Search & Convert’s Founder Spotlight: Improv | On and Off the Stage
Ask almost anyone to go up on stage and read from a script and they’ll panic. But ask someone to go on stage and improvise – in other words, perform a scene without a script or plan – and they’ll probably say you’re crazy then run in the opposite direction. But according to Shannon Stott, improviser, teacher, and founder of Improv | On and Off the Stage, everyone is improvising all the time, and we should embrace it.
Improv | On and Off the Stage is an Austin-based production company that creates improv shows, classes, and content to help people connect with themselves and others. Stott has been performing and teaching improv for more than 20 years, and she founded Improv | On and Off the Stage to help performers and non-performers integrate improvisational skills into their lives so that they can become better communicators, more empathetic, and more grounded.
Improv Roots
Stott was born into a globally-minded family of foreign service officers, and as a result she has moved around a lot, living in places all across the globe. When she finally settled down in Virginia, she began improvising with ComedySportz, a troupe that does comedy like a sport (not to be confused with a troupe that does comedy about sports).
Stott immediately connected with her passion for improv and discovered that many of the skills she developed to survive those transitions between cultural environments were the same skills she used in her improvisational practice. She realized that these skills, such as intuiting appropriate behavior, learning how to trust others, and executing effective communication through words and body language, were all skills that non-performers need in their daily lives. Stott began teaching improv as well as performing it. She’d been slowly developing her practice into a business when the pandemic hit.
Founding Improv | On and Off the Stage
After building a successful career in other industries, Stott decided to use the disruption of the pandemic to pivot and focus on her business. She traded her corner office and executive title for the role of Founder and Director at Improv | On and Off the Stage. Her company applies her performances, content, and classes to a wide audience, and her students range from individuals to groups to corporate clients.
Stott describes the foundational skills of improvisational practice as, “Recognizing who I am, and where I am, and what it means to be where I am.” Answering these questions requires soft skills that can be developed to benefit her students and clients in all facets of their lives.
Sometimes these skills are directly transferable in business, homing in on the kinds of interpersonal dexterity needed to close a sale, or be effective and confident in professional settings. Businesses will also request Improv | On and Off the Stage’s services to provide the framework and competence to host conversations about workplace diversity and inclusion.
Learning from our Missteps
Stott shares a personal example of how improvisational skills can help us be more connected in group settings, especially when it comes to vulnerable conversations. During a group activity in a workshop, Stott wanted to gauge her students’ comprehension of a concept and ended up stumbling over her words and asking a question that was “off the mark” and potentially harmful towards one of her students.
This cultural misstep was bothering Stott, and so she seized the next appropriate moment in the workshop to pause the activity and address the issue with humility, honesty, and vulnerability. “Because I have been doing improv for a long time, I know that at any given time, you can stop a scene and self-correct. So I used that [skill]. I could’ve just kept going, but instead I said, Hey, I’m so glad we’re back together. I want to stop right here and apologize. I can’t tell you how sorry I am for just being rude,” Stott explains. “I felt rude, and I just want to apologize for it.”
Stott laughs describing the immediate relief that she could sense washing over the workshop, and cites it as an example of the power of improvisational skills and how they can enhance and assist us in our daily lives – often in professional settings, and often when we’re dealing with topics or situations we perceive as challenging.
“Hard conversations really aren’t that difficult,” Stott suggests. “They’re not. People make it difficult because they are unwilling to put themselves in spaces where they feel embarrassed. Instead of just addressing the fact that you’re embarrassed, we just sort of move on through it,” Stott observes. “And improv isn’t about teaching you how to have a hard conversation. It’s about lightening yourself and being aware of other people so that you can be vulnerable, and so that you understand it’s okay – it’s fun to be vulnerable. It’s okay. People appreciate it.”
Learning how to get comfortable being vulnerable through an improv practice is a start, and Stott wants her students and clients to carry that skill into conversations, applying the same scene rules that improv uses off-stage.
“The scene can be the world,” Stott explains, smiling. “If you can figure out how to be vulnerable enough to say “Sorry,” to be empathetic, to try and understand someone else’s point of view – these are the things that help grow and strengthen relationships, and they are the things that help change the world.”
While sustaining and hosting these conversations is important, Stott also addresses that too often, those conversations can be performative. It’s one thing to talk about inclusion, diversity, and fighting systemic injustice, but the conversation itself needs to be backed up with authenticity, integration, and action.
Challenges that Shouldn’t Exist
foundingAUSTIN always asks entrepreneurs about the challenges they have faced and turned into victories, but in the interest of celebrating Black excellence with this Founder Spotlight series, this question in the podcast encompassed the challenges that Shannon has experienced as a direct result of her race and gender. She explains that in light of that, this question becomes much more complicated.
“I am here, and that is a victory,” Stott explains, acknowledging that she has faced unique challenges that are directly a result of her gender and race, such as other people taking credit for her work. But the question of turning these challenges into victories is more complex than that.
“I am alive. I am running a business and that is a victory. That being said, the challenges that I have had to face and the mental health that I have had to go through, as well as all of the people of color… that [we] are going through to be here and to be alive and to be running a business… it is a victory, and should it be? Should I have had to go through all of the things that I have had to go through?”
While entrepreneurs face challenges everyday related to building, scaling, and sustaining a self-made business, those challenges were chosen. When it comes to racial discrimination and injsutices, those challenges are not chosen and should not exist in the first place. Another complicated dimension of this question that Stott shines a light on is related to that issue of empty, performative gestures around social justice.
“When the pandemic hit and George Floyd was murdered and Black Lives Matter was shooting to the forefront and being recognized, suddenly there was a shift for who I am. And that is also a challenge,” Stott says, explaining that she has to ask for her name and face to be removed from company’s websites that she isn’t heavily involved with, or she’ll be asked to do things (such as this podcast, speaking of honesty and vulnerability) during February for Black History Month, when Black people’s voices and experiences are equally important and critical all year.
“Should there really be a designated time where a person of color and their voice is more predominant or more valuable? It’s a mental challenge to decide where to put my voice and where to put my face,” Stott says, explaining that she doesn’t want to be used as a “nod to [a company] promoting Black people or people of color or women” if the companies and people she engages with are not actually doing things in their day-to-day and operations that support and promote Black people, women, and people of color.
“There are challenges that I go through and I believe that probably many entrepreneurs of color go through because … you are pounding the pavement, looking for money. Who are you going to be in service of?” Stott asks, explaining it’s an exhausting challenge to navigate accepting support while also avoiding being in service of empty gestures made solely in response to social trends or viral tragedies.
Partnership with Search & Convert
These kinds of questions ran through Stott’s mind, she admits, when she first met PJ Christie. Christie is the founder of Search & Convert, an Austin-based marketing agency specializing in search engine optimization (SEO) which helps you get more leads through your website.
Christie and Stott met at Vuka coworking, where Christie has been a member for a long time. Christie admits that he immediately wanted to be Stott’s friend when she joined, and they bonded over music before he approached her about his Black Businesses Matter program.
When Christie was new on the SEO scene, he was hired as Webmaster for a historically Black Catholic college called Xavier University, and he learned a lot from the Black leaders and mentors he met there. These early professional experiences combined with Search & Convert’s company values of ethics and community prompted Christie to found the Black Businesses Matter program, where Search & Convert provides free SEO services to Black-owned businesses in their community. Christie had been running the program for a year and six businesses had already graduated when he approached Stott about the program. She admits she was skeptical that these services were truly free.
“How much am I going to pay later,” she admits wondering, and acknowledges that payment is not always in dollar amounts. “Some of that payment that we’re talking about isn’t financial, it’s spiritual, it’s moral. Am I going to find out later that really the person that I’m working with isn’t wanting to actually work with me, they just want to be able to say that they are working with me? These are the challenges.” Stott explains that she had to lean on her improv skills at that moment. Because improv has taught her how and when to trust others, her improv practice helped her intuit whether she could trust Christie and his Black Businesses Matter program.
Christie explains that his first step in working with entrepreneurs is to understand where they’re at. While his team has vast experience with all things Search Engine Optimization, he usually works with businesses who have a robust team. When it comes to newly founded businesses, usually the entrepreneur is filling all of the roles in the company, including marketing and website support.
So, the first step Search & Convert takes is to have a conversation about what tools their client has, and what their goals are. Christie identifies the missing pieces in their marketing strategy, and Search & Convert works to fill those gaps. Getting to know his clients and their business is always the first step that Christie takes.
“You have to get to know somebody before you can really serve their needs. And I consider what I do a service. I consider that I am in service to my friends and the people in my community,” Christie explains. He goes on to explain that he has observed during his years of experience in the field that communities are not equally aware of the importance of SEO, nor are SEO resources equally available to every community, which can be detrimental considering SEO is essential to running a successful business today. Search & Convert strives to bridge the gaps in the businesses they serve as well as the communities they belong to.
Christie also acknowledges that the Black Businesses Matter program has taught him a lot about his own industry and his own business, helping him gain valuable skills and experiences that have improved his business and his community. He encourages every entrepreneur to create a similar program in their own business: “It’s meaningful work and it will change the way you see your own business, and I promise [you] will learn more about [yourself].”
He also says that entrepreneurs need to make sure that the work they are doing matters to them, and Stott vehemently agrees. She adds that even if everyone around you thinks you’re crazy, once you’ve identified your passion, keep following it.
“Go forth, and keep digging at what you’re passionate about… because [if] there’s something in you, and it keeps coming back to you, and you keep turning towards this thing, there’s a reason for that, so you may as well follow it,” Stott encourages.
Learn more about Improv | On and Off the Stage.
Learn more about Search & Convert.
This article was written in partnership with founding_media.
This Founder Spotlight series is sponsored by Search and Convert, an Austin-based marketing agency that can help your business get more leads through your site.
