14 | John Sweeney: Founder & CEO, Brave New Outpost - VIDEO EDITION

Foreign.

I'm Craig Thielen, and this is the one percent Better podcast. Today is a very special episode of one percent Better. Improvement at its highest form is often called innovation or invention, either by some sort of brilliant design or necessity, and almost always by getting and being out of your comfort zone. Our guest today is. I can't think of a better example. And I think it's going to be really fun to talk to John Sweeney, who is the CEO and founder of the Brave New Outpost and previously the owner of America's oldest comedy theater, the Brave New Workshop. And if you don't know what the Brave New Workshop, it's based out of the Twin Cities, and just an amazing story in itself. It actually has some lineage to Saturday Night Live and fascinating story. And John was such a big part of that for years. And then he sort of transitioned from comedy into the business world or added that to his repertoire and worked with people like Microsoft, Target, Facebook, Apple. He even was on stage with the likes of George Bush, Deepak Chopra, Betty White, Steve Ballmer, Mark Zuckerberg. We'll talk about that. That's fascinating in itself. You get so many great stories about John. His. A quote from his book appeared on millions of Starbucks cups. He's danced shirtless in front of probably millions of people, been on ESPN SportsCenter, and he literally wrote the book on innovation called the Innovation Mindset. So he not only talks innovation, but he has lived it in many ways. And so I'm very excited to dig into improvement today and innovation. And so buckle up. And we're really going to get into it today. We're going to get the mastery level of innovation today. So, John, welcome to the show. Welcome to one percent Better.

Thank you so much. So glad to be here. I'm. As you may see if you're watching this, I'm here in an innovative way. I'm actually in the cab of a large truck because the innovation of my Internet company isn't very good today. So I'm doing this on the fly, which is kind of fun.

And that's the. That's the life you live, right? It's all improv, and you got to take it one step at a time. Let's get started, John. And just. And the reason for the big intro is not to give you a whole bunch of, you know, creds, but I feel like all of those things are meaningful parts of your pass and sort of give you little clues as to sort of the life experience that you have, which is incredibly interesting. So just walk us through how you got involved with this organization called the Brave New Workshop and how you got to run it and how that sort of progressed into, you know, going outside of the comedy world, even into the corporate world.

Yeah, it's, it's. I don't know how interesting it is, but it's certainly an odd story. Like, I can't say that I've taken a pretty traditional or, or predictable path and yet kind of like an improv scene. You can look at an improv scene in the segments of little 3 to 5 second chunks of theater that are all kind of woven together like a string of pearls. In some ways, my life has been just one big improv. I grew up on a dairy farm outside of Madison, Wisconsin. Large 8 kids, Irish Catholic dairy farmers. Went to a small liberal arts Catholic college called St. Norbert, which is kind of the St. John's of Wisconsin. I like to say it's a nice seventh choice. If you get turned down by Notre Dame, Boston College, Godzaga, that's a great seventh choice. But it was a great college. I loved it. Played some football there, which was fun. And then as odd as it seems, dairy farmers is the primary occupation of my family. But then everyone seems to be in real estate. So I grew up in a family that talked a lot about commercial real estate. We owned apartments and gas stations and all kinds of things. So I came out of college in 88 and I moved right to the Twin Cities because I thought it was a great town and mostly because I found a boss who was in corporate real estate, but also was a teacher. And that was one of the great pieces of advice I got from my family is, you know, for those first couple of jobs, find. Find a person or a culture or a team that can teach you a lot. Like, you'll ultimately figure out how to make money and you don't need a lot of money when you're fresh out of college. So try to find those great mentors. And I was able to do that.

That's a pretty good piece of advice.

Yeah, yeah. And it was one of those where he was a full time, it was called ccim, Commercial Real Estate Instructor. And so I got the benefit of having the teacher of the class be my boss all day long. So I just learned and learned and learned. And I learned more than just corporate real estate. I think I learned a great deal about sales, about relationship building. It also gave me the framework which is, you know, as you mentioned, really serves me now and has in the last 20 years as I took this improvisational comedy to the corporate world. You know, I see a lot of folks who are doing art in the corporate world, athletics in the corporate world, whatever it is. They're bringing other disciplines to the corporate world, but they haven't spent enough time there to really translate it or at least make those dotted lines to what the heck does improvisation have to do with corporate information, corporate leadership? So I've always been grateful that I got trained the right way and our clients were large organizations, so I got to see how org chart works, how decision works, how politics work, how bureaucratic decisions can slow things down. I think was learning a lot of innovation prohibitors at the time, just watching how they made their real estate decisions, and that really kind of represented how they made any decision. So I did that for six years and then was blessed to have a real close friend who many of you know by the name of Chris Farley. So Chris and I, and Chris's brothers and I all went to high school.

I had no idea. This is a new twist to the story. I.

Yes. So that's. That's what kind of drew me to comedy. So while Chris. Chris made it on Saturday Night Live. That was an inspiration for me. Eddie said, you know, we were pretty funny in high school, and you're. You're working pretty hard, and I'm. I'm just having fun, you know, showing my butt crack with Patrick Swayze here dancing on Saturday.

That was his first episode, wasn't it? I saw that live, and it's interesting this even came up. You and I have never talked about this, but you're cruising across YouTube. We just posted our first episode on YouTube, but it's actually Kelsey Carlson. And here comes the Chris Farley man from, you know, a guy from a, you know, live in a van, you know, down by the river. That skit, like, that's probably one of his most popular memorable skits. I literally watched that yesterday and just had sideaches. I mean, it's just. No one could do that skit by Chris Farley, right?

Matt Foley.

That's like Matt Foley.

There you go. That's. That's named after a guy that we went to school with, actually.

Wow.

That was the one who was always reasonable when the rest of us were. We're not reasonable. So that's why it's kind of funny and ironic that he named that character Matt Fully. So Chris was doing well. I said, well, at least I'll try this out. So I started taking improv classes also as a way to kind of have some fun. You Know, I was working real hard. I was doing the. I'm 58. So the movie that influenced a lot of people in my generation was Wall street. Right. And. And Glengarry Glen Ross and those type of movies where it was all about, you know, kind of harder, angrier. Yep. Faster, and that sort of stuff. And I was. I was living that life in many ways. And so I was taking improv classes as a way to also take a break, and it went well. You know, I. When you come from a large Irish family, you're kind of improvising all the time, and they're. Tell me about it. Humor was just such a big part of our lives. And I think they always say humor, comedy is tragedy plus time. Right? And.

Okay.

And so I like that. Like. Like large families, we had lots of sad times, too, and we laughed to get through those times, especially on the farm. So I did pretty well. And then next thing you know, I've got this decision. This guy named Dudley Riggs, who started the Brave new workshop in 1958, he saw me perform, and he said, you know, I'd like you to come and audition to be in my theater. I said, well, that's wonderful. I'm making really good money. I got an office on the 40th floor of the IDS Tower. You know, I'm currently negotiating a big lease in New York for our firm here. What do you pay? And he said, well, it's $200, but then you have to get your own insurance. And I was like, a day? And he was like, no, a week. And so I. I got a great, great gift. At that time, The.

The.

The person who was running the firm that I was working for at the time, he just said, you know, we all have these different itches as we go through life, and if we don't scratch them, they're either going to go away and we'll have regrets, or they're going to show himself. And so you've got this itch. You want to try this comedy thing? Why don't you scratch it for a while and maybe you'll suck at it. You come back and, you know, real corporate, real est going to be here. So he gave me the gift of freedom of choice and that luxury of going and kind of taking almost a sabbatical from the real world. So I sold my house in Linden Hills and sold my car and took a job at the Brave new workshop for $200 a week with no insurance. That was October 13th of 1993. And. And I gave it a Whirl. And I did two years at the Brave New Workshop and then went down to Second City where Chris was, and I did two years down there. And then Chris and I and his brothers did a sitcom together called the Sports Bar.

Okay.

And I got to be a guest actor on that. And. And then, of course, Chris, you know, things were going great for him personally. And so. So right before he passed, actually, Dudley, the man who started that theater, said, you know, you're the only actor who's ever gone through a theater that has had some business, you know, experience. And I'm kind of getting old. Would you like to buy this theater? And I said, wow, what an honor to be able to buy the nation's longest running comedy theater. And I actually tried to have him sell it to Second City for a while, and that didn't work out. And, you know, I had experienced enough of Hollywood at that point to kind of realize I didn't meet a lot of people who had sustainable happiness and sustainable kind of lifestyle. And then I was going through, you know, my period in that time too. So I got sober 28 years ago. So here I am, and I'm a couple of years sober, and I'm making some big questions in my life. And I've got this wonderful young lady that I'm dating who. Who knew me on both sides of my sobriety. And. And we're thinking about getting married. And. And she said, you know, if you own a theater, you can perform anywhere you want. You don't have to deal with Hollywood. So we bought the theater together, Jenny and I.

Awesome.

On March 3rd of 98. And we didn't get married until a year or about six months later. So we bought a theater.

She wanted to see. She wanted to see the cash flow and the.

Yeah, she had some. Some prenuptial conditions. And so we got married in 98 and did some great things. You know, we were able to have a theater on the Disney Cruise Line ships for three years. That was kind of fun. We were able to open another theater in downtown St. Paul in the old Palace Theater. Jenny built our school of improvisation to 2,000 students. But lo and behold, about three years into owning the theater, that Internet thing came out and Netflix and TiVo and it got really tough to. To own a theater. And so I think part of our innovation story is based on survival, right? Because yes, you know, we lost a third of the theaters in the Twin Cities in two years. They just went away. That's how.

Wow.

Was it really? You know, you don't you don't see a lot of stories about it, but live theater got hit in between 98 and 2001 really hard because.

And we had a great theater scene in the Twin Cities, and it was one of the best in the country, right?

Yeah. I mean, second most seats per capita. New York is the only place that has more seats per capita. So. But all of a sudden, you know, why would you drive in from the suburbs when you can TiVo things and all that? It got tough for live theaters. So that's when we, out of desperation and survival, that's when we decided to scratch our heads and say, well, you know, instead of going bankrupt, is there another revenue stream that we create that's. That's sourced from what we believe in, source from what we're experts in. Can we be authentic in it? And of all places, we found that in Jenny's school. So we had a, you know, a bunch of students at that point, and we just sat down and talked to them and said, why are you taking improv classes? And I was surprised. I thought the answer was B. I wanted to be more funny. I wanted to be on stage. Only about 10% of them wanted to perform. The other 90% worked at Medtronic, General Mills, Target, 3M, all the great companies that we have in the Twin Cities. And they said the reason they were taking improv classes because it was a great place to practice. I said, tell me more about that practice. Better public speaking practice faster decision making practice innovation. And I said, wow, we might have something. So I started going back to all my corporate real estate, which was General Mills and Target, and saying, hey, you're chief human resource officer, your head sales trainer. You're whoever you are. Can I come and talk to you about how improvisation and this mindset of openness and this ability to make decisions a little bit faster that might affect you in the workplace? Because I've got some research, I've got a lot of people who've been doing that, and I'll buy you lunch. So that's where it all started. And. And I think we've done about 3,300 keynotes and training sessions with 141 of the Fortune 500 since we started.

It's amazing. Yeah. And what a. What a pivot. I mean, who would have thunk, you know, a comedy improv kind of club gets into the corporate world, and then it's actually how you and I met. So I was going through a leadership development program, and one of we, you know, have all these speakers come in on different topics. And you, you came in as the sort of innovation topic. And we all come in, oh, this is going to be great. We're going to learn how to do innovation. The first thing you say is, hey, you know, my background is improv. I'm going to have you guys do improv. And we all like, literally the blood, you know, drained out of our heads and we're like, you're going to make us do this. So we're deathly afraid. You get us out of our chairs, you have us do some exercises. And it was one of the, you know, and the tail end, the first 10 minutes was frightening, but it was so eye opening about what you can do and you're self limiting and how you can prepare and all the lessons that you taught on that. So that, that was, I just think it's such a great thing and I wish every corporation and leaders would go through that kind of training. So one thing I do want to go back to. Oh, go ahead.

I was just saying in those early days when I met you for the first time, we were just doing it because we needed the work. Right. But it was interesting we learned so much in those first five years. Because at first I couldn't understand why would people be hesitant or frightened because I was right. And so I didn't have that greatest empathy. What it did is it forced us to go and do the research. And that's when we realized what this mindset was all about. I mean, the reason why people are uncomfortable doing an improv exercise is, is not because it's inherently dangerous, it's because they're in a mindset of fear. And so really for the last 15 years, that's what we've been doing. We've simply been helping people get out of that mindset of fear and into a mindset of innovation or recently our work really has been called to help people get into a mindset of action. Because there is so much, let's wait till next quarter, let's wait till the market gets better, let's wait till after the war. Like so much hesitation and people are still frightened to move forward. So that's where we are today.

Is there a way, John, and we can come back to this, this later, but is there a way that people can get that mindset? You know, those self limiting beliefs and I can't do this because I haven't been trained or I don't know how to, or I'm not good at improv or I'm not good at comedy or whatever. Their beliefs are without actually doing it, like, do you have to get into some sort of course or class or practice it? Or can you intellectually get that?

Yeah, you can't, unfortunately. You know, one of the catchphrases we've been using for a long time now is there's a difference between getting it and getting it done. And it's like anything else I use sometimes some cheeky analogies, but, you know, if Medtronic or 3M wanted everyone, instead of to go sell or to go innovate, if they wanted them to play the cello, like that's what their mission was. And they bought everybody a cello and they had a speaker come in on celloing and they, and they brought the seven habits of Highly Successful Cello Players. And then they said, okay, go back to work, don't practice. Everyone's going to still suck at the cello. And it's the practice where it goes from the poster to the person. Right? It doesn't have to be improv exercises. You can, you can practice innovation. You can practice this kind of limitless growth mindset in lots of ways. Like one of the most effective ways that I, that I've seen is just to simply spend more time with children. Like if you've got any kids or grandkids, because a five year old is almost always in that sense of play and imagination. And if you just jump in and that's usually a safe place to go and, you know, be an idiot. With a five year old, what do you want to do? You want to pretend, okay, you're a cowgirl and you know, I'm a cheese sandwich. Let's go. They'll just keep going. They'll provide a, a mindset workout gym for you to, to practice that. Because that's really, it's actually pretty simple. You've got these different processes in your brains. One's really linear, logical, and one's really creative and meandering and innovative. Well, after about second grade, we drastically stop practicing working out the part of our neurology that's flexible and nimble and innovative. And we spend almost all of our time getting good grades, figuring out what algebra is, making sure that our college essay looks good, and then doing all the things that are linear and logical. So like, it just makes sense to be innovative. Atrophy, there's actually a really cool. It's pretty old, but there's a cool study that the space program did. They started in 1965 with 3,000 kids, and they followed them throughout their entire lives and kept testing them for Innovation, creativity. And that's the. You should see that dip.

Yeah. Don't you think, though, that we systematically deprogram that out of kids in our school systems?

Yeah, we certainly, you know, I don't know if we do it purposely, but what happens is what we reward is. Doesn't include the creativity stuff. Right. Like, so, like, hey, you were. You were thinking of seven different things in class today. Well, instead of going, wow, you're an innovative multitasker, we'll say, oh, you have.

Adhd, and so go to the principal's office.

Yeah, you're in trouble for, you know, you're a dreamer, whatever it is. Yeah, that was one of the things, you know, when I kind of learned about ADHD and all that sort of stuff, and it was clear that I had it, I was like, now I understand why I'm so good at improv. What a gift I have. And I really looked at it as a positive thing because it should be a gift.

Yeah.

If you get linear, logical on the improv stage, the audience is like, we just paid 30 bucks for you to do exactly what we thought you would do. Like, you know, there's no. No need for that. You're always trying to find the exceptional or the odd. So, yeah, it's. It's been a great journey. It really has.

Give me just one last thing about the brave new Workshop, then I want to move on to a couple other things here. What is the exact beyond the Chris Farley connection, the lineage and connection between Saturday Night Live and the brave new Workshop?

Sure. So the brave new workshop started May 10th of 58 in a small coffee shop on East Hennepin. And it was kind of COVID was sad for us in a very specific way. We had never missed a weekend of performances. Unreal. Yeah. Our doors had always been open. JFK assassination, Vietnam, 9, 11. We had always, you know, brought laughter to the world. And when we shut down, that was the first time in 62 years we hadn't done a show that weekend. And where our connection to Saturday Night Live is, is when they were putting that show together, when Lorne Michaels was putting together kind of the writers and the people who are going to be responsible for the content, he hired Al Franken and Tom Davis as the two first head writers, and he took those two folks right off our stage. So. But I think we've all figured out that politics and comedy doesn't work together because Al's not nearly as funny as he used to be.

Well, it depends. Yeah. It's interesting because both shows. I mean, I've been to the Brave New Workshop at least a half a dozen times. Of course, I used to be an avid, you know, viewer of Saturday Live, and they were both very political in terms of using politics as comedy, and that was their strength. And so it's an interesting connection there, for sure.

Yeah. Well, let's.

Let's jump into something else that, that you're incredibly well known for. And we can't have a podcast without mentioning it, and that's the Timberwolves playoff publicity stunt. It's one of the all time best marketing ideas, and not just idea, but you actually executed it personally. So just walk us through where that came from and what it was, and we'll of course, include the link on the podcast so people can watch it themselves, but walk us through it.

Sure. So we, we. Back in the day, we used to work with, I don't know, maybe 10 professional sports teams across the globe. And what they all shared in common is that their teams weren't doing very well. As a matter of fact, their teams weren't doing well at all, which is why they'd call us. And basically they'd say is, can we use your combination of your innovation work and your business understanding and then your comedy theater to create moments in our game so our guests can actually enjoy their time because they're not enjoying watching that many losses. And so we were working with the Wolves and we're making videos during the timeouts. We're, you know, coming up with contests. We're doing all this stuff. And, and. And yet there was still this challenge of, in my opinion, the classic governor on fun that Minnesota's allowed themselves to have at a game. Right. Like, we don't want to have too much fun because, I mean, what would happen? We. We'd win. Right. And if we want too much, we'd win the super bowl or whatever. Right?

It is the Midwest.

Yeah. Yeah. So. So we said, well, you know, what if. And then we did brainstormed a bunch of things. So someone in that brainstorming session, because we used to do some pretty robust formal brainstorming sessions, I wrote a book called Innovation at the Speed of Laughter that outlines that process. And so someone in the group said, well, what if Sweeney danced with his shirt off and then the cops threw him out because he was literally having too much fun. And I was like, that's the stupidest idea I've ever heard in my life because I didn't want to have to go do it. Right, right.

And you're like, no.

Remember? Yes. And we have to. Yes. And everything around here. There's no bad idea. Apparently, the group outvoted me, and next thing you knew, we were dancing with that shirt off. And then we actually had two of our actors dressed as cops drag me out of the game. And we thought it was just a bit. We just having fun, right? What we didn't know is these. These Minnesota fans who don't want to cheer themselves, they're very kind and loyal to others who will go and cheer for them. So they went nuts. They had 118 complaints during halftime of, how dare you throw that guy out. He was just having fun. So we didn't know what to do. That wasn't part of the plan, right? So as improvisers, we worked with the Wolves, and we came back in the second half, in the fourth quarter, and the place went nuts. So then we danced with the dance line a couple of times that year, and we thought we were done. But then, you know, Minnesota teams, they have this ability to hire teenagers for millions of dollars, then let them go win a championship somewhere else.

And then Kevin.

And then, yeah, bring them back when they're in their 60s so they can be a leader, right? And so they brought Garnett back, and Chris Wright, who was the president of the team, texted me, and he said, confidentially, garnett's coming back on Thursday. Does Jiggly Boy want to dance again? And I was like, no, no, no, no, no. Because I was already. The first time I danced, and this was. I was 50. I was like, first of all, sequels don't work. And second of all, it's not really funny. It's just kind of gross. It's just kind of gross. So he kept pushing and stuff, and I said, well, can I have my sons dance with me? So I think William was nine and Michael was seven at the time. And we came up with a bit and we choreographed it. And so in the second half, we danced again, and it made sense. But what we didn't know is the temporals came out of the timeout, like in record time. So Garnett's standing there, the place goes nuts. Because I was dancing, they were having a good time, and I had welcome Home KG printed on my chest. And he notices me, and now we make eye contact, and now we have an exchange. And it was just a lot of fun. And so that video went a little bit goofy. I mean, we got a million hits in the first day, and.

And that was before was such a thing as going viral. But you were on the ESPN Sports center and it absolutely went viral. Before being viral was a big deal. Like. Yeah, it was incredible, right?

Yeah, it just keeps going like, you know, China picked up on it. So we've got 250 million hits over in China.

Unbelievable.

And I think, as you know, the good news is once we knew it was going to be a big deal, we immediately created a partnership with Smile Network International. And so you can go to jigglyboy.com and you can click on Smile Network and donate a dollar. And as of this morning, We've funded about 420 cleft palate surgeries for kids.

Unbelievable. That's such an amazing thing, John. So we will include that link and make sure we can add to that. So let's take a, so a little bit of a shift now. So your business was really doing quite well. You had kind of expanded it in corporate world. Again, incredible stability in terms of like doing your. Keeping your comedy alive, but growing the corporate business. And then all of a sudden this thing came called Covid. And all of a sudden everything that you thought you knew and you had mastered, you got into some sort of like, we know what we're doing just went away. And now you're, you're back on. What's next?

Yeah, talk about that.

How do you, how do you deal with that? That's the biggest test of innovation. You know, again, you're starting over, right?

Yeah, you know, and I'm still kind of recovering, to tell you the truth. You know, it's interesting thing to, I guess, come to terms with. Right, because it's actually, it's kind of interesting. So Dudley Riggs's wife is a tenured professor at the U. And she specializes in something called ambiguous loss. In other words, when things in our lives, like she works with the folks in Kosovo, 9, 11 victims. When stuff just doesn't make sense. Right. And it was a bit of ambiguous loss because if you think about it, when we bought the theater, we had four employees. It was a $250,000 annual business. Thanks. So, you know, with a lot of hard work and a lot of help from other great people, we had 110 employees. We had never owned any real estate. Now we own two beautiful buildings right on Hennepin Avenue in the middle of downtown. We had a revenue stream from ticket sales. We had a revenue stream from renting out the meeting space in that building. We had a revenue stream from three separate bars, from a school of 2,000 people, and from 115 corporate engagements a year we were actually at a place of entrepreneurship where we were stabilizing. So now we had a large enough portfolio of revenue streams where we weren't as vulnerable, at least we thought. And when Covid hit, I guess we didn't know that we really did have an Achilles heel. And that was, everything we did involved getting lots of people into a small room together. And so, and you know, I laugh about it, it's been a tough few years, but I don't know how you could have ever strategized.

No. No way.

And so when that hit, it was, you know, we lost. We lost a million. Five in speeches. We shut down the school, we shut down the theater, we shut down the whole building all in a matter of three days. And, and, and I'm just staring in the mirror going, everything we've worked for doesn't exist as of today. So the good news is, I think all the things we had been creating and sharing with others were exactly what I needed to do at that moment. I needed to ask what else. I needed to say yes, and I needed to fill myself with gratitude and not pity. I needed to ask, what can we build and who can we help? Because, you know, we were a little comedy theater in Minneapolis doing some corporate speeches. There were billions of people in the world who had much larger problems than we did. There were companies. So there was also some business opportunities. Right. So what could we do? I learned more about green screen large scale zoom meetings in three weeks than I ever had. And we pivoted pretty good. We started, you know, where the theater was closed for 30 months, but we were able to find a buyer for that theater, which is the Hennepin Theater Trust, which runs all the theaters downtown. So in hindsight, that would have been a great succession plan. It just got speeded up, so that's a benefit. My point is, I think we, we did a pretty good job asking what opportunities were there instead of just looking at what couldn't happen and what we couldn't do, you know, and, and yet it was tough times, you know, I mean, we had to lay off people who had worked for us for more than 20 years. It's interesting, you don't hear this story a lot either, but theaters couldn't get any PPP money because you have to be open for business to get PPP money. Yeah.

And they shut you down.

Yeah. So. So like I can't, I can't. You can't even be in the theater, so I can't pay you for anything. And it would, it would have been dishonest. And you know, the IRS would have came after if we would have said, yeah, we're taking money for this business that's currently closed. It's just the way that it was written. So like, it was interesting. Some of the hardest hit industries also weren't available to get PPP money. So we, you know, it's still, it's still tough even to talk about, especially kind of, you know, laying off some people that I really loved and that, that it helped me build something. But, you know, I think it made us stronger. And I think, you know, I'm 58 now and so it was probably one of those. I can't see me being organized enough to have like figured out what the 10 year succession plan. So I probably needed a little bit of, you know, hit on the head to figure out what this next chapter was. And I'm glad that the theater is in a great place. And then what it's allowed us to do is just really focus on this now kind of more tenured approach after 3,300 keynote speeches of how we can go into large organizations and help them with this mindset. And like I said, the most popular speech and training we're doing right now is how to create this mindset of action. Because that mindset of fear wants you to stall, stall, stall. Oh my gosh, everybody's doing it.

We see it every day, John. Like, I mean, we live in the corporate world and there's so much. And it's interesting because there's so many lessons learned from all around, you know, the world with COVID and what we could do and what we, you know, kind of broke through our own mindsets. But it's kind of now we're back to fear and we can't do this. And we can't do this. It's pretty prevalent. So I have one question about that and thank you for sharing it. It's a, it's a very tough story from, like you said, you, you really care about people and you built this thing up over, you know, and it's such a great success story. But all the techniques, all the, the mindsets and techniques that you used and you preached and you taught and you lived, I assume that's what you feel like that's what got us out of it. But was there anything that you added to it by just going through this as well? Or was it. No, we just got to go back to what got us here?

No, I think it was because in some ways it's, it's, it's ironic because you have to. You have to behave based on the beliefs that you've been doing for 25 years. But then you have to reinvent yourself. So there's no really going back. There's just whatever the next chapter is. I think we drank our own medicine, but I think maybe what helped us because in some ways, we were reinventing yourself, right? We couldn't really, really go back, was this kind of. As an improviser, I've always looked at my life and probably my business career as episodic. In other words, this is chapter and then the next chapter, and that's how you build an improv scene, right? So I. It was unexpected. It was. If I looked, you know, to try to find what was wrong with it, I certainly could have found what was wrong with shutting down the theater and losing all this business. But as an improviser, you're trying to focus more on what can you use to build, what can you use to move forward. And so, you know, we just kind of did what we've always done. We just said, this is what we have. What can we build? Because, you know, as. As a trained improviser, you're standing on an empty stage with no props, no costumes, no scripts, no rehearsals, and you're always asking the question, what can we make from nothing? Because you cannot. I mean, you know, compared to an inventory or physical material or science, whatever it is, you don't really have anything. And so we're like, well, what do we have? You know, we had. This was an interesting one. I don't know if I've thought about this before. Probably the biggest thing that we had was this great relationship with all of our past clients. So that was. You know, thinking back in that first week, I think that's the first thing I did, is instead of sending out an email that says, woe was us, we just lost all of the speeches. I just sent out an email that said, I'm so grateful for all the business you've given me in the last 20 years. How can I help you today? Don't worry about fees, but I just want to help because, you know, like, I'll give you an example. We've done 200 gigs for Hilton hotels. They need 62% occupancy to break even. In all of 2021, they were at 18%. Like, like. So, yeah, my theater was closed. But those are thousands and thousands of people who are losing their jobs. So I just reached out to the CEO of Hampton, which was the brand we work with, and she Said, I have some time on my hands and I'd like to help you. And that's the other thing, too, Right. Remember, improvisers are always asking the question, what can you do to make everyone else on stage look better than yourself at all times? And then I think, coming from back to your first question of this crazy life I lived, right? Like, it's kind of how we were raised on the farm. Like, you know, what can you do to help others? Somebody's always got it worse than you. And then I think, selfishly, since I knew I wasn't, I couldn't do much. I was feeling a bit useless. And so, like, if I thought, well, if I could help our clients, that's better than just staring at the wall, wondering. Wondering when you can open your theater again. So all that helped. We did drink our own medicine, and then I think we did put into practice a lot of the things we talked about. Mindset. I can also tell you that I understood for the first time in my life that sometimes in that last 20 years, when I talked about get out of a mindset of fear, get into a mindset of innovation, I was a bit Pollyanna and naive because I had been so lucky in my life that I hadn't had a lot of times where I really was fearful or that life really did suck. I'd been a very, very privileged person. And so I can tell you now, I have a much greater sense of empathy than those. So that's. That's been a gift.

It's an incredible. I mean, it's really an incredible story. And I know how that feels like.

We're.

We do management consulting. We largely get hired to help our clients change, and sometimes we get somewhat, you know, repetitive and cavalier about it. And, you know, there's an old saying, change is like the rain. Everyone likes to talk about. No one likes to stand in it. And it's very true. Like, you know, applying change to yourself. One thing to talk about it and say you need to change, and here's all the things you need to change. But when you have to change yourself, it's a whole different game. So then, really an incredible story, John. Just thanks for sharing that. Let me ask you this. You. You got to share the stage. I mentioned a lot of really big name, like some of the most famous people on the planet, who, out of the people that you were able to do that, interact with and be on the stage, was the most fun, the most enlightening, the most memorable to you.

I'll probably choose a couple If I had to choose one, it would be Betty White. So I got to spend an hour interviewing Betty in Grand Rapids, Michigan, for a gala that benefited Gilda's club, which is, you know, my wife is the founder of Gilda's club in the Twin Cities. It's a place where you get social and emotional help for cancer. And she was the kind of guest of honor. And so they chose me to interview her, and then I got to spend some time with her beforehand and stuff. And I don't know if I've ever met anyone who is. I wouldn't say identical, but almost identical on stage as she is off stage like that. And then she was 90 when I interviewed her. And so I think, you know, you get to that age, and, like, in a good way, you don't care anymore. You just actually live a life of odyssey, that sort of stuff. So that was really, really cool. The time that I was with Deepak Chopra and shared the stage with him, that was pretty cool from a spiritual standpoint. I was lucky enough to. To have met Pope John Paul II and the Dal and life. I met both those guys. They both had a sense of compassion that you kind of feel that I've never met. I had got to have lunch. I was the keynote speaker for the first ever Facebook sales meeting. And so I got to have lunch with the Zuck. And that was one of the most fun lunches of my life because he was so young, and you could tell that someone in PR had been coaching him on how to talk, because now, you know, now that they're public, what he says affects stock price, right?

Absolutely.

But almost like someone who's bilingual, he would keep going back and forth from kind of surfer California talk. So he would say, like, I really think if we can globalize our verticals, a synergy that could come from could create an ecosystem that could really add value. And then I'd just be awesome, dude. He would kind of mix the two languages because it really is a language to be able to.

That's hilarious.

Yeah. So that was kind of fun. And then I got to spend a day with Sir Anthony Hopkins, and that was a special day because we were. We were both at an event that celebrated sobriety. And so he tells the story publicly. So I'll. I'll tell it. But that was when I found out that in the same year that he won a Tony, an Emmy, and a Golden Glober, or maybe a, you know, three big awards, he tried to commit suicide twice. And so it was a great understanding for me. That the circumstances in our lives don't always dictate the happiness and vice versa and those type of things. You know, again, you talk about a blessed life when they shut you down for Covid and you know you can't do what you do. You do remember all these wonderful people you've met and how they've influenced you and how they've touched you and how you can learn from their mistakes and from their wisdom and all that sort of stuff. So it's, it's been a great ride. And then, you know, currently I get to know people like Beth Ford, who's the CEO of Land O' Lakes. I think she's an incredible, incredible leader. So there's just a. Every day I get to meet someone who I'm just impressed with. I had a lot of fun at Microsoft sales meeting. They allowed me to follow Ballmer and they allowed me to make fun of Balmer. And so I did a quick Ballmer invitation which included almost passing out from being so loud and full of energy and also swearing a lot. So that was a lot of fun. So it's been a great ride. I'm very fortunate.

Amazing. Really amazing. Well, let's, let's wrap this up. You've really given so many different clues and insights. It's, it's actually have to kind of reflect and download, you know, just your life experience, everything you've been through. But what's your most practical advice to like the, the non superhero people like us out here, the people that don't take their shirts off at term rules games and haven't been on stage and haven't lived, you know, done improv with Chris Farley, but just super practical advice. Like people that really want to change, whether it's, you know, giving up drinking or some sort of personal thing, or whether they want to just drive more improvement professionally or whether they want to drive more innovation. Like how does somebody go about doing that? What would you recommend to them?

I think the first thing I would recommend is to do just a little bit, you can do it online, a little bit of research on understanding how your brain creates your mindset. And I won't give you the full lecture, but you'll understand clearly and quickly that the mindset is needed as an organizer of information so that we don't go crazy. Like there's too much information for us to sort. And that mindset is either one that we consciously choose in the front of our brains. I'm going to be in a mindset of innovation, of gratitude, of happiness, whatever it is. And if we don't choose one, that takes energy and effort to choose one, the brain chooses it, but the back of the brain chooses it, and it chooses the same one every time. A mindset of fear. And when we understand that the neurology works that way, the next step is to understand that. So if we don't feel very innovative or we're a little bit scared to do something, or we're hesitant, please don't beat yourself up. Actually be grateful that you have a fully functioning, really healthy brain. It's doing what it's built to do, and then gently ask it to chill out and bring that decision to the front of the brain and decide. I'd like to be in a mindset. That's what's best for me in this moment. And like I said, the one that we're trying to really help people out is this ability to take action. We created a simple little phrase with the word tap. So the three things that, that I help people with in this mindset of action is create a timeline of urgency. You have to have a timeline of urgency.

Okay.

Think back. Think back to the improv stuff, right?

Yep.

We got three minutes to get this done. So timeline of urgency. Second is accountability to others. If we're not accountability to others, we'll just keep hesitating. Right. And then the third is to choose progress over perfection, and that's where that set of perfection gets in there. But if we just tap timeline of urgency. Accountability, others practice. Some, Some. Some progress instead of perfection. That's a way. And remember, we talked about the beginning. You can know that. But if you don't put it into practice every day, think of your mindset as a muscle. If you're not working out in that gym, unfortunately, no matter what you're doing in life, you're not going to be able to be in the mindset. That's against your default mindset.

Yeah. And that's easy to remember too, right?

Yep.

The PM has actually got some 1% better into it. So I love that. Well, last question. I'll finish up with that. Ask everyone on the show is, you know, you're getting somewhat reflective talking about, you know, where you are in your career. So you got a lot, a lot of work left and a lot of plans and ideas left. But fast forward, you. You're talking to yourself, you know, when you were, you know, maybe coming out of high school or you have a grandson, and you'd want to give a piece or two of life advice, not into sort of all this improvement stuff, but just, you know, life advice, anything else that comes to mind.

Yeah, I think as you get older, you realize that there's happiness that is shiny things, whether it's career, success or money and that sort of stuff. But I'm really starting to believe in this last part of my life that the real happiness, and maybe the only happiness is when we decide to be a person of service. And it's interesting because it's a bit ironic. Like, the more we serve, the happier we are, which is in somewhat a selfish act. Right. But, like, I get asked the question a lot, what's the silver bulletin? Lies and stuff. And I do believe this, this service to others. And it sounds so simple and so trite, but, man, I've chased so many things in my life, whether it's wealth or fame or importance or whatever it is, and none of them have brought me the true happiness of. Of trying to help others. And. And it. It lasts longer, it's deeper, it's easier. And, you know, we're in a world where there's a ton of people who need help. It's. It's. It's pretty easy. I. I decided. Last couple of years, I went over to. To Warsaw, Poland, and I. I helped me feed people as they were coming out of Ukraine. Right. And so you. You see a thousand people on a train that's supposed to hold 500. They're leaving their. Their neighborhood because of bombs. They don't know where they're going. They don't necessarily have the language. They've got their grandparents, their kids with them, and they're hungry. Like, that simple act reinforced to me that the happiest I am in my life is why I'm serving others.

Yeah, that's. That's very profound, John. Thank you for sharing that and thanks for taking the time. Amazing story, and there's so many lessons learned for a lot of people, so thank you very much.

Yeah, no, I'm glad to be on the show, and it's a great show. And just keep laughing. That's all we got.

Right? Laughter is the best medicine, as they say. Right? All right, take care.

Take care, everybody.

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