Welcome to Super States. I’m here today with Kevin Lapine. Kevin, welcome to the show.

Thank you for having me.

I always like to get a start with my guests by having them share what it is that you do and how that makes an impact.

So I am fortunate enough to have the longest-running hypnosis show in Vegas right now. I’ve been headlining out here for the last 14 years. And that’s after my hypnosis career took me literally all around the world to spread laughter and fun. Before that, I started off as a performer doing kids’ birthday parties in Detroit. I get to live my dreams. I get to use hypnosis to show people just how powerful their mind is, and I get to live my dream performing with it.

I love that you started out as kind of a birthday magician and now your longest headlining show in Vegas doing hypnosis.

I didn’t even know I was going to be a birthday magician until I got the gig. So when I was 16, I got picked up by an entertainment company. This was in Detroit. And when I say I got picked up by an entertainment company, I mean, they posted an audition on what used to be the internet before the internet. There was a number you could call every week. It was the actor’s line for the Detroit area, and every major city had one. You would call in and hear all the auditions, and there was this company that just said they needed performers.

Well, I’m 16. I know everything in the world. I can be one of those.

And after calling and talking to the guy, he had me meet him at his office, which confused me because it was a house. And when I got there, he did have a couple of people working there, and he had totally forgotten about me.

And then he ended up having to come back to the office because he forgot a costume. So he picked me up, I followed him, and I started doing costume characters for them. That led into doing clown work because I wanted to pick up more gigs at more kids’ birthday parties. The clown work led to magic. And if you’ve ever just done something and it just kind of worked, I’m the most uncoordinated human being in the world. Yet a deck of cards made sense in my hands.

And so the magic started building. Then when I was 20, I started working with hypnotists. And they got me enrolled in a course for social workers, and it just grew and grew and grew and grew all from an opportunity because I thought I wanted to be an actor.

The Journey From Small Performances to Vegas

Yeah, sometimes it’s those simple choices, right? Like you’re just like, I’m 16, I can do this. And here you are now.

Yeah!

And it just—it’s, there was an opportunity to pursue something I was passionate about. I didn’t know enough to know if I wanted to do it or not, but I just knew that there was an option there. And after I did my first birthday party, I got paid $40, which was as much as I made in a week flipping pizzas at Little Caesar’s. This is brilliant.

And people are like, “Well, aren’t you embarrassed? You’re in a Big Bird suit or a turtle suit for a kid’s birthday party.” I don’t care. There’s a mask. They can’t even see me in there.

Blows my mind sometimes how popular those costumed birthday characters are.

Yeah. And what was interesting to me is you get to go into people’s homes, and the Detroit area has got a lot of different cultures. So I really got to learn and experience different cultures. I got to see how different communities did different parties and different events. I got to try a lot of amazing food.

Lessons Learned From Early Days

It’s where I learned a few of my food rules and one of the things that I learned. So I’m like 17, 18 at this point. I’m doing a party and it was all Middle Eastern food. I had never been exposed to this. And I’m in a buffet with the heads of the party. I realized the smartest thing I could do is look at one of them and go, “Hey, I have no idea what any of this is.”

I said it sincerely, and they got excited because they started explaining what every type of food was. “Here, try this, try this with this, don’t eat that.” But I learned one of my favorite lessons: admit when you’re ignorant about something. Very, very few people make fun of you for being ignorant about it if you want to learn.

Yeah, I know that was a hard lesson for me to learn. It took me a little bit beyond 17 to learn that one, but if you don’t know something, just ask. Otherwise, you’re not going to learn anything.

And we feel embarrassed to ask, especially the further into adulthood we get. Because we feel, “Well, they’re going to think I’m stupid for not having known this already.” Well, if you don’t know, there’s a reason you don’t know.

Ask earnestly. It’s amazing what you’ll find out.

Writing and Sharing His Life Story

So I know you wrote a book. I can see it floating in the air behind you.

Yep, yeah, my wife made that for me. It’s a poster version of the cover.

And in this book, I believe you’re kind of sharing your life story through it.

Yes, very, very much so. It’s called Deep Into My Eyes: From Victim to Vegas Headliner. It’s available at deepintomyeyes.com and, of course, through Amazon and Barnes & Noble. It’s my journey. I talk a lot about the victimization that I suffered, the bullying that I suffered, and I had always wanted to tell the story, but it wasn’t until I found the picture—

I know this isn’t going to translate well through webcams. So it’s a picture of a bunch of fish all grouped up together to look like a giant shark to chase a shark away. And as soon as I saw the picture, I’m like, “That’s my story.” That’s how I survived. I built a community around me. And once I built that community, I became safe. And in that being safe, I was finally able to grow and flourish.

Overcoming Struggles and Finding His Voice

I’ll share one of my favorite parts of it, only because kids are jerks and this is a moment where they weren’t. So I had been severely bullied in school to the point of being ready to commit suicide. And the book talks a lot about how, thank God, I came to the realization that I didn’t want to do that.

But because of all the bullying and abuse, I had a very bad stuttering problem. I could not communicate at all. And when I was about 15 and a half, I finally found a group of friends.

And they let me do this. The only way I could talk was to meter out the words.

And a group of 15-, 16-year-old kids who were nothing but just kids. They were just friends. It’s not like this was a therapy group or anything like that. These were just people. And they gave me the space to do that. They gave me that permission and said, “Your voice is important. We want to hear what you have to say.” And in less than six months, the stutter was gone.

Wow.

It’s unbelievable. Yeah, it’s miraculous. When I look back on that, it’s one of those moments. And that was another big decision I made when I was writing the book. I talk a lot about the people who helped me, and I name them and I thank them. And I talk about how my interaction with them helped me grow to where I am. But to all the people who tore me down…

My decision was I would talk about a negative situation, but I wouldn’t mention a negative person because I felt that they didn’t deserve that level of recognition, but the people who helped me do.

That’s a wonderful frame for that. So what led you then to wanting to do hypnosis? What was your process there?

I was curious. I was really curious, and I saw some hypnosis shows, and I got to meet some hypnotists, and I got really, really interested in it. And now we’re talking 1995. So understand the internet doesn’t exist again in the way that we know it now. So there wasn’t a lot of information. I read some books.

Only one book actually made sense to me, and I managed to get enrolled in a course for social workers.

And I hated hypnosis shows for a while. I didn’t like them because every show that I saw that could influence me said, “I’m a jerk, and I want to make you look like an idiot.” And I didn’t like that aspect of it. And I was trying to reframe that in the show and reframe it in the show.

And I had an opportunity to move down to New Orleans to do my show down there for six months. And it was in New Orleans I met a group of performers who all had this idea of “Be unique, be creative, or don’t be on the stage.”

And so I’m talking with them, and they went, “Well, what message do you want to get out there?” I said, “What I want to say is I have something really fun and interesting to share with you. And if you walk up on my stage, I’m going to make you look like a star and feel great.” They went, “OK, well, let’s do that.” I said, “Well, it’s not done like that.” They’re like, “Well, it will be by tomorrow.”

And we started working, we started writing, and we started looking at all these different things. And because of that, the show flourished. My six months in New Orleans turned into five years.

Key Lessons and Defining His Hypnosis Approach

That was when I started touring colleges and really growing. And I had another moment that changed my show so much. And it changed my outlook of hypnosis so much. A mentor explained to me there are two kinds of laughter.

People will laugh because they’re engaged and they’re coming in and they want to be a part of this. People laugh because they’re uncomfortable and they want to get away from you and they don’t know how else to respond. So his question to me was, “What kind of laughs are you getting? Are you getting engaging laughs? Are you getting disengaging laughs?”

And that really, really helped me come up with how I wanted to portray everything.

I tell every hypnotherapist I meet, go take a stand-up class. Go take an improv class. Take a good stage class. Maybe you don’t ever want to do shows, and that’s fine.

But as soon as you can be comfortable for five, ten, fifteen minutes getting in front of a group of people at the Chamber of Commerce, at the Kiwanis Club, at the Lions Club, without feeling your face getting all flushed, without feeling yourself getting tense… as soon as you can do ten or fifteen minutes—and I don’t like the word “exposure,” because you’ll hear people say, “Well, this will be good exposure.” I grew up in Detroit. People die from exposure every winter.

But being in front of the right group of people, a Chamber of Commerce, a Lions Club, where people have the money and are interested in your services but don’t understand what they are, that’s the group you need to be in front of. And you don’t want to use the word “perform,” because a lot of therapists feel, “Well, if I’m performing, that cheapens what I do.”

But I’ll tell you this, you don’t want to give them a lecture. You lecture them for five minutes, their brain’s going to turn off. If you can find a way to engage them and make five to ten minutes on stage a really comfortable conversation between you and them, you’re going to get clients out of it.

Improv has been one of the things that has made a huge impact in my life in general, not just as a hypnotherapist, but in learning. Exactly. Yes. And I love connecting with people and keeping the thing going. So how did you go from being in New Orleans to getting the Vegas gig?

I’ve got the weirdest bookend with New Orleans. I know when I got there, and I know when I left. I got there the week after 9/11, and Katrina kicked me out. So that’s my bookends for New Orleans. I was there for a little over four years, four and a half years. It was some of the craziest ten years of my life, but it was great. It was a great experience. Still, I will always love it down there.

Katrina sent me back to Detroit. And while I was back in Detroit, I signed a really large corporate contract because an idea was presented to me, and I was able to shift the idea around, and I was able to create something.

Seizing Opportunities and Landing in Vegas

What I was able to create was this idea. So besides hypnosis, what are some other careers you’re interested in?

Well, I did this one thing where I was able to connect performers and sponsors for big conventions. So what I would do is I would go to an organization—let’s use broadcasters as an example. You want a booth at the National Association of Broadcasters Convention, but those booths can be $15,000, $20,000.

I would call the convention organizers and say, “I’ll give you a free show for your banquet. All I ask is that my sponsor gets a 10×10 booth.” They would agree because they’re getting entertainment for free. Then I’d go to the sponsor, sell the booth for less, make a profit, and everyone won. I did that once, and the company immediately put me on payroll to do it for multiple events.

That taught me about corporate events and how to treat my business like a business.

And because I was doing so many corporate shows, I had an opportunity to come to Vegas for six months for a big run of events. I had always wanted to be in Vegas, but I wasn’t sure if I was ready. Spoiler: I wasn’t ready. But six months turned into 14 years.

I got lucky. I met Terry Stokes, who was part-owner of a show called Hypnosis Unleashed. He let me do a five-minute guest spot, and then he invited me back every day for a week. At that point, I had almost 20 years of performing experience and 15 years of hypnosis experience, so I knew how to do the work.

Terry retired a year later, and I got his spot in the show. The theater closed down not long after, and the other owner offered me the show name if I wanted to carry it forward. So in 2012, I launched Hypnosis Unleashed as my own show, and I’ve been headlining ever since.

Building Connections and Supporting the Hypnosis Industry

The one thing I knew was I could never be a Vegas headliner if I was living in Detroit. Sometimes you just have to take the shot.

So there’s so much in there, but I think my favorite thing about what you just shared with us is how you showed up with that beginner mindset, with that “I’m just going to be here, I’m going to sweep the floors, I’m just going to be around you guys and I’m going to learn everything I can,” even though, like you said, you were a pretty seasoned performer at that point.

Exactly. Just because you know how to do one thing and you know how to do it well doesn’t mean you know everything. I knew how to do shows, but I didn’t know what a Vegas audience expected.

If you’re willing to learn, and if you’re sincere and humble in your approach, people will teach you. I’ve been fortunate to meet incredible people, including some heroes of mine, and they became friends because I stayed open to learning.

If all you want is to be told you’re right, you’ll stay in the same place forever. But if you’re willing to ask questions, even uncomfortable ones, you’ll grow.

Final Thoughts and Takeaways

What do you see as the future of hypnosis?

It’s exciting and full of opportunity, but the industry needs to do better at policing itself. Hypnosis has so much potential to help people and entertain, but we have to protect its reputation by promoting the good actors and holding the bad ones accountable.

The future is bright, but it’s up to us to make it that way.

What’s the one insight you want listeners to leave with today?

If you can stay curious, ask questions, and approach things with humility, you can learn almost anything, and nothing is impossible.

I’ve really enjoyed chatting with you today. It’s been an excellent and enlightening conversation.

Thank you. It’s been my pleasure.