#670: Embracing Chaos to Get Better Results with Mark DeCarlo

Summary

The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström®

Episode #670: Embracing Chaos to Get Better Results with Mark DeCarlo
Date: April 30, 2025
Guest: Mark DeCarlo, Emmy Award-winning comedian, TV host, speaker

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Episode Overview

In this lively and insightful episode, Greg Kihlström is joined by Mark DeCarlo to explore the unconventional but highly practical role of agility, improvisation, and chaos-embracing in both business and life. Drawing on lessons from his experiences in improvisational comedy, hit television productions (notably Seinfeld), and voice acting, DeCarlo shares his five simple strategies to help individuals and organizations overcome fear (including fear of AI), foster creativity, and achieve lasting happiness while working smarter — not harder.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Mark DeCarlo’s Background and Lessons from Entertainment (03:20–08:52)

• DeCarlo’s Path: Grew up frequenting Second City in Chicago, fully immersed in improvisational comedy; extensive television and voice acting career (notably, Hugh Neutron on Jimmy Neutron).
• Business Through the Lens of Improv:
  "Agility is basically a business term for improvisation. Everyone in business… sometimes you can't go in the door. You gotta go in through the window or… come up through the basement." (04:41)
• Collaborative Cultures:
  Describes the unusually collaborative and ego-free environment on the Seinfeld set where ideas could come from anyone.
• Attention to Detail as a Foundation for Agility:
  Shares wisdom from Carl Reiner: "What do I know that nobody else knows about?... That kind of attention to detail… is not only important in entertainment, but it's important in business. And I think that's where the energy that fuels agility comes from." (07:38)

2. Five Strategies for Embracing Chaos and Enhancing Wellness (09:33–16:22)

• Empowerment and Inclusivity:
  • "Wellness is a big buzzword now in business because businesses are finally understanding that if employees are miserable or not feeling taken care of, the production suffers… But when they feel an integral part of the machine… the quality of the work [improves]." (09:33)
  • Uses examples of employee satisfaction at Costco and Trader Joe’s.
• Improv Rules = Innovation Rules:
  • Describes how Second City shows required communal, non-judgmental brainstorming.
    "If someone says something stupid, you don't say no, you say, 'Well, we could do part of that. And what if we added this to it?'" (11:38)
  • The "Yes, and..." rule as a metaphor for inclusive business practices.
  • Cautions that shutting down ideas leads to disengagement: "At some point, you may lose out on a great idea I had because I was afraid." (12:14)
• Agile Leadership:
  • Emphasizes the importance of two-way communication and making all employees feel valued: "Make people feel important. And, you know what, if they're not important, they shouldn't be working for you." (13:14)

3. Embracing Chaos and Change as Opportunity (16:22–20:14)

• No Such Thing as Stasis:
  "There is no stasis. You're born, your body grows, then it starts to decay, and then you die. Nothing is the same." (17:18)
• Viewing Chaos as Creative Space:
  • "If you expect things to go to shit, then when it happens, you're prepared… you're agile." (18:09)
  • "Chaos is an opportunity to innovate. The whole core of business success is innovation and seeing something that your competitors don’t see..." (19:25)

4. Owning Your Happiness and Aligning Work With Joy (20:16–23:36)

• Internal versus External Motivation:
  • “You are responsible for your own personal happiness. You are your brand… and if you’re miserable, it’s your fault.” (20:16)
  • Encourages reflecting on activities or moments that truly bring happiness and finding ways to build them into work life.
• Happiness as a Priority:
  • “In my opinion, there’s nothing more important than being happy every day, because when you’re happy, everything else is fine.” (20:55)

5. Dissolving Fear and the Everyday Practice of Improv (23:36–29:48)

• Improv as a Life Skill:
  • "We’ve been improvising for the past 20 minutes." (24:42)
  • Encourages reframing improv not as something scary, but as a routine life skill, emphasizing listening and being present.
• Fear of Failure:
  • "If you create a corporate culture that makes it imperative to give everybody a seat at the table… the more input you have, the better the output is going to be. So you have to. Fear is a wasted emotion." (29:48)
  • Personal failures as rich learning experiences: “You have learned more from your mistakes and failures than from your successes.” (28:19)
• Encouraging Psychological Safety:
  • "If you make them afraid to say the stupid stuff, you’ll never get the gems." (29:00)

6. Agility in Practice: The Value of Curiosity and Listening (33:57–36:01)

• DeCarlo’s Own Habit for Staying Agile:
  • "I talk to strangers. I listen to people… I stay agile by constantly feeding my head with interesting people and interesting perspectives that aren't my own." (33:57-34:12)
• The Empathy Dividend:
  • Recounts stories of meaningful encounters while traveling—learning about others’ experiences and perspectives as a way to build empathy and adaptability.

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Notable Quotes and Memorable Moments

• On Innovation:
  “A room of 10 funny people is going to be funnier than a room of one funny guy.” – Mark DeCarlo (16:00)
• On Chaos and Change:
  “Change is the essence of life. Time passing is change. So to pretend that every time something happens that you didn’t prepare for, it’s a catastrophe… you’re not doing your best work when you’re freaked out and stressed.” – Mark DeCarlo (17:36)
• On Happiness:
  “You are your brand. And if you’re miserable, it’s your fault.” – Mark DeCarlo (20:14)
• On Improv and Listening:
  “The magic and the power of improvisation is being in the moment, being present.” – Mark DeCarlo (25:00)
• On Fear:
  “Fear is, you know, it's, it's, in my opinion, it's the most stupid, wasteful human emotion that everybody has to deal with. So I think by defanging it to a certain degree… you realize that you could go out and bomb at the improv and your life is going to stay the same.” – Mark DeCarlo (29:48)
• On Leadership:
  “…As a leader… construct a system where everyone feels that they can throw in their ideas, as smart or stupid as it may seem, without fear…” – Mark DeCarlo (31:47)
• On Curiosity:
  “I talk to strangers. I listen to people… and you know, it’s empathy, putting… learning how to put yourself in the shoes of other people…” – Mark DeCarlo (33:57–34:12)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Mark DeCarlo’s background and Seinfeld insights – 03:20–08:52
• Wellness, empowerment, the “Yes, and” principle – 09:33–14:38
• Chaos as opportunity and happiness as a core pursuit – 16:22–23:36
• Dissolving fear and everyday improvisation – 23:36–29:48
• Leadership, psychological safety, value of bad ideas – 29:48–31:47
• Curiosity and agility in practice – 33:57–36:01

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Summary

This episode is a vibrant look at how adopting a mindset of improvisation, embracing chaos, and empowering everyone in the organization to contribute ideas can dramatically improve both business outcomes and personal wellbeing. Mark DeCarlo’s showbiz anecdotes are deftly tied to actionable business and leadership insights, emphasizing creativity, communication, psychological safety, and above all, the pursuit of happiness as vital to building resilient, agile brands.

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[For more on Mark DeCarlo and his five strategies, follow links in the episode show notes.]

Transcript

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[Strayer University Announcer]

the Agile Brand.

[Podcast Host Greg Kilstrom (Intro and Outro)]

Welcome to Season seven of the Agile Brand where we discuss the trends and topics marketing leaders need to know. Stay curious, stay agile and join the top enterprise brands and Martech platforms as we explore marketing technology, AI, e commerce, and whatever's next for the Omnichannel customer experience. Together we'll discover what it takes to create an agile brand built for today and tomorrow and built for customers, employees and continued business growth. I'm your host Greg Kilstrom, advising Fortune 1000 brands on martech, AI and marketing operations. The Agile Brand Podcast is brought to you by Tech Systems, an industry leader in full stack technology services, talent services and real world application. For more information go to teksystems.com to make sure you always get the latest episodes, please hit subscribe on the app you listen to podcasts on and leave us a rating so others can find us as well. And now onto the show. We talk a lot about agility on this show and mostly involved in business

[Greg Kilstrom]

of course, but today we're going to do that. But my guest is someone that has some answers about how we can be

[Podcast Host Greg Kilstrom (Intro and Outro)]

more agile in our worlds that come

[Greg Kilstrom]

from unexpected places like the set of

[Podcast Host Greg Kilstrom (Intro and Outro)]

Seinfeld, where for those super fans like

[Greg Kilstrom]

myself out there, he played Alec Berg, which should be said in more of

[Podcast Host Greg Kilstrom (Intro and Outro)]

a John Houseman manner.

[Greg Kilstrom]

Some of you will get that, some of you will not. And while guest starring there, he took

[Podcast Host Greg Kilstrom (Intro and Outro)]

some lessons from the value of collaboration and how great ideas can come from anyone and anywhere. Joining me today is Mark DeCarlo, an

[Greg Kilstrom]

Emmy Award winning comedian, TV host and

[Podcast Host Greg Kilstrom (Intro and Outro)]

speaker who brings a fresh and entertaining perspective on navigating change, AI and work life balance.

[Greg Kilstrom]

He's developed five simple strategies to help people embrace chaos, overcome fear of AI, and actually be happier while working smarter.

[Podcast Host Greg Kilstrom (Intro and Outro)]

Mark, welcome to the show.

[Mark DeCarlo]

Good to be here, Greg. Thanks for having me on.

[Greg Kilstrom]

Yeah, absolutely. Looking forward to talking about this. Before we dive in though, why don't you give us a little more about your background and, you know, what kind of led up to, you know, developing the five strategies.

[Mark DeCarlo]

Well, I started, grew up in Chicago. My best friend's older siblings were on stage at Second City. So we would sneak in at the age of, I don't know, 14 and watch the show. And when I realized that you could get paid for going on stage and improvising for an hour and a half every night, that was pretty much it for me. So I started doing comedy. I came to ucla, did more comedy there. I won a bunch of money on a game show so I didn't have to get a job right away. And it allowed me to focus on show business. And I just started doing commercials, hosted some shows for Fox and FX and Hallmark, and did a real fun series on the travel channel called Taste of America where I got to go to 500 different cities and meet mom and pops and business entrepreneurs, small business entrepreneurs. And I've also had a career as a cartoon voice. I'm Hugh Neutron on Jimmy Neutron. I've been on Family Guy and Rugrats, a bunch of different cartoons. And I enjoy comedy. And I like your podcast because agility is basically a business term for improvisation. Everyone in business is trying to get an advantage or move their product forward or move their ideas forward. And sometimes you can't go in the door. You got to go in through the window or you got to dig a hole and come up through the basement. And the philosophy of improvisation is a win win for everybody involved. So I think that's really my only skill.

[Greg Kilstrom]

Pretty good skill.

[Mark DeCarlo]

Well, it does generalize to a lot of other things outside of show business business specifically. But like if, if I was one of the seven people on Gilligan's Island, I would not be as utilitarian as the professor or as stupid as Gilligan. I'd be in the middle somewhere.

[Greg Kilstrom]

Yeah, that's a good place to be, right? Yeah.

[Mark DeCarlo]

Yeah.

[Greg Kilstrom]

Right. Well, to me, sorry to typecast you. You will always be Alec Berg from Seinfeld. So it's, you know, huge fan of that show. But, yeah, definitely, you know, you've done it. You've done a lot of great work. And. And it's interesting to see how you have parlayed that into the business world as well.

[Mark DeCarlo]

Let me tell you something about that week on Seinfeld. I mean, I've been on a lot of different sitcoms, television shows, and when you're a guest star, typically you kind of go in, you keep your head down, you learn your lines, you do them. You know, maybe the regular cast sidles up to you and says, hi, blah, blah, blah. But you're. You're definitely lower on the totem pole than the stars of the show. Not so on Seinfeld. They welcomed me immediately. And instead of going back to my trailer between my scenes, I was only in, I don't know, three or four scenes. I. I sat on set and I watched their process for the entire week. And unlike any other show I've ever been on, except for maybe Curb, when. When the stars weren't in a scene, they were sitting off stage during rehearsal and coaching, saying, wait, wait, you know what? Why don't. You shouldn't have that line. Give that line to Julia. Give the ball to him. And they were all very focused on the group endeavor that they were engaged in, as opposed to a lot of shows. Like, if I'm not in the scene, I'm in my trailer on my phone doing stuff. And I think the proof is in the pudding, you know, the show was spectacular for its entire run. It was smart, it was clever, the acting was great, the writing was great. Jerry and Larry were the first guys there every day, the last guys to leave every night. They worked really hard, which is why the show is still Good, you know, 30 years after it premiered. When I was in school at ucla, I got the chance to meet Carl Reiner, one of my comedy, clearly one of the comedy gods of the 20th century, a personal hero of mine. A friend of mine had written a Dick Van Dyke show book. And I was at the launch party, and the entire cast was there. And as the party was winding down, Carl was still there. So I screwed up the nerve to go talk to him. And I said, you know, I'm an aspiring writer. How did you come up with this Dick Van Doe, Dick Van Dyke show idea? And he said, I sat because he had written on my show of shows, the Sid Caesar show, for years, which was a live, Saturday Night Live, ish type of show, sketch comedy, music, and it was the top show at the time. When that show ended, he said. He went. Sat at home and said, all right, what do I know that nobody else knows about? And he was like, I'm writing on a comedy show. So he wrote what he knew, and he wrote 13 complete episodes before he showed it to CBS, which is unheard of. And maintain the quality of that show for six seasons. There's no slang in it. There's no numbers like $5 for nothing like that. So the show, in my opinion, is still hilariously funny 60 years later. And that kind of attention to detail, I think is not only important in entertainment, but it's important in business. And I think that's where the energy that fuels agility comes from. Just paying attention and knowing what's important and what isn't important.

[Greg Kilstrom]

Yeah.

[Mark DeCarlo]

In whatever your endeavor is, you know.

[Greg Kilstrom]

Yeah. Yeah, I love that. And, yeah, I've never. I had not heard that about the. The Seinfeld process, but again, to your point, makes a lot of sense when you. When you see it. And, you know, I certainly think it's. It's. It's timeless as. As well. So let's. Let's talk about, you know, let's. Let's parlay this a little bit into. Into business and. And stuff. So, you know, you've been able to take comedy and. And just that. That agility from improv and. And things and, you know, apply it to. To business settings. And, you know, one of the things I want to touch on at least is, you know, developing the. The five strategies that you've. You've developed. Do you want to talk a little bit about that process?

[Mark DeCarlo]

Yeah, I. I think wellness is a big buzzword now in business because businesses are finally understanding that if employees are miserable or not feeling taken care of, they. The production suffers, the output suffers, the quality of the work suffers. Whereas people that feel valued and feel included in whatever process is going on produce better work. I don't know where you live. I live in California, and I go to Costco all the time.

[Greg Kilstrom]

Yeah.

[Mark DeCarlo]

I'll give you a million dollars if you can find me a Costco employee who doesn't love their job.

[Greg Kilstrom]

Yeah, good point.

[Mark DeCarlo]

Everybody that works at Costco loves their job. People at Trader Joe's love their job.

[Greg Kilstrom]

Yeah.

[Mark DeCarlo]

You know, why? What is it about the work? I would propose it has less to do with the work than how the employees are made to feel that they're an integral part of the machine that serves the customer and they're listened to. And when they have an idea, they can talk to the boss. They don't have to drop it in a box where it dies. And that kind of investment from the C suite on down empowers people. And what I learned at Second City, we would do a show like a half scripted, half improv show. And then the third act would be, okay, we're going to take a 10 minute break. Before we do, we're going to take a bunch of suggestions, then we're going to come out in 10 minutes and we're going to do another 30 minutes of comedy based on your suggestions. So we would get those, those suggestions, we go backstage and there'd be six or seven of us sitting around a table, and we would have to take all that information and figure out ways to turn it into scenes. And that process requires a lot of communal thinking and working and not crapping on other people. Can I say shitting on this podcast or is this.

[Greg Kilstrom]

You just did so. Yeah. Yeah, I think you can. Yeah.

[Mark DeCarlo]

You know, if you know anything about Improv, the rule rul 1 is yes. And if someone says something stupid, you don't say no, you say, well, we could do part of that. And what if we added this to it? And what that does is, first of all, it opens a corridor of information flow from the lowest person on the totem pole to the top. You know, sometimes the guys in the loading dock will have an idea that the C suite would never conceive of because they're not doing the work. Yeah, you know, you know they're not. Yeah, we're wasting all these packing peanuts when we could do this instead and we'd save X amount of money. And oftentimes people lower on the totem pole are frightened to speak up because they're going to be laughed at or marginalized or made fun of or just ignored. And when, you know, when you raise your hand four or five times with what you think is a great idea and people basically say, you know what? Sit down, the grown ups are talking. All right, I'm going to stop volunteering my information. And at some point, you may lose out on a great idea I had because I was afraid. So these five simple strategies I've kind of pieced together from my time in entertainment, but they generalize to business. Right? The first thing is empower people and encourage creativity. And communication is the key to everything. Right? You need to have a system where information can flow both ways and make people feel. I mean, it's so simple. You make people feel important.

[Greg Kilstrom]

Right.

[Mark DeCarlo]

And you know what if they're. If they're not important, they shouldn't be working for you.

[Greg Kilstrom]

Right, Right. Yeah. Why are you hiring people and asking them for things, but yet not listening to them? I mean, to your point, it's maybe once or twice you can get away with that as a leader, but, yeah, people start shutting it. I. I think to some leaders, maybe that at first, that feels good of like, oh, okay, now I can just, like, get my way or whatever. But, like, that's not a sustainable way of doing. Like, pretty soon, like, a leader only knows what they know. Right. So, like, pretty soon.

[Mark DeCarlo]

Exactly.

[Greg Kilstrom]

The ideas run out, and then who you're going to turn to?

[Mark DeCarlo]

You.

[Greg Kilstrom]

You turn to a bunch of people that have been told to be quiet. Right, Right.

[Mark DeCarlo]

Yeah. And this.

[Greg Kilstrom]

And.

[Mark DeCarlo]

And going back to the Seinfeld analogy you had, Larry and Jerry were absolutely the unquestioned top of the food chain there. They did all the writing, they did all the conceptualizing, but they empowered their cast, the craft service people. Literally everybody on that set in the week that I was there felt free to speak up with an idea about what was happening on the set, and they were listened to. And. And what does the guy that makes pancakes know about comedy? Well, you know what? He's been watching your show for four years. Yeah. And he knows that. You know what? George would never say that. Kramer would say it, but George wouldn't say it.

[Greg Kilstrom]

Yeah.

[Mark DeCarlo]

Just my. Just my opinion, Larry. You do it with what you want, and it fosters a collegial we're all in this together mentality, and it's better for the people at the top. I wrote and produced an animated reboot of Pinocchio that's coming out later this summer.

[Greg Kilstrom]

Nice.

[Mark DeCarlo]

And in animation now, the current. The way people produce it is they'll write the script, and then they'll get one person in the booth, and that person will read with the director. In my opinion, that's crazy. What we did is we had the whole cast together in the studio at the same time reading the scenes together. So we would read it once as written, that I wrote.

[Greg Kilstrom]

Right.

[Mark DeCarlo]

And then the next pass, I was like, all right, this is a crazy pass. Do whatever you want. So I had some of the funniest people in cartoons improvising and adding material based on how they've developed the character in their mind. And some of it was better. I mean, we used 25% of the. 20. 25% of the movie was stuff that was improvised in the room that was hilarious, that wasn't on the Page. And there are, you know, some writers or producers who are like, hey, I didn't write it. I don't want to hear it. You're paying those people for the day. Squeeze everything you can out of them.

[Greg Kilstrom]

Right?

[Mark DeCarlo]

And if you're picking. If you're picking the right people, people with talent, you're an idiot if you don't use it. Because like you said, leaders only know what they know. You can't know everything. Yeah, but a room of 10 funny people is going to be funnier than a room of one funny guy.

[Greg Kilstrom]

And another thing, you know, based on the. The strategies that, you know, just reading through I. I liked and, you know, at least resonated with me was this idea of embracing chaos instead of avoiding it. Right? So, like, you know, anybody that keeps up with anything these days knows that there's a lot of chaos. And I don't want to. I don't want to go there. But, like, you know, I know in my career, you know, I've started and sold a couple of companies. I've been through the ups and downs and the economic downturns and this and that. People coming, people going instead of thinking or maybe deluding yourself into thinking, okay, we're going to hit this stage and then we're going. Everything's going to be smooth. Like, that's not a thing. I mean, anyone that's done this long enough, they. They know that. But I think we keep maybe convincing ourselves that maybe there is this point of stasis instead of, you know, talk a little bit about what does it mean to embrace chaos without being chaotic, I guess.

[Mark DeCarlo]

Well, that's a good question. I mean, let's talk physics, right? There is no stasis.

[Greg Kilstrom]

Yeah.

[Mark DeCarlo]

You're born, your body grows, then it starts to decay, and then you die. Nothing is the same. Your body is different today than it was yesterday. You know, you've lost 4% of your cell, whatever the. The number is.

[Greg Kilstrom]

Right.

[Mark DeCarlo]

And people seek the comfort of stasis. You know, they want to get everything straight. They want to clean the house and then don't walk on the floor. I just clean the house.

[Greg Kilstrom]

Right, right.

[Mark DeCarlo]

But that change is the essence of life. Time passing is change. So to pretend that every time something happens that you didn't prepare for, it's a catastrophe. First of all, you're living your life on adrenaline, and you're. You're freaked out and stressed and you're not doing your best work when you're freaked out and stressed.

[Greg Kilstrom]

Yeah, good point.

[Mark DeCarlo]

Right?

[Greg Kilstrom]

Yeah.

[Mark DeCarlo]

So if you expect Things to go to shit. Then when it happens, you're prepared and you again, you're agile. All right, hey, everything is great today, but if something. Something goes sideways, I've already got plan A, plan B and plan C in my head on how to deal with it. So by expecting it, you take the. The corrosive power away from it, and because most people can't embrace it, you're giving yourself a leg up.

[Greg Kilstrom]

Yeah.

[Mark DeCarlo]

Does that make sense?

[Greg Kilstrom]

Yeah. Yeah. No, I. I like that. Yeah. I mean, it's. You know, part of it is just being realistic and accepting things that as they are. But also it's. It's the idea of once you get past the. It's scary or it's, you know, I wish it were. You know, whatever you wish it were, then you can actually start. I mean, maybe this kind of goes back to the other thread, but then you can actually start getting creative with it and you can start embracing the parts that are opportunities instead of, you know, there's.

[Mark DeCarlo]

There's chaos.

[Greg Kilstrom]

Right.

[Mark DeCarlo]

That is the. That is the key takeaway, I think when things break down, there's. It's like an offensive line in football.

[Greg Kilstrom]

Right. Right.

[Mark DeCarlo]

They make a little hole and the running back can get through it. That's chaos down there. And for a moment, that chaos separates and that person gets through. Chaos is an opportunity to innovate. The whole core of business success is innovation and seeing something that your competitors don't see. Acting on it, and then executing it and then sustaining it and the sustaining it. What you do today is different than what you're going to do two years from now just because everything changes all the time. And not only do I think it's important to embrace chaos, but I think the most important thing people need to learn is that you are responsible for your own personal happiness. You are your brand.

[Greg Kilstrom]

Right.

[Mark DeCarlo]

And if you're miserable, it's your fault. And the way I start people off is, let's sit down and talk about when was the last time you were really happy? When was that? What were you doing? What about the time before that? And if you realize, geez, I'm only happy when I'm painting or when I'm mowing the lawn or when I'm doing this, but my work life is something completely different. You're. You're making yourself miserable every day.

[Greg Kilstrom]

Yeah.

[Mark DeCarlo]

And, you know, everybody dies. I don't see any reason to purposefully spend a day in misery when you have other options now.

[Greg Kilstrom]

Yeah.

[Mark DeCarlo]

You know, as you get older, it's harder because you have wife and kids, and you can't just quit your job and, you know, go sit on a mountaintop. But in my opinion, there's nothing more important than. Than being happy every day, because when you're happy, everything else is fine. You know, in show business, I audition 20 times before I get a voiceover job or an acting job, and if I let the other 19 times bug me or depress me, I'd be miserable. You know, my goal is every time I audition, I do the best I can. Yeah. And I know if that was, you know, if I do 95% or better, I'm happy. And then whatever happens, happens. And maintaining that happiness is a lifelong. I don't want to say fight, but it's a lifelong process that most people don't even think to engage in. And that's what I try and teach people.

[Greg Kilstrom]

Yeah, I think it's. Some of that can be tied to, you know, so they're like intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation. So, you know, everybody works because they need money to live and all that stuff. So that's the extrinsic stuff. And. And I think that intrinsic stuff is harder and less talked about, for what it's worth. So in other words, like, there's lots of things that I like to do, but I know in work I like to learn stuff. Like, if I'm not learning new things, then I'm not happy. So that could be applied to literally anything. You know, it doesn't mean I need to be a teacher. It just means I need to have a job that makes me learn things all the time.

[Mark DeCarlo]

Or carve out time in your week where you read a book or you read the news or you investigate what's happening with the James Webb Space Telescope just because it feeds your creativity and it feeds your mind and it keeps your mind agile. Yeah, but you have to instigate that. You know, it's easier to lay on the couch and watch hockey than it is maybe to go read a book by Michio Kaku, who, you know, is a genius, but some of his stuff is incomprehensible to me.

[Greg Kilstrom]

Right, right.

[Mark DeCarlo]

But it's you. You have to provide that energy. And I think if you understand that that gets rewarded with an increase in happiness, it's easier to continue. And as you. As you output the energy and it comes back to you in happiness, it builds on itself and it becomes a lifestyle. As opposed to some people who just wake up every day, hate their job, and go to work and get a paycheck. And then they wake up and they're 65 and they've got money in the bank and they've. They've been miserable for 40 years.

[Greg Kilstrom]

Last topic I want to talk about here is about dissolving fear. You know, that's a. That's another one of the. The strategies here. And, you know, I'll just. I'll just kind of take it back to. To me, improv is a scary thing. You know, to me, like, 15 years ago, I never would have gotten up and talked in front of people. Now I give speeches and keynotes and stuff like that, and not. I'm not like, terrified and whatever on the floor crying. But still, you know, improv. Maybe it's because I'm not funny, but, like, improv would be a little intimidating to me, but yet that's something where maybe this also goes back to the. I think Seinfeld has a joke about this, too, about, you know, more people wanting to be in the coffin than giving the eulogy or something. So talk a little bit about. I mean, you know, it sounds like you had an interest early on in, like, Second City, and. And that was. You had a cute, natural curiosity about it. But again, most people, you throw them on a stage and. And ask them to be funny, they're going to be terrified. Right? Like, how do you. How do you kind of embrace. Kind of like embracing chaos, but how do you embrace some of that fear and make it work for you?

[Mark DeCarlo]

First of all, we've been improvising for the past 20 minutes.

[Greg Kilstrom]

Fair enough, right? Yeah.

[Mark DeCarlo]

You improvise every day, all day long, and people still, they hear that word and they're terrified by it. Right. Improvising to do comedy on a stage is an extreme version of that, but we do it every day. And the key component to improvising is listening. I've had several talk shows on television where I mostly, you know, some of them. One of the. The actual. I was interviewing celebrities, but on the Travel Channel and on the dating show back in the 90s, studs, I was interviewing civilians, regular people who are nervous to be on television at first. So what I have to do a. Is connect with them, look at them in the eye, make them comfortable, and then once they're comfortable that it's just me and them talking, then they'll reveal things and they'll be funny and they'll be genuine, and all of that will proceed. But the magic and the power of improvisation is being in the moment, being present. Because if you are, then, you know, you hear. I say Something, it made you think of something and you responded something back. That's improvisation and that's business. If you're a salesman and your sales team is not performing, maybe it's because they're not listening. It could be because you have a crappy product. But if you have a good product and you're not, and your guys are, your team is not performing well, it's because they're not listening to what the client is telling them and reacting to it and modifying their message to answer what their concerns are. And that is something that is eminently teachable. The hardest thing about teaching it is what you referred to is this fear. People hear the word improv and they're like, oh, I can't do that.

[Greg Kilstrom]

Right, right.

[Mark DeCarlo]

So step one is I'm like, you guys have been improvising all week here at, you know, the Gaylord in Orlando. You've been, that's what you do. You do it all day long. So don't be afraid of it. You're doing it already. We're just going to fine tune your tools and make you aware that's what you're doing so you can get better at it. Again, to serve your own personal happiness, if every time you make a decision, the question in your mind is, will eating this candy bar or doing this sit up or going on this walk or kissing this person, is it going to make me happier or less happy? And if you only do the things that you think will make you happier, you'll end up happier. You know, sometimes you'll make judgment, mistakes, but in general, if you make happiness your number one priority, everything else falls into place.

[Greg Kilstrom]

Yeah, yeah. And I mean, I also think if you, if you add on to that of, you know, I think there's a lot of fear of failure. You know, part, part of, part of the fear thing is, is that you're gonna fail. What? And I, I think when leaders are able to teach that, first of all, it's not really failure if you learn. And in, in which case, like, yes, you can, you can really screw something up. And maybe nobody learns from it, I guess, but most of the time, even mistakes like every, yourself and everybody can learn from, then you know, what, what's to fear? You're, you're, you're being afraid of learning something, whether it's what to do or what not to do. Right, right.

[Mark DeCarlo]

Think about this. I guarantee you, you have, you personally, Greg, have learned more from your mistakes and failures than from your successes. Yeah, right.

[Greg Kilstrom]

Yeah.

[Mark DeCarlo]

So being afraid of that process is basically Being afraid of looking stupid, right? And I think years on stand up stages and improv stages, looking incredibly stupid, you know, telling a joke you think is brilliant and it's crickets. You, you realize that you could go out and bomb at the improv and your life is going to stay the same. Nothing bad. You know, you're not killing anybody. You're not blowing a brain surgery. It's, it's not as important as you think it is. And again, going back to one of our first points. If you create a corporate culture that makes it imperative to give everybody a seat at the table and make sure everyone is heard, you know, some people are going to be better at throwing out ideas than other people. There's a, you know, it's a bell curve of talent in that realm. But every once in a while, you know, the low person on the totem pole might lob in something that's brilliant. So if you make them afraid to say the stupid stuff, you'll never get the gems. And listen, if you're coming, if you're, if you're trying to create a new ad campaign or you're, you're pushing out a new marketing program, you're gonna have 10 people spitting ideas for three weeks. Eventually one idea is going to be chosen, right?

[Greg Kilstrom]

Right.

[Mark DeCarlo]

There's tons of bad ideas, tons of unchosen ideas that built the stairway to get you to that idea. And the more input you have, the better the output is going to be. So you have to. Fear is a wasted emotion. It cripples people. It makes them miserable and unhappy. You don't step in front of a bus. But being afraid every day that you wake up that you're going to get hit by a bus is stupid. You're probably not going to be hit by a bus, so why let it cripple your entire life? Fear is, you know, it's, it's, in my opinion, it's the most stupid, wasteful human emotion that everybody has to deal with. So I think by defanging it to a certain degree and understanding that, yeah, you could stand up in a meeting and say something really stupid today. But next Tuesday, if you think you have another stupid idea, maybe it's good. Because if your group is having problems figuring out an idea, it means you gotta move further outside the box to find the answer. And, you know, the farther outside the box you get, the dumber or weirder the ideas might seem. And you don't want to inhibit people from throwing it in. The worst thing they say is, you know what? No but that gave me an idea about this other thing. And that's how, that's how we constructed our sets at Second City. That's how good teams function. Good sales teams, good creative teams, good C level teams. They take the input and then through the, the expertise of all the people involved, winnow out the bad stuff and, and construct the prime idea that then they can go ahead and, and activate as best they can. You know, some people are afraid of doing podcasts.

[Greg Kilstrom]

I know, I know. There are those people that like, write out the answers to their questions and stuff instead of like engaging in a

[Mark DeCarlo]

conversation like this because they're afraid. They're afraid to listen. I mean, you and I didn't discuss anything before we started today, right? I'm sitting here listening to what you're saying and responding, and you're doing the same thing, and I think that makes a more interesting conversation. This is, this is my last note here. Johnny Carson was on the air for 30 years and in my, for my money, he was the best late night show host ever because he didn't have to be the funniest guy. He listened. And when someone went sideways and said something that wasn't on his card, he followed that story. Yeah, and, and you never said, hey, did you see blah, blah, blah on the Tonight show last night? You said, did you see Johnny last night talking to Don Rickles or Frank Sinatra or whoever it may be? He had great ears and understood that when people say something or when they avert their eyes and, you know, don't want to say something, that's where you dig to get the information. And you have to you as a leader. I think it behooves your enterprise to construct a system where everyone feels that they can throw in their ideas, as smart or stupid as it may seem, without fear of mocking or getting fired or feeling stupid. And eventually you'll get better output from everybody. And the flip side of that is all of your employees will be happier and they will love coming to work and they will be more valued employees and they will add more to your bottom line simply by making them happier. It's almost anti capitalist, but in the truest sense it is capitalism because you are empowering people to make good decisions and contribute as best they can to the endeavor.

[Greg Kilstrom]

Yeah. Love it. Well, Mark, thanks so much for joining. I've got one last question for you that I ask everybody here. What do you do to stay agile in your role and how do you find a way to do it consistently?

[Mark DeCarlo]

I talk to strangers. I listen to people When I was traveling with the Travel Channel, I would always go out at night. My crew would stay in the hotel or do whatever, and I would just go out on my own and talk to strangers.

[Greg Kilstrom]

Yeah.

[Mark DeCarlo]

One night we got snowed in in Fargo and it was brutally cold. I don't know what we were doing there in the wind. Oh, my God. And there's like one downtown street.

[Greg Kilstrom]

Wow.

[Mark DeCarlo]

No, it was Grand Forks. It was even further north.

[Greg Kilstrom]

Okay. Yeah.

[Mark DeCarlo]

And the only two places that were open was the VFW hall and the American Legion Hall. So I went into the American Legion hall, walked into the basement, classic old Midwest plains bar, and there was this Asian guy, older Asian guy sitting at the bar, nobody else in there. So I sit down next to him, we start talking. And turns out he was a United States Air Force pilot during the Korean War. And he told me stories about that. He told me stories about how he faced discrimination because he was an Asian guy and we were fighting Asian people and. And it was one of the most interesting conversations of my life. We went to the Trappist monastery in Kentucky and I met an 82 year old monk who had been a professional baseball player, a fighter pilot, a bunch of other jobs before he became a monk. And he was Brother Ray. He was one of the most interesting people I've ever met. So I stay agile by constantly feeding my head with interesting people and interesting perspectives that aren't my own. And you know, it's empathy, putting. You're being learning how to put yourself in the shoes of other people and then put that in the back of your head so that when the situation needs where you have to zig instead of zag, you sort of have a paradigm for that. Hey Greg, it was great talking to you, man. Thanks for having me on the show and continued success on this great podcast and your agility.

[Greg Kilstrom]

Oh, thanks so much. Really appreciate it. Thanks again to Mark DeCarlo for joining the show. You can learn more about Mark and his five strategies for winning life by

[Podcast Host Greg Kilstrom (Intro and Outro)]

following the links in the show notes. Thanks again for listening to the Agile brand brought to you by Tech Systems. If you enjoyed the show, please take a minute to subscribe and leave us a rating so that others can find the show as well. You can access more episodes of the [e-mail] that's theagile brand.com and contact me. If you're interested in consulting or advisory services or are looking for a speaker for your next event, go to www.gregkillstrom.com. that's G R E G K I H L S t r o m.com the Agile brand is produced by Missing Link, a Latina owned, strategy driven, creatively fueled production co. Op. From ideation to creation, they craft human connections through intelligent, engaging and informative content. Until next time, stay curious and stay agile.

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