The Pitch: Signing of Ronan O’Gara completes Declan Kelly’s comeback

As well as seven-time Super Bowl winner Brady, Strive includes 23-time Grand Slam winner Serena Williams, holder of eight Premier League medals and two Champions League titles Gary Neville, and two-time NBA Championship winner Pau Gasol.

However, Consello needed another golden name to join its sports stable — an Irish star in the mould of a Rory, Roy, or ROG — to join Paul McGinley and Liam Sheedy on its management advisory team.

Then the news dropped on Tuesday with the announcement of Ronan O’Gara as senior adviser to the firm, an audacious signing, every bit as exceptional as the rapid growth of the firm itself.

O’Gara’s four European Cups as a player and manager, a Six Nations Grand Slam, and three triple crowns and Lions jerseys sit comfortably within the profile of remarkable talent, power, and success acquired by the group.

The suite of superstars scooped up by Kelly is only trumped by his own achievement in recent years — a rise, fall, and comeback as pure and impressive as any sporting drama on the field of play.

Kelly’s ability is boundless to build yet another global powerhouse company in business management and consultancy, created from scratch, to once again serve and counsel the world’s leading businesses and Fortune 500 firms. This time with an added sporting strategic layer, through Strive.

Kelly’s rise again is stunning, coming so soon after a stumble which led to a complete collapse which forced him out of his first iteration, Teneo, in 2021, following controversy at a fundraiser. Vax Live at the SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California — headlined by the Foo Fighters and Selena Gomez and supported by Harry and Meghan, then Duke and Duchess of Sussex — was followed by a Financial Times investigation which made claims about Kelly’s behaviour.

Upon the first whiff of scandal, a number of leading clients left the business, notably General Motors, forcing Kelly’s exit.

The corporate brand world is jittery at the best of times and paranoia can be smothering, even on the mildest of stinks.

“Regardless of the veracity of any such matters, I do not want them to be an ongoing distraction to the running of our company,” he said.

With its founder and CEO gone, Teneo eventually pulled its sponsorship of Kelly’s beloved Tipperary GAA and the downfall was complete.

So that was it for Kelly — or so everyone thought, almost everyone.

At the time of his resignation, I met a former colleague of Kelly who said, in words which have proven prophetic: “If anyone can come back from this, it’s Declan — don’t rule him out.”

And so, in 2022, Consello was born with four distinct business objectives: M&A advisory and investment banking, growth and business development, investing, and digital assets advisory.

Kelly’s own crisis communications experience will have brought an added skillset to the suite of strategies but, more importantly, his development of the sports and entertainment side of management began to make waves.

Within a year, the firm announced that perhaps the greatest female athlete in history — Williams — would be joining the advisory team.

“I have been extremely impressed with the progress Declan and the entire team at Consello have made since the company’s launch last year, as well as the growth the company has had both in terms of financial services advisory and its private equity investing business,” said Williams.

“Moreover, the distinguished list of senior executives who have come together to form the nucleus of the partnership leading the company speaks for itself and is, in my opinion, one of the best in the world already.”

So what is it that Williams or Neville or O’Gara do for Consello? With Consello Strive, they will support and lead strategic solutions, particularly across commercial and brand initiatives, along with investment, infrastructure, and technology to support teams, leagues, and athletes. Its key sports assets or stars will also link in with Consello’s leadership development, talent, and business transformation division, working with clients on an ongoing basis across a range of areas including organisational, redesign, and restructure.

Much of the work is focused on leadership development, generally with the CEO or various heads of departments, to run effective management programmes and to ensure high-performance across their entire teams.

Sheedy — another Irish Examiner columnist — has vast business and operational experience, from his banking days when he managed 600 people and 500,000 retail and business customers across the Munster region and, of course, from his two All-Ireland wins with Tipperary as manager.

Sheedy and his key advisory team will help to deliver programmes onsite or offsite, depending on needs and budgets both in Ireland and internationally. They will also — and here’s where O’Gara is perfect for such a role — advise, teach, and support leadership development, a key focus area for advisers as they bring their expertise and experience to bear by devising programmes transferable from sport to business.

In specific instances, they will participate directly in the delivery of such programmes, whether that be a two or three-day workshop or on an ongoing basis.

Consello sees what it offers as something particularly unique in an Irish business context, and in a jurisdiction which is a significant strategic hub for the world’s leading brands.

It is something which is already in high demand, with significant take-up for its services, according to insiders.

With O’Gara involved, an engaging character anyway — as readers of his Examiner Sport column will testify — and as someone who has achieved remarkable success in management and leadership, the company expects significant corporate demand on the back of his association.

What all of the leading sports advisory team at Consello have is profile, through status within their chosen disciplines, and perhaps even higher profiles through their media work.

Neville is a case in point of someone with vast audience and someone who speaks well — indeed, his words and thoughts forced the early collapse of the European Super League in 2021.

But also Neville has serious interests of his own, across eight valuable businesses, something which Kelly alluded to earlier this year.

“We will also be working directly with Gary to expand his business interests in the US and other regions, further building on the very successful career he has developed both inside and outside of football over the last number of years,” he said.

Kelly runs Consello mainly through its New York HQ and only speaks publicly through press release.

In politely refusing The Pitch access to the CEO, a colleague of Kelly said: “Declan prefers to let the business do the talking, and there’s really nothing that he has to say outside of that.”

Based on the group’s exceptional growth in profile and in its accumulation of star assets, Kelly may as well be roaring from the rooftops: “Comeback complete.”