Evan Rapp

I've been in this industry long enough to know I can't simply talk my way into being valuable, and that my eyes are the place dreams go to live.

Here's the story — I started faxing — FAXING — the Rapp Report as a weekly newsletter to my Klipsch dealers a long time ago. It has always existed because CI dealers need to know they're supported, and benefit from concepts that help them grow even when they have no time for my long-winded explanations (which I still insist are the Crown Jewels of this industry). You want to know what the products actually do, and why they matter to your business.

Everyone knows I like to keep talking long after I've left the room, and this makes good on that. I want my dealers to have what they need and to know I'm always the place to find out more — even when I need to do more research myself. I feel better when I bring more to the dance.

My career has covered a crazy lot of ground. Hi-fi and car audio back in the day — out east in Connecticut, New York, and Jersey, while I was trying to become a decent comic and having too much fun. Still trying. National rep work for Klipsch covering almost the entire East Coast. RSM roles at ClearOne and RTI. VP of Sales and Marketing at Zigen. Time in design and management at Creative Artists Agency that turned out to be some of the best relationship training I never anticipated. Also a lot of voiceover stuff. Life takes you places — and I'm still wildly romantic about all of it, because you learn from all of it.

I'm an AVIXA CTS with Dante and various other certs that have actually helped me get pretty good at design. I try to know my stuff and I try to make the moment enjoyable, even when we're in a firefight. I know most of these products not just from the spec sheet but from the field — the installs, the edge cases, the conversations with integrators at 4pm on a Friday when something's gone sideways. I even like the business for the way we get after it during the rough moments.

I live in Ventura with my wonderful and beautiful wife Shelly, one of the most genuinely extraordinary humans I've ever met, who keeps me grounded in the ways that matter most. (She's also recently become a successful and inspiring children's author — more on that soon.) I'm a rabid Dodgers fan with an intense and failing fantasy baseball franchise, a fairly despotic Lakers fan, and always up for a friendly argument — because I never know what I might say until it happens.

Wherever the work is — the whole state, coast to canyon: