Today we’d like to introduce you to Todd Rice.
Todd, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
While I lived in Chicago, I was always engaged as a business person while taking classes at the Second City and other improv comedy venues around the city. I moved down to South Florida in 1999 for a job opportunity and became the CEO of a small technology company. To relax after-hours, I would perform with a local improv troupe and started producing events to raise money for charities. I called it Comedy With a Cause and it became THEY Improv. I used my business background to pay attention to what our clients needed to achieve and this set me apart from others in my industry.
When the bubble burst in the Internet sector, I moved on to make business consulting and entertainment my full-time job and started performing for a variety of companies. I was hired for an event at Yale University and joined with performers in Boston. I already had contacts throughout the country and this led to my having performers in all 50 states. We have become one of the larger entertainment groups performing from sea to shining sea and are starting to do some work internationally.
Has it been a smooth road?
I certainly can’t complain. My industry is not one that is normally conducive to making a living and I’ve proven to be a rarity. The toughest part of my job is overcoming the concept of improv and the fear it induces in potential clients. Also, overcoming the nature of public improv performances that often will be more risqué than they have to be leaves a poor prediction of what a show will entail. For us, we operate at a very professional level and keep it clean. We pride ourselves in being able to entertain even religious audiences and helping to have companies know that we will make them look good for having hired us has been the challenge.
We’d love to hear more about your business.
The main focus of our company is to bring people together. This is whether for a family gathering or for companies. This takes two forms, we provide workshops and activities that are clearly designed to build teams or develop skills. The other is using entertainment options to achieve those same results. The concept is to provide team building and training without the participants realizing that we’re doing it. That being said, what makes me the most proud is our ability to work with people and companies and to have them better for having hired us. Nothing makes me more proud than to have a client, whether a family, a company or a charity, to be much improved through our services. What honestly sets us apart from others is right in our name…THEY. The idea is that we worry about what THEY need instead of what we need. This means that I try to understand the company we’re working with, identifying the true goals of that client and advising them on what the best options may be for them to achieve those goals. Even better, and a matter of pride for me, is that sometimes we can achieve their goals with a choice that is less expensive than the one they originally asked about. Simply put, I help people and they get better value than we charge. That should be what everyone seeks to do.
Is our city a good place to do what you do?
Unfortunately I’ve had to expand my horizons to achieve my goals. Then again, I have found that Miami is the perfect place to be based as flights tend to be less expensive from here than from practically anywhere else, making it more feasible. There are also a lot of companies that come here for their incentives events. But starting from scratch can be quite difficult, and the jigsaw aspect to culture where pieces fit here and there make the city a difficult one to master. In general, the city has to put a greater emphasis on the arts as an option for entertainment. Keeping talent down here is difficult when so many leave for New York, LA or elsewhere in order to ‘make it’. If the state were to reinstate film incentives, it could help us compete with Atlanta, New Orleans and elsewhere to put Miami back on the production map. This would bring more actors and more meetings and incentives events. This leads to an improved economy and more opportunity.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://theyimprov.com
- Phone: 866-219-4386
- Email: info@theyimprov.com
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/THEYaregoingtomakeyoulaugh/
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