Repaired Couple of Nukes

The host welcomes a civilian guest, Mike Roth, who is a podcasting instructor and runs a podcast called "Open Forum in the Villages, Florida." Mike shares his experience of doing a podcast in Cincinnati and how he started teaching podcasting in Florida. He also talks about running improvisational theater clubs and doing shows for the community. Mike discusses his background in sales and how he used the Sandler sales techniques to grow his business. He mentions using EMDR therapy to help salespeople overcome trauma and improve their success. The "Open Forum in the Villages, Florida" podcast covers various topics like cancer, Alzheimer's, and diabetes. They release one show a week on Friday mornings. Mike also briefly mentions his past work as a political aide and his dislike for politicians. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another episode a couple of nukes as always. I'm your host. Mr Whiskey and it has been a while since we've done a civilians versus nukes on this show In fact, it's my series with the least episodes So I'm happy to sit down with a civilian and just talk about life for a while I had a fever last night and woke up with a sore throat. So the bane of existence for a podcaster So I'm gonna let Mike Roth here our guest do most of the talking But he's gonna go ahead and introduce himself to us now Mike. Would you please tell us a little bit about yourself, man? Sure. Thanks. Mr. Whiskey. My name is Mike Roth. I Podcast based here in the villages, Florida called open forum in the villages, Florida I also am a podcasting instructor at the Actually the only podcasting instructor at the villages in Richmond Academy and I run a three-week course on Podcasting a couple of times a year back the next time we started this tomorrow And the reason I started the course is a couple of my friends kept beating me up verbally Mike Would you teach me how to do a podcast? I know you used to do one in Cincinnati I lived in Cincinnati for 25 years before coming to the villages and as part of my sales training and leadership training Business I did a podcast to promote the business and we had about 90,000 listeners I did about 350 episodes before I sold the business and the fellow who bought the business from me recorded a grand total of one additional episode and then he closed it down and When I came here, I thought I'd never have to do another podcast, but you guys just driving me crazy So I said, okay I'll teach it as a course in the Richmond Academy one of the two guys took the course twice and he was a Audio engineer for National Public Radio which surprised the heck out of me that he would even be bothering to take a course in Podcasting took it twice the other guy never did and I also run two improvisational theater clubs here in the villages where we on the basic training level we give people the understanding of the routines of the ropes the things that you have to do in improv to be Successful and the other group is a Advanced course more people who are came with being on stage and we do someplace between Three and ten improv shows a year. Some of them are small for groups of 30 people like we did Show on Saturday for 130 people. We did a show on Sunday for almost 260 people the show is very funny. I like to include some Musical parodies and the audience had a good time players had a good time and it keeps you busy keeps your mind active bringing outside training instructors to Help our people become better improvers that we've been doing the improv course for four years The podcast open forum in the villages, Florida You can listen to them directly on your computer browser or your phone at open forum in the villages Florida.com and there is a list of all of the shows if you want to find out what's in the show most of the shows have a most of the newer shows have a transcript available where you can read approximately what the people said I use a lot of Creation of the shows all of my announcers are AI it much easier I save time background when I was in the sales training business I got in that business for 25 years after I took a course called the Sandler sales Institute when I was in LA I was in LA for 15 years and I was there when Reagan turned off the Star Wars program And I was looking for a way to grow my business while in fact moving getting ready to commit an act of bankruptcy because we were dying and I took this course and In eight weeks the business doubled in size and I was growing rapidly while I was watching my Competitors go out of business. I was scratching my head all the way to the bank My wife was transferred to Cincinnati by Hines couldn't sell my business I went to the training instructor in LA and I said to him How do I sell this business and it says to me find someone who doesn't need to buy it? And I've been using the Sandler techniques on him and the second person I talked to Slap the cash down on the table He paid me more than I thought it was worth in cash and then he paid me on payments an equal amount over the next nine years Wow, it was very easy for me to buy into the Sandler system and the franchise and we were successful in Cincinnati became unhappy with franchises, but the branch was successful when I made my clients successful and Scope improved it changed. We added sales management Management enterprise selling and the customer service And it was a good thing we did in the beginning It was training from the book that probably lasted for the first year and that got boring and I adopted a system of Entertainment where everything was broken up into in increments of no more than 15 minutes There were exercises sometimes comedy sometimes magic to keep the players People in the class entertained Interested and engaged that were like a charm. Another interesting thing that I discovered was that the salespeople in general pretty Psychologically screwed up. They needed help and Through the training I could fix them in two or three years But most people would drop out before that period of time whether people learn by long-term positive reinforcement training And if they drop out in eight months when they need three years worth of training They're gonna say it didn't work and I didn't like that. So I stumbled into something called I movement desensitization and reprocessing are for short and It's a psychological technique. And in fact when I heard about it, I said gee, this is crazy It's not never gonna work. So I was given a book on EMDR and Probably the first page in the book was a Prefix which was an endorsement by the FBI and they said they used EMDR to cure the post trauma Conditions caused in the people who survived the Oklahoma City bombing when I read the book. I said to myself gee whiz Rama, Oklahoma City bombing was a big-t trauma people for remember it people have traumas when they're children and they repress and Distort what the trauma was in their childhood and it affects their everyday life so we I engaged an EMDR therapist to work with my salespeople who had a Indicator in the conscious level of what their problem was Yeah Now to test the EMDR process even though it had the endorsement of the FBI I said I am gonna be client number one for the EMDR and I said I don't have any problems But I'll go through it and in my first EMDR session I left crying couldn't believe how because I relived a childhood trauma that happened Probably when I was nine years old that I had completely repressed Wow and misidentified in my conscious brain So it worked for me and I discovered that there were outward signs that people had of trauma that were repressed I would ask questions like did you either one of your parents or anyone in your family die? Before you were 18 the death of a parent major traumatic incident major accident a injury or loss and We had a probably about 85% success ratio with EMDR with our salespeople most of them they would buy into a EMDR set of sessions of six sessions and less than half of them less than half needed all six by Time we got to the third session about 50% of them All themselves cured and when they went on to be more successful in sales, I considered it a success That's a little bit of the background of what I've done the open forum of the village podcast is designed it was originally designed for villagers to be by villagers and We're expanding the scope a little bit. I've done over a hundred and ten episodes now You have about seven thousand regular listeners and as we do as we review the statistics It becomes clear that a show that has the word cancer in the title is much more listened to Than a show it's not in the medical area and we have a number of shows on Alzheimer's We've talked a little bit about diabetes and we're going to be talking more about that this year coming up We do one show a week, which is released every Friday morning at 9 a.m. Oh, yeah Yeah Mike when I'm trying to track here is you were a salesperson and then you sold the business and then you ended up Training salespeople, correct? Yes Yeah I started out believe it or not as a political aid to Mayor Lindsay in New York City that lasted for probably 18 months Before I discovered I disliked Politicians. Yeah, every time I saw them Lindsay or any of us deputies deputy mayors Everyone was wearing makeup five days a week as a kid fresh out of college Yeah, that was driving me crazy and bright, huh? I wound up doing a radio show with Mayor Lindsay It was like 9 a.m. 9 p.m And WNYC and we would go I had to go into Manhattan up to the uptown studio We sat across the desk for Mayor Lindsay and I talked to him every week, okay Yeah, what drove me crazy was one night. It was a nice night outside I had a light coat on as we left the studio Lindsay had a heavy trench coat on and As soon as we stepped outside he rolled up the collar Okay, and pulled his hat down when I said to him why are you doing that? It's not that cold He said to me I don't want anyone to recognize me. Yeah. Yeah, I can imagine Okay, very good I got to learn more about political game that I wanted to and I had a chance to go into sales I didn't know if I'd like it I took a telephone sales jobs with a company called Teneco and sold thin peeled polyurethane foam About a year and that's covered that I actually could sell but other people were taking credit for the sales that I made It sounds about right. Yeah, I said that's enough the Teneco and I Went over to the Burroughs Corporation Where they had me selling any machines and calculators and multiplying machines door-to-door in New York City in the Jewelry District and in the Fellow Center, and it was great training He got a lot a chance to do a lot of calls. I learned what worked. I learned what didn't work Right successful. They promoted me into the computer group into the accounting machine group and then the computer accounting computers I was actually the first desktop computer the Burroughs L 2000 sold a heck of a lot of I was thought I was to make any money You didn't get paid you commission until the system was paid for that meant it had to be programmed there's no one bought it with the Burroughs standard programs, so I discovered that I was a programmer and Three of my buddies we formed a company to hire people to write the programs better and faster than we could we are we? We are in that company. We found people to operate the Burroughs computers Okay, and we found people to print the business forms Sometimes people want to the lease the computers instead of buying them for cash and we employed some leasing companies I found myself making more money in this little three-person company that I was as a salesman at Burroughs I really know how to sell and I should go someplace that pays me more I don't have to be a juggler, which is what I turned out to be there and found a job with a competitor of IBM Telex computer products, I went from working seven days a week to working five days a week. That's nice twice as much money I said, this is I know how to sell and a couple of years later I wound up working for a division of IBM and I Became the number one salesperson in that company and when I made more money than the vision president He comes down to LA and he says to me Mike We're gonna cut your commission plan by two-thirds and we're gonna take away half your territory. Of course. Yeah I was absolutely dumbfounded and I asked my boss in LA. This can't be right. I must have heard it wrong And they said oh, that's right Mike. They gave me a big commission check and I said to myself I really know how to sell I don't need their salary Went out on my own and rated my own companies to sell phone systems and computer networks and even advertising on hold and That's what got me started down the path and it's so interesting to me. So you were selling like Calculators like just a regular old calculator originally. Yeah, it started out before that Burroughs had Mechanical tanning machines where you put the three numbers in and then you pull the crank Oh, we had an electric motor that all the machines seemed to have a backup crank just in case they've lost electricity The motor died and then they started importing digital calculators with mixi tubes and they sold from between $1,100 to two hundred two thousand dollars the two thousand dollar machine had two memories and it could do square roots and They were great machines, I couldn't get them off the boat fast enough in Japan and to really make a living that they had a French made any Subtracting and multiplying machine But if you asked the machine one, two, three times four five six It would never give you the right answer fifty six or eighty eight and I had a quarter supposed to sell a couple of those French machines every month and I was scratching man. I had to do that I'd rather sell the calculators with mixi tubes that were fancy two grand And as soon as you put some one of these on someone's desk, you're left to pay for a few days He came back and said you want a moment? Do you want to write up an order or B? I'll take it off your desk and get it out of the way and most people said I want it. How much is it? No one wanted this French panting machine So one day at the time I was in graduate school and I was taking statistics I learned that for a standard deviation The random number is the seed and I said to myself that damn J hundred it can never get the right answer so I went over to a Rockefeller Center with one of the machines under my arm that weighed a ton and Found an actuarial firm. I went to the head actuary and said hey, we wouldn't want to have a random number generator It really generates a different number every time as opposed to looking through the books of random numbers that you have Wow And he said to me there's no such thing and I said I got it right here, let's try a couple Wow and You know, if one two, three times four five six is 56. We did that problem Probably 20 times the machine never came up with 50 6088 and never came up with the same number twice And he said leave it with me for a week. Let me try it and see what I think I said, okay week later. I go back and he buys six of them Wow Okay, and I get back to the branch turn the order in branch manager looks at me and says Mike You sold six of these things to an actuarial firm, but they work with numbers. I said, yep He said Mike they're gonna return them. We're gonna hold your commission back for 60 days. I said, that's not fair He said if your machines come back, then you won't have to get a charge back I said, okay, she's making plenty of money on the other products and within those six weeks I get a call from the guy said he might I got a friend on the next block He runs an actuarial firm. He loved the idea of an automatic random number generator. Like I have why don't you go over and see him? So I went over to see him. I sold before any buggers Wow, this is so crazy because you're a smart guy Mike to think. All right, we've got this product that doesn't work What can I do with it? But the reason I want to go back was it added and subtract beautifully But you hit that X key and I told the guy the X meant random number yeah, what's so crazy to me about all of this is what you did and the life you lived is Absolutely. It's gone nowadays. I could pull up my phone a calculator a random number generator all of this You live through a time where being a salesperson it was the peak time to be a salesperson because nowadays there's very few sales people because everyone has everything between Amazon and The internet but you got to do this experience where you went in and you sold machines that were slightly better than an abacus Where he used to move the beads, but that's so insane now you mentioned going to college and then you were a salesperson what was your degree in I spent two years in the electrical engineering school at the City College of New York and After almost flunking out. I went to my instructor and said I got a change I Went the Bernard Baruch College of Business, which was part of City College for the last two years okay, I got a degree in management and Marketing and then but I thought I graduated I had the job with Mayor Lindsay So I worked nine to five for Lindsay and then three nights a week I was working on my graduate degree at Baruch and that's where I took the statistics course And I hated the statistics course, but I learned the one thing about random numbers and you see one Which allowed me to sell those darn J 800s, right? That's so interesting now fast forward Do you take these business courses you sell you make a bunch of money? Then you end up in charge of other people now seeing if I'm tracking you were trying to help sales people overcome their personal trauma and deal with their Personal life so that they could focus on work better and be better sales people correct when I got really two types of clients They are one with for the individuals who voted themselves in with their own cash and said Mike I know I can be better in sales. I got to be better I want to join the assembly and they called it a president's club, which was a lifetime program sales training They were a little bit easier to work with and I got the secondary type which were Companies that said Mike we've got a problem here. I want our team to grow Here's our team of sales people and they were look say involuntarily put into the sales training course when I got those teams some were definitely untrainable and Some were definitely trainable and when the trainables were the undreamables Indicated that they had one of the trauma problems in their past I immediately thought let's use the EMDR therapy which was Prove the odds of turning them into a winning salesperson Well, and you're you will look when you said there aren't as many salespeople. I still think there are a lot of salespeople They're just not selling consumer products. Okay, they're selling industrial products Whether it's a guy that works for Motorola that's selling police and fire communication systems or the guy at a company Like Martin Marietta materials that's selling asphalt and gravel to road building companies There's always a need for sales people. Okay, it's just you never think of a guy sells rocks in Tremendous quantities to I remember the first day after I got the contract with Martin Marietta That was that was really classic because it was a one call close Very large company and I said, what do you know about quarries and mining? I said going up in New York City, you just didn't run into a lot of my yeah company So that first day I was dressed in jeans and we went out to a couple of quarries So I learned how they operate where they got their material and then we could apply it to Improve their sales team and they had some significant growth. That was funny So at the other end of the scale, I got hired by a division of IBM Even though they had their own training company inside of IBM Because their people weren't growing and we they had a very aggressive woman manager wanted her division Be number one and she said Mike will do whatever it takes I said it's gonna be expensive probably more than yet you want to spend and she Pounds on the table and said how much I gave her my price and I says let's do it game on There are a lot of companies. There's a lot of these recruiters whether it's got a guy selling high-end copier machines printing systems You just never know. I remember a deal that we did with readers digest. This is when I was with Telex compromise we had an IBM compatible printer that printed someplace between 30 and 200% of the speed of the printer and Let's say it was dog. It had a mean time to failure of about 20 hours, which meant it would go out of service and that's not very good I said I gave come up we we loaned a couple of machines to the region I just to try them out and Like I told them they broke down every 20 hours and the only hand that had a variable print density control So that this is when they were printing the region digest sweepstakes They could put the name of the consumer on the form in the same color black and same Intensity that the pre-printed form was so it looked like it came out of a printer that way and they loved it and the IT Manager says to me when I show this to my marketing director. He said he loved it It's much better than the IBM printers back He's been on my back for years about it. And I said, let's pretend we could solve the problem for you of Reliability, right? You could get the the marketing guy off your back Would we have a basis to do a deal and he says Absolutely, and then I remember I spent the next three weeks living at the readers digest Hammering out a deal between my company and them. It was crazy. They gave us space inside of their Facility for us to have the East Coast Printer Service Depot there and we have a service technician in the Depot 24 hours a day seven days a week So that he could fix their machines as well as others They had an external door so that they can move these printers in and out Without going through the security at readers digest. It was the craziest deal in the world in the end. Remember? Mr. Simpson the owner of the readers. I just had to sign my check for 1.2 million dollars And I got the check in my hand before my boss in New York City Frank what I do with the check and he says to me Mike go out to JFK Airport and buy it a seat on the Plane the Tulsa, that's where the company is working. It was crazy again It was a structured deal where I told him up front Wasn't gonna work more than 20 hours before dying and our technicians in their facility Learned how to keep the machines running longer because they had so much time and experience with just that one model machine Right, so you have to think out of the box I think in the box and hope there's a lot of food and water in there now Mike when I told miss Whitney She's my co-host for the Davy Jones locker series on my show. I was like, hey, I met this guy Mike Roth He runs his podcast about the villages in Florida blah blah blah He performed open mic night with me and she just goes He must be an older guy because the villages is a gated community for seniors I didn't know that so Mike how long have you been retired or semi retired now about seven years. It's not a gated community It's a community that has gates But if you push the button and say I'm here to see Mike you're in If you push the red button, you don't even have to say anything You shouldn't come but everyone in there is retired. Like it's all is there an age requirement? I guess it's a Florida law might be a federal law to call yourself a retirement community 80% of the new home buyers must be at least one of the two Residents in the home must be more than 55. So if you were 55 and you had a 44 year old bride You could buy in a new house. That's called a internal restriction But if I was to sell my house To someone who was less than 55 and no one in their household was more than 55 They used house the restriction would still apply to the deed but in fact How many homes that are owned by people who are less than 55 there aren't supposed to be any children inside of the villages? And the their solution around that was they created several communities inside the villages that they call family Areas where the houses are built for families. Okay, the retirement areas Villages all the houses are one story in the family area some of the houses Probably 25% are two-story houses. So there is that Accommodation for folks who work here in the villages inside the retirement area There are a lot of people who work a part-time job back in my improv is last night used to be a college president and He's really proper and he got called by one of his former Colleges to come back as a professor They wanted on my campus and he said I don't want to do that and they said we'll give you an apartment on campus And a car money. That's good money, too. Oh very good money. I don't want to use the real number Yeah, of course, but but it was significantly into the two into the six figures Come back and he said so he's gonna spend the summer is some of the spring and some of the fall about 24 weeks a year at that college in the north and The rest of the time he's gonna be spending it here. Oh, that's the best plan. Yeah Yeah, we have people in here in the villages. They work at all kinds of jobs both remotely and local from home It's not unusual one of my improvers the guy probably Fifty-eight fifty and Bob Evans restaurant. Hey, so I can keep talking about the villages and you've got a whole podcast about it In fact, what's so special about it? But if I'm a senior, why should I retire there other than the nice warm weather year-round, of course. Yeah, the weather is good Okay, some people say it gets too hot in the summer. Let me look at it this way You're gonna leave your air-conditioned house in the summer to get into your air-conditioned car Drive to an air-conditioned recreation center and then drive maybe to an air-conditioned supermarket And yes, it will be a little bit uncomfortable when you walk out Some people say the villages is a golfing community with a drinking problem. I can imagine that. Yeah, the Villages we have golf cart paths Every place people who no longer have driver's licenses drive their golf carts. It's over 54 square miles now So it's a really big place with over 150,000 people Wow my story I know I want to want it to get out of the north. It's too cold here snows all the time old in the north Yes in the winter. I lived in LA for 15 years and I hated earthquakes But on the other side of the coin, I also hated winter So my wife gets this transfer to Cincinnati and I said to her we're gonna go there for two years If I don't like it, we'll leave and then the sales training business. I put together there was very successful. So he's excuse me So I stayed probably a couple years longer than I should have but we were looking around the last five years various places here from North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida remember seeing a very nice Del Webb community and Beautiful houses nice community and I said to the salesman does it ever snow here and he looks at me says my guy I gotta be honest with you. It snows here It usually melts by the next day and I said to myself no Thank you very much over for the South to Florida look to the cry communities and I came to this strange conclusion That although I played golf and half played here. It's not a big part of my life And so I instead measured the number of clubs and activities each community had Well the popular world community at the time had 200 clubs and that looked nice But then I looked at the villages and at that time in 2017 they had 2200 clubs and I said, okay Look at the number of recreation centers top of the world had one or two the villages had 30 and I said, oh There's a big difference here. The villages had live entertainment in Three town squares, I said anything like that in the other communities No, I said, let's give the villagers a try and so we moved down to the villagers now There are probably 33 to 3500 clubs and activities over 100 swimming pools like the squirrel Up last thing I want us to take on the maintenance of keeping a private swimming pool Yeah, of course, so you didn't like earthquakes you didn't like snow but Mike you're fine with hurricanes Yeah, we bought a house that's made out of cinder block. Okay, that's good We looked at Florida that way too and we said look you can live on either coast But eventually you're gonna get hit with it hurricane Yeah Here with the area and it was only two hurricanes a glancing blow knocking what as I said that we're 70 miles From either shore of Florida, okay We're about 80 feet above sea level. So the chance of a hurricane tidal wave reaching us is pretty much zero Okay, but never zero. It's never zero, but pretty much zero. Yeah, we're in Central, Florida Where occasionally there are some sinkholes, but those are remediated pretty quickly Yeah, and then I grew up I grew up about an hour away from New York City So I know since you were there to that Northeast gets hits with hurricane quite a bit and a lot of people don't recognize that but New Jersey, New York and Connecticut We get just sucker punch with the hurricanes. I go up the East Coast They just go right up and then they just decide to land right in the middle of us Yeah, I remember Sandy Irene all of that Yeah I remember as a kid sitting in the house getting hit by a hurricane two hurricanes passed over since I've been here There were tornadoes that happened in Florida, but in New York there were nor'easters, I remember trudging to school ten blocks wearing galoshes and Thinking why am I here? Why am I doing this and in a sales business? But you make appointments two weeks out or three weeks out and then the day is supposed to get up there It's snowing like crazy. You find yourself driving in the snow. It was unpleasant. It doesn't rain here in Florida Sure, it's not as bad weather is not a real issue. It happens wherever you are Yeah Remember in Cincinnati being surprised after a couple of years when I'm sitting at the kitchen table and the house shakes and I look up And the chandelier is swinging above my head I said she was not supposed to have earthquakes here, but they had earthquakes in the Midwest. So yeah, you're playing the odds Yeah, of course now Mike before we wrap things up here the last segment I want to get into is improv So like I said, I actually officially met you at the speed networking tables and then again at the open mic night And so I can't vouch for you that you're very funny. You're good at improv And so what got you into that because you're still doing that nowadays I know you and I spoke on the phone the other night you had a sold-out show and everything and You work with a team and are you going up on stage still or you're more of behind-the-scenes kind of guy now No, I I go up on stage. I consider myself one of the understudies for most of the skits It's not all I won't do a skit where I have to pick up a guitar and sing a song That's it beyond my skill level, but we have senior citizens here I have people over 80 years of age in my group and at any moment anyone can have a problem we had one lady who was in our scheduled to be in our show and She falls down one day. Okay breaks it off Okay, she winds up with one of those or her arm is out in 90 degrees to her body Later, she gets out of her car to get her mail and she breaks her other arm Yeah, but we have on studies for that who even have a few people die that happens I was in the sales training business this guy Dave Sandler He would say sales is a Broadway play performed by a psychiatrist And so he said to me and everybody go out and take acting courses Take improv occasionally in what some of their training courses. They brought in actors or improvers and Frankly, I had some acting training when I was in high school But when I was given a choice of either running the lights or being an onstage player I said I'll take the lights So I took what I got to the villagers first year I joined 20 clubs seven of them had something to do with acting or improv and I guess a couple of acting parts on stage and I didn't like memorizing the lines and In sales for all the all those years. I was improvising, but I didn't know I was improvising I know right now what I should have been should be doing and saying but I didn't have it written down in the script Couple of the companies gave us scripts that they wanted us to memorize and for the purposes of passing their tests Yes, I would memorize the script, but then when I got out of the real world, I had lived it I didn't know that was improvising. Anyway, so I take this improvising course and leader of that course gave us just improvisational games and I was good at it and I became his number two guy in the club and Probably after eight months he comes to me one day and says Mike I'm gonna be closing the improv club Take a watch. He can't close. It's great club He said I got a job in IT for 200 grand a year in Boston. I'm moving back to Boston. Yeah Yeah, I imagine what about the club? He said Mike you could take it over or be it's closed and I not the last thing in the world I want to do is take over an improv club. So I called up one of my acting friends and I said hey Greg you want to help you out with it running this club and he said sure it sounds like a great idea and We took it over we built we built it in a funny way There were a hundred and forty people on the roster most of whom never showed up most of the time and you couldn't get any continuity so we decided to charge $10 a year in dues and All of a sudden the club went down from 140 people to 25 and we had 25 people who would come most of the time It made a difference that we could put shows on the I found myself learning improvisational techniques and reading improv books and Watching whose line is it anyway on TV to learn what they're doing and they do something called short-form improv Yeah, three to five minute sketches and that's primarily what we do now last July I got an email somehow. I don't know how from the Improv Festival International Improv Festival in Sarasota July. I looked at it and said sounds interesting probably a fake I gave it to one of my people in the club an ex-lawyer I said to her Margaret check this out see if it's worth us going and she checks it out She calls me back a couple of days later says Mike. I'm going I bought the tickets for three days. It's only $79. Okay, and then I discovered the hotel was $260. Yeah, but it was a great hotel Unlike the hotel the best convention Yeah We go down there and we discover that not only do they have improv shows for three nights in war theaters Five shows a night that was all included in your ticket during the daytime They had improv classes or workshops that you could take I took a workshop But the first night at the show had a big problem. I'm sitting there my face hurt 45 minutes I was laughing like crazy and watch two or three more shows and they did something that we hadn't done before We hadn't attempted they incorporated music Oh and a keyboard player and me and my co-leader come back from the Improv Festival No, it's like a Music in improv is a good idea and we scrounged around and we found a really great Keyboard player and Wayne Richards who was a composer to it and doesn't read music But he plays everything by ear and we've incorporated him into our show and the show we just did with this was fantastic Because he played cover music in between scenes. We play the game of musical chairs we play the music and Loser of each round had to sing a song at random rate who was playing on the keyboard Wow Okay, it was fantastic And I'm hoping that we went last year to the Improv Festival in Sarasota with five people this year I'm hoping it's going to be closer to 20 Wasn't cheap probably I spent more than grand I became a better improv nice person myself and it gave me a lot of material to teach our players We had this dramatic change where we put music it made a big difference. Yeah, I feel you on that I'm going to be a lander pretty soon here And it was one of America's largest conferences for all kinds of stuff specifically voice acting film and industry networking So obviously I'm going because I'm trying to get into that world and with $647 for a general admissions ticket and in every single booth They have there that is considered an X session is an additional 275 dollars So I'm not taking a single X session because I can't afford that the hotels Because it's so soon and because it's such a big conference for charging double their regular rate So for three nights, it's cost to me over $600 to stay at the La Quinta, which is normally $70 a night But because of the oil and it's a hundred and forty a night and I was like I'm about to sleep in my car. I'm about to set up in the back of my car I said it's costing me almost more to stay at the hotel Just just to sleep there at night than it is to go to the event So I lived in LA for 15 years and had some friends who are in the movie industry and TV My my advice to anyone who wants to be in those businesses as a career You have to go where the fish you are gonna fish. You got to go to LA live in LA You got to go to in New York live in New York if you think about Broadway And you got to take the auditions and you got to take the acting training to make it happen there are a few people who Live in Indianapolis ever wind up on the big screen and there are few exceptions but people tend to like people that they know and trust but if a Beginner does a good audition one of their friends does an audition. That's okay Chances are they're gonna go with their friend. It's a very close-knit industry But that's my advice for anyone who wants to get into acting or stage work professionally Yeah, you got to go with a fish or if you want to be in the music business You know, I think there's only one place to go Nashville I mean if you can sing it's where you got to be, you know, go go where the fish are Yeah at this rate I think I'm just gonna buy a mobile home or an RV with how much traveling I'm doing now to all these Conferences and everything and just park it and stay there instead of paying all these hotels that aren't even good quality And I know you mentioned the Windham Resort I mean we had bridges were missing coffee machines didn't work or Wi-Fi door maintenance They sent me to a different hotel because they overbooked so I had to walk 20 minutes I spent over $200 in uber rides after paying Hundreds of dollars for a hotel to be at the conference, but they put you at they put me down the street at the Avani International Resort and my basic complaint Mike was we're paying a hundred to two hundred dollars a night And there was no complimentary breakfast Not even a muffin not even a cereal that blows my mind could have stayed at a or a Hampton The I don't really want to say anything about the hotels because I can't say anything good The hotel where the convention was I did tell the leader of the convention that I'd rather pay More or even a lot more to have really good accommodations He said took you 20 minutes to walk to the conference I was on the hotel grounds Probably as far away from the conference center as you could get and it would take me 12 to 15 minutes make that walk. Yeah, cuz the they had all these like satellite hotel Buildings that were far away from the conference hall and by the third day I said to myself I ain't gonna walk this far. So I got my car as you Have anything right to the main conference center and parked my car outside all day. That's where I was a great The weird part was they had the one lady I was talking to miss and loin I believe it was she they put her a single older woman by herself with her door going straight out into the gas station there There was a gas station like attached to the hotel And so if you were in the one satellite building you would just walk out into the gas station Which at night in Orlando gas stations can be dangerous places me and my buddy had issue once at night We were we got out when I won't get out of my place I was looking at a gigantic parking lot and then in the distance International Drive and the Longhorns restaurant That was a nice walk a couple of nice meals at the restaurants But the last morning I get out of the room and looking at Longhorns and who's sitting in the parking lot But the local sheriff, yeah, yeah, they literally had the cops station. I saw that too Mike I saw there was multiple times where they had police to station there because People have reported there was homeless people squatting in the bushes outside the doors of pod festers. They actually Yeah, I someone had mentioned it to me I can my one friend I was walking her to her room every night and make sure she was safe and Because there was there had been reports of people squatting outside her bushes. So it's wild I hadn't heard that didn't see it, but it was a great convention. There was a lot of good I will admit to suffer from information overload from that convention last year. I went only for one day and The value of the ticket I had was dramatically reduced because most of the sessions they had were closed sessions so this year I want the VIP set ticket and There were I got very little for the VIP ticket. I got two lunches and I got access to a VIP suite Yeah, no, I just stuck with a creator pass I I Balanced it and I felt like the benefits offered weren't that good the full body massage did sound nice though I am sad. I missed out on that. That's one thing. That would have been nice. I didn't partake in that I didn't have the time I went from session to session and usually I discovered that there were three sessions on the agenda But I wanted to see don't real hard about do I want to buy the videos or the cassettes? However, they're selling the media and what I have the time in my schedule to spend another nine to twenty seven hours Listening to it and I said to myself. So when I was in the sales training business, we have four conventions a year oh, and there were 20 hours of material to listen to and Probably most of it I never listened to but there was that one session that I sat in That I knew was good that had journals of truth that I can make some money on It might be good for my customers. I would spend those extra 20 hours Disassembling was in that audio or word so that I could internalize it and put it in my brain because it was Invaluable and bypassed there was so much material So much so many things if anyone's listening and thinking of doing a podcast Definitely go. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I wish I had gone before I started my podcast I learned so much and I barely went to any of the sessions. I actually spent 95% of my time networking Talking to other people because I had a different mindset than you Mike My mindset is hey, I'll I can always listen back to the videos at any time But meeting these people this is the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Some of them might not be back next year I don't know if I'll see them again I might not be able to make it and I'm glad I've been booked on several podcasts. I've gotten new equipment I've made good contacts and I've had a great time and it was really nice since leaving because I only left the military recently It was the first time I've really interacted with other people and the support for the military and veterans there was great and everyone there was so friendly and Welcoming and it was awesome to interact with everyone and try new things It was my first time traveling alone. It was my first time doing open mic night It was my first time really meeting that many people so it was a great time Yeah, Chris talks about it as a community of podcasters and I think he does a really good job of Creating it. There was a meetup of Podcasters over 55 years of age So I went to that and the person running it said we're in the biggest minority group here at pod fest Podcasters over 55 there are only about 15 of us in that group I don't know if that was totally true, but they were there podcasters of every age and Every subject that you could dream of some I couldn't dream of so I met a lot of people too It was a good show I was very surprised to see that they had an open mic night a comedy night and at first I didn't think I would bother Participate with it because stand-up comedy is best today when you write your own material And you don't use canned jokes, right? We'll steal someone else's material I didn't think about doing it and I spoke to one of the organizers and I said hey if I sign up Can I do improv instead of stand-up and he said sure as long as you only do it for three minutes I'm pretty sure I can keep it three minutes and we put together that little improv routine Absolutely killed in a comedy sense. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. No, you had me laughing. I thought it was great See I didn't even know about it till last minute and All the comedy I've ever done has been on my show, right? So behind the screen it's very different And so that morning I was super nervous. I got in the shower. That's where I do all my thinking I'm like, alright I gotta make a script up because I obviously I want to make it up on stage But I want to have some kind of idea where I'm going and I had everything down and then I get there and they're like You only have three minutes. I was like, oh no, I planned for five to ten minutes now I gotta compact it down and for me, I got some good feedback I spoke too fast my biggest error and when I listened back to my recording I was like man When people are laughing I gotta stop talking. I gotta let them laugh. How'd you get a recording of it? I actually I gave my phone to the woman behind me and I asked her to record me But Mike they are releasing a an edited video version of it a couple weeks here from three different camera angles So it'll be pretty awesome And as soon as I get that if you haven't gotten it, I'll send it to you so you can yeah, I don't see that No, I'm gonna add it here I'm gonna add it in the description for this episode so y'all can see Mike on stage and his performance was great It had me dying. And if you like jokes about blondes, he's also pretty good at those I was very apprehensive about that joke Yeah, my wife is a blonde and she doesn't like I want to do blonde jokes My sister's fully blonde Most people don't know it and so we grew up making those jokes all the time because my sister is so blonde She would get into someone's car and it'd be like, but you're not my mom and she would get out We she could never remember what car we drove and so at school She would just get in someone's car and be like, oh crap You're not my mom and get out and yeah, and and she has walked into glass doors. So blonde Myself. Yeah, it happens to the best of us, but it was great that improv routine I had three people working with me in it who never done it never worked with before Yeah, I never worked with barely knew their first names But that was about it because the first name was on their badge and it was it turned out to be a killer routine And that happens sometimes improv really works great Sometimes it's a dud we get a show in front of a group it turned out to be people who are on average much older people who weren't drinking and It was a tough show. I'm telling you it was a tough show and we I really wrote the show for the Sunday night Based on what happened on Saturday night and Saturday night was okay, but Sunday night was phenomenal The rewrite really helped and in comedy I we have an actual comedy club here at the villages we just change the leadership on it and one of the recommendations for people who want to do stand-up is That you're for your material as you go and then you listen to a back word for word and figure out what? Jokes worked what didn't work? What do you take out? What do you have to rework? Sometimes a Stand-up routine moving a word from the beginning of a sentence to the end of a sentence or vice versa Makes the difference between getting a really big laugh getting a whole Yeah, yeah, you never want that So Mike, but if I'm someone and I happen to be passing through Florida and I want to see one of your shows or one Where do I go to buy the tickets for that the way to get on our email list so you find out about the shows so you can buy tickets is Send me an email to Mike and my ke at Roth Roth voice vo I see e.com That's Mike at Roth voice calm and I'll put you on our constant contact email list We announced shows about eight weeks before the show if you're trying to come to the show and you're not a village resident You'll need to get a guest pass guest pass are not hard to get they're free as long as you don't live in Sumter Lake Marion counties in which case they're almost impossible to get and you have to say you're a relative But if you say you're from Georgia and you want to come to the villages for a couple of days Can you get a guest pass? No problem. They love having people come in We also do some shows at a comedy club called the joke joint in summer. Okay, okay To just north of the villages is a small small venue with about 80 seats It's better in the sense that there's no language restrictions in inside of the villages in the recreation centers that we use for Our meet our shows we have a language restriction that we're allowed to use any obscene language at the joke joint We can say whatever we want But I would say that the performances that we've done there are mildly are rated as opposed to Hicks rate You never want to insult anybody in the audience a single amount So we try to keep it clean and have a lot of fun in the process But the result is you get a very funny show when people's faces hurt at the end of the show Then you know, you've done a good job. Yeah. Yes, sir. Like I said, ladies and gentlemen I highly encourage you to check that out. And so That you could check out the villages improv calm and that will that on that site We announce the shows and we give you a link to the ticketing Yeah and all that information will be in the description below for the podcast ladies and gentlemen, so you can find those Website links and emails that way you can find out about the next improv show and hopefully you'll be able to go see it But Mike I'd like to thank you for coming on the show And before we close out here, do you have any closing remarks or anything you'd like to say? You know live your life to the fullest. Enjoy yourself laughing tends to extend your life So the long the earlier in your life that you can learn to laugh it's going to extend your life And I wholeheartedly agree with that. So Mike once again, thank you for coming on man. I appreciate you. Hey, thanks. Mr Whiskey for having me on your show