Bob Kulhan
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Bob Kulhan is a co-founder of Baby Wants Candy and has been performing, teaching & studying improv and sketch comedy since 1994 in Chicago and since 2009 in NYC. Bob was trained in improvisation by Del Close, Matt Besser, Amy Poehler, Tina Fey, Susan Messing and others at Chicago’s ImprovOlympic theater, Mick Napier at The Annoyance Theater, and taught and mentored by Martin de Maat at The Second City (among so many other greats in all 3 fantastic schools!). Bob currently performs in NYC with Baby Wants Candy (Soho Playhouse), The Scene (The PIT), Dos Experimento! (The PIT), Mystic Improv (The PIT) and The Windy Pendejos? (The PIT and… really wherever the heck else we can play!).
Bob’s has created more than a dozen one-man and sketch comedy shows. You can find his characters on YouTube videos (“The BonVivant Gourmet” “SafetyMen” & the hit Holiday song “Christmas Hot Pants”)
For the last 24 years Bob has performed and taught improvisation internationally. His teaching and performing credits include Chicago’s famed The Second City, Improv Olympic, The Annoyance Theater, The PIT, Columbia College, London TheaterSports, The Banff Centre, The Australian Graduate School of Management, and Koç University in Istanbul, University of South Carolina’s The Darla Moore School of Business, UCLA Anderson School of Management, Columbia University Business School, and Duke University’s The Fuqua School of Business.
In addition to all things improv, Bob is passionate about cooking, SCUBA diving, and Brazilian Jju-Jitsu.
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Welcome to the Enabled Disabled Podcast. I'm your host, Gustavo Serafini. I was born with a rare physical disability called Pfft. My journey has been about selfacceptance persistence and adaptation. On the show, we'll explore how people experience disability, how the stories we tell ourselves can both enable and disable, how vulnerability is a foundation for strength and why people with disabilities can contribute more than we imagine. I hope that leaders, companies, clinicians, families and friends will better understand our capacity to contribute to the world and help enable us to improve it.
Bob Khullan is an improviser actor, comedian, business coach and possibly the most interesting man you might never have heard of in the Western Hemisphere. Bob was trained in improvisation by Del Close, Matt Besser, Amy Polar, Tina A, Susan Messing and others at Chicago's Improv Olympic Theater. Strained by MC Napier at the Annoyance Theatre and taught and mentored by Martin Demat at the Second City. Talk with Bob was different for this podcast, but it opens some interesting doors that neither of us have explored. We get to learn about improv, how it helps us communicate.
And Bob got to explore questions around disability and comedy and how the improv skills he teaches to business leaders can help them have more open conversations around disability. I hope you can feel Bob's enthusiasm and energy. He speaks with his whole body, which you'll see when the YouTube clips are released. It's refreshing to meet people like Bob who are open minded, funny and committed to helping to teach us how to understand each other just a little bit better. If you're enjoying the show, please share it with a friend, family member, colleague, somebody on your social media who you think might enjoy it.
Sharing is caring folks. Sharing is how we grow, how we spread the word and how more people get to understand contribute, have their voices be heard. Thank you. See you in the next episode. Hey, Bob, thank you so much for being here and joining us. We really appreciate it. It's an honor to have you, Gustavo.
The honor is mine and I'm glad to be here. Let's chat this thing up.
Awesome. So I would like to start out understanding a little bit about this small little topic called humor. You are an improv artist. You have been at Second City. You've done. I mean, the fabled Second City. We got to get all the dirt on Second City. It's cool, like, right. You can share all that. But I want to understand a little bit about humor. Like what is funny to you? How did you get started with this? Like how do this take a hold of you and where did it go?
Alright. So those are great questions. So I'm going to start with really how I got started in this and I think like a lot of comedians I got started pretty much at home. I can remember vividly sitting on the floor in the corner on a wall or underneath the table while my dad and his brother in particular, he's one of five. So the whole family, there's one in particular that he would go back and forth with Uncle Gary, and they would just do bits. They would just make each other laugh.
And and then when they come over, other friends would come over and play cards. You know, it just seems like it's just so much fun. And everyone's having such a good time. And I learned pretty early in school that I was a funny guy. And so I'll go to Billy Crystal quote, which is, I wasn't the class clown. I was the class comedian. And that big difference is really the knowledge of an understanding of and desire to have knowledge and understanding of what is funny and when to be funny.
And, of course, learning along the lines of when not to be funny as well. So I think I got my desire to make people laugh at a very early age and then just became a student of comedy. I can recall vividly watching moments of the movie The Jerk. Have you ever seen the movie The Jerk up Steve Martin? I want to say somewhere around, like, 1978 or so and just replaying singular moments over and over again to try to understand why that was funny. That was the same with Fletch.
That was the same with The Naked Gun. Like, okay, wait a minute. This was funny here because they actually set that up, like, 4567 scenes earlier, 20 minutes earlier, they set up this joke and it paid itself off here. So just kind of the science of comedy became very interesting to me just on my own. And then it was time to start practicing. And so that led me at 19 to move from down to Illinois to Chicago and began studying that in the summer intensive. And I met the person who was my mentor would become my mentor.
The person who is credited for creating the Second City Training Center man named Martin Demo, one of the more unrecognized names in comedy yet he touched the heart of and comedic soul of hundreds of thousands of improvisers. Probably just a brilliant man. And that kind of led to me leaving the world of business at the age of 24 and immersing myself in improvisation. And up to 27 years later, I'm talking to you.
Well, there's a lot to cover in between them, and we'll try to do some of that. But can you tell us, like, a good story that you remember of when you tried to be funny? And it was just totally the wrong time.
This week. It happens all the time. I can remember at my aunt's funeral, I was probably like, ten years old or something like that, and it's super silent, and I literally made a fart sound. I was like, my God, like the look of death that came from this man's eyes, and I got so much trouble, like, okay, timing is everything. This is important because the timing of the joke was spot on. It just wasn't the right time for the joke. And now I have a four year old and seven year old and my seven who soon to be very soon to be eight.
He is experimenting with comedy. And so is my four year old do it in very different ways. And I'm impressing upon him the need to really be smart about when he exercises a joke, because right now it's not coming out a good time. It's usually like, in the house, there's tension and emotions are escalating. And then he's, like, find a for finalno.
It's interesting. I was going to say that so much of the temptation to be funny is in those moments of tension, right? It just becomes something either either unbearable or there's just this silence that you have to break. And it sounds like your instinct is let me make you laugh, because that's better than that's. Better than the other motion sometimes, which is anger, frustration, crying, whatever it is, it's better to laugh.
Yes, it's true. There is a teacher in high school, so it's probably like, 18. I think it was my senior year Mrs. Bsenski. I think it was history that she was teaching. And we were the classroom was over odd an overpass in between, like, the metal shop area and the band area or something like that, so you can drive underneath it. And when you were just sitting in class, all you had to do is to start kind of bouncing your feet and you can get the floor to shake a little bit.
And I would do that quite often in class. And the tension was escalating inside the class. And I'm doing this. And she's telling people not to. And she's just really a very nice teacher. She was a really, really, really nice teacher. She was just having a bad day and I can't remember what I did. And I was like, okay, everybody just stop at something like that. That's just like, obviously, it's coming for me. I'm just to blame the other 24 kids in the class, and she just started laughing.
Gas Bob, no matter how bad of a modem in you'll say something that somehow makes me laugh and feel good. And that was one of those little key moments of life. Like, I like that. I like making people feel good. There's nothing wrong with that. Let's focus on that.
Interesting. So when you started to learn. So what are your key insights right? With humor? Like, what what is it that you can do to make like, why do people laugh? And there's so many different kinds of humor, right. So there's there's maybe the more, I don't know, graphics thinking like Richard Pryor, Eddie Murphy, they're really funny. You have the for lack of a better term, the British school. It's like the witticisms and the play on words. And then you have all these other things in between.
What were you what kind of humor were you drawn to?
I think I was drawn most to. We all humor. Really. However, physical humor and observational humor would probably be the two that I was most drawn to. And I would say align my comedic choices with the most because there's nothing wrong with a good physical bit. That's universal. I've had the opportunity to perform in Asia, for example, and I was performing for an audience that spoke Mandarin, and I don't know Mandarin yet. What I know is in a silent scene, which is what I chose to do.
I could do things that are universal, eat, drink sets, grab writing instruments, whatever it is that translates culture from one culture to the next culture. It transcends language as well. And that is the language. And so I think that's where my base is. And people laugh for all sorts of reasons. You see that you said it before. Sometimes laughter takes place when there's just so much tension and something happens and somehow it just eases the sort of the pressure cooker. Right. The error gets let out a little bit.
It's cathartic, and sometimes it's physical stuff, and sometimes it's observational stuff, and sometimes it's it's political. And sometimes it's social and satirical. And here's the great thing about it, though. It's subjective. What's funny to you may not be funny to me, and what's funny to me might be I'm going to be very careful with this one when I say offensive to somebody else, because I don't mean I don't fall into, like, the blue humor, which is what you mentioned. Some of those an Andrew Dice Clay, if you recall a comedian and he's like, you know, Hickory Dickory Dock, and you're, like, a punch line is going to rhyme with the word Doc, and, you know, it's coming and that can turn a lot of people off.
It didn't turn me off. It didn't get me excited either, though. I wasn't like, oh, yeah, it wasn't the biggest Dice Clay fan. So you find your own voice in there, and then the audience finds its own choices as well. And so comedically. What I always try to do is just perform at the top of my intelligence and do the best I can to support everybody else on stage. And then just let the comedy come from committing to the reality as opposed to trying to be funny.
Got you. Is that why you are drawn to improve more than stand up?
I was drawn improve more than stand up for a lot of reasons. So when I was 19, I left a town called Effingham, Illinois, in Downstate, Illinois, which, since we're talking about comedy, that name on its own, has its own series of jokes that come with it and went up and sit on my cousin's floor in Chicago. My cousin John and learned from Martin Demo, and from the first class, I was like, oh, this is what I'm supposed to be doing. This is like I had that real life.
This is my blood. This is like my skin. This is easy and hard. It's hard. It's easy, though, like, there's the core part of it was like, oh, man, this is what I'm supposed to be doing. And I think that that kind of calling in life is rare and wonderful. And I think that for me, the difference between stand up, which is rehearse rehearse rehearse the same thing over and over again. And improv is the multi fold, the joy of creation. You know, it's cool to create in front of an audience.
So the risk is there as well, like, they paid money to watch some entertainment and preferably it should be funny. On top of that or, at the very least, thought provoking. So there's some stake attached to as well. It's also ensemble base that I like the team. I like the fact that you are responsible for other people on your stage or at least getting their backs, and they're responsible for getting your back as well. I also like the pure romantic nature of improvisation in so much that it's created in real time in the moment, and you experience the moment exactly for what it is, and then it's gone, and you either did experience it, were able to grasp it and enjoy it, or you didn't.
And either way, you can't replicate it. You cannot bring that scene back. Now, if you try to bring that scene back, typically, it fails because the chemistry is different from one shot to the next. The audience is different. And also veteran improvisers will scold you for doing a bit too many times or doing a character too many times, especially where I come from in Chicago. It's organic improvise what we're going for. And I became one of those grizzled vets, too. Like, like, oh, you're doing some stand up now, is that what you're doing?
You kind of condescendingly. Giving notes to improvisers are like, oh, I saw you do that bit last week. It's good. No one wants those types of notes, which I got as well. You test things, but, yeah, you live in the moment or you missed it. And either way, you can't bring it back. So there's something cool about that.
So when you were at I went to Second City a couple times when I was in College, loved it for people who never experienced it. Is there a bit that you remember like, that was really funny. How would you go from, like you say, like, the next day is something different? The next day is something different. So when you I got on stage, the next day is just different. Bits are being thrown at you. How does that work? What was that? What did that look like? Why could you never repeat it again.
Yeah.
All right. So I would put in context a couple of things, the Second City, as well as my position in there, just so that we have some clarity there. So the Second city, Chicago, is the nucleus for improvisation and sketch comedy in the world. It's where the modern incarnations of improvisation came from. It dates back to the 1920s and 30s and evolved slowly between there in the 70s and 80s, when Dell clothes kind of kicked it in, and I was just fortunate to learner that improv legend as well and work with him.
And Chicago has a lot of great institutions. So when I think about my time in Chicago province, sketch comedy is not just the Second City, which is the mothership of all of this. It's also the Improv Olympic, otherwise known as I o. Or the Great Annoyance Theater, with Mic and Jen at the helm. There these great improv theaters that have different styles as well that you have to honor and respect the forms inside of it, the styles inside of it. The Second City, the known for improvisation is really sketch comedy.
Once you get to the stages more than improvisation, and the sketch comedies derive from the improvisation. Yet the 90 minutes or so of solid entertainment is sketch with maybe a little improv woven in there. And then they do an improv show at the a free show at the end of the night. For me, whether it's there or any of those other the great theaters, the Annoyance or I o, you get they're just different styles.
Like I said.
So the Second City, once you get to the improv set and my position there was part of their training center. It was the first core faculty of their training center. So I rose to the Prince, the highest rank possible there. I toured for them. I've done some directing for them. And on the main stage, I was an understudy for about a year, so I never got my own show there. I never got the big stage alone yet as a benchwarmer in the show, I was still there there.
So what do you get in the improv set suggestion. And then you do a scene, and that scene kind of concludes with somebody pulling the lights. At the time I was there a great guy named Craig was pulling the lights. He pulled them down. Then you come back out there and get another suggestion. Then you do another scene. So it's not short form, like who lives in anywhere where you're playing these improv games. It's just sort of vignettes that would capture it all. Occasionally we would do some long form improvisation where you get one suggestion, phone and go for, like, 25 minutes.
It's just organically creating. That was really more IO and annoyance, much more in different ways. Organic creation those two theaters. Then once you get to the main stage, because once you get to the main stage, they structured in such a way that you're positioned to succeed a and that's because it's known it's brand is enormous. And the audience wants you to succeed, and they're paid to watch you succeed as well. And the talents there as well. It's not to dismiss that in any capacity. It's just structured very differently.
So it was all like, single suggestion bit, single suggestion, seen, single suggestion figure out how to work with this thing and then just run those shows in that way.
Interesting. Is there a bit that you remember as being something you were really, you know, something that was really memorable, it stuck in the memory or something that you saw that was just amazed you. Or is it just because of its very nature, it doesn't really work that way. It's just funny night in and night out.
The very nature of it, especially when you do a buddy of mine, Joe Canal. And I was his understand. He was the one on the main stage performance, Joe a lot. And somewhere around ten years ago, we're just kind of estimating based on in the early days in Chicago, we were creating Nights of the Week. I mean, we weren't alone. There's a good handful of us, like, let's say, 15 people or so just like, they're like creating forms, creating Nights of the week, creating legendary stuff that every improviser out there is like, oh, I know what the jam is.
I know what cage matches. We were the first cage match, ten to the first jam, all this great stuff that we were just developing and helping create. We determined about ten years ago that we had passed four0 live shows and those range anywhere from, like, a set to a 90 minutes improvise musical, you know, it's just like, tons and tons and tons. So over the course of that time and, of course, another ten years. On top of that, who knows how many shows I've done in that period of time, they blend together.
They blur. I can remember once in one of the sets I was with Brad Morris, and I think, Michael Patrick O'Brien. And I think who else was sitting in a jet or Holly? I can't remember the other people on the stage. I just remember there's one physical bit with chairs, like, we just kept getting tangled in chairs and just trying to move around. The chairs were attacking us. And you get these little moments were like, oh, that was great. It was fun. And then in some of the longer form stuff, you can remember more vividly, like the show or show titles, yet it all just blurs together as one giant, wonderful memory.
How long did it take you to feel enough confidence to improvise like that just on the moment and know that something was on, something good was going to come out of it because that has to be like, you know, I don't know. Some people have. I'm assuming there's no stage fright. You guys are over. You guys and girls are over. That like you're seasoned enough, but to come in night and night out and just here's a suggestion. Here's a scene run with it like, I don't know.
You know what happens when you just can't think of anything or nothing comes out.
Alright. I think Costa, you're asking a couple of questions here. One is. When did I I had the confidence do that. And that was instantly. That was like, oh, I love this. I'm born to do this thing. Confidence and skill level or two different things. So I can recall like, I remember vividly my first long form show and long form. This was a problem. Or I I don't remember what the suggestion was. I remember the group that we were opening for, though, and I can remember it not being a very good show.
You know, I'm very nervous as excited, so not nervous. I don't want to do this. I'm not having anxiety attack. It just like, you know, that's my person. It's just like the mind doesn't link with the mouth and you're missing parts. It's very different than once. You really get the reps and get very experienced. And then sometimes you're still nervous or excited. And that's typically like you're playing for the IO 25th anniversary party. There was a show rather at the same Chicago theater, the one with the Chicago sign where it's spelled Chicago down.
It's like half the postcards, you know, it's on TV shows or movies. It's just quintessential Chicago, and it's like 3000 or maybe 3500 seat theater. Maybe it's like 3800. I don't know. Somewher between three and 4000ft theater. It's a big event. And so you're pumped up and you're nervous yet it's more like game. Let's go let you start getting in the zone and getting really excited about this. And that comes from reps that just comes from over time. It comes from experience. It comes from failure as well.
And so you mentioned, like, those times that you get on stage and there's nothing there. It happens. I mean, especially like 4000 shows. There's a failure rate inside of that one. It's not like baseball. If you bet three Hunter, you're going to go to the hall of Fame. So three out of ten times at the plate, you get ahead. It's not like that. If you bet 300 in improv, you're not going to be part of the great improv on Sable. You got to be closer to nine and a half times out of ten yet that still means like you're gonna fail every once in a while.
Maybe it's even 9.9 times out of ten. There's still failure. And the earlier in your career there are, the more failure there is. And then you figure out how to do it and then burn out. Burn out happens. Everybody gets burned out. Improv legend. She was my coach for a long time. Susan investing was like, You're going to burn out. You will burn out. It's a matter of time. It will happen. And sure. And I was like, oh, yeah, sure. I'm already five years into this.
I'm doing eight shows a week and just, like, over and over and over again. I'm missing holidays and family stuff just to perform for free, over and over and over again. You hit your wall and you're I never felt like I was done. I always felt like I called Impro for some reason, a lady like, lady improve. Tell me when it's time to stop dancing. There's been a couple of times in the last 27 years that I wondered. I was like, I'm really tired, very tired of performing at a high level.
It's a young person's game. And there are people like me who are, like, even 5610 years my senior who are still performing. And I plan to be that person as well. Like, where all the young people are like, either they're in all of that person or they're just, like, go away. Are you still here? You don't make money doing this, and both are okay as well. Yet you will burn out. It will happen again and again and again. And so really, what we focus on is stretching those times out between your one bad show in your next bad show or your one burnout and the next burnout, and then developing tips and tricks and ideas on how to get out of that burnout.
So resilience is in the DNA of a professional improviser.
And then there's also I would imagine the rush of being on stage, of being with this incredible group of of people and performing this way and just the excitement of the crowd, right? That has to be what what keeps you going.
It's one of them. Yeah. Yeah. So for anybody out there, like, at least no Chicago improv. What you get in Chicago improv is a stage and chairs, that's all you have to work with. And then people, the other people on your team who become very important because the chairs don't give you a whole lot. So it's all about working with each other. So that rush of being from a live audience, that rush of, like conducting an audience. Maybe the show is just really rough opening. And then you do something that becomes the catalyst for the audience getting on board or the team get and reenergized.
And again, it's not that you're the star. You're just, like, all it needs is like, one little thing, one little domino to get knocked over, and then you can find your rhythm as an ensemble and you feed it or somebody else does it. And you're like, Well, that's what we're looking for. You just kind of get on board and doing it as a team as well. I mean, that's so important. The ensemble is so important. The team is so important, and that's part of it showing up for each other with each other and doing it.
And regardless of what the audience is like, you know, some people will blame the audience if you think you did a good show, it's just a bad audience. Sometimes sometimes it's the audience rarely to I would always say, look in the mirror, look at each other. What did you do differently? Was your warm up a crap warm up and you just didn't get in the zone. You didn't get connected before the show. Were you stressed out? Were you pandering to the audience and they were like, no, don't placate us.
You know, we're a smart audience. Or were you talking down to the audience? You know, like, there's so many things that could turn in audience, including what the ensemble is doing. And then sometimes you do it right. And the audience is still like, no, why? Why? So yeah. And that I mean, that's part of it as well, right? That's a ten chance that failure is ever present in improvisation on a stage, you know, it's part of the ensemble, really. And so there's something cool about that, too, of having a thread needles in real time while stitching somebody up in front of an audience that either want you to succeed or want you to fail or doesn't care and you have to turn them one way or another.
Right. But you can break that. That fourth wall, so to speak with the audience, right? Because you're engaging with them. You're interacting with them. It's not like you're. The veil is very, very thin. Right. So there's more chances to turn them, to interact with them, to engage with them.
Yeah, you can. It's got to be done right, though, because if you don't do it right there, there's where it seems like you're pandering and you definitely don't want to do that. I can remember once, and I don't remember the specific a bit. Peter Gwen, though, great improviser part of Baby Wants Candy founding member like me, Babe Montana as hour long, completely improvised musicals with a full band. And I cannot remember what the bit was. It was super funny, though, and it was really dark. And he hits this bit and the audience groans at him.
And we're in a scene together. I'm on stage with them. We're talking. The audience grows and he will sit on into really, really. And then just turns back to me and goes right back in ten. He was like, yeah, we are. That that in it. They're dumb. They're like, We're wrong. We're wrong. And that came back on board. So it happened. You can break that fourth wall correctly, and it's great. And you can also break the fourth wall incorrectly, and it stinks. I.
Think the audience is wondering where the tie in is going to be, and I'm going to get there in a second. But just one more selfish question. I'm going to put it this way when you are in a room, just privately backstage or just hanging out with a bunch of other comedians. What's that like? Is it do you experiment on each other? Is it just everybody trying to make each other laugh or you all just kind of just relax sometimes and just, you know, like everybody else?
Like, what does that look like?
Well, every group is different and improvisers are unique. Ultimately, we're people. So let's start there. If a team really cares about each other. Mentioned big ones. Kenny, before we were a family, somewhat dysfunctional family. A lot of families are dysfunctional. So we still love each other and care about each other. And sometimes before shows, something bad happens and we get each other's back. We hug each other and get people in the zone. A lot of times we're just trying to get focused and get aligned with our energy.
So bits are flying and popping and people are acting really ridiculous. If it's a big show, like the Chicago Theater, one I mentioned, we're kind of really locking in with each other and getting on point. There's another group I mentioned Joe before Joe Canalli, there's a third person Bob Scoop, and the three of us essentially were the core of We Delicious. That had just a wonderful, really great, not supporting cast. That's an alternating cast. Like it's like a revolving door of talent that came in. And before those gigs were typically just like anything that could get each other, including, like, front tapping, genitals.
You like, it's kind of like blocking and just do whatever it takes to kind of get aligned with each other afterwards, though. That's really when the bits start popping, especially if it's a good show and you go to the bar or an anybody use an ear shot, just sit back and watch that show. Watch like The Belly of the Beast.
Awesome. That would be an amazing experience. I would pay to be a fly on the wall at one of those bars. I think so. I want to first start to tie in, and I want to get into what you're doing now and why you're doing it, because I think it's really interesting and important. But how do you approach humor and disability? Because in my experience, right, I don't usually joke about it. I've joked about it before I remember being in College, and so I have one arm.
And so whenever I would wear a long sleeve shirt, a sweat or a jacket, the right sleeve was essentially sewed in. So there was only one sleeve, and I walked into the dorm room and we're all hanging out and somebody says, you know, anybody see my sweater? I think somebody took it by accident. I don't know. And I just naturally, just without even thinking about it. And I said, look, you don't have to worry about me, right? And I just kind of put my hand up and everybody started laughing, and then like, 3 seconds later, I think my friend turned to me and said, Never say that again.
So that was an interesting experience of can I joke about it? You know, when are those jokes appropriate? And why are people so sensitive to it when it's done? It's not done. Even self deprecating humor is okay sometimes, right? So it's not done in a mean spirited way. It's not done in a way to look down on anybody else. It was an observational humor that in my experience and my feeling, I want my friends to be able to laugh about that openly and not feel bad about that.
Where do you kind of see that? Like, where can we introduce humor and just laugh at ourselves? It's okay to laugh at ourselves. It's okay to laugh at certain things that we do that are funny, even if it is related to disability. That's my take. How do you feel about that?
I feel that there needs to be sensitivity around that. And I think that sensitivity has to be based in respect and empathy. And I think that if you go through the history of comedy, there's been a lot of comedy over the decades that's done at the expense of other people. And I think that becomes very, very dangerous, if not even insulting. And I think the sensitivity that we have really does have to come from that core issue for me. With my base of sort of observational and physical comedy, it does not have to be at the expense of somebody else.
It typically is at the expense of me. And so expanding this to anyone really out there, I would say that you got to know your audience. First of all, your audience could be a dorm room full of people having some beers. Or it could be, I think in our last conversation, I said with baby ones. Kenny, specifically, we had sort of this focus of you don't go to a Church and do a frat show. You don't go to a frat and do a Church show. They're very different audiences.
We might still be doing our law completely improvised musicals, yet the audience is different. So we better play the toward that audience again, not pander. We're playing to honor and respect the audience. So I would extend that to this as well, that there has to be levels of comfort and understanding and right place, right time, especially if it's at your own expense. Then I bet, you know, bellies are laughing and people are falling on the floor. And otherwise I think there has to be an opportunity to experiment and an opportunity to test humor out.
And that's got to be done in a safe environment as well. And so with all of that, I'll go back to empathy and respect. And if that's there, then game on.
So right. And that's not a joke that I would make to strangers walking into a room that I'm a first meeting, right. That was a group of friends who knew me, at least for I think it was a couple of months and, you know, we were relatively comfortable with each other. And so you can make those jokes. But that's interesting. So when you're doing an improv get, did that ever come up like somebody did disability ever get factored in to put into that skit in any way?
Well, there's yes.
And to that in so much that when you're trying to run as fast as you can, as hard as you can, you're willing to pretty much do anything on stage. And I don't say in the mid 90s, there's probably lines that you can't cross in the early 2020. And I think that's appropriate. I think ultimately, if there's a pendulum, we were like one way I said before, like, you go to the history of comedy. There's doing things that should not be done now. And so the pendulum was already all the way over here for a long time, and it swung this way.
And I don't know if it's swung equal to this side or not. However, I think ultimately we're going to find where it sits in the middle that is based in honor and respect and integrity and inclusion as well, because it should not be at the expense of anyone else. I will tell you one of my favorite shows in the last half a decade, anyway, maybe it's closer to a decade. Micas Sherman and Dan Hodapp in New York, when I left Chicago, moved to New York, they had this great show called The Scene, and the scene was essentially a one act play.
You're on stage, and they did it in sort of the barest, most naked rules of improvisation. You get one character in this one act play, and the play is going to last 25 to 30 minutes, something like that, and you're not allowed to do well. They encourage devices, no multiple characters. So it's just pure you in the moment as this character with other people being in the moment as these characters. And based on the suggestion from the audience and I can't remember what it was. I chose to play somebody who was knocking on death store in a hospital, and I was essentially going to move with my head and my mouth and talk.
And so I stayed on stage the whole time being as still as possible. And that was interesting because I had a relative that happened to fairly recently. And so for me after it was done, though, was not intentional. That's what I kept thinking about. It became a a blend of being cathartic. And I was very introspective for a long time after that, like just trying to picture in different lines. And I think there's smart comedy in there, too, where people are willing to step over without stepping on and at the same time reflective afterwards to question if they did the job correctly if they actually and I'll go back to T that new quote of mine, you know, really trying to push the envelope, step over and not step on people at the same time.
I agree. I think there was. I mean, I remember being liking some of that humor. I mean, I still do to a certain extent, but it's also it also feels cheap and easy, right? It's so easy to just it's almost like you're picking on someone, right. Something that they can't change, something that there. It's part of who they are. And it's just it doesn't come across the right way. But I'm right. Go ahead.
What I was going to say for that that one, though, going back to that specific show, it's all about relationship, relationship, relationship. So at no time was I playing at the expense of this character in that position, it was all like it was people saying goodbye to me, you know, coming into the room. So it was all like, what effect this character had on other people and witnessing it in a comedy show. Keep in mind, this is supposed to be comedy.
But that is comedy. That's tragic comedy. That's beautiful. I would have loved to have seen that because, no, that's the opposite of what I was just talking about. But I think we look like with your example, your analogy of the pendulum swinging. I think we've also lost the ability to experiment and broaden those Horizons. Right. Like there is humor to be found in all aspects of life as long as we do it in the right way, maybe what we need are more comedians with disabilities out there, right.
Sharing their experiences, sharing their stories, sharing what's funny. So we can all learn from that and enjoy that. Yes. We don't see a lot of it.
Did you watch any of America's Got talent in the last few years?
No.
So there's two comedians in particular that come to mind one, and I don't know their name. So please forgive me out there. One had Tourette or has Tourette, and he went to I think he was top five, I think. And the other one was born with challenges, with his challenges, differences in his arms. And he rose to, yeah, he may have even won it because it was based on comedy. And to your point, I bring up he did pull some self deprecating humor out there as well.
And so I think the more we see it, the more we get sensitized to it or in the positive way desensitized that I think part of the challenge is that we don't look at everybody the same. And we should because we all do the same things. We we breathe, we cry, we laugh, we love he died. And so when we all just say, look at each one and say, Yep, we're all here. We're here on Earth for my dollar that could go a long way across the board in the world, let alone in America, let alone in comedy.
Yeah. Or just yeah, just looking at the absurdities of life, the observations, the things that we all share or the way we see things differently. I think it's really interesting and there's a big big space there that's open for that, which I think hopefully I'm going to hopefully we see more of that. But you let's transition into what you're doing now because I think there's there's a lot to be said there you are using your improvisational skills as a business consultant. So how did that get started?
And what made you go that route?
Alright. So my formal degree is in business and it's an undergrad degree. What I've always said I have a BS in business that's appropriate in many ways. And I was actually good at business as a young 20 something year old and left that to really dive into improvisation and just submerge myself in it and cut to five years later, I have the opportunity to cocreate the first improv program anywhere in the entire world in any business school that focus solely on linking improvisation of business. And that was at the Duke, a school of business.
And from there I formed a company called Business Improv and really focus on showing people how to use the tenants of improvisation that would otherwise be used to produce comedy in a way to communicate with each other and collaborate with Ah her connect with each other, engage each other, bring personality out, which is different than humor. It's just bring a little bit more of yourself out. And then how do you actually move that to leadership skills or sales skills? And so that's the focus we root it in the behavioral Sciences.
So really behavioral psychology, cognitive psychology, behavioral economics. Org theory, how and why we make decisions in real time. And so we take high energy exercises and then pin them down with the behavioral Sciences and then focus on application. And so that's been my day job when my night job, which doesn't pay or very peace only every once in a while, getting people up on stage and laughing.
So how did you come up with that idea? Like what was the spark?
It was the fact that I got my undergrad degree in business and I was a good business person and I was pretty successful one of a bank of America award for Creative Marketing for Guerilla marketing. And so you kind of get that in your blood and then I love improv love. I still love it, love it, love it, love it. And so the idea of just marrying the two of them was not mine. There's a lot of theaters in the nine that were doing corporate improv, and I was teaching for some of those theaters.
And what I kept hearing is this is great. Participants would say this as great as they're leaving, except I can't use any of this. And so now I have to go back to work and make up the work that I missed because I was forced to come here because my boss told me too. And for this team building event, and that really made me feel bad. It made me feel like I was selling snake oil. And so when I had this opportunity, which was just serendipity right place, right time, recognizing the opportunity and jumping on it, I said, I know how to do this.
I know how to put these two together. And the first program I created was a five day, 36 hours intensive linking improvisation to business. So I took something I was good at and I great respect for and even love business and married it with my passion. And here we are.
So what can you share? Obviously, I'd like to take the program at some point, and I'm sure other people would, too. So what are some of the tenants that you can share? Like, where do they translate? I heard you talk a lot in the beginning of the conversation about how important the team was feeding off each other's energy, picking each other up, working with each other and trusting each other. I'm imagining that that's a big part of it. What else am I missing?
Yeah, I was going to say right there. Where does that not apply anywhere on the loan in business. So we define improvisation in business, improve my company. And this is unique to us. We define it improvisation on three core competencies, which is reacting, adapting and communicating. Reacting, adapting, communicating, reacting is focus and concentration of presence. Adapting as if you're doing it within parameters or trying to achieve an outcome. So think like sales, for example, or collaboration, a team meeting, shifting strategy to this crazy stuff around us and then communicating, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk to talk.
So based on those three core competencies, my question is similar to what I just said to you regarding how you described improv. Where don't you use those? When is that not applicable in specifically business, for that matter as well. So we teach people then how to take on those core competencies, which everyone, if you ask, anybody, is reacting and adapting important? Yeah, absolutely. It is communicating important. Then the question is, well, how are you doing it? And so when you look at improvisation, especially with your background, have seen so much of it.
What we do on stage starts with focus and concentration and presence in the moment at a very, very high level. And then that adaptability and communication comes from caring about your team or ensemble that you just broke down so accurately. It's also rooted in this idea of postponing judgment or the improv term is suspending judgment. When somebody brings an idea to the table, don't judge it and definitely don't shoot it down. You take it for what it is and do something with it. You can build directly on it and a heightening type of way comedically.
You can take it and honor and respect it and just hold it close to your heart. That might not be funny, yet you're still honoring what somebody else gave to you. And it comes from this idea that whatever anybody else says is if not as important as what you're saying. It's more important than what you're saying. So words become gold, and you don't just give gold to whoever you know, just throw gold away. You give to specific people to specific reasons for specific reasons. And if words are gold, you don't.
If somebody tries to hand you gold, Gustavo, you're not gonna be like, no, I don't want your gold. Yeah. You can be like, yeah, thank you. Yes. And I'm going to take it, and I'm going to treasure it and do something with it. And that's the same. So this is how important communication becomes on an improv stage. And that's so relevant to how we build relationships, whether we're on site with each other or we're virtual with each other. It's all about that connection and engagement.
And it's interesting, right. Because when are we taught in school to communicate? When are we taught in school, how to adapt? We we're not taught those things, at least not directly. We sort of learn haphazardly through failing, through experiences, through our interactions with others. But this is like to me, I would argue this is important for junior high school kids to learn, for high school kids to learn. It's not just for business. Right? This is for life.
It is.
It is.
And this is one of those great work life blends, because what we teach specifically in business improv is people skills and human connection. And so when you talk about this collaborative communication style, wouldn't you want that with your roommates? What do you want that with your significant other, your partner, children, parents, parents. Right. Right. You know, it's so important, and it's fundamental to who we are as people. Yet, as you said, there's not a whole lot of training in it. And really the approaches in improvisation on its own create a high level of training.
And then once you start honing it and fine tuning it and crafting it to a specific audience for specific reasons, like we've done in 21 years, then it becomes master class work. Yep.
I can see that in fun, fun.
Master. On top of that, too. That must be really clear.
Because most of the time when you're I mean, I have a small business and we have a pretty close knit team and we joke around with each other a lot. But it's also there's always that kind of underlying competition of ideas. You know, it's like, no, like I'm right. Or this idea is better, and it's so easy to lose sight of being present in that moment. And that what the other person is saying is more important. So it's like you need a constant reminder of what they're saying is actually gold.
Let me treat it that way. The problem is I don't recognize it that way. I'm trying to give you my goal instead. And then we get into this conflict and we don't understand each other.
Yeah. You actually just hit another positive outcome of using these tools and techniques and that's conflict management. And that comes from let's start with entering in difficult conversations respectfully with the idea of like settling this in some mutual way and also being in it where a lot of people will disengage think about what they're going to say next is why I have a point that's going to negate your point. So we start protecting our own ideas while we're trying to undermine somebody else's ideas as opposed to saying, alright, we're heated right now.
We're gonna get into it because we all get into it. Let's be clear as well. Anybody is like, no, I never get in an argument with anybody. Whatever. A person probably is trying to sell you a bridge. We all life is tricky. So when this type of stuff happens and we're just rubbing each other is a lot of friction. Let's take ten minutes or half an hour or an hour or revisit this tomorrow morning. All right, let's step away from this, get a glass of whole water or beer or you just go for a walk, air it out, you know, just decompress a little bit, then come back in and say, all right, let's work to solve this.
Let's do this in a collaborative way. And in that spirit of like a Venn diagram, right. This is you argument point. My argument point. There's got to be a middle ground. There's got to be this place in the middle that exists and there's where these techniques thrive.
So what do you think? That what's the most impressive outcome so far out of all the companies that you worked with, like, what's been the biggest turnaround story. And you can give us like, I know you probably have NDAs, etc. But what's been that that moment where you just said, wow, this really work. And this really changed something in this culture for the better that you just hit the keyword right.
There. The things that we do really well in business. Improv is help people create structure for longevity. So culture and watching, I can remember specifically, is a big Pharma. And there's a specific branch of this. And there are really veteran, very veteran, big Pharma, high ranking individuals who if you get to that place, it's not just status and rank that you have. You have experience. And typically it comes with a fair amount of politely say confidence. And there's a lot of common people who think that they're right.
And when that happens in one room and one team, there's a lot of people who stop listening to each other because they think they're right. And other people are wrong. And so the conflict is the underlying. It's not even brought out, you know. So then it's like water cooler chatter behind the back, chatter that type of stuff. So going in there and working with them, this was a longer engagement. Many, many months. We flip them. We flip that team from being a highly dysfunctional team to being a highly functional team, so much so that we got a lot of recognition for that.
And a lot of eyes were on us after that. And we got brought in for a lot of other, very sticky, very tricky type of programs.
That's fun. But what's coming to mind now is you believe it feels like you believe that people can change. People can have their attitudes, their perceptions, their minds change and see things in a different way than they did before.
Yes. Now you can't change people, though. People have to want to change. There's got to be some kind of drive to do it. In this case, it was the most senior person, the team who brought us in. So she mandated that this is the path that we're going to follow. And these are the people who are going to help us on this path to both navigate treacherous terrain and support us with learning how to drive this vehicle. I don't know. I'm going to continue down this analogy.
I guess, however, that is a way to help change take place. And if the people are truly resistant to change, that's so hard, it's impossible. So there has to be some level of intrinsic desire to change. It could be motivated with external influences. Your job, for example, your job is changing, so you should adapt so that you keep your job, that you increase your probability of getting promoted and get your bonuses and all that sexy stuff. That's true on an individual basis, though you have to want it.
You have to want to do this. So if you don't have that external influence, extrinsic motivation. You need intrinsic motivation. And if you don't have that, then you're not going to change. If you're going to really go a zero sum on this, I would put all my money on the fact that people who are not focused on changing are going to change because to change, you need tenacity. You need diligence, hard work. You need drive. None of those are easy words. Change is hard. So you need not only to be able to do this for yourself, you need a support team around you.
You know, let's go back to the family base. You have to tell your family I'm trying to change this behavior. So you need accountability practices when I slept, because I will slip because I've had this behavior my whole life. I've been past some aggressive my whole life. I'm trying not to be password. I need people around me to tell me like Yo Emperor, you are naked. Your bucket, put some clothes on. Nobody wants to see this, no one, you know. So you're like, okay, I got called out, and that means you also have to be humble and vulnerable that you're not going to be right all the time and curious enough to want to get better and develop the foundational skill set for sustainable change and all that, you know, it's time, energy, commitment, it's drive and is needed for change take place.
It's a big question, and we probably don't have time to go through this. But I think there's a lot to think about here in terms of disability, because part of my mission, my goal is to change the way people perceive and understand what it means and doesn't mean to have a disability. So I believe that that's important, along with everything else, legal stuff, economic incentives. But if we don't reach people's hearts, if we don't get in there and change those perceptions, I believe that those other things just become bare minimums that we do in society just because they're there.
But in order to really elevate and change the nature of the game, I think we have to go there. So how do we help people want to change what conditions do we have to create corporate America and society in general for these things to start flourishing? Do you have just initial thoughts on what we can do there?
Well, everybody has opinions right now. Everyone's got whole take it as just grain of salt ideas from an improviser, I guess with those different ways of doing it. I think if we focus on consistency of messaging, if we're hearing the same messages over and over and over again, you can start turning the tide from people, I think structurally as well. You know, whether the structural could be incentive type of programs. We talked about this in several of our conversations like that can help ultimately, though, if we create some level of comfort, right.
And by that, I don't know if I mean, like, normalization, which that doesn't sound right because it's not not normal. It's the perception of other people.
Though.
Just regularity of just like, let's just talk. Let's just always talk to each other. And I think leadership it's got to come from leadership, too, because we all follow the leader walk to talk. And if the leaders are not, they could say one thing and behave in a different way. Then the majority of people are going to behave that way. And so you need that type of, like leadership to show like, this is the way that we're going forward and ultimately guidelines, too. Like you heard me say it before.
Treat each other with respect, dignity, you know, just basic things. It's Martin Demon I mentioned before a quote of his it's a basic human desire to be understood or at least believe that people understand us. And so if we just go to that core communication of I'm here to connect. I'm here to hear. I'm here to learn. Then we can all be students of each other. And that might be a way to continue to move forward in a positive way.
Yeah. Curiosity has to be the stronger the stronger desire, as opposed to shying away from this is awkward. This is difficult. This is not something I want to deal with. Yeah. And I think the the message that I'm playing with and exploring is based around potential. I think that we are in broad strokes, right. This is going to sound grandiose, but I think we are here on this Earth to fulfill and test our potential as human beings. What can we do? What can we contribute? What can we do while we're here on Earth in this time?
Are we making people laugh? Are we making people cry? Are we helping people in some way? Like, what are we doing? Are we building great businesses? But we're doing something. So the more of that potential that we can activate as people, the better off you would think we would be as a society. And I think that the disability community is the largest untapped resource in terms of human potential that we haven't even begun to scratch. And maybe that's true of all humanity. But I see it more poignantly with the disability community.
And just there's so much there that's just being ignored or kind of tossed to the side that we're just missing out on as human beings.
Yeah. An untapped potential. Is it's sad? And it's frustrating, you know, when I think about my children, the idea that their talent and potential would not be fulfilled, it's sad. And so I think with that, though, there's opportunity and it's opportunity that I hope more, more people at the very least, Explorer, then that goes back to your curiosity.
Yep. What have I missed, Bob, that we haven't talked about that you'd like to tell us that's important or interesting.
I plug something that if anybody out there.
We'Re going to plug the way, too. Yeah, that's plug. All right.
So if anybody out there is like, okay, I get what these two jokers are talking about. And yeah, maybe this is a skill set that I want to bulk up a little bit. There's a couple of ways that you could do it from your home if you want to. So whether it's the book getting to. Yes. And The Art of Business Improv, which is a prescriptive book. It's a Stanford University Press book, so it's baked in the research and the citations as a prescriptive book. It's a how to book.
It's the textbook for what we do. Also, in 2019, we created an online program called Improvisational Communication. It's unteachable, and it has worksheets a tattoo. And if you're really like into the online program was created for people who don't want to go to a classroom. That was the major focus. Not everybody wants to go to a classroom and going back to Martin Mod, that doesn't mean they shouldn't learn these techniques. It's an opportunity to learn them. And some people don't want to be on Saturday Night lives either.
So it's not necessarily improv for comedy. It's improver creativity, collaboration, communication deal with change. And if you go through the program and choose to download the worksheet, it's not mandatory. No one's gonna be on your shoulder there. You will walk out of the program, though, with an action plan, a tangible action plan that says, in your own words, this is I. Gustavo will walk out of this program with tools and techniques that I can use for communication, collaboration, creativity, change, dealing with some conflict and ultimately creating a culture, my own culture to sustain this going forward so that this continues to be part of how I develop as a person and as a leader so that's improvisational communication unteachable awesome.
And how else can people get in touch with you and reach out?
Find us at business improv, business, improv.
Com.
Find me on LinkedIn.
Come and say Hi, awesome. And, well, thank you for that. I'm looking forward to taking some classes, and obviously, you know, having future conversations with you, but I really appreciate the time, the energy like you're when we release this later on YouTube, people are gonna see you are so present and you're just physically here, even though I'm just seeing you from a screen, and I don't usually get that with people like you're just right there in the moment. So thank you for that. Well, thank you again.
It's all that improved training, so I appreciate gustable. It's been a pleasure to chat with you, and I look forward to future conversations as well.
All right. Thank you so much, Bob.
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