We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Scott Elam a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Scott thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Earning a full time living from one’s creative career can be incredibly difficult. Have you been able to do so and if so, can you share some of the key parts of your journey and any important advice or lessons that might help creatives who haven’t been able to yet?

I earn my full-time living as a creative now but I haven’t always. I worked for 6+ years in higher education – Northwestern and then Vanderbilt. And for a long time I worked behind the scenes running the training center at The Second City in Chicago. The first time I was able to say I was working full-time as a performer was when The Second City hired me to work on cruise ships in July 2012. The gig itself is not the best – it’s long stretches away from friends/family and even though you’re in beautiful places, you spend a lot of time in a shoebox staring out a porthole. But despite all that, I was still getting paid to travel the world and perform.

Scott, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I am the Artistic Director at the Third Coast Comedy Club in Nashville, Tennessee. Third Coast is an intimate, 88-seat venue dedicated to all forms of local comedy but our bread and butter is improv. And that’s what my background is in. I spent a decade plus living and working in Chicago. I performed largely at iO and considered it my artistic home but I worked mostly at The Second City. I started out washing dishes on the night staff and interning in exchange for free classes. I spent my summers running their comedy camps for youth and teens. After a few years, Kerry Sheehan, who oversaw the training centers for Second City, asked me to join full-time as her assistant. It gave me the opportunity to work closely with her and to learn how to run an arts-centric organization. Even before all that though, I took my first improv class not out of a desire to be a performer but as a way to meet people and work through some of my social anxiety. I was new to Chicago and didn’t know many people. I was in college part-time but I could barely speak in front of a class without my hands shaking and my voice quivering. Improv changed my life. It taught me to slow down, to listen first and talk second, to say yes to others’ ideas, and to not be so afraid of failure.

Looking back, are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?

I wish I had spent less time trying to get the gatekeepers at various venues to let me in and more time creating opportunities for myself. So the resource I wish I’d had was the confidence that if iO wouldn’t let me perform on their stage or The Second City wouldn’t cast me in a show I wanted, that I could go rent a space, invite my friends, and perform my own show. I spent so much time trying to get others to put me in their shows and not nearly enough time creating my own.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative?

I mentioned earlier that I worked in higher education. And it wasn’t the Theater Department or another creative field. It was for economists at Northwestern and finance professors at Vanderbilt. And at both places, these were some of the premier minds in their fields. They were absolutely brilliant. And I’ll never forget a professor over dinner asking my wife – who is a phenomenal, accomplished stage actor – what she did for a living. As they spoke, inevitably the conversation turned to where they might have seen her. She has some film and television credits but mostly her work was done on stages all over Chicago where we met. The professor mentioned how he had a niece who worked on Broadway but he’d never seen on tv or in films but if she kept working hard, “she’d make it one day”. About his niece – WHO WAS ON BROADWAY – he said she’d make it one day. And I think what occurred to me in that moment was that outside of the arts, there aren’t many jobs where someone can tell you you’ve failed. Maybe athletics. But I would never tell a Vanderbilt professor that if they worked hard, maybe they’d get a job at Harvard one day. Or the CEO of YouTube to keep working and one day they can be CEO of Apple. So I think it’s hard for non-creatives to realize how hard it is to work in a creative industry where your worth is tied so closely to your work and your work is usually temporary.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.thirdcoastcomedyclub.com