How Mike Posner built a music empire from his dorm room

Your life is already a 3-act story. You have the rise to meteoric fame.

Mike Posner.

Mike Posner.

Breakthrough Artist of the Year Award. Then you have the crash.

My career had plummeted. I had a hit and my career plummeted.

And then you have the rebirth.

One of Spotify's top 10 most streamed songs of all time. Mike Posner is enjoying sweet success. At the time, it was scary. The fame, the adoration, the money. Really the fame.

Really the fame.

Yeah, the money and all that other stuff was nice, but it was the fame, man.

So what I'm supposed to do is ask you to walk me through that. But I already know that story. So I said, what am I actually curious about? And it's why you would climb Everest, why you would walk across America. What's the philosophy that drives somebody to do those things?

I've never been asked that before. Okay, let me, let me try to tell the truth.

I want to ask you about some things back when we were at Duke. So for people who are listening who don't know this, Me and Mike actually were at Duke at the same time, same year, freshman class. I remember hearing stories that there's a white boy rapper in the dorm next door, and we were like, who is he trying to make it? Whatever. Didn't really think too much of it. And then I suddenly started to see a couple of interesting things. The first interesting thing I saw was that at some point I opened up my laptop and I went to iTunes and I saw you at the top of iTunes, but it wasn't the top of iTunes, it was the top of iTunes U. And iTunes U was like this little part of iTunes that was like for lectures. In Silicon Valley, we call this a growth hack. Sometimes you gotta be clever and you gotta use your, turn your disadvantage to an advantage. Can you teach me about this? 'Cause I've always known half the story. I didn't know the full story.

Yeah, absolutely. So I was a giant hip-hop fan, so I started rapping when I was 8, got to Duke, you know, 12 years later, and I started to sing. But really, I was singing almost from a hip-hop perspective. I'd use these complex rhyme schemes, polysyllabic rhyme schemes. Even in my first hit song, "Cooler Than Me," it's got a complex rhyme scheme. So, you got designer shades just to hide your face. So it's not just the last syllable of the rhyme that rhymes, shades and face, but also designer rhymes with hide your. This is a rapper thing, right? And so I was combining hip-hop with melody in a way that I thought was dope, right? I thought was cool, and I hadn't heard anyone do it before, really. And so I started to share my music, and I was getting a little bit of traction on these hip-hop blogs, which were important in hip-hop at the time. Blogs like 2 Dope Boyz, um, Nah Right, even, um, Kanye's blog, which is a really big deal at the time. And this is the era of piracy. So everyone, you probably remember when we were at Duke, we did not pay for music, you know? So you'd go on LimeWire, BitTorrent, that whole thing. And so I knew no one was going to pay for my music because we weren't paying for Kanye's music. We weren't paying for Jay-Z. The artists we love the most, we were stealing their music. So no one's going to pay for my music because no one knows who I am. So I understood that, and I understood it was important. I was on these hip-hop blogs. But then I was kind of a shy kid, and I was really into my music, so I'd always stay in. And then my friends would come back, they'd stumble into my room drunk, interrupt my song, and push them out, and this whole thing. And one day I go to this, uh, kid's room down the hall named Xander. He was a really cool kid, you know, and, uh, seemed to have a more robust social life than I did.

And there's only cool Xanders. Yeah, exactly, dude.

So, and so he said to me, um, hey Posner, at the party last night, um, they played your song and all the sorority girls knew the words. I said, what, really? Yeah, that's— mind you, I've been making music 12 years now, that's never happened. He goes, "Yeah." And dude, they played it twice. They played it twice in a row and everyone's saying the words. So then I said, "Wow, okay." The next day my mom calls and she says in passing, "By the way, I really like that song you made, 'Cooler Than Me.'" I don't know how she heard it. Her, you know, friend sent her. It was MySpace at the time. So I said, okay, that's kind of peculiar. It's on the hip-hop blogs, the sorority girls like it, and my mom likes it. The next day, my friend Big Sean calls, who I came up with in Detroit, and he had gotten a record deal with Kanye. He's a rapper from Detroit and a dear friend of mine. And he said, I love Kool and the Neat. He goes, I think that could be a hit song. I said, hold on. If Sean, Mom, and the sorority girls all like the same song, something's going on here that never happened before. Because I've been making music 12 years and nobody seemed to particularly give a fuck besides me, including my mom, right? Always supportive and loving. She, you know, pay for music lessons, supportive, but never told me she liked one of my songs. I'm 20 years old.

Wow.

So I realized the way these hip-hop blogs work was you'd go on the site, there'd be a blog entry with your song, and then you had to do some, some kind of, uh, right-clicking, and there was always these weird links that would throw you off into some sketchy websites, and you had to click the right thing and then save, you know, file as, and that's how you download the song. But it was really convoluted and hidden behind advertisements. And I just realized that these sorority girls were never going to do that. They were never going to— hey, they're never going to go to these hip-hop blogs. And if, you know, snowball chance in hell they would, they wouldn't ever be able to download the song. So I realized, you know, iTunes was just starting to come out, and it was this safe place you could get music. And so I knew I needed to get my music there. But then I had this other rub that I alluded to earlier, which is no one's gonna pay for it. So I need it to be free like it is on the blogs, but I need to be on iTunes. And then I saw iTunes U.

All right, so a lot of people watch and listen to this show because they want to hear us just tell them exactly what to do when it comes to starting or growing a business. And really, a lot of people who are listening, they have a full-time job and they want to start something on the side, a side hustle. Now, a lot of people message Sean and I and they say, all right, I want to start something on the side. Is this a good idea? Is that a good idea? And again, what they're really just saying is just give me the ideas. Well, my friends, you're in luck. So my old company, The Hustle, they put together 100 different side hustle ideas and they have appropriately called it the Side Hustle Idea Database. It's a list of 100 pretty good ideas, frankly. I went through 'em. They're awesome. And it gives you how to start 'em, how to grow 'em, things like that. Gives you a little bit of inspiration. So check it out. It's called the Side Hustle Idea Database. It's in the description below. You'll see the link, click it, check it out. Let me know in the comments what you think.

So iTunes U was this section of iTunes that was set up for professors to post their lectures. And if you weren't there, you went to a different school, you could, you could listen to this professor's lecture and it was supposed to be purely educational and the cost was free for everything on iTunes U. There was no charge. It was an educational arm of iTunes. So I said, I got to get my music there. Now this is where life, capital L, comes in. I'm from Southfield, Michigan. It's a suburb of Detroit. I was born in Detroit. I moved to Southfield when I was 2 years old. I grew up there, lived there till I'm 18. I go to Duke University. I do some searching and I find out who's in charge of iTunes U for Duke. So if you're a Duke professor and you want to post your lecture, how do you get it up there? I find out it's a man named Todd Stabili. I cold email Todd. Remember, you could type in any name in the directory, you could get the email. So I get Todd's email, I cold email him, and we do a phone call. He gives me his number, and his number is the same area code as mine. Hey man, you got 248 area code? Yeah. He goes, I'm from Southfield, Michigan. Where are you from? I said, Come on, you know, I get the goosebumps still to this day. I said, look, this is what I'm trying to do. I'm a student artist and I'm going to share my album, you know, and I want to put on iTunes U. He goes, oh yeah, man, from Southfield, you're a student, we can put on iTunes U, no problem. Life set that up for me, man. So I got my music onto iTunes, and you just search on iTunes like any other thing. But when you went, my album came up, the price was free. Any other music out cost $1, $1.99, whatever it was. Mine was free. And so then I got busy on Facebook. I created a Facebook event, and there was a link to that album, and I activated all my communities. So I was from Michigan, and a lot of my friends went to different colleges across the country, including Michigan, Michigan State. Gosh, um, friends at Northwestern, friends at, you know, Marquette, friends, you know, just wherever they went. And then my friend— I was in fraternity, and there were these— we had pledges. So these older guys would do mean things. These pledges make them like do, you know, 1,000 push-ups or whatever. I said, look, you guys are gonna do something for me. You're gonna pause the push-ups. You're gonna send the invitation to this Facebook event to everyone in your Facebook network, every single person. And there's a way— I, I had a protocol, it's 5 steps, and you could send it out. And all of you are going to change your profile picture to my album cover. And all my friends, they all changed their profile picture, my album cover. And my friends did the same thing. My fraternity brothers, they all did the same thing. So all their friends that were at different schools, they sent it out. And then here's that— the last thing is the music was good, right? So if the music wasn't good, none of this shit matters, right? But— and my music wasn't always good. Like I said, I'm 20, I started when I was 8. So it's 12 years making songs, a lot of songs, to get to that one song where my mom likes it. Right? And Sean likes it. So this iTunes U thing, yeah, was a thing that was pivotal for me. Pivotal. And so from there, every— pretty much every college in the U.S. was listening to Mike Posner that year. And it started off small. There'd be, you know, 50 people, or— and I'd get a show at Dayton, Ohio, where I'd go to Dayton, Ohio. I'd be booked to play at some bar You know, at colleges there's always a hustler guy that throws the parties and, you know, so those guys would book me.

And are you even getting paid to do this at the time, or at the start?

$500. So I'd go— my boy Pat Klein became my manager later. He booked me at Dayton, Ohio, and I go there and there's 25 to 50 people. I do my set and they know every word to my song. A month later, he booked me to come back, there'd be 300 people there. Know every word to my song. And so I just started to expand like that. And, um, yeah, the iTunes U was a, was a really great hack.

I've never heard that, that story. That's, um, that's amazing story. So because, because what you did then, you kind of stacked these, right? So you did that, then you started doing the shows, which normally— correct me if I'm wrong— normally you kind of, you did it backwards, right? That's like, it seems like normally you'd have a label, they would get you set up with tours, you were kind of underground. So you, if I remember correctly, because you already had tours and fans, then when record labels were interested, you're like, yo, I'm de-risked. Like, I'm more de-risked than the average artist because look at this, like, I've already, I'm already playing shows with real fans all around the country. And I remember being at Duke and we would hear like, dude, this dude flies out every weekend and just does a show at a different college and flies back and like takes his tests. Like, that's what you were doing.

We're doing 2 or 3, man. It got crazy. Yeah, I would do 2 or 3. Except that senior year I had set up, so I had all my classes Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. I leave Thursday night, rip Thursday night, Friday night, Saturday night. I get 3 checks, come back, have a bunch of cash, go to the bank, put in the bank, come back in my house, just dirty, filthy house, you know, like go to class again. It was just insane doing homework on the planes. Like, it was insane, insane.

It seems like one of the unique things about you is like, you may not be the best rapper or the best singer or the best kind of beats producer guy, but because you're good enough to be dangerous on all three, you were able to be like a one-man machine that was able to, to, to get a bunch of practice reps in and get, you know, keep, keep trial and error where you weren't dependent on somebody else's time or somebody else's interests or tastes or whatever. Is that fair?

No, I don't think so.

How would you say it?

I would say, yeah, I'm probably, yeah, I'm definitely not the best singer. Definitely, you know, I can't dance or anything or do any cool runs, but I'm a damn good writer.

Writer, okay. That's like your A+ skill.

You know, people connect to me, I think, because of the writing. You know, yeah, I can't, if I did American Idol, I'd lose, you know, right? I can sing, but not—

Well, one of the things that inspired me when I was doing the research was that at some point in the middle of your career, so not like before he made it, but like actually after you had the initial burst of success, it seemed like I read something that you went back and almost like took music lessons and singing lessons and enrolled into college. And you said something like, you know, I'm in this class and I'm not the best singer in the class. I'm supposed to be this, you know, I'm supposed to be this guy who's the star, right? They all want to be artists. I actually even have the the credentials. But I thought that was kind of an amazing, humbling move to just— of course, why wouldn't I dedicate myself to the craft? Can you talk a little about that? There was something in that that resonated with me because I think that's unusual.

Yeah, well, there's two things in that. One, I think it speaks to the point I just made where there are these people— I might— at that time in my career, I had— I was in a cold spot. So I said, hey, let me use this time to get better at my skills. And if I'm being honest, yeah, I don't know how to play like I had a hit song, but I didn't know how to play guitar. I didn't know how to really sing. I was a rapper who had started singing. I didn't know how to play piano. So why don't I learn some of those things? And I remember I was at a, at a— it was kind of like a campfire kind of situation, and that guy, uh, Psy was there. You remember him?

Yeah.

And Tori Kelly was there, and they were passing the guitar around the fire. And Tori Kelly sang this song. It was so beautiful. And then I had just written a song that day. I wanted to sing it. And I was at— I said, could you play the guitar, these chords, the thing? And she's trying to do it for me because I couldn't play the guitar. And I really wanted to sing my song, but I couldn't do it. And it didn't really work. And I remember leaving, I go, that's stupid that I can't do that. That's never going to happen again. I'm going to learn to play the guitar. I need to be able to sing a song at a campfire. You know? So that's one part of it. You know, it's just less than go, hey, you know, being an artist is about, it's similar to being a human. It's about growing. It's about being a better artist than you were a year ago. And you can always, your relationship to the music deepens or the art, any art form deepens your whole life. Art is not like the NBA, you know? It's not like you peak at 30 and you know, you can't jump as high anymore. No, this is a lifelong thing. You can always get deeper. So that's part A. But then part B was, yeah, I realized kind of to the point right before this point was I'm in a singing class. I took Berklee School of Music online. There's these great singers in there. And yeah, I was like, you know, in the bottom quartile of that class, but I was a successful recording artist and those people all wanted my job. And I realized I had something that most people don't, which is my writing. But I have a way of connecting. The music I make, whether it doesn't matter— music is not about hitting the high notes like life. It's not about hitting the perfect note or doing the run. It's about, does it— does this part of my humanity speak to that part of your humanity? I'm raising my hand, I'm taking my clothes off out here and it's vulnerable and going, this is what it's like for me to be a human. Anyone else? And if I do a good job, someone else hears it and they could be like, I'm so glad you said it because that's how I've been feeling for years and I didn't know how to articulate it. And now I don't feel as alone. That's what an artist does. And so I realized in that singing class, I already know how to do that. I can, I can add colors and refinements and make things more sophisticated by, you know, adding to my skills. But at the end of the day, even if you got no skills and you can do that, you're a great artist. You're a great artist.

Well, I love your music videos for this reason. Like, now that you say it, when I think about when I became a super fan of yours.

Like you— sorry, by the way, that's why you're a great artist. We talk about the beginning, you always say I'm a little lowercase artist. No, you're making the thing and it obviously connects with other people. You're obviously following your own curiosity and going, hey, I'm making a thing that— it's a million podcasts in the freaking world, dude, right? But you're doing something in a way that connects with other humans, and you're not doing it because you're trying to— you're doing it by trying to connect with yourself and connect your own creativity and curiosity to the, the art you're making or the, the, you know, the pieces that you're making, whatever you call them. And so, yeah.

And by the way, I used to approach it very differently. I used to approach it very analytically, logically. Duke kid, right? Like, you know, there's a certain set of skills that gets you into Duke, and those skills were— I was trying to sort of map the market out and the opportunity. Where's the white space? And my, my coach, my trainer, I've mentioned before, he's like, the white space is you, bro. He's like, he's like, the product is you pushed out. That's it. Take, take yourself, turn yourself inside out. Whoever resonates with what you are, that's your target customer. You don't need a market study, right? That who are the people? Who are my customers? The people that love what I do. And he just flipped it on its head and I was like, dude, you're speaking a different language to me. Different. I've never seen this in a book. But I started to put some faith in that, and that's when I did the podcast. I was like, what's the podcast supposed to be? It started off as only interviews, and then we would just get on the podcast sometimes, just shoot the shit about, dude, did you see this app that did this? It was just me pushed out. That's what I'm actually interested in. So I just started talking about it. And then all of a sudden it was getting a different result because there was only one of those, because there's only one of me, right? So that was a big lesson to learn. Yeah, that sounds kind of obvious and almost like a fortune cookie, but it takes courage. You gotta go do it.

It takes courage and you have to stumble upon it. Yeah, you had to, you had to do the other thing. So yeah, it has to be stumbled upon. I had this line on my song that said, I got, I'm in the yoga class headband now. People say I'm off brand. How? I am the brand. Therefore, anything I do is on brand now. I'm on brand now. Yo, it's like, uh, uh, I look at my heroes and that's what I am now. People got attached to a version of me 'cause it hurts when they see a person who's free. And I'm so grateful for all these lessons. Twice as much money, half the possessions, no drugs. Now the vision's clear. All my gold jewelry just disappeared. That's the universe telling me to start switching gears. The deeper the human, the deeper the songs. I saw all of this 3 years ago. It's almost like it was me reading my palm. Yes. Yeah, right.

I like that. Um, how'd you get on the radio? Because that's a black box. Like, how'd you even figure out how to get on radio?

Oh, the thing I was gonna say to you before was, you know, the music industry has completely moved that way. So these, these days of a record label are— hey kid, you got talent, we're gonna develop you for 6 years— like, that doesn't happen. And now it's even more so. You only get a record deal if you already have an audience. So that no longer is, you know, the responsibility of the label. That's now the responsibility of the artist. And there's so much data now, right? So labels can be really prudent and go, hey, that or that or that, right? Okay. You asked about getting on the radio. So I graduate and I sign a record deal. And I'm making this new album, starting to work with bigger producers. I'm working with Benny Blanco and making these songs and thinking, you know, when I do my first real album, not an iTunes U album, it's going to be big. And I'm starting to make all this new music. And the original Cooler Than Me used to have this line in it. It used to, at the end of the verse, would say, you're so vain, you probably think that The song is about you, don't you? If I could write you a song to make you— I don't know if you remember that.

I remember that.

Yeah.

Yeah. Is that not still the song? That's the one I remember.

It's not. Most people don't know it that way because we went to then go clear it because that's a Carly Simon song, You're So Vain. So this was this two lines in the verse. We got to go clear it. We said, hey, you know, I use this part of your song in my song. We want to give you credit for it. Can we work out a deal? She's Yes, her representative. No problem, um, we'll just take 80% or maybe 70 or something. Like, dude, yeah, it's like it's 2 lines of the verse. So I had to change that, right? First thing I had to go, behind Jamaica, nobody knows who you really are, who do you think you are, you know? So we had changed that out, and then I'm thinking that I'm gonna make this new hit song, Benny Blanco, is like brand big thing because I have a record deal now. And when I play the new version of Cooler Than Me without the Carly Simon, my record label thinks— they say it's not as good, it's not as good anymore. So I think we should use one of the new songs to be your first real single. Cooler Than Me's now been out for 2 years to us college kids. I'm in New York City, I'm about to go to some meeting or studio or something, hang out with a friend, and my manager says, we got to do a meeting with this radio promoter. His name is Ian C. We need to do a meeting with this guy. His job is he gets songs on the radio without you, and usually the label is supposed to do that, but we need to pay him to do it ourselves. I said, I don't want to go to that meeting, I want to go to the studio, I'm an artist, you go to the meeting. He goes, this is more important. I go, no, it's not. He says, yes, it is. I said, why? Well, Cooler Than Me is your first single. The label doesn't know it, but I know it. This is my manager, Daniel Weissman. I said, Cooler Than Me is old. It's 2 years old. It's been out 2 years and everybody has already heard it. On the sidewalk in New York City, he looks me in the eye, he goes, Nobody has heard it. I'll go to the meeting. We go to the meeting, we hire ENC. I think we paid him, what was it, $5 grand, $10 grand, and he's gonna get this song on a few radio stations. No guarantee how much they're gonna play it, but he said, I can get on a few stations. So he gets on a few stations. And this thing starts catching on. People are calling into the station, "We like this song." You know, it was before Shazam released, but they have some way they test it. The tests are going crazy. And these few stations, Patty Moreno in Sacramento and Shorty, they start playing this song 50 times a week. That's a lot. And then DJ Reflex in LA, Power 106, he plays the song. It does well here. It starts catching on here. Now the label calls, they go, we told you, Cooler Than Me is your first single, dude. What a great idea, right? And that's what labels are great at. They're not so great at starting fires, but if you could start a fire, they got a hell of a lot of gasoline. So they, they then they go in hyper mode, do their thing, start getting it on all the other stations. And that was how I got on the radio. And at that time, the radio drove mattered. Yeah, it still matters, but it— you win Spotify and get on the radio, or you win YouTube and you get on the radio. Then it was the opposite.

I told you I get more out of the research for these than I do the interview sometimes. And at first I got discouraged by that because I was like, oh man, it's kind of anticlimactic. All the fun was in the foreplay, not the real thing.

We're gonna change that.

We're gonna change that today. But then I got excited. I was like, oh wait, That means when I'm doing the research, look for, look for the gold. Because there's usually like one thing that I'm like, wow, that alone made this worth it. This whole trip worth it. And so for me, that was this one, which was, um, about, I guess, making art or making songs. It was, you know, do you try to make a hit? Do you try to think about what the audience wants? And the quote was, I just do what's cool to me, and sometimes the whole world agrees. I like that. Can you talk about that a little bit? Like where that mindset comes from?

That's a good question because I could talk about that mindset really easily, but you asked me something different, which is where does that mindset come from? And that, I've never been asked that before, so we're off to a good start. That's an answer I give other people when artists are struggling. I tell them, you know, your job is to make the thing that you think is beautiful, period. That's it. Don't do what I think is beautiful, or you, or your manager, or your fans. That's it. So that's an answer I give to others. Now you're asking me a question about my answer. The root. So, okay, let me, let me try to tell the truth or find what's true for me. In part, it comes from messing it up. Undoubtedly. I experienced a lot of success in my early 20s and I got addicted to it. The fame, the adoration, the money. Really the fame. Really the fame. Yeah, the money and all that stuff was nice, but it was the fame.

One of those had a higher high than the rest.

That's freaking fame, dude.

It's like, whoo.

And so I can remember trying to replicate the success I had from my first hit song, which is a song, Cooler Than Me. If I could write you a song to make you fall in love. That song. And I just wanted that feeling. I wanted to be that guy. That everyone was looking at. And so I can remember going in the studio and going, I'm trying to make a— make a hit, make a hit, make something everyone else likes. And whenever I tried to create from that vantage point, the only thing I succeeded in making was something I hated. And sometimes I think, well, even if I don't like it, maybe everyone else will. It kind of checks all the boxes. It's the right BPM. It's got a catchy melody and a cool lyric. It doesn't really meet my standards of, for my aesthetics, what I think is beautiful. But who cares what I think? Like, this is about me being famous, right? And of course, if you don't like it, nobody's gonna like it.

You know, it's like you went from a guaranteed audience of 1 to 0 to start this.

Yeah, man. And so, and I think life or God, I believe in God. Sometimes I just call it life. So I'll use those interchangeably in this interview. It's life with a capital L. You know, I thank God that it never gave me success with one of those, because it wanted me to learn that very lesson, right, that I could teach to others. But gosh, could you imagine if one of those things I didn't really like got really popular? Whoo, that would have been even worse, right?

You'd have been trapped on that path.

I'd still be— I'd still be doing interviews about that song now, still be singing that song at my shows now, right?

The original plan for this episode was Your life is already a 3-act story. So from a podcaster point of view, oh, this is easy. You have the come up, you have the rise to meteoric fame, everything that everybody wants. You're a pop star, you're on stage, shirts off, everybody's crazy about you. You're the man. Then you have the crash and then you have the rebirth, right? So your story's already like that. And so what I'm supposed to do is ask you to walk me through that. But then I have to do what's honest for me too, which is I already know that story and I like that story. I don't really want to talk. I'll ask you some questions about it, but I kind of already know that. So it wouldn't be honest for me to ask that because I wouldn't be curious. Cool. I already know it.

Great, man.

So I said, what am I actually curious about? And I was like, I wanted to know that. Like, hey, you said something that resonated with me, which is my job is not to make a hit. It's to make something that's cool to me. And sometimes the world agrees. So that was the first place I want to start. The second one is, you know, I'm not a musician, but I'd like to— I'm maybe like a lowercase a artist. I write, I have a podcast, I do things like that.

Oh, you're an artist. Capital A. Oh, thank you. Something exists now out of that used to just be an idea in your head. You're an artist.

All right, you heard it here first. Mike Bowser thinks I'm an artist. There we go.

Absolutely.

The thing that's been most helpful for me when I write is exactly that. So if somebody asked me, how do you write something great? How do you write something that goes viral? And the best thing I ever read was sit down and write one true sentence. One true sentence. And that just became like a calling card for me. It was like, oh, I know where to start now. Let me sit down and try to write one honest sentence. And that's surprisingly hard because the honest sentence is usually something vulnerable. And if I look at your hit songs, so if you look at, you know, I Took a Pill in Ibiza, the one true sentence right at the beginning is, you know, I took a pill in Ibiza to, you know, show Avicii I was cool.

Or in your new song, it's something like, "There's a part of me underneath the part that I let people see. That part is the good part." Exactly.

And I love that. Underneath the part that I let other people see, that is the good part. And I was like, man, he's really good at the one true sentence. Is that a technique you use at all? Like honesty to write the song or to bake the core of the song?

Yeah, you know, there's an old adage in studios gets thrown around, and more so in Nashville and LA, they say don't try to write a good song, write a true song, and then it'll be good automatically. My music— listen, when I was 13, I was a rapper already. I started rapping when I was 8, but I was around 13, I was starting to consider creating a stage name. And I'd go 6 months. I remember I had this rapper name, it was Acrimony, and then I had this other name. 6 months later, I threw it out and I go, my name further here on out is MC MP, right? The world will know MC MP. It has about 13 and a half.

Yeah, like aim screen name status.

Yeah, exactly, exactly. And it goes— and I had this thought to myself, I said, my music isn't an act. The stuff I write even then was just what was happening in my life. It was real to me. So my— I shouldn't have a stage name. I should have my name. And I said, I'm going to go by Mike Posner. That's my name. And that's who I am. And who I am in life is who I am in my music. This came back one other time. It was almost 20 years later. It was right when I wrote "I Took a Pill in Ibiza" because my career had plummeted. I had a hit and my career plummeted. And I was known, as you know, for doing kind of frat songs and party songs. I had this, you know, upbeat dance success song, "Cooler Than Me." And then I wrote "I Took a Pill in Ibiza" and it's this sad singer-songwriter song on the guitar.

Which most people don't know.

Yeah, the original one. And I thought, dude, like, whatever is left of my career, will be destroyed by— and what is funny now, but at the time it was, it was horror. It was scary. It will be destroyed by me making such a drastic change in my music. Like, no, none of my fans that liked what I did before will like this. It's so different. And I started contemplating again, maybe I should change my name for this project. And I remember thinking, oh, maybe I'll change my name to The Truth. It's like, no, the truth is your name is Mike Kozner. And so I, you know, I quickly got my head out of my ass on that one again and went, hey, you know, like, this is my story. And, and the 3x story you talk about, you know, I've, I've owned it for better, for worse, or tried to, you know.

Do you look for that moment where you're like, I'm almost so scared to put this out. I, I gotta change my act name. It's so— this, this goes to a certain place where it's not safe. Have you now learned to look at that signal and be like, maybe there's something here if I'm feeling that?

Yeah, absolutely. And yeah, a huge, huge barometer of something I should be writing is that, oh, I really don't want to write this. This moment was so painful, like I don't want to talk about it. I don't want to think about it. So yeah, that, that it's not the only, you know, it's not to say the converse is not true, which is the only thing that should be written is something that causes you great pain. That's not true. But often that is a, that is an entry point that, that is worth examining. Right. Absolutely.

We had Tim Ferriss on the podcast and I asked him a question. I said, Tim, my, my, my one honest question, I was like, I'm supposed to ask you about 4-Hour Workweek, but I read it already. I said, the thing I really want to know is how do you decide what's next? Because I knew he was kind of thinking about what's next. And I know that whenever Tim Ferriss is trying to do something, he's methodical. He doesn't just—

yeah, you think he doesn't just do it.

He's got like a way he's going to do it.

That's right.

And I was like, I kind of just hop to the next thing. Like, how do you do figure out the next thing? And he goes, well, I create a menu of options. And he's like, he's like, and on that menu, I make sure I have— I leave room for the weirdest option. I go, the weirdest option? Why, you're going to do it? He's like, I'm not necessarily going to do it. He goes, but he goes, I treat like the weirdest idea of what I could do next. This is not what I normally do. This is not what I'm known for. So if you're still around, you must have, I actually need to overweight you as an option for me. For you, when you try to figure out what's next, like, uh, whether it's the next song or the next project, like writing a book. How do you decide where to apply your talents?

What's hard now is choosing what not to do. That's the hardest part, is, you know, killing things. And on paper, I may be doing too many things right now. I'm writing my book intensively every day, a lot of time alone, my computer. I'm putting an album out. We're expanding our business in a lot of different ways. So on paper, if I was making the menu, I go, cross two of them out.

Right, right.

But your question was, how do you decide? And the same internal compass that I use in the, in the micro when I'm creating, I'm writing a sentence in my book and I go, that word is not quite right. No, not that. And then boom, that one. It's an internal knowing. It's a feeling. So that, that's it. Mark Twain said the difference between the almost right word and the right word is the difference between lightning bug and the lightning bolt. Right? And isn't that the truth, right?

Has it happened in your songs?

Oh yeah.

Is there a song today that we all know that almost was— "Floor." "Took a Pill in Sacramento." Didn't have the same ring to it.

Just kept trying to make it work. It doesn't hit. No. No, but just on the, in the song, same way. A lot of times in the production, gosh, that's not the right snare drum sample. We'll work for an hour, go through every, all the sounds, and that's the one. You just know.

There's a quote that Rick Rubin has that I love, which he says, the best way to serve your audience is to ignore them. Meaning to not try to reverse engineer what they might want or what they might like or what they might just make what you want and what you like, and that is the best way to serve them. You know, when you hear something, you're like, oh, that's probably the truth. I think I just heard the truth. Okay, now the rest of my life is coming to grips with that truth. I don't need to search for the answer. I got the answer. Yeah, it's just a question of how long I'm going to deny myself, you know, how many roundabout ways I'm going to avoid facing the answer. Now I know the answer. Has that been— it been easy for you? Kind of back to that first question about like making what you want.

Music is pretty easy now, and honestly, um, taking care of my finances has been a big part of that.

What do you mean by that?

I'm financially secure. I don't need to make another dollar from my music again. So logically, I was able to just talk to— at some point in the past, talk to that part of that voice in my head and go, hey dude, like, you never need to make a song that you don't want to make ever again. You never need to be in the studio with a person you're not a fan of ever again. Ever. And that made me a much better artist.

And I live in Silicon Valley. There's people with more money than, than God out there, and they don't feel like they have enough. I know a lot of people who have enough, who have made the last dollar they will ever spend. Many times over, but they still do things to chase more. And, you know, they don't like to say they're doing it, but if you watch people's actions, people's actions will sort of speak, uh, where they're devoting their talents to. What's the, uh, what was useful to you to coming at, coming to peace with, you know, having enough? Was it as simple as I wrote down how much I needed and how much I had and I, the logic part of my brain solved that? Or was it a different part of you that, that got peace with with the money side of your life?

Both twofold. So I had, you know, the analysis where they do a Monte Carlo or whatever, you know, it's like you spend this much for this many more years, you'd be okay.

So that was like a money manager did that for you?

Or yes, that was part of it, right? Just knowing, hey, I'm okay. You got to shift at some point, right? Because when you're coming up, you say yes to everything, you know, opportunity is going to work. And then when you get successful, you have too many opportunities. You got to learn to say no. There's, there's paradigm shifts along the journey. And so that, that was one of them. That's the logical part. And then the, the illogical part, or the spiritual part, is realizing what true wealth or abundance or success is to me. It's my definition. True success or wealth is health. It's the ability to have joy in the present moment. That's— if you can do that, you're a wealthy person. And if you're grateful, if you're grateful what you have, you're wealthy.

There's a perception in the business world which is that the chip on your shoulder serves you. I know investors that will invest specifically in people they know are kind of like sort of damaged, semi-screwed up, but they know that that gives them this sort of psychopathic, you know, drive. And when somebody is really happy, I know people who don't want to invest in somebody who's super at peace because the returns might not be there. I don't know if I believe that. Do you think that the best art comes from, you know, people who are in a happy place or the people who have that pain? Do you think that the best success comes from the people who have that big chip on their shoulder or or not? What's your take on that?

I can't answer in terms of where to invest your money. I don't really know that much about that stuff. But what I can speak to is architecting a more beautiful life. I don't have a perfect life, but it's a hell of a lot more perfect than it was 5 years ago. Right. So what I can say is I don't want a life that is hyper successful in the vertical of work and finance and a desert wasteland in the areas of passionate intimacy, faith, spiritual growth, friendships, fun, physical health, giving back. All right, so I believe the way I look at my life, and I, I do measure this, is work and mission is but one vertical. And the thing I screwed up in my 20s is I thought if I crushed it so hard in this vertical, meaning I got all the fame, all the money, that I thought the points would carry over. I thought, yeah, I can not show up, you know, to Thanksgiving and not return my mother's phone call because she knows I'm busy. I'm pop star Mike Posner. Right? I cannot, you know, see my friends or ghost them for months on end. They understand. I'm pop star Mike Posner, Grammy-nominated Mike Posner, international superstar. I can never, like, go on dates and just have one-night stands after my shows for years on end and never develop emotional intimacy or the capacity to communicate on an intimate level or vulnerable level with another human being because I'm international superstar Grammy-nominated Mike Posner. I can never give back with my time, or not so much with my money either, because I'm international. And what you get is just a life that isn't that good. Winning the game of life is played on all these different verticals, and some of them require different skill sets that you won't find in the work vertical. It's not going to help you be a good husband. It's not going to help you be a good father. I have a mission, right? So it's not saying abandon this for the other— it's How do you do it all in balance? How do you, how do you have everything? That's what I'm interested in. That's what I'm building in my life. I'm doing the best job I've ever done. Am I perfect? No. But boy, am I proud of myself.

There's a great clip on YouTube of Jim Carrey when he gets some award and he goes up on stage and he gave almost the same speech you gave. He's like, you know, I'm— he's like, I— this is my second Emmy. You know, I used to be—

oh yeah, the Golden Globes.

A Golden Globe. Yeah, one time.

Totally plagiarizing that.

No, it reminded me of it. It was great. I was one-time Golden Globe winner Jim Carrey, and tonight I'm two-time. And he's like, and when I go to bed at night, I will dream about being three-time. And, you know, he has the great quote, which is, I wish, I wish the whole world could be rich and famous so they would know that that's not the answer. Yeah, right. Um, you know, you got to taste that and you found out yourself that's not the answer for you. Uh, and, and doesn't seem like it's the answer for most. Um, I have this goofy, uh, analogy that I want to ask you about. So do you ever watch the show Survivor?

When I was a kid, I watched it.

Okay, so I'm one of the doofuses that's still watching it in season 47.

What's going on with you, man?

Okay, so we all have a thing. I got my thing. Some people got weird things. This is mine. I want to go on Survivor someday. That's part of my, my, my angle here. But there's this thing that they do on Survivor, which is, I think, a good analogy for life. So in life, uh, in Survivor, the best thing every player wants is the immunity idol. It's this one thing that if you had it, you're safe. You can finally relax. You've got the one thing that everybody wants. And the— that's been the case for many years. Recently they made a twist. They call it the Beware Idol, which is basically you pick it up and it says, beware, this comes with some disadvantages. And the player has opportunity. They can just put it down. They don't have to take any of the disadvantages. So far, 100% of players, not a single player has ever put it down. Even though it says on the label, beware, this thing has disadvantages that come with it that will hurt you in this game. And every player can't resist. They take it. And I was thinking about, I was watching Survivor. I was prepping for this podcast and I was like, I think fame is the beware advantage of life. It's the thing that, yeah, well, we all think we want the money, the fame, uh, the love of, of others. And it's, it, it could say it on the label, beware. People who become pop stars when they're young, those aren't the happiest people, but we would all take it over again, right? And so there's something to that. And I actually was curious, like, for you, if you could go back, if there was the next Mike Posner, he's, he's 21 years old, and you get 15 minutes in a room with him just like this, and you could tell him anything, I'm curious, what would you tell him? And do you think he would listen?

I mean, dude, one of the things you opened up the interview with You know, my smiles don't result from good things, they result in good things. You have sovereignty over your own emotions and the way you respond to and interpret every event of your life. And life, I think Naval Ravikant says, life is a one-player game, right? And you need to exercise and practice that sovereignty. You need to develop rituals that give you the best chance of of enjoying your life to the fullest and, and being the joy in life. Not waiting for something good to happen so you can feel happy. Being happy so something good will happen. Not waiting for someone to do something nice for you so you can feel good. Doing something nice for someone else and make them feel good, and then you feel good, you know, by default. So I, yeah, I, I didn't have a handle on any of that stuff when I was 21.

I saw a great example of that from you, which was, I think you had either you missed a flight or you were delayed on a flight or something like that. And I love this example because it's so relatable. Everybody's been in this moment where it's travel, travel stressful. And then travel often feels out of your control, whether it's a flight delay or you miss your connection or whatever it is. And there's the common cliché reaction to that. And we actually all kind of have that reaction, but it's not always the response. Yeah, can you tell that story? Because I think that example—

yeah, absolutely—

it stood out to me. Not everybody's gonna relate to being a pop star or making great music, but this was something everybody can relate to. So I'd love if you could share this one.

I've been told in recording studio so many times the lyric that I'm trying to write isn't relatable. Hey Mike, don't— you can't put that in a song because no one will relate to it. Yeah, nobody else took a pill in Ibiza to show Avicii they were cool. That was just me. But everybody's done something that wasn't true to themselves to try to gain the attention of someone else. And so while, yeah, knowing the lyric on the surface is unrelatable, the emotion underneath the lyric is universal. And the same thing with all these stories, you know. My life is my life. I'm probably— I'm the only guy I know that got nominated for the Grammy, walked across a continent, and climbed Everest. And I did that by design, right? Because I wanted—

I want to be the only guy.

I wanted to have a life that was cool to me and unique to me. And, and yeah, and part of it was ego, that like, hey, I want to be unique. And but also I wanted my life to be inspiring to me. But every element, every one of the stories we share today, whether it's a story from you or a story from me or Survivor, what have you, has human emotions underneath that are universal. So the story you're talking about is, uh, yeah, I did a post. I never talked about this. This is a podcast world premiere. I had this horrible travel day, man. I did that the day before, wasn't good, and I didn't sleep and woke up early and we had to drive 3 hours to the airport. We're in Colorado and there was an accident on I-70 and we just got in this traffic jam and we're in the car 7 hours, missed the flight. And it was just, you know, I was feeling sorry for myself and it was just a bad— it wasn't— stuff was bothering me in other parts of my life. It was a bad day, man. I didn't feel good physically, emotionally, everything was off. And I remembered that I was on a Zoom call, uh, in Tony Robbins conference about, um, time and scheduling efficiency. And in one of the breakout sessions, one of the other participants said, when you're having a bad day, ask yourself, what could I do to make this a great day? And it just flashed back in my head while I was in that car. I said, well, this is okay. This is bad day, check. We got the first part. All right. I said, what can I do to make this a great day? And I said, okay, if I could use the fact that I'm having a bad day to do something nice for others, that would be a really cool thing. That would make me proud of myself. And so I called my assistant. I said, yeah, this is all messed up, you know, I'm supposed to— and I was missing family time, you know. I get only so many days with my family every year, my mom, my sister, and I was missing one of them. I was just bummed out. I go, look, so we get to spend the night in Denver tonight. Can you find me a place where I can just go volunteer? Not with money, actually show up, go serve. And Stacy, she's amazing, she found me a, um, I forgot the name of the establishment, but it was set up for people that, um, were getting off of drugs, and they could live there and they could have a house, you know, roof over their head and some meals while they find a job and they get some training. And I just show up to, you know, like, serve, serve food and When I showed up there, I was still tired. I physically had a headache, still all the same things, but I was just proud. I said, hey, I used my suffering, my having a bad day, as an excuse not to go to bed, not to complain, not to take it out on somebody else, but I used that as an excuse to do something good for someone else. So I did alchemy today. I turned my suffering into a service. I turned my suffering into connection. And that pride I felt in myself, because I would usually not do that, I would usually have a pity party in the hotel and look at my phone. It, it just gave me all this pride. And I, I say this, you know, when I speak a lot, true happiness comes from growth. True happiness comes from growth. It doesn't come from getting everyone to like you. It doesn't come from getting the most followers. Doesn't come from a million dollars. It doesn't come from things going the right way for you, the right way for you. It comes from playing a part in the evolution of your own soul. So it's saying, hey, I usually do things this way. What if I did something this way? And that day, I can truly say, was one of the best days of my year, without a doubt. I went to bed proud. And, oh, by the way, So much energy.

Yeah, there's certain things that take energy that seem like they take energy but actually give. It's like going to the gym. Anybody's ever— you're tired, you don't really want to go to the gym, but you go to the gym, suddenly you have energy. It's like, wait, how'd that math work? It was supposed to take energy to go work out, but I have more than I had when I started. It doesn't make any sense, but it does. To anybody who's ever done it, makes perfect sense.

It makes sense because if I would have stayed in the hotel room and played on my phone, I would have got more and more tired. Because I was engaging in an activity that I knew I don't care about. But when I engage in an activity that I know is gonna do something to make my soul grow, there's unlimited energy. So sometimes doing more is easier than doing less. Sometimes a hard goal is easier than an easy goal.

Right.

My, my trainer, he told me this story once that I love. It's very similar to your, your story just now. He came to the, to our workout in the morning and he's beaming and he's always a happy guy, but I could tell a little extra pep in the step. What's up?

Hey, man, what's going on?

I thought I was looking like more fit or something. I didn't know what the reason was. I was hoping, secretly hoping it was me. But then he was like, he goes, well, for the last 9 months I've been driving around with like an expired license. And he's like, didn't want to go to the DMV, so I avoided that pain. But then every time I drove, I was paranoid all the time that I was going to get pulled over. And then if I got pulled over, it was going to become this mess. And so he's like, it's always a little anxiety that was eating at me. So today I woke up, I just decided I'm doing it differently. So his thing is always just do it differently. So do it differently than you used to do it in the past. That simple thing. So instead of trying to do things perfectly, just do it differently. And you do that often enough, you end up getting pretty damn close to perfect. And so he goes, I did it differently. What'd you do differently? And so He, he's like, all right, where's the local DMV? He Googles it, and you know Google, it shows you the star ratings. And like, imagine a DMV's star ratings, right? Like, there's no DMV on Earth with a 5-star review, right? So it's like one and a half—

experience was stellar.

Yeah, exactly. So it's like a 1.5-star experience. He's like, oh man, he's like, the reason I haven't been going, I've been dreading the DMV. And I love this because it's like Everybody dreads the DMV.

So I love this.

He looks at that 1.5 star and he goes, okay, but I'm a sovereign being. I don't have to have a 1.5 star experience. That, that's the average experience. I'm going to have a 5-star experience. How do you have a 5-star experience? It's not by going in there and them giving you 5 stars, just by you walking in a 5-star customer. So he gets in his car, he drives to the DMV, no appointment, walks in proud, happy, excited, opens the door for some lady. You know, it helps this, it helps these people. Hey, why don't you guys go ahead of me? Instead of everybody in the DMV rushing into line, you guys go ahead. Yeah, yeah, have fun. And then he's— the lady he was joking around with while he was walking from the parking lot in, turns out she works at the DMV. She sees him on the inside. She's like, what are you here for anyways? He's like, uh, I've been driving around with this expired license. I've been so stressed out about it, but I said today is the day. She goes, you're right, today is the day. Come over here. Cuts the whole line, gives him the thing. He doesn't have to take the test, gives him the license. He walks out of there like you know, under 30 minutes with a 5-star DMV experience. And so he took that and he was like, yo, I just like— this is like watching somebody part the seas. It's like you have seen an act. If you didn't believe in manifestation before, if you didn't believe that you control your experience before, like, well, look what I just did with the DMV. I love that story. So I always held that one as like, yeah, you get to choose. You get to choose your experience. And like, I also like that message of like, don't expect the world to be giving you this 5-star hospitality. 5-star, like, you be a 5-star customer and watch how the universe sort of responds to you.

I love that.

So I thought you would like that.

Yeah, thanks for the story, dude. Yeah, I want to remember that one.

That's good. I want to ask you about some things. You mentioned Benny Blanco. I got to ask you, because I'm really fascinated by these people who are the, the influencers of the influencers. They're the people who unlock creatives in some way, or they're They just have this like really high hit rate. What's going on? What are they doing differently? And we don't know the answer. He was telling me, he's like, oh, I read some shit. He like, you know, tries to create a safe space. He kicks people out of the room. He lights candles. I was like, okay, I gotta ask Mike about this. What's Benny Blanco's superpower? What does he do well that, that has enabled him to, to work with guys like you and get, get kind of great results?

From my perspective, it's, it's what you did, but it's the intangibles. It's not the type of candle. It's he really has a gift. For making artists who are a fickle bunch, right? Can easily get scared, kind of like exotic birds, you know, get scared, or like, you know, we're sensitive in a good way. We pick up on things that other people don't, and then we can write about and help other people to see that, you know. We see divine in the mundanity. But as a result, you know, we could, we can feel someone's energy. A lot of artists could go, yo, if that dude is weird, like, it's hard for us to write a song if there's a weird dude in the room, or You know, so he's a master at, yeah, creating the physical space, but him, he knows how to get the best out of the best people in the world. You have people like that in your life, I'm sure, whether it's family or friends that, gosh, you just feel comfortable around them. So he has a gift for that. And he also has great taste. And his superpower, one of his superpowers is that. And he's also really fun to be around, you know. And like, I'm really driven, type A. When I first worked with Benny, he was the first person I did a real studio session with where it was in an actual recording studio, you know. I'd written songs with Big Sean in my basement, but I'd never gone to a studio. And I was always like, man, we gotta work hard. And at that time, paying by the hour for studio, we gotta make this song, let's go. And he was the first guy who goes, dude, it doesn't matter if we make a song today. Let's just be. And the song will come out. And if it doesn't, it'll come next time, you know. So he taught me how to collaborate. He taught me a lot about— and hopefully I do that for other artists now too, you know, other people when I collaborate. But yeah, he has a gift for that.

I'm obsessed with these videos that are like, you know, some guys love the Roman Empire or whatever. Mine is like watching the making of these songs because there's so many of these on YouTube. You've got a bunch of them on YouTube. it's like, you know, this grainy footage and you hear, you can hear them play the lick for the first time and they're like, oh yeah, I like that. It's like, that's the song. And you almost want to reach through the screen and be like, that's it. That's the song that we're all going to love. You just don't realize you just did it. There's one of Benny and Ed Sheeran, I think, in a tour bus where he's like writing, uh, Love Yourself or something like that. And they're just messing around. It was the same sort of vibe where he's like sitting there cross-legged barefoot. He's like, yeah, it's not like it didn't seem like there's a lot of stress around like 'What is the answer?' It was more just like, 'That would be fun. Oh, I like that,' you know? And he was just playful with it, which allowed them to play and be like, 'You should go and fuck yourself.' Yeah, that's great. That's a great line. And it's like, wasn't the appropriate line, but it was the like fun line. And because it got there, the song got there. Uh, I'm pretty fascinated by those. One of the things that I, I heard that Ed Sheeran said I thought was pretty interesting— yeah, there's some documentary about him on Apple TV Plus, but he goes, it's almost like a superstition. He said, I believe that rooms have songs. Rooms and instruments have songs because to write his album, he wouldn't just like go to a studio. He would rent a farmhouse or some like cool inspiring space and he would build a mobile studio there, which was 85% as good as the, like the best studio, but the house would get like double the inspiration for him or the comfort for him and the band. I thought that was very interesting, the trade-off between, you know, efficiency or, you know, picture-perfect audio versus creative inspiration. Do you—

how—

what do you do with your environment to like get the most creative version of you?

Very similar, you know. So first of all, I love to work in immersions like that. I have a studio, you know, in here. And, you know, I mostly record myself when I'm home. So my whole career, same as when I was in the dorm room, the mic's a little better now, but I have a laptop, nice mic plugged in, a nice pre, and I hit record on the laptop. I sing until I mess up, I hit stop, I engineer the thing myself. That way I can record whenever I want. I don't need another person, I don't have to wait for someone else to come over. But I love to work in immersion, similar to what you just described with Ed. Which is— that's when the most stuff happens. Hey, we're going to take a bunch of talented people, we're going to go to a nice place that's divorced from our normal duties, and we're just going to live and breathe this art for a week or 2 weeks. Then we're going to basically work till we die, and then we take a couple of weeks off and we come back and do it again. I like to work like that.

Is that where some of your songs have come out of, like a setup like that?

My songs come from all over, you know, so that's my personal favorite way to do it, but it's not about what I like. It's, you know, the song's coming through, so I get together. So I've written songs on airplanes, I've written songs here, written songs in the morning, written songs at night, written songs starting with piano licks, written songs starting with lyrics, written songs starting with melody. So pretty much every different way. Hey, by the way, we having fun?

I'm having fun.

Where are we measuring up to your research, dude?

It's, it's higher because that's what I— you gave me that iTunes U.

I'm better in real life.

That iTunes U, uh, story was amazing. That's like, you know, everybody's got their favorite dish. That's my favorite dish. It's a combination of like the serendipity of things working out for somebody 10 years in the making. Like, I love that. Everybody, everybody who's trying to do shit you want to hear stories that, yeah, after 10 years, then it starts to work out. It's something we all need to hear those stories. But then also you did engineer it in a way too. Like you weren't a passive observer to some lucky circumstance. Like you took this, you took steps to like, hmm, observation. Let me double down on that. And you did things that there's no textbook to say, make your pledges, change their profile pictures and invite people. But it, it makes sense at the same time. So I love that story.

Thank you.

I want to ask you about the, the walk, but also the walk or Everest or the, the, the, uh, silent meditations, but I bucket them all under one philosophy, which is do hard things. Is that the right description of your philosophy? Why you would climb Everest, why you would walk across America? What's the philosophy that got— that drives somebody to do those things?

Yeah, they were large examples of the, you know, the airport day gone wrong, going to volunteer, saying my life is maybe too easy right now, and that's why it doesn't feel right. So I'm going to make a harder goal. I'm going to make my life harder. But then paradoxically, my life feels easier when I'm doing the harder thing. So they've, they've hit on a lot of things that we touched on today, and, um, I think that's true probably of walking across the U.S., climbing Everest, and doing some longer meditation retreats.

Can you take me back to one of them where the— where you were, life is easy but doesn't feel quite right? I don't have the same level of joy I should be having on paper. And then the decision, what the voice said that made you go do one of those. Can you— can you walk me through that?

Yeah, with the— the walk across America, I— I was at a friend's jewelry shop And someone across the room said, "My friend just walked across America." And it was like a tractor beam. I went, "Grrr." I said, "What'd you just say?" He said, "My friend walked." I go, "You can do that?" He said, "I guess. He did it." No one else cared about it. Like, what's up with you, man? You know? And I said out loud in that jewelry shop, I'm gonna do that one day. I actually don't think I said— I said, I want to do that one day. And the sentence lingered in the jewelry shop like a fart no one wanted to claim. And everyone just sort of went back to whatever they were talking about before I said it. Fast forward 4 years later, 4 or 5 years later, my father dies from brain cancer. And I think about 6 months after that, um, my assistant at the time, Nick, comes to pick me up, take me to studio session that day, and he said, hey man, Avicii's dead. Avicii was a friend of mine that I worked with in the music studio. I worked with him a few weeks before. He said, Avicii's dead. I go, don't fuck with me, man. He said, I'm not fucking with you, Avicii's dead. I can't— I couldn't believe this. And I get in his car, he drives in the studio, and I keep saying, I can't believe this. And while I'm saying I can't believe this out loud, there's one thought going through my head that I can't make stop, is I have to walk across America. I have to walk across America. I have to walk across America. I have to walk across America. And it was this proximity of death is saying, hey dude, you see that man that gave you your life, the one that you look just like? He's dead. That's what's going to happen to you. You see that other man who does the same job as you? You guys do the same, you do concerts, you're in the studio with him last week. He's dead. That's what's going to happen to you. Maybe not in the same way, but this is a return trip. Another couple weeks pass. I'm in this shitty little guest house that I'm renting in West Hollywood, bouncing around studios trying to make my next hit. And my friend Willie calls me, he goes, hey Mike, I got bad news. One of our best friends that we grew up with, his name was Ronnie, he goes, Ronnie's dead. Oh shit, man. And I just realized, dude, I'm gonna die. Before I die, I want to live the life that I actually wanted to live, and I wasn't doing it. I was living the life that I thought my manager thought I should live. Truly, I was living the life that I— I was 30 years old living the life that 20-year-old me had set up, and it was It was pain. I walked across America because I was in pain, and I, I wanted to figure out a different way.

When you were doing it, did you— like, a lot of times the reason I do something isn't the thing I get out in a great way. Yeah, uh, right. I go in for one reason and I come out with— it's like going to Chuck E. Cheese to play the games. You get all these prizes at the end. You didn't even realize that's, that's how the tickets work. Um, what were the prizes you got at the end of that?

Found a part of myself that was, that was so much stronger than I ever knew was even there. Not only found a part of myself, unleashed a part of myself that I previously didn't know was there. Dude, I got bit by a poisonous rattlesnake. I spent 3 nights in the ICU. I got airlifted. I got told by dispatch I might not live. I got told by doctors it might take me 8 months to heal. I got, you know, told by other doctors I might lose my foot. It's just like— and I did a crazy thing, dude. I went back. I kept going. Everyone expected me to quit. 'Cause probably 'cause the old me was such a bitch, you know? I was like, my whole life was about me and everything, me being comfortable. And so like, I'm gonna do the opposite. I'm gonna be a 5-star walker, right?

I'm gonna do it different.

I'm gonna do it different. I'm not gonna use— I'm not gonna use this injury as an excuse to do less. I'm gonna use it as an excuse to do more. And Yeah, I get to do podcasts and talk about it, and this thing is on my Wikipedia page. And the check— the real trophies that you ask is I became someone new. And that part of me is— it is so different having an inkling you're strong versus knowing you're strong because you— because you were strong. And I was strong in a way I hadn't been before.

That's amazing. I think that the, um, there's this concept of misogyny. Have you heard of this? Yeah, uh, we've talked about on the pod before. Um, this guy Jesse Itzler came on.

I love Jesse. It's— he's a good friend, man.

Yeah, so Jesse came on.

Anything for Jesse.

It's like, I like that for real. Uh, he's one of my, like, I don't ever use the word like mentors or heroes or anything, but like I call them blueprint, blueprints. Yeah, so I look for people who live interesting lives. Yeah, but I'm like, oh, that could be— I like the way that house is laid out. Maybe I could steal some of that blueprint.

He's that for me too. And by the way, a friend spent time with him off the, off the record. Yeah, he's that guy.

Yeah, that's actually something I always wonder because on the podcast you always see people's, you know, hopefully that guy, dude, 24/7.

I've been with him, I watch him with his kids. He's that guy.

So he's got, he has this idea of, uh, Kevin's Rule, and he's got the misogi, which is like, misogi is like the one, one grand challenge a year, one ambitious, hard thing you're going to do, whether it's super physical or it might be some other thing. Like I have mine, which is, can I go 24 hours straight without a complaint in my head? Um, that's my, that's my misogi. It's harder for me than a, you know, an Ironman or anything like that.

That's dope, dude. I want to try that too.

But that's a superpower.

'Cause not in your mouth, in your head, dude.

Yeah, yeah.

That's—

anybody can not say it, but I'm saying it to myself. It's the conversation I'm having in my head is the big one all day.

So good, man.

And so I'm really working on that. And it's so funny. You see it, you're like, and actually you're a Tony Robbins guy. I'm a Tony Robbins guy too. He said a phrase which made me realize how important this was. He says he goes on some trip and he meets some guy in India or whatever, and the guy goes, asked him something about suffering and he's like, Yeah, I'm Tony Robbins. Like, I don't know if you know this, but suffering isn't what usually people describe me as. Like, you know, I'm thriving, I'm powerful, I'm successful, all these things. He's always— he's like, didn't say that to him, but that was the internal feeling, was like, what you mean suffering? And he's like, well, I just saw you kind of yelling at your guy over there. He said, well, no, he wasn't doing his job, and so I had to, you know, immediately, you know, demand the performance. And the guy brought to his awareness, like, man, there are so many of these little moments every day where you're losing your state, this beautiful state that you're in, and then it goes away. And he said it like— he said, how cheap is your happiness? Like, how little does it— how much— how little of inconvenience does it take? If I spill this water on this desk right now, do you lose that beautiful state or you stay in it? Because if you lose it, then that was cheap, man. That was so easy to knock you out of that. And I heard that and that was like, ooh, that's a It's a thing I want. And when I look at your story about like the things you wanted in your 20s, the success, the fame, the money, the love of everybody, like those are the things all of us want, at least in our 20s, often their whole lives. And a big part of life seems to be just figuring out what are you supposed to actually want? You know, I wanted this, I achieved this. Oh shit. Worst case scenario, I realized I didn't even want the right thing in the first place. I played a game that was rigged for me to lose. So, you know, some of your story reminds me of that philosophy that has served me well.

It's so well said. And I believe the person that Tony was talking to was Krishnaji.

Yeah.

And, and so Krishnaji and his wife Preetna Ji are these amazing teachers, and they teach that there's only two kinds of states: beautiful states and suffering states. And there's all different types of suffering states and types of beautiful states— joy, laughter, you know, calm, serenity, or pain, depression. You know, self-pity, you name it, right? But there's really only two states. And so I think what all of us really want is to have more beautiful states, less suffering states. And so we're talking about tools to get there. What do you want? That's what you want, I think.

Right. The problem is we convince ourselves that we want the middleman. We think the middle— the promotion gives us the beautiful state. Well, yeah, the achievement gives us the beautiful state.

Anything you want, you want because you think it's going to give you a better state.

Right.

And maybe it will momentarily, but the trick of the game is, hey, you don't have to wait for the thing, right? Feel it now. Feel it right now. And if you can, if you can win that game, you've won life, right? Right. And so nobody's perfect. I don't know anybody. You, you know a lot of these guys too.

We just met, so now you know one, right?

Right. But like you, we get to spend time with a lot of these teachers and gurus. So I haven't met one yet that's 100% in a beautiful state, but we can work more towards there, and we need external goals. So that's a lot of my message. Hey, set a, set a goal that actually inspires you. That's Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning. You need something in the future looking forward to. It's important. At the same time, you need to be winning this internal game of, hey, that's my goal, But how do I want to feel as I'm going after it? No, that's a different kind of goal that, that interweaves with your external goal. And most people forget to set that one, and they lose. They lose life. They might win on the, the vertical axis, or they might win on the horizontal axis, but they lose in the depth, the, the vertical axis. So that's it, man. It's such a— so thank you for bringing that story. That's a great reminder. And That's it. That's all we're trying to do, man. And so any of these like tips or tools or stories or, you know, it's, it's all to, to win that game, right? Yeah.

Well, listen, man, I appreciate you inviting me out to your house and appreciate you doing this.

Thank you.

It's been great. Great.

It has been great. Peace.