Epic Entrepreneurs

From Chaos to Catalyst: Angie Flynn-McIver and Gillian Bellinger on The Asheville Business Summit

• Bill Gilliland

Share episode

What happens when theater directors and improv masters turn their attention to business leadership? Something magical, it turns out. Meet Gillian Bellinger and Angie Flynn-McIver, two creative professionals whose unlikely partnership is revolutionizing how we think about leadership in uncertain times.

Despite having remarkably parallel careers—Gillian with twenty years as an improviser and corporate facilitator, Angie as a theater director who co-founded NC Stage Company before transitioning to leadership coaching—they only met three months before this conversation. Connected by mutual friends who recognized their complementary talents, they quickly formed Verge Leadership Lab, bringing arts-based approaches to business challenges.

Their upcoming keynote "From Chaos to Catalyst" at the Asheville Business Summit promises something different from typical business presentations. Rather than talking at attendees, they're creating an interactive experience focused on practical tools for navigating disruption. The session will feature Alex Matisse, CEO of the internationally acclaimed East Fork Pottery, who will demonstrate how creative principles have tangibly benefited his organization.

What makes their approach so powerful? As Gillian explains, improvisers constantly process incoming information and pivot immediately based on changing conditions—precisely the skill modern executives need. Angie notes that theater professionals inherently understand uncertainty, as the arts operate in a perpetual state of adaptation. This "baked-in" comfort with ambiguity enables creative professionals to approach business challenges with innovative mindsets that conventional business training often lacks.

Their insights into resilience, rejection, and continuous learning apply universally to entrepreneurs in any field. Whether you're managing a pottery company, running a theater, or building a tech startup, the skills that enable artists to thrive—adaptability, creative problem-solving, and authentic communication—are increasingly essential in our volatile business environment.

Don't miss this opportunity to gain actionable strategies from two masters of creative leadership. Register for the Asheville Business Summit at wncsummit.com and transform how you navigate uncertainty in your business and life.

Guest Bios

Gillian Bellinger

As a corporate trainer and owner of Misfit Improv, Gillian crafts experiential programs that help business leaders and creatives alike flex their “adaptability muscle.” Her facilitation résumé spans 20 years across a variety of industries. Clients include: PwC, Lockheed Martin, Kaiser Permanente, Nissan, and Fidelity. Audiences value her knack for turning discomfort into discovery: yes-and becomes strategic insight. Gillian looks to empower people to choose change on purpose. bellingercoaching.weebly.com

Angie Flynn-McIver

Angie Flynn-McIver founded Ignite CSP on a radical premise: intentional communication is a fundamental pillar of leadership. Dubbed a “detective of human behavior,” Angie blends performance savvy from her theatre ro

Thanks for Listening. You may contact me or our team at https://billgilliland.biz/

All the best!
Bill

Thanks for listening. Please hit the subscribe button, leave us a 5 star review, and share this podcast. You can reach me at williamgilliland@actioncoach.com or at https://billgilliland.biz/

All the best!

Bill

Bill Gilliland:

Hi there, welcome to this week's episode of Epic Entrepreneurs. Man, have I got a treat for you today? But I want to remind you that you need to get your tickets to the Asheville Business Summit. It's easy All you need to do is go out to wncsummitcom all the information there. Now, the reason I've got a treat for you today is because I've got the keynote speakers, and it's an interesting story of how they came together. They actually have their own businesses, but they've come together as Verge Leadership Lab. I've got Jillian Bellinger and Angie Flynn McKeever, so I don't know who wants to start, but tell us a little bit about how all this happened and your backgrounds and how you got there. Maybe we'll start with Jillian, yeah, Great.

Gillian Bellinger:

Thanks so much, bill. We're glad to be here. So Angie and I together are Verge Leadership Labs and we do facilitation, consulting and coaches. We're both coaches and facilitators individually, and it's interesting because we didn't know each other until maybe four months ago. Angie, three months ago.

Angie Flynn McIver:

I mean yeah yeah, we were.

Gillian Bellinger:

We were kind of match made through other people because we have deeply similar backgrounds and I have a background in improvisation. I've been an improviser and improv teacher for the last 20 years and I am also a corporate facilitator and a certified coach. So I wear two hats and in Asheville I run Misfit Improv, which is an improv school and performance ensemble, and our shows happen to actually be at NC Stage and Angie and I can talk about what that connection is momentarily. So we had mutual friends that connected us and said you know you should talk to each other about the overlap in your careers. And we were both gay, right, we were both willing to sort of entertain what that looks like and I'll hand it over to Angie to kind of pick up the story and share a bit about her experience.

Angie Flynn McIver:

As Jillian said, we have really similar backgrounds. Mine is not in improv, but in theater. I am a director and producer, and my husband, charlie, and I moved to Asheville in 2001 to start NC Stage Company, which now is the lucky host of Misfit Improv. And then, when I had been doing NC Stage about 10 years, I started to peel off into corporate coaching and facilitation and I have a company called Ignite CSP that specializes in communication skills coaching and leadership coaching and sort of everything that falls under that umbrella, and one of the things that we do a lot is speaking and coach other people to speak in public, so that what seemed like a great clearly the person who brought us together saw a lot of overlap between my background and Jillian's and, as I was joking before we started recording, it's like we're one of those boy bands in the 90s who was created by a producer and I'm not sure which one I am, but I'll let you pick your flavor, jillian.

Gillian Bellinger:

I choose Sporty Spice, and I would also like to offer.

Gillian Bellinger:

That obviously means that wealth and fame are sure to follow. Yes, so once we we connected, we realized that we we both are deeply passionate about how the creative arts can really serve business. So a lot of the skills that we use as facilitators with my sort of sweet spot is mid-level to upper-level corporate executives about how to be a leader, and a lot of that lives in dealing with the unknown, the ability to pivot, the ability to be adaptable, managing change and helping other people do the same thing, and that all of that it lives in the arts. Right, we are constantly asked in improv to pivot immediately based on a data set that we are getting and responding to, and then in theater it shows up a little bit differently for Angie, if you wanna sort of talk about how you see it, Angie.

Angie Flynn McIver:

Well, I was thinking, if you want to sort of talk about how you see it, angie, well, I was thinking, as you were saying that, that it's really about the way that creative arts are businesses, whether that is an actor who is their own freelance small business, who is figuring out how to do everything that you need to do as that type of small business, which is one person who's auditioning and booking and traveling and dealing with taxes and being incorporated and all those things to something like North Carolina Stage Company, which is indeed a small business, which has all of the issues and the questions of any small business, and then added to to pick up on a word that you said earlier adding to this idea of uncertainty which plagues the arts almost more than any other business.

Angie Flynn McIver:

So it is really baked into our process and the way that we respond to even daily challenges to go okay, let's take a step back, let's look at this creatively, let's see where we need to innovate, let's see where we need to pivot, and I think that that's one of the things that we were interested in exploring in this keynote.

Gillian Bellinger:

And I think we're also really good at We've been scrappy for a long time. That's exactly right. What were you going to say, Bill?

Bill Gilliland:

that's exactly right. What were you gonna say, bill? Well, no, I love all this. I almost don't need to be here and uh, which is, which is awesome, but it does spark some questions for me about business, and then we'll get to the, to the summit and the keynote and how that came out. But I I just want to. I I think it's interesting.

Bill Gilliland:

I believe beth was maybe the one that put you two together, so beth is beth limbaugh's, the other co-founder of the Asheville Business Summit, and she's very good at connecting folks and seeing some things then in other people that maybe they didn't even see themselves, or at least introducing them to people that might work. And I love that the fact that in the arts you guys are so collaborative in in general anyway, because everything's a production and you understand that you can't do this stuff by yourself. But I do have a business question for each of you, and that is what surprised you? You come out of the arts, you come out of theater, what surprised you or what do you wish you had known when you went into business?

Angie Flynn McIver:

Everything. I think I was really fortunate in that I knew I wanted to be a producer from a pretty young age, so I was able to set up my career in a way that I was able to gather some of those skills in a safe environment. So I was the education director of the National Shakespeare Company in New York for about five years in my 20s, and so what that meant was I got to create a whole project, I got to create a program and we toured Shakespeare and workshops all over New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. But I got to do it under the umbrella of this larger organization. So I figured out hiring and firing, I figured out budgeting, I figured out sales all under this other aegis before I was out on my own.

Angie Flynn McIver:

But Charlie, my husband and I often joke that we started NC Stage. We wanted to do it sort of before. We knew better and that's still true, I think for us the understanding of what it was really going to take to make a financially viable business. We had a glimmer, but we didn't really know what we were getting into.

Bill Gilliland:

Yeah, I think a lot of people start businesses and are successful and have no idea what they're doing in the beginning. And so they had, and so a lot of them will tell you that they might not have done it if they actually knew, which is which is super interesting. That's great. How about you, jillian?

Gillian Bellinger:

Yeah, uh. So I would say, um, a couple of things. So, um, my, my initial business was what Angie talked about, about being an actor. So I've been an improviser and an actor for a long time and acting is sort of an interesting career because one there is no direct path to that. You're sort of floating in the unknown and you just have to figure it out. And then the second piece is it really sits in a space of a lot of rejection. It's like a constant job interview where you just don't hear anything and that is a difficult experience to interact with.

Gillian Bellinger:

I'm much more used to it now and you know I still audition and I let those auditions go a lot easier and don't think about them after they're done and move on, generally speaking, and it also requires an immense amount of resilience and I might even say, like at the beginning, a bit of bravado. The other side of that bravado coin is that I think in the beginning I overshot my skills. So I would say that you know, I sort of had this perspective and I see this with our students, where I was like, well, I've done one improv program, so now I should be a professional improviser, and on the second city stage, and that may or may not be true for some people. It wasn't true for me, and I think what I needed was, while I needed that resilience, I also needed a lot of humility, and that humility, I think, comes in the form of continuing to educate oneself so constantly, constantly seeking out information and education and classes about how to continue to be more. I don't even know if the word is better, but more specific and effective might be the way that, and so that would be one thing.

Gillian Bellinger:

I think it also is that there is a visioning of a future that is even bigger than I would initially think. So an example is that I, as a young improviser, I really fixated on Second City and being on a Second City stage, and that is a great career and many people do it. It also isn't the end of a line, right Like. There are a lot of ways that a career as an actor can look, an example, being running an improv theater and being an artistic director. So it is. Sometimes it will look like how we want, and sometimes it will reveal itself as we go along and having a vision of the world being bigger and and the end goal looking bigger than maybe what's right in front of me. I think is really a useful skill that I came to late Not too late, but I just came to it late.

Bill Gilliland:

Yeah, there's really a lot there. Yeah, that's pretty amazing. What occurred to me was that I come out of sales and in sales you get a lot of no's and you have to get a. In fact, the rule is you figure out how many no's you need to get to get a yes yeah, so you might get. It might take you 10 no's to get a yes. So every no's of hey, thanks for the no kind of thing, and if you look at it that way, then it becomes a game to how do you, how do you move it? So I don't think it's any different from what you learned in in auditioning and right, all of that. So how did you get into the corporate game, both of you?

Gillian Bellinger:

I could start. So, um, I got into it through corporate improv. So a lot of improv organizations do corporate improv and I started with an organization called Stevie Ray's Comedy Cabaret in Minneapolis they still exist, they're a local company and then I moved to Comedy Sports Minneapolis. Both of those organizations do corporate improv. Both of those organizations do corporate improv and so I started to do some of those with them. When I moved to Chicago, I did some for Comedy Sports Chicago and then I moved to LA and that's where I kind of lived the longest in my adult life and I had connections then essentially, then essentially, and several improvisers started to hook me up to other organizations that really love improvisers because they are very adept at being able to translate data.

Gillian Bellinger:

So one of the companies I work for now is a large leadership and development company out of the UK and they do topic based training. So good, how to give good feedback, how to management versus leadership Time management would be another example the psychology of leadership. So there's about 70 courses that we deliver and we get a deck and then we have to make sense of it. We have to translate that information to an audience of executives and make it useful, which is something that improvisers do all the time. We get a suggestion from the audience, we filter that and we turn it into something. So it's similar skills. I will say that one of the things that I've gotten really good at is speaking corporate, and I also lead a staff now. So, as a leader, I understand what it's like to have challenging conversations. I understand what it's like to have to manage my own time. I understand what it's like to have to delegate and navigate the being in a leadership role and what that feels like. So so that was the trajectory, you know, 20 plus years.

Bill Gilliland:

Yeah, yeah. So you started working for somebody else, essentially, and ended up yeah, yeah, ended up being great.

Gillian Bellinger:

And I still do, I still yeah, yeah, yeah.

Bill Gilliland:

A hundred percent. Yeah, they, but they. You know that helps to have some other people booking some things for you from time to time, for sure Awesome yeah, how about? You immersed in North Carolina Stage.

Angie Flynn McIver:

Company, a leadership development company, reached out to me and said, hey, we need, as part of this larger program leadership development program that we are running, we need a presentation skills component. Could you design that? And I was like, yep, I could, I can figure that out. With my education background and directing background, I was pretty sure I could figure that out. So I designed that for them and for several years just ran that workshop for them with some other coaches that I trained to deliver that work and then started realizing, oh, there's a huge amount of adjacent work that I could do in this area.

Angie Flynn McIver:

Ultimately, I felt like my skills as a director were what were really coming into the forefront here. It's being able to see these little moments that indicate, oh, this person is nervous about something, but they're not telling me what it is, but they're just trying to push through this speech or this conversation. So, but, if we can get back to this little moment, this little hiccup, and unpack that, ah, now we can really get somewhere in creating authentic communication. And then, once I realized that, I went back to school, I got a coaching certificate and a master's in organizational development and leadership and then felt like, okay, I've really got the credentials to do what I want to do in this field, and I've been doing it full-time ever since.

Bill Gilliland:

Yeah, that's awesome. Those are. That's two great stories. Well, let's talk a little bit about the keynote and why people should show up and come and get this Cause. I'm going to tell you y'all, you get it right now. These are people have been all over the world and they've they're choosing to be in Asheville and we didn't have to go get them. They're already here and uh, which is which is exciting.

Angie Flynn McIver:

And so tell us what y I would say the thing I'm most excited about with this keynote is it really brings together a bunch of these threads that Jillian and I have been talking about about what do the creative arts do really well, what can we bring from our knowledge and history and experience in the creative arts and the creative industries to a business audience that may or may not have a toe in that place, and then making it pretty tangible and actionable. We've come up with takeaways and an experience that is going to be pretty different, I think, from any other keynote that you might attend in 2025. It's really coming together in an exciting way, with a lot of different components and a lot of different takeaways.

Gillian Bellinger:

I would agree. I would say that we are definitely not going to talk at people. We are interested in talking with people about how to help them solve problems and we are bringing with us a toolkit that folks are going to walk away with and be able to implement. We also are excited because, as a case study, we are bringing in Alex Matisse, who is the CEO of East Fork Pottery, which is, if people aren't aware of, east Fork is a massive pottery company that is pretty famous in the pottery world and has been featured in, you know, the New York Times for being an amazing company, and Alex is going to come and share how East Fork utilizes the skills that we talk about and we'll be able to see how that affects the bottom line and why that matters and how it has been actionable for their organization from a real boots on the ground way.

Bill Gilliland:

Yeah, I can't wait. I think that's so exciting to take concepts and then make them real. And, like you said, I love the fact that one of our principles of this is that people have to walk away with things that they can put in practice the next day. We're not talking about things that are pie in the sky, or you got a book and it's going to set it on the shelf. This is actionable items that are going to make a difference in your life and your business the next day. So, yeah, I love that. So, is there a? Is there a working title? Is there a full?

Gillian Bellinger:

title.

Bill Gilliland:

Yeah, what's the? What are we talking about here? Yeah.

Gillian Bellinger:

So our our title is from chaos to catalyst. Yeah, so we're just talking about what do you do when your world explodes from a business perspective? So you know, examples of that might be a pandemic. Another example of that for folks who are in't affected by that Disruption change what do we do when we find ourselves in circumstances that are new and require a new set of skills?

Bill Gilliland:

Yeah, I love that, I love that. So what else would you like for folks to know?

Angie Flynn McIver:

A whole day is just shaping up to be very exciting. Jillian and I were talking the other day about how we're going to spend the morning before the keynote and what we're looking forward to. It's a great time to be celebrating Asheville, to be celebrating Asheville business. Whether you're located here in Western North Carolina or if you're coming from a little further away Charlotte or Greenville or someplace like that it's just going to be an incredible event.

Gillian Bellinger:

And I think it's exciting that people will have an opportunity to really gain some of that knowledge that I was even talking about before, where, as long as we keep learning, then we are able to evolve our skills and capabilities to meet the needs of the new moment we find ourselves in. And, as I'm sure everyone knows, everything keeps changing. I mean, it changes what stays the same and if we're able to evolve with that and come from a place of that growth mindset, it only empowers us to make stronger, more successful businesses.

Bill Gilliland:

So you heard it here You're going to leave with tools to deal with everything in your life. Yes, it's going to be amazing, it's going to be fun. It is going to be so fun and so informative. Going to be amazing, it's going to be fun. It is going to be so fun and so informative, and we are dedicated to making sure that you walk away with actionable things that you can have. And I can't tell you how excited to see and to participate in this event and, frankly, I know that they don't even know 100% of how this thing is going to go. So it's going to be exciting, it's going to be fun. That's what improv is all about. Right, that's right. So it should be fun.

Bill Gilliland:

Well, thanks for being here, Really appreciate what you're doing in our community and for Asheville and Western North Carolina and the rest of the world, and I really can't wait to see y'all.

Gillian Bellinger:

Thank you, Bill. We're excited. Thanks so much.

Bill Gilliland:

Hey, and until next time, all the best.