Why a Business Coach Teaches Acting Classes

For twenty years I studied and worked as an actor, director and producer of live theatre. My focus was on live theatre and I eventually, over an extended period of time, earned my BA in Art and Performance at the University of Texas at Dallas, then my MFA from DePaul University’s The Theatre School. Now I’m a business coach. Makes sense, right?

Actually it makes a lot of sense because I saw a pattern that was very interesting and pursued it DEEP. On the stage, my job was to make the character’s journey clear to the audience. Find out what the character wants, determine what’s in their way, and make every scene about them achieving their goal, despite obstacles, either real or imagined, and move them towards their end, either literally or figuratively. Do this with the least amount of wasted effort and you have a good production.

As an actor I had to learn how to move every line towards the characters goal and that took hours of character study to determine motivation, inspiration, fears, limits and the other foibles that affected them. I had to step out of me and into them, literally, understanding them without judgement, helping them win, and I had to do it with a team onstage and off. AND we had to do it live, with limited means, in front of an audience and critics, several times a night, no excuses, no delays. We did the impossible as a way of life.

I was never satisfied as an actor and continued to work hard, on my skills and on myself as a person and I signed up for a leadership development series that promised to move me forward in my goals over a three part series that would unfold over several months. All I had to do was put in countless hours, listen and give in, question my way of being up till then and get my real goals clear. In other words, this training seminar was making me play ME in real life, only better than I had been achieving the role up till then.

It was in one of these seminars that I had the ‘ah hah!’ moment that would provide the bridge from actor, teacher and director, to sales coach, manager and executive coach. The ‘ah hah’ I had was that I was spending thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours learning what I already knew. I knew how to figure out where a character was, where they needed to go, what was stopping them and to gear their actions towards achieving their goals. I made the bridge from stage to life and became hooked. 

The rest was easy. All I had to do was to get a job with the training company, apprentice under one of their world class facilitators, read hundreds of books, learn different training models and become an expert in the field. Then I had to take what I learned into  a real life situation involving actual people. I went into sales, then sales management, then corporate training and development and served apprenticeship under corporate coaches and trainers, again reading hundreds of books and articles and working thousands of hours toward my goals. And it only took about 15 years!

So now, as the owner of my own executive business coaching business, the author of hundreds of articles, one book out, one on the way and the reality that I’m now actually ‘helping hundreds make millions’, I’m going back to teaching an acting monologue class. Makes, sense, right?

Right; it does! My acting classes, before I started on this new career, had morphed into a new format where I got a glimpse of my new career, even before I knew it existed for me. My students often told me that they were using what they learned in my classes to improve their tennis games or their relationships with spouses or co-workers. I even held a ‘Star of Your Own Life’ seminar that was the precursor to the work I do now, blending character study with life goals.

But still, why I teach acting is that it’s an instant gratification, where people who are courageous enough to face the number one recorded fear in our culture, ‘speaking in public’, and work through that fear. In a class we can move further and faster in a quick ‘ah hah’ moment than in a traditional class with lots of ‘uh huh’ moments. People get shock waves of realization, work hard, and often come out of the classes tired, but beaming with the energy of a passion indulged. 

I teach acting because it’s one place where all of the tools I’ve learned in studios, from acting gurus, in books and theory, from theatre to business best practices, can come together like a huge bag of tricks, and come out with one purpose. I love the people who come to the classes and I love to be the catalyst for their growth and, now don’t tell them, they teach me so much about life in return. 

I teach acting and I coach business, and it makes a lot of sense to me. I’ll tell you more about it, but you’ll have to come to a class or have me in to help with your business!

PS: Classes now forming under the aegis of Theatre in The Woods. Contact: 847-604-1990 or tiw300@comcast.net