IAM1435 – Founder Improves Leadership Skills in a Fun Way

Mary is an entrepreneur, improv comedian, writer, philanthropist, startup advisor, recovering venture capitalist, and food pun illustrator, among other things.

She is the founder of Improve, a company that improves leadership and lives with improv comedy techniques backed by research. As Mary likes to say “We give people M&Ms laced with vitamins. They taste good and they’re good for you!” In her, TED talk “How Improv Can Improve Your Leadership and Life” she shares more about the importance and impact of improv.

Mary has worked with tens of thousands of leaders and companies to improve innovation, problem-solving, growth, and team culture. She started her first company at age 14, did early-stage investing, was a Director at a Silicon Valley unicorn, wrote a book, and has performed on the same stages as comedy legends. She graduated from the University of Michigan and studied improv and comedy writing at The Second City, Upright Citizen’s Brigade, and The Groundlings, among other improv theatres.

• CEO Story: Mary grew up in Michigan, and her family originated from Italy. Started at a very young age with Italian water ice in a food cart serving at events, parties, and festivals. Little did she know that the summer business that she started was still growing business now for over 20 years later. Then started introducing gelato. Because of this venture, Mary was fascinated to go to business school and was exposed to many other fields including venture capitals. Then joined an improv comedy class which helped her a lot in life and in her business outlook.
• Business Service: Improving leadership, improving innovation, problem-solving, growth, and team culture. Classes.
• Secret Sauce: Giving a psychological space to play around and try new skills through Improv techniques.
• CEO Hack: Practicing screen less on Sunday – no emails, no social media, etc. Do offline things.
• CEO Nugget: Take everything as a gift, helps release pressures in life. Whatever happened, move forward.
• CEO Defined: Empowering, empathetic, and visionary – belief in that vision. Courage and compassion.

Website: www.chooseimprove.com , www.marylemmer.com

Instagram: @maryimproves , @chooseimprove

Twitter: @maryimproves

LinkedIn: melemmer

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Transcription

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00:24 – Intro

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

00:52 – Gresham Harkless

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO Podcast. I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Mary Lemmer of Improve. Mary, it's great to have you on the show.

01:01 – Mary Lemmer

Great to be here. Thanks for having me.

01:03 – Gresham Harkless

Yes, excited to have you on and talk about all the awesome things that you're doing. And before we do that, I want to read a little bit more about Mary so we can hear about some of those awesome things. And Mary is an entrepreneur, improv comedian, writer, philanthropist, startup advisor, recovering venture capitalist, food pun illustrator, amongst many other things. She's the founder of Improve, a company that improves leadership and lives with improv comedy techniques backed by research.

As Mary likes to say, we give people M and Ms. Laced with vitamins, they taste good and they're good for you. In her TED talk, How Improv Can Improve Your Leadership in Life, she shares more about the importance of the impact of improv. Mary has worked with tens of thousands of leaders and companies to improve innovation, problem-solving, growth, and teen culture. She started her first company at the age of 14, did early-stage investing, was a director at a Silicon Valley unicorn, wrote a book, and has performed on the same stages as Comedy Legends.

She graduated from the University of Michigan and studied improv and comedy writing at the Second City, Upright Citizens Brigade, and the Groundlings, among many other improv theaters. Mary, super excited to have you on the show. Was excited since we last spoke before. Are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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02:17 – Mary Lemmer

I am excited to be here and thank you for that warm welcome and introduction.

02:21 – Gresham Harkless

Yes, absolutely. I appreciate you doing all the hard work that makes it easier for me to just read and rattle off all the accolades and accomplishments that you have. So before we just jumped into that, I wanted to rewind the clock and hear a little bit more about how you got started, what I call your CEO story.

02:35 – Mary Lemmer

I grew up in Michigan, and my family kind of originated from Italy. So I grew up visiting my Italian family on the East Coast. And I would enjoy all sorts of Italian things there, right? Culture and foods, and Italian water ice and gelatos, which were very popular out in the Philadelphia area, but I couldn't get them in Michigan. And so we'd come back. When I was a kid, we'd come back to Michigan, and I'd ask my dad, like, Dad, can we get some Italian water ice? And he'd be like, well, you can't get it here, and if you want it here, you're going to have to bring it to Michigan. And not knowing any better, I'm like, okay, what do I need to do?

He's like, start a business. I'm like, okay, what do I need to do? And he's like, write a business plan. So there I was, an early teenager, wrote up a little plan, and my dad was very supportive. Both my parents were really supportive of starting this business and got a little, like, food cart, right, that was frozen so it could hold Italian water ice. And I would do, like, private parties and local music festivals and art fairs. Little did I know that this summer job or this summer business that I started would still be a growing business now over 20 years later. And it just kind of kept growing, and people liked it.

And it took a while because people weren't familiar, like, what's water ice? Is it water? Is it ice? Like, what is this supposed to be? And then when we introduced gelato, that was a whole other kind of education. Right? It's ice cream, but Italian ice cream. And so it was a lot of learning at a young age. But the initial inspiration was really bringing part of my family's heritage and culture and sharing that with a community that didn't have access to it or hadn't been exposed to it.

04:39 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah. And I love that because I think so many times we forget about the things that we do as beings. The word that was coming to my mind was gifts. And I love it. It's kind of like you. You don't necessarily. You can't necessarily bring everybody inside of your world and your journey, your culture, and all those aspects. But there are certain things that kind of symbolize that, that you're able to, you know, make an impact on so many other people. Our gift ability manifests itself in so many different ways. So that's just what it reminds me of when you. When you've been able to do that at a very, very young age.

05:09 – Mary Lemmer

Very well said. Yeah. When we have no idea where it will take us. Right. And how it will touch the lives of other people, sometimes until years or decades later.

05:19 – Gresham Harkless

Right? Absolutely, absolutely. So you started to work on, you know, obviously, that business, and you branched off into other different. Many other different things as you journeyed on through your life.

05:30 – Mary Lemmer

Yeah. That experience really got me interested in business and entrepreneurship. And so I decided to apply for business school to go to college. And because that's at the time, that's what I thought. Entrepreneurs, you know, you got to go to business school, you got to learn business. Do a whole separate podcast about that. But I. While at business school, I basically tried to learn as much as I could to build, like, my entrepreneurial toolkit to learn how to start and build businesses, because that's what I really wanted to do. And businesses that could make a positive impact on their communities and the world.

One thing led to another. I ended up working with an early-stage venture capital firm right out of college and invested in early-stage technology companies. So I really learned what it took to be that kind of entrepreneur. Think about this. I was always so much in my head, and with improv, everything you say is a gift. That's one of the dominant principles. So there was no. I didn't have to worry about saying the right or wrong thing because everything was just gonna. We were gonna see how it unfolds. So it was pretty like magic. It was a very magical moment for me. And so I kept taking improv classes, and I kept living this life as an entrepreneur and investor.

And I live these parallel lives. And I started to see that practicing improv was helping me as an entrepreneur, as a leader. And I could see all these other entrepreneurs that were trying to raise money for their businesses that could also benefit from this. And so that's kind of when I had this light bulb moment of like, oh, I need to bring these things together. That's kind of what inspired my current venture and where that kind of path of doing these different things, all started to make sense and lead me down this unique kind of business opportunity.

07:27 – Gresham Harkless

Nice. I absolutely love that. So you touched a little bit upon how you work with clients. So I wanted to make sure and see if there wasn't anything you wanted to discuss more that we hadn't really talked about, but also hear a little bit more about what you might call your secret sauce. The thing you feel kind of sets you or the organization apart and makes it unique.

07:45 – Mary Lemmer

Rewiring and changing how our brains are thinking about things, right? We have neuroplasticity, and new experiences can help us change the way we see something. And that's so deliberate in what we're doing. And I think that's really special about what we're doing, because when we look at leadership, right, there's a lot of ways that leaders and teams can improve. There are a lot of books out there, as well as YouTube videos and resources. And with improv, people are actually physically doing the thing, right? They're practicing communicating clearly. They're practicing listening better to their colleagues.

They're practicing being adaptable and thinking quickly. So all of the stuff is not just theoretical. It's lived and it's learned. And that's one way to make change really sustainable and help people actually change their habits and behaviors. Because we've all been there. We're like, oh, I want to be more this. I remember myself, I wanted to be more confident. And I was like, ah. But every time I'd get into a situation where I could be confident, I just kind of revert back to that, like, in that insecurity until I got to practice confidence.

Improv gives us this psychologically safe space to just play around and try these new skills. And when we do so deliberately, then there's a lot of potential that can come from that. So I think that's the biggest thing that I would like to share with people and hope that people start to see that improv is fun and games and it's like. And it's those vitamins, right? And it's that punch. And that's what sets. What we're doing, apart from just taking a typical improv class, is we're doing it with the goal of improving something.

09:34 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, I absolutely love that. I wanted to switch gears a little bit, and I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an app, a book, or a habit that you have, but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

09:47 – Mary Lemmer

Oh, I like this question a lot. And I will say that one thing that's made me so much more effective as a leader and a person in society is I practice a screenless Sunday. So on Sunday, I don't check my email, I don't check my text, I don't go on social media. And I do offline things. I do. I paint. Yesterday, I painted, and I went for a walk. I cooked and read a book, you know, that I wrote on paper and in a journal. like, it's and, and I share it as a hack because I think one of the biggest challenges of being a leader in today's society, very different than when I first started a business when I was a teenager.

Are there way more distractions? Right. Just with this alone on our phone. That's the hack I would share and recommend to any leader CEO, whether it's a full day or a couple of hours. But having something that helps you helps rid those distractions and refocus on just being able to do the things that are what you want to be focused on.

11:08 – Gresham Harkless

Definitely love. And that is the definition of what I like to call CEO hack. So now I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO nugget. So this is a little bit more word of wisdom or a piece of advice. I like to say it might be something you would tell your younger business self if you happen to do a time machine or maybe your favorite client.

11:23 – Mary Lemmer

Take everything as a gift. Nugget of wisdom. This philosophy of Taking everything as a gift or this nugget I'll call it Taking Everything as a Gift really helps release that pressure to say, you know, what, what happens happens. And then I'm going to play the scene I'm in, right? I'm going to be present with what happens and I'm going to keep moving forward in the scene and take it as a gift. Right? Take it as like maybe you hire the person that doesn't work out for the role and then you notice that and you play that scene and you recognize, okay, I didn't hire the best person for this role and now I have to make a decision based on that.

Do we let this person go? Do we retrain? Like, do we do training? Do we have a conversation about what happens because of that? But these two nuggets of taking everything as a gift and playing the scene you're in, I think provide a lot of freedom and reduce that pressure, which then allows leaders and entrepreneurs to be more creative and make decisions.

12:26 – Gresham Harkless

Right.

12:27 – Mary Lemmer

And make. And not have that anxiety around decisions.

12:31 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. I love both of those nuggets. I would ask you my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. And we're hoping to have different quotes, unquote CEOs on the show. So, Mary, with just being a CEO.

12:42 – Mary Lemmer

Mean to you, kind of empowering and empathetic and visionary and I think ultimately the CEO is not necessarily the most glamorous job. I think you said it earlier around, not everything's rainbows and Skittles and Sprinkles, Right? It's like a sunny day. Sunshine.

13:07 – Gresham Harkless

Any of those things really hard.

13:09 – Mary Lemmer

And I think it takes a lot of courage to be CEO. It takes a lot of empowering others and sometimes yourself. And it takes optimism. Right. If we look at CEO as an acronym, right? It's courage, empowerment, and optimism. And that optimism piece is around the vision and having a vision and having, like, a belief that that vision is possible. And I think ultimately, like, that is what it boils down to for me acting with courage and compassion. If I were going to add a second C, empowering myself and others and being optimistic about the future and that this future vision of what and where we're headed is possible.

13:57 – Gresham Harkless

I love that. You know, just especially the acronym. I'm big. I'm an English major, so I always love acronyms and words and all of that. So, courage and compassion and, really being able to kind of understand that and empowering and optimism and just how all those things are so powerful. But I think they're powerful in the sense that they symbolize things that we have within us to be able to kind of do. Those aren't things that we have to go out and find or go out and do or go out and buy. Of course, those things can always complement and help support us, but I think we sometimes get in the space of looking outwardly for something that we already have within.

So I love that definition and that perspective because it really hits home with the things that it symbolizes, but also the things that we have that are right in front of us. Well, I appreciate the journey that you took with us, and of course, I appreciate your time and all the work that you do even more. So what I want to do now is pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional that you can let our readers and listeners know. And of course, how best people can get a hold of you to find out about all the awesome things you and your team are working on.

14:58 – Mary Lemmer

Awesome. Thank you. Well, you can definitely check us out at our website, choose improve.com, which is chosen, and then improve.com and that's also us on Instagram. And all of our contact info is on both of those places. You can see all sorts of things that we do and find ways to try improv for yourself if you'd like to. Oftentimes people realize how often they're actually thinking about what they're going to say next while someone else is still talking. So it really forces listening. And so when we practice this. We're practicing listening. Right. Which is great for teams and everything. And it sometimes has you sounding like Yoda, which is always.

15:46 – Gresham Harkless

Exactly.

15:47 – Mary Lemmer

Thanks for doing that with me.

15:49 – Gresham Harkless

I appreciate you for giving me that gift. That's awesome.

15:52 – Mary Lemmer

Yeah, of course. So if you want to do more, choose improve.com and prove it on social media.

15:59 – Gresham Harkless

Absolutely. And to make it even easier, we're going to have the links and information in the show notes. So you too can sound like Yoda, just like I was a minute ago. And I appreciate you so much, Mary, for all the awesome things you're doing, obviously the gifts that you're giving. And I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

16:13 – Mary Lemmer

Thank you.

16:13 – Gresham Harkless

You too.

16:14 – Mary Lemmer

Thanks so much for chatting with me today and inviting me to the show.

16:17 – Outro

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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