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Meet Shana Merlin

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Meet Shana Merlin

July 31, 2023
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We recently connected with Shana Merlin and have shared our conversation below.

Shana, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?

I didn’t know it at the time, but I’ve had two instinctual guiding principles from the beginning: 1) listen to what customers are asking for and say “yes, I can offer that!” and 2) grow lean–never pay for anything I can’t cover in income. Almost from my business’s inception, I’ve been listening to my customers and following their guidance (and demand.) I started by renting space hourly at a casting studio in South Austin and offering drop-in classes to improv students. Then a student asked if I could teach a musical improv class. So I offered a one-day class in that. It filled up and those students asked if it could be a series. So I offered a six week version next. This is how I slowly turned from a business that teaches improv classes to an improv school. I also listened to my teachers, and generally when they suggest a class, we put it up on the website. Some flop and some flourish. We’ve followed demand and now offer three levels of stand up, storytelling, and musical improv, and six levels of improv comedy classes. We still rent by the hour, but at five different locations around town. The growth of my corporate training business using improv has followed a similar route. I used to just do team building workshops. And over the years clients have asked for training in presentation skills, thriving through change, storytelling, persuasive communication and more. These are now all core offerings. If one person or company wants it, there’s a good chance someone else does too.

Shana, 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?
The year was 1995 and the Braves were in the World Series. At the time, I was a drama nerd in high school in suburban Atlanta and had no idea that the Braves were in the World Series. So when me and my girlfriends went downtown to catch an improv comedy show at Dad’s Garage Theater, I had no idea that the show would be cancelled—and my life changed forever. But when the volunteer at the ticket booth handed me a fat stack of free tickets as an apology, my social calendar for the year was sealed. I kept watching improv shows and seeing that the people on stage were having the most fun I’d ever seen—and I wanted to have that much fun too. So I signed up for an improv class there, and sucked! In class, they would go around the circle playing an improv game and have to stop when it was my turn. But I stuck with it, started performing in student shows, and was bitten by the improv bug—hard. I found improv used every part of my being: my brain, my body, my heart, my experiences, my writing, my directing, my singing, my dancing, my storytelling. It was all there. And for the next twenty years I have become a nationally recognized award winning performer, trainer and teacher from the world of improvisational theater.
I founded my company, Merlin Works, in 2003, with three parts: 1) an improv comedy school offering classes in improv, standup, storytelling, and musical comedy 2) Comedy shows that feature our teachers and students coming together as a community and showing off what they’ve learned. 3) A corporate training company using the tools from the world of improvisational theater to help businesses and organizations be more fun, more resilient, more creative, and better communicators. After 10 years of doing it all, I hired staff to run the improv school so I could focus on growing the Corporate Training side of the business. I have been serving clients such as Meta, Dell, T-Mobile, and Deloitte as well as schools and nonprofits. Some of my most requested programs are on the topics of team building, communication, sales, persuasion, leadership, medical communications, and creativity. The feedback that I get from my students and clients is that I have feet in both worlds: I am a creative and a comedian so my programs are full of laughter, engagement and entertainment. But I’m also a professional inside and outside the training room. I am clear, responsive, applicable, and can handle challenging audiences and unexpected situations.
After training at the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science at Stony Brook University, I became a lecturer in the College of Medicine Texas A&M University and an associate at the Center for Health Communication at the University of Texas Dell Medical School and Moody College of Communication. For the past few years I’ve also been a professor of Improv at St. Edwards University. I still perform for fun in the Merlin Works Faculty Troupe The Known Wizards in our shows at Creative Action in Springdale General and with improv troupes like B Iden Payne Award Winning Girls Girls Girls Improvised Musicals at the Fallout Theater. When I’m not doing improv I hangout with my partner and two kids in the Mueller neighborhood in Austin.

Has your business ever had a near-death moment? Would you mind sharing the story?

My company almost died. Twice. The first time was about ten years into running my business when I had my first child. My plan was to hire teachers to teach all the classes and I could work from home to do the admin. I would do this for about 6 months or so until I was ready to get back to full time work. This is not what happened. Without my daily attention and presence, my business dried up within a few months. Plus my business partner was ready to get out of his part and have me take over the whole operation. Plus I had this beautiful baby and I was exhausted, angry, and couldn’t think straight. It was not ideal. I decided to shut it down, be a mom, and figure out my next move later. When I was telling this all to a dear friend and fellow business leader, she flat out said, “No. Your company is too important. Let’s have coffee and figure this out.” And we did have coffee. And we did figure it out. I had to let go of my idea of holding on to my company like it was, which wasn’t working, so I could start imagining how it could be. That’s when we came up with the idea of moving to ZACH theater, where we gained a lot of prestige with their brand. And we cut the shows down to once a month and focused on the more profitable classes. Also, my baby got older and went to daycare. The next year the business was stronger than ever.

The funny thing is I share this story all the time when I teach my Thriving Through Change program. In that course we learn that one way to increase your resilience when bad things happen is to have your own personal comeback stories already prepped and in your back pocket. So I shared this story of the rebirth of my company as an example. And then COVID hit. And my in-person classes and training business collapsed overnight. It wasn’t fun. Or easy. But, I wasn’t as panicked as the first time my business almost shut down. I knew I had rebuilt it before and I would do it again. And I spent 18 months throwing spaghetti at the wall with virtual classes and filing for PPP loans. And in 2022, when we came back to in person classes my business had its best year ever.

How do you keep in touch with clients and foster brand loyalty?

I send out an email newsletter every month (or two or three). I find it’s a great way to keep in touch with my clients because the time that I have contact with them (through taking one of my classes or watching me speak at a conference) and the time that they might need to hire my services is often more than a year apart. So I don’t need to do a hard, urgent sell. I just need to be on their radar when that conference, training, offsite, retreat, or event is coming up on their calendar and they need to book a speaker or trainer. I’ve also learned that instead of trying to teach people about improv and give them that benefit in my newsletter, people are much more interested in what I’m struggling with and then connecting that to a concept in improv. The more established I’ve been in my career and my company, the more comfortable I’ve been being vulnerable, the more rewarding the work and communication has been.

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