Hello and welcome to the podcast! Today, we're going to talk about Mike Rayburn. Mike is a world-famous stage performer who has performed on over 5000 stages and is known for emotionally engaging his audience. The podcast episode focuses on Mike's ability to emotionally enroll people from the stage and ultimately lead them to make a meaningful impact in their lives. Mike shares his story of becoming a guitarist and comedian, and how he decided to use his talents to teach creativity, innovation, and mindset using guitar and comedy instead of PowerPoint and statistics. The episode highlights the importance of emotion in impacting people and moving them to action.

Mike started playing guitar and making people laugh when he was younger. Now he uses his talents to teach people about creativity and having a positive attitude. He doesn't just use boring PowerPoint slides and statistics like some teachers do. He uses his guitar and comedy to make people feel things.

Mike thinks that it's really important to make people feel emotions when you're talking to them. He says that if you want to teach something or make a change, you have to make people care about it first. He tells a story about a nurse who made her audience feel connected to her by asking them a question and then waiting to give them the answer. This made the audience feel like they were part of the story and kept them interested.

Mike also shares a story about his friend who died in a bicycle accident when they were teenagers. This made him realize that life is short and we should make the most of it. Now, he teaches people how to be their best selves and live their best lives.

He says that it's okay to use other people's stories in your presentations, as long as you give them credit. He tells a story about learning to play music for drunk people and getting fed up, which leads to a discussion of Chris Christopherson's story about becoming a songwriter. Mike thinks that stories can really make a difference in how people feel.

If you want to learn more from Mike, he has a free newsletter where he gives tips and inspirational stories to stay positive. He also has a three-day event called the What If Weekend, where you can learn how to be your best self. And if you want even more help, he has a one-year program called the Virtuoso Underground, where you get to talk to him and his wife and get help achieving your goals.

Mike thinks that everyone can achieve more than they think they can. He wants people to show up, be prepared, and follow their hearts to achieve their dreams. So, don't be afraid to feel emotions and make a change in your life!

Want to connect with Mike?

To schedule a free 30-minute consultation with Mike, click HERE.

To learn more about Mike's work, click HERE.

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It’s Rudy Rodriguez here. And on today's episode, we have a special guest on with us, Mr. Mike Rayburn. Welcome to the show, sir.

Thank you so much, Rudy. It's great to see you.

Yeah. You got a really cool introduction for us. Actually, I want to just go ahead and jump right in and hear what you have to share.

Sure. Well, I always like to look at things a little bit differently, so I came up with a new way of playing like this.

There it is. Who needs an introduction when you have that?

For many years, that's exactly how I started every program. And occasionally still now once in a while.

Yes. So for our audience who is listening and maybe some are watching, believe it or not, Mike did that on one instrument, a guitar. And he did that live here on the show. Mike Rayburn is a world famous stage performer. He's performed on over 5000 stages and some of the biggest stages in the world. And he and I were recently both at a training event called Engage from Your Stage. And one of the things that really impressed me about Mike is not only how well he performs on a guitar, but how powerful he powerfully is able to emotionally engage his audience. And that's why we brought him on as our special guest for today's show, is so he can share his wisdom, his mastery, his experience when it comes to not just entertaining, but really getting people engaged from the stage and ultimately influencing them and leading them to make a meaningful impact in their lives. So, Mike. Welcome, sir.

I was so excited about what you're saying, I jumped in. Sorry about that. Thank you. I love being here.

Yes, sir. And one of the things I'd love to do is just have you share a little bit about yourself in a minute or two to share your story. What brought you to where you're at today in your life as a leader, as an event leader, and ultimately share the value that you have to share with us when it comes to emotional enrollment from stage.

Sure. Well, for years, I knew guitar was my thing. Even though I was from a sports family, I knew that I was headed for music. And so there were challenges to overcome there. I became a guitarist and comedian.

I have a degree in classical guitar, and I toured all over for 16 years. I played 1800 college shows all over the US. And Canada. And I had this little personal development nerd side that listening to Tony Robbins and Brian Tracy and reading books on success and how the mind works and mindset and emotions, the power of emotion to move people. And so about 21 years ago, I decided to pull those together back up. I like to do things no one's ever done. It's my favorite thing. And so I saw that within the world of speaking, that there was no one teaching creativity, innovation and mindset using guitar and comedy rather than Powerpoint and statistics. Right. And so I thought, well, let me try this. And it wasn't like a speaker looking for a message. I knew what I wanted to teach. I just didn't know if there was a market for it. Well, it turns out there was. And so I was blessed that it clicked. I presented for thousands of corporations, most of the Fortune 500, Fortune Half, the Fortune Ten. I've been able to go in and teach innovation and possibility thinking. And so in that process, to get to what we're talking about today, one of the things that people forget in strategies and how do we fill our events, how do we create an event that really impacts people, is they forget the emotional contingent, the emotional side to it. And keep in mind, when I say emotion, that's anything emotion. Yes. Tears are emotion. Sadness. Emotion can be you can stir up anger, that's emotion.

Laughter, comedy, that's emotion. Right. All of those can and will move us to action if we do it the right way. So that's what I feel like we're going to kind of dig into a little bit today.

Very cool. Mike. Most certainly. And I personally had the opportunity to witness you perform when we were together in Vegas, and the whole experience that you created for us, quite frankly, I was moved to tears. It was right in my heart center. I was inspired by your message as well as your performance. And I know you had, like, a little video that was going on there in the background. And the saying goes, people don't remember what you tell them. They remember how you made them feel. I definitely see you as a master, as a virtuoso in this field, and I'm just eager and excited, man, to learn from you. How do you do it? How do you craft that message, craft that performance, craft that talk in a way that truly, emotionally engages the audience?

Absolutely. Well, the first thing that I would suggest is to take stock of what it is that you do well or that you bring to the table or that you know is something that clicks for you, meaning, I've got the guitar. And the guitar can create an emotional connection. A sad song or a happy song or a rebellious anthem. Those can all elicit emotions. The question is, I get people who say, well, yeah, but what if you don't play guitar? Anybody can do this. The reason is anyone can learn. If you're not good at it yet, you can learn to tell a story.

Stories are how Jesus taught. Stories are what sold so many Chicken Soup for the Soul books. So stories can have an emotional impact. So first thing you can do is look at the emotion. That the way you want to reach in a base, the way you want to dig in what level you want to connect with them and then either find or remember a story which points at that emotion that illustrates that situation so that they can grab it. And once you've got them emotionally, then you can take them somewhere again. You've always heard this. They're all asking, what's in it for me? Right? Everyone is secretly in some way subconsciously or consciously asking, what's in it for me? They think at the beginning that that's strategy and that that's content And that's certain points which are, of course, important. However, what they don't realize is what everyone's looking for is some kind of an emotional connection. We crave that as human beings. And so the first thing is, look at what you do. I'll give you an example. There's a woman who is a registered nurse, and she's a speaker, and she was speaking for college kids, and I happened to be at this event, and so I listened to her, and she was speaking about health. She walked out on stage, and she said, okay, which is the most dangerous? Cigarettes, alcohol, marijuana, prescription drugs, or opioids? And I started thinking everybody you could see everybody just thinking through it. Okay, right away she's dug into something. Well, it could be this. And she went through cigarettes are dangerous, but they take 25 or 30 years to kill you. Alcohol, so socially acceptable.

Anyway, she went through the particulars of each one. She said, which one's the most dangerous? And I thought, I don't know. I can't wait to hear the answer. And she said, I'm going to tell you at the end. And I thought, you better pay this off because I'm sticking around for this whole presentation because I want to know the answer to that question. She then proceeded to go through all kinds of different discussions of ways to help. And people were engaged from the beginning because they had emotional attachment, plus they want to know the answer at the end. She said, So which one is the book? Oh, she finished with a big story, and we all, oh, good. And we all clapped, and they were all thinking, Hold it. What about the answer to the question? And she kind of turned around and went back and said, oh, which one is the most dangerous? Is the one you like the most? And I went, boom. Okay. Emotion came from that. Okay. She had us all in the palm of her hands with that one simple point. She doesn't play guitar. She's not an illusionist. She's not juggling. She just used what she had. So look for what it is that you know that you do well, that you have a story about, especially emotional stories. I mean, I'm going to share one with you guys in a little bit that goes along those lines, but ended up being the force behind everything I do look for ways. The first step is to look for what you bring to the table that no one else does.

I love that. Look for what you bring what everyone else does. I think that's an important point here, because someone listens to say, oh, I have to be a master entertainer, master guitarist like Mike Rayburn if I ever want to enroll people emotionally. But you're saying you have to use what you got. You gave a great example there.

And when you use what you got and not try to be something else, you're authentic. And people yearn for long for crave authenticity. They just want to know who you are. I mean, I'll share with you, but the reason I share the ways I screwed up is because it's authentic, it's real. People get you.

Yeah, definitely. Mike, I think you make a great point here. The best way to learn is by listening to a story. And maybe if you're willing to share with us, love for you to share a little bit more about yourself through your story and give us an experience of what does it sound like when you're emotionally rolling people through a story?

Sure. This is really what compels everything that I do. Growing up, my best friend was a guy named Toby. Toby and I did everything together. We learned to play guitar together. My first shows were Toby and I playing two different shows for our fourth grade class. Third grade class. And we learned to play guitar. We would push the limits, like we ride our bicycles and see how far away from home we could get before dinner, because the only criteria was we had to be back by dinner. So we would get up earlier and earlier and ride farther and farther. Well, summer after our freshman year of high school, we decided to do a three day bike trip. And we packed all our things and we got on and we rode out there, and we were on the ride of our lives. Two freshmen in high school getting to just explore western. It was in Virginia. Western Virginia. We were on highway 50, about seven or 8 miles from Winchester, and we crossed a creek. We rode over under the highway forget the name of it. I recognized it as one that I had kayaked earlier in the year with my family.

And so I turned around and I yelled to Toby, and the next thing I heard was a crash. That fast crash skid and a huge force behind me, lifting me up and forward. I evidently blacked out because I flew through the air and landed hard on my left side. But I don't remember it. I just know because I still have scars where I hit. I bounced up and I was running along the highway trying to catch my balance, kind of like you see a football player who's trying to stay up. And I looked up and Toby, who had been behind me, landed in front of me. And when he landed, he hit and blood just immediately ran down the highway. Two boys on bicycles were hit by car going 65 miles an hour. And somehow I was thrown clear with mostly minor injuries. So I ran over to Toby and I was first, I was dazed, and then I was a Boy Scout, so I remembered first aid, right? And there was a little poem that had if it's red, lift his head. If he's pale, lift his tail. And he was red. So I lifted his head, tried to clear the blood out of his mouth and his face and everything, and I listened for his heartbeat, and it was there, which was weird because I didn't know how he lived through this. But anyway, I tried to help him. Finally, the ambulances arrived, and I wanted to go in the ambulance with Toby, even though they brought one for me. I just rode in the front seat with the one with Toby. And so we were riding towards Winchester. They had the lights on, they were flying down the highway.

And about long before we got to the hospital, they turned the lights off. And I thought, oh, no. And when I got to the hospital, I ended up having to clean my own cuts out for a while because they didn't look at me for a little bit. But the doctor came in and checked me over, and then he said, Your friend didn't make it. I was thrown clearance for some reason Toby wasn't. And on the way back, my parents came out to pick me up. The police had asked me to stop by the scene of the accident coming back to help them reconstruct what had happened, which is one of the hardest things I've ever done, because the blood was still on the highway. And the cop I explained where I thought I was, where Toby was, and the policeman said, yeah, that's exactly what we thought. Except there's one problem. There is no reason you should be alive. Which, ironically, meant the exact opposite. There's definitely clearly a reason that I'm alive. And on the way back, as we drove 60 or 70 miles back home, I was sitting in the backseat and I really looked, just processing everything that happened. And I made a decision that changed my life, that defined everything that I've done ever since then. I decided I would rather die making every moment count, living completely the way Toby, my hero, did, than to live worrying about how many freaking moments I have. And that principle has guided everything I've done since then. So fast forward a number of years.

I have an endorsement deal with Mcpherson Guitars, which is one of the best guitars, acoustic guitars in the world. And when they made this one for me, I don't know if you can see it, but I had them put Toby's name at the 12th. So he's always with me and everything that I have done since then. My sense of purpose, why I do what I do, comes from that event. So in doing that now, we'll kind of move to I'm finished with the story. What I will make the point is my program, my virtuoso underground is about mastery. It's about getting the most out of life going, why are you going to do it halfway? We're going to be here anyway. Let's just do it. Let's make this happen on a full scale, all out, playful out level, right? And so I created a mastermind coaching event. It's a year long. It's called the Virtuoso underground one year path to Mastery. And it's to equip people who are in that same place, who are either stuck in what they do, they're willing to dream big, start with what they want, rather than worrying about how people who are leaders, people who are creatives, people who are innovators or entrepreneurs, people who want to get the most. So that's what we do. We equip.

Mike, thank you for sharing that. Can you hear me? Okay, cool. I don't want to interrupt you. It was such an inspiring story. I really felt emotionally enrolled in you and your purpose and living purpose and why you live so purposefully. Like you said in the story, police officer said there's no reason why you should be alive. And you were like, on the contrary, it's the reason I'm alive. Right. And the purpose that I now have. And now you carry Toby with you on your guitar. It's really beautiful.

There was a point there that I didn't do because I was talking about how to do this without a guitar. One of the points I make when I talk about after the cop told me that, I say that there was a point when all the cars were stopped on the highway and the ambulances were there and they were treating Toby and I was wandering out. I was just kind of on my own. And one of the cars had the door open and I could hear the radio. It's the only music I remember from that day. And the music said, don't stop thinking about tomorrow. Don't stop. It'll soon be here. It'll be better than before. Yesterday is gone. Yesterday is gone. How perfect music came and essentially saved me in that moment.

Wow. Awesome, man. Thank you for sharing that.

Yeah. Now, the other thing, it's important as far as, like, coming up with we're talking about coming up with stories later. I want to talk about how the whole event works on an emotional level. You don't have to have your own stories. It's okay to use other people's stories as long as you credit them. And the cool thing is, if you do credit them, you end up getting credit for it as well. And so one of the points I make is that in my presentations is that I learned to play for people by playing for drunk people. I get on stage and they would yell all these stupid requests, and I didn't know them. And I didn't know how to handle them. And I looked bad on stage. I looked like I was an amateur. And I got tired of it and finally I got fed up. And I talk about the importance of getting fed up. The status quo, the results you're getting are not what you want. Get fed up. That's when things change. And then I share because music is obviously my thing. And I end up presenting in Nashville a number of times, and this is a Nashville story. I'll say, for instance, one of the great songwriters of the 20th century is Chris Christopherson. He went on to be a famous actor as well. But that wasn't his plan. That wasn't what was set out for him. He was from a family of military heroes, and that's what they expected. He was a Rhodes scholar, studied at Oxford. He came back, he became a prodigy helicopter pilot, and his future was set. That's not what he wanted. He wanted to be a songwriter. So he gave it all up, including his mom writing him out of the will, all to go to Nashville and become a janitor in a recording studio and start writing songs.

So what he did well, I know as a staff songwriter for Sony Music Publishing back at that time, how that works, you basically write songs. You try to get somebody famous to record them, and you have a hit and everything's good. So he was having the hardest time getting people to listen to his songs. Tried. Didn't work. So he got fed up. Now, I don't know what fed up looks like in your life, but here's what he did. I'm not suggesting you do what he did, but you can Google this story. It's absolutely true. He stole a helicopter. Already bad idea. Okay? He stole a helicopter, he flew it to Johnny Cash's ranch and landed in the backyard. Johnny and June tell the story that they looked out the back door, and here was this guy with long hair got out of the helicopter holding a beer in one hand. Okay? Drinking and flying again. Bad idea. A beer in one hand and a tape in the other. That's how we used to share music tapes. And he walked up to the back door, and Johnny said, I'll listen. You're willing to go through? And Johnny's next song was Sunday Morning Coming Down, which was on that tape. Chris Christopherson went on to write for The Good Times. Me and Bobby Mcgee helped me make it through the night. And he became a famous actor. Why? Because he got fed up. Okay? That's an emotional story. It's a different kind of an emotion. It's like, oh, my gosh. But it's emotion. So look for those stories that create the emotion you're trying to create.

I guess it's great. I'm taking notes here, man. I love how you gave an example of a third party story. It wasn't necessarily your story, but you're sharing somebody else's story and getting not only phrasing them, but also credibility for the person saying the story, like you mentioned before. So this is another great demonstration of how to emotionally enroll the audience and a great story. I'm going to go Google search and look for the video after this.

Yeah. In fact, I told that story, and a guy came up to me afterwards and shared with me. He had read Christopherson's autobiography, which I hadn't, and he shares that I didn't know the part about his mom writing out of a will or getting rid of the trust fund or whatever it was. You moved to Nashville and you're not getting any money from me. Luckily, he no longer needs it.

There you go. I actually was a Navy pilot myself, so I have many helicopter pilot buddies. I can see some of my buddies doing something rogue like that.

So that story hits you. And I'm sure you have so many stories with flying the P three S and the different things that happen, people don't realize that just life going on. Take notes. Henry Cho, who's one of the great comedians in this world right now, he's married to a woman from Arab, Alabama. So Henry Cho is a Korean guy in Knoxville, Tennessee, who has a thick Southern accent. You expect it to sound Asian. And no, he sounds southern. And he's married to a woman from Arab, Alabama. And he said, Thanksgiving, I go down there with them to Arab, Alabama. I listen to her family, and I just take notes. And his whole bit, a lot of his routine is based on what he hears from them. So do that. Listen to think about the stories in your life.

Think about the stories in others. It might be something that happened to your dad, might be sisters or brothers or whatever. Yeah, great. So a way to look for stories. They're all around us in our own lives and just got to pay attention and take those notes. There's another point that's really because we're talking about emotionally the emotional impact of your event and the way to enroll people to go deeper with you. And so the next point I would share is to pay attention to the overall arc of the event. Let's say we have something called the what if weekend. My keynote is called What If? I teach people how to use the question what if for innovation, reinvention, creativity, problem solving, all kinds of ways. And so we have the what if weekend where we what if people's lives for three days. You're going to leave there no longer living by default, but living by design, a design you create. So the emotional arc of our event, the first day we title Discover the second day is called disrupt. And the third day is called design. Three DS and discover this is uplifting. This is digging into who you are, why you do what you do, the abilities that you have. The real goal not just the goal, but the real goal, the reasons behind it. The second day is disrupt and that's emotionally, we're going deep. We're going into the emotions that are holding you back, the limiting beliefs and that kind of thing. And the third day is design. Okay, we've been through this stuff, and now we're going to turn this into a great product. Your events, anybody who's listening to your events will have some kind of an arc, whether you pay attention to it or not.

So I advise paying attention to it. What does that arc look like? What is the emotional journey? You want to start by welcoming them and then you want to go deep and you want to touch their pain. What is the pain you're trying to solve? And then you position yourself as solving that or your program or you're giving them solutions there however it works. And you want some kind of in comedy, they say, start big, finish big. And so you want some kind of a big, powerful ending. It doesn't have to be big as in, like, loud or just crate, although that works. You can be powerful by bringing it down to nothing. For instance, I have finished programs, although I finished with a guitar version of Devil Went Down to Georgia Sometimes, which is big. I have also learned how to create power and emotion with simple spoken word. I'll finish Bohemian Rhapsody on the guitar and I'll finish these things and I'll come down and say Richard Bach once wrote, here's a test to see if your purpose in life is over if you're alive, it isn't. There is a profound and a divine and wonderful reason that you're here. There are people you serve. There are people who depend on what you do every day, which is the reason I want you to keep asking, what if that ending is powerful, but it's not big. It's actually very small. I've gone from very big to very small, and I wish I was smart enough to come up with that. I wouldn't have come up with it. I saw somebody do it. I went, oh, my gosh.

That was more powerful than finishing with We Will Rock You. And it was simple spoken word. It was just the power of those words. Does that make sense?

Yeah. What I'm hearing you say is simple spoken words can be a powerful ending. It doesn't have to be a performance blowout, performance at the end. If you can really make a point and hit their heartstrings with simple spoken word, it works.

There's also, I would add to that the power of music to evoke emotion, which clearly is part of what I do for a big ending. When you get somebody, you take them on that emotional journey and they've come through and they feel like they've really come to a new understanding, a paradigm shift, an Aha kind of experience, and then Don't Stop Believing play. Or big songs like that anthemic kind of song we Will Rock you with. That's where music can take that emotion and just send it over top. And then they're going, you got me. I'm in.

Powerful. Awesome, brother. You shared some really great nuggets with us today. I'm taking copious notes, and I'll definitely be sure to include my notes in the podcast. Show notes here as well. Cool. I'm curious, Mike, for people who are listening in and leaning in, they're like, I love what Mike has to share. And I like his vibe, I like his approach. If they want to learn more about you and want to learn maybe more about the What If weekend, the Virtuoso Mastermind, what is the next best step for them?

Okay, sure. The easiest, best next step is to go to my website mikerayburn.com. Mikerayburn.com. And sign up. This is free. It's totally free. Okay, here's the way I want you to understand this. I get excited when I hear a podcast like this. I get excited when I go to an event. The challenge is not the next three days, because I'm going to be excited going on momentum. The challenge is seven days from now, 30 days from now, 90 days from now, eight months from now. How do you keep that? Well, so I created the What If weekly, and the What If weekly is my simple usually about 500 words of a simple tip, strategy, tool, inspirational story that you can use to stay in that mindset, to stay in that possibility, thinking that you're not getting stagnant and stuck in scarcity. Right. To keep that abundance mindset. And so it's absolutely free. Just go to my website and sign up. That's the first thing. The other is concerning the What If weekend, which is a three day event. The next one is July 20 in Reno Tahoe, which is my home. I'm looking at the mountains right here, the What If weekend. And then there's the Virtuoso underground, which I'll explain in a second. For both of those, I'm going to offer something I told Rudy beforehand. I don't always do this. I'm doing it with select audiences, and you guys are one of them. I'm going to offer a complimentary 30 minute what if jumpstart call, it's about whatever questions have come up from this that you have going on.

If you want to learn a little more about the things that I do or you just have something that you're trying to figure out, I'll explain the background to this in a second. But I love to uplift people. I love to equip them. So this is 30 minutes where you can explain what. You want, quite honestly, usually go 45 where you can explain what your situation is. I have some questions that I want to ask you and we'll talk about some solutions. And then if there's a reason for us to go deeper to work together past that, we can explore that too. And if not, that's cool too. I'm going to give that to you. And the link is up there. It's a calendar link. And you can schedule a call with me at your convenience and we will discuss this.

Mike, thank you so much, man. I'll be sure to include that link with the show notes here as well. What a wonderful opportunity for our audience. Appreciate that gift because I know you speak, I mean, you've spoken over 5000 stages and oftentimes audiences 500 to 5000 people at a time, and you just couldn't possibly make yourself available to that many people at once. So appreciate you being willing to meet individually with members of our audience to give them some tips and also to see if there's any synergies between the two of you. That's a huge gift. So if you're listening, I highly recommend taking advantage of the opportunity to meet with Mike for a 30 minute session and definitely check out The Virtuoso Weekend or the What If Weekend. And the virtuoso mastermind.

Yeah, the virtuoso mastermind. What you'll find on my website is there is a link for the what if weekend. There's not one for the Virtuoso underground. And there's a reason for that. Now, I might end up putting one up there. However, the reason is this is a select group of people. It's not for everyone. If you're getting all the results you want, you have all the influence, impact and income that you want, then it's not for you. It's not for people who are happy with mediocrity. Nothing wrong with mediocrity, but if you're happy with it, this is for a select group who really want to absolutely carpet seize life, suck the marrow out of life, as they say, to become mass. It's called the Virtuoso underground. One year path to mastery. Virtuoso because it's about mastery underground. It's because you and I both know the people who achieve mastery are a little different. They're counterculture. They're willing to do what others will not. They're willing to stay later, show up earlier, work harder. They're willing to confront the things that they need to get beyond. And so it's a one year path where we follow something. I'll share one of my difficult stories. I was in a place after playing colleges and being a professional comedian and guitarist, and I was just stuck. I was not able to get beyond the college market. I was not able to get beyond things I want to do with record sales. And I don't know if anybody out there is in this place, but that's where I was. And I started listening to Tony Robbins and Brian Tracy and all these I read Psycho Cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz and these books and speakers who really influenced me.

So I took what I learned from them and just for my own purposes, I came up, I put them together with this process of goal identification mission, your vision, your purpose. You're creating a plan for the goal, which none of them do. They all set goals. They don't create plans. We do that. Anyway, I came up with this virtual system and I applied it for myself, and it worked faster and better than I thought it would. And within 2003, five years of applying that, I headlined Carnegie Hall seven times, eight times, actually. I ended up becoming a speaker. My income quintupled. So here's that pain where I was just like stuck, turned into a big solution. So I then in Las Vegas, when I had in that time, I got my own show on the Strip in Las Vegas, and somebody said, well, hey, start teaching this. Years ago, a friend of mine and I were having a conversation about gifts and talents and what we bring to the table and what we're born with. And I said, Well, I think my gifts music and performance and maybe teaching and people, I love to react to people. And he said, Well, Mike, I think your gift is exhortation. And I said, Great. What's that? I've never heard the word. What it means is to strongly encourage, to edify, to uplift, to equip for greater things, right? The way he said it to me was, Mike, I've watched you. It matters to you that the people around you do better.

And when he said that, I almost cried because he hit something that was true, but I didn't know it. And I had this realization it doesn't. So I decided to start teaching this virtuoso system. And I helped plant a church in Las Vegas called Verb Church for people who don't like church. And we're very different. And we were I'm not there anymore. And so I started teaching this system and talk about stories. We started getting these people, getting these huge results from applying this system. And this was in a six week class, right? So the Virtuosa system works. A woman I'll give you a couple of examples. A woman named Cherie Rowe, out of work pianist, is a classical pianist. She worked for The Las Vegas Opera. She worked for Unlv. She's been fired from both those. She's out of work. She's got an 18 month old kid. And all her friends I bet you guys have dealt with this. All her friends are saying, you need to give up on that dream. You need to stay home, you need to raise your kid. You need to stop doing this crazy stuff. So she came into the program and where we start the questions and the ways that we identify her goal. Her goal was she wanted to study on the highest level possible in the world. She wanted to tour the world as a classical pianist, and she wanted to make that her living. And I'm like a believer in the dream, and I'm even going, man, this is a little optimistic, but we're going to trust the process, right? So we did it, created the plan, whatever. Well, this system that I developed as a side note, some people contacted me and asked me to deliver A Ted Talk on this, Tedx Talk on this system, and I did it.

You can look it up. It's called become a life, Virtuoso. So this is out of a movie. I was literally typing, working on the presentation of The Ted Talk, and Cherie's email came in with a little ding, Right? She was freaking out because she had just been accepted to The Mana School Of Music, The New England Conservatory, juilliard, professional Studies at Lincoln Center. She chose Juilliard. She moved her family to New York. She graduated with a classical piano degree from Juilliard. She toured the world as a classical accompanist for a cellist named Corey Joyner. In fact, when they came through Vegas as a thank you, they did a house concert for us. And she is now a professor at Juilliard. And she'll tell you if you contacted her right now, she would tell you it's because of the virtuoso system. I did what he taught. So I decided to create this virtuoso underground as a means to exhort, to uplift people to be that. So we meet weekly. We have guest speakers who are world class performers in different areas. We have a yearly retreat. The next one is coming up in June. But you can join this at any time. The process can still be applied whenever you start. And it's also unlimited one on one coaching with both me and with my wife, who is a, she's a life coach, And she's also a breath work artist, presenter expert. So anyway, we created this program just for that.

That's remarkable, Mike. That's a lot. I can tell that you put a lot of sweat, blood, tears experience into designing the patrol slope experience and just from your own experience. I've made a note here to go watch your Ted Talk. I'm going to grab it and put it in the show notes as well for our audience, too.

There's a second Ted Talk. It's actually the first one I did is called What If it was for TEDx NASA? That's the other thing. I'm not a scientist or anything like that. I'm going to present for NASA. And of course, the way I sort of make a deal with myself is, go, it's not like they're rocket scientists, and it's like, yes, they are. Every one of them is a rocket scientist. But it works.

That's going to be a good one to watch. I'm eager to listen to that one. I wanted to work at NASA when I was a young man. That's why I went into my field as well.

Yeah, because you have a mind that can get that the engineering, the Aeronautics, all that stuff. I don't believe anyone that I can't do it. I just know it's not my immediate skill set.

I appreciate that, Mike, and thank you again for your generous offerings on today's episode. And you're sharing stories and how to mostly engage the audience. Before we wrap up here, are there any final comments or words or anything you want to share with our audience?

Yeah, I always ask in designing the events that you design for me, designing my program and how I help others in whatever pursuit of mastery, whether it's performance or we have entrepreneurs, we have business owners, we have people in the corporate world, and whatever it is, I always ask people, what is it? You just want to shake the world to get them to understand what is that thing? And so, however you answer, that is a really good indication of what your events should be doing, what your presentation should be doing. And I say should. I'm not trying to should on you. It's a good idea of where to look for me, I want to get people to know you are capable. Whoever you are, you are capable of way more than you have even imagined, absolutely capable of doing things that you can't even fathom right now. The key is just to show up and to be equipped to allow yourself outside input and then go with what your heart says to go. So just remember, you are capable. Whatever it is you're dreaming of, you are capable of it.

Perfect. That's a great point to end on. Whatever it is they're capable of dreaming up, whatever we can dream up, we're capable of accomplishing it. Thank you again, Mike, for being a guest on our show. And with that being said, we're going to go ahead and call it a wrap. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Rudy, you are awesome, man. Thank you.