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Thursday, Mar 28, 2024

Laughs Last

Laughter is the best medicine, but for Gary Alexander, it’s also a teaching tool. For more than a decade, Alexander has provided “edutainment” in the form of humor-based courses for traffic infractions that feature material from stand-up comedians to get the lessons across. His Encino company Interactive Education Concepts Inc. operates strictly online and is expanding into workplace safety courses. Its six-hour traffic safety course combines text with comic strips and videos of comedians. Charles Fleischer, a stand-up comic best known for voicing “Roger Rabbit,” narrates the course. The son of Russian immigrants, Alexander, 50, poached the idea of a humor-based traffic safety course and brought it to the operators of the Improv comedy club in West Hollywood. The idea became a business called Improv Traffic School, which expanded into other states until Alexander sold it around 2000. In 2010, he formed Interactive Education Concepts to buy back the assets of the school, and embark on modernizing and expanding the course offerings. The company had $5.2 million in revenue in 2014 and its 65 percent growth over three years earned it a spot at No. 25 on the Business Journal’s list of Fastest Growing Private Companies. Alexander spoke with the Business Journal about the origins of the company, how it has grown and the value of being a part of the Entrepreneurs’ Organization. Question: What motivates you? Answer: I think really experiencing a certain level of success. And I don’t necessarily mean financial success. In my personal life, it would be my kids. From a business perspective, building a company is a creative process. I am somewhat of a frustrated artist. Title: Chief Executive Company: Interactive Education Concepts Inc., Encino. Born: Odessa, Ukraine; 1965. Education: Attended Fairfax High School; college courses at UCLA Extension. Career Turning Point: Founding Improv Traffic School in the early 1990s. Most Admired Person: Steve Jobs, Richard Branson, Elon Musk. Personal: Married; daughter, 18, and son, 6. Hobbies: Photography and travel. What are the origins of Improv Traffic School? The origins go back to the mid-1980s. I got involved with it through my dad. We came here in 1979 from the Ukraine. He saw there was a large influx of Russian-speaking immigrants in the ’70s and ’80s and he started a driving school. He had a Chevy station wagon and my mom was in the kitchen booking appointments. How did coming to the United States influence your approach? It gave me a certain level of hunger. Coming in as a kid in high school, you had something to prove. It taught me you had to work hard to get what you wanted. My parents couldn’t provide things to me financially. I knew that if I wanted a better car than a Chevrolet station wagon, I had to work hard to get one. Did you work for your father? As I turned 18, I started helping him and got exposed to it for a few years. We then started a Russian-speaking traffic school. One day I came across a company I heard was using humor (in traffic schools) and how successful it was. I thought, “Mmm, that sounds like a real neat idea.” How did the connection with the Improv come about? I was a big fan back then. They used to have a TV show (on A&E) and the club was where big names like (Jay) Leno and (Jerry) Seinfeld were performing. I was young and stupid and without much preparation. I went to the club (on Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles) and looked up (founder) Budd Friedman and said, “Hey, I have this crazy idea, Improv Traffic School, in the club, under your name.” By that time it was 1992, 1993. What was Friedman’s response? He looked at me like I was crazy. He asked me questions. I had no answers, I just improvised. I didn’t think he was going to buy this. He called me a few days later and he said, “OK, kid, we’re interested. Come talk to us.” Was it a success from the start? I had no idea what I was doing and no money to do it. I convinced him to lend me $10,000. We started hiring working comics, training them, going through the licensing process. Because of the novelty of it, we became the high ticket in town and got tons of publicity. The school started growing. We expanded into Texas, then into Florida. We were operating in pretty much all of the nation at this point. This was all brick and mortar. These were pre-Internet days. What was your next move? That’s when I sold the company. That was almost 15 years ago. I was out of the business and never thought I was going to get back to it. I started two successful companies in that interim period not related to anything we did here. What were those businesses? I started a medical staffing company that we grew into a national chain. I had a real estate development company where we focused on distressed real estate in downtown Los Angeles. What was that experience like? When I started the staffing company, I raised outside capital and had a formal board of directors. I had a different set of accountability and rules that took some adjustment. What happened to those two businesses? They are all around but I am not part of it. The staffing company was sold about eight, nine years ago. The real estate company, I sold my interest to my partner because this began to get traction and it was not fair for me to stay as a partner. Initially this was going to be a fun project on the side. I couldn’t do both. How did you end up getting back in with the traffic school? I became close friends with the person who purchased the company. He had some personal issues. They took a few missteps and the wrong direction in the vision of the company. And they missed the transition when the industry transitioned online. Was it tough seeing that happen to the company you started? That is part of the reason why I stepped in. When I took it back, it was down to one employee and it was 300 when I had left. There was no business coming in. What did you do? We started to make changes, primarily transitioning everything online. Things started happening one by one. By the time I knew it, I was working full time. The first few years were spent reclaiming our core business, which was traffic school, teen driving education courses and defensive driving programs in other states. Why go with the humorous approach? Safety is not something that people embrace. Typically it is easy to lose the participation or attention of the participants. Most of those films are not very exciting. Using our humorous approach, we are reaching out to that participant and delivering something fresh to the market. Does humor increase retention of the material taught? For our particular (traffic safety) course, we have three independent studies that we did not commission. Two were done by the Florida DMV and one by New York that show that people who go through our course have fewer collisions and tickets. We are able to affect, according to them, the outcome. Very few programs in the nation can make that claim. All your courses are now online? We just closed our last classroom locations in California in June. The model shifted. People prefer doing it online. The quality of the education is better. Online ensures consistency. In the classroom, you were at the mercy of the instructors. Some instructors were great; some got us in trouble by cutting corners. With this new generation, people just expect it to be online. Are you still affiliated with the Improv comedy clubs? We license their name and tap into their resources once in a while. Budd (Friedman) was very influential. We have a loose affiliation with them. What are your day-to-day duties? New product development. I am involved sometimes more than what the staff likes to see. I am a stickler for detail. I am fanatical about customer service. I get involved in the details of building the culture. What are some of the new products? We are in the process of developing a corporate library that is going to be called Improv Safety, using the same concepts for safety training. Imagine you are in a factory where there is the potential for all kinds of safety (hazards). We focus on the OSHA-type market. We are in the process of developing a series with a well-known Hollywood celebrity for a library of safety courses. What kinds of safety will the course focus on? There is no shortage of topics. From OSHA compliance to office safety to sexual harassment, that market has big potential for us. What is your business model? There are three markets right now that generate the consumer side of the revenue. In California, for example, it is the courts. If you are under 18 and need to get your driver’s license, it would be the teen driver’s education course online. We don’t do the actual driving part. In California, there is a program that we just got approved called mature drivers, so if you are 55-plus you can take our course and get a discount on your insurance, which is mandated by law. On the corporate side, a company will contract with us to develop a custom course or buy one of the courses in our library. With the defensive driving course, we have a version modified for our corporate clients. They pay for each user taking the course. It is a straightforward model. How do you explain your company’s fast growth? We focus on our product. I think the consumer appreciates that. Especially in California, there are a lot of other choices. Some of them are cheaper than ours. When someone has to go through this process, people are nervous. It is not the most pleasant experience and not something you are looking forward to and we want to minimize that impact. Have you ever taken one of your traffic safety courses? I take one almost every week for quality control but I did have to do it as a student once. I ran a stop sign a block away from my home. You were satisfied with the experience? I don’t think I feel satisfied. That is what drives me. I always see room for improvement. The minute we are satisfied 100 percent, that is when the competition takes over. It has to be a living product. How has the L.A. chapter of the Entrepreneurs’ Organization influenced your career? I have been a member for 14 years. It’s had a profound effect on me personally and professionally. I don’t think I would have achieved a fraction of what I’ve achieved without it. Why is that? Just from the vast amount of knowledge and support and being surrounded by other entrepreneurs. It is not a networking group. It is peer-to-peer support. I refer to it as my informal board of directors and board of advisers. You have a forum and venue to ask for help, to express your frustration and get feedback based on experience. What was the turning point in your career? There were a few. Definitely starting Improv Traffic School. I was a kid with two years of high school education. I just relied on my instincts. That was the biggest. The second was before I sold we merged with (another company) and that was my first experience in a more formal corporate environment. It took some time for me to adapt. Whom do you admire the most? There are so many people I admire. As a business person I would have to say Steve Jobs or Richard Branson. Elon Musk is another one. Anyone who can achieve a level of success over and over again and change an industry and put it on its head. What are your hobbies or outside interests? Photography is the biggest. I spend more time on it than I can afford. It became my therapy. And I like to travel. But those two go hand in hand. I try to do a couple of big trips a year. Where have you been this year? Nepal, Japan, Greece, Israel and Europe. Have you ever gone back to the former Soviet Union? I was back to Ukraine once and that was almost 10 years ago.

Mark Madler
Mark Madler
Mark R. Madler covers aviation & aerospace, manufacturing, technology, automotive & transportation, media & entertainment and the Antelope Valley. He joined the company in February 2006. Madler previously worked as a reporter for the Burbank Leader. Before that, he was a reporter for the City News Bureau of Chicago and several daily newspapers in the suburban Chicago area. He has a bachelor’s of science degree in journalism from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

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