Boxing and Chess: Brawn and Brain on CEO Secrets

Our last two CEO Secrets episodes have looked at business leaders from the worlds of boxing and chess.

These sports aren't quite as far apart as you'd think - there are competitions where boxers play each other at chess between rounds, while still in the ring.

I caught up with Ben Amanna of BOXRAW last year. He happened to be at the same boxing gym where I was filming a piece with Manya Klempner , doing a photo shoot with some professional boxers who were wearing his kit.

You can watch the film with Manya here.

I was primiarly there to film with Manya, but when I heard about Amanna's background story, I was intrigued and thought he would make a strong interview for the series too.

Amanna's parents were both Christian missionairies in India. When his family moved to the UK, in Conventry, he was the only non-white kid at a Roman Catholic school. He was also one of the few non-white kids in his neighbourhood who wasn't Muslim or Sikh.

He struggled with bullies, so learned how to box to defend himself. The passion for boxing never left him. He had an entrepreneurial spirit too and was fond of selling sweets at school and then later took to drop-shipping through Amazon, stuffing his parents' garage with stock. Eventually he brought his two passions together, starting his boxing apparel company, BoxRaw.

I had a long chat with him in the corner of the gym and this will hopefully run as a radio interview. But it was in the course of this chat that he mentioned his daily personal routine: 4am starts, yoga, 7k runs, meditation, journaling and goal setting. It amazed me so I thought the audience would be interested too. I made this his CEO Secret for the 90-second video.

Some people might find his personal, daily rituals quite extreme. Of course they are not for everyone. But I think that the interesting point is that daily structure and ritual, even in a much milder form, can be very beneficial. It can motivate us and help us to reach our goals.

Then last week we ran the interview with Ilya Merenzon of World Chess . You can watch it here.

I caught up with him at a gaming cafe in east London. I tried to conduct this interview over a game of chess, but this proved difficult for two main reasons. Firstly, I love playing online chess, but my brain went to mush when I tried to play over a real board. Everything I thought I knew seemed to vanish from my head when it was in 3D, real life - kind of sad in a way.

Secondly, I found that when you play chess, you really need to concentrate on the game and nothing else. Trying to think about the game and the interview proved impossible for me.

Well that's my excuse for playing badly. Turns out he also knew a neat way to counteract the Fried Liver attack.

Again our audio interview will hopefully run in a few weeks on BBC World Service radio, where you can hear about his grandfather playing chess in Russia for his local factory, and why World Chess moved out of Russia following the war in Ukraine.

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This Saturday, the 28th January, I will be speaking about CEO Secrets at the StartUp 2023 show at King's College, Londno, organised by Enterprise Nation - I will be on stage interviewing former CEO Secrets guest Timothy Armoo . You can get tickets here.

Don't forget the CEO Secrets book is still available in hardback - you can get it in these places. People as me how well it is selling and the answer if that I have no idea - the publisher don't tell me! But to be honest, I don't really have to know. I've had some nice personal feedback from people who have enjoyed reading it, which is enough for me.

I've also been hitting the podcast trail to talk about the book. I did an interview with Digital Leaders , which will run soon. I also did a 6-min interview with The Right Work Podcast , which has been broadcast and you can check out here.

Dougal