From the pages of In Business magazine.
For Tom Farley, improvisation is a family trait. The older brother of the late Chris Farley, famed Saturday Night Live comic and lifelong prankster, Tom was always the more serious sibling, but he learned valuable life lessons from Chris, even though they came at the most inopportune times. Such as the moment he was talking to a cute girl at school when Chris strolled by and said, “Tom, you wet the bed again last night. Mom is really upset.”
Until he learned to laugh at himself, Tom was the one who might get upset. Now when he speaks publicly, he recalls the self-deprecating value of Chris’ pranks and the importance of “improv,” another gift from a younger sibling who cut his professional teeth at Second City in Chicago, became a screen actor and TV icon, and left us much too soon as the result of a drug overdose.
In the business realm, Tom Farley is a realtor for First Weber in Madison, where he sells the inviting possibilities of the home experience rather than the value of real estate. He also remains a premier speaker who regularly touts the value of improv for idea generation. His key piece of advice for entrepreneurs is to approach the creative process with “yes, and” enthusiasm rather than “yes, but” limitations. The former facilitates innovation, while the latter shuts it down.
Take it from a man who had to be quick on his feet and with his mind, given the fun-loving family he was born into. When Tom Farley speaks of his late brother, he talks frankly about Chris’ struggles with drugs and alcohol, and he recalls the family humor that provided a shield against life’s friction.
From there, it’s not long before Tom rolls into improv as a communication tool, including when trying to connect with kids about drug and alcohol abuse. The more he looked at three brothers (Chris, Kevin, and John) who went through improv at Second City, and the more he came to view improv as a means to communicate, and the more he thought about kids who are given so much information about the dangers of hard drugs — in DARE programs and high school health classes — the more he realized that kids lacked the tools to apply this knowledge.
This acknowledgement led to the development of peer-enhanced environments to stay drug-free rather than peer-pressure environments to give in. “It was revolutionary,” Tom states, “and it was phenomenal.”
No “yes, buts” about it.
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