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Guaranteed Human.

April Bayer is a 25-year professional matchmaker relationship expert and founder of level connections, a first of

its kind matchmaking platform making professional matchmaking more accessible for serious singles

and more scalable for the matchmakers who serve them. Hi, April. Hello, Kelly. Well, I had all

these questions ready to start the podcast and then you just dropped the biggest, amazing, most amazing bomb on me. And I can't stop geeking out about it. But I know my listeners know that I went to Second City over the holiday break in Chicago, which is like an improv. It's kind of like being at a live S&L performance is what I would say. And you just told me that you used to be

a part of the groundlings and then Second City. Can you tell the listeners about that a little bit?

Yes. It's so interesting. I don't often talk about it because it feels so unrelated to what I do

in my career. But yes, in my 20s, I was actually friends with Will

Farrell before he got S&L. And Will was the reason I went to the groundings. He's like,

you've got to go, April. And I went and I loved comedy. As a little girl, I wanted to be,

you know, the wicked stepmother, not the princess.

Whatever was character, I wanted to do it.

And I went there and I enjoyed it.

It was really good training.

But it was hard to be a young woman in those days and those kind of early comedy days because they really wanted people that looked more like caricature.

So they were harder on women,

I felt, especially if you looked a certain way. And then I eventually went over to Second City and I

graduated from their two-year program. And that's where I found my home. That's where I was

part of writers groups and directing. And it was just so, such a different space of people welcoming you, all types.

You know, you could go off character, off type.

And I loved every single second of it, every second of it.

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