The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Unlock Business Networking on the Golf Course with Emajin Golf

Episode Date: November 10, 2024

Emajin.golf Unlock Business Networking on the Golf Course with Emajin Golf About the Guest(s): Raj Narayan is the founder and CEO of Emajin Golf, a unique golf-based business networking platform. With extensive experience in the corporate sector, she has held various leadership positions, including COO at Westpac Private Bank. Raj's passion for golf and its potential as a networking tool inspired her to establish Emajin Golf. She has served as a Golf NSW Advisory Committee member and as a woman’s captain and board member at a premier golf club. Raj aims to bridge business and golf, offering exclusive access to top golf courses and opportunities to connect with influential business leaders. Episode Summary: In this exciting episode of The Chris Voss Show, host Chris Voss engages with Raj Narayan, the visionary founder and CEO of Emajin Golf, a pioneering business networking platform focused on the game of golf. As a reputed leader in the corporate banking sector and a passionate golf enthusiast, Raj shares her journey of transitioning her love for golf into a thriving business model. The conversation delves deep into how Emajin Golf facilitates business networking by providing access to exclusive golf courses and connecting members with senior executives, CEOs, and industry leaders. Throughout the episode, Raj highlights the significance of golf as an instrumental tool for forming robust business connections. She discusses the structured format Emajin Golf offers, blending exclusive golf experiences with high-impact business networking opportunities. By detailing the unique approach of curating high-quality and memorable networking events, Raj emphasizes the competitive advantage her platform provides. Listeners will gain insights into how a strategic fusion of sports and business networking can drive significant value, offering a fresh perspective on leveraging leisure activities for business growth. Key Takeaways: Emajin Golf offers a structured business networking platform centered around golf, providing access to exclusive courses and notable speakers. The platform facilitates meaningful connections, with 94% of members being senior executives or company owners, optimizing business growth opportunities. Events feature a variety of seasoned keynote speakers across different industries, covering relevant business topics and fostering learning. Raj Ion emphasizes the growing need for face-to-face networking, highlighting its effectiveness compared to digital interactions. Emajin Golf is actively seeking to expand globally, aiming to bring its unique networking approach to new international markets. Notable Quotes: "Networking is really important because, let's be honest, people do business with people they know, they like, and they trust." "The value of the community is the community itself. We've got amazing business owners and leaders within our membership." "Community is not about belonging to something. Community is doing something together that makes belonging matter." "People join us to gain access to top golf courses and hear from senior keynote speakers, but they stay to grow their business." "Golf provides an opportunity… you're trapped in a cart with someone for four and a half hours, and it amplifies that connection."

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. It's Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com.

Where the hell did that come from? Who was that? Who did that on the show? Who took that? That's the Iron Lady. One of the things that makes it official, welcome my friends and family to the Chris Voss Show. For 16 years and over 2,100 episodes, we've been bringing you the Chris Voss Show, the

billionaires, the CEOs, the White House Presidents, advisors, the Pulitzer Prize winners, all the smartest people who share with you their journeys in life, their stories, their lessons that they learned through some of the cathartic times they went through, and they share them with you to let you know you're not alone. And maybe you, too, could be as cool as the guests on The Chris Voss Show. No, you guys are all on. I'm just teasing. Anyway, we have a wonderful young lady on the show with us today. Today, we are joined by Raj Narayan,

and she's going to be talking to us about some of the things that she does and how she does it she is the founder and CEO at imagine golf a golf tragic who loves the game Raj comes from a corporate background and is led held various corporate leadership and NED positions including CEO at Westpac Westpac private bank a leading bank in Australia. She was a golf NSW advisory committee member and a woman's captain and board member at a leading golf club in Sydney, Australia. She believes golf is a powerful business networking tool, and she has experienced the benefits of golf networking firsthand.

She wants to share their amazing benefits by building a powerful networking group through her company, Imagine Golf, spelled E-M-A-J-I-N, which provides members access to top golf courses, and you can learn from senior voices an opportunity to grow their business to greater heights. Welcome to the show. How are you, Raj? Thanks, Chris. Thank you for having me.

Thank you for coming. And did I get your name pronunciation correct? Absolutely correct. So much energy at the beginning of the show, my brain just goes, woohoo, and starts just making up stuff. Raj, welcome to the show. Give us your dot coms. Where do you want people to find you on the interweb? Fabulous. On our website, imagine.golf, E-M-A-J-I-N.golf. Or you can find me on LinkedIn, Raj Narayan at

Imagine Golf. So give us a 30,000 overview, what you guys do there. So we are a golf-based business networking group. So I have a background in banking and all my life I've done various deals on the golf course. And I thought there's a huge opportunity to build a community around that. So what we do is we organize, it's a membership-based group. We provide access for our members to play at top golf courses, which you normally cannot access. We learn from senior keynote presenters, CEOs of listed companies, Olympic gold medalists and scientists, and then an opportunity to connect with people and grow your business and make business connections. So that's just what we do. So when I was young, we kind of all knew that golf was a great way to network.

It was a great way to learn how to swear better and throw golf clubs into oceans and waters and stuff. That's pretty much what I learned. But then I went to Arnold Palmer's school of golfing and learned that everything I had been doing for years was completely wrong. And I just went, okay, I'm, I'm going to go do something that I'm good at, but it is a great networking thing. I mean, you've got the clubhouse where you can meet people, usually people that I think golf probably have maybe a higher net worth because it golfing is pretty expensive. It's not cheap sport. And,

you know, it's kind of more, you spend a lot of time with, I guess, whoever you're networking with and talking with. And it used to be a real thing for business. You know, you'd be like, Hey, we're going to have a meeting on the golf course as opposed to lunch or dinner. What are your thoughts on what I just said? Yeah, look, absolutely. All my life, I worked in banking and financial services and I only wanted two things. One is to have an excuse to play golf midweek and then two to be able to expense it. That's what we do. Because we're a networking group,

it's a tax deductible expense. We allow you to connect and network. But jokes aside, what we do is we're a membership base. So say, Chris, you came and joined us. We try to learn two things. One, learn more about your business and what you do. And two, learn more about who you're looking to connect with. And then every time you come, we curate the connection.

So we place you in a table of eight during our networking meeting, and we place you in a group of four with three other people. So every time you come, you meet seven new people, seven at your table at the networking part of the day, and three when you play golf so invariably if you get it right you're making great connections of people you want to meet in terms of size scale industry operations of the companies that you've nominated that's pretty cool yeah so we used to we used to do a networking thing with the commerce department i think they used to call it score or

something but you would show up and trade leads if you had any and listen to what other people had to offer. But that's great. You know, it's just not getting drunk on the golf course like we normally used to do and then wreck golf carts into the lake. Getting drunk is not a bad thing as well, Chris. I always say when you're playing golf, have a beer because, one, it improves your game. And, two, if it doesn't improve your game, you don't care anymore. So either way. That or you drink it too much. You care less.

Exactly. You care less about not getting the good shots. So invariably it's a win. I was always good until about two and a half beers in, and then I'd be playing better. But if I went to the full third beer, it would just wreck everything. So I had to pace myself, basically. That's right. You didn't see marginal returns.

In economics, they say that. And why is building relationships important with fellow golfers? Are there some stats on this, like some demographics, earnings, business opportunities? Why is it important to get to know these people as opposed to me just going to a shady card game with some drugs down on Skid Row? That's right.

So, look, two things. One is networking. I mean, networking is really important because, let's be honest, people do business with people they know, they like, and they trust. I mean, you know, especially if you're doing large transactions, deals, whatever it may be, you know, unless you have an e-commerce product that's $5 or whatever, everything else, you're building relationships. Even there, you build supplier relationships and everything is based on the connections you built. So networking is very important. And I think with golf, what golf provides is an opportunity. Let me ask you this question. When was the last time you had a four and a half hour meeting with a supplier or a

prospect or a customer? Four and a half hours in a cart, you get to know them really well. You get to know the person. So what it does is it just amplifies that connection and really builds a great relationship because I always say, whether you hit great golf shots or not, when you hit a great shot, everybody, you know, claps with you. And when you hit a bad shot, everybody laughs with you because they've all been there.

But really it builds that, you know, connection. It builds that connection. And it's something, you know, talking points, something to talk about, you know. And we are always, we keep talking about building a community. It's all about creating this membership-based community. So every time you come, you meet the same people.

And not only do they open doors for you to do business with them, they connect their connections to you. So there's like a bit of a network effect and you meet other people, you know, who are their connections as well. So I think that's how it works. Yeah. And a lot of people, this used to be the way people did most of their networking was doing golfing and spending time and building relationships.

You know, you find that building relationships is kind of a lost art for people nowadays. A lot of people are not the greatest at getting that done, right? Absolutely true. And look, especially since post-COVID, I mean, we're living in a highly digital age. Everybody's behind a computer screen. And it's really fantastic when you do get out and make those real connections and relationships. And we found that people are craving for that. People are craving to do something.

Also, with all the work-life balance and everything that they get today, they have the ability to take the time to go and, you know, partake in a day like where you're playing golf for a day. You're connecting with people doing business and we really focus on the roi so obviously you know we want to connect people with the right people so they do end up doing business and in our community 94 of our members are ceos or senior executives and 70 do business with one another and we track this on a quarterly basis so we know who's doing business and who isn't and things like that and and if they're not doing any business we quickly connect them to more people i love this because i don't think there really is a format for this it's always just go golfing and and whatever but you guys create a whole community setup so that people can do that

tell us about how how did you first learn about golf or fall in love with golf? What was golf? Did I say golf? Golf? Golf. You might be a goth. I don't know. Were you a goth? I'm a gothic person.

Anyway, when you grew up, what were some of your influences? And when did you first get turned on to golf? Yeah, look, I started golf a bit later in my life. I mean, I obviously come originally from India. And I came to Australia to do my undergraduate and then never left and I've been here since. I actually decided to take up golf when I was studying at London Business School. So I had the opportunity to go study in London and I was doing my, you know, master's there. And I thought, look, I'm going to be doing all these deals on the golf course. I should take up this sport. And at the time I used to do,

you know, I used to run, I used to do a lot of triathlons and marathons. I played tennis at quite a high level. And I thought, oh, we should take a golf. So anyway, I go there, I book myself into a six week lesson at clinics. And literally, I just hate it. I say, what is this sport? I'm trying to hit a stationary ball that doesn't move. It's still there. I'm having air swings or tops. And I just thought, you don't sweat. And it's a terrible sport. And I thought, I hate this sport. And I actually gave it up at the time and didn't even bother completing the clinic. I went for three sessions and I gave it up. And then interestingly, about 10 years later, I was in banking and all of my colleagues and clients played and I took it up at the time and just fell in love with it. And, you know, it's just, and I think timing is very important for everything in life.

And then I took it up. I loved it. I had a lot of lessons. And then I got quite competitive. So I started practicing. And then I just got quite good at the game. And then I therefore loved it quite a bit. And then I used it.

Most of my clients, when I worked in banking, I looked after 2 billion plus market cap companies. So most of my clients were CEOs and CFOs of listed companies. And being a young banker, you know, when I called them and said, hey, could I, you know, come and have a meeting with you for a deal that's maturing in, you know, 18 months time, because they were all large, $500 million syndicated debt facilities or big transactions, which had a long lead time, they had no time for me. But then if I called and said, hey, can I invite you for a round of golf at one of the top golf courses? Miraculously, a whole day cleared in their diary and they were free to come and play golf with me.

I see them. Exactly. So I thought, here's a great opportunity. It's a door opener. You know, I could get these people into these top courses, trap them in a cart with me for four and a half hours and have a chit chat. And business came naturally after that. So I thought, this is a great sport. I loved it. And I played more. The more I played played the more I loved it and so on and so forth and then golf

is always only a hobby and then later on you know I've done did all that stints all the great introduction you gave me about being the women's captain and the board member and everything I thought look there's a huge opportunity to connect golf and business nobody was doing it in a structured way I mean people did it ad hoc you went to a corporate golf day or you played some golf with someone as you said you went in a structured way. I mean, people did it ad hoc. You went to a corporate golf day or you played some golf with someone. As you said, you went in a car and drank beer, but then you never saw them again. So nothing happened after that.

So we try to create a structure around it. We have a formal meeting at every one of our events where you kind of, you know, have a senior keynote presenter present on a relevant business topic. And we've had so many interesting topics that we've talked about. And yeah, and so it's a community that's you know built around that around that love for golf love for

doing business and love for learning yeah and i mean like i say people that play golf you know they you've got some stats here on your website according to your guys's imagine golf's business networking 94 of your members are c-suite or owners of companies. 73% are professional services people. 65% procure your member services that you offer. 10% of profits support charity. So you do some charity work there. And yeah, so you just help turn these golf events or golf things into ways to network and find stuff. Do you guys have an online community, maybe a Facebook group or some sort of network? Yes.

So we have a members app. We have our own members app that our members can download and you get all the news of what's happening, all the events they can RSVP and come to events. They get to see who attended the events and then you can message one another. They can connect with each other. And we have, you know,

various groups that you can join within the community, beginners groups. So Friday afternoon practice group and things like that. But also we run our formal events, which they can connect and come along to. So we have our own members app where they can sign up. And so can they go through the community and see profiles of people, see people that they might want to network with or they're interested in? Absolutely. And they can search by keyword.

They can connect with people on there. They can see their company, a little bio. Everybody's got a bio of themselves and a bio of their company. So they can actually see all that information. So it's a great tool to connect and network and stay in touch in between the events, in between when they come to the events. And then you also, it's only for individuals, but if you have corporate, if people, you know, are a corporate thing or boardroom, they want to take and get involved, you've got corporate membership packages as well. Tell us a little bit about those. Yes, absolutely. So we have corporate members, the company can sign up and have their staff come along, any members from

the company come along. And also we have a lot of sponsorship opportunities. So we do have a lot of corporates who sponsor events, they sponsor holds, or even a corporate golf day, they organize a day through us. So it's an opportunity for them to connect and build their brand within the community. And what it does for the communities is great because our corporate sponsors sponsor prizes. So every time you come to an event, we, you know, win range finders and drivers and, you know, overnight stay at, you know know a five-star hotel that kind of prizes are you know up for grabs because our sponsors have put up these prizes so it's a it's a win-win for everyone definitely a win we love wins so yes the you know this sort of thing is

good plus you get out in that fresh air and you breathe some fresh air and hopefully it's fresh air let's put it that way. Absolutely. Now, you mentioned that you get access to some top courses that a lot of people don't get access to. Tell us a little bit about that, the benefits of that. Yeah, absolutely. So look, I mean, as you know, golf has always been, it's called the rich man's sport, as you just said before. You're always hitting those balls in the water,

so you always have to replace them. Exactly. And balls are the least of your expense but look there's you know there's high barriers to entry and as you know lover of golf that's what i found is that there's huge barriers to entry there's joining fees there's long wait lists there's you know you need to have fire referees to get on some of these top golf courses so it's really hard for everyone to be able to access these courses i mean they're quite private they're quite hard for everyone to be able to access these courses. I mean, they're quite private, they're quite exclusive. You need to be a member, you need to have been on the waitlist for eight years or 10 years, depending on which course you're looking at. So one of the things we wanted was, I mean, and we talk about golf and growing the game, and everybody talks about growing the game. But the biggest competition in golf is substitution.

It's not, it's what else can they do with their time and money. And preventing access sometimes makes it hard. People say, oh, it's too hard. I'm going to go to something else. So our goal is to try and provide access to all of the top rated golf courses. And so we organize events that we organize tee times and events there, and then we take our members to those courses. So we have partnered with all of the top rated golf courses across Australia. We have some great partnerships and relationships with them. And then we use that to provide access. So for example, we play at, you know, Kingston Heath, New South Wales, Lakes, all the top golf courses here, all the top five golf courses in the country and top, you know, top 10 or

30 golf courses. And in fact, you know, in a couple of weeks, we're playing at Victoria Golf Club, which is a week before the Australian Open. So nobody gets access to play in a course at tournament conditions with grandstands and everything. And we have Bahan, who is a famous Australian golfer, who is going to be doing the keynote and presenting on that day. And he's going to do a massive putting masterclass

and pray a whole with everybody. So we organize unique experiences like that. I mean, we've had the CEO of Australia Post, the CEO of Metcash, like listed CEOs, presented our events. So that's the opportunity to play at these golf courses and hear from senior people. So are you guys international or are you just in Australia right now? Look, at the moment, we're only in Australia, but our goal is to go international. Absolutely.

We'd love to be in America. We'd love to be in Asia, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, a lot of places. And, you know, in Europe. vietnam a lot of places and you know in europe so that's our goal to you know yeah expand globally yeah golf is an international based game and what are some good strategies you found that are good for business networking other than using your services and are there any good strategies that you found in just normal business networking yeah look absolutely i mean i do a lot of keynotes and presentations on networking i love Strategies that you found in just normal business networking? Yeah, look, absolutely. I mean, I do a lot of keynotes and presentations on networking.

I love networking. And I've been part of so many groups. And I've got my little acronym. And we've got this called the Rich Referral Recipe. And R-I-C-H. So how to get rich using networking. And it's basically four things, right? One is R stands for the right people. So being strategic, getting the

right people in the room who can possibly do business with one another. There could be a whole lot of great businesses, but if you don't get the right people together, it's really hard to do business because there's so many factors, industry, you know, backgrounds and so forth. The second thing is initiative. I stands for initiative. So whether you're at your own event or whether you're at someone else's event take the initiative to organize things to connect people and you know you know be a leader in in that space and the third one c is creating creating a friendly environment so making sure everybody feels welcome and connecting people and the thought and the fourth thing is the h stands for high quality experiences and that's one of the things that we like to provide because something that's

memorable because you go to so many events you you go out to business cards, you connect with people, have coffee, et cetera. So when you have something that's a high quality experience, like going to a top golf course or going, hearing from someone, you know, special, it's just a talking point. So they go back to work the next day and they say, you know what? Yesterday I was out with Raj and, you know, I played at Kingston Heath Golf Club and I heard the senior keynote presenter. So that is a high quality experience that makes it memorable and helps you build those connections yeah yeah it's it i mean we always used to meet a lot of good people in the golf there's there's great things that corporations can do there's companies that i've

i've uh consulted with that basically they'll do you know outings for the golf course for some of them um they're they're people in their company and their C-suite. And it's a good, oh, what's that? Trust. It's a good builder of stuff. People do those trust events and different team-building events. That's the word I'm looking for, team-building. And so those sort of outings can be great for that as well.

So it sounds like you guys got it down I love the program, you know, I think you know, there's a lot of people just golf and and imagine people do some networking But having the set up there the base to be able to go here's how you can do it Now you guys also have speakers come and talk and and talk about things and instructions. Are the speakers just golf instructors or are they inspirational, motivational speakers? Absolutely. So we have a lot of business leaders come and present at our events.

So we've had listed CEOs of big companies. We have Olympic gold medalists talk about the mental game and various things that are applicable for business. We have legendary golfers come and speak. We've had scientists. We have every type of keynote presenter, but always on a relevant business topic.

They always present on a relevant business topic. So it's a great way to get learnings. And we present it on so many topics like sales, on e-commerce, on cryptocurrency, on the healthcare in Australia, the healthcare in the world. So many different topics. So we always present on great, interesting topics. So it's a great way to connect and learn from the presenters.

Exactly. Yeah. I mean, you can get people who can motivate your life, that can help you do all your things and all that good stuff. You got to love it. So what haven't we talked about that maybe you want to advertise to people and get them involved with? Do you plan on,

are you looking for franchisees to handle your outside Australian network or are you going to be managing yourself as you scale and grow? Yes, look, we're definitely looking for partnerships. I'm not sure whether we'll go to a franchise model, but we're looking for partnerships and people in those geographies to connect with us and for us to be able to grow and build some joint venture relationships or partnerships with people in those geographies.

Absolutely. And we have so far grown organically. We've grown quite rapidly in size. And every one of our events, we have 100 to 150 people attend them. And we've got over 9,000 people in our database and over 2,000, 2,500 active people coming in all the time. So it's quite a large community, quite a large network. And we'd love to, you know, be able to grow this model overseas and elsewhere. So we'd love to hear from people who want to be involved or people who just want to play golf and take advantage of this model.

Yeah. I mean, it's something that can really make all the difference for you. people who want to be involved or people who just want to play golf and take advantage of this model. Yeah. I mean, it's something that can really make all the difference for you. So let's take in, as we go out, give people a final pitch to find out more about you guys, get involved, et cetera, et cetera. Yes, absolutely. Look, we are, you know, we're a growing group, a very fast growing and amazing community. I always say people join us to gain access to top golf courses and people join us to hear from senior keynote speakers and learn on relevant business topics. But the real reason that people stay is because they grow their business

and the value of the community is the community itself. Like we've got amazing business owners, leaders as members of our community. So in the end of the day, that's the value you get by by joining a group you get to connect with these people you know share ideas share you know business strategies do business we have people in our community you know doing joint venture joint ventures with one another partnering on projects providing connections etc so it's a great group to be part of and so yeah definitely do connect with us and join this. And I always say, I love this Brian Solis quote where he says, community is not about belonging to something. Community is doing something together that makes belonging matter. And God is that linchpin of our community. So I would love for people to connect and go the game.

That's a great quote. Brian is a friend of mine. Fantastic. We've spent a lot of time hanging out at a lot of different events and things of that nature. He's a great guy, wonderful gentleman, very insightful, and his scientific way that he can look at different things is just amazing to me. Anyway, yeah, fun is fun. And give us the.golf, I guess, as we go out. Yes, that's right. Imagine.golf, E-M-A-G-I-N.golf. Or connect with me on LinkedIn, Raj. Raj and Ryan at Imagine Golf.

And there'll be a link on the Chris Voss show you can find there as well. Thank you very much, Raj, for coming on the show. We really appreciate it. Thanks, Chris, for having me. It's been fantastic. Thank you. And thanks to Ryan for tuning in. Go to goodreads.com, 4chesschrisvoss,

LinkedIn.com, 4chesschrisvoss, chrisvoss1 on the TikTokity and all those crazy places on the Internet. to goodreads.com 4chesschrisfuss linkedin.com 4chesschrisfuss chrisfuss1 on the tiktokity and all those crazy places on the internet be good to each other stay safe we'll see you next time and that should have us out