Once a speaker in the business tent, John Powers made his way to the main stage for the 18th edition of the Bakersfield Business Conference.

Right away, the audience discovered the humor he projected in the face of life’s more serious situations.

“We would all like to live forever,” Powers said. “I know I’d like to be the last man on Earth, just to see if all of those women were telling the truth.”

Using a passionate delivery, the motivational speaker talked about the value of being in control of oneself and the importance of keeping a passion for life.

Passion, Powers explained, opens the mind to possibilities.

“The reality is there has never been anyone like you before and there will never be again. Each of us is a once in a universe happening.”

Writer and performer of the one-man show, “Scissors, Paper, Rock” and producer of the musical comedy, “Do Black Patent Leather Shoes Really Reflect Up?”, Powers explained how the game of life is much more than just wins and losses.

“We confuse success and failure with winning and losing. They have nothing to do with one another,” Powers said.

“Success is when you are striving toward your goal. Failure is when you quit. You control that… losing and learning to go out and live again is the only kind of winning that truly matters.”

Power said when he was young, he and his brother would get candy bars and sit with his grandfather on the porch in the front of the house and talk about the wonderful things they were going to do in life.

“Every time we sat down, my grandfather would say the same thing. ‘Wow, what a view. You can see the world from here,’ and I believed he could.”

He said as his brother and he talked, his grandfather, being the wise teacher he was, would just listen.

Before his father passed away a few years ago, Powers said his father described the true meaning of power to him.

“Real power is spiritual. Real power comes from within,” Powers said. “My dad often said, ‘No one can made me happy, no one can make me mad, no one can make me anything, Until I first give them the power to do it.’ “