In Search Of Excellence - Mike Posner on "Cooler Than Me," "I Took a Pill in Ibiza," and His Walk Across America | Podcast Interview | E113

Episode Date: May 28, 2024

My guest today is the incredible Mike Posner. Mike is a singer-songwriter, record producer, and poet. He has released four albums and is best known for his hit song "Cooler Than Me," which he wrote as a sophomore in college. He is also known for the smash hit "I Took a Pill in Ibiza," which is one of my favorite songs of all time and, as of today, has 1.9 billion streams on Spotify. He has written songs for Justin Bieber, Maroon 5, Nick Jonas, Snoop Dogg, and many others, and has been nominated for a Grammy and various MTV Video Music Awards. As the author of the poetry book Teardrops and Balloons, he is also the only Grammy Award-nominated musician to walk across the United States on foot.00:00:00 - Introduction.00:02:57 - Lessons from family and mission-driven values.00:05:50 - A pivotal moment of change.00:08:45 - Entrepreneurial efforts during college.00:11:38 - Early interests and influences.00:14:36 - Challenges and motivational moments.00:17:31 - Discussing patterns of depression and emotional states.00:20:26 - Overcoming self-doubt and silly feelings.00:23:18 - Achievements: Walking across continents and Grammy nominations.00:26:15 - Socio-economic background and educational environment.00:29:08 - Reflections on personal achievements.00:32:08 - Rethinking career and life questions.00:34:56 - Balancing career aspirations with financial realities.00:37:56 - Academic experiences and personal capabilities.00:40:51 - Memorable encounters with celebrities.00:43:43 - Evaluating creative collaborations.00:46:40 - The power of visualization and goal setting.00:49:36 - Long-term commitment to music and personal growth.00:52:28 - Supportive family dynamics and early creative experiences.00:55:27 - Creative process and spontaneous songwriting.00:58:18 - Brief moments and lasting impressions.01:01:16 - Learning about the music business.01:04:11 - Recognition and personal identity in the industry.01:07:06 - Networking and spreading music through social connections.01:10:00 - Philosophical thoughts on happiness and external circumstances.Sponsors:Sandee | Bliss: BeachesWant to Connect? Reach out to us online!Website | Instagram | LinkedIn

Sorority girls at Duke, my mother, and Big Sean all love the same thing I made. I think I might be onto something. Cooler Than Me was a song I wrote. Basically, it's about feeling left out. That's how I felt my whole life. I never felt like I belonged. And I put it online. It was MySpace at the time.

I didn't think that much of it. And he said, Mike, we were at a party last night, which I was not at. Because when other kids would go out to the parties, the dorms were quiet and I could record. So I was not at these parties. He said, we were at the party last night and they played your song and everyone knew the words. I had chills, by the way, as you're telling me the story now. Depression is not some mysterious disease. It was a habit and I changed the fucking habit.

This is not a peer-reviewed published study Duke Medical School yeah this is this is the Mike Posner school of trying to make my freaking life better depression has a hard time surviving under 40 degrees my dreams were to like go to college and please get a job and make money compare that to my real life walked across a continent climbed the tallest mountain on Earth. Written six platinum songs. Nominated for Grammy. And beyond all that, happy. I'm a unicorn.

Like, I have fame, but I have fulfillment. I got you. All figured out. You need everyone's eyes. Welcome to In Search of Excellence, where we meet entrepreneurs, CEOs, entertainers, athletes, motivational speakers, and trailblazers of excellence with incredible stories from all walks of life. My name is Randall Kaplan. I'm a serial entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and the host of In Search of Excellence, which I started to

motivate and inspire us to achieve excellence in all areas of our lives. My guest today is the incredible Mike Posner. Mike is a singer, songwriter, record producer, and poet. He's released four albums and is best known for his hit songs, Cooler Than Me, which he wrote as a sophomore in college, and is also known for his smash hit, I Took a Pill in Ibiza, which is one of my favorite songs of all times, and which has, of today, has 1.9 billion streams on Spotify. He's written songs for Justin Bieber, Maroon 5, Nick Jonas, Snoop, and many others, and has been nominated for a Grammy and various MTV Video Music Awards,

and is the author of The Poetry Brook, Teardrops, and Balloons. He's also the only Grammy Award nominated musician to walk across the United States on foot. Mike, it's a true pleasure to have you on my show. Thanks so much for being here. Welcome to In Search of Excellence. To me, too. Thank you. So, you're born in the great city of Detroit. Your dad, John, was a well-respected criminal defense lawyer.

Your mom was a pharmacist. Tell us what influence they had on your life and what was the single biggest lesson they taught you when you were a young kid? Well, the number one thing that comes to mind from dad is now it comes like this because it's the mission of our company now. He used to always say to me, Mike, there's two H's in life, health and happiness. So our mission and everything we do at Team Mike Posner is to help people be healthier and happier, and that's it. And my mom, listen, my mom, I can't boil her influence on me down to a soundbite, but she instilled in me a real fire. My mom is a fighter. is a detroit hard rock uh

she she worked for everything she had in her life and um to this day she inspires me and that's that's where my fire comes from and there's a lot of it so yeah my mom is my heart to this day when you're eight years old you started making. When you're eight years old, you started making music. When you're 10 years old, you started rapping. I had Rodney Jerkins on my show, one of the biggest producers of all time. Yeah, I know Rodney. Yeah, you don't have to tell me who Rodney is.

And so, well, for those people who don't know, Rodney Jerkins, one of the biggest record movie genius producers of all time. So he was in Indiana with his aunt at a shopping mall when he heard michael jackson come on the radio he said to himself i want to make music for that guy one day and by the age of 21 he was producing michael jackson's records yeah so what was the inspiration for you when you were eight years old or 10 year olds that said hey hey, I'm my Posner, I'm gonna start making music? I can remember hanging with my buddies, Aaron Webster and Ronnie Posey.

Ronnie's no longer with us, so Ronnie, rest in peace. And we're eight or nine years old and we're in the basement one night, just that's where our parents would go. In Michigan, there's basements, right? Where are you from? Michigan. We're going to get into that.

Okay. So, you know, there's basements in the homes there. Yeah, Southfield, baby. No basements in California, right? But in Michigan, there's basements, right? So our parents would throw us down there, you know, we're in this musty basement. So we don't drive them crazy. And Ronnie, rest his his soul he always had

had like a scheme to get into and that night it was hip-hop and so he said we're gonna try freestyling tonight and we put on these we found cds of just music that had no words on it and we just try rapping to it. And as I spit and stumble over, you know, cliches and words that I was trying to rhyme with Mike, you know, something just clicked in my brain. My synapses started to fire. And at the end of that night, I knew I was never going to stop doing that. And I haven't since. And that was when you were 10 years old? Yeah, roughly.

I don't know exactly. eight, nine, 10. I think I'd written a few raps before that or something, but that was the night where I knew this is, I'm always gonna do this the rest of my life. I didn't know it could be my job, but I knew I was gonna do it the rest of my life. Right, so various points in our life, especially when we're younger, we do things

maybe we're not supposed to do. Maybe you take your dad's car, mom's car for a spin. We used to go in Maple Road and Oak and we would just do donuts on people's lawns when we were stupid, silly kids. Tell us about going on your mom's computer and stealing songs on the net and kind of how that also helped you in your career yeah so you know we had this old computer and apple 2e was old now it was new then was it a mac was it apple no i was a gateway a gateway gateway 2000 yeah we had a gateway and i mean i do a lot of things on that computer one of the things i did like you said it

was installed napster and you know you could type in x y and z song but put instrumental after and so you'd get back these these tracks without the words and i would try to rap and write my own songs to them so that was one of the things I was up to on that computer. The other thing, um, surprisingly, uh, wasn't porn. Uh, you know, I think the dial up was, was too small for my, my 13 year old, but, but, um, I would, I would write actual like raps on Microsoft word word and then i was deathly afraid of my parents finding them so i made a folder and say like math second semester or you know language arts like it was one of my classes and i would save all these documents in there my my raps my hip they were really there was a reason i didn't want anyone to see them. They were really honest, you know,

and I try to still write from that point to this day. So your parents didn't know that you were making these rap songs and you were just doing it. Were you writing them or singing them or you made the beats? Did you record any of these? At first I was just writing raps

over other people's beats and like the ones, the instrumentals i'd find and then and i wasn't recording them then i figured out really archaic software i could record on this bad mic that came with the the computer and then eventually um i started making beats that came a little later like age 13 i i uh allocated some bar mitzvah money to to get a little cheap keyboard from from best buy and and is it off to the races that's awesome i took 500 of my bar mitzvah money and i made t-shirts in college that was really my first see like another jewish guy from from mich, man. Like what, what's going on

here? A Jewish guy from Michigan. But you know, I took, I took, I always had, I always wanted to have my own business. I was wanting to sell something and I was going to create something, but I took $500 of my bar mitzvah money. There was no Google or no net then. So you couldn't go on and just say, Hey, give me a hundred t-shirts. You had to go through the yellow pages and call a pay. I need some t-shirts. What do they cost? Are they cotton? You know, you want the a hundred percent cotton polyester.

And I bought these t-shirts for five bucks each. And I would sell the short sleeve for 12. And of course I copied the Nike logo on the font, just do it. And when Michigan ran to the final four, and I know you're a Duke guy. Yeah. I like michigan too though that's where my dad went yeah so it said uh road to the final four so i would go to every dorm in michigan i think there were 14 dorms i went in every hallway i sold these t-shirts door to door i kicked out of every hallway uh but i learned the art of cold

calling and it was really really cool for me because i think 100 of what we do in business and even in our personal life is selling ourselves yeah you got to sell a t-shirt you got to face rejection we're going to talk about all the challenges that you've been through in your life but a lot of it's about rejection and just powering through challenges that we all have absolutely that's a wonderful story. So you want to grow. I hope the statute of limitations is up on that. Exactly. You know, to all the people at Nike.

I'm sorry. There's like 1990 I graduated. So I made these shirts in 1986. I think we're well past the statute of limitations. But thank you, Nike, for the genius of the just do it slogan, which is one of the best slogans of all time. For sure. So I went to country day.

You went to gross. I ran cross country. Your best time was 1801 for the 5K. Man, how do you know all this stuff? My best time. My best time. Don't say 1801. No, no. My best time. Those are 1801. No, no.

It was like 22 point something. And the only reason I ran across country because there's a girl named Marcy Thompson. If you're listening, Marcy, hello. And if you're not, I'm going to send you, I'm going to send you the show. But I thought, gosh, you know, when I went to country day,

I went to Covington in eighth grade. And then I said, you know, I want something different. As a Jewish kid. There are only three Jews in my class and people were not really Jewish friendly. And I was a good student. So I asked my parents, can I go to country day? And I went to country day and the corporate load, the corporate, um, the, uh, school, um, saying was men's sound on corporate sound, sound mind and sound body. And they made you play two sports.

So I ran cross country thing. All right, I'm gonna hang out with Marcy a little bit. When I got to school, I was cool for about two weeks and then I wasn't cool, but I took Marcy to the freshmen dance. She was the prettiest girl in class. And then I never had another date with her again in high school. You know,

10 year reunion was a different thing. Randall, I just want to congratulate you for being the only guy ever to get a girl by doing cross country. By the way, it failed. I didn't get her. It worked for a little while. You got one dance. Come on, we got to take our wins, man. It was before. No, no. It took 10 years because our 10-year high school reunion, we reunited and we had a nice time together and we became good friends. Oh, okay. So it took 10 years to get that date. Got it.

But so you're in high school. I want you to talk to us about your basketball coach and you playing basketball. And then you said you were not very happy, depressed, hated school, hated your teachers, hated yourself. When did that start? And when did you really say to yourself, I'm depressed? In high school. High school. I can't – probably sophomore year. I remember we were assigned Catcher in the Rye, that book. And I was

reading this book sophomore year, and I can remember being afraid to turn the next page because I felt like I was reading my own thoughts. This was exactly how I felt to the point where it was creepy. And so I think I realized then, hey, this guy in this book ain't so happy, and this is me. This is me. You mentioned basketball. Basketball was social capital where I grew up.

So if you were good at basketball, you were cool. So I desperately wanted to be cool and that meant I desperately wanted to be good at basketball and there's only one problem with that one is maybe a couple problems one I was short Jewish white and I wasn't very good at basketball. It's a problem. A few roadblocks despite practicing really hard. And I made the JV team. And I remember I built up all this courage. And I asked the coach at some point in a meeting between just him and I. I said, Coach, why don't you ever play me in the games? And he just really honestly said, because you're not good enough.

And that was like all I needed to hear. You know, that lit a fire in my butt that didn't manifest in basketball, as we know, as my story turned out, but in music. And I just sort of lived my life for the next 15 years going, I'm going to show you I'm good enough. And that allowed me to accomplish a lot, but it was also achilles heel at times in my life there's some situations where showing other people you're better than them is not is not the best attitude and frame to have well we'll talk about that a little later i've been there a couple times um you think it's great you've great. And then there's downside to

your success. I'm looking forward to talking about it. Mental health was not really a thing back then. Today it's at the forefront. People talk about mental health all the time. You hear about these suicides on a regular basis of highly functioning people who you would never suspect to be depressed. A Stanford goalie, soccer player, just as one generic description of someone you think did not have mental health problems, never told people about our mental health problems before. Did you tell your parents at that point,

hey, mom, dad, I'm depressed. And did you see a therapist and they give you medication or were you kind of in the closet with it in closet fully it was like this big secret i don't know how well i hid the secret and then i made an album about it so it was like uh uh that i sold out of the trunk of my car we talked about entrepreneurial slanging of cds uh senior year so pretty much that whole album was about that but i was i would try to hide it as much as i could you know and for anyone that's felt that way it's exhausting yeah um because you're you're you're putting all this energy into playing the part of being a happy

version of yourself which you're not that being said you know like i always sort of tense up when I hear mental health and mental wellness and all these kind of buzzwords nowadays because what I don't believe is that in most cases, I don't think depression is this disease that you magically end up with and you're stuck with for life. I believe, in my case at least, it was a habit. And I use that word intentionally. It was a habit. It was a certain pattern of thoughts that I chose to think over and over again that resulted in a certain set of emotional states that I chose to dwell in over and over again. It was a way I held my body, slouch. It was a way I breathed.

And the confluence of these factors, the thought patterns, the emotional states, the posture, the breathing, that's depression. It's not like in my DNA. It's a habit. And when I took ownership of that, this is something I'm doing to myself, then I was able to say, hey, I could choose to do something else. So you'll notice me even – you may have noticed already, I'm constantly going that. As I sit here right here

put my shoulders back yeah i'm constantly breathing and every morning i wake up if you go on my instagram people laugh at me but it it is worked better than any pill i run or i get in cold water and i remind myself who i actually am. I say, I am joy. I am faith. I am love. I am grace. I am gratitude. And I'm running up a hill or I'm in a 35 degree, not 35, 39 degree ice bath going,

I am joy. I am faith. And these are the new, this is the new thought pattern. And this creates a new emotional pattern in my body. And with these new habit, I'm a different person. And so I don't, in my case, at least depression is not some mysterious disease. It was a habit and I changed the fucking habit.

Right, so. And I ain't going back. What's your advice to all the people listening today who have depression, they're untreated, they're afraid to talk to their friends or family about it? I think, have depression they're untreated they're afraid to talk to their friends or family about it i think getting a nice bath to treat depression oh yeah you're you're you're 18 years old hey listen this is this is not a this is not a um this is not a peer-reviewed published study right but in duke medical school yeah this is this is the mike posner school of school of trying to make my freaking life better depression has a

hard time surviving under 40 degrees because it gets you out of your freaking head depression lives up here you know and and what are we thinking we think about ourselves right it's obsessive self-centered thinking of how we're wronged or we're not understood or something's wrong with me we get in these spirals it happens all the time so i'm not saying like i never have a bad mood or i never have a depressed thought or a depressed mood but i would never put the word depressed after i am as an identity no i don't know i am joy i am faith i'm love so i would say um change your story get in cold water, stand up straight, breathe deeply, and start thinking some positive thoughts. And at first, those thoughts will feel like jokes. You'll think posing is stupid, man. This feels silly. But if you keep doing it and if you couple

those things together, they start to get powerful, right? If you couple a state change, a physical state change, like getting in cold water or exercising with saying these new thoughts out loud, I am joy, I am faith, I'm whatever, it's the story you want to write. It becomes powerful. And over time, not in a day, not in two days, but quicker than you might think, two weeks, three weeks, you start to believe yourself. You start to believe yourself. What if I am joy?

And what a lot of us, you know, I'm not going to sit here and say what my situation is the same as everybody else's. But for a lot of people, because I was one of them, the other thing depression is beyond being a habit is an excuse. It's a catch-all excuse. Because as long as I'm depressed, I got an excuse for not really honoring my responsibilities as a friend, as a son, as a human being, as a member of my community, and for living up to who deep down, deep down, you know you really are. You know deep down that you are a badass motherfucker. You're here to do great things.

You're here to live a joyous life. You're here to make an impact on other people. The problem is with that, you got to actually move. You got to actually take a risk. You got to actually put yourself in situations where it might not work out. And as long as I was depressed, I got an excuse to not do any of that. And so it's like this isn't the path for the faint of heart. You know, this is the path, like what I'm saying is the path you go on if you want to have an

incredible life that you take out of the teeth of this story of depression and ends up in happiness and joy and magic and abundance and adventure in a life bigger than your dreams even were. That's my real life now. So I don't say this as a judgment to others. I say this as an invitation because we're talking about when I'm 15. When I was 15, my dreams were to go to college and hopefully get a job, make money.

Compare that to my real life, which you talked a little bit about the intro. Walked across a continent. Climbed the tallest mountain on earth. Written six platinum songs. for grammys and beyond all that happy i'm a unicorn like i have fame but i have fulfillment so my real life is bigger than my dreams were. It's, it's more magical. So I'm just trying to share. I'm here to share the, the tools I use to, to, to navigate that. I made a lot of mistakes along the way too. And I'm happy to share those as well. So people don't have to fall in the same pit, pit holes, but these are, these are some of the ways I've changed my life.

And when I say changed my life, like I got a, I got a cool rap sheet. I get it. That's why we get to talk. I get to do cool interviews like this. But the thing that's not on my Wikipedia is how I've transitioned from being this kid, 15 years old, who was just exhausted every day from trying to pretend I was happy when I wasn't to this 36-year-old man who loves his life and loves life. I love all of that.

I want to go back a little bit or move forward from when you were 15 to 18, made your first record. You sold out the back of your car. You made $1,700. I think it was like $700. $700? Oh, maybe net. Gross $1,700.

Okay, gross $1,700. So were you selling this in the gross parking lot? And then how good was it? Do you remember the first time someone actually bought your album? How good was that feeling? I was selling that, yeah. I had an 88 Volvo that my aunt gave, passed down to me. Safe car.

Yeah. And I was definitely selling it right out of the trunk of the car. At Groves? At Groves, yeah. And I don't remember the first sale I ever made, but it felt good. I remember having the $700 and going, this is cool, man, to be getting money. Like making $700 is a lot for an 18-year-old kid. A lot, a lot.

Right? To get $700 from doing something that i would do anyways right that i would probably even pay to do because i love to make music it was that was freaking cool that was freaking cool and um i've always made money doing music you know from from that point on and uh there's something about, there's a lesson in there somewhere about just declaring your own worth. There were five other rappers in my school. Which by the way, for those people who don't know,

is really an upper middle class to wealthy school i mean i know you guys didn't have you know there was a spectrum there i mean i went to country day down the street that was very privileged yeah right um and we would hang out at groves especially for the girls because my class was 93 kids and that's it's basically you know 45 you know 45 girls and growth had a much much wider variety of people to meet only one yeah yeah we'd hang out the big boy on telegraph and all that but so yeah the school was great it was it was it was pretty diverse actually you're right there were there were some very wealthy families in my school, but there are also some very poor families in our school. There's a trailer park in our district.

It was really diverse, both racially and socioeconomically. But the point is, there's five other rappers in my school, but I didn't look at myself as one of them. I looked at myself as special, I'm the one. And I can remember, you remember, you seen 8 Mile, you had rap battles. Yeah, I mean, not only have I seen it in the movies, but we did some dumb shit when I was at Country Day. So we'd drive down to Detroit, 8 Mile,

and we'd go buy liquor down there. We'd buy some beer, Bartles and James, which is no longer around. It's kind of like a Truly today, a wine spritzer. And we'd go down and we'd buy Colt 45s and Bush beer and Strohs, which at the time was the biggest Detroit brewery. So I've been to eight mile. I've seen the movie, obviously. I love it.

I'm from Detroit. Love the rap. I mean, I love it. I'm from Detroit, love the rap. I mean, I love the whole thing. Yeah. But yeah, I've seen the movie and I've been to 8 Mile more times than I would ever want my kids to go there. Right.

So there's a lesson here in declaring your value. So there's, like I said, there's five rappers in my school. We would have rap battles. But there were some kids that I wouldn't even battle them if I didn't think they were good enough to battle me. I always place a value on myself. When I got to Duke, where I went to college, the problem is when you start your music career, you know from starting a business, is you see yourself as a star.

But everyone else sees you as the kid in the dorm next door. So you have to do things to differentiate yourself. Like there were certain gigs where I would get offered to be paid a couple hundred dollars to play at a frat party or something like this. I say no. I play at Duke once a year and I throw the show. Maybe twice a year. I create scarcity around myself. I continue that in my career you know in detroit when when my career started to take off the radio stations they all want you

to do their show right and they play your song on the radio so they they say hey this is the stations in detroit say we got a our christ or whatever. I want you to come. I say, no, I play in Detroit once, maybe twice a year. It's my hometown, scarcity. I'm not, I'm not a, I'm not a college artist. I'm not a high school band. I'm me. I'm Mike Posner. And the first person to see Mike Posner, Mike Posner was Mike Posner. You know what I mean and so you have to you see yourself as this of as what you're going to become but you got to

help other people to see you that way and one of the ways I did that was just was just always declare my value yeah excuse me you're good um i think today people are questioning the value of college education yeah and every day you're rightfully so i mean right right i mean my son today is a sophomore in college and he's and dad you know why why am i here he's because dad why the fuck am i These professors, if they could get a job in the real world, he's got a professor from Google who tells them, right, make $800,000 a year and he can't teach. And he does have a job in the real world. And when we read the stats today, the average college graduate has $34,000 in student debt. It takes 21 years to pay that off. First year plumber today makes $80,000.

The Wall Street Journal just came out with a ranking of the schools that pay the best first year salaries. And we're talking about Harvard, Stanford, Duke, Michigan, and they're in the mid 40s. So what's your advice to everybody out there who has a talent? You got into Duke, went to Duke for part, and we're going to talk about what happened there in a second, so I don't want to jump the gun. But what's your advice to all the parents out there and all the students out there, really,

starting with the students, should we go to college if you have a passion to do something else? And what's the value of a college education today? I think, first of all, there's no one blanket answer what every person should do with their life. I think you got to look at what lights you up. And this is a really hard conversation for someone who's 17, 18 years old. They start going, what do I want to do with the rest of my life? It's probably the wrong question.

The right question might look something like, what excites me right now? What am I interested in right now? And I think you go down that path. And listen, my buddy, Big Sean, we're both the same age he had a full ride to Michigan State and I was going to get ready to go to Duke he didn't go and he just focused on music and it's worked out just fine for him yeah you know and I went to duke and uh it took me a year or two while i was there to you know i thought i was gonna get a business degree or something but while i'm in class i'm

writing songs in the margins of my notebook and it turned out that the things i'm writing in the margins of the notebook were actually the thing that became my career and the the notes in the in the middle of the page which i thought was was going to be my career, turned out to be things I didn't so much use. So I would be really reticent to just offer a prescription for any human being. You got to look at what lights you up, what you're passionate in, and go down the rabbit hole of your own inspiration. And for some people, that might involve going to get a four-year degree. And for a lot of people, it might not. This is the thing. If you could become excellent in whatever the thing is that you're, right? That's the name of your podcast, right?

The search of excellence. Yeah. If you could become excellent in whatever your passion is, you're going to have some career options. Then the question is, can you become excellent in something you're not really interested in? Probably not. So let's start with the thing you're interested in. And then I would just become as excellent as you can in that thing. Go learn from the best in the world at that thing.

And if that person's at a university man maybe you want to go there if not maybe you don't you know and so that's it that's it i'll never be broke because i can pick up a guitar and i can make you feel something you know even if i've all my everything messed up like i i know how to do that And so that would be my advice. And for parents, I would say, you asked about kids and parents. One is like, okay, when you're a kid, the time to chase after your passion is now. Is now.

You know, I'd meet kids on the walk across America. They go, I've always wanted to do this, but I got to get a good job first and make some money and go, dude, what are you talking about? Like you're 18. This is the time. This is the time. So the time to like take a risk and fail is now, you know, is now, um, for parents, you gotta be willing to allow your kids to live in a world and thrive in a world, be excellent in a world that looks different than the one you grew up in.

And them being excellent might involve them taking a different path. And so, faith. I believe education is the greatest investment we can make in ourselves and i do and and i do believe college is not for a lot of people but even people like my son who's an entrepreneur he was flipping shoes when he was younger he got me in the dumps and i'm a sneaker head of the highest order it's a very expensive habit but it's something i love but he was saying you know for a while that i'm

not going to college i said you're going to college he said no i'm not i'm gonna be 18 and you can't make me so i say charlie where are you gonna live and ultimately he came to the conclusion that he should go to college because and he came to this conclusion that he should go to college because, and he came to this conclusion on his own for the social component and moving away from home and not all people go to college will move away from home. Obviously that's expensive, but I do think the social connections

and the social maturity you gain from graduating high school and living apart from home, if you can, is invaluable. It's the experience home if you can is invaluable it's the experience it's the growth it's the maturity and then it's the connections you make duke has alumni all over the world right if you were to reach out to someone on linkedin or call someone and say yeah i graduated duke they'd have a propensity to talk to you. At Michigan has the largest alumni body in the world, greatest school on earth. I don't know what was wrong with your judgment,

not going to the University of Michigan, going to Duke. But I think it's very, very important. And I think there's a lot of reasons not only to learn, but more of intangible reasons for the value of our education. Yeah, I think you're right um there's a flip side to that you know at least in my case i could remember just we were like heathens man the amount of we were drinking and the culture of womanizing i mean it was it was pretty out of control in hindsight you know some of the culture there so i made some

incredible friends um but we were up to some pretty nasty behavior at the same time so you know many of us were yeah it's it's it's it's shades of gray you know it's not black and white but yeah yeah there's some intangible benefits to college so you're gonna do great school must have been great test test taker must have been a very good student tell us your parents don't want you hanging around after you graduate tell us about the internship you got at the radio station in detroit what station was it by the way because in my research i couldn't find the actual name of the station and then tell us about this guy who was dressing like a millionaire and how that friendship later changed your life yeah so i i got an internship at the station was called hot 1027 i don't i don't think it uh i think it's been

rebranded or bought or something since then it's not still a station but it's a hip-hop station and yeah my mom said you know you got a couple months here this summer before you're going to school you're gonna work you know you're not so i got that internship and i went and um through my co-worker i met a guy named sean who as you said was dressed like a millionaire. And the word on the street was Sean knew Kanye West. Well, what does that mean by the way? I mean, dressed like a millionaire.

I mean, he's 18, he's an intern. So is he, he can't have the money. His friend was an intern. Yeah, I don't know, man. He can't have money for real change. I mean, is he wearing fake drip there or what? I don't know. I don't know. He just looked like a millionaire. Just the whole picture? I don't know. He just looked like a millionaire.

I don't think it was fake. I don't know what he had done to procure the outfits that he had. Maybe we can get him on your podcast. Okay, I'd love to have Big Sean on my show. He'd be a good guest, actually. He's an incredible guy. And he was like this lifeline out of Detroit.

He had this connection to Kanye West, which was a new connection for him, but he was like a way to a different life. Everyone I knew was sort of stuck in the mediocrity of suburban molasses. And I thought I was doomed to that kind of existence. I was desperate for a way to add color to my life, add excitement, add glory and to just get out and he was that way out he had he had a connection that looked like a way out to me when he told you he had this thing with kanye did you believe him or was that come on man yeah yeah i believed them and they had like you know so funny like this back in the day before the iphone had really i think i don't think the iphone was out yet so they had like actual like pictures that they had developed like he was at like a party with kanye

and stuff and i saw him and and um he had met kanye at the radio station where i worked and so everyone knew the story you know of him meeting kanye and i believe so i believed him yeah and uh he didn't get a record deal from Kanye right away. I went to college at Duke, like I said, and then Kanye told Sean, don't go to college. You're going to be a rapper. So Sean didn't take his scholarship at Michigan State.

He just worked. And it took about a year or two of courtship between Kanye and Sean. But I remember the day walking, I was on the phone, walking on West Campus, talking to Sean, and he said, my deal came through. I signed my record deal. And I just thought, man, I didn't know we could do that. And immediately I started to believe if Sean could get a record deal, that I could

too. And this is the funny thing about belief. A belief is just a thought repeated over time. And I had a new belief. The old belief was it's like impossible to be a recording artist, like a famous recording artist. The new belief was if Sean could do it, I could do it too.

I'm going to get a record deal also. Randall, eight months after that phone call, I was getting offers for my own record deal. All right, let's freeze frame the story there. So there's another guy, was it Quick Trips that also got a record deal and you thought, hey, I'm better than that guy as well? And is there jealousy that goes into someone not as good as you getting and achieving something like a record deal?

And then say, hey, man, I mean, Big Sean, lots of talent. This other guy, maybe not as much. Is jealousy also a great motivator to work harder? Who's this other guy you're talking about? Isn't it? Right Tracks. Oh, Right Tracks. Well, they were good, man.

Right Tracks was good. You did your research. God, me. Right Tracks, they were producers. And they were great. And they did beats for Sean. And they did most of Sean's beats every once in a while. I would sneak one in.

But they had proximity to him. You know, they were in Detroit. And I had left North Carolina. And then I heard Kanye was going to sign them as producers. And I just, like, my heart saying, oh, man, that should have been me. I shouldn't have. I shouldn't. I should stay in Detroit.

Just stayed by Sean, like put all my eggs in the Sean basket. So I think there was some competitive you know healthy competition in my relationship with Sean and right tracks and then probably some unhealthy jealousy at times as well but

it's a blessing and a curse at the same time yeah but man I whatever it was it was jealousy or healthy competition.

I used it to fuel me. And when I think of Sean, though, mostly I just think of inspiration. I think of him as somebody who changed my life twice. We can talk about the second one later. But that first way wasn't by some advice he gave or, you know, it was just him living his life at the highest capacity. No one told him he could get a record deal. Like, he just went and did it. He just went and did it.

And that inspired the heck out of me where I was like I can do it too and I'm pretty sure that certainty and your own ability to achieve something is is a foundational agreement and you're actually doing that thing and I didn't have that belief in myself until he showed me it was possible and yeah I wouldn't be here without him without him doing that how great is it when you have a huge dream you think it's impossible and a friend of yours does something it makes the impossible possible what a great motivation yes for everyone listening it's a blessing but here's the thing randall is is not everyone has a big sean in their life so they might be listening going hey that sounds nice where's my where's my like really inspiring friend right god didn't give me one of those here's the good news you can change your belief on your own. Like I said, a belief is just a thought repeated

over time. We talked earlier about incantation, affirmation. You go out and you run, or you sit in that cold water, or you walk every day, or you take out the journal and you practice that new belief, and you put emotion into it, and you write, I, Mike Posner, whatever your name is, comma, will get a record deal by X date. I, Mike Posner. And you write that thing 15 times every day, and you envision it, you see it, and you feel stupid at first,

but after a few days, you start to believe it, and you can change your own beliefs. You don't need a big shot to change your beliefs. you can change your own beliefs. You don't need a big shot to change your beliefs. You can change your own beliefs. And I do that in pretty much every area of my life because we all have limiting beliefs, whether that was something somebody else told us and we believed them or it's a mainstream belief in the culture

that isn't even yours got passed down you for through social media through your parents or whatever they're not even your beliefs a lot of them you inherit we think all our thoughts are our own thoughts a lot of most of us are not that original you know a lot of the the things we believe about ourselves and our capabilities we didn't even make up and they're just kind of running like malware in the background. And you can change all these things. You know, like I used to believe I was like a bad, complicated boyfriend. I changed that belief.

I'm like the best lover I've ever been. And so you don't need a big Sean to change your beliefs. All you need is persistence, dedication, discipline, and repetition. And you can tell a new story. So you get to Duke, you're writing music. And for all those who haven't seen it, it's really cool. You can go online and watch a lot of Mike's videos at Duke.

And it really brings you back when you see someone famous who writes this great song. You figure, okay, you think of the big recording studios that we all see on TV. But there's some great videos of you sitting at your dorm room and your desk, which brought me back to my dorm room. That's really great. So I want to take Cooler Than me and the mixtape separately. Okay. So you write this song basically to meet girls and the song was about, um, not needing something to impress girls or meet girls. So tell us about Cooler Than Me, and the inspiration for that song, If I Got It Right.

And then what happened that you exploded on campus and everyone knew you? Well, by the time I wrote Cooler Than Me, you gotta understand I've already been making music now 12 years. Okay, so that's the first thing. Amateur basis, except for the $700. Correct. I'm not a professional.

I'm not paying my bills with music, but I've been making music for 12 years. Cooler Than Me was a song I wrote. Basically, it's about feeling left out. It's about going on the cross-country team, trying to meet the girl and not working out. That's how I felt my whole life. I was like the odd guy out. I never felt like I belonged. I had friends for sure. And I felt special,

but I didn't feel like I belonged. And so this was a song that I wrote with Eric Holgis and Jeff Oler and my band at the time. And we wrote and I recorded in my dorm room. And I put it online. It was MySpace at the time. Yeah.

And I didn't think that much of it. Like I said, I'd been making music for a long time until one day i went to this kid named xander's room who lived down the hall from me xander was a cool kid and this was a saturday afternoon and i went to his room, which is kind of like hallowed ground because he's so cool. And he said, Mike, we were at a party last night, which I was not at. You know, I was like, because when other kids would go out to the parties, the dorms were quiet and I could record then.

So I was not at these parties often. And he said, we were at the party last night and they played your song and everyone knew the words. And then they played it again and everyone sang it again. I had chills, by the way, as you're telling me the story now. Yeah, and I'm just like, whoa. I've been making music 12 years. That never happened before. The only person that knew the words to my songs was me.

And I went back from Xander's room, and I walked back to my dorm room, and I remember getting a call from my mom. Remember I told you at the beginning of the interview, my mom's a Detroit hard rock. She doesn't exaggerate. She doesn't sugarcoat. You don't have to guess how she feels she'll tell you she said michael i really love that song cooler than me i almost dropped the phone because my mom was always supportive of my music giving me lessons and drum lessons and driving me to studios past eight mile to six mile and like

we're in the hood you know and i'm in the like super supportive but she never told me she liked anything i made before that that day wow the next day i get a call from Sean, and he says, Mike, that Cooler Than Me song is, he goes, that sounds like it's a hit song. Now, that wasn't even in my realm of possibilities, a hit song, but I just triangulated. I go, sorority girls at Duke, my mother, and Big Sean all love the same thing I made. I think I might be on to something here and so that was that was um that was an important checkpoint on my on my path

because i started to put a lot of time and energy and and whatever capital i little capital i had at the time into this project and um i thought i had a tiger by its tail and turns out I did. You also made a lot of songs that do want for the Duke basketball team, but I, that became sort of their anthem, but I want to talk about where the inspiration of where songs come from. Taylor Swift talks about her love life a lot. Talk to us about taking a shower in your mom's bathroom and the Maybelline shampoo that was in her bathroom

that inspired another one of your great songs in college. Yeah, I forgot what this song, this song doesn't make the cut for my shows anymore, but I had a song called Drug Dealer Girl. And it started off, Well, you may never be on a maybelline commercial but you always let me know when you got some purple and yeah i saw the the shampoo bottle for maybelline or i thought of that and it's just i like the turn of phrase may never be on a maybelline it's like cool paul simony

turn of phrase and um yeah so inspiration could come a lot of ways could come from something like that or sometimes just comes out of thin air often when i'm asleep i'll be in a dream where i'm singing a song in the dream and i'll wake up and go that song doesn't exist yet you know i, I should record that thing, you know, or sometimes they just come through. Sometimes I'll be holding the guitar and a song just comes out. Boom. Stream of consciousness, like in the basement.

So there's a lot of different ways songs can present themselves, but mostly I don't think we deserve that much credit for them we can deserve credit for keeping the channel clear to god or inspiration if that word turns you off you should call it inspiration but when you think about who thinks your thoughts. Did you decide to pop the thought in your head or the idea, right? Because I'm catching myself. You can decide to think a thought, but can you decide to have a new idea?

That I don't know. You can make the space for that to occur in. You can keep a clear mind. You can keep a healthy body. You can meditate so that there's space for that to show up inside of. And I think I can take credit for that. But as far as the thing actually coming in, you know, all the great ones say, and I think they're right you know i'm just a channel i'm just a vehicle for for something beautiful to

to manifest itself so you're in school big sean gets a record deal with Kanye. You're toiling away. It's final as your sophomore year. You've got a mixtape now that has really made its way all the way around. You've got a 20-page sociology paper that's due. Yeah. And you get this crazy call from Big Sean that Jay-Z wants to meet you. Tell us about that whole thing what what were you thinking when you heard that like this is fucking unbelievable so it wasn't it wasn't sean that

called me it was my manager dan he called and said mike um you gotta go back to new york and i had just been in new york taking some meetings with record labels and stuff and i said i can't go to new York, man. It's finals week. Like, I go to Duke. It's hard. I'm on a curve against really smart children. Not children, really smart young adults.

And he said, you got to go. Jay-Z wants to meet you. I said, don't mess with me, man. Don't tell me that. He goes, no, it's real. Jay-Z must have met you. So I didn't tell his soul because I didn't think it would actually happen. I thought I would get there and, you know, he'd get busy.

I'd meet, you know, with one of his associates or something. But I got on a plane to New York and I sat and I, with Jay-Z for a few hours and I played him cooler than me and he started to nod his head like this. And we just had an amazing meeting and it was inspiring. And I remember I felt really understood by him. I felt really seen by him. He understood the things that inspired me, the music I listened to, and it was just a great meeting. I went back to Duke, and I was in the library working on this paper, and I remember I checked my email, and there was a record deal offer from Jay-Z. And not from him personally, but from Roc Nation.

It was just incredible, man. Like, it felt like a dream come true. And it was. You walk into the office,'s gorgeous right it's huge and when when you step foot in that door that very second you could see him on the other side of the room probably walking towards you right to shake your hand what were you feeling at that exact moment jay-z nervous i was feeling Well, he was very disarming and charming.

And within a few minutes, I felt really comfortable in the room. And I, yeah, we just had a great meeting. Just a great meeting. He sends, Roc Nation sends you a record deal on a contract, but you didn't sign with Roc Nation. Correct. RCA. You signed with.

The interesting thing about that deal is if you stayed in school with Roc Nation deal, you were gonna get a bonus. He wanted you to stay in school and graduate? I think it was just kind of a cute thing they put in the clause, you know, it was like, if you complete your term, you get a little bonus, but me and my lawyer were like,

let me just give you the bonus now when I sign it. So what was the money? How much, what was the first deal? And did you have, it sounds like you had a lawyer and a manager, so were they protecting you? So many times we hear about you're new you got a record deal you do anything to get signed and then you get taken advantage of with a five record deal they keep all the copyrights did you know what you were doing did you have

good advice and what was the deal um i don't remember all the ins and outs of the deal but no knowing what i know now obviously i have more, you know, and I have my own money now. So, yeah, the deal like pretty much sucked compared to any deal I would do now. But you're in a different place in life. And so, you know, I can't cry over sp spilled milk. But yeah, I think if I had educated myself more as a book, anyone who's getting in the music business should read called Everything You Need to Know About the Music Business by Donald Passman. Right.

I think if I read that book, I'd have a few more shekels in my bank account right now. Right. Are we talking about a $50,000 deal or are we talking about $250,000? Because either one, you're in college, there's a lot of money. Yeah, I think it was a couple hundred grand.

A couple hundred grand. And then I did a publishing deal for significantly more than that. But they're all kind of bad deals because they bet against yourself. Right. You know, if you have, you're basically taking a,

giving up a lot of ownership of your intellectual property in return for these these checks up front so if you listen if you're a dud they're great deals but if you have a lot of success they don't shake out and so yeah what i gave up for that couple hundred k you know that publishing deal is a lot, you know, it was worth, you know, like tens of millions of dollars. So yeah, it was in hindsight, not a great, great deal, but, uh, it, it got me to where I am to even be, even have the perspective of, you know what I'm saying? To, to, to say, hey, it's not a great deal.

I'll do a different one now. So everything happens for a reason, and you live and you learn, and you're in a different position now. So your mixtape goes viral, and I think in a lot of our success today, we think about marketing and creativity. So talk to us about itunes university and the posner rule yeah yeah so i figured out really early right that i was first of all i was really into hip-hop and at the time if you're a new hip-hop artist you would try to get your

your music featured on a series of hip-hop blogs that were that were prominent that people who were into hip-hop read and the other thing you would do is you would give your music away for free because at that time the music industry um you there was just a lot of pirating going on. Like me and my friends at Duke, we stole the music off of Napster or BitTorrents, that kind of thing. So one thing you didn't do is like really sell music the way I was trying to in high school. So I looked at the data points I had, which were this i can't sell my music because i'm stealing like kanye and jay-z's music right so no one's gonna pay for my music because no one knows who i am so that's a and b is i'm looking at this these data points which is like zander's telling me these rich white girls love my music as much as Big Sean does.

And they, these white girls are not going on in these hip hop blogs, you know, and like, and going on a bit torrents and all this stuff. They're, they're on iTunes. So I have to serve both of these audiences because they both like my music. And what I found was this loophole. There was this thing on iTunes called iTunes U, and it was set up for professors to post their lectures so students could view the lectures and everything on iTunes U was free and everything on iTunes U was supposed to be like an educational thing and I thought well you know I'm a this is my music is really educational but I'm a student, so maybe I could get my music on there. And I found the guy who ran iTunes U for Duke. And this is like one of those God moments.

This was a guy named Todd Stabley. And I found his number. I called him. And it turns out he's from southfield michigan just like me and so he said yeah man i'll help you out i'll put your album on on itunes you no problem so now i had my my music in a safe place called itunes that these these the rich girls could access and would access and it wasn't just about the rich girls at Duke it was about the rich it was about that whole demographic across the country and we just used guerrilla marketing after

that I had I had friends from high school that were at different colleges, Michigan State, Michigan, Marquette, Notre Dame, I had a friend. Any place I had a friend, I had a Facebook group and I made it really easy for them. said look like there's a link here to the iTunes U thing and I and here's how you could send this to all your friends and if you're open to it would you change your profile picture to my album cover for the next two weeks the mixtape cover so I had this network of and then I asked my friends at Duke who all had their own set of friends at all these different colleges to do the same thing. And I started getting people that I didn't even know were a couple degrees of separation to share my mixtape, my free album with all of their networks on Facebook.

And this event, I think, went out to like 30,000 people, which is a lot for somebody starting from zero. And it just worked, man. It worked. And I got to add one last thing. It was good. so even people that weren't, you know, part of our networks, when they heard it, they shared it anyways, because it was good. And it took me a long while to make something that good. Like I said, I've been going 12 years already, you know? And so the thing itself was, was worthy of being shared. You know, the wheels, you you get all your techniques or what if it's

it's not a good product then none of this stuff works you know so um it just started to spread and people liked it and i got to the point where you're good i would get booked to play concerts at other schools and i'd show up at other schools and everybody knew the words when I got there. So that was pretty cool. Signed the record deal, thought you'd be happy, weren't happy, still depressed, and started writing songs for all these amazing people,

Bieber, Snoop, Avicii, who you had met in college, who would text you in college. You guys became good friends. We're gonna talk about him a little bit later in the show. Tell us why you weren't happy. Here you've got this, you've got your dream. You didn't think it was possible. Big Sean gives you a mind shift, said he got one,

I'm gonna get one, you got one. You should have been on top of the world at that point. Yeah, well, you know, tale as old as time. Happiness is an inside job. And we talked about the habit of depression. And I gave you and your audience some tools as far as how I changed that habit. What wasn't on that list of ways to change the habit of depression was getting a bunch of money and getting famous. Because so often, look, we all do this.

We think we're unhappy because something isn't quite right in our external world. So we make our life about changing our external circumstances in such a way that we think we will then be happy if the external circumstances are updated and upgraded and changed in some way based on our preferences. And we make our whole life about making those changes. And it turns out it almost never works. We make the change and the whole time while we're working sometimes years sometimes a lifetime to make the change we're still in the same habit we're practicing being depressed while we do it and so when we get there and the the external thing changes we're still breathing the

same way still holding our bodies the same way. We're still thinking the same thoughts. We're still in the same emotional states. And so you might get a momentary hit. Like it was exciting to get the record deal. It was exciting to see, you know, be on stage and people know the words to the songs. For sure, you get a hit, you know. But it doesn't last very long. So, you know, this tale is old as time and it's cliche but it's true then we go back to our baseline and my baseline was depressed so even though i had the record deal now and i had

some degree of fame now and i had some degree of monetary success now i was still thinking the same thoughts i was still standing the same way i was still thinking the same thoughts i was still standing the same way i was still breathing the same i was still spending my life in the same emotional states and until you change those which is all they're all internal until you change those like you're still gonna you're still gonna feel the same way. That's it. It's as simple as that, man. So you had something that you've called an ice cold period. You got in a Dodge van and drove across the country.

Was that just to get away? Or what was the mind thought process at that point in time? And how did that help you get out of whatever you were in you know we're bouncing forward in the story and that's totally fine but i i moved to la after college and and i bounced around west hollywood for a long time writing songs for others and i had success doing it and la has been great to me you know i've i actually worked out you know like i did become a success like we're here this beautiful amazing home yeah in la i did become a success and things all turned out well but i would sometimes feel like I was caught in it,

like I was trapped underneath the weight of my own success. And I think deep down I inherently knew I am more than just an artist. I'm more than just like a pop singer. And me moving into my van and seeing, hey, can I live alone like in the mountains for a few months was just the first step, baby step in me exploring that. And that obviously went a lot further.

Thanks for listening to part one of my incredible conversation with the awesome mike posner be sure to tune in next week for my incredible interview with mike