The Blueprint of Successful Teams: Lessons from a Comedy Troupe

Scott, Kelly, and Andy pre-show in Saas Fe, Switzerland

Here is part two in my series about successful teams I’ve helped create—and what made them thrive. 

What’s the secret to building a team that lasts year after year? Is it grit? Skill? A steady supply of coffee and RedBull?

In my experience—it’s joy. Pure, simple fun.

For nearly 30 years, I’ve been part of a troupe called We’re Not Clowns. Why do we call ourselves that? Quite simply because we're not clowns. Together we’ve juggled (literally and figuratively) our way across the globe. We’ve shared stages from the European Juggling Convention in The Netherlands to private shows for the Crown Princess of Sweden. We’ve earned a Silver Medal at the International Jugglers Association competition in Montreal, performed in countless schools across the U.S., and made many a Colorado stage our second home. Weddings, birthday parties, community events—you name it, we’ve brought our brand of comedy, juggling, magic, music, and “dance” to every venue imaginable.

Most shows kick off the same way: with our original We’re Not Clowns Theme Song! It sets the tone that what’s about to happen is fun, a little offbeat, and guaranteed to involve the audience. (Because yes—our shows always include plenty of audience participation. We love pulling people into the act and making them part of the magic…and from time to time knocking a pretzel out of their mouth)

So how do we keep it going after three decades and nearly 1,000 shows? Here’s what I’ve learned about teams that stand the test of time:

1. Lean Into Diverse Skills

Our troupe thrives because each of us brings something unique.

• Kelly Anzalone has dance moves that make Napoleon Dynamite look like an amateur. He juggles, he’s funny, and he writes quirky songs and performs them with his acoustic guitar. Songs like Moose on the Loose, Smoothie the Hairless Fox, and Thanksgiving (which has my all-time favorite lyric about eating so much turkey you pass out—only to magically wake up to clean dishes). He’s also our videographer, often creating fun videos that become part of our shows and give audiences a whole new layer of entertainment.

• Andy Pratt, aka “Professor Pratt” is our musical backbone. He scores original music for our shows, accompanies Kelly’s Adam Sandler-esque tunes on piano, and—oh yeah—wows crowds with daring feats like sword juggling and a three-level rollo bolla act using dented cans, warped boards, and an old snowboard. Nobody else in the performing world has attempted it, and for good reason. Oh…and he’s also rather funny.

• Me? I write a lot of the material, weave in a bit of magic, and do a death-defying routine with a machete and a NON-ORGANIC APPLE (oh the horror). My job is to keep the show moving while surprising the audience at every turn with dad jokes. And I think that I am funny as well.

  
  

Individually, we shine. Together? We’re unstoppable.

2. Make Fun the Foundation

Audiences have told us for years, “Your show is never the same twice.” That’s because we love to improvise. We play off each other. We poke fun at ourselves. We keep it “loose and improvy”, fresh, and joyful. People have come to see us perform the same show multiple times in a summer, and when we ask, “Don’t you get tired of it?” their answer is always: “NEVER.”  Our show is like Schrodinger's cat.  It’s the same and different simultaneously.

That’s the magic of fun—it keeps a team (and its fans) coming back again and again.

3. Keep Evolving

From new glow-in-the-dark props and magic tricks to new comedy routines like audience participation mad-libs , we’ve never stopped innovating. A strong team knows that staying fresh means adding new material and challenging each other to grow. We also learn from other acts we see and love trying out new material in our shows. We call this “sharing best practices”  (Often without practice).

When I think about leadership and collaboration, We’re Not Clowns is one of the strongest examples I can point to. We’ve endured because we enjoy what we do, we respect each other’s talents, and we never stop laughing along the way. We are friends who genuinely like each other's company and it translates when we are on the stage together.

And that’s a fun takeaway from part two of this series on successful teams: the best teams don’t just perform—they endure, adapt, and have fun doing it.

If you’re ready to help your team find that same spark, let’s talk. Through my leadership workshops, I help organizations build stronger cultures, foster collaboration, and—yes—make work more fun.

👉 Learn more at Scott Parker Leadership.