Second Glance – Episode 7: Dave Wilk

Dave Wilk is a founding member of Four Day Weekend, the critically acclaimed improvisational comedy troupe that has become a Texas institution and a global brand. As a master of "Yes, And," Dave has spent decades blending sharp-witted performance with corporate keynote speaking, helping organizations harness the power of adaptability and creative collaboration. Whether he’s performing for presidents or leading workshops for Fortune 500 companies, his ability to transform spontaneity into meaningful connection has established him as a premier voice in both the entertainment and professional development worlds.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:05

It was 20% of the gate, and we had to buy the lighting guy a six-pack of beer to stick around and do the lights, and he would get drunker and drunker as the show went on. And then he's like, nah, I'm kidding, they're my Texas homeboys. And we're backstage going, Oh my gosh, President Bush just called us his Texas homeboys. And he passed away in his sleep at the hotel. And they got back to me and said, We will always have the memory of my dad being the star and the hero of the night.

SPEAKER_01 0:39

Most things that last 30 years usually start with a plan. This didn't. Today's guest started an improv comedy show with two of his best friends that was only supposed to last six weeks. There was no script, no roadmap, and no guarantee that anyone would even show up, let alone laugh. 30 years later, it's the longest-running comedy show in the Southwest, with more than 8,000 completely improvised performances. He's one of the three founders of Four Day Weekend, where the cast walks on stage with nothing, takes your $15, and figures it out in real time every night in front of a full room. I saw the show in Dallas a few months ago and met him afterward. It didn't take long to realize the guy off stage is exactly who you'd want building something like this. Sharp, grounded, thoughtful, and yes, actually pretty funny. And behind it all is a pretty amazing story. This is Dave Wilk at a second glance.

SPEAKER_00 1:57

You know, that's kind of the that's kind of the role of all of that combining. It's like, oh my goodness. I turns out I desperately seek the approval of strangers for a living. What can you do? I love it.

SPEAKER_01 2:13

This is this is good. This is gonna be fun. I'm excited for this one. We're gonna have a good time. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:17

Yeah, that was it. You know, I was never really the class clown, but I was always kind of feeding the class clown lines because I didn't I don't like getting in trouble. So, where did you grow up? I grew up in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Okay, Tulsa? Yeah, had a you know what'd your parents do? Not your uh my dad was an optometrist, my mom was a retired school teacher who uh raised her family.

SPEAKER_01 2:40

Talk to me about Tulsa. What was going on in Tulsa? What was the fine family dynamic?

SPEAKER_00 2:45

Uh Tulsa's great. Um, you know, parents divorced when I was uh 13, and then I went to live with dad, and my brother and sister stayed with mom, and they uh they got really uh well educated, and um, and then I uh dropped out of college and became a comedian. So that should give you an idea of um what those two households were like.

SPEAKER_01 3:12

What what college did you drop out of?

SPEAKER_00 3:15

I went to the University of Arkansas for two years, and I no longer felt the institution had anything left to offer me. And they felt very similar about me. And uh I wasn't really planning on dropping out, I just took a summer job on a cruise ship, and that was so much fun and so in my element, and I found the microphone for the first time, and then it was just like, yeah, I'm gonna take a semester off. This is fun. And then I started making a ton of money and seeing the world. I'm like, yeah, yeah, I'm gonna I'm gonna keep doing this. So that what was happening on the cruise ship? What was well um okay, I gotta go before that. So my girlfriend at the time said, Hey, we should go interview for Disney. Disney's doing this summer program, and you get school credit, you get college credit, and you live at Disney and you work all summer at Disney. I'm like, yeah, let's do it. So uh she goes and she gets the job, and I oversleep and miss the interview. So now I have nothing to do all summer, and my girlfriend's gonna go to Disney. So I'm like, oh crap. So I scramble around and I I find uh I find a job at Dollywood. So I'm uh I'm working at old Dollywood in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. I drive my 79 Volkswagen bug convertible up there and rent a room from some people that had those little tear off a tag in a coffee shop, room for rent. And uh worked at Dollywood. Uh and then I had filled out this form about do you ever want to work on a cruise ship? You know, I months ago, I didn't even think about it. And they called and they said, hey, you know, we're looking for uh uh youth counselors to play with the kids. They're like, well, you know, go to the airport, we'll have a ticket waiting on you. So I went to the airport, no ticket waiting on me.

SPEAKER_02 5:01

Oh crap.

unknown 5:02

Huh.

SPEAKER_00 5:02

I should have been a red flag, right? But not me. I slapped down the credit card, got a ticket, flew to T-Neck, New Jersey, went to their office, and they were very surprised to see me. Like, oh, oh, you came. Okay, uh, wow, that shows tenacity. Next thing you know, like a week later, I'm sailing down the Hudson on a cruise ship, have no idea what I'm doing or where I'm going. And uh at the end of the summer, they're like, Yeah, the kids are going back to school. We don't need a youth counselor. I said, Well, I'd really like to stay on. They're like, Well, have you ever DJ'd? I'm like, Of course, yes, I DJ. Never DJ'd. So started DJing in the club. My hours were like 10 at night to five in the morning. And then uh, you know, I was pretty good on the microphone. They said, Oh, come do some cruise staff stuff. Then just kept working my way up, ended up being assistant cruise director at age 21 and banking all sorts of money and having fun. And and then, you know, you get the bug. You're like, all right, enough of this cruise ship. I want to see what I see what kind of chops I got on land. And uh, as it turns out, a lot harder on land.

SPEAKER_01 6:12

Less less intoxication on land?

SPEAKER_00 6:14

Yeah, less intoxication. Not everybody happens to be in a good mood because they're on vacation.

SPEAKER_01 6:20

That's awesome. So were you were did you know you wanted to be in showbiz growing up? Or how did you cruise?

SPEAKER_00 6:28

I always kind of had that want, but you know, you're Tulsa, Oklahoma, you have no idea how to get into it. I, you know, I hell I'm in it, I don't know how to get into it. So it it is just what it is, you know. It was a happy accident after went back to school for one semester just to prove to myself and my parents that I could do it, made straight A's, went back, said, those are my grades. I can do it. I'm not stupid, I'm never going back. It's not what I want to do. And uh banged around in some dead end jobs, and then finally said, No, it's comedy. Figure out how to do it. And uh started going to Second City and learning how to be an improviser.

SPEAKER_01 7:08

How did I I imagine uh your parents weren't stoked to hear I'm gonna drop out of college to do to do comedy?

SPEAKER_00 7:16

No, no, they they weren't too too stoked about that. Uh the cruise ship was a nice buffer though, because they knew I found my element and I was making, you know, there's no rent, no food, no tax, no bills. Uh everything I made, I was banking. I I had a ton of money. Looked like I had a future, you know.

SPEAKER_01 7:37

Dave, when you decide to get serious about improv, what do you do?

SPEAKER_00 7:44

Well, what I did was I said, okay, this isn't a hobby. I want to do this for a living. I have to live it, breathe it, digest it. I gotta go to Second City. I mean, Chicago, it's the Mecca. I have to go. Now keep in mind I'm broke and I'm living in Dallas. How do I get to Chicago? My dad worked for an airline uh cargo company that flew MU-2s and learjets, gutted out, and they flew canceled checks around the country at night for the Federal Reserve. This is before you could scan a check. So if I looked at the schedule, I could get anywhere in the country. It would just take me a long time. So I would leave Dallas at 2 a.m. on Saturday night, and I would get to Chicago at 7 a.m. And I would go Dallas, Birmingham, Little Rock, Chicago. Then I would clean up in the airport. I would burn the whole day in Chicago, just having coffee, reading, going to museums, whatever I could do for free, then do my class 7 to 10, and then reverse the trip back. So I took a three-hour class once a week, and it took me 37 hours to take that class. And I did it for two years. And I learned incredible improvisational techniques from some of the best teachers in the world, Marty DeMott, Mick Napier, Anne Libra, just amazing talent. But I also started studying the Second City business model. It's like, huh, okay. And I thought, well, either I move here and try to climb this ladder, but they got a lot of guys that look just like me. Or I pick a city that's never seen it and start my own, armed with the knowledge that I learned here. And that's what we did. So we basically ripped off Second City's business model and brought it to Texas.

SPEAKER_01 9:47

Just to make sure my ears didn't deceive me there. Yeah. Once a week for two years, you would take a 37-hour layover no geographer sense. I mean, I guess a little bit, but you would do that once a week for two years, 37 hours.

SPEAKER_00 10:05

And there weren't there weren't seats in this plane. I would just lay back on these bags of canceled checks or two pilots, and I would just be in this. They were like beanbags of these hundred millions of dollars worth of canceled checks, getting to where they needed to go. And then I could get to the doors of Second City for a dollar fifty because that's what the subway, the the L was a buck fifty from uh Midway Airport to the loop, and then I would just walk from the loop to uh second city and take me about five hours, you know, just bebop throughout the day. And I could do the whole trip for three bucks if I drank water and didn't eat. I mean, I was broke. I was broke. I would, you know, I would sip a cup of coffee all day and you know uh I was single but engaged in living with my fiance. She's got to be a rock star to put up with that. She is amazing, and she calls herself a comedy widow because she's given up every Friday and Saturday night forever, and you know, she's my rock and my rock star. She's she's incredible.

SPEAKER_01 11:17

Man, that's awesome. That's that's an amazing story. Yeah, isn't it crazy? Yeah, you don't realize I'm gonna tell that story on behalf of you now. When I hear Four Day Week, I'd be like, you should hear this story about Dave he told me.

SPEAKER_00 11:31

I did that. I mean, that's how badly I wanted to learn the craft.

SPEAKER_01 11:36

So you what I guess what I if you go to the four-day weekend show, we talked about this. You have a snippet before the show starts that this show started with $750. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:53

All right, here's the story. All right, so we we were in uh another comedy show, uh, and it was very popular, doing very well, and the owner was just, you know, it's kind of a different breed as far as personalities, and he got mad at Frank, who's my business partner, and fired Frank. And Troy and I kind of stood up and had that uh Jerry Maguire moment. This is wrong. Let's go! And of course, nobody goes with us. So now we're like, oh crap, we just walked out of a hit show, we got nothing. So, you know, we uh we decided we'll do our own thing. And we all pooled our money, and uh we had 2100 bucks, 700 bucks each. And the goal was to do six weeks. Six weeks turned into a year, that turned into a bigger theater, that turned into multiple shows a week, touring company, corporate communication division. Just it just we just kept stumbling forward, just stumbling forward. You know, we if we we didn't know what we didn't know, so we just kept trying new things and it kept working. So talk to me through. You guys are sitting down, you have the $2,100.

SPEAKER_01 13:11

Yeah, right. What is what is step one? How did you you know what did you guys do? How was that going?

SPEAKER_00 13:17

We made flyers and we talked a theater into letting us go on at 11 o'clock at night after their regular show. It was 20% of the gate, and we had to buy the lighting guy a six-pack of beer to stick around and do the lights, and he would get drunker and drunker as the show went on. And uh and I would get there at three o'clock. We we chose Fort Worth because at the time Dallas had a booming comedy scene, late 90s. You had ad lib, section eight, rubber chicken, four out of five doctors. You had you had all these great uh troops, but Fort Worth didn't have anything. And Troy, who's my other partner, was like, let's go to Fort Worth. We're like, what are you talking about? Fort Worth, nothing's there. And he goes, aha, we'll be the only game in town. So we went to Fort Worth and talked that theater into letting us do it. And uh man, we were hit right away within probably five weeks. We were selling out that theater at 11 o'clock at night. I'd get there at three in the afternoon, hand out flyers until about 10:15, then bring a little table down in the lobby and sell tickets to the nine or ten people I talked into coming. And then at 10 o'clock, I'd put the table up and run upstairs and change clothes and go out on stage and do my little show and uh, you know, then sweep and mop the floor, get it ready for the original show when we were done. I mean, it's it's we did everything, it was just a blast, and then drive home three in the morning laughing about the stupidity of stuff we did. How much did a ticket cost back then? Nine dollars. Nine dollars. Yeah, we wanted to we wanted to compete with a movie, so we said we'll be we'll have a nine dollar cover charge, and we would sell, we would sell 45 tickets, you know. We'd be okay, nine times 45. We divide it up, everyone in the cast, and you know, oh my god, we made 21 dollars. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 15:12

How many people were on the cast at this time?

SPEAKER_00 15:15

Uh there were four improvisers, host, and a musician.

SPEAKER_01 15:18

And is that now the shows are a little bit bigger?

SPEAKER_00 15:22

Uh, I try to keep them at that. If I have newer people I'm trying to work in, I I'll have a bigger cast. But generally, if you see more than four people host a musician, then one of them's new, and we're just kind of easing them in.

SPEAKER_01 15:34

Okay, I see.

SPEAKER_00 15:35

So this is you're starting, you're you're an instant hit here in Fort Worth. Yeah. This is pre-internet, right? So we had an article written about us in like week 10 or week nine, and it was a huge multi-page article back when people read the art section, and man, the next weekend sold out. And then it just got you couldn't get a ticket, and then we left it was a little 99-seat theater. Then we left that, got our own theater that was 212 seats, and son of a gun, we were selling that out. Holy cow! Then we kept adding shows, you know, two shows a night, and then yeah, it was it was fun, fun.

SPEAKER_01 16:19

So, how did you and Frank get into improv though? I mean, that's this very niche part of comedy.

SPEAKER_00 16:26

We were all stand-ups, and none of us were really good stand-ups or having any success. We loved the craft, loved it, but we just, you know, like I can only speak for me. They're they were probably better stand-ups than I was, but I was just kind of doing my impression of a stand-up. Oh, I like Seinfeld, I'll kind of do that vibe. I really like Johnny Carson, you know, I'll do that. Love Letterman, you know, so you're kind of doing your impression of somebody. And it wasn't until uh I found the freedom of improvisation that I could learn just to be myself, and and that was good enough. Were you good at it instantly? It was way easier than than uh stand up for me. My mind just my mental Rolodex just clicks, you know. Everyone thinks it's how quick you are. It has nothing to do with that. It's how well can you listen and then build on your partner's information. For whatever reason, when my partner's done saying it, it the response is just locked and loaded. I I don't know what it is, you know. And then you study the craft, yes and and listening and line building and heightening, and there's all these techniques you can do that just enhance that, but it it always helped that I kind of was quick on my feet.

SPEAKER_01 17:40

How long were you doing it in Dallas before you left on a wing in a prayer? Three years. Three years. Did you see mass development in yourself in those three years where you're like, I can't wait to do that? Yeah, not really.

SPEAKER_00 17:52

I was kind of stifled. I wasn't a big character guy, so I wasn't really a standout in that show. And they kind of relegated me to host, which I felt was a little bit of a demotion, but as it turns out, oh my god, getting hundreds of reps as a host, that's given me a beautiful life because now I go host you know a hundred corporate events a year, and and those pay all the bills, right? I mean, that's a lucrative living. So it was a happy accident for sure.

SPEAKER_01 18:24

Were you doing this full time in Dallas or did you have another job?

SPEAKER_00 18:28

No, I well, I worked for the club. I worked for the club uh on a I think I made 150 bucks a week and I got a dollar ahead for anybody I could pull into the Friday early show. So I would arrange for these drawings. Hey, you won 23 tickets, come on out. Well, you know, everybody who entered won. Right. Um, and it helped build the audience, but I didn't like that. I don't like to four days never done that. I don't like devaluing the ticket, but uh it did help build an audience. But you know, once you start giving tickets away, how do you put a price tag on it?

SPEAKER_01 19:05

So now you're in Fort Worth, things are going really well. You upgraded theaters. Yeah. Did you when did when did the moment click this is this is gonna work?

SPEAKER_00 19:15

Or was that would that happen yet? Uh no, it's 29 years. I'm still waiting. Is this going to work? Yeah. No, and when we started selling, you know, 800 tickets a weekend every weekend. We're like, just by turning the lights on, it was all word of mouth. It was incredible. And and we're talking about a decade of that, right? And then that just opened other doors. You know, we we didn't sit down and say, we're gonna open a uh touring company. Somebody came up and said, Hey, your show's clean. How fun? You want to take it on the road? We're like, Yeah, sure. Then someone said, Hey, this is really funny. Do you ever you know video it? Well, kind of. So now we have a video product, you know, it's just all these ideas that came to us through doing the show.

SPEAKER_01 20:03

How much has the show changed since you started?

SPEAKER_00 20:07

The quality of the show has changed a lot, but once we figured out the dynamic of we need consistency in the idea. People need to come to the show and and see familiar things. Oh my god, this is this is they're gonna this it's called Idle Factor. They're gonna sing songs. So the shell of Idle Factor has been around probably 10 years. Um, but the songs are different every night. Uh, we've thrown that football at the end. It's kind of our closer, man. It's our it's our margaritaville. We have to play that every night. Every time we try to retire one of our anchor bits, oh man, what happened? Blah, blah, blah. So even though the content's different every night, uh, you know, it is the four-day show. It's kind of its own format. And then, you know, every every few months we'll pull something out and plug something in, but there's never really just a wholesale change of the show. You know, you're getting the four-day weekend show.

SPEAKER_01 21:02

Do you have a favorite bit?

SPEAKER_00 21:06

I do like the big brother at the end. Uh, my favorite bit is just the three post-it notes in the opening and see where that goes because that's just that really sets the tone for the night, tells us what the audience is. You know, if we have three smart suggestions, you can kind of breathe easy, like, okay, it's gonna be a fun night. If you pull, you know, fart, dildo, and something else, you're like, oh god, we're in for a long night.

SPEAKER_01 21:34

So, how does do you guys? I know, like you know, in showbiz, you can't reveal all of your secrets. But I'm curious if maybe you can give a little bit of an insight, because you are the lead guy up there. You know, you're the captain of the ship. Yes. When you pull Fart versus something way more sophisticated, is there Gears your head goes to and how to perform the rest of the show?

SPEAKER_00 22:04

Yeah, it it really it those three it's called what's on the audience's mind because it really just helps the audio the performers uh understand the collective energy of this room. And you know, I would much rather have the word apple and let us determine oh, is it computers? Is it doctor? Is it Adam and Eve? Is it a worm? Is it a farm? Is it uh, you know, what is it? Let us explore than jello midget mud wrestling. It's like, well, we know what that is. That's you know, uh, so I I just like them to challenge us with and let us be creative, and new people don't get it, you know. I think the first two I pulled off this week, it said Hiroshima and and dildo. I was like, yeah, you're not, you don't, you've never been to this show. Or you've never been you've never been to this show. That's not what we do.

SPEAKER_01 23:01

It's uh when you said Apple, and I want to think about it. I thought a red apple on a teacher's desk, and I thought the computer brand. Yeah, and then you just whipped out like 10 more things right after that.

SPEAKER_02 23:15

Yeah, I mean it could be so it go ahead.

SPEAKER_00 23:21

It can be, you know, it could be you know, slice it, and and you know, a little kid wants the skin off, you know. I uh it's it's it's endless, right? It there's an exercise in improv called sign here, where you line up everything this is just for classes, and the opening line of the scene, you say sign here. And the person has to give the second line. There we go. Well, I guess we're divorced. Sign here. There you go, kid. Always happy to see a fan, you know. Sign here. Oh, I hope it's my new pickleball racket, you know. So the most important line in the scene is that second, that second line, right? That can just determine any direction it's going, right?

SPEAKER_01 24:05

So, what other tips, or not tips, what other tricks are going on behind the scenes of the show? The art is in concealing the art. I understand. I figured it was gonna be hard to get something out of you on that one.

SPEAKER_00 24:19

I'm happy to tell you that what we're doing, but we're concealing it from the audience, right? If a show is going well, it looks like we're just up there BSing with our friends. But what the audience doesn't know is the one of us, the first line, we're trying to establish who we are, where we are, or what we're doing. So if I my opening line is uh, hey dad, come check this out. Okay, now my partner knows we're father-son. So who we are is taken care of. So it's their job to establish where we are or what we're doing. Oh, tell me you didn't finish that puzzle without me. Okay, father-son doing a jigsaw puzzle. And uh now what are we missing? We know who we are, we know what we're doing, we just need to know where we are. And it's like, hey, I told you when we built this man cave, it was gonna be awesome. Okay, father-son in a puzzle, man cave. Now all we do is explore uh the why. Why are we doing this puzzle? Is it therapy? Uh do I don't have any friends? Uh am I am I lonely? Is is my dad an alcoholic and we can't drive because he's under house arrest? I mean, I don't know what the what the thing is, but we can explore that. And the beauty is we just hid all of that from the audience.

SPEAKER_01 25:36

Do you ever get uh I guess brain fart?

SPEAKER_00 25:42

Oh, does that happen on stage often? Yeah, all the time. All the time. And you can see it in your partner. You look and you just see no sale. You're like, well, I better say another line because they ain't got it. And then you know, you have their back. And then later on, when you have no sale in your eyes, they have your back, right?

SPEAKER_01 25:59

How do you find people for this? Because the cast is great. I've seen Fort Worth, I've seen Dallas.

SPEAKER_00 26:05

Oh, thank you.

SPEAKER_01 26:06

Can you imagine there's that many people this good at it out there?

SPEAKER_00 26:10

It it's that's been our challenge. So for the first 20 years, we were a boy band. It was just us, right? It was just the same guys. And then when we had an opportunity to open the second theater, then we had a challenge. Okay, we're like, wow, now we're not a boy band. Now we got to figure out how to, we're a company, we have to figure out how to cast it. So we did an open casting call and learned that man, people can ace an audition. And then when you start working with them, you realize, uh, that's all they had was that great move in the audition that caught our attention. So then you get a couple gems, and then you start asking them, hey, do you know any recommendations? Do you have any, you know, and then we go scout other troops and you know, just it's kind of trial and error at that part, right? Because and I'll take chemistry over talent. Uh, we've had some amazingly talented people, but they were difficult to work with, and it just didn't feel right.

SPEAKER_01 27:09

How is your role adapted over time from being the comedian on stage to Dave the leader, Dave the host? This is Dave's show. I mean, how do talk tell me about that?

SPEAKER_00 27:20

All right, I don't consider it my show. It's I am the leader by default. So it is an ensemble. Everybody brings such amazing things to it. I kind of run the business by default because I didn't have a job at the time we started. So I'm like, oh, I'll take care of the phones and the bills, you know, and then it grew. Um, and I'm the host because our host retired uh during the pandemic. He said, you know, Dave, the universe is telling me it's time for a new chapter. I won't be coming back if we reopen the theaters. So I'm only hosting because we didn't have a host. I'm one of the ensemble guys, and I like hosting because I I I'm pretty good at it. And it I you can that's the one thing you can kind of control the controllables and and work the timing and speed it up or let it flow. Uh again, the art of hostings and concealing the art, right?

SPEAKER_01 28:15

How is the business side of it been for you?

SPEAKER_00 28:20

It's I g I get just as much of a rush as I do the uh the stage time. Really? And after yeah, after 29 years, I kind of consider myself not a comedian, but a funny entrepreneur. Like I I don't like the minutiae of running the business, but I like the big picture thinking of what's next, what do we want to do? Oh my gosh, we have this incredible opportunity with this client. What can we come up with for for them? And what you know, I just came back from Denver last week and I I was I shot a video for United Airlines and they let me uh try to become a pilot. And I got to fly in the simulators and go through all the safety. And and how do you make aircraft aviation funny when safety is of paramount importance, right? So I had to figure out how to be funny without expressing that United, you know, they take safety seriously. I can't just be wacky because it doesn't. So I had to, oh, okay, I'm gonna come up with some daydream scenarios. And I'm you know, all these different things that that the challenge of figuring out how to make a very serious topic funny. Uh, I got just as much juice out of that as I would have uh a standing ovation live show. Where does your confidence come from? Because uh misspent youth and uh I mean it's uh it it's all an act. I'm as insecure as it gets. I mean, everybody's got their insecurities, but once you've done something for 10,000 hours, I I have I guess I am confident in that. I I used to go out on stage and say something and it didn't get a laugh, and I would almost crumble. I would just collapse. And now I go out and I say something and it doesn't get a laugh, and I think, huh, how can 200 people be that wrong? You gotta flip the perspective on it. Yeah. I'm like, no, you're wrong. That's the same. I was hosting this corporate event. I won't tell you the client, but they'd never had a host. I was there for three days. And day one, they were lukewarm on me. You could tell they just weren't sure. And I finally I go, I go, look, by day three, you guys are gonna love me. So let's just get that out of the way now. And of course, by day three, we're I'm slaying them, you know, but it's it's just I don't know. I don't know where that confidence comes from. A lot of it's an actor, so you just act like you're confident.

SPEAKER_01 30:52

It's just, I gotta think, you know, like I was telling this to someone, improv's really cool. Comedy, all the arts are like this. We you know, I talked to an actor recently. It's like sports where there's really bad days. There's really good days. But I think what's so interesting is there's no hiding in the dugout on your stage. There's no I'm swinging and missing, coach can pull me and we can reassess and come back tomorrow. I mean, you're out there and everyone's watching. If it's not your day, you still got a 90-minute show. And hopefully maybe it's Friday, not Saturday, where you have two shows that night.

SPEAKER_00 31:34

Yeah, and the last thing you want is the last show of the week to be bad, and then you gotta live with it all week, you know, at least if Friday's subpar. I got Saturday to come back. But the interesting thing in that is, you know, beginning improvisers, when it's not going well, you could see them. They oh god, you know, they they they fade to the back and they don't come into scenes, you know? But the experienced improvisers, like, oh my god, we're sucking, and they lean in and they go into it, right? And that's how you can tell, you know, who's got the experience.

SPEAKER_01 32:05

How has um excuse me? The I'm really curious. I'm kind of asking a long-winded question, but I'm not curious specifically about the pandemic. How has the show been able to hold through the years and the changes of the internet, TikTok, up and down economy? I mean, is how much does that stuff really uh impact you guys?

SPEAKER_00 32:30

Well, it's it it's affected us tremendously, right? When uh in 2008, we were doing a lot of corporate work, we were entertainment at these big events. And in 2008, when the economy collapsed, stuff like us was unacceptable. It's like this company's wasting money on an improv trip. So nobody had money for uh acts like ours. So what we realized was okay, nobody's got money for entertainment, but they do have money for continuing education, and they always have to reward their top performers. So we pivoted into some corporate training, and then we pivoted into instead of doing our show as entertainment, taking our show, your awards, marrying them, and instead of having awards followed by entertainment, let's make your awards entertaining. And that was a happy accident of all time. We have just killed it after that.

SPEAKER_01 33:27

How about COVID?

SPEAKER_00 33:29

COVID was brutal. Uh we we excelled in two things corporate events and live theaters. They both went away in a matter of weeks. They went away. Our calendar went away, and the government mandated that we shut down our business, and we looked at each other like, oh, oh no. But we're improvisers and we said, okay, it's gonna be a while. What do we got? Let's yes and this, let's think about it. We know how to put on a show, great. We have product, you know, uh Oliver was a TV personality. He he hosted uh the CW in the morning, the eye opener. Great. We have comedic talent, we have technical people, we have a space. We turned our theater into a multi-camera live studio and learned how to stream an event way before Zoom, way before we within by mid-May, we were doing virtual events and virtual training and virtual awards banquets. We were way ahead of that, and that carried us through um the pandemic. So much so that we made just enough money that we didn't qualify for a uh a huge arts grant. It's like, oh, had we not done anything, we would have qualified for that grant, but that's okay. You're too successful for your own good. We had just made enough. You had to lose like, I don't know, 70% of your revenue, and we lost like 69% of our revenue. We missed it by like one silly gig.

SPEAKER_01 35:08

Oh, so it was measured like backwards.

SPEAKER_00 35:11

Yeah, you had, yeah. If you lost, you've only qualified if you lost X amount of your revenue. And we didn't because we I think we were operating on about 30% revenue. Wow. Um, so and then you know, we've we've been very fortunate that we've had a great corporate communication division, so we've made money and we were able to get by on 30%. There was no profit, and just hold the line, hold the line, hold the line. And then when the pendulum came back, man, we were packed once we reopened. So we survived it.

SPEAKER_01 35:44

Was there ever a moment, maybe during the pandemic, or was there ever a moment in these 29 years you thought, man, I don't think this is gonna work?

SPEAKER_00 35:54

Yeah, there was there were so many times we're like, what are we doing? What are we doing? But you just there was always a task in front of us that you know it there's no way we should have started this business. There's no way it should have survived. You go back and you look at how many businesses are still operating since 1997, it's just a fraction. And especially this, and Troy, one of our partners, we just we just didn't know, we didn't know. We were just ignorantly positive, optimistic, right? And we just kept trying things, and if it failed, improv, you fail all the time. It's like, okay, that didn't work, moving on. Oh, that didn't work, moving on. Oh, that worked, let's do more of that.

SPEAKER_01 36:41

So I know this from our brief one time we met, and I wouldn't let you leave because I just wanted to talk to you about all this. Enjoyed our conversation. What um I learned from that you're very plugged into the community, you're very charitable, not it's not a self-centered business at all at Four Day Weekend. Can you talk about some of the community involvement or any stories you have within the community? I mean, you've been the staple of DFW. I remember when we moved here in 2008, my family. Even 11, 12-year-old me had heard of Four-day Weekend. But I wasn't allowed to go, obviously. Right. But so you guys have been a staple in the community for so long. Can you do you have any stories there?

SPEAKER_00 37:27

I mean, I I have a million. I have a million stories. It's been such a blessing, and we and we feel, you know, I don't want to get sappy on you, but we feel so fortunate that this has been our life. This has been a really nice life. It's provided everything for us. And we are well aware that we're in Dallas Fort Worth, and there's a million things you could do. And if somebody chooses to come to four-day weekend, I mean, what an honor and what a huge responsibility. Uh, yeah, the $30 tickets, babysitter, dinner, drinks, parking. It's $200. You know, so we're not doing a $30 show. We're doing a $200 show because this may be the one time this couple gets out in two months. It may be a birthday, it may be an anniversary. That's a big responsibility. And if they choose to come to four-day weekend, holy cow, we we we got to give it our all for them. Uh, I had a couple there Saturday night pulled me aside afterwards and said, we are moving to Denver, and the last thing we wanted to do was see one more four-day weekend show. Our first date was here, blah, blah, blah. They were just effusive with their praise, and it just, I couldn't believe it, you know. Um there's we've done a lot of work. If uh the city's been so good to us, Fort Worth gave us the key to the city for being Fort Worth's greatest ambassador. So if the if the cops call or the fire department calls or the city calls, and they need anything, they need a host, they need a video, it's like, yeah, yeah, done deal. Done deal, whatever. And and that's just been a great relationship. And then, you know, if you need something, oh, I have the mayor's phone number in my phone. We're on a first name basis, and that's really nice. That you know, it just it just works, right? Who have you gotten to meet through this? Oh my god. What what stories do you have? I mean countless celebrities. We we were hosting an event on 9-11 in like 2011. It might have been like the 10th anniversary, we're hosting a corporate event, and the keynote speaker is George W. Bush. And we're like, oh man. And the Secret Service, they taped off this area and they said, you will stand in this area when you're not on stage, and uh, you will not meet the president.

SPEAKER_02 39:52

We're like, oh, okay.

SPEAKER_00 39:53

And then we're like, I mean, but after the president sees us, you know, and wants to meet us, then what? And the Secret Service is like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, if that happens, we'll let you know. Well, we go out and we kill, we slay, and we walk off and we run right into that. It's the president would like to speak to you. We go over and meet the president. We're busting balls, having fun, you know, uh, and he says, Hey guys, you do me a favor, we do a show for the troops. Yeah, we'd love to. Yeah, yeah, you got it, you got it. Then he had to go on stage and did his thing and um ended up doing an armed forces entertainment tour and you know, uh all through the Balkans. We did uh Amsterdam, we did Germany, England, Kosovo. We were all over the place doing these shows. And we met that, and then through uh another corporate event, somebody saw us and and my phone rings, and it's chairman John Larson of the Democratic National Caucus wants us to come to uh DC and do a yes and seminar for the United States Congress, and we meet Obama, and yeah, I mean it's just all of these crazy things are happening. We've met every celebrity, every sports fan. I mean, you know, when Nolan Ryan bought the team, we did a private roast for him, and we just took the gloves off. I mean, you know, we could say things that that others can't, and we were slaying him. As a matter of fact, when we met George W. Bush, we worked with him a second time. And uh Dave and I were hosted dual hosting, and he's like, Dave, you'll never guess who we get to introduce. I go, ooh, who's coming up? He goes, Well, let's just say it's political royalty by the last name of Bush. I go, Herbert Walker Bush is here. He goes, No, no, no, no, the son. I go, Jeb Bush is here. They're like, no, the other one. And I'm like, the painter? He goes, yeah, that's the guy. So that's our introduction for him. He comes out and he's a great sport. He's like, Oh, I heard you got four-day weekend, you guys can't afford real entertainment. So he's giving it right back to us. And then he's like, nah, I'm kidding, they're my Texas homeboys. And we're backstage going, oh my gosh, President Bush has called us the Texas homeboys. You know, it's just it's just amazing.

SPEAKER_01 42:06

Does it feel surreal to think about proving to your parents you got you could kit straight A's out in Fayetteville? Heck, I'm gonna go park, I'm gonna go work on a cruise. And then you're having these full circle moments with the president of the United States. Does that feel hit you?

SPEAKER_00 42:26

You know, I I don't know if it has or not. Hopefully it hit them. You know, I I know my dad, my dad passed away a few years ago, but he was my biggest fan. He was rooting for me the whole time. Uh, and I think I sh I think I really surprised my mom.

SPEAKER_01 42:42

You do have a couple kids. I do. Yeah. Are they interested in improv or comedy?

SPEAKER_00 42:47

Not spent too much time growing up around it. I think so. I I think they saw the toll it takes. I've been, you know, it's a beautiful life, but I've been away every Friday and Saturday night of their life, right? I mean, that's the job. Um, so they they understand that that's tough. Now, it gives me my days free. So I've been coach Dave, I've coached every team, I've been around a lot. I'm not, you know, I've been a great present dad. But you know, being away on the weekend, it's tough. You know, my it was tough on my wife. She had to hold the fort down. We missed every wedding, every party, every, you know. So that was tough. So I don't think they want anything to do with that. Uh, they're both really funny, really smart, just incredible kids who, you know, one graduated UT and has a high-tech job in New York, computer science kid making a bucket load of money. And my other's a sophomore at UT, advertising creative kid, doing great. So uh I'm I'm officially uh he's a sophomore now, so I'm officially the least educated in the family. But I always say, hey, hey, hold on. Between my wife and myself, we have two degrees. There we go. And you still you kept the lights on too. I did. You still got them to college.

SPEAKER_02 44:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 44:00

Do uh Yeah, I used I used to be embarrassed by it, and now I wear it like a badge of honor because there's more than one path to success.

SPEAKER_01 44:09

Right. Did you ever think about quitting this? Not because things were going bad, but because of the toll it takes?

SPEAKER_00 44:16

No, never. No. And I think that's why we succeeded. Quit was never an option. Just never was an option. Quit. What are you talking about? I mean, so my other partner, Frank, that's one of the three, he was a design engineer at Texas Instruments, highly recruited out of Ohio State, walks right into a six-figure job in the 90s stock options. He is his life is set. Now he's also in the show on the weekends. And the show's starting to grow. We're starting to go on the road. And he would have to sneak out of TI. We'd drive across town to a show and come back and go back into work. And I had to sit down with him and say, hey, buddy, we can really make a go of this, but if we treat it like a hobby, we're going to get hobby results. So we really need you to be all in. And he walked away from that TI job to do four-day weekend full-time. And you know, we couldn't pay him anything like he was making there for a while. You know, now he now he tells me, Dave, what a great decision. I wouldn't have changed for you know for the world.

SPEAKER_01 45:24

What was his incentive to walk away from Twitter?

SPEAKER_00 45:28

He loved the craft. He was he Frank Ford is the funniest guy I know. I mean, he's just so brilliant. And look, I don't know. This is his TI calculator, and see how it goes up like that? He invented that.

SPEAKER_01 45:42

Really?

SPEAKER_00 45:43

That's he's like, hey, why don't we move that up like that so you can see it? You're working. Genius. Well, I've had that since 97. Larry, look at that, baby. Come on now.

SPEAKER_01 45:54

Dave, that thing's older than me.

SPEAKER_00 45:59

So every Friday and Saturday night of your life, I've been on a four-day weekend stage. Is that what you're telling me? Every Friday and Saturday might plus a few more. Yeah. Wow. Okay. Yeah, well, there you go. That's where the confidence came from. I got it.

SPEAKER_01 46:17

How does there a turnover in yours cast, or do you guys usually hold people for a long time?

SPEAKER_00 46:24

In the Fort Worth cast, there's been very little turnover, right? Um the Dallas cast is a bit different just because it's just a different vibe. We didn't want it to be a boy band. We wanted, you know, because we were we were four guys. You know, we're like, okay, we want some female representation. You know, so so that's just been a little bit more of uh trial and error on cast members, and some have, you know, worked our stage for a few years and moved to Chicago, and you know, and some have uh moved on, and and it that's a little bit more of a rotating door than the uh the Fort Worth cast.

SPEAKER_01 46:59

What is your I'm really curious, I know we briefly touched about, but your role is the gray-haired guy in the group.

unknown 47:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 47:10

The mentor, the guy who's done shows longer than I've been alive. Right? How do you accept the responsibility of I don't think responsibility is the right word, but to help these young people coming off?

SPEAKER_00 47:25

Well, it it's hard. It's hard. Like my nickname is Tweak because I'm constantly tweaking everything. Oh, just so I have a little bit of controlling issues because it's my vision, you know, like four-day weekends, our our vision, and then it's my responsibility to foresee it through. So every decision kind of runs across my desk or through me, and it and they always bust my hump and call me tweak. So I have to learn how to step back. And if these younger performers do something or make a choice that I wouldn't have made, you know, I have to learn from it, you know, because I'm older. Now I can teach them things, but they can teach me things too. I, you know, I can't be so stuck in my ways that I don't want to grow anymore just because I know I can do it this way. So it's hard to be, you know, you'd have to ask them. I don't know how they feel about me. I don't know if they're like, you know, oh man, I feel so safe with Dave. He's got us. Or, oh God, the old man, retire. Let us have the show. What's wrong with you?

SPEAKER_01 48:28

Where do these people come from? And I mean that respectfully. Because where do you go to learn improv and where do you go to where you can show up to an audition for a four-day weekend? And you're just to get it.

SPEAKER_00 48:42

You know, you're not gonna get it pulled off an audition. You know, you're gonna join our training center, and then we're gonna watch you for years. You go through the training center, and and the the instructors will flag somebody and say, hey, check check this guy out in a couple months, you know, and then uh, or we'll go, we'll go look at other existing troops that have been around for years and say that would be a good fit and ask them if they want to join 4D. And some of them some of them work and some of them don't. It's been a difficult thing. It's not like we can just make more Pepsi because we have the formula. It's just like make more Pepsi, we're selling a ton. It's like, no, it's really hard to get people that gel, right?

SPEAKER_01 49:22

And they travel with you to corporate events?

SPEAKER_00 49:25

Yeah. So the corporate events are either all of us or two of us or me solo, you know, or somebody else solo. Uh it's a very scalable um offerings.

SPEAKER_01 49:38

You talked about the Delta, we talked about the presidents. What other corporate, what other things are you doing for corporate events?

SPEAKER_00 49:44

The awards, the Yeah, we do a lot of training. So we have a keynote, a yes and keynote. We wrote a book called Happy Accidents, the you know, power of yes and at work and in life. And we have an hour keynote, and we go in, and our client lists is a who's who. We go in and train uh all of these either corporate executives or or marketing people or sales staff, and we work with them on how to incorporate the philosophies of improvisation into the workspace, which consists of you know, empathy and listening and line building and collaboration and just being open to new ideas and not saying no.

SPEAKER_01 50:28

And where did this come from? Did you write this book?

SPEAKER_00 50:31

We did. Uh, three of us, Frank Ford, David Ahern, and myself wrote the book called Happy Accidents, The Transformative Power of Yes and at Working in Life. And uh it actually became a national bestseller in the first week because we pre-sold, I think, about 30,000 copies to every corporate client we had. We're like, if you buy, you know, if you buy a thousand books, we'll do a show for you for free. And you know, you're just trying to uh yeah. So that was a pretty pretty big moment for us back in the day. How long ago did you write that? I think it was right at 10 years. Yeah. Wow. And where did that idea spark from? Um, somebody on a plane, we were flying and we were talking about improv. Like, have you ever written all this down, written a book? Your story's fantastic. You should write a book. And I came back and said, we should write a book. And then David, who was uh the other David, who's a prolific writer on his own, is like, Well, yeah, I'll take a crack at it. So he starts and we would just sit around a table and talk about ideas, and he would transcribe and then go home and clean it up. And uh, you know, it's a lot of lessons, but it's a lot of our history and story too. So it's kind of a fun read.

SPEAKER_01 51:41

What else is on your life resume that you haven't talked about yet?

SPEAKER_00 51:47

Uh let's see. Husband, father, business owner. Uh, I'm an entrepreneur in residence at TCU's Neely School of Business. I teach uh the Neely School of Business uh fellows. I teach them improvisational techniques to help them with entrepreneurship. We've received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the uh from NACE, which is the National Association of Community Colleges of Entrepreneurship. I have the key to the city for being Fort Worth's greatest ambassador. We were gifted, uh what are we? We're the number one comedy act, corporate comedy act, uh, under $25,000, which is nice. You know, we're not a Dana Carvey or the big money, but if you're spending less than $25,000, we got that. We won an Addy for one of our uh commercials that we produced and shot and edited. Uh you know, the accolade list, when I read, I'm like, dang, not bad for a college dropout. It's come a long way from $2,100. Yeah, yes. You know, that's the most thing I'm most proud of. We never went back for financing. We never, we never had a second round. We took that $2,100 and just up, up, up, up, up, up, up. And it was a little bit rocky through the pandemic, but we're back to up, up, up.

SPEAKER_01 53:06

Now, as a as a college student right now, that's probably something more business students need to hear. Do you do you teach that? Do you tell people that when you're talking to these business students?

SPEAKER_00 53:19

No, I I I I I touch on our story, but we're an outlier. I mean, I mean, you know, three guys putting on a show for six weeks. We were hoping the 2100 would last us to six weeks with flyers and rent, and and that was it. You know, it just but it just kept stumbling forward. It hasn't been pretty. It's just we're just stumbling forward. Just everything is just out of our balance and and and you know, we we haven't fallen yet. We just stumble forward. Um I'll tell you a story that is my most proud story about the show. Forget all the accolades. This is someone who came to the show. We had uh, you've seen the show, we close with a thing called Big Brother, where we take a random audience member and we bring them on stage, we throw the football with them, and then we basically recreate their life looking just like them, and it ends in a song. And it's been a closer of ours. Like I said, it's our margarita bill. We close with it every night. The big brothers don't ask to be in the show. It's spotlight is thrust upon them. And our goal is to have fun with and not make fun of. And I gotta say that again. We have fun with, we don't make fun of. They don't choose to be in the show. So I have no desire from one human being to another to punch down to attack on appearance or or or or or race or orientation or religion. That doesn't interest me at all. Anybody we interact with, we try to elevate. Always. I always try to take lower status. That's why the character that throws a football is a little eight-year-old boy. So no matter what, the audience member has status over the little boy. Our goal is to make him a hero. We want at the end of the night for that applause when we say, and a big round of applause for our big brother, Colin. That's the biggest round of applause of the night is for this stranger. We'd play, we did this guy in Fort Worth, and he had these glasses that were hanging around, and they would, you would put them on and they would magnet. They were just one lens, but they would connect by magnet, and we just thought that was so interesting. That we went and broke a pair of glasses and had them around the guy's neck. And of course, every time, you know, the scene, he would have to, we had tape, we put the glasses together, and we just played that little tiny bit for comedic effect, the whole scene. And the audience is roaring. The next day we get an email. That man passed away that night in his sleep. He died. It was the last time their whole family will ever be together. The daughter and the boys, everybody was there, and they all came to Four Day Weekend, and then they went to a hotel, and he passed away in his sleep at the hotel. And they got back to me and said, We will always have, I'm getting choked up, we will always have the memory of my dad being the star and the hero of the night, thanks to four-day weekend. And we cannot thank you enough for giving us that last memory of our father. Sorry, man. It's so, it's I'm more proud of that. I mean, we could have totally made fun. Oh, look at that nerd with the gun. No, that's not who we are as people, and that's not who we want the show to be. We want to elevate others. Our business model doesn't say make people laugh. It the top of it says to heal through laughter. We want people to come to the show and have a 90-minute escape from whatever they're dealing with. That's why there's no politics, that's why there's no religion. It's just funny. And that email, we took those glasses and we put them in a shadow box and we sent them to that family. So that's that's what I'm most proud of. And the fact that if somebody comes up to me at a restaurant and says, I'm I've been to your show 25 times, it's amazing. You know, they I mean, just a random person that has come that many times, it's it's beautiful. It's been a great life.

SPEAKER_01 57:51

That's an amazing story, Dave.

SPEAKER_00 57:53

Yeah, thank you. Yeah, I am that's we get that all the time. You know, we get my my husband died, and I haven't laughed in a year, and I came to your show and it was cathartic. Thank you. And you know, our first date was at four-day weekend, and now we're bringing our kids. Wow. Yeah, we waited 18 years so we could bring our kids to your show. This was our first date. We've had people propose at the show.

SPEAKER_01 58:22

We've had, you know, this is it's when the show started, was that the goal to have those moments? I mean, were you already thinking when you started the show you wanted these amazing moments to come through it? Or was this a byproduct?

SPEAKER_00 58:36

It was a byproduct. All we wanted to do was put on a show with our with my best friends. The three of us talk Dave the fourth in, and we were best friends, and all we wanted to do was put on a show. I mean, we would perform to nobody and record it, and then go back and watch it and talk about it and dissect it. We, you know, we just cared about the craft and the fact that it's still going, blessing beyond blessings. Dave? Yep. What's next? Uh, probably gonna go make a sandwich. Oh, you mean with the show? Sorry. Or with Dave Wilk. Yeah. No, I'm going to uh, you know, we're gonna uh we're opening a new theater. This is I don't know when this is gonna air, but since we after 27 years in Fort Worth, we lost our lease unexpectedly. Heartbreak. I don't want to talk about that because I I want to be positive. But we have a new deal. We're not announcing it yet. We're working through MEP right now and plans, and we should be open on our 29th anniversary, February 28th. That's our goal day to open our brand new Forever home in Fort Worth. Dallas Theaters are rocking and rolling, and just keep making them laugh.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:04

One thing that really stuck with me from this conversation is how much a four-day weekend success came from simply keeping it alive. Or, as Dave put it, stumbling forward. There was no perfect plan, no master strategy, and no money. Just showing up, figuring it out, not quitting, and making a few people laugh along the way. And there's something kind of wild about realizing you're what people chose for their night out. Not Netflix, not the ballgame. You. That pressure shows up in how Dave talks about community, ethics, and actually caring about the people in the room, not just getting laughs at their expense. If you're in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, Four-day Weekend has shows every Friday and Saturday night. Go see it live. I promise it's way better than me trying to describe it.