It's the kind of answer you come to expect once you spend even a short amount of time with Cox, Mark Bergren and Jim Detmar, partners in Out of the Blue. Just as quickly, you also realize that their witty replies and pithy comments either contain or are set ups for solid business wisdom.

Out of the Blue is a business that defies categorization but can best be described as a corporate training and workshop firm that uses improvisational techniques to teach valuable business skills, improve productivity and motivate and energize employees.

Your meeting with Mr. or Mrs. Banker seems to go well. Three days later you get a call from the bank. The loan committee has denied your request. What do you do? Turn immediately to another source of funds? Shrug it off and figure that you will find a way to grow without outside money? No. Go back to a bank, a different bank this time, and go prepared.

The three partners interact seamlessly and play off each other's remarks with an ease that comes from long association in a successful and creative venture. Bergren, for example, uses Cox's coffee quip as a lead in to talk about the importance of honing what the group calls "active listening" skills. In fact, their improvisation classes spend a great deal of time teaching those skills.

"To be a good improviser is to react to someone honestly and effectively, which is only possible when you are truly listening to their needs," Bergren says. "When we approach a business, we pride ourselves on' being able to see behind the overt statements, ferret out what they really need and give it to them."

Reacting honestly and effectively is only possible when you truly listen to others.

There is an important lesson here in finding creative solutions to common business problems. Businesses thrive by filling unmet needs. The first step in that process is identifying those needs something that requires the ability to truly listen.

HOW IT BEGAN

It is perhaps fitting that the genesis of Out of the Blue as a business concept was an "improve" class. Detmar was working as director of a workshop in improvisation at Brave New Workshop, a company owned by Bergren, and Cox, who was a professional speaker and corporate trainer, took the class for 36 weeks. The three began talking about their backgrounds, and that is how the idea for the business germinated.

"One of the keys was seeing how people in business from advertising executives to airline pilots were taking what they learned with improve in a classroom setting and using it in their business," recalls Bergren, who taught improve theatrically for many years. "I thought, wouldn't it be great to take this creativity and adapt it to a business setting."

All three had substantial experience in the business world Cox through her speaking business, Detmar and Bergren through years of consulting work and they were convinced there would be plenty of demand to support the new venture.

"Within the first couple of meetings with large corporations, it became clear that the ones that had even a germ of creativity got it," Detmar recalls. "That made it a transferable skill base, which was good."

Adds Cox, "One of the things that made it a bit easier for us is that other companies don't have the combination of business plus acting plus improve skills that we bring to the table. We can talk the speech of managers and CEO's, and that sets us apart."

People listen at I25-250 words per minute, think at 1,000-3,000 words per minute.

Another ingredient in the mix that would become Out of the Blue was a shared passion for what they do, and the three partners believe that may have been the most important one.

"One of the true beliefs we hold is that if you are going to be an entrepreneur, you have to follow your passion and leverage it into a money making venture," Detmar says. "Our passion gives us a wider range of things we can bring to the table and helps us develop longterm relationships with clients."

Staying focused on that passion is high on their , priority list. "Even though we do this for a living, it is something we have to work on constantly," Cox notes. "When we get stressed out, we go back to the basics, to the principles of what we do and why we do it. That's something that can work in any type of business and in other aspects of life as well."

It is particularly important for novice entrepreneurs to take note of the Out of the Blue team's advice in this area. Starting a business and hoping you'll develop a passion for it later is a crap shoot. A better strategy is to start with your passion and use that as the basis for. your business venture.

Take a bell, an oversized index card featuring any holiday (even a made up one) and another card with the name of any department in your business. Add people. Mix them all together. What do you get?

IGNITING BRAINSTORMS

"The concept behind this particular exercise is to prod attendees to brainstorm ideas that could stem from the pairing of an event and some department in your business," explains Cox. "The only qualifier is that the idea heeds to be a celebration of your clients/customers, your employees or, ideally, both."

Once the brainstorming starts, whenever anyone hears an inspiring idea, they run over, ring the bell, and all focus narrows to that specific idea. It stays there until the idea is completely exhausted, then two new cards are picked and the process starts again.

When Out of the Blue ran this workshop for the combined staffs of four Las Vegas Athletic Club facilities, the participants generated more than 100 ideas in just one hour. "Top management felt that more than 25 of them could easily be implemented over the course of a year, and a few were acted on the very next day," Cox relates.

Another was a decision to implement Friday meetings to discuss the coming week and to celebrate the things that went right over the past week, which bolsters the flow of positive energy.

"These kinds of results happen because the improvisational techniques we use create a supportive atmosphere that is free from judgment," Cox opines. "It eliminates the tendency to self edit, thus allowing each individual and the group as a whole to tap into their boundless creativity."

Entrepreneurs have to follow their passion and leverage it into a moneymaking venture.

The training in improvisation that Out of the Blue provides makes its clients more adaptable and flexible in meeting business challenges, Bergren says.

"We are able to remove them from their normal, everyday situation and let them open up, have fun, let loose and go with their gut in a nonjudgmental atmosphere. Endorphins start to flow, creativity follows, and then we take that creativity and help them apply it to their business and specific challenges they face," he says.

The Blue Sky workshop, an example of which is described above, is a good example of the way in which Out of the Blue helps clients come up with new products and new ways to interact with customers.

"We start by loosening them up with some improvisational exercises, then lead them through the process," Cox explains. "Most companies walk out with 100 to 200 new ideas, 25 of which they can implement immediately." Adds Bergren, "They are taking away the fruits of their own creativity."

That is particularly important when it comes to injecting creativity into business. As they put it in their book, "Being deadly serious can make you the Jack Kevorkian of any creative environment."

"We remove workers from their normal, everyday situation and let them open up."

It is absolutely essential to have a sense of humor in business (and in life), to tap into it arid to see things from that point of view, Cox attests. "Otherwise, you will be stressed out, and everything will have the same importance. Laughing releases endorphins it physically changes you."

Too many people in business are afraid to tap into humor's important benefits. "I know a lot of people, including CEOs, who do have a good sense of humor but feel compelled to keep it under wraps," says Detmar.

Humor equals perspective, Bergren opines. "When you have a sense of humor, you have perspective. A good joke is really a specific take on a serious subject." Many people perceive a sense of humor as a sign of intelligence. "It draws people to you because there is a positive energy there," he says. "The trick is to use it appropriately."

Detmar points out that ,one of the problems virtually all businesses face at some point is falling into a rut. "If they are continually falling back on the way they have always done things, the well eventually runs dry.

"We teach them to throw away the script, and that forces them to interact, listen more actively and come up with new ideas," he adds. The exercise can support development of a five or 10 year plan as well as a new mentality for dealing with day to day issues.

STRETCHING LIMITS

"It's the rubber band theory," says Cox. "When you take a rubber band and stretch it, it never goes completely back to its original form.. That's what happens with people who take our workshops. Their way of thinking and approaching problems is permanently changed, even if it's' just in a small way. Improve is great for this because it shares the same principles of successful businesses: creativity, adaptability, innovation and teamwork."

"Of course," Detmar chimes in, in typical Out of the Blue fashion, "every once in a while, the rubber band snaps back and hits you in the eye."

There is, perhaps, an implicit lesson on the balance between risk and reward in Detmar's comment. In business, as in investment, achieving greater rewards generally entails taking on greater risk. Naturally, it is every bit as important for business owners to take a reasoned, intelligent approach toward assuming risk as it is for investors. But both need to be willing to deal with some degree of risk.

Risk is one of the attributes that is usually associated with change, and change is absolutely essential to any business's continued success over time. Markets change, consumers change, economies change. Businesses that don't change--and change appropriately--in response to (or, better yet, in anticipation of) those needs leave themselves open to the greatest risk of all: the risk of becoming irrelevant.

Risk is associated with change, and change is essential to business success over time.

That may be one of the most important lessons. of all that Cox, Detmar and Bergren have learned about starting and running a business. From time to time, every business needs to take a look at itself from a fresh perspective. "Because we've always done it that way" is not a valid argument for continuing any business practice, they point out.

And, after all, you can always improvise a new way of doing things.. Just ask anyone who has been through an Out of the Blue workshop.