Zach Ward has proven that you don’t have to be uptight and stodgy to be a successful businessman. I met him at last month’s Social Media Club of the Triangle meeting which he hosted. Zach is the owner and operator of DSI Comedy Theater in Carrboro, North Carolina, and has turned one of his greatest passions into his livelihood.
He graciously agreed to be interviewed and I began the interview by asking him when he fell in love with improv (improvisational comedy). He explained that it’s been quite the love affair. He took his first acting class back in 1993 at Chapel Hill High School. He enjoyed it so much that he went on to join a professional group in college with the one real mission: make people laugh.
It wasn’t always so cut-and-dried, though. He started his college career as a Pre-med student and stayed that way for his first three years. After deciding that it wasn’t the path he truly wished to travel, he switched majors an impressive three times.
Now after seventeen years of performing and twelve years of teaching, he is just as passionate about it as he was back then. With no formal business training, he has local (and not so local) companies vying for his consultation on how to turn their businesses into the success that DSI has become.
When I asked Zach what made him different, special, in the field of arts management, he said that “none of the arts people I know actually read business magazines cover to cover…Inc., Fast Company, etc. I read those every month.”
I wish it was that simple, but as a successful comedy theater owner, he is somewhat of an anomaly. Growing up, you never hear about the general population of comedians running their own businesses and having people hunting them down to learn their secrets. You are told to go to school, pick a responsible major that will yield you a high-paying job, and hope for the pie in the sky – the American dream.
Zach created his own American dream.
By approaching his passion – comedy – with a logical mindset – business – he has morphed the NC Comedy Arts Festival from a small event into the month-long festival it has become. Currently celebrating its tenth year anniversary, NCCAF is the second largest comedy festival in the Southern U.S. featuring improv and standup comedy. This year NCCAF is premiering two new components: Sketch Comedy and Film & Video. (Buy tickets!)
The best part of Zach’s story was that he never set out to accomplish all that he has. He simply wanted to entertain and inspire and he has done so on an incredible scale. One of his biggest enjoyments is to make the audience laugh uncontrollably, breathing optional, and then take that and turn it into a message they can take away and apply to their own lives.
I mean, think about it, if you greet and correspond with people with open arms, open mind, and a smile, you gain their trust much more quickly than if you start by making a hard sell. You get the opportunity to then speak openly with them and what you say is met with open ears as a result. Not only that, but the positivity filters into their own lives and they will actually perpetuate positivity. Alliteration aside, the point is that if you are active in the community and engage people in a positive way, you build an authentic relationship based on trust.
If nothing else, business owners should take all of this information and own it: the more you give, the more you get.
Zach is living proof of that. Not only is his beautiful 5 year-old niece the light of his life (see gratuitous fart videos on his Youtube), but two weeks ago on the first night of the Comedy Festival, the Mayor of Carrboro got up on stage and named a day after him.
I’d say he’s done just fine for a guy who not only makes people laugh for a living, but he makes people live while laughing.
From Zach’s personal webpage:
Zach Ward is a Chapel Hill-Carrboro resident and proud Carolina graduate. Founder and Artistic Director of DSI COMEDY THEATER and also Founder and Executive Producer of the NORTH CAROLINA COMEDY ARTS FESTIVAL, Zach has received critical acclaim from the Chicago Reader and the Chicago Tribune for DUAL EXHAUST (Top 10 “Most Influential Comedy Duos of the Past Decade”) and THE BEATBOX (Critic’s Choice, Best Bet, Chicago’s “Top 5 Latenight Shows”). Zach can currently be seen performing comedy around the country and at the DSI COMEDY THEATER.
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