Published on Flying Solo – http://www.flyingsolo.com.au/startup/business-lessons-learned

Starting a business in a market that doesn’t exist really brings out the sceptics. So it’s given me great pleasure over the years to prove those people wrong. Here’s how I did it.

20 April 2016 by David Koetsier

Starting a business in a practically non-existing market was probably the toughest thing I have ever done. Here’s what we learned along the way:

‘Shoot for the moon, even if you miss you’ll land among the stars.’ – Les Brown.

When we moved to Australia from the Netherlands 10 years ago we realised that the chess community here is extremely small, unlike anything we are used to. We were accustomed to being surrounded by countries where chess is taught as part of the school curriculum. (The educational benefits of chess like developing strategic and forward planning capabilities as well as increasing concentration complement the regular classes.) Very quickly we saw an immense opportunity to help develop our future generations. From the very beginning we have had a very large vision – to see chess taught in every school in Australia. All we had to do now was to put this into action.

Having a clear vision and passion for the education of juniors made the work enjoyable, but we quickly found the need to re-assess by creating smaller and achievable goals which allowed us to grow the business without continually running into cash flow problems. It gave us targets to meet regularly which motivated not only us, but also our growing group of coaches.

“From the very beginning we have had a very large vision – to see chess taught in every school in Australia. “

‘People don’t care how much you know, until they know how much you care.’ – John C Maxwell

So where do you start? We found cold calling and emailing schools one of the most demotivating activities one can undertake. The ‘gate-keepers’ are absolutely fantastic at their job; the amount of requests they receive for someone to speak to the principal with a new idea must be mind-blowing.

Offering free trial classes and continually going the extra mile for our customers in the beginning made all the difference. We did not focus on the business we were trying to grow, but the ultimate benefits students and customers would receive through the service of chess coaching. Slowly the word got out about what we wanted to achieve.

Want more articles like this? Check out the business startup section.

‘If you look after your staff they’ll look after your customers. It’s that simple.’ – Richard Branson

As we started coaching at more schools (word of mouth is truly the best piece of advertising!) we needed to hire coaches. Advertising on our website and social media quickly led to local chess players coming forward. Obviously hiring the best people for the job is already hard enough, but how do you go about this for a non-existing role? So, we followed our gut and instead of hiring the best chess players, we focussed on personality, (a decision deemed controversial in the chess community – but we figured these coaches would be dealing with seven year olds, not grandmasters!).

We did not get it right straight away but have consistently found that following our gut when it comes to staff has definitely been the best way to go about things. We also look after our staff by providing additional training every school holidays where all the coaches get to learn from each other. And we’ve also realised our coaches do not have the same passion and goals as we do (of course they don’t, it’s not their business), so we reward generously and support them every step of the way to ensure a positive work environment.

‘Success is no accident. It is hard work, studying, sacrifice and most of all, LOVE what you are doing.’ – Pele

We continue to learn by reading and listening to other business owners; locally, nationally and internationally. We’re all trying to achieve the same thing; to follow our dreams. It really doesn’t matter whether you run a mechanic repair place, a fashion house or coach chess. The process is almost the same and through supporting each other by sharing our stories we can continue to inspire and grow.

The journey has been tough so far, but by having followed my dream, this is by far the best job I have ever had!

12 months ago the Adelaide Hills magazine published an article about David’s quest to find Grandmasters. Please see the text of the article, wonderfully written by James Howe below:

David Koetsier believes there are young chess-playing superstars waiting to be discovered in the Adelaide Hills. Trouble is, he says. They’ve always been overlooked by a nation more obsessed with ball-games. James Howe talks to the Grandmaster who believes teaching chess can be as formulaic as teaching spelling – and that a touch of Asperger’s can mean a path to glory…

I hear him before I seem him: a loud, musical voice ricocheting off the concrete floor of the Udder Delights cheese cellar. “Hi, hi! Yah, I’m going to need to get a coffee”. Presently, David Koetsier round the corner with a cappuccino; he’s a small, tidy man in an orange flanno, buttoned nearly to the Adam’s apple. He parks himself opposite me, bobbing his head and grinning broadly in greeting.

He begins to tell me what he plans to do in the Hills. “You have to understand in the last 40 years in Australia, there have been only four Grandmasters. Only four!” He shakes his head, contemplating a figure he hasn’t quite dealt with during his nine years in Australia. In short, David plans to make a lot more. David was born in Holland, where there are 150 Grandmasters (a title conferred by the World Chess Federation) and everybody plays. But David says he started late – at age seven. “I played chess because I was bored out of my brains at school.”

As fate would have it, he was good. Really good. By 12, he was travelling Europe with professional players much older than himself. He made good money doing it, too. “If you can pay your way through uni, you can imagine the figures,: he says. Today, when he goes home to Amsterdam, kids stop him in the street for autographs. When he pulls out a chessboard, he gathers huge crowds. Such is the reality of being a chess star in Holland, where the sport rates second only to soccer in popularity. And David was a star.

But in 2005, when David arrive in Adelaide, he was unknown. There was, he says, no real chess scene at the time. I protest at this, recalling a lively chess program at my high school. St Ignatius College, back in the early 2000s. “Ahh St Ignatius. Yah, yah, we played them last year.” He says, leaning back to sip his cappuccino before briskly dabbing his lips with a paper napkin. “That, for me, is not a level of chess. There is a difference between playing chess and just messing about with chess pieces.”

David isn’t arrogant when he placed my school in the latter camp; he’s being honest. He’s European, and is accustomed to European chess. Australian chess, by comparison, is found to be wanting. “I’m still working at the European standard.” He says. “Because if you lower your standards, then you as a parent will say, ‘oh my son is doing great!’ But he isn’t”

Instead, David plans to raise a generation of true-blue, home-grown, Australian Grandmasters. And he believes he can do it. In Hahndorf, he says, there are already more kids playing chess than soccer. Many of these have real promise. “There are geniuses walking around here. They’re walking around! But you’ve got to look for them. And nobody’s looked for them before.” But he’s looking. Formally educated as a medical physicist, David has discarded his career in this field to allow him to dedicate all of his time to the quest for Grandmasters. He has even let go of his chess career, because the 40 hour-plus playing week of the professional was incompatible with coaching.

Today, all his time is absorbed in travelling between Hills schools, teaching chess to students. He squeezes his lessons into gaps before classes, during lunch and after school. The take-up, he says, has been astonishing. “Something is really happening,” he says. “Kids are coming from everywhere.” Although David has started his search for Australian Grandmasters in the Hills, he doesn’t expect it to end there. “My aim is to put not only Hahndorf, or Adelaide on the map, but also to put Australia on the map,” he says.

But can David really teach people to be chess champions? Or do you need to be born one? The answer, he says, is a little bit of both. Although teaching chess is as formulaic as teaching maths or spelling, it pays for a pupil to have the right kind of temperament. The first thing to look out for, when it comes to chess, is a little bit of Autism. “Asperger’s-related students, mostly, are really good at chess, because they can think for 10 hours,” he says. A chess champion is likely to be someone who has felt at odds with a culture that elevates ball games, says David, “and there are a lot more chess players than footy-players, trust me.” But while natural chess players may form the majority in Australian schools, they haven’t traditionally had many opportunities for glory in the sporting arena. This is where David comes in. “I make a slot for them,” he says. “Teachers and principals find it amazing how many children don’t have a slot. Now they say, ‘Why didn’t we do this thing years ago?”

One reason is a dire shortage of teachers. Geniuses with Asperger’s make excellent chess players, but they’re not usually great at holding the attention of six-year-olds. So does David has Asperger’s? Absolutely he does. But in his case it’s an ingredient in a rare personality cocktail. “I am different because I have Asperger’s, too – but I am sanguine.” It’s the perfect mix: the Asperger’s lends an obsessive concentration needed to be a brilliant chess player, while the bubbly positivity of David’s optimism (his ‘sanguine’ disposition, as he puts it in that lovely European way_ helps him to engage students. “They say I have a lively delivery,” he adds wryly.

David reaches into a folder and produces an exercise book: Step one of the six-step program he uses to turn kids into Grandmasters. “About ten people in Australia are at Step Six,” he says. Step one contains a few dozen pictures of chess boards, each with a different setup of pieces. Students are required to indicate the quickest routes of the pieces across the board. The one he shows me has been completed by a six-year-old boy; he can’t write properly yet, but he plays chess against 12-year-olds.

David’s early lessons are geared towards teaching the pupil how to be a good defender, which he sees as a player’s most vital attribute. “A lot of schools do it the other way around: they start with checkmate,” he says. “But how can you start with checkmate? Chess is like a soccer team. If your defences are right, then you can start attacking.”

And when the pieces start flying, it’s not uncommon for passions to spill over. During one game, David was beaten over the head with a chess board. This happened during a chess tournament, when his opponent came to the end of his two-hour time limit. “He was so angry at himself, that he sort of just went AARGHH!” says David, while standing up and swinging an imaginary chessboard at my head. Frightening. The player was banned for a year. “He’s not the only one,” he adds.

Aside from inciting the odd violent outburst, chess instils players with an ability to strategize and concentrate David says the game is especially beneficial for children with conditions such as ADHD, as it forces them to focus their attention. “Their world becomes 64 squares. Teachers will say, ‘He’s changed since he started playing chess! What happened?”

But most important, in David’s mind, is the enjoyment the game can bring. For him, it has meant a career, friends, world travel. “It’s my life,” he says.

Is chess a game or a sport?

I am sure you have all had the conversation with your friends, is chess a sport or a game? This may of course depend on who you are playing against; if it is just a friendly match with your uncle or sibling, than sure – the match you are playing can be seen as a game. But as soon as you are playing in a tournament – whether it is school against school, or an individual championship – I believe chess should be looked at as a sport.

In the seventies and eighties, the Australian Government had chess classified as a sport. Funding for the game was allocated from the sports budget and chess was played by many. Since the removal of its status as a sport, numbers appear to have declined and funding is harder to find. Around the world, the opinions are also divided; the countries that have embraced chess in their curriculum are those that often have chess recognised as a sport, while other countries offer it as a game.

Chess was accepted as a sport by the International Olympic Committee in 1999 and the world chess body FIDE has been dreaming of having chess included at the Olympic Games. FIDE’s controversial President Kirsan Iljumzhinov has put in another bid for chess to be included in the 2024 winter games (Paris), with the idea of playing a blitz tournament with pieces made out of ice for it to classify as a winter sport. GM Ian Rogers wrote a blog about this recently: http://gardinerchess.com.au/gm-rogers-iljumzhinovs-olympic-games/

But the exclusion from the Olympics does not stop the chess community, since 1924 every two years they host their own Olympiad, where teams of 4 and 5 from around the world compete against each other. This highly respected tournament sees all the top players play for their country and coverage of the 10 day spectacle is almost as large as that of the Olympics. Last year, Australia did incredibly well and came 31st out of the 150 teams in the Open tournament and the Women’s teams came 32^nd from 136 teams.

Most people consider a game to be a sport when it includes physical exertion, like running, and they can’t imagine a game whereby you sit still for 6 hours could be considered a sport. What most people may not realise is that thinking for 6 hours at this level will have your brain use as much energy as your muscles would need to run a marathon. Most chess players loose a fair bit of weight during a game, because their brain consumes so much energy. And these chess players keep this in mind with pending tournaments, by keeping to a strict diet and exercise routine, just like any athlete does.

I guess in the end it all comes down to how you perceive the activity. If you play a game of footy with your friends, are you participating in sport or are you just having a game? If you play tennis with your sister, are you playing a game or a sport? Overall I think it is important that if you are playing chess, it is important that you need to take it as serious as you can!

Chess Player versus Chess Coach – 29/05/2015

I often get asked when I will be playing in a tournament. People seem keen to link my ability for coaching to how well I could perform in a tournament. In order to prepare for a tournament, you need to spend many hours studying and reviewing games of opponents. In order to prepare students for tournaments you need to spend many hours studying, what style would suit their game for example defensive or attacking, and reviewing games of opponents. It is impossible to do both without compromising.

I have played tournaments for many years, but when I started coaching I made the commitment to my students to be completely devoted to their growth, not my own. Not only do I need to prepare their technical skill, a coach also focuses on all the aspects around the game; posture, attitude and mental state. A coach does not need to be the best chess player, they need to be able to transfer their skills and aim to have their students become better chess players then they are. Grandmaster Judith Polgar retired from chess last year to start her own chess school; she did not start this level of coaching until she had finished competing for herself.

Current World Champion Magnus Carlsen has set the ultimate example for finding good coaches and how they not necessarily need to be known for their play. After working with Garry Kasparov for many years – yes the former world champion Garry Kasparov – Carlsen dropped Kasparov and chose to be coached by a team of people, among others Fide Master Espen Agdestein. Espen is not a grandmaster, but is very good at analysis and provide positional expertise for Carlsen, showing the world that you should not judge a coach on their own play.

Just because you have been a good footy player, does not mean you are good at coaching an entire team. Just because you are a good tennis player, does not mean you are going to be good at transferring those skills to others.

Many countries like the Netherlands and even the world chess organisation have recognised this concept for years and have in place coaching courses and certificates. They have all realised you should not judge a coach just on their own chess skills, but rather on the way they are able to transfer their skills.

So I am sorry to disappoint if you were waiting to see me compete in any upcoming tournaments, I have retired from competitive chess a long time ago. But I love what I do and study chess so I can transfer that knowledge to my students so they can flourish and grow. And even though I enjoyed winning tournaments during my chess career, there is nothing more rewarding than seeing young players on stage being acknowledged for their hard work.

Autism – 15/05/2015

As Aspergers has become part of our vocabulary, we are starting to understand moreabout the amazing minds of students that are diagnosed within the spectrum of Autism and how they view the world. I am sure it comes as no surprise that there are many students with Autism that love the game of chess and are excelling their skill. And it is especially for these students that teaching chess has very little to do with rules of the game and so much about their development. On a regular basis I am invited into the home of a family that would like to try chess for their child, sometimes because the student has already taught themselves the game and parents want to encourage their growth. The key to teaching someone with Autism is communication, creating a world so small that it becomes purely about the 64 squares in front of them. Clear rules and structure provide the safety when they attempt this new game. You teach them how the different pieces move, providing evidence on how different rules apply for different people depending on their role in life. And then suddenly you see it happen – the best part – a smile, the start of a conversation; first with the pieces in front of them and then with the face on the other side of the board. They discover it is safe to talk about their plan of attack, how they will defend their king and what they will be doing next, with the person they are playing with. For those that have great difficulty in making new friends and holding a social conversation, they have just discovered a whole new world or people that they can interact with safely! Chess can become the bridge between two worlds.

In an environment where it has become so easy to interact via electronic devices, it has made making new friends even harder. The comment I hear most from students is why they like to play chess; it has allowed them to make new friends. And the truth is this is not just for students with Autism. A parent that has difficulty communicating with their teenager, grandpa that does not understand his 8 year old grandson – all can communicate over a game of chess!

Why not comment and tell us how you make new friends.

Monday 4th May 2015

You do What?!?!? I am a chess coach. As in the Game? Yes, as in the game. Don’t worry – you are not the first one to ask, I hear it all the time. Some continue that conversation by comments of disbelief; ‘when are you finding a real job?’ but others are pleasantly surprised and admire the fact I have created a job out of passion. And that is exactly what I am doing – I live and breathe chess – have done so from a very young age. Every day I look at games played around the world, prepare classes and study tactics. I have made the switch from chess player to chess coach over 20 years ago and my experience in teaching others has led me to where I am today. So what do I do exactly? My wife and I run ‘Chesslife’ – coaching chess in and around Adelaide to over 500 students every week with a team of enthusiastic coaches. Our friends have watched us from the sidelines over the last few years and seen this has made us happier than anything else before. Of course running your own business is hard and comes with all the same issues anyone faces – there is staff training, cash flow and marketing, but the core of what I do – coach chess – is what makes this the most rewarding job I have ever had!

Let me give you an example; I love how I can train not just the skills of the game – you can learn how the pieces move from a book – but how I can focus on all these extra benefits that come with this mighty game. Last year one of our students was progressing nicely with his chess skills, but when it came to tournaments he was struggling. He was completely devastated after a loss and brought to tears in front of the other players and found it hard to pick himself up for the next game. His games got worse after each round and left deflated at the end. With guidance, support and coaching, this young man has now completely turned around and has become a strong independent and confident chess player. This is reflected in his games, his posture during tournaments and how he deals with a loss, but the benefits have far outstretched the game of chess. His school work has improved, his social network has grown and he is now using his confidence in his first job as a chess arbiter this year (arbiter is a chess umpire). This boy is not the same as last year and chess has been able to help him shape his growth. Of course his loving parents are very much part of this journey as well, but the point I am trying to make is that the sport you choose as a child, will have a great impact on your future and I am grateful I can be part of the lives of these young minds.

Why not comment and tell us about your passion.