Craig Andrews    00:04
Today we have a rock star guest, a legitimate rock star. His name is Michael Baker and he was the lead singer and songwriter for Fall of Envy and melodic hard rock band, which has been streamed over 20 million times worldwide. He's a solo artist at three six four as well. He's been featured in movies, television, and has performed with acts such as Guns and Roses, Papa Roach, 30 Seconds, 30 Seconds Tomorrow's, James Brown and more. And this started at an early age. He was born into a family that was on a tour bus. He spent the first six years of his life on a tour bus, remembers his bus better than he remembers his own home. And in this journey, Michael found himself handling social media, marketing, design, delivery, video editing for more 2 million MultiTech firms. And at some point, he decided it was time to launch his own venture, guiding Perception Content Media. Michael runs that the same way he runs his life. He puts Christ first in everything he does. You could say prior to launching this, this was what he was destined to do his entire life. Michael, welcome.
Mike Baker    01:31
Thank you so much. I appreciate you having me know.
Craig Andrews    01:35
We've been chatting a little bit in the green room and I just want to tell folks that are listening, hang on, you're going to have a few surprises in this conversation. This is certainly an interesting life. And
Craig Andrews    01:58
first off, let's just start with what was it like growing up on a tour bus?
Mike Baker    02:04
Very interesting. Obviously, it was up until I was six years old when my parents decided that there's probably a better financial future for them and their three children than on a tour bus going into churches across the country and singing. But it was quite interesting. One kind of story that is stuck in my head, probably because it was a little traumatic, I had some type of toothache or a tooth falling out and I was swollen. And my family were inside the church getting ready, like Rehearsing, sound check, all that type of stuff, and they left me in the bus to sleep. Well, I woke up and could not figure out how to get the because we're talking old school. I was born and give away my age here. I was born in 73, so this is between 73 and 79. You can imagine the old school bus. There wasn't like a little button and the doors magically opened. You pull this big handle type of thing.
Craig Andrews    03:16
This is like Partridge Family bus.
Mike Baker    03:18
Yes, old school. At whatever age, I was probably about five. I could not get that thing open and I was just traumatized. And by the time either somebody came and got me and everything, I remember that so distinctly of not being able feeling trapped inside this bus. Of course, nowadays, fast forward the amount of trouble. Had anybody known that they had left me inside the bus? And I couldn't get out amount of trouble from authorities they would have gotten in at that time. Nowadays, compared to back then, where it was no big deal. Right. Sleeping in the top part of the car where the window is.
Craig Andrews    04:04
And we had a Volkswagen van, and the luggage compartment was basically a mobile playpen for us. We're back there just screwing around, playing with cars and GI. Joes. No seatbelt in sight.
Mike Baker    04:21
Yeah.
Craig Andrews    04:23
Let alone a child seat. I don't think those existed then.
Mike Baker    04:27
No. I don't even know. Which begs the question, why do school buses not have seatbelts?
Craig Andrews    04:33
Oh, yeah. That is pretty amazing. It's pretty amazing.
Mike Baker    04:40
Anyway. Yeah. So it was an interesting life doing that. We traveled around. It was our whole family and then another family, and we toured around.
Craig Andrews    04:54
Yeah. Wow.
Craig Andrews    05:00
As kids, you always assume that your life is normal. And obviously that was like a really abnormal life compared to the masses. Did you perceive it as abnormal or did it just seem normal to you?
Mike Baker    05:14
It seemed normal to me. And it's funny because I've never had anybody ask me that or make that statement. And here I am. Fast forward. I have two children, my own. One's about to turn ten, the other one is seven, boy and girl. And my little girl just lost a tooth this morning. But here we are not touring as a Christian singing group around the country in a tour bus, but we are traveling the country full time. And I run my business from the road, traveling the world, the country full time in a fifth wheel. And to them, this is not abnormal. This is normal life. This is just our life. It's our little bubble of what our reality is. Right.
Craig Andrews    06:07
In some ways, it's a different version of working on the farm with dad.
Mike Baker    06:12
Yeah.
Craig Andrews    06:16
Your kids are on the road with you. They're working on the farm with dad.
Mike Baker    06:21
Yeah. Well, they are getting a firsthand look now. I've kind of rewind a little bit, and you mentioned it. So I worked prior to starting my own marketing firm. I was in tech and I was director of business development for one tech firm out of Nashville and then was also doing sales stuff for another tech firm out of Ohio. But I'd always worked from home. I had been working from home for quite several years. And we've always homeschooled our kids. And so they're kind of used to me always being around. But it's good because they're getting a first hand look of
Mike Baker    07:10
it's a different world. It's not the dad wakes up at whatever time in the morning, he's out the door. We don't get to see him until X amount of time, and then we get X amount of time with him in the evening, those types of things. But they still are seeing that there is still responsibilities, there's still work that has to be done. It's not just, hey, we just happen to be in this beautiful state park with waterfalls and we can just go out and just do whatever we want. We still have work, we still have school, we still have responsibilities. And we have to get those things finished and accomplished first so that we can go enjoy the other parts of our life. Yeah. Wow.
Craig Andrews    07:56
Now let's jump back to the music.
Craig Andrews    08:03
Those were some big bands that you played for. Of course guns N'Roses are open know? Guns N'Roses is a big. Wasn't the James Brown? Oh, my goodness, that had to be electric.
Mike Baker    08:19
James Brown shared stages with George Clinton and P Funk. Creed nickelback three doors down a lot. I've been very blessed. I would say I've had about as good of a music career you can have without being signed to a major label and becoming a household name played. I think the highlight. I would know it's interesting because I've opened for all these bands, but the highlight, I would say, is so Ben Hill Griffin Stadium is where they used to which is the Florida Gators. They used to have what's called Gator Growl. That's their homecoming party. And for I don't know if it still is, but it used to be considered the largest homecoming event in the entire country for any university. And they held it inside the stadium. And so one year, my first band, which was called Liquid Vinyl we were very successful as well. But either way, we got to open up all of Gator Growl. And up to that point, there had only been one other band that had actually opened up in Gator Growl. It was usually comedians and things like that. And so by the time we got off the stage there was an estimated 75,000 people that we were performing in front of by the time we were finishing up our set. So that's probably highlight. Even though we've played with many well known bands. That was pretty cool, being basically playing a stadium. I mean, how many people can say that they've played a stadium in front of 75,000 people and still relatively be unknown?
Craig Andrews    10:11
Yeah, that is amazing. I know very few people that have been on a stage that big and that's pretty amazing.
Mike Baker    10:21
Fell off the front.
Craig Andrews    10:24
That would have been embarrassing.
Mike Baker    10:27
I started to trip over some of the monitor cords at the front because I was getting a little too I love to perform on stage. I don't just mark the X and stand there still. And so I was performing and I tripped over the cords and I was only about 2ft away from dropping about 30ft from the top of the stage oh, my goodness. To the end zone. I would not have called that a touchdown.
Craig Andrews    10:52
Oh, my goodness. I didn't realize it was that high.
Mike Baker    10:54
Yeah, it was a big stage.
Craig Andrews    10:58
Just the other day, my wife and I were talking and I heard a Guns and Roses song come on the air. I was never a big Guns N'Roses fan, but I told her, I said, My perception is that Alex Rose is enormously talented. And I was judging it based on the variety of styles that he could play. It wasn't like he found one lane and just ran in that lane. He could run in multiple lanes.
Mike Baker    11:31
Yeah, I agree. A lot of these bands, these huge especially I'm in a rock world, so a lot of these huge rock bands. When you really start dissecting musically, especially these older bands like these Metallicas, these Guns and Roses, getting old school, even more old school, led Zeppelin, things like that. When you break down musically, what's happening in the songs, it's quite complex. There's a lot of stuff going on there, theoretically and musically. And so one of the coolest things I've ever heard was there was an orchestra, a very famous orchestra that did an entire album of nothing but Metallica stuff. There was no singing, there was no guitars or anything. It was just the orchestra. And musically, it was just like, this is so unbelievably. So you start realizing what they're doing. But, yeah, Axel had that ability, even though his voice was very unique, he had that ability to be able to go from that screaming crazy to the double album where it was chopped full of ballads. Yeah, well and the thing that covers and things like that.
Craig Andrews    12:58
Well, and the thing that was part of our conversation, I'd be interested in your take on said, you know, if you look at Eddie Van Halen, widely regarded as a brilliant guitarist, but it seems like he had one lane and he played that lane very don't in him. I don't see as much diversity as I do like Axel Rose.
Mike Baker    13:19
Yeah. I would say Eddie's probably the greatest just for his innovation and things. Man, we could talk about music for forever. I don't know if you realize, Sammy Hagar and Michael I can't think of his last name, the bass player from Van, they're going on tour and Satriani is going to be the guitarist. And they were on Howard Stern and they were talking about what was the hardest thing that Eddie ever played, and Sashriana tried to play it, and he kind of did, but he started to do it and had to stop. He's like, man, this is so hard. And to Eddie sitting there doing it on stage in front of tens of thousands of people with ease, as if it was just riding a bike. But, yeah, I understand what you're saying with that. He kind of had his thing and just went with it.
Craig Andrews    14:24
Yeah. Well, I tell you what.
Mike Baker    14:27
Son is incredibly talented, by the way. If anybody has not heard, there's a band called Mammoth, which, fun fact, that was actually going to be Van Halen's original band name, Mammoth. And it's his son and is oh, gosh, I can't believe Wolfgang. Wolfgang? Yes. Wolfgang Van Halen. And he plays every instrument on the album. He does everything. And it's absolutely unbelievable. It's an amazing album.
Craig Andrews    15:01
But anyways, this is fascinating. Let's talk about so help me understand, how did you go from this? I mean, this just sounds like an amazing creative musical career over to perception, content, media.
Mike Baker    15:21
Yeah. So to try great question. To try to make a very long story short, so I met my now wife, and I was still in the band, and it had nothing necessarily to do with her or wanting to have a family. It was just at the age I was and what I was trying to do, I just kind of came to this peace within myself of like, hey, I've had a great life. I've been very blessed to have done what I've done. But it was okay to let go. It was okay to stop chasing the dream, to try to be signed to a record label and travel and tour and play stadiums on a regular basis. Right? And so I always make the joke that I'm the anomaly. We ended up we were living in Florida. I'm the anomaly. I moved to Nashville to get out of music, the opposite of what most people do.
Craig Andrews    16:28
That is wild.
Mike Baker    16:30
Worked in HR, outsourced HR for a little bit, but then ended up in tech. And the first tech firm that I was working for, I was national director of business development, but they didn't have any marketing. And as sales, I knew how important it was to have marketing content and things like that because it just is going to help me with my pitch that much more. So I just took over marketing and just started doing it all kind of plateaued within that business and didn't see my career going much further. So I shifted to another tech firm out of Ohio, and they came to me like, hey, since you were doing marketing over here and we're still trying to figure it out for ourselves, do you mind doing it for us? And so I was, you know, I'll do it. And so I did it. And kind of just to rewind real quickly with all my band music stuff, I was the one that was pretty much doing all the flyers. I was doing album covers and I was doing CD inlays. I know we don't really have CDs anymore, but I was doing all that the marketing type of stuff for the bands until we were getting underneath labels and things like that. So fast forward, I went that other tech firm, the second firm, and COVID Hits, and coming out of COVID they completely changed how they were going to go after business and how they were going to grow their business. We were going to open up a bunch of spots all around the country. Well, they decided they were just going to have all of their people be at the main headquarters. Things weren't working out coming out COVID we were just good at. So we parted ways and I was in a good financial spot and so I really enjoyed the marketing things that I was doing. I had a friend of mine who had his own business and so I just did some marketing social content stuff for him and without him knowing and just sent it to him and just said, hey, what do you think about this? And he was like, Dude, this is awesome. I kind of tailored it towards like the Gary Vee type know, reels and that type of thing. And he's like, I love this. I was like, cool. I was we can I come to your office and have a conversation? And so I did. And in the back of my mind, my thought was, I'll just do this as like a little bit of a side hustle and this will just buy me some extra time. I just want to land with the right company. I don't want to feel like I have to take a job just because I don't have one. And ultimately, I walked out of his office with a monthly recurring revenue contract to handle some of his marketing stuff. I got down to my car and I called my wife and I said, I'm not working for anybody ever again. I'm going to start my own marketing firm. And she was like, okay. I just realized it was just that lack of better terms coming to Jesus moment of just like all of these things from my past, of all the stuff that I had to do to understand how to market my music and my bands and all of those things that I helped handle. And then even going into tech and doing those. I even have an old blog post that I wrote not even realizing where my life was going to go, right? But I had an old blog post that I wrote that was called Wake Up Salesperson, it's time to market. And the whole blog post was talking about how as a salesperson, what you're actually doing is marketing. You're marketing your business, your company, you're marketing yourself, you're gaining trust, all of those things. And then fast forward and I just realized this is what I love to do. It's still feeding that creativity piece of me that I had through music and all of that. I get to be creative, I get to try to think outside of the box. And ultimately, what I love about it is it's fulfilling that piece of me that also I just like to help people. And there's a reason why my wife is the one that does most of the financial handlings in our household. And that's because if it was left to me, I'd probably give away a lot more of our money. And that's just the way I just like to help people. This is a great way for me to help people that have businesses and they're in the same boat as me. They're running their own business and they need to grow, they need to get more customers, clients, but don't have that big box budget that a lot of these larger businesses have. And so I just love being able to do that. And so it's feeding all of these little pieces of who I am and allows me to live the life that I'm doing and spend time with my kids rather than lack of better terms, being a cog in a system. Yeah.
Craig Andrews    22:06
Now, one of the things and you said you had a come to Jesus moment, but in your bio, you said that Jesus or Christ is an important influencing factor in your life. What's that mean?
Mike Baker    22:22
So obviously, as stated know, I grew up in a strong Christian home, my first six years Christian singing group. And there was, I think, not unlike a lot of people, there was that part of my life where I strayed the opposite direction. And then I kind of kind of got my life, I got my life straight, rededicated my life. And so
Mike Baker    22:55
I just completely went off, in other words. So I apologize. Let me make sure I'm answering your question. What was the question again?
Craig Andrews    23:02
Well, I'm just trying to understand what it means. You said everything you do. Let me take a look at here. You try to honor Christ. You try to put Christ first in everything you do. And what does that.
Mike Baker    23:19
Believe? I believe that what we're called to be in the Bible, what it literally says is to be disciples and to live a godly life. And there's many verses within the Bible that talk about how you are supposed to live your life on a daily basis. And so I try to do that. I try to understand that in everything that I do that I need to make sure that I'm setting an example, that I'm not just preaching, so to speak. I'm not just preaching, but I'm leading by example.
Mike Baker    24:03
I'm not afraid to talk about my faith and share my faith. I don't shove it onto people, but it's how I live my life. I want people to look at me and it not just be, oh, he claims to be this person, but that's not who he really is. I want people to be like, oh, yeah, that's not just I don't even have to hear the fact that that's what he claims. I can tell by the way he lives his life, the way he treats people, the way he runs his business, the way he treats his customers. Everything that he does is in the Christlike model of how know it's the old school, I guess, what would Jesus do type of situation. But it's that it's just modeling my life after what has been called for us to do and trying to make sure that that's the center point of what I do in my life.
Craig Andrews    25:13
Well, there's some people listening that their brain is short circuiting right now. They're trying to figure out how to reconcile what you just said with you hung out with Metallica and Guns N'Roses and all these bands.
Craig Andrews    25:33
What did that look like then?
Mike Baker    25:38
Not good. Because very honestly,
Mike Baker    25:47
there was that period in my life where I was not living the way I was supposed to be living and battled depression. I still feel like I battle depression, and here and there that might be strong. I still have these little pieces of things where I'm like, okay, deep breath. Different things. Um, but I went through a period in my life where not going to church, not reading my Bible, not trying to have I mean, the most important thing is a relationship, a relationship with God. And I had no relationship. I had no interest in having a relationship. I would still call myself a Christian, but anybody who was around me during that period of time would have been like, whatever. That is not the case, because from what I know about what you're supposed to do, if you're a Christian, you are not acting that way. You are not doing the things not that I was treating people bad, but I was not doing Godly things. And so there is just a period in my life that I was not living that way. I was the old adage of what it was like to be the lead singer of a rock and roll band living that life.
Mike Baker    27:22
I do believe that there is a part of my past where I feel like God saved me almost from myself, because we were right on that verge. We had major record labels that had given us offers. We had some great attorneys that were keeping us from signing basically horrible record deals. But I feel like overarching. I feel like God was saving me for myself, because had my band gotten signed while I was in the midst of that dark part of my life, who knows if I would even be still alive?
Craig Andrews    28:07
Wow.
Mike Baker    28:10
It would have just compounded what I was already doing, being a big fish in a little pond, so to speak. And then all of a sudden, if we were just on tour and that was life, who knows? Who knows?
Craig Andrews    28:24
Ozzy Osborne just came out and announced that he has less than ten years left, and he's 74. I'm like, I'm shocked that you had 74 years living that lifestyle.
Mike Baker    28:34
Right. Yeah.
Craig Andrews    28:37
Well, I appreciate you sharing that. It's really transparent. I think a lot of people look at Christians and they say, well, you pretend to be one way, but I know who you are in reality. And I think you painted an interesting picture of no, there were some dark days, there were some good days. And it's, I guess, not a life of perfection, but a life of pursuit.
Mike Baker    29:08
Right.
Craig Andrews    29:10
So one of the questions. Obviously you have perception, content, media. Do you only work with owners of Christian companies?
Mike Baker    29:20
No, not at all. I work with anybody that is needing help with their business and wants help with their marketing. No, I don't get into those conversations. I keep it pretty business, but for the most part it's on my website. People can ask me about it, but I don't typically bring that up within conversations in business. Okay, well, as far as me trying to all of a sudden push that on if it ever is commented on, or if I start picking up because I get to know my clients, I want to get to know them and understand their life and about their families and things like that. And so if I start getting an inclination of like, hey, how was your week? How's your month been? Oh, it was great. We went to this church function. If I hear that, then I'm like, okay, that's my door. I can start talking about that. Or if somebody asked me, hey, what did you do? Oh yeah, it was great. We went to the thing at my church and blah, blah, blah, blah. I'll throw those things out, but I don't push it, so to speak.
Craig Andrews    30:56
Yeah, well, for people that want to reach out to you, how do they find you?
Mike Baker    31:02
Yeah, so the best way to find me is on my website, Perceptioncontentmedia.com. And so you can reach out to me there. There's a contact. But of course, I think LinkedIn is one of my biggest used for me and for contacts within the business realm. Obviously I use all social media platforms to help promote and do things like that. But, yeah, perceptioncontentmedia.com is probably the easiest just because you can just fill up the contact form and it'll go straight to my team and let me know that hey, somebody saw you on Craig's podcast, and they want to talk to you about whatever it may be, business about what you said about Christ. Want to know more about your music, whatever it is.
Craig Andrews    31:59
Well, Michael, I do hope people reach out to you. What a fascinating story, what a fascinating life you've lived.
Mike Baker    32:06
Lived.
Craig Andrews    32:07
And I appreciate you sharing that today on Leaders and Legacies.
Mike Baker    32:11
I appreciate it. Craig, thank you so much for having me on.