We were lucky to catch up with Rob Snow recently and have shared our conversation below.

Rob , appreciate you joining us today. Can you talk to us about serving the underserved.

The Improvaneer Method teaches improvisation to build skills in individuals with developmental disabilities that will greatly increase social, workplace, and lifetime opportunities. The reason this is needed is because while there may be a decent amount of opportunities available to people with developmental disabilities, they often don’t match the individual’s true abilities. Many times, these opportunities are sort of pigeon-holed into a one-size-fits-all approach, and we know that this group has so many different abilities that they can share with the world in so many different ways. Through improvisation we build a very fun, engaging, and skill-building environment that allows each participant the opportunity to express themselves and showcase their skills. This is very different than many programs out there or a typical classroom type environment. When we first started the program, we had an individual with both Down syndrome and Autism. In the classes he was very amiable and seemed to be enjoying himself but only said about three words (Tony, Tiger, and Yeah). After 5 classes, a friend was visiting his house and Tony answered the door, gave her a hug, both of which he didn’t normally do, and then started talking…alot. He said, “Tony want to be actor, Tony love improvising, Tony go Playhouse Square and act.” When my friend asked the parents what had gotten into Tony, they just said, “That class, he hasn’t stopped talking since that class!”. From that moment I knew we had a very special program and one that needed to grow and reach as many individuals as possible.

Rob , before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I started this program because I used to perform Stand-Up Comedy and Improvisation in the late 90s in Chicago. I had stopped for about 8 years and in 2009, my wife and I had our second son Henry who was born with Down syndrome. We jumped big into the DS community. I even used my comedy background to perform a show about raising a child with developmental disabilities. Once I started performing that show around the country, I realized that we could be doing more for the DS community, so my wife and I started a charity called Stand Up For Downs which produced comedy events to raise money. After about 5 years of doing these events I remembered my improvisation roots, and thought that the skills that improvisation can build would do amazing things for those with Down syndrome. So we began testing out the program on a group of 10 individuals with Down syndrome that would make up the world’s first all Down syndrome improvisation troupe. We called them The Improvaneers. We trained for two hours a week for about two years until we had our first show which went incredibly well. From there we began receiving a lot of press nationally. Unfortunately COVID put a damper on our coming out party, but it worked out as we created an online program. Today that online program hosts 30 classes a week. We also offer live classes, licensing of the program, certifying of directors and we travel all over the country with our Improvaneers performing. What I’m most proud of is knowing that this program actually works and that it keeps growing. The more individuals that take this program the more opportunities that will be available to them. The ultimate goal is to use this to allow individuals with disabilities to achieve their dreams.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

Towards the end of 2019, we had just completed two sold-out shows with over 300 audience members in each show, we had been featured in countless national media including TodayShow.com, Inside Edition and the Washington Post. We began putting out our story and offering workshops, performances and classes. And we got booked a lot. We had over 15 different bookings around the country in the first quarter of 2020. I couldn’t believe our luck and the attention we were receiving. Then, COVID hit. We had a program completely based on being in a live environment where we had to perform in close proximity to each other. This was devastating . Everything we had been booked for was canceled. I thought this was a cruel joke, and also thought we were done. But, someone mentioned trying out Zoom. First off, I had no idea what Zoom was, and when I found out what it was, I thought there was no way we could do Improvisation over our laptops. But, I looked at our games and the agendas and we thought it might be possible to do about 75% of the games over Zoom. We put it together and tested it out on one of our classes. They seemed to like it, so we tried it with another group, then another, and eventually we had a solid format and some happy customers. Today we direct about 30 online classes a week to over 500 individuals throughout the country. So it taught us how to practice what we taught, and actually improvise ourselves. But it also provided an easier path to starting out our program than we would have had if COVID never happened. The truth was that I don’t think we were ready for the market at the end of 2019, and this allowed us to get our feet under us and put this together the right way.

Do you have any stories of times when you almost missed payroll or any other near death experiences for your business?

We seemed to be met to keep going. As with many companies, sometimes the more you are bringing in, the harder it gets to stay in business. The reason many times for this is because when we make more money we begin spending more. We start buying things to help the business grow or get the word out, and since we are a start-up, we often don’t have great data or historical perspective on what kind of ROI we’ll receive from this. So there’s lots of hits and misses. But, it seems like every time our payroll gets close to the bottom line, something pulls us back up. In some cases, it has been grants that we’ve applied for, in other cases, it’s been a few prospects on the pipeline that finally decided to buy. I try not to get too stressed and take every dip or one of these close calls as learning opportunities. For example, we had almost bit the bottom line last year, and several performances were booked for later in the year. Normally, our contracts had our customers pay once the performance was complete, but a wise person told me to make sure that at least 25% is paid upfront, which is actually pretty standard. So I recreated our contracts to reflect this. It allowed to receive a good amount of the income at that moment and saved us. But I also learned that while we were being booked for a lot of performances, it wasn’t a sustainable operation since repeat performances were rarely something to bank on. So we shifted our efforts towards our classes and building our database to make sure we can create more classes where repeat customers are much more common.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.theimprovaneermethod.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the_improvaneer_method/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/improvaneermethod
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/69685452/admin/dashboard/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@theimprovaneermethod7608