Evan Weinberger is the CEO of Illuminos LLC, an academic coaching and tutoring company he co-founded with his cousin Wendy in 2016 after a decade of success growing the sister company he founded in Texas in 2006 called Staying Ahead of the Game LLC. The focus of his award-winning and research-driven program is helping kids build the executive functioning skills they need to be successful in the classroom and beyond. The core components include helping students with organization, time management, and influencing the perceptions of others. Evan particularly enjoys speaking to parents, counselors, and educators all over the country about the power of executive functioning skills and the most useful ways to assist students of all ages in getting the most out of school and achieving their goals.
Tell us about your childhood and where you grew up
I grew up in Houston, Texas. I was diagnosed with ADHD at a young age, as well as issues with reading comprehension and auditory processing. I was lucky in that my father was a well-known clinical psychologist and I was the oldest of three children. As such, I had a uniquely high level of self-awareness regarding my intelligence, learning differences, and needs at every point of my educational journey. My school performance was always high, but not without lots of tears and chaos in the background. I needed to work harder than my peers to achieve the same level of performance at every level in school. With medications at different times, some light accommodations in the classroom, lots of support from my parents, and some therapeutic help, I maintained my self-efficacy, motivation, and performance in school. I was a pretty normal kid otherwise. I am very extroverted and I have always thrived socially. I played baseball at a very high level for many years. I have a great relationship with my two younger sisters. I graduated high school a year early and studied in Israel for about 10 months with a handful of my best friends before starting college. I attended Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee, and returned back to Houston for graduate school after that. I married the love of my life in 2011 and I am the proud father of three wonderful children.
How did you get started as an entrepreneur?
When I decided against going to medical school, I took some post-bachelorette classes in psychology thinking I would follow my father’s path as a clinical psychologist. I also started doing some academic coaching for students to share the strategies I used to compensate for some of my weaknesses and maintain a high level of performance. While taking my post-bachelorette classes in psychology, I discovered industrial/organizational psychology. I decided to pursue a doctorate in that field while also developing my academic coaching into an actual business. My research interests were in polychronic (time management), executive coaching, and impressional management. For several years, I was in a position to coach students one-on-one, teach classes to students at the undergraduate level, and apply principles I was learning from my research and teaching directly to the students I was coaching. After completing my actual coursework, I had an epiphany. While there were lots of traditional tutoring companies supporting students in their coursework, there were no companies helping students develop critical executive function skills they needed to reach their true potential academically and otherwise. The deeper I got into my doctoral research, the more I realized folks in my field were exclusively focused on coaching executives with these skills. So I pivoted away from finishing my research and decided to dedicate my full attention to further developing and growing my academic coaching business to be an executive coaching program for kids. Fast-forward and I now operate the largest academic coaching and tutoring company in one of the biggest cities in the country (Houston, TX) called Staying Ahead of the Game. I have also leveraged that program and co-founded Illuminos with my cousin (Wendy Weinberger) to start bringing these much-needed services to other cities around the country. The headquarters for Illuminos is in the DC Metro area.
What is one business lesson you would tell a startup founder?
Pursue your dreams and don’t let others sway you away. Steve Jobs, the co-founder of Apple, knew what people needed before they knew they needed it. Don’t think too much about the challenges and growing pains years down the road. If you are successful in building a stable and thriving business, you will be prepared to meet those challenges when they come. If you identify a gap in the marketplace and you have a passion for filling it, then go for it! People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it. Focus on your “why” and plow forward. People will see your passion and follow you.
