You’ve seen Improvisational Comedy, I know it. In Improv, a couple of comedians stand on stage and make up a funny story on the fly. One person starts with a simple sentence, like: “Oh! Look at my watch!” and then another follows with something else: “Why is there water running out of it?” The goal is to make the story funny, and it often works. But despite what the audience thinks, Improv doesn’t start from a blank canvas. There are RULES. And we can learn from them. Just as in business, scripts can often sound fake. If you read a phone script to a client who’s inquiring about your rates, they’ll trust you less. That’s why we don’t use call centers. But you also don’t want to have a 90-minute conversation with every client, either. You don’t want to vomit every single detail of your philosophy, practice and science; you want them to take action, because knowledge alone doesn’t make anyone fit. Here’s how the lessons of Improv comedy can help you: First rule of Improv: Don’t disagree. When two performers are building a funny story, they agree to agree. Neither will ever say, “No.” or “You’re wrong,” because that ends a conversation before it goes anywhere. Instead, performers will say “Yes, and…” because they know it’s more important to keep the conversation alive than it is to “win”. When I started as a Personal Trainer, I’d often argue with people who wanted to pay me money. I’d say, “You don’t need to run 10 miles every day to run a marathon! You need to do HIIT. And you don’t need all those carbs either!” I won lots of conversations and lost a lot of money. Instead, I should have approached the conversation the way a train approaches a turn: slowly and incrementally. I should have said, “Yes, you can run ...
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