Dive into the whimsical world of Adam Lee Seitz, Emmy-winning writer and improv maestro! We kick things off with a hearty introduction to this comedic powerhouse whose career spans the glitzy realms of Broadway, TV, and even video games. Adam doesn’t just stop at being a performer; he's here to sprinkle a bit of joy and humor into our lives, and man, does he deliver! His mission? To help us all find that elusive spark of happiness through laughter, storytelling, and the magical art of improvisation. Through his book, *Unscripted Success*, Adam shares nuggets of wisdom that can help not just adults, but also kids, build resilience and confidence in their own unique ways.

As the conversation unfolds, we dig deep into the power of 'yes and,' a fundamental tool in improv that encourages openness and creativity. Adam passionately explains how this principle can transform our everyday interactions, making life a stage where everyone can shine. Why say “no” when you can say “yes” and add a little flair? It’s all about embracing the unexpected and letting go of that pesky fear of judgment. Plus, we explore some of Adam's hilarious anecdotes from his life, including how his ‘hyper-awareness’—a playful rebranding of ADHD—has become his superpower. We get to hear about the delightful chaos that ensues when he forgets simple tasks, like bringing water back from the kitchen, only to return with a banana instead!

But it’s not all fun and games; Adam brings a heartwarming message about teaching kids to embrace their quirks and recognize their worth. We discuss the importance of instilling confidence in the younger generation, encouraging them to ask for what they want and to understand that it’s okay to make mistakes. After all, even the greatest baseball players only hit about 30% of the time! This episode is a joyous mix of laughter, learning, and the reminder that every moment is an opportunity for connection. So come join us, and let’s create some smiles together!

A gift from our guest: Adamsietz.com/sumitgiveaway

This link will take you to the downloadable e-book that tries to answer the question”What is funny?”

Bringing Education Home is an educational podcast brought to you by Kristina and Herb Heagh-Avritt.

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I now have the pleasure of introducing Adam Lee Sietz.

Adam is an Emmy award winning writer, performer, best selling author, speaker, comedian and master improviser whose 35 year career spans Broadway, television, film, radio and video games.

Author of Unscripted Success, the Power of Improvisation, Improvisational Thinking, Adam helps audiences build confidence, resilience, communication skills and creative courage through humor, storytelling and his signature say yes and mindset. Known for his energy, authenticity and unforgettable stories, Adam's mission is simple. To put smiles on the faces and help others do the same.

Welcome Adam. It is a pleasure to have you here today. Thank you so much for joining us.

Oh, my pleasure, my pleasure. Absolutely.

Yeah, I was excited to bring you on because that whole bio that we just read, right. You know, the whole TV, media career, etc. But then the whole, you know, underneath that, how do we make people say smile? The. Yes.

And how do we help our kids bring this forward, our families bring this forward. So we're looking forward and building great future. So thank you for being here, Adam. It is going to be fun.

My pleasure. It's really, it's really my, my, my new purpose is to really get around and get to schools. I've been doing corporate work on the side for years.

And it's fun, it pays well.

But the value I get back from it is not anywhere near comparison to when, you know, I'm basically telling kids to get out of your head, you're okay just the way you are. You know, I was labeled attention deficit hyperactive disorder. I don't like that.

I re diagnosed myself with hyper awareness and it's kind of, I, it's been a superpower in certain ways and it's been, you know, it's definitely not an easy thing to deal with. My brain works a little differently. Neurodiversity is, you know, what makes us all different. But mine works in certain ways.

Well, I mean, my wife and say, hey honey, can you, can you get me some water while you go in the kitchen? Yeah, absolutely. Five minutes later I come back with a banana. For me, that's her life.

So, honey, did you forget the water?

Yeah, no, I walk in and go, and turn around and go back.

But yeah, when you're walking back, you're going, water, water, water, water, water, water. I got it, I got it.

Yay.

I've never done that. I have no idea what you're talking about.

Yeah, yeah, no, it's a, it's a way of life. But, you know, I've, I've learned, you know, different methods and ways to cope and to adapt and. And to work. And that's.

I kind of wrote the book originally. It was just like, to tell a story, and I've got a bunch of.

So it's really nothing that's, you know, like you have to read chapter one, then two, then three. You look at a title of something, you could just open that up.

And I like the audiobook myself, because I did the audiobook and I did all the different voices. And, you know, it's fun I had. When I was done, I realized I can do whatever I want. It's mine. So I added, like, people in the background.

If I'm talking about someone, I had them in the background doing whatever. You know, we just had a lot of fun. So. And right now, my goal is really to just let people know that you use this. There's a little computer in there.

It's a little mushy thing that's called the brain. I call it your boss. Your, your. Your. Your.

It's.

Your brain's operating super system is really what's happening. It would get you wherever you got to go. It tells you what you need to know.

It brings up stuff that you have no clue is even in there until you need it. And there it is. Some call it, God, the universe, whatever it is, you just tap in. If you're tapping in, it's right there in front of you.

And as an improviser, it's all about focusing on what's happening right now. Listening, watching, feeling, and trusting that something. And whatever it is, don't question it. Go.

And once I got to that point and that level, everything changed.

And I got to say that the skill, that tool to have, that comfortability with mental agility to deal with whatever's coming at you without having a clue of what's coming at you is a great skill to have. And being a kid that had learning disabilities and was in the. In this.

In the special education class, and then I actually left the school and went to a private school that was for children with learning disabilities. No one knew that, of course, because I told everyone. It was like a Rutgers prep. A cut I made up. I lied. I was embarrassed. I wasn't too happy.

But as we. As we go, things have changed in now I'm okay exactly the way I am. So.

So I'm 56 years old. I hurt my head. Life fell apart. Weird stuff happens inside my brain. So neurodivergent. Yeah. Is there anybody that's neuronormal anymore? Just.

Just curious, because we're all individuals. But it's like through. Through that process. It's like right now, for. Actually, for many years, I've been working on meditation.

The last couple of weeks, different things have clicked. After working on it for years, you hear something that you've heard for 10 years and finally you hear it in a different way.

It's like, oh, is that what that means? And then suddenly you're. You're around you. The same thing you've been doing is having different results because of a mind shift. Now I'm 56 years old.

I right now am doing the Onopono literally about four or five hours a day. She's like getting irritated with. With me saying, you know, I'm sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you. I love you continuously.

But my mind just rattles and just goes all sorts of places. And so that clearing of the mind, I mean, I have to spend hours a day on it just to maintain because of the. Of the stuff.

Taking that to kids, taking that to our younger audience, that is so important that they get these tools and hopefully start hearing these words and planting these seeds so that they don't have to wait till the world falls apart before they start doing these things. Because even as I do these things, it's not about having better rewards. It's about feeling okay.

Absolutely.

That's.

That's what all we want. We want money. Why? So we're happy. Because we could get stuff and buy stuff. We want love. Why? Because it'll make us happy. All of it.

We kind of do a lot of crazy things because we think it's going to make us happy. But happy is right here, right now. It's not tomorrow. It's not yesterday or a moment ago. Sorry, guys, I. I can't be.

And the way it happens more often is when you're actually paying attention and you're focusing on. Especially to the little things the opposite offers and opportunities that we miss. I can say I can't talk about anyone else.

I can say I missed multiple. Could I have been on Saturday Night Live at some point? I believe I probably could have if I wasn't too caught up thinking about other stuff and.

And ego and status and. I wanted to be celebrity. I wanted to be rich in fame. And I got the fame. All that's. It's lame. It's a bunch of fantasy.

After doing Broadway and having people want me to sign their Playbill, and then I'd go and have lunch, and people would stop at our table and say, you're wonderful. Not like, I'm. Like, they just. They just saw me 10 minutes ago. They were 10ft away from me on stage.

I'm recognizable at the point, but I got the sense that, wow, maybe. I mean, maybe that's.

I don't want that because I started working with some people that were famous, and you could not walk down the street without 10 people stopping them. Take a selfie, they think they know you. They want to have conversation. Oh, can you talk to my wife? Let me. I mean, it's literally amazing.

I got nothing like that, but just that little taste really let me know that, you know what I do, like, my. My life to just be. I could do what I want to do, be where I want to be.

And I kind of step more from Broadway or on camera, like, whatever, and did more voice work. Because with voice work, I could. I'm doing it out of my house often now. You know, when Covid came, everything came to the house. And now I do.

I have a green screen. I could shoot things for on camera stuff. But most of the stuff is voices, you know, from. I play the man above in the one below.

I've kind of covered all these different things, and I always wanted to. As a kid, I wanted to be a cartoon, and I found out I couldn't be animated. But you can actually. There's the voices that do it.

So it started at a really young age, a really young age. I found that the humor and these abilities to do voices and just silliness and just that. I never knew improv was a thing.

I thought it was the name of Bud Friedman's comedy club evening at the Improv. I didn't know that the improvisation was a play. I didn't know it was an actual art form.

And once I found it and realized that, oh, I don't have to write my jokes, I. I've always been funny at the table. That's. That's what this is.

And, you know, then again, once I got rid of the ego and that need to look good up there and not do what's necessary and trust, everything changed, you know, and often about it.

Let's give our parents a strategy right now. Right? How can we help? Either explain this to the kiddos who are listening.

How can we help them understand when things don't go quite right, that it'll be okay.

Give the parents a strategy that they can kind of help their kiddo with so that they don't start building those, you know, oh, regrets and oh, I don't fit in and those kinds of things that a lot of us.

Yeah. When you go out to your schools, what is, what is your biggest talking point that has like the most impact on your kids?

Ask for what you want. Number one, if you don't ask, nothing's going to happen. And if you do ask, nothing still might happen. Or in my situation, you can end up on Broadway.

Because I never took an acting class in my life. I was, I was an improviser, did some stand up and, and moved on. And the key is, is your parents who just let your kids know that they're okay.

They're okay just the way they are. They don't have to be anyone else. Now, fortunately, I'm an actor, so I can be someone else if I need to be someone else.

But the truth is, is I'm still me.

And anything, whatever it is, we all have some kind of a skill or something that makes us special, that makes us feel good, forget about the rest of the world that we like doing. And again, as a hyper aware person, for me, if it's not something I'm interested in, it's going to be really hard for you to get me to do it.

And that's really how it was as a child in school. I was very distracting. I, I had to be.

Now that I teach kids improv one day a week, I understand what it must have been to deal with me because I was bouncing off the walls. I was difficult. I was, I'd get angry when someone teased me. I remember all the, I remember so much.

But it's like, it's like a story from far away because it's just a, another world. But the key is again, to talk to your child, let them know they're okay. And right and wrong. You know what?

Right can be wrong and wrong could be right. You know, and sometimes, you know, it depends on who you're dealing with and how they choose to make it.

Sometimes there is no wrong and sometimes there is no right.

Right. Well, you know, but sometimes, again, people wanting status or whatever want to manipulate. So I mean, for great example, I, I do name this song.

So that's Barney or Twinkle, Twinkle little Star.

Twinkle little Star right now. No, it was Baa Baa Black sheep. Have you any wolf? So I'll do it again and then you'll say, oh, that was Ba ba ba.

No, that was A, B, C, D, E, F, G, it's the same song. But I could make you wrong by just saying, no, that's wrong. You were right, but you're wrong, because I'm making you wrong.

And there's so often people do that to each other. And I started something called Comediation. It's really kind of at the bottom, right. I just literally came up with the idea.

I have a website that's up there. I have all this stuff, and nothing's being done because I'm just too busy doing other things.

But the concept is for those who can't tell someone something, they need to tell them or they're. They're really uncomfortable doing it, or there's a battle that's constantly going on. It could be simple, it could be big.

And we mediate it through humor. So it's comedy plus mediation, comediation. We turn your conflict into comedy. And it's basically.

There's a game that we used to do called Day in a Life.

And what we do is we find out what's going on, and we hear from you, and then we hear from you, and then we sit down, we show you exactly how you look like in this situation from here. And you get to see how the reaction. All this stuff that you might not see because it's all behind the scenes. You don't.

You're not in her head, she's not in your head. So these kind of things. So. So that's something that I. We used to do with. With my group was called comedy sports. We do comedy courts.

And it's the same kind of thing. We help you resolve situations. So with the improvisational mindset is. Is to stay now, and the things that happen now, deal with them now.

Like when something happens with. Between me and my wife, when we get upset, I'm not someone that's gonna sit there and. And stew. Now I'm gonna say, whoa, whoa, whoa. Hey, whoa.

Tell me something. I have a feeling. I don't. I don't know if this would do, but you know what just came up for me? I feel like. Like shame. I feel all this stuff.

Were you trying to. Was your intention to make me feel like shame? Shame? Oh, no, no, no. That was.

And when you put it right there, then they could clarify exactly what's going on, and you can clarify what's going on. But that. That lingering stuff that we do are mostly with the people we love and the people who are we closest with.

We pull this crap on each other, and it's all because of control and what I like the angel and the devil. The angel is the answers, the answers you want.

You ask a question, the Lord above the universe, what you, your own boss gives you the answer you want. And the devil is the manipulation that we as humans try to do to make sure that this actually kind of fits more.

I know that try to manipulate and maneuver it to come to the way our control and what we want. That's just a good analyt. A way to show what it is that I'm talking about that metaphor up in that stuff, you know.

And so far when I'm really upset or anxious or fearful, it's because I'm thinking about something that's making me anxious and fearful or upset. So for me, I just changed the channel. Now I can't just be oblivious to things that are important, that must be done.

But if I'm going to be pissed off at something that happened earlier today and it's done, it's over, it's not. I can't reverse it. I can't go back. I could spend as much time as I want on it, but that's all a pure, pure fantasy thinking and waste of time.

And as I get older and older time, I want to highlight, it's very.

Important, valuable, and I want to highlight. Part of what you just said right there was like, bring it up when it's happening right now.

If you are completely angry, out of control, yes, you might need to go take a break and then come back. But don't let it be three or four or five minutes.

Because especially between like siblings, they're constantly, oh, they're out to get me because they're the brother or the mean sister or the whatever. But if they actually talked and did what you exactly just said was like, did you really mean to make me feel bad right there?

Were you really trying to make me upset? And you get in their head and they're gonna say, no, I was just trying to be funny. Or I was just.

Well, no, I just thought, yeah, that was mean. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to say that.

But you know what it does is it also, when someone's doing stuff, it just, it helps to diffuse and it also really puts it right back in the person's face that just threw something at you that made you feel a specific way and you don't have to throw it like you, you, you say, whoa, whoa, whoa. You know, just. So some just came up for me when you said that. And I don't know if this is, if this is what you meant, but you know, and clarify.

Because so often. And my wife is a perfect example. She loves to, you know, someone says. And she's thinking. And only. It's like none of that will exist.

It's all fantasy land when you're getting upset about something. It's not just my wife. It's. I do it too, actually. I have a story. Worrying Airplane and Joe Airplane is. Basically was me. It was. I'm late. I have.

I have a car service that's picking me up. I'm not here. I got to go. My wife is going to pick me up at the airport so we can get there early enough to catch the end of my son's baseball game.

All this stuff. And the car is late to pick me up. And this. And I'm. Now I'm losing it. I'm losing my. All this stuff. What happened? I got. I made my flight.

I got there, My wife picked me up. I made the game. There was nothing. All of this upset was pure waste and false because I do that to her.

It's like something will be going wrong or we'll be. And all of a sudden it's like all this worry and angst, and then.

We can't find it. Where is it?

And it's like, so how was all of that? Hours of worrying? Did you enjoy that? You know, it's like, you know, all the way at the end until you actually have the problem.

You don't have a problem.

They're a lot shorter. Now, my. My outburst, because I'm still. I still, like, I've made it very clear when I first met her, I'm the worst backseat driver on the planet.

Know it before, know it now, because you will. You'll hate me in the car. I'll make you nuts. And I do. Because if it's something I see, well, hey, get left, Lane. Get left. You're going to miss the.

Whatever it is. I make her absolutely nuts. But she also understands. She accepts that because I have no power over those kind of things.

There's certain things about me. It has to come out. People don't understand these invisible differences that people have.

And it could be like, in my situation, I have an ADHD brain, or my brain is. I could be talking to you. And over here, I hear the lawnmower going on over here. My cat might be over here. I might be in a restaurant.

There's a kid right over your head going, right. And I hear the story about the. The mother and father were talking about their daughter that didn't come home last Night. What's going. But it's.

I could. It's all there. So it's difficult to just stay on the one thing. So I've learned that through. Through this improvisational thing.

And also certain things. I have a thing I call Larry as my personal life coach. And it's really. I just.

I had a kid that I was coaching was adhd, and he said, how have you become. How did you, like, be successful? Well, I can't even, like, you know, just quiet it down. I was like, well, you know, I have a lot of lists and alarms.

I have alarms going off all day long.

Yeah.

And when I do the alarm, I put the reminders. I do reminders, or I do all five of them. 10 Minutes, 20 minutes, an hour, one day to. Until it says, you can't put any more. Because I will.

Literally, we are. We're gonna. We're gonna have this podcast at 2:00'. Clock. At 4, at 1:54, I'll be like, okay, we've got this going. And at 1:56, Cat. Oh, man.

I was supposed to that it. So list alarms, reminders. And then I repeat it all the time. You gotta repeat it because if you don't keep doing it, you'll forget to do it.

So every single time I get an appointment, I do it. I do my I alarm. I do my. My. My calendar. I put all the little reminders and a repetition. So I had LARR written down on a piece of paper.

Lists, alarms, reminders, repetition. I was like, lar. Larry. Larry. Yes. Why? There it is. Perfect. Say yes. Stop saying no thing. I was afraid of. Of roller coasters my whole life.

21, 22, I'm in Busch Gardens visiting my friend. He's at William and Mary University. We go, we're all hanging out. They're all going on the Big Bad Wolf. And I'm like, oh, like, come on, come on. Okay.

Yeah. And we're going. And we start going and we get closer and. And now. Now.

Huh?

I'm sweating. I'm a. Guys, you know, I think I ate something. I'm not feeling good. They just tore me apart. So I got on the ride and literally I'm.

I'm in peril until we go. And when we first went down, I loved it. It was glorious. It was amazing how I blew all these times. It was right around that same time.

I was like, I'm gonna get on a swing. I haven't been on the swing in a long time. I loved swinging when I was a little boy, and that was Big.

You can't get on a swing, but you know, I found a swing.

Wow.

Wow, that's cool. And things that you don't do when you get older, you stop doing these things or you limit yourself or you, you minimize or you censor.

That's the biggest thing about the improv brain when you're working at it as a performance level, is you censor the stuff. You're gonna, you're gonna miss out, you know, depending upon the show, you have an audience.

You know, especially when I deal with kids, I start beginning and they love this. No pee, pee, poo poo, cocka doo doo. Keep it above the belt, out of the toilet, no one gets hurt. There are no weapons. Are we ready? Cool.

And you know, without a doubt, within the first three people, poop, poopy, head, poop, something silly. We used to put a brown paper bag on their head. The brown bag, foul.

But I don't do that to children anymore because they don't like when you put bags on kids heads. Yeah, they don't like, especially the plastic ones.

I mean that would be really bad.

I gotta say.

My friend and I, his wife had a rule that whenever she was around, we had to stop talking about butts and noses because somehow our conversations always got around to again the poopy or the snot. And so, so it's, it's not, it's not unnormal. It wasn't necessarily intentional.

We, we reach around 13, 14 mentality wise in certain aspects and it, and we could, you know, we're, of course we're responsible. We make a living, we take care of it. But the cell thing is like, you know, we're still boys.

Yeah. Hopefully you get older.

The cool dog look, boobies, look, candy. It's all the same squirrel. Exactly. My friend Peter Shankman, he's a great guy. He wrote a great book called Faster than Normal.

Anyone else that might be in that ADHD world, get the book and listen to his podcast. Also did the FTN Faster than Normal podcast and he, he's the one, he called it faster than normal. His brain is faster than normal.

I was like, ooh, hyper awareness. And that's how we connected. I had known him somehow, but he, he wrote a great book and he does, in the book, as you're reading, he goes squirrel.

And that means like he's going to go totally left, left turn. Which is just the way I, I do a lot of work with, as I said, entrepreneurship and sales.

And the book, I put it out and it was Listed under sales and selling, which was pretty cool because it did well. It hit number six in this. Of the sales and selling. I was like, wow. But it's really more of a motivational. If I can do that. I was 425, 26 pounds.

I lost. I was divorced, I was broke, I was miserable. I did not believe in myself. I was depressed, all this stuff.

And then the improv came in and everything started to change because I couldn't stay in my head thinking about the crap that's making me feel bad. You know, I like to say, when somebody's in a real bad state, I say, think of people throwing cow. Cow pucks. Cow poop. The people actually do this.

They actually pay a fee to join this competition. Then they go and they. They find the best poop. They have to find the best cow chicks. They call them cow pie chucking.

Who can throw the cow chip further. And there's videos of it. So in my head, anytime I'm like, oh, wait, people throw cow poop.

That's pretty funny.

Change of state. Change of state. The mind. Like Tony Robbins, I remember he just go, just do something like that, and it'll physically change what's going on in there.

For me, it's just. I just go, right to toss some cow poop.

I've been going into the ho. No pono. Yeah, because those four statements, it's weird.

There's four statements, and sometimes I, like, get them out of order, and sometimes, like, which one's next? And so those four statements again, stop the looping, stop everything else.

And they're statements that help me move forward in life instead of getting stuck in the thoughts. But what I have to do is I have to start recognizing that I'm having that thought, the awareness. And then I have to interrupt it.

And so for our kids, the sooner we teach them how, it's like, you know what? That's just a thought. That's not actually real. That's not who you are.

So I have a whole chapter about what is a thought or the anatomy of a thought. Because what happens is something happens.

You go through the files, all these billions of files in your boss, and while it's doing it, it finds something that kind of matches what just happened. File up emotion. Come to any field, and it's all happening about a file that you're pulling up from something in the past.

There is a fraction of second where you can go, it's not now. There's not. And take that moment also, as you were talking about, you know, where you got to notice you're doing it. Sometimes I don't know when I'm.

And someone else might feel like, man, this guy doesn't give me an opportunity to say a word. Does he even care about me? You know what? No, it has nothing to do with that. I don't even know what's happening. I'm just. I'm passionate.

I'm excited about something, so I've created something. And what's interesting is this is one thing that I get more fun feedback on, and I never thought I would. It's a safe word.

And my safe word is fire truck. So if we're in the middle of something and I give this to. I give this to my students, I give this to anyone.

If I'm going to spend more than, like, the next hour with you and we're going to be together doing a project or whatever, I let you know that you're welcome to go firetruck. And what it does is it reminds me, whoa, you're doing that thing. And I need. I need a moment. I need to get in here.

Or we've gone so far off track of what we need to get done and what you. You know, and it doesn't hurt my feelings. It goes, oh, thanks. I'm doing that thing, you know, and it works.

Yes, that's safe word.

Yeah. I have something called transition anxiety.

A couple of my friends know this, and when I'm over at their house, after a while, they look at me and go, herb, go home. And I'm like, oh, thank you. And I leave, because it's like I'm waiting for that. It's like I'm looking and get it. And so, yeah, there's.

There's some weird things. And so, yeah, I love what you're talking about. And it's, again, really important for. For children to.

To get those skills, those strategies, those things that we can teach them and that will help them so they don't end up being labeled the weird one or the obnoxious one or the whatever. Right? Because we don't want those kinds of feelings and conditions.

Labels suck. Labels.

One of the things that I wanted.

To say, you don't even realize it because, again, as I said before, the. The invisible differences. You have no idea what's going on in the other kid's head. I did. I did a. A bullying tour to schools, and I did this.

This whole thing, and I'd come a little earlier and I'd see if I can get a few kids that were up to doing A little make believe performance kind of thing. And it would basically be that there's this kid who's, his hair is messy, his clothes aren't so great and people call him it tease them all the time.

And then they're all laughing and then someone comes up, goes, do you know his mom's in the hospital? Do you know that his, his dad and his brother are the only one?

And his dad has to go to work to get home to make enough money to pay for the hospital bills. So he has to get his little brother to school every morning and then he has to run from the middle school here to the high school every single day.

And, and he barely, he forgets his lunch. Do you know what's going on? And his mom is sick in the hospital and they're like, oh yeah, I know. It's like, yeah.

So that there's so much that people judge. People get so caught up. I had somebody show up this past week.

I had a big party and I had some work that I needed done and I was like, I put out on Facebook, I said, hey, anyone who has a rake, I have a couple of rakes, but if you want to push some wood chips, I got 20 bucks an hour for you. And a guy shows up at like 7:30. I was, no one's coming until 8.

And I'm sitting outside getting, and his hair is all kind of wacky and he's wearing like an old ripped up shirt and clothes. And it turns out my initial thoughts were, oh boy. But in the end a godsend that this man came.

He knew, he knew so many things that I would never have thought of. And what we do, you know, if we do that and then we, I have all these pavers. We made a paving a paver path.

It would cost so much money for someone and he was just a blessing to just pop up in my life. I've now, he's come back a few times and I'll never lose him. And he brings his son who's like 6ft and 12 years old.

So it's, it's again, you never know. And when I, if you're, if you're aware and you're open to these opportunities and these offers and things and you don't shut them down so quick.

It's amazing what happens like again with my dad, if I didn't, I said no for weeks. And then right before the show I had the same thing with this, with the roller coaster happen.

I'm like, dad, you know, I'm not feeling good I, I, I'm gonna screw this up, man. He's like, kiddo, you know, I could do it. I got that. I said, you've done it yourself. Don't worry about it. Go sit down. I love you. It's all right.

It's like, okay, I'll do it. And everything, everything changed from that moment, you know? And again, it's a, that's a yes moment. If I didn't say yes, it never my.

This whole life would not be. I would still be, you know, hawking people on the telephone. You know, a producer, a television producer is a glorified name for a salesman.

That's all it is a really a good schmoozer that goes there.

So let's jump to the yes. And because we have a few minutes left, I want to make sure that we talk about that a little bit more.

The yes and strategy, the yes and yes and mindset that you have in your bio. Tell us a little bit about that and what parents can do with that.

Well, no puts the brakes on, you know, or yes, you could say, if you say yes and add something to it, it starts to build. That's in the improv and scene building kind of thing.

But in general also, it came to that because you could always politely decline after you get a little taste or see what's going on. But if you don't even open the door to look what's going on, you missed it. And then the next day, say, gosh, did you know what happened?

What happened? Oh, what's his name happened? Shaquille o', Neal, who knows what it is? And you, oh, you missed it. You missed it, or you don't even know.

You have no idea. Something you missed and what was going.

And you would have loved it, but you didn't choose to say yes to it because again, fear, anxiety, all the stuff comes up. Say yes and again, then ask what I was saying before, but asking for what you want.

If I never asked the first time, it was a. I had done a video game and I asked to read for a different character, and then she, the cast, she said, no, I wouldn't ask. And then when I walked in, I said, can I? And they said, yeah, go ahead, read it.

And then I ended up not I booked that, but I ended up doing them both. And then when I called to say, hey, guess what? She said, oh, what are you doing? And she said, I got this reading. Oh.

She gave me a script, and I saw them, and there was like one line, but there was another character, and I'm like, hey, can I read for this other cat? Well, yes, you can. You're gonna be. And it turned into. I had no idea it was for. It was a reading. I had no idea it's gonna be a. A Broadway show.

They like. They're gonna make you an offer. What do you. I never took an acting class in my life. I was an improviser. I was a salesman.

So I was my dad, you know, I learned a lot from him. He was a performer. We're all performing. People don't realize when you're performing, you know, whether it's your.

Whether you're an attorney and you have a judge and a jury or a teacher and you have a classroom, you gotta keep them. When you're a comedian, you gotta win them. You got that? Likability is real important. If they like you, they'll listen and they'll pay attention.

And if you could get them to smile now they're not just. They want to hear what's coming next. You get them to laugh. I say you could sit in their lap and close the deal.

And the way to get that I like to call taking the scenic route. And it's not paying attention to just what we're talking about business wise.

But if there's something else that pops up or beforehand, you could do research and find out about anything and everything you can and put it in your pocket where it might come off as spontaneous, but. Oh, he's a Met fan too. Okay, there we go. Yeah, we could both commiserate on how much they suck right now or something.

Whatever it is, you're able to commune and create a relate. You begin this. Hats of relationships begin about talking about stuff that have nothing. Nobody likes to be sold. Everyone likes to buy stuff.

So that's why. I guess it was in the sales part. But the.

The yes and is is the core principle of improv because you try not to ask too many questions to try to make statements. It's okay to ask a question if you could kind of. If you could answer it yourself or it just happens.

But because somebody asks a question and no comes. So the. The big. The big thought of the yes and is because once it's oh, yes and let's go to the party. Yes and. And let's. Let's. Let's bring a cake. Yes.

Oh, and Lucy will be so happy if we. If we actually do like the Taylor Swift on it. She'd love that. Oh, yes and oh, we should actually make some music with Taylor. Oh, we should get a Bed.

And it's building. It's building. No, let's not do that. Just shuts it all down. And when it comes to. When it comes to parents and dealing with kids and.

No, no, no, no, no. We have to say no a lot once in a while. If it's not going to. If they're not going to fall off a cliff and hurt themselves, give them a yes.

Let them do something and let them find out for themselves that, oh, you know what? That probably wasn't a good idea. Most greatest.

Yes.

And we learned. Yes. And mistakes are very good because mistakes are where you find out how you screwed up. So, you know, it's okay to mess up once in a while.

You know that. And then I give the great example. Major League baseball. You hit three balls out of 10, and you do this your whole career. You're in the hall of Fame.

You hit two, you don't ever even hit the minor leagues. You can't be a professional baseball player. The percentages of 0.16, a batting average of.305 compared to.260. It's. It's ridiculous.

When you look at it. There's that little tiny window. I've been on Broadway and you know.

When you're looking at your batting average,.

I've been up already three times. Where does that happen? It happens when you put yourself on your open and you're watching and you jump in. You know, that's where stuff cool happened.

Jump in the pool. Oh, it's cold. Okay. You live.

And when you're looking at your batting average, the reason it's 0.3 is because you're looking at how often you hit the ball. Now you. If you look at it the other way, you know your batting average is 0.7. You're missing 7 out of 10 times.

If you're focusing 7 out of 10 times more.

Exactly.

Yeah. So again, that's a. That's. That's another great analogy.

Oh, and there was something else I was going to say in there, but it slipped out through the fog. That happens a lot as well. Yeah.

If I can't find, all I need to do is put one word that I know and search and it finds the note that I need.

Yeah. Something that goes along really well with the. Yes. And is the. Or better. So better or better? Because you say kids have to ask for what they want.

Yeah. Or Better.

So when you ask, it's like, I want this bike or better. Ooh, I want this cake or better. That goes so much along well with the yes and or better.

So absolutely though, that, that tool when you were saying that is like, wow, that just goes. So that's almost the start of yes and or better.

And then my favorite one is yet I just can't do it yet or I don't understand yet. It's that forward thinking of I can learn. I just don't have it right here right now.

That's true. I mean, I, I, I could not imagine as a little boy that I would have been able to do all the cool, fun stuff that I've been able to do.

And it's like when you, when you can find something that you really love to do, it's like, I don't work, I mean, I really don't work today. I, I, two and a half hour. Not even two and a half because two of the, two of my periods, they didn't show up because it was a carnival.

And there's other times where I'll be doing something in there, having a dance party with bubbles. And I'm going to try to battle that. No, go play in the bubble. So, okay, run again.

You gotta, you gotta be flexible, you know, and I'm there to do something, but if they're not there, I'm not gonna be like, where am I now? I'll just look at my phone and watch them play in the bubbles. But again, put yourself out there. Get, get, get in, get in, get in the mix, you know?

But finding my niece just moved up here. She didn't know anybody and she's really into something called flow. It's like a big, you spin this like cloth that's like shaped like a star.

And she's really, really impressive at it. So she put something up on Facebook like, hey, we're gonna do a thing at the park, Central park, whatever. First week, five people showed up.

Second week, 11 people showed up. This week, 72 people showed up. And she said, I have to cancel it because if I have more than 50, I need a permit and I don't know what to do. So.

And within three to four weeks, she's built this thing. My son. I might start a drum circle. You love to play the conga, but do something. Same thing for anyone out there.

If you have a passion about something, go for it. I had no idea that improv and just that the games, the, the quick wit kind of games, like whose line is it anyway kind of stuff. That's. It just.

It changed everything. And the confidence is built, your creativity is built. The comedy and the humor. You find the ways.

As a giveaway, if anyone wants, go to adamsites.com that's Adam S I-E-T Z.com summit giveaway and you could download a free book. It's called the Funny is a Factor. And what I did was I was doing a summit recently and they said, do you have a giveaway?

And I was like, let me think about it. And then I. So I went in my book and I took a chapter that's called what is funny?

And I pulled it out and I expanded it and it kind of gives you the tried and true methods and why it is that people laugh at that. What was it that happened? The, the, the reversal, the law of three, the self deprecation, the accents, the characters that. Just changing your voice.

Like, even if you're just talking about your mother, you don't have to do great impressions. But when you change your voice and become the character, when you're telling stories, telling stories is powerful. People love to listen to a joke.

People love to listen to a good story. And I had no idea until I was telling some stories. When someone says, you should be a speaker, I'm like, what do you mean?

Like the way you tell that story. Then it was the Friars Club and I tell a joke and another comedian came up to.

He said and showed me the same joke and his listen, I was about to tell that joke, but I have to tell you, I would never have told it the way you, the way you changed it. And I be. And instead of just talking about it, I became the Three Cat. And it was just so much fun.

It was one of the most validating experiences as somebody who's funny to have other comedians say, wow, the way you did. And it was, it was cool.

But yeah, Adam, this has been so amazing self deprecating.

And getting a laugh is like, yeah, whenever I'm, whenever I'm being funny and people start laughing, it's like, oh, it's so much more pleasant when people aren't pointing at me when they're laughing.

That's how again, that's how you become friends. You get somebody to giggle or laugh. It's over. It's over. And that's what.

When I deal with the corporate situation, I've got the CEO and the executive staff and we have the sales crew, then we have the people that work in the cafeteria, then the guy who scrapes the gum off the floor. And they're all in the room and I'm doing this big workshop and I'm speaking and then I do interaction.

So we're gonna do stuff and we actually see that the guy who scrapes the stuff off the floor, his creativity in his mind, where he could go, is so far more creative than the CEO who's all wonky and widgets and numbers and, you know, so I do a lot of work with young CEOs also that are uncomfortable dealing with power and being a leader of people that are older than you. This could be my father and my grandfather. I got to. I'm their boss, you know, it's. So it's a CEO comedy crash course again.

It lets you, let you understand that it's okay to just lead from within, not from above. It's the same thing. Improv is a wee thing. It's not a me thing. And the truth is, is life is a we thing. It's not a me thing.

When you're caught up in the me, me, me, me, me, which this entire my generation and most of the world today, it's all about, how many likes did you get? Did you. How many followers do you have? And to me, I have. I have none of that stuff. I don't care about it. And it pisses a lot of people off.

Well, you know, you're going to come on the pod. We'd really love if you have some people. You know, I was like, well, don't bring me on your podcast because that's not what it's about.

I don't, I don't. In fact, I specifically preach against likes and follows because they're not important. And when you make them important, that's where upset comes in.

And you've just created your own upset because you were caught up on a somebody clicked and my daughter said called ratio, where you put a post up and someone who made comic comments get more likes than your actual post.

So the power of life is in the question, not in the answer. Because when you get to the answer, you're at the end. So as you question, the question is the.

And more Or.

Or. Or better. And so in improv is keeping that question open. That's. That's what it's all about. And this.

Everyone should take it in broadcast, always open.

And that's where the power is.

So this has been a great conversation and I'm almost scared to ask this question, but is there something you would have liked to have talked about today that we didn't get to and you're like, oh, man, I wish I should. Should we actually ask that today? No.

Just kidding. Really, I kind of. As I said, there's no what was meant to happen. What happened. You know, we did what we did and I kind of get the point again.

Adam cites it. What's cool is I now have Adam S. IE and se E. I say you spell it wrong, you'll still get to me. But the book to get that free.

But you got to go the Ietz.

Yeah.

But what's cool is I'm rebuilding my whole website because my website is like it starts with. In a world where laughter and I'm like doing a movie thing. And Adam Seitz comes to your thing. He's been in movies, tv and it's like too much. Yeah.

Now it's more about. Not about me, but hey, what can I do for you?

And.

And I think I might be able to help you with this particular thing. And it's going more towards schools and it's not. I don't. The dollar is definitely not what's driving me anymore.

I've been fortunate enough where I'm not worrying about bills as much as I used to and now like the schools speaking engagement, they have me listed on the speaker's bureau and the ethan at like 7,500 to $10,000 for me to come and do a speaker engagement. How many people are going to actually spend that kind of money? And I'm like, you are completely knocking out my. The rest of the market.

I don't care about a 75. $10,000. If this school can handle 500 and they'll make sure they could get me there, that's fine.

And depending upon what it is, if they can't handle anything, but they'll get me there, feed me, get me home. I'm still willing, I'm flexible. Because again, it's more about to me is getting those minds.

The more faces, the more heads I get, the more smiles I put on faces. So when I found out that my Simon Sinek. Ever hear of him? Great, amazing speaker.

He has this book called Start with why and one of the things I did is one of the processes will find out what is my why, what is my purpose. And it was after a long, exhausting experience and. And going through the process, putting smiles on faces and helping others to do the same.

So now the more people I get, the more smiles, the more they can spread it and so on and so on and so they compound. So that's kind of it. Reach out anyone I'm always available.

I have a little that calendar thing on my website now, so I don't care who you are, you could be Joe the Bricklayer. And you have a question that you want to ask, go in there, click and pick. I'll give you 15 minutes of my life anytime. If it's open, I'm there.

So reach out.

Yep. And all of that stuff is down in the show notes. Thank you, Adam. This has been fun and illuminating and yeah, thank you for being here today.

It was a great show.

Thank you for being here. One of the things that our people are missing in life is that humanity. And that's the connection, that is the humor that is these things.

Everybody thinks it's, oh, we have the money, the job, the fame, but these connections, laughter, this humanity, this being human, and that's, that's the out of the box. That's what we need to get back to.

Less judgment, less expectation. Your life will be so much better if you just. If you're kind.

The older, the older you get, the easier it is to understand this. The younger you are, the harder it is to get involved in it. So. So balance that, the better. So thank you for being here.

You are a hero making the world laugh. Doing this for our children going out there, you know, that's what heroes do. So thank you very much.

Well, hey, I want to come to your school. Get in touch, reach out, anyone again, even if they're homeschooling kind of things. I know a lot of stuff.

Reach out also, because there are a number of things that you can do with your kid that are improvisationally based in their quick wit kind of thing where you can't really think. You just gotta hear, listen, react, and go. There are a number of games in the book. There are a bunch listed in Improv Encyclopedia online.

You could find a hundreds of thousands of games. Dive in, people. Jump in. Awesome.

Thank you. All right, audience, we thank you so much for being here with us today.

Make sure you're connecting with our experts and remember that we are raising happy, healthy and successful kids by creating little humans who know how to connect. And if you guys, till next time,.

And if you know anybody with fun little kids, send them along, get them in improv, because I'm sure there's kid improv stuff out there. Oh, there's a wonderful thing to do.

And you, grandma and grandpa and everyone, anyone, one go. It's so fearful. Oh, I'm going to look silly. No, go for it. Let your hair down. Let it go. They're all doing the same thing.

We're all going to look silly. Have fun, be you. Just let go. Just be.

Perfect ending.

All right?

Perfect ending. Bye for now, everybody.