I’ll Follow You: Behind the Scenes with Cemal Ozdemir

Ooh, you’re in for a treat today! I am so excited to share with you my conversation with my very dear, very funny, and very brilliant friend Cemal Ozdemir.

(You can stream our chat via the embed here or pretty much anywhere else you source your podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, and Google Podcasts.)

Cemal spent nearly 30 years with the firm Dauby O’Connor & Zaleski (DOZ), a leader in affordable housing and real estate accounting, starting there as an intern in 1993 and ultimately becoming Chief Executive Officer in early 2020. He stepped down in 2022 to focus exclusively on his newest project, Ozwell Fitness, an elevated wellness studio that combines the two core elements of wellness—fitness and recovery—into a single, seamless experience. He has a degree in business and accounting from Indiana University and has also taken over 2,000 group fitness classes, with Orangetheory, CycleBar, Fit Flex Fly, Shred415, Peloton tread and bike, Flywheel, and SoulCycle as well as several hundred hours of personal training.

But more importantly for our purposes here, Cemal was also the lead actor and impresario behind the Chicago production Higher Grounds, a live sitcom-on-stage concept that you’ll hear us talk about much more in depth throughout the episode. He and I originally knew each other through our mutual affiliation with the Lake Central Theater Guild but became much closer when I came on board as a script writer for Higher Grounds and ultimately his de facto personal assistant.

Names and references are gonna start flying fast and furious right off the bat, so just to orient you a bit before we get started. The Lowes are Paul and Angie Lowe, the directors of the Lake Central Theater Guild (whom I also have interviewed for this podcast, way back on episode 14 in April 2020). Keith and Brenda are Keith Underwood and the late Brenda Palazolo, tech experts from the Lake Central Theater Guild who knew everything there was to know about running lights and sound and building sets.

So let’s hear Cemal talk about how, exactly, a gym is like a sitcom; the importance of community; people coming to LA to dream; the power of being the sidekick; how to properly pronounce his first name with (or without!) a Turkish accent; and learning to focus on what you’re good at.