Kevin Hubschmann: Comedy Skills, Applied Improv, and the Business Case for Laughter

Kevin Hutchman on improv training and building high performing teams. Welcome to another episode of Biz Bites for Thought Leaders. What if the key to Better business performances wasn’t another productivity hack, but learning to laugh together? My guest today, Kevin Hutchman, has discovered that training in improv comedy develops the exact soft skills that every business desperately needs.

This is a very fun episode, but it’s a very different way of looking at building culture, building teams, and really creating unbelievably successful way of breaking down boundaries and improving performance. You don’t want to miss this one. So let’s get into this episode of Biz Bites for Thought Leaders.

Welcome everyone to another episode of Biz Bites for Thought Leaders, and this is going to be a different kind of episode ’cause we legitimately are gonna have a bit of fun with this one. Kevin, welcome to the program. Thanks for having me. Excited to be here. So let’s kick things off as we do by allowing you to introduce yourself to everyone.

I am a entrepreneur, comedian keynote speaker. Team bond bonding, fun guy. And yeah, corporate facilitator that likes to work with companies to help them have comedy skills in their professional world. Yeah, there is a lot to cover in that alone. And I wanna point out to everyone listening in that what we’re gonna cover a fair amount today is, of course a about the role that some of this stuff can play in building teams and really building a sense of community and a sense of fun in your organization.

I wanna start things off, Kevin, that’s interesting about how you introduce yourself. So what do you see yourself as first? What is the first thing? Is it entrepreneur? Is it comedian? Is it, where do you sit? I’d say it’s probably entrepreneur. I think that entrepreneur allows me to. I, there’s a various amount of businesses that I do outside of the one we’re talking about.

I’ve always been interested in a unique path, but more just about solving unique problems. And so I’m really just drawn to different areas of industry whatever that might may be, and using my expertise that I’ve had over the years to, apply some solutions to those problems. I’m a problem solver, and if I haven’t said it enough, and I love I love being an entrepreneur, and so I try to apply that in whatever I do.

I love that it’s being an entrepreneur is such a a wonderful asset and a way of thinking to have, but I think you apply it in a different way, particularly with a comedy background. So I know you call yourself a comedy nerd, but where did the comedy stuff begin for you?

Yeah, so it really began at the dinner table. I am youngest of six kids. Always loved comedy. But I was introduced to comedy from all my brothers and sisters. We used to watch Saturday Night Live. Ever weekly when I was a kid, like real young all the way up until, currently watch it.

So I’ve been exposed to all different types of genres of comedy my old life. And I didn’t really take a big leap until I moved to New York City after college and started at a company called Splash where I was one of the first 10 employees. But simultaneously, while I was there, I started training in improv comedy.

And me and my two brothers and my best friend, we started a group called The Brothers in Flaws, and we would do three hours of comedy training of improv comedy a week, and it was just the most fun ever. We just would laugh our butts off constantly and we thought, I thought it ended there, but it wasn’t until I would go into work the next day.

Fresh outta college. Not a lot of professional skills, but what I did have were these new skills I was learning in the comedy world. So I was able to apply those to work. And, you know what I call them comedy skills. I’m not talking about being able to make a joke, but I’m talking about active listening and empathetic communication and collaboration and creating psychological safety taking risks, going off script.

There was just these crazy lists. Of skills that I were protruding from me and I was able to communicate better with my team, collaborate better, which you absolutely need when you’re on a small, scrappy squad. I was able to reel in clients better. I was able to talk to customers and prospects, learn about their problems, prescribe custom solutions, go off script.

And I truly believe that it wa, if it wasn’t for immersing myself in the low stakes environment of improv, I wouldn’t have been so successful early on in my career because I was able to use those skills while I got, it got the chops of the business world under my belt. So I really attribute learning those skills in comedy as a way to really jumpstart my career.

I think it’s a fascinating way of bringing those things in because yes, immediately you think, okay, you can’t, there’s only so far that you can have jokes in the workplace because things have to get serious at some point in time. But you’re right there that, that safety that is created, but also I find fascinating with improv is that everything always has to be a yes, right?

You can’t say no to things, and that is a skill within itself, particularly in the business world. How do you actually say yes to things? How do you actually make it work? Yeah. And I think that understanding what the yes is not, I’m gonna be now doing the thing that you’ve told me to do. And it’s more about accepting the current circumstance that you’re in.

And adapting. So the phrase is yes, and rather than just Yes. So the yes is more of a validation. The yes is a validation of, Hey, I’m accepting your idea that you’re throwing my way. And yes, that is great. And you’re validating the person that’s giving it to you, whether it’s on the stage or in the boardroom, and you’re validating that individual.

Then you’re adding and to it, right? You’re saying, and here’s how I feel, whether it can be positive or combat, not combative, but contrary. And, the whole idea is that it’s the validation that you’re giving people with the Yes. And it’s the acceptance of what they’re saying with the Yes.

And it’s then bridging what the words that you’re going to do the, and is really for the individual. So is the yes as well, but it allows you to say, Hey, how can I just be very collaborative in this effort and eliminate words like, no, but or because those are words that can really stop the train. And that’s all about what applied improv is about.

And improv performing in general, but it’s about saying yes to the experience and the situation that you’re in and playing the next play off the top of your intelligence. Not coming up with a canned response or a, or something that you were gonna say. And, you wish you said it earlier, so now you’re saying it now.

It’s really about living in the moment of being present, and that is the best thing that you can do. To create a laughing moment is allowing people to create rapport and build rapport. Because that is, it’s not even if you go and back to someone and you try to explain why you laugh today, they’re probably not going to understand it.

’cause it’s not like some joke, but it was a situation that you were in and that’s what happens on the improv stage. If you go and tell someone why you laugh so hard at an improv event, people are gonna be like, that’s not funny. And you’re like it was ’cause I was there. And we’re in the moment and in the zone.

But that’s because we’ve created the psychological safety where it’s like, Hey we’re in a silly fun area, now we can laugh. Or we’ve created vulnerability now we can trust each other to laugh with one another. So it’s really about listening, communicating, building that trust and vulnerability so that people can effectively communicate.

I’m a big fan of watching shows like, whose Line is it Anyway, where? All about improv and for anyone who hasn’t seen it, I recommend you do watch it. It’s interesting what you’re saying there because they definitely create that sense of safety because clearly they’re given things that they don’t know what it’s going to be, but there’s so much trust in each other that they know.

That it’ll go somewhere that will work for both of the people that might be appearing on there at any given time, or it could be three or four, whatever it is that appears on the stage. And I think there’s a lot of valuable lessons to learn in business there. I think we, you’re not necessarily suggesting everyone in business goes and learns how to do improv, but it’s a good way of demonstrating it.

I’d say that is exactly what I’m hoping people will do because improv is something that is an incredibly accessible art form. You don’t need to go into it with any sort of knowledge. That’s what our business primarily helps people train in, improv and train. We call it laughing and development.

And it’s this workshop, series of workshops in person or virtual. The virtual ones are actually. Amazing because everyone has to be so focused and dialed on their squares. You’re al already dialed into like your environment and looking at other people and they, the whole goal of this is that we should be training in improv, and it’s called Applied Improv.

I’m not saying people need to go and perform improv. That’s a completely, totally different beast. And if you’re gonna perform and invite your friends, you better be good. ’cause you’ll give improv a bad name if you stink. The, but the, but training in improv and training in comedy is totally different than going out there and performing in front of a huge group of people.

While that also can have its benefits, I’m not saying everyone needs to do that, but I do think everyone can benefit from. Getting into the EQ gym, so to speak, working on their soft skills like listening and communication and adaptability, and what are those different ways that we can do that. And improv offers a wonderful environment for people to feel safe enough to make mistakes and really be silly and show up as your most authentic self.

Then when it’s time for a business situation or professional setting or any sort of like even serious high stakes situation, you can tap into that muscle that you’ve been training and your performance might not be in a comedy setting. Your performance is going to be in the real world where these skills are going to benefit you and you’re not gonna receive a laugh.

You might receive. A sale, you might receive trust, you might receive a new friend, whatever that might be. And so that’s why I truly believe that, training in these comedy skills is not to make you the next Jerry Seinfeld, but it’s to make you the best version of yourself so that you can always bring yourself into a place to connect with others.

Yeah. I wanna pick you up on a couple of things that you’ve said there that I think so important. Yes, you’ve said the listening, and I think that’s incredibly important, but it’s really about, to me, that ability to adapt. Is incredibly important. That I think is often overlooked, but we do it in business every single day.

No matter what business you’re in, you don’t know what is going to walk through the door or come through in an email or in a call, in a, in the next, five minutes and it can throw you for a loop. Sometimes it’s not always exactly the same as whatever happened previously. So we have to adapt and we have to learn how to utilize those skills.

And I think then the second point about that is, is then developing trust as a result of that. I think that is where the important skills lie, particularly for business. Absolutely. Those are, that’s the foundation of any sort of business relationship, whether it’s internal or external. And and people find their own ways to do it.

And I think that, again, communication, trust. All of those different components I’ve talked about are a really great way to build that foundation with your organization. So tell me a little bit before we get into what it actually looks like for people now. How did it happen? How did the progress happen to get to where you are now in terms of offering, offering comedy and improv and these ideas to the business world?

So we started out I’ll take you all the way back, but we did I started this business in 2019, just as a way for me to get more stage time. And, I, after I did my improv journey I kept training in improv after our group broke up. And we went and I just went and did more improv training and then eventually I got into the standup comedy scene, started hitting more open mics, doing some clubs in New York.

And then, we had the opportunity to throw an event at my office that I worked at, and we had this awesome stage and lighting and the just sound system was perfect and. I also had one of my best friends at work played the drums and could work the lights and the sound and, suddenly we were our own Jimmy Fallon and the Roots situation.

And we went and started throwing what I would consider at that time, the best comedy show in New York City on a Wednesday at 7:00 PM and it was electric. The comedians that we had on this show were some of the best, not just in the, in New York City, but in the whole. Country. And I’d say since we first did those first 10 shows, there have to be at least 10 people that have done Netflix specials.

It was that kind of talent that were on our shows and I was incredibly grateful for those experiences because one, I got to perform alongside mega huge stars and that was so cool. But I also got to. See how they prepared, what they were like before they got on stage, what they were like after. Then I would be, some of them I’d be able to pick their brains like, Hey, what is, what was it like to prepare?

How do you learn from certain situations? So I’d bug a lot of them and be like, just, I wanna get into your psyche about what it’s like to perform at such a high level. So this was like one of the first times I was able to really. Work with comedians at this level, both producing and hosting and performing in these shows, but, performing alongside of them.

And that was a really cool experience. And then, about 10 shows in, I was like, let’s, no, let me do this full time. So I was, I’ll leaving my company doing this full time and then the pandemic hit and I was like, what have I done? This is a horrible mistake and. We got really, it was a blessing in disguise and we went into corporate comedy and we said, how can we put these comedians that I’ve been working with over these last 10 shows in New York, and how do we put them to work?

Because all those comedians were actually out of work because of the pandemic, and they weren’t legally allowed to even perform in comedy clubs. Doing virtual comedy was a good outlet for folks. And I had the opportunity to give some comedians corporate gigs. And so I started to get into that corporate scene and see what it was like for people to how they were at work.

And, COVID was a Hal. Its own thing, but people were so not pumped to be at work or be at this event, or like their day was like just absolutely killing them. It was the first time I was actually able to see. How our comedy shows were impacting people during the workday. And it wasn’t just like great show in our post-event surveys.

It was, thank you so much, I really needed that. I’ve had a horrible week or a month or something’s going on in my life and this was the best outlet. It was these like incredibly impassioned things. And since it was COVID, people were like, I haven’t bonded with my teammates like that since we were back in person.

I also, I started to see. This was making people less depressed. It was bringing people more social bonding. It was, people suddenly leaving their jobs. Men mentally for a second and showing that they could have fun in the same environment, AKA, the zoom link that they were having some of their most boring and mundane and probably brutal experiences.

It was a very good, immersion therapy, I’m sure as well, to be like, oh, this is a really good experience. So that was the first moment where I was like. Comedy at work works, and I really want to keep going down this. How else can we serve these organizations, especially as we go back in person, but more importantly as people stop to think about how do we meaningfully spend our budgets on team building or professional development?

Because there was a shift and said, Hey, we gotta tighten the coffers and we can’t really just be doing. Cocktail making classes and, comedy shows were thrown into that mix too. So we started, that’s when we first developed laughing and development. And I brought, I went back to my time starting comedy and starting my professional career.

And I realized that was the key. That was the key to really unlocking folks, is taking them pretty much through my journey that I did myself, because I saw firsthand the impact that. Training in improv could have if I applied it to the workplace. So that is really when our business took off. And we were able to, have real meaningful impact.

That was another thing. Although the comedy shows are awesome, we still do they’re a huge part of our business. We still do a lot. There’s a time and a place for a comedy show. There’s a time and a play and that’s a celebration. It’s having a lot of fun. And, but when it comes to every quarter, every month or offsites or moments where we need to really dial in and figure out people’s why that we’re able to come in and have real meaningful impact, that helps companies, through us tell their message to their employees about.

This is an environment where we value collaboration and we want to communicate more effectively and we wanna listen to one another and we wanna go to war with each other at work, and we wanna support one another. So that really was, added a whole extra meaning to what we were doing. First it was in the world of let’s just get people to laugh more, have fun and brighten up their day.

And then it turned into, okay, how do we help people really start effectively? Communicating and using these skills at work to make each other smile at the very least, hopefully it leads to a laugh. So are you going in with businesses and talking to them in advance so you understand what the messages are that they maybe want to give over so that is worked into whatever it is you are delivering for them?

Oh yeah, absolutely. It’s a very prescriptive solution that we’re offering, whether it is a. Entertainment comedy show on the virtual. We do virtual comedy shows that are so specific and tailored that we have attendees completing pre-event surveys to tell us office buzzwords to incorporate or memes to incorporate.

But then on the other side of things with professional development, we will ask the event organizer to tell us. What do you want out of this event? And there are so many different exercises and games that we can incorporate into our sessions. So we wanna know exactly like I have them rank a list of 12 outcomes from one to 12, which they think is the best, outcome for their group.

And a lot of the times people are like, they’re like, they’ll write in a note. I couldn’t, I wish I could. Put all of these at number one. That’s how like pe, how much people resonate with the material. But we then try to take like the average of the six and say, let’s create a theme connected with what their purpose of it.

We asked them, why are you doing this event? Or what challenges. Is your company seeing, we have a recent one that we’re working with now. It’s hey, we are a new sales team. We’re coming people that have, one style of selling with, a transactional style of selling and we need to bring them together as a group.

And, and then we also need to have people be more comfortable creating relationships with clients. So we wanna help build that rapport. And it’s stuff like that where we then say, okay, we have a series of games and exercises that we think are going to lead you in this right direction, so that in the OutCo outcomes of all of this, people are going to feel like they can take these skills and apply them to their, to the next day at work.

And that’s where you are using things more like the improv and those kinds of ideas, rather than it necessarily being a comedian. ’cause I imagine the comedian’s gonna be a little bit harder to adapt to some of those things, but I gather that’s still part of it as well, potentially. Yeah, but not really.

We’re all business when, it’s silly and it’s fun, don’t get me wrong. Like laughing and development is, it’s in the name there. It’s a lot of laughing. People are going to have a lot of fun, but it’s not gonna be from a comedian telling jokes, like if you had hired us from an entertainment perspective, this is all.

Parentheses funny business and we are trying to, help your team accomplish your goals. And so these facilitators, I don’t call them necessarily comedians, even though they are all comedians, but they’re facilitating a session with the group. And that’s different than the entertainment side of our business that we offer.

It’s a completely separate thing where, we are one side. We’re trying to create a great comedy show that’s for this moment. Then the other side of our business is we’re trying to create a really great team building and professional development experience that will have people really learning or even bringing out some of their skills that they may have had dormant.

What a great business to have both sides of the things that you can, do the straight out entertainment side and you can do this stuff that, that really gets into the that’s the best. Yeah. The man of business. I’m interested though, ’cause you talked about. This coming out of the COVID period and o obviously operating in a virtual environment, which I know you do.

And for those that are in Australia and watching or listening to the podcast at the moment, there is opportunities to do some of this stuff in a virtual environment. And I think we talked about before, could be coming soon in a real world environment as well. But talk to me about the virtual environment because.

It’s a lot harder to get responses, right? Comedy doesn’t play as well when you’ve got one person delivering something and you’ve got these other people that may or may not have microphones open, but you’re not feeding off one another in the same way as you are in a sitting down in a live audience.

So how does that play out in not just comedy, but in the improv and other things you’re doing? So just in the higher arching of everything, you’d be surprised in that virtual, in a non-corporate setting. You’re right. It doesn’t, I don’t think it works very well. It’s like a bunch of strangers.

I remember being at that in the beginning of the pandemic and we started to this idea of doing like that was got what got very popular public. Virtual comedy shows and see had 200, 300 people in, you had to mute some people were listening on their phones, like it was just like a complete disaster.

And so I remember going, we’re doing this, but not that. And what I mean by that is. The public nature of it. Now, when it becomes corporate, your company is sponsoring your event and your company is asking you to attend this event, and your company is asking you not just to attend the event, but you’re attending as a member of the organization.

So there is this built in sense of I have to be, I’m at work, I’m getting paid to be here. So there is this sense of I need to focus and dial in and I was very surprised at it. But the, just the nature of a corporate virtual event has a like, like bouncer feel to it.

Like that, like you’re, the company is the bouncer being like, you gotta, you better pay attention. And so much so that we don’t even have to we, I’ve never kicked anybody out, ever. And we’ve done so many things of of events that people are being like rowdy or not good. Or not paying attention whenever it might be.

I’ve had other people that, like the companies have kicked out because like they’re so dialed into it. So that’s just one kind of misconception that comedy can’t be done virtually. I think the setting is so incredibly important. And we also, on the virtual comedy side of things, and I’ll get into the improv side of things, but on the virtual comedy side of things, we started to say, okay.

First we started with just standup, and then we realized what’s another way that we could bring people to always be focused on what’s going on. So we went from standup to what I said before was, let’s have the content be about the people in the room. So let’s do pre-event surveys with the attendees and get information.

We said, all right, maybe let’s layer in images on top of screens when comedians are doing shows, like it’s a late night format. So creating another virtual element of it or visual element of it. We also started to get into musical improv where, or we have comedians that will create songs about your company live on the spot from ideas that they have in front of you.

It is actually amazing when the audience is dialed in and everyone’s on their mics and everyone’s on their cameras or as many people that can be, it is as fun as it can get on virtual. Obviously nothing beats in person, but it is as fun as it gets, and you’d be very surprised at how fun it can be.

Now when it comes to improv, it’s the same thing. People, we recently did an event where there was actually one of the women, that was, had to catch a flight. And so she was actually like going through, she was in a cab and then she was going through security and then I think she had to, when she got on the plane, she had to turn her phone off, but like this was a moment where you see.

We put people into breakout rooms, like we do warmup events where we get people assimilated, create that psychological safety. Then we’ll do two person activities. So we’ll put them into a breakout room and then we’ll do five person activities, put them into a breakout room. The beauty of the virtual side of things is that we can.

When we’re trying to do team building and professional development, we can leverage the technology that virtual softwares have, like breakout rooms to make sure that people are getting that, high level engagement from one another. And then on the entertainment side, we don’t use any breakout rooms and we’re just like, bring the laughter in.

Let’s just have a good time. So it really is dependent on it, but we found ways to be. The leader in our category as it relates to doing any sort of comedy experience online improv. The improv let’s, to make it work. It’s, and it’s amazing how you’ve adapted the business and found ways to make it work and made it probably larger than it would’ve been ’cause you would’ve otherwise been looking at very localized offices and operating perhaps just in New York.

And now you can operate globally. It’s the coolest thing. There is the first, I’d say 2021 was the first year where it was like, whoa. Maybe even early 2020 or like at the end of 2020, but it was 2021 where we had like at one point 13 events in one day and it was. So also not only like the volume was crazy because the demand was so high because of the pandemic.

We were doing so many events that it was starting at 9:00 AM my time and ending at 9:00 PM. My time. And so it was this full, like using Eastern time zone to, or, sorry, not eastern time zone, but like we do a show on that in the European time zones. Then us time zones, then APAC time zones.

And it was this very we had companies that were hiring us for like, all three of their holiday parties and they would just have different time zone areas. So it’s just very cool. We’ve performed on nearly every continent. Which I never thought I’d be able to say. VIR obviously virtually.

And, we get to reach so many different audience members and that’s what’s cool about performing for remote audiences and remote workforces. And do you get much opportunity to perform or you it’s just stuck in the entrepreneur space. I’m a host of a lot of these events, so I get to get the crowd going, that’s my natural position is the host.

And so anytime I have a chance to put myself into the event, I usually do. And but it’s very fun to be in that host space, get the crowd engaged, make sure people are, on the virtual side of things, have their cameras on, mics on, do some crowd work, practice what I preach a lot of the, of what I’m doing.

And so the performing is always very fun, we always like to. The people that we’re bringing in are just the best at what they do. And so we really respect that and these companies are paying good money for great talent. And, we wanna make sure that we’re delivering the best show possible.

So there are moments where I gotta step out of the limelight and let the real craftsman take over. Tell me, you’ve done a lot of shows for the business. Have you collected the data? Do you know where the main problem areas are that businesses are highlighting and where you are seeing a result after what you’ve been doing?

I think the best way to answer that question, and I think ’cause we went through a bit of a, we’ve been through a bit of a wave in terms of what our offering was and it was virtual entertainment to in-person. Laughing and development. So there’s been like a very large wave. And so in the beginning, people had bad cultures, frankly, they weren’t transitioning well in the COVID space and they didn’t know how to connect with people.

And they were really open to trying new things. They just wanted people to have more fun. Now I would say I’m able to dial in so much more. I love being on the. Professional development and team building side of things because I’m really able to now ask questions about what is wrong with your organization that you think you need to do a laughing and development experience.

And what I mean by what is wrong, it’s more what do you think that you can improve? Not like I can’t believe that you’ve come to us but it’s like, what do you think? You can very be very honest and I would say the biggest thing is. AI has lowered our EQs a bit across the board, and that can either be veterans in the professional world or it can be people that never started a job or you had to go in person five days a week or go out to meet with a client over lunch or whatever, or pitch in person.

I think that’s really the biggest trend that I’m noticing is that a lot of people are still, assimilating into this new normal because we all went through an experience where virtual was normalized. And I think that people got some of their muscles atrophied on the EQ side of things.

And so people are, organizations are really looking to get that mojo back and what we’re able to provide is, I like to it’s like a gym, we’re able to help with those muscles and, the people that work with us best are the, are not the ones that do this one time. It’s the people that do intermittent sessions with us that can allow for people to, really work.

Better with each other and work better with their clients. And it’s because they’re working on these skills. I think that’s an important point for people to hear from you as well, is that this is not about a one-off kind of gig. It can be, but I assume, but ultimately you want people coming back and continuing to work and obviously seeing a level of improvement that happens in that.

So are you seeing a lot of that and do you, are you able to track it? It’s the organization. It’s, it all depends on what the organization allows us to track, obviously. But the ones that continue to do more events with us. We do not have to reset and start at zero. If we are doing an event with an organization, we can pick up into 1 0 2, 1 0 3, eventually get them up to 2 0 1, 2 0 2 0 2.

So I think that’s the best thing is you what, when I was training in improv, I didn’t see the value the first day after. At work the first day after I left or went into work after doing improv, it was until like probably a month or so in where I had done it so many times that it was now a part of me and it was a, it was now a muscle and a skillset that I had grown and developed.

And I think it was when I started to combine both of the two, I was more conscious of it and said, oh, this is like improv and listening and communicating and going off script, adapting, all that stuff that I’m now conscious of. But it took my subconscious a while in reps to do I think that, that is what people can really benefit from is seeing that and my goal is that there’s gonna be.

A sales team that comes through and wants to do a case study with us. That’s very clear. I’ve seen case studies done with organizations like Salesforce, where I saw that they had a I think a 20% increase in, in sales conversions when they trained their sales reps in, in improv. And that’s a case study that I’ve pulled from the internet and.

Those are the things that are so fascinating, but you also have to have people that are in in it with you to want to grow and have the same people and the same studies and go from there. But the good news is I don’t need to prove this to anybody. These, this is in medical journals, it’s in case studies.

I’m just picking up where a lot of people have already done the hard work. And how much resistance do you get from people, because obviously there are people that are going to be embrace it straight away for whatever reason. And you would have, I imagine, people who are more outgoing and then you have the people that are more insular in their approach and maybe a little bit reticent if you, when you start doing some of these exercises.

So how do you bridge that gap? Yeah, I would say. The first five minutes are a lot different than the last five minutes. And that’s basically everybody comes in with preconceived notions, whether it’s improv or not improv. That’s also, we don’t call it improv ’cause that’s a scary word for a lot of people.

We call it laughing and development. And so I think that is, no matter what, you gotta shake those cobwebs off. And so I think that the. The important thing is like how do you create psychological safety in the beginning of the event to be like, Hey, we’re gonna have some fun. And so whether that’s an entertainment event that we’re doing or an IMP or a laughing and development improv event that we’re doing, you need to spend those first five minutes of.

Doing really easy warmups with folks and icebreakers with folks so they get familiar and create that psychological safety so that you’re able to take them into the deep end and and everyone ha can have a lot of fun. How much baggage does the term laugh carry? Because I imagine and maybe you can tell us what it was like the first time you jumped on stage as a standup, because most people can’t really imagine what that’d be like.

But you stand on stage and the audience is sitting there going your job is to make me laugh, so go on, make me laugh. That’s hard. Yeah. I think that, that’s definitely the worst audience member that could be if that, that they’re coming with that attitude. But you’re right. No, that is the, that is what people pay for a show.

And I think that what I learned is that there are comedians that take that part very seriously. They go and they’re not just doing a throwaway show and throwaway event. They know people that have come out. They’ve paid money. They’ve gotten babysitters in some cases. Not for me, obviously I’m not in this category, but I think what I’ve noticed is that you try to take it with that same approach and mentality.

You try to prepare. And I think that’s a really. Good lesson that I learned from folks is really giving a crap, giving, really making this very important to you. And so that you not only prepare what you’re gonna say, but you’re very dialed in and focused and very present in what’s going on in the room.

And then the next thing is like reps, like it’s scary, but it’s only scary if it’s your first time or second time, third time, it’s, the scare the scare turns to nervousness and this, and the nervousness is different than the scare. Because the nervousness is because now you want it to go really well.

You know that nervousness is just meaning that you care about it. And so you can ask other comedians like, do you still feel nervous? Where you get on stage, people that are huge, and they’ll say yes. And that is coming from a place of I want it to go very well versus in the beginning. It’s scary because you’re not used to it.

You haven’t gone through the ups and downs or the bombs or the failures, and so you don’t know the worst that could happen. But most comics, they have to go through the worst before they can have really good sets, myself included. I have so many moments where I’ve bombed for five, 10 minutes straight.

It’s the worst feeling in the world. But that’s those are scars and calluses that I can leverage. Not just for future performances, but sort of anything that I’m getting into of being like, I know it can go bad, but also I’ve survived a lot of crappy awkward moments where my body is telling me they hate it.

At the end of the day you survive. And and it’s just another story that you can tell yourself that you’re resilient. Is it, tell me when you talk about laugh and development, is it that. It just puts a smile on people’s faces and brings the barriers down. Or does it carry some level of expectation in a similar way for people?

Do you find? I think that the laughing component is to let people know that this is going to be fun, and that is the mo most important aspect. We’re not calling it jokes, and development. And I think that’s a very clear distinction between jokes and laughter. People can laugh in a whole different number of ways, and the whole, the goal is that we are going to do these games and exercises, and I almost guarantee you are going to laugh out of the experience and you’re going to laugh probably within the first five minutes because we’re going to do something silly.

Enough that you are going to break down your barrier and you’re gonna make a mistake and you’re gonna laugh at the mistake and you’re going to laugh at others making mistakes, and suddenly nobody really cares. And you’ve broken down these barriers. So the laughing component of it is, it’s a result of what’s gonna happen and when and then the development part of it is also another result of what’s gonna happen.

And when you can combine laughing and development together. When you laugh, you and you associate a new skill with a moment of laughter, your brain remembers it better. So our goal is to always be combining the laughing with the development. And that’s why we named it that because applied Improv and applied standup has have so many opportunities for people to laugh and connect with one another, and then simultaneously learn something that they can take away and use in the future.

And we didn’t. Talk too much about it but the musical comedy side of things as well. So I’m open to having a musical comedy version of the, of this show. So whenever you’re ready, just just pluck out the guitar and get going. But no, I, in all seriousness, I wanted to ask you as well, you talked earlier on about learning from a lot of the comedians and things.

So tell me what are some of the biggest learnings that you’ve had? And if you wanna name drop a few people, go for it. But are there some particular things that you’ve learned that have then transferred across to this stuff that you’re doing in, in, in laugh and development, I can name a lot of comics that I’ve worked with and I could talk forever about this.

I’ll just focus on one. And someone I’ve worked very close with over the years, a comedian named Jessica Kirson. She’s, your favorite comics, favorite comic. She is amazing. She’s such a killer. And I had the pleasure of opening for her once. And, I was opening for her and I remember doing my set and it was whatever, my, my experience my I did the job I hosted, it was a fun time.

But when I saw Jessica go up there, you open that door and it was the loudest laughs you’ve ever heard she’s killing for. And I only did 10 minutes, she’s doing 60 and she’s. Lighting the room on fire. She’s absolutely crushing. And I went up to her after and I was like, how do you kill every single time?

And I was like, that is what I heard in my room versus what it was like when you were up there. Those are two different sounds. How do I get to where you are? And she said, Kevin, I’ve been doing this for over 30 years. And that was it. It was, that was the answer. It was like, I have been in it, I’ve been in the trenches.

You’ve been doing this, for seven years or whatever the number was at the time. You, we don’t compare and experience, and it was one of these like aha moments where it’s especially in comedy, but throughout all of our, professional experience. We wanna cut the line and we wanna, get to that goal faster.

And the older that we get, the more we realize how important those years of struggling are to our final story and how hard we could kill it in the professional world. And so I think that was one of my let me zoom out for a second and realize where I am. And I’m on a, I’m on a journey, whether that’s in comedy or as an entrepreneur.

And, I’ve had a lot of lows during that time. But that is ultimately for, I’m investing in my ability to have really big successes in the near future and beyond. So that’s how I look at it. And that was probably my biggest skill I took away from a comedian. What I really enjoy about Jessica and I followed her for a while on in my feeds on social is that a lot of her stuff is bouncing off the audience.

She’s, it’s not it’s amazing. See, great comedians like a, like a Jerry Seinfeld and the like, and they have a pre-prepared routine. They do know how to respond to an audience jumping in as well, but a lot of her stuff is built around what is in front of her. That’s she’s a killer.

She’s, she is, she knows how to work a room. She’s very adaptable. She really embodies a lot of the stuff that we’re learning or teaching and laughing and development. She’s really good at improvising and she’s really good at working with what she’s got. She’s really good at her act and her material that she’s honed over the years.

She. She can, I’ve heard her do sets back to back to back. So I’ve heard like them do run consecutively and the breaths that she takes are conscious, like she is such a master at her craft. And not only does she work with what she’s got to. Bring the audience back in. She’s doing that to bring them in so that she can really knock them out with a tried and true joke that she knows is kills in any environment.

So she’s constantly rope a doping, the, her audience members and no one kills harder than her. And she’s and it’s because she’s got, it’s she’s like out of a helicopter, like shooting like two giant guns. You know what I mean? So she’s just but it’s she’s awesome.

And she’s amazing at what she does, and she’s a good friend. Two quick things to wrap things up. One is, are there some top tips that you can give businesses from the things that you’re doing and that you’ve picked up to open their minds as to what you can do with this sort of stuff that you are doing?

My lesson to businesses always, whether they work with us or not, is find a way to improve your team’s active listening skills, which will then help them more empathetically communicate, which then will allow them to be more vulnerable and that will allow people to trust one another. And those steps are very important and that’s what we aim for in all the workshops that we do.

Is with that ultimate goal of kind of building people up in that mentality and that can pay the dividends for internal team collaboration. It can be external with clients and prospects, and it’s really investing in your team’s emotional quotient. And that’s, it has to, I’m not saying don’t do other types of trainings and professional development.

It’s allowing people to be very well-rounded. But don’t forget that these emotional skills are invaluable and could arguably be the X factor in helping your team reach its full potential. So one final question. I love those tips by the way, and thank you for that. The final question that I have, and I always like to ask all my guests this question, what’s the aha moment that businesses have when they come to work with you that you wish more people knew they were gonna have in advance?

The aha moment is that is a lot more fun than I thought it would ever be. That’s the, we do a survey before the event and after the event, and almost always the, before we ask people to say one word or a phrase, and the phrase always before is tired. Don’t wanna do this apathetic, just neutral or negative.

And the words that they end with are. Enlightened ex inspired, energetic, open to new experiences. It’s just completely opposite of what they had going into it, the experience they had. So that’s I show that to people to say it doesn’t matter. This is a work event.

People in general are just gonna feel negative about a work event. But here’s what people feel afterwards, and it’s always gonna be opposite and exciting. And so we try to really help people understand that everyone just gets into it and we build our programs to make sure that the first five minutes is, are way different than the last five.

Thank you so much for all of those insights and we’re going to remind everyone that we’ll put lots of details in the show notes of how to get in touch with you, but it’s Laugh Events is the website address where you can find lots and lots of information about how to work with you. Kevin, thank you so much for being a part of the program.

Thoroughly enjoyed the conversation. Yeah, thanks for having me. All right, everyone pay attention to the show notes so you can get in touch with Kevin and we look forward to your company next time. Don’t forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode. We’ll see you next time on Biz Bites for Thought Leaders.

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