We're getting too emotional here. Why did you blunder here? 90% of the time? There was actually some sort of reason that.
Welcome to smashing the plateau. We help you get unstuck so you can do what you love and get paid. What you're worth consistently. I'm your host David Schreiner Kahn today on episode 605 of smashing the plateau. I'm speaking with Evan. Evan has the unique combination of mastery at what he loves to do. Plus competence and sales and business.
His niche, chess has lessons for all of us in how we can respond to unexpected obstacles, stay with us to hear all the details, figuring out your unique combination of what you love and what you're competent at doing is one of the keys to success in your own. Helping you find your uniqueness is just one of the ways the smashing the plateau community can help you launch and grow your consulting business.
Especially if you've had a long career as a high achieving employee before you became a consultant. I know I've always had a great deal of trouble seeing my own uniqueness. That's why I've learned to rely on the wisdom and feedback of trusted colleagues. You can have the benefit of a whole community of trusted colleagues. When you join the smashing the plateau community, go to smashing the plateau.com/community. To learn more. That's smashing the plateau.com/.
Now let's welcome. Evan Raman, Evan was born and raised in New York. After working in corporate America, doing enterprise sales at Oracle and rapid seven. He formed premier chess in September, 2017. Premier chest currently runs programs in over 80 schools and companies, including the law firm. Kramer-Levin, he's a us chess national master Evan. Welcome to the. Thank you so much for having me, my pleasure. So tell me a little bit about your career. it's interesting.
You went corporate and then you didn't, what's behind that.
basically I graduated Brandeis university in May, 2012. I was studying business and international global studies. after a very brief stint, working at chess in the schools for six months, I started my career. Yeah. Oracle where I was doing enterprise sales for three years. And then I went to rapid seven, selling data security for. And it was enjoyable. I love sales. I love, working, with great individuals and, being analytical in sales, but ultimately cited that, want to sell what I love.
So in September, 2017, I formed premier chess. And within the first two months of the business, we were in 14 schools and had 10 instructors, working for us. just kept going through.
Ah, congratulations. What does it mean to be analytical in sales? I
think what it comes down to is always trying to figure out how you could carve out your territory. Look for the low-hanging fruit. I remember when I first started at Oracle, my good friend and mentor bill Peterson, he used to. Mentioned that, a lot of sales reps and when it first starting out, they look for, the big whales they look for, their biggest deals possible. But at the end of the day, those are a little bit difficult and it's better to, work for, smaller upgrades and things like that.
I actually wrote a blog post a couple of weeks ago about the parallels between sales and. And I talked about low-hanging fruit and now it's the same thing on the chess board. I have a lot of beginner and intermediate students, so it will pretty much every single time they could go for an attack, but that's not always justified. yes, the ultimate goal of a chess game is checkmate, means the king isn't check and there's no way to get out of check, but at the end of the day, a lot of.
Master games don't actually end in check me, you get a material advantage and then you win. So the point is, you need to look for the specific weaknesses and figure out where to attack and whether it's on the board or in sales or anything else for that
matter. Yeah. The other parallel that comes to my mind is. Entrepreneurs in particular are often enamored of, what they perceive to be massive breakthroughs that other people achieve. And they try to get them and they hope to get them. Often much more quickly than is actually realistic.
What we typically don't see is that when somebody else has used a breakthrough, there've been hundreds or maybe even thousands of tiny steps and pivots along the way, and those steps and pivots take a lot of time. They take energy, they take focus, they take perseverance and, which speaks to your comment about the low hanging fruit and going for the incremental steps along the way. Evan Zachary Rabin: Yeah, and I think it's.
important to, consider and I think, yeah, every entrepreneur and chess player definitely has a drive. that I would say is more important in a way than even like studying, chess or anything else. you could study sales all you want, but until you actually get into like the weeds of it and do it, you're not going to succeed. that's why we were in 14 schools. Literally two months, but we just went at it.
So Evan, how did it feel to suddenly make this huge shift and focus all your time and energy on something that you love as opposed to something that was interesting and maybe you were good at, but wasn't fueling something that was a kind of a personal desire.
Yeah. I would say. we just look, everyone says it right. When you do something you love, you're not exactly working. there are definitely elements that I don't like, of course. And, imagine outsourcing most of those, we recently brought on a full-time part-time, operations and finance person, in releasing a lot of the burden of, some of the operations. But, everything else. I pretty much love, I love going to classrooms. I love teaching, I love the, all the corporate classes that we do.
I love hiring instructors and networking beyond podcasts like this, just talking about what we do, it's just never a dull moment, All in, around from meeting to meeting, it's not being in the office and, I'm flexible. I don't see myself ever working again, for someone. And
the other thing is you as an entrepreneur, once we've been doing it for a period of time, most of the time, somebody else doesn't really want to hire. We don't make good fits as employees. No, it's very
true. Yeah. That's why I was just networking with someone the other day, who does sales at Google, she, and how we could help each other. And he was like, Hey, by the way, do do wine potentially get hired? And I said no, it's just it felt weird to say that, to turn someone down at Google, but, still,
Yeah. congratulations on a and what you have achieved. How far in were you Evan, when you felt like what the business that you had launched was sustainable?
pretty much like in those first two months and it was sustainable, also frankly it's not as much of a niche as people think either, in New York alone there. Off the top of my head, 12 jazz companies and more, and has been working for, many years. So I just knew, from prior history that it could definitely work, especially with my sales background and willingness to, run programs around the country. And I pretty much never looked back.
So given the fact that there was competition, what do you think differentiated you, your business? From what was already out there so that you could gain traction pretty
quickly? I would say the biggest thing is my business acumen. Most of the chess companies and New York, are run by chess players, who are great at chess and great at teaching, but they're just not particularly great at sale. I've had schools be surprised that we would even send them a statement of work compared to like previous just companies that they've worked with, years ago that just said, Hey, we're coming in tomorrow. Okay, great.
and for me coming from Oracle and rapid seven, like there's no way I would start working at a school without a signed contract.
Yeah. It's like common sense to me, that thing it's just being very professional standards, making sure that, Marshall very hands-on, but all of our programs as much as possible, especially obviously our New York schools, we do some schools around the country that are a little harder to visit, but even them, I communicate every week and, I value in every way as possible. And yeah. So the last, big thing is being a master, as well. I am rated in the top 1.5% of players, in the country. There are.
A few other just companies, held by masters, some aren't, it all the time people tell me like, oh wow, you must be such a good chess player. You run a chess company. And I honestly laugh because my biggest competitor is not run by a trusted or rated chess player. It is what it is, And he actually has some great instructors and staff who are titled players. But yeah, it's definitely not like an obvious. That you could be a strong chess player to, to run a test company.
So you have the unique combination of love and competence for the sector that you're in.
Yeah, I would say love confidence. also the business skills I did actually before premier chess also start a different company, pillar sales that, Dale tails for starting. Did that for about a year and she'd while I was teaching chess a little bit like on the side.
And were you full-time in that other company? Mostly.
I was teaching chess like 10% and doing that in 90% of,
ah, okay. But you weren't working in corporate at that point? No. Okay. What made you decide to start the sales company for.
actually one of my former Oracle colleagues, Jad Shaheen had a FinTech startup and, he was at the time struggling for salespeople and just met me one day. and, he knew I was open to potentially leaving rapid seven. And, basically certain, I looked me in so many other entrepreneurs are struggling to find salespeople. Why don't we consider doing this? starting a sales outsourcing business. And I brushed him away actually from the idea didn't really make that much sense to me.
And then literally two nights later, I was at a Shabbat dinner and talking to my friend, Jonah, who is a serial entrepreneur. And I literally just asked him, what is. Doing, and he was like, wow, I'm starting this like sales business, And I was like, whoa, like I just was talking to my friend. Dad felt like almost the same thing. Two days ago. I, started to think about it a little bit more. And eventually all of us met up one day, he and his two business partners and Jad and all that.
And then, it was interesting cause eventually Jonah and Jad actually pulled out pretty early on, but then the three of us stayed Dale and John took a night and it was a lot of fun. I, did it for a year. I was traveling around the world in Iceland, Israel, England, meeting startups that were looking to come to the U S w it wasn't easy. And at the same time, I was, teaching chess again in New York. And. like, why not do this? why not tell chess?
I did have a couple of connections as well and just, yeah, got it. Got the ground running.
Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. So in fact, the chest business is your second business, correct. Got it. So now in your current business, Who do you describe as your ideal client?
So for us, it's pretty broad. We do have three main types of clients. We have our corporate clients that are generally 50 employees. They're not in particular law firms, tech firms, and hedge funds and banks as well. Those are just some verticals that certainly have a lot of test players. Then we also do a lot of school programs all around the country, really every type of school from preschool to 12th grade, public charter, private, it doesn't really matter. We could be there.
And then, individuals, three to 100 plus that are looking to, learn business and life lessons through the game. whether it be privately or, in a group class,
what's the most common problem you saw?
The biggest problem we have for organizations in particular is just giving organizations platform, basically as a playground for critical thinking and development. So we realized that for instance, with lawyers, that frame 11, that we teach, once a month, they're attorneys. they know law in and out, and many of them have been practicing for, 10, 20 plus years.
But at the end of the day, every single case is different know, just like on a chess board, I, all the time we'll go over games with students and I'll ask a student, oh, why do you make this move? And in a given opening position and be like, oh, that's like the common moves. That's what I normally do. and then I'll say, have you seen this position before? And then he'll start to say, yeah, I've seen similar positions and I'm like, no, I asked that, have you seen this position before?
No. I haven't either. So guess what? This case is a little bit different, but it's, thinking about what you've learned before, but also thinking right here.
So how do you deal with unexpected situations
dealing with unexpected situations and also being able to, even if it's something that you've seen before, not rushing through it? I not, yes. Using your instincts that obviously I think is a very important part of jazz for business or anything else. They're not blindly doing it.
Yeah, I think that not rushing through it when you're in an unexpected situation, sounds to me like a real aha moment for people, because particularly if the unexpected situation makes you feel uncomfortable, you may want to get it over with as quickly as possible.
Yeah, absolutely. I just look chest half of them battle is controlling your emotions. My coach actually, who I master Leyanna do Dawson, who I'm working on a book with now actually is a former world championship candidate. I used to get annoyed and when we first started working together, because know, we'd go over one of my games and you'd say something like, oh, I haven't, we're getting too emotional. and I kept being like, I Astra, you're a chess coach. You're not my psychologist.
And, he would then ask me, look, why did you blunder here? And I'm like, what? I made a silly mistake. I wasn't thinking let's move on. Let's go to the next, game or whatever, but, no, he would dig into it. And 90% of the time there was. Actually some sort of reason that I wondered whether I was, I missed the value of the position. I was thinking about something completely unrelated, like an exam the next day, or I was tired and I shouldn't have even played the tournament. I did that yesterday.
Actually I played a tournament, it was scheduled, but I was running around on morning before, ran home, literally with a minute to spare, to hop on the online tournament. Of course, ponder is the first two games. I just wasn't in the mindset to play. So I think it's a, yeah, it really important to, be able to control that and, be able to, take a deep breath and, just.
How important do you find your mindset is and how important do you find it is to understand your emotions when you're facing an unexpected situation in order to be able to come out on the other side with a move that is as successful as possible in terms of how it positions you for.
I think it's extremely important. one common mistake that a lot of players, including myself make a lot, as much as I try not to is letting a domino effect happen. you make one mistake, you go from a winning position to, a slightly better position to lose a position to an equal, completely losing possession. very common.
So the biggest thing I tell students all the time and I'd chill is look, you make a mistake and it happens, go get up, go get a drink of water, relax, take a deep breath, and come back to the board then and play a whole new game. Basically, as much as possible. Similarly, once people lose a game, they'll be so much more likely to lose another game and, a bunch more.
yeah, I think, ultimately it really is just important to, take a deep breath and think about it as, a game that serious, but not like too crazy for the
folks that you teach in a business context using. What are some of their takeaways when it comes to understanding their mindset and their emotions when they're dealing with one of these unexpected, yet critical junctures in their business?
Yeah. I would say, business people, could struggle when there's no unexpected turn. I think COVID-19, of course is a very good example of that. A great example, of course. probably better than anything else, but, yeah. And much, 2020, pretty much businesses suddenly had to
stop and some flourished and some pivoted and flourished,
some pivoted and flourished. we did, we started running all of our programs virtually for the most part. But a lot more. I was actually quoted in the New York times about how our virtual business went up 150%, yet I honestly like almost disappoints me sometimes when I like still hear like some chest people test teachers, for instance, have not taught virtual classes, since then I was just like, whoa, don't, some of them have just been off know, never adapted.
So yeah, like I think that the point is. Yeah, it's really important to be able to, use this as an opportunity, not a problem. And, ultimately take it and realize, things happen for a reason know, given the pandemic actually. personally, I've been able to connect people around the world. I've had one person who comes to mind is it's this lady Tundra. who's a life coach and Slovenia that I met networking. She's been on my podcast naturally. And I'm coming in horizontally in a few weeks.
taking advantage of, the whole situation, BC, there's like a new competitor out there, use them as a partner, we've get tons of business from other trust companies and vice versa, so really it's important just to, you see something that's incorrect, it's, what could you learn from it? And, how could you actually use it to your advantage?
Yeah, the ability to. To reflect, understand where you are, understand what's driving you and then learn from that. And pivot is really critical. Evan, we've covered a lot of territory about, your own career trajectory, the success that you have achieved in your business. And also. How you help your clients. If somebody wants to go deeper with anything we've discussed today, access any resources you may have or learn more about you get in touch with you where it'd be the best place for them.
Thank you. So yeah. Thank you again for having me. And I do want to actually give a quick shout out to Gary Ireland, your previous guests, which is how I found out about you. he's also been on my podcast as well, but, yeah, if anyone is interested in learning more talking to you, Learning about options as a company, as a school, as an individual to, work with us, you could certainly check out premier chests.com or you could email Evan at premier, Jessica.
Sounds great. Well, Evan, it's been a pleasure to have you on today. As part of the part of smashing the plateau. My guest today has been the CEO of premier chess academy. Evan, Raven, thank you for sharing your story with us. Smashing a plateau community.
Thank you. My sincere pleasure
when you visit the smashing the plateau website@smashingtheplateau.com, you'll find a summary of each episode, along with the links we mentioned on the show today, we learned how you use your unique combination of mastery at what you love to do. Plus other areas of competence to build a successful business, figuring out your unique combination of what you love and what you're competent at doing is one of the key. To success in your own business, helping you find your uniqueness.
It's just one of the ways the smashing the plateau community can help you launch and grow your consulting business. Especially if you've had a long career as a high achieving employee before you became a consultant. The challenge is it's hard to see what makes you unique on your own. I know I've always had a great deal of trouble seeing my own uniqueness. That's why I've learned to rely on the wisdom and feedback of trusted colleagues.
You can have the benefit of a whole community of trusted colleagues. When you joined the smashing the plateau community, go to smashing the plateau.com/community. To learn more. That's smashing the plateau.com/community. Thank you for taking the time to listen to our show. I'll see you on our next episode.