We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Holly Mandel. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Holly below.

Alright, Holly thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.

I thought for sure I would enter the entertainment industry. I had a cushy job at a big studio in LA and was on track to ascend to that place where you get beefy expense accounts and nice cars. Then I took an improv class at The Groundlings Theater & School in West Hollywood. It’s extremely well-known now as a pipeline to SNL, TV, and film—but when I was there, it was still a place where you learned the art of improv for no other reason than to do it.

I quickly became enamored with it and, interestingly, noticed how I was evolving as a person while learning this fun, wild new skill. I was also getting better and better at my job—marketing, copywriting, and editing. After becoming a Groundlings Main Company member, I moved to New York and started my own classes to teach the unique style I had learned, which no one else was really doing.

What was fascinating was that, instead of actors and people hungry to be famous, I was attracting people who wanted to transform and grow—who wanted to get better at their jobs and overcome fears.

So the idea to start a company dedicated to translating improvisation—not for theater or comedy, but for the betterment of companies—really enticed me. And I wasn’t seeing much of that out there. Sure, there were fun classes for people who wanted their group to do something other than paintball… but there wasn’t much that leaned into the real power within improv to change people and develop teams in a short, energizing amount of time.

I won’t lie—it was hard in the beginning! I was speaking “improv for performers,” and I had to learn the language of business. I wasn’t scared of business—in fact, I’m very drawn to it and I really respect it. I loved visiting my dad at his office in downtown St. Louis, where I’m from. He worked for a big ad agency there, and I felt very at home—even when I was still in high school.

But this wasn’t about being comfortable. It was about learning on the go: learning about business as an entity and as its own creative process. I joined BNI and woke up at ungodly hours to attend meetings, where I learned how to pitch my business to other business-people, listened for what resonated with others, and started to understand what companies would actually be willing to invest in.

My first couple of calls with people interested in how improv might help them were tough. I remember grappling with things like pricing, how much I needed to design the program for it to succeed, versus how much I should let the client call the shots. It was new coming up with the proposal — how much detail to put in and what kind of descriptions were useful. If you over-explain improv exercises, I’ll tell you now, they sound ridiculous on paper! So I just started refusing to “divulge too many details about my process” just to avoid that issue. Those were all steep learning curves.

But I loved it! I loved educating myself on the go and was lucky to have kind people offer me useful advice along the way. One woman at a big law firm called me after I submitted a proposal for a three-hour workshop—I’ll never forget it—and said, “What you do is unique and valuable. What you sent me isn’t even the budget we allocate for bagels every quarter. Double this and send it back.”

That really stuck with me. It humbled me and made me more willing to ask questions of people I connected with who seemed to know things I didn’t. Having someone in her world see the value in what I offered—maybe even more than I did—made me realize what I was tapping into.

Naming my company was surprisingly easy and fun. I wanted to bury the word “improv” because this was 2010, and the idea of improv as a serious training modality wasn’t widely accepted. So I wanted to kind of plop it in there—but not lead with it.

“Emergence” is a word and idea I’ve always loved—where the creation of a thing is magically more than the sum of its parts. It’s another way of saying evolution or progress. When you’ve improvised as long as I have, you begin to trust the process where emergence is happening on its own, often.

It also felt true to what’s at the heart of company success—when a group of people comes together and creates something extraordinary, unexpected, or new. That’s the creativity of business, and honestly, it’s no different than a bunch of actors onstage doing improv. So “I” for improv plus -mergence for emergence felt like the perfect fit. About a year after I launched the website, two guys from the Silicon Valley emailed me and said they were extremely jealous I’d gotten to the name first—which felt like a big ol’ tip of the hat.

Making the website was also an interesting step. I knew it had to appeal to business people and give the right feeling that a comedy improv school with a black box theater never would. I used Apple as my model — I thought Apple struck the perfect cord between creative, innovative, sleek, simple, polished, and “worth the cost”. I still use it as a reference when working on any marketing or graphics.

If I had to say what excites me the most about iMERGENCE and what I do, I’d say two things:

1. Sharing improv with people who would almost never take a class on their own. It evokes a lot of anxiety—people think it sounds too hard or scary (which I get—it is… until you realize it’s not at all, and that takes about four minutes). Improv is such a powerful tool for development and change. People leave in a different state and a different version of themselves every single time. Their experience of the unknown shifts from fear to curiosity. There’s a new willingness and flexibility that emerges. I could go on and on—the benefits are remarkable.

2. Seeing the changes between people in a company. I have a spidey sense now after teaching so many thousands of people. I can usually tell pretty quickly what’s going on: the team doesn’t really trust each other; the company hierarchy is locking people down; everyone’s afraid to make mistakes; there’s an “in crowd” and an “out crowd” that’s stopping real collaboration. People can talk until they’re blue in the face about making change, but when you get everyone in a room—relaxed, playful, having fun—you can start to align the group around new values and principles. It’s experiential. The learning comes from doing, not thinking or talking about it. When it’s in the group, it sticks. It becomes a new reference point.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I fell in love with comedy early on—I was raised by a Charlie Chaplin fan and expert, so it’s probably no surprise that it’s intrinsic to what I do. When I saw improv for the first time in Los Angeles, I was in sixth grade, and it forever changed me. I didn’t know how, but I knew it activated something in me. I moved to LA and I went into college thinking I’d study acting and film, but once I took a sociology and psychology class, I was hooked.

Looking back, my path has always been a dance between improv, comedy, and the arts—and change, transformation, and culture. Both have always lit me up, though I probably couldn’t have articulated that at the time. You know… your twenties… you just kind of do things without knowing why.

As I grew as an improviser, sketch comedy writer and performer, director, and instructor at The Groundlings, I was also deepening my understanding of cultural development, systems, and personal growth. Now I see how aligned they are—and how that blend gave me a specific skill set that led perfectly to creating both an improv school and a corporate training company using improv as the primary mechanism.

When I moved to New York, I began teaching drop-in classes. I put up fliers all over the city, and pretty soon I had one class, then two, and it kept growing. It also gave me the opportunity to experiment with improv in ways I couldn’t have if I were still teaching at The Groundlings. I had an eager group of students and was able to unpack and explore what made improv tick. That led me to a deeply intimate understanding of it, which I’m very grateful for.

This freedom especially helped me feel confident in exploring how improv could be translated into business. The “packaging” may change, but the core ingredients are what matter—because that’s where the magic lives. That’s what shifts people from being locked in their heads, stuck in fight-or-flight mode, or disconnected from others, to the opposite: connected, at ease, attentive, collaborative.

I have a fabulous team that also loves improv. Some were once my students who also are fluent in “corporate.” Our Director of Sales and Events, Sarah Hicks, and I nerd out constantly on all the ways improv can change people and teams. We love going out after a session and sharing the amazing transformations we saw in the room.

We work across all kinds of industries—law firms, banks, ad agencies, tech companies, financial services, pharmaceutical companies. We also work with companies of all sizes—from small startups to global giants. So when people ask who our clients tend to be, it’s really more about the situation their company or team is in. Maybe they’ve grown quickly, merged with another company, brought in new leadership, hit a plateau, or are navigating a period of major change—or preparing for it.

We solve a lot of problems because what we tap into is a unique mindset. I call it The Improv Mindset, and honestly, the mindset itself is the goal in many ways. Once people and teams click into it, it becomes a different playing field with different players. You now have people who hold a new perspective on change, challenges, and goals. That’s where the real value is.

I’m extremely proud to have an all-female team working with me—and to have been the first female founder of both an improv school in NYC and a corporate consultancy using improv. I’m proud of the work we do and how we work with our clients: from the proposals we send, to the communications we have, to how we show up for the training itself—everything sends the same message and expresses what we’re about:

YES, AND.

We’re here to help companies become a YES, AND company—because we know from experience that it’s possible, and that it’s a game-changer. YES, AND is the driving force behind improv; it’s the core philosophy and tenet. It’s our orientation to everything: agreement and inclusion.

We hear you.
We value you.
And we include what you bring as we move forward—together.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

What comes to mind that I hope will be useful is about the nature of being an entrepreneur. We are a strange breed! We have one foot in the dreaming/creating world and one in the management/practical world. We know how to take lofty ideas and turn them into things. It’s clearly not for everyone, but if you have the entrepreneur gene, nothing less will do.

I think the biggest lessons about what it takes to be an entrepreneur came when I realized I had to stop making my business ideas take a back seat to the job that was paying my bills. I was freelancing a lot and working in commercials as an actor. I was making a good living—not amazing—but there wasn’t much wiggle room. It sort of felt like I was living check to check, which was okay, but nothing was being built, and I wasn’t creating something.

I remember when it was time to sign up for the next round of producing projects, sign up for the next round of classes to teach, and all of that. And I just had a knowing that if I didn’t get off that treadmill right then, it would never change. I knew I had to take both a leap of faith and push myself into extreme action if I was going to transition into a new world. That world was not going to knock on my door and present itself.

It was scary, and there were a few months when rent went on credit cards and bills didn’t get paid. I didn’t like the feeling at all—there was a lot of stress. However, stress causes evolution. No one really evolves when everything is copacetic and comfy. Somewhere in me, I knew I needed to keep going, and I believed in my corporate business. It’s like I forced myself into a position where I had to go for it—pedal to the metal. It gave me the fuel to call people I knew and ask for advice or connections. I cold-called and emailed, worked endlessly on my website, and learned how to make it do what I wanted so I could tweak it as I learned.

So, I guess the inspiration I hope to share is that you might have to make it happen—and not wait for it to. Because it won’t. It needs you to dive in and commit. I remember when I wanted very badly to live and work in both NYC and LA. I had work, friends, and opportunities in both places, and instead of choosing one over the other, I kept saying, “I’m trying to be bi-coastal.” Then that same knowing in me told me I needed to start telling people, “I’m bi-coastal.” Just that shift was all I needed—it literally started happening. People saw me as someone who was bi-coastal, and it just never went back.

Same with any business or endeavor I’ve started. I go all in, and then the magic begins to happen.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

Reputation is interesting. I know for myself, as a woman, owning the things I’ve accomplished didn’t come naturally. I don’t doubt that men have similar challenges, but I know from experience that we women have a unique relationship with owning our accomplishments—imposter syndrome, being seen as bragging, confidence. It’s a hot mess in there. (I actually created a talk and workshop based on all of this because it’s so prevalent—Good Girls Aren’t CEOs!)

Building your reputation, I think, happens in a lot of ways. Obviously, if you’re genuine, sincere, and authentic, you almost can’t help but build your reputation. So it’s the opposite that I would emphasize—stay away from tactics and strategies that take advantage, feel slimy or tricky, or over-promise just to get a sale. I don’t believe that leads you anywhere good. Money is a tempting element, and when there’s big money on the table, it’s important to have your moral compass and values crystal clear. Make decisions based on who you want to be and how you want your company to be viewed.

I also think there are times when the right thing is to walk away or turn down a gig. There’s a time to have a tough conversation—with someone working for you or even a potential client. If I feel like the person I’m talking to just wants the cheapest option of the bunch, I know they’re not my ideal client. I’ve had enough experience to know that the ‘ick’ feeling always leads to an awful experience that’s never worth the money in the end.

But as I was saying—owning everything that you are, and everything you’ve learned and experienced, is part of your value. If you’re not really owning it—and sometimes leading with it—no one else will see you as that. It doesn’t mean being obnoxious or rattling off your resume every chance you get. It means seeing yourself fully, with everything in the picture.

It took me a very long time to hold the value of becoming a Groundling, for instance. I used to never tell people I was the first female founder of a school or company because of some false humility BS. But once I started to, I know I started showing up differently. I started thinking differently. Pretty soon, the dollar amounts we were charging for a gig seemed ridiculously low.

I once heard something really helpful:
People who create things and have a big impact on the world need to have big egos.
They need to see themselves as someone who can do a lot.

But—they also need an equal amount of humility to balance it out.
Too much ego and you’re a jerk who can’t learn and isn’t connectable.
Too much humility and you won’t have the juice to make the impact you want.

When I heard that, I realized I didn’t need to be scared to own what I’ve done—or what I want to do. That’s part of who I am. (I’m a Leo, for god’s sake!)
I just want to always stay curious about what I don’t know and keep leaving space to grow.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.imergenceusa.com, www.hollymandel.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/imergence.usa/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/imergence-corporate-improv/