Las Vegas Review-Journal (Sunday)
Life is Rayburn’s source material
Mike Rayburn of Henderson gave his greatest Carnegie Hall performance in the lobby.
It was January 9, 2004, and Rayburn — a guitarist/comedian/ motivational speaker who has played the world’s most famous concert hall eight times — had just finished a soundcheck when his wife called.
Tara Rayburn was going into labor.
A check with the airlines found no flights from New York City home to Tampa anytime soon.
So he had to go on stage.
He got a standing ovation but didn’t come out for an encore.
Instead he raced to the lobby — not far from where his CDs were sold — took out his cellphone and called the birthing center where his wife was in the throes of childbirth.
He was positive — “You can do it” — and started breathing and grunting loudly in and out with his wife. As he did so, he looked over and saw a crowd at the CD table watching him.
And then the world’s population grew by one.
“It’s a boy,” Rayburn yelled.
That announcement, the 54-year-old swears, prompted the best applause he’s ever heard.
Life, Rayburn says
as we sit in his Henderson condo, provides him with the material he’s used to entertain people in 17 countries on four continents. A yearlong gig at Planet Hollywood’s V Theater ended in 2010.
His parodies of songs — somehow he manages to sound just like Led Zeppelin singing Dr. Seuss’s “Green Eggs and Ham” and Bruce Springsteen singing “Green Acres” — are staples of Sirius/XM comedy channels.
He can take the truth — he was born with six fingers on his left hand — and massage it to say he was destined to be a little odd and work with his hands.
“Had they left me the sixth finger,” he grins, “I could have been a better guitar player but could never have bought a pair of gloves.”
Today, the man voted America’s best college campus entertainer for three out of four years in the ’90s largely makes his living as a motivational speaker who uses his guitar to get his message across.
A past president of the National Speakers Association of Las Vegas, he found himself on the phone not long ago with a telemarketer for a communications company. He said he wasn’t interested but the telemarketer asked if he was the Mike Rayburn who performed at Highland Community College in Highland, Kansas.
When he said yes, she said she had wanted to buy one of his CDs after his performance but got sidetracked on a visit to the restroom. She thanked him profusely after he told her to go to mikerayburn.com to purchase his CDs.
“How many people do you know who’ve sold something to a telemarketer?” he asks.
John Getter, the current president of the National Speakers Association of Las Vegas, marvels at how Rayburn helped found Verve, the church on Dean Martin Drive for people who don’t like church.
Started six years ago, it now has more than 300 members. They generally see Rayburn playing guitar in a rock band that kicks off the service. A Christian message is interspersed with funny videos, including one that asked people on the Strip what can destroy their lives.
“Marriage,” answers a man standing next to a not particularly pleased wife. “Staying married,” the wife says. Rayburn keeps busy these days delivering motivational speeches that are largely based on his book, “What if …?”
“When you come up against the impossible ask, ‘What if we could?’” he tells listeners. “When you set a goal don’t start with what’s possible, start with what’s cool. What’s right.”
He says too many people become satisfied with their lives and don’t become all they could be.
“Most adults are coasting. The problem with coasting is, it only happens downhill. … To do things you’ve never done, you’ve got to start by doing things you’ve never done. … Most of us know exactly what to do, we just don’t do it.”
Rayburn knows what motivates people best.
“The most powerful motivational force … is not power, money, sex or fame; it’s a sense of purpose.”
Amen.