The Start of iMERGENCE: Featuring Holly Mandel

How did you start your company and why did you start it?

HOLLY: 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 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 Business Networking International (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.

Where did the name iMERGENCE come from?

HOLLY: 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 a start-up in 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.

What excites you about your work?

HOLLY: 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.