In Search Of Excellence - Mike Posner on Songwriting, Climbing Mount Everest, and Personal Journeys | E114

Episode Date: June 7, 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.02:27 - "I Took a Pill in Ibiza"09:08 - Reflections on Success and Struggles13:57 - Overcoming Personal Challenges22:50 - Walking Across America35:05 - Rattlesnake Bite Incident38:24 - Five Lessons from the Walk46:53 - Mount Everest Preparation56:35 - Meditation and Mindfulness1:06:03 - Personal Reflections and Future GoalsSponsors:Sandee | Bliss: BeachesWant to Connect? Reach out to us online!Website | Instagram | LinkedIn

goes Mike Posner he throws his hands in the air I act like I'm surprised even though I've set this whole moment up to get noticed and he produces a bag you know plastic bag of pills and says you want one of these and I didn't even ask him what it was I was like fuck it and I took the took the drugs and like the song says you know when I woke up the next day, I felt 10 years older. When I finally got sober, I felt 10 years older. And I woke up that next morning and I was just alone. Everyone else in Ibiza with their friends. It's like Vegas, you know.

You don't go to Vegas alone. I was alone. I just woke up feeling about as sad and dreadful as a man can feel. That's what that song is about. Oh, I know. Sad songs. Sad songs. You're listening to part two of my incredible interview with Mike Posner. If you haven't yet listened to part one, be sure to check that one out first.

Without further ado, here's part two with the awesome Mike Posner. We talk about a few seminal moments of your career. We're talking about a few more as we go through the show. Big Sean is one. You have a thing for airplanes so your album songs with the word delta and at flight numbers but one of the seminal moments that happened your career was after a flight attendant served you a meal talk about that and how does a meal change your entire perspective wait i don't know what you're talking about you gotta remind me you know my story better than me there was there's a flight attendant yeah served you a meal yeah and you said you had this epiphany that you're going to for every meal that for every album sold oh yeah for

every album sold yeah you were going to give a meal to someone who needed it focus on new york and detroit i get it and i know why i forgot it now is is uh yeah i had an album coming out called pages and yeah idea which was part of marketing idea but also part of a really good thing which was for every album that i sold i wanted to to shows how old the idea is to buy his albums now it's my stream for every album i saw i wanted to serve a meal um but the album never came out my career went cold and uh i got shelved that album still isn't out to this day so um you're gonna put it out ever yeah there's a lot of politics that go into that because my old label owns it that i'm not a partner with anymore and we're working on it we're working on it will come out for sure okay we we gotta move on to come on

what is truly one of my favorite songs of all time this is ironic because matt my producer and wherever i shoot studios, it's sort of like the football players, basketball players. They get off the bus, they got their music on, headphones on, and they're just jamming to motivate you. So I fire up my podcast by playing your song. Which one? I Took a Pill in the Bees. Hey, I took a pill in the bees. I love it. I was going to ask you to sing a few verses later, but let's go back to 2012.

You're with Avicii and you took a pill to impress him. You guys were friends. He was your buddy. You felt like he wasn't judging you if you had a hit song or not. That 2015 you're with them in ibiza and you have spring break and you're looking around and you wrote this song acoustically first and then it was mixed by sieb a norwegian producer and the thing just fucking exploded today is one of i think the greatest songs ever written thank you wow thank you. Thank you. Tell us about the song. Well, I wrote the song a couple years after the night. I had achieved a lot of success, and then it all disappeared. So I came out the gate with Cooler cooler than me and we talked about that and

i enjoyed the success and you know and we talked about moving in the van but really my career had like completely went cold completely went cold and my career was considered over if you spoke to someone in the music industry in 2014, they'd say, Mike Posner, they'd say, oh, he's a great songwriter. But his artist career is over. One-hit wonder. He's a one-hit wonder. And I would go online and I'd go on my Twitter

and I'd see people just call me a one-hit wonder. Ouch. Yeah, it hurt. It hurt. And the real thing I was looking for was something that no one else could give me. It was a sense of security. Security doesn't come from other people. It doesn't come from your bank account. It doesn't come from other people. It doesn't come from your bank account.

It doesn't come from your relationship with your spouse. It doesn't come from your relationship with your parents. It comes from your connection with God. Or if that word rubs you the wrong way, with life, with a capital L. I didn't have that, so I was looking for it in all these different ways. And one of the ways I was looking for it was I ended up at my friend Avicii's concert. And I'm in the VIP. It's when I still drink, so I'm drunk.

And I'm looking at him on the stage, and I'm thinking, it used to be me. It used to be me. And I told Avicii's manager, who I was standing next to, I said, I'm going to go try to get a better view of the stage and I'm going to leave the VIP.

But the real reason that I walked from behind that velvet rope was not to get a better view of the stage. It was I was hoping, praying that somebody in the crowd was going to recognize Mike Posner, was going to remind me that I exist, that I matter. And my prayers were answered. A guy with no shirt on goes, Mike Posner. He throws his hands in the air.

And I act like I'm surprised, even though I've set this whole moment up to get noticed. And he produces a bag, you know, plastic bag of pills and says, you want one of these? And I didn't even ask him what it was. I was like, fuck it. And I took the drugs. And like the song says, you know, when I woke up the next day, I felt 10 years older. When I finally got sober, I felt 10 years older. And I woke up that next morning, and I was just alone. Everyone else is in Ibiza with their friends.

It's like Vegas, you know? You don't go to Vegas alone. I was alone. I just woke up feeling about as sad and dreadful as a man can feel. That's what that song is about. And I don't know why the vibration of my sadness harmonized so perfectly and powerfully with the vibration of what the public wanted to hear at that time. Or maybe what the public was starved for, which was honesty. But those two vibrations made a beautiful chord, and that song became very popular, as you mentioned.

And it thrust me into the next chapter of my career in my life. The beats amazing. The lyrics are amazing. And when I hear the song, yeah, I mean, it's clearly somebody who's made mistakes, but they're honest with the reflection. They look in the mirror. And for me, it's a story about redemption. You know, when I hear that, I'm an underdog, you are to some extent as well. This kid in Detroit making music, you know,

it's impossible till it becomes possible. But it's a story about, hey, I fucked up. Yeah. I acknowledge it. And now my future is ahead of me. Yeah. You want to know my favorite part about that song? I took a pill and Ibiza is now I'm 10 years older than when I wrote it.

And not one of the lyrics is true about my life anymore. My life is transformed to the point that every single line in that song is false or just it wouldn't apply to my life now. I took a pill and a Beezer to show Avicii I was cool. I would never take drugs from a stranger, put my body in danger now because I love myself you know the chorus all I know is sad songs I'm happy now I'm I have struggles I have challenges in my life for sure life keeps coming but my life is a my life is a dream I love my life and life loves me back. I'm just a singer who already blew his shot.

I get along with old-timers because my name's a reminder of a pop song people forgot. My name's not a reminder of a pop song people forgot anymore. My name, now that I walked across America, climbed Mount Everest, my name's a reminder of what's possible. My name's a reminder that if you keep going, you can do anything. My name, I think, is synonymous with inspiration. I hope.

And so that's my favorite part about I Took a Pill and a Bees and Now is I sing it, and it's about a chapter in my life that I overcame. And I'm so proud of that. I'm so proud of that. You should be. I mean, you are an inspiration. Thank you. When I met Doug Evans,

we'll talk about him in a few minutes. Yeah, Doug! I'm partners and shout out to Doug for introducing me to Mike. I'm grateful you're inspiring, but just going back to the song, when you wrote the song, you never thought it'd really be a hit. If you look back, what's your favorite verse of the song? If there is a favorite verse that was the most impactful to you and would you mind just singing that verse on the show? I don't know what my favorite is but there's a third verse right so you mentioned the original

version of i took a pill and a bees is a acoustic version of the song and there's three verses and in the the remix which is the version that got really popular there's. The third one is cut out. And so the third verse says, what does he say? I took a plane to my hometown. I brought my pride and my guitar. And why is he running a guitar? Well, my friends are all gone, but there's manicured lawns and the people still think I'm a star. I walked around downtown. I met some fans on Lafayette. They said, Mike, tell us how to make it. We're getting real impatient. I looked them in the eyes and said, you don't want to be high like me. Never really knowing why like me. You don't never want to step off that

roller coaster and be all alone you don't want to ride the bus like this never knowing who to trust like this you don't want to be stuck up on that stage Oh, I know our sad songs, sad songs. Darling, no, I know our sad songs, sad songs. That's so fucking good, by the way way so thank you for doing that if someone someone had told me when i first was introduced that song and we've listened that song 300 times at the office yeah he's not bullshitting me there's no there's no bullshit and this is yeah maybe more and it's on my workout playlist it's on my workout playlist. It's on my wake surfing list.

That's awesome. And if someone had said, hey, I'm going to be here with Mike, and he's going to be singing the song for me, and I'm going to be singing 10 words with him, I'd be like, this is fucking awesome. Anything is possible. Hey, you know, I'm proud of you too because you snapped on two and four, which is the right beats to snap on and oftentimes you'll find white people are unable to do so so just congratulations you've done the

impossible once again you met a girl you met the girl despite running cross country you've snapped on the right beats what else can you do so so you love this story so it's weird i've always there there's this thing where uh my brother had a drum set growing up and he was in a band i wasn't allowed to touch the drums but right rush is my favorite band by the way i'm a drummer so neil pert and i know drums was what you played what you played first but i would sneak on twice and i'd play his drums but i had uh drumsticks so when i saw you in your dorm room at duke i thought how i had my drumsticks and i would play them so hard that the wood on the desk would start splintering all in the air. It was super fun. And when I was 35 years old,

I'm at Costco and I see a $399 Ludwig drum set on the shelf. I brought that thing home and I taught myself to play the drums. Nice. Yeah. Now I have a DW eight-piece drum set in my bedroom. It's literally next to the bed. It's the only place where you can do it. Double kick? Single kick. Yeah.

Single kick. And I'm self-taught. But Neil had a double, right? Neil had a double. I mean, I've seen him rush in concert 12 times. And when I was younger, I had no money, right? And so I'd sit in the back, but I always, I think it's the greatest three-piece rock band in history and certainly the best band that's come out of canada in my opinion

but as i got older and when i finally made money man i was in the front row yeah dude and i would always yell to the roadies or to uh drummers and i typically get good tickets now and when i want to be in the front row i'm in the front row yeah and so i'll say stick sticks and so when neil was done the roadie came over and gave me a stick they're in my office they're hanging in my office how cool is that it's fucking cool how cool is that that's fucking cool there's a moment i had um when i was 16 and uh there was this band I love called Dilated People. It's their hip-hop trio, one DJ and two MCs, and I love them. And I went to go see their show at St. Andrew's Hall. And similar to you, we got there early with my two buddies, and we were in the front row, front row, front and center.

And they were opening up for another band, so most of the crowd was there for the other band and me and my buddies you know you imagine he's like 16 year old white kids and they're just know all the words going crazy and we're just all in right that's how I am when I go to concert I'm all in right to this day you know if I go to concert I don't want to be in the VIP. I want to be in the crowd dancing, going crazy. So the band notices we're going crazy, and the DJ, DJ Babu, rolls up a joint, and he lights it, and he hands it to Evidence, one of the rappers, and he passes it to me.

And just that moment, I mean, think of the symbolism of that moment. For me, it almost crystallized in my consciousness that there's this barrier between being an audience member and the guy on the stage. And it's not as high as you think it is. Like you can make the transition from crowd to stage. You can do it. And that was such a special moment. And I'll never forget the pull I took out of that joint,

not because of the joint itself, but because of what it meant. Right. A lot, a lot of people, I mean, from Detroit, I'm a classic rock guy. I mean, I grew up with Bob Seger. I love Bob Seger. I've seen him a bunch of times. Um, a lot of people have rockstar fantasy. I have a rockstar fantasy. So I taught myself to play the drums and I go to NASA. What do you mean by rock star fantasy? Rock star fantasy. Like you're a famous musician on stage in front of 80,000 people at Wembley Stadium. I thought you might mean you're alone with the rock star in your bedroom.

That's kind of a rock star fantasy. That's not my fantasy. I just wanted to clarify. That's not my fantasy. That would be a different kind of a rock star fantasy that's not my fantasy i just wanted to clarify that's not my fantasy um that that'd be a different kind of fantasy and it definitely would not be with a rock star it'd be it'd be with somebody else like a pop diva fan but i uh go to nashville on business sometimes we own a bunch of uh townhomes. And I'll always go to Kid Rock. You been to Nashville before?

Mm-hmm. So there's all these, what do you call them, music halls where all the country guys have, whatever they're called. And there's this great band at Kid Rock. And I'd never played. We have a vacation home in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. And we have bands come in. It's a residential community. So years ago, I said, all right, can I play a song?

It was the first time I ever hit a drum that was mic'd up. I'm like, oh, my God. The electricity from that thing was awesome. I played a Garth Brooks song, which I had never heard. What's his famous song? And it's weird with the beats because I can hear a song and play the song without ever hearing the song. Knowing the words.

It's like a weird thing. But I go to Nashville now and I pay $100 a song. And I'm up there. There's like, I don't know, 500 people there on two levels. And the first thing they said is, can you actually play? I mean, we're a real band. And I said, I'll get by.

It's fine. But it's fun. It's my rock star fantasy. Good for you, man. It's beautiful. So shot a video at Duke. We were in a Detroit Tigers hat, great hat, jeans,

and you wore a sweatshirt that said that you don't have to be high to be dope. And I think, what's the message here to all the kids out there that are smoking, the musicians are in the wrong crowd? What are you gonna say to all those people? I mean- Think they gotta smoke to have fun.

Oh, dude, largely, look, anything that's not making you a better version of yourself you want to stay away from you know so one of my heroes is is the the zen monk who passed away titnet han and he says retreat is about re-entry so if you're using some kind of drug whatever it is just marijuana for some people that might help their life i don't you know i don't know i'm not here to like whatever cast judgment for me when i smoked weed i'd get paranoid weird and i'd eat unhealthy food and I'd like and I wouldn't make better music and it just I thought it was cool like I thought I was cool doing it like it added a mystique to my

persona but it didn't help my life and so I just had to stop. And alcohol was the same way. Alcohol was, you know, I never was an alcoholic, thankfully. But I would drink and the next day I just feel bad. And it would prevent me from being my best. And I couldn't show up in my life the way I wanted to. And it just didn't, I couldn't justify it. It didn't serve me and my mission at all. And so I think we all have to audit everything in our lives, whether that's the substances we're using and also what we're spending our time on, like not just drugs, but how about porn? You know, I didn't stop watching porn until I was 34, 35. Porn is bad.

For sure. For sure. I mean, yeah, so I stopped like a year, you're putting your sexual energy and releasing your sexual energy while you're watching other people have sex. And so for me, I found like I didn't have energy left over to then go date in real life. you know and i found myself in this weird relationship with where i'm where i think i'm like satisfying my needs sexually with this with these videos of other people having sex and i'm alone i'm actually alone like i'm not going out on dates i'm not like i'm doing i'm doing everything i can to avoid committing and having responsibility to another human in real life. And, yeah, it was like, it doesn't, it's not serving me.

It's like, what good thing came to my life from me watching porn? Like, you know, like, you could justify maybe how it's not like destroying your life. But tell me what good thing you like has happened in your life from you watching porn. Nothing. It's not it's a waste of time. At best, it's a waste of time. At worst, it's destroying other parts of your life. So. Yeah, I think, you know, this really wasn't the parts of your life um so yeah i think you know this really wasn't

the spirit of your question the spirit of your question was like you know youngsters how should they think about mind-altering drugs you do definitely do not need drugs to be an amazing artist or to be cool no No, you're born cool. You're a child of God. You know what I mean? There's 12 billion sperm in that ejaculate and the one that made it to the egg is you. You're not a mistake.

Your nature is great as miracle. Like the human body, the human being, you were given a gift, this body that's worth more than Elon Musk can ever make. How do I know? Because if you had, how much money does he have? $300 billion. What does he have?

A lot. $100 billion, whatever it is. More. If you had that $150 billion and I said, you have a disease and you're going gonna die and there's one cure for it and it costs 150 billion dollars you would you would pay the money instantaneously because your life is worth more than 150 billion dollars your body is worth more than 150 billion dollars you're rich already and so um you don't need to you don't need to do anything to be cool. You're a

miracle. You're more than cool. There are so many things in all of our lives that we think about doing for a long time, right? There's always reasons not to do them. We're busy, got a career. I work 70 hours a week, at least still today. I have five kids. I've got my show. I'm writing a book called Extreme Preparation. I'm doing some paid corporate speaking. I'm doing- Who, you? Extreme Preparation? The guy that's asking me questions about my life that I can't even remember that's on brand my friend well that is the brand that i want to create and we're going to talk about it we're going to talk i say that in a compliment because it's clearly aligned to how you do everything like you've you've you've clearly over prepared for this interview and i appreciate that there's no such thing as

over preparing and that's that's part of my's part of my teaching and part of my coaching. But going back to our goals and things that we always want to do, there's always reasons not to do them, right? So I want you to talk about hearing about an idea in your friend Tini's jewelry shop and then talk about how death the death of your father avicii's suicide mac miller's overdose how that affected and led you to doing something in your life that was remarkable for you and for every other person that's heard about it and knows the story which one of the most incredible things I've ever heard in my life. Thank you for saying that.

Yeah. So this story starts off with an unimportant moment. And that unimportant moment is I'm in my friend Teeny's jewelry shop. And I hear her speaking to somebody else. I'm not even in the conversation. She says, my friend just finished walking across America. And like a tractor beam, I was pulled into that conversation. I said, what did you just say?

She said, my friend just walked across America. I said, you can walk across America? She goes, I guess. He just did it. And I said, I want to do that too. And I said it out loud, but it was almost as if I didn't. Because no one responded. It lingered.

That sentence lingered in the air of the shop like a fart nobody wanted to claim. And the reason it lingered is nobody cares about the thing you want to do one day. Not even you. I left that jewelry shop and I did not walk across America. I read about walking across America. I watched videos about walking across America.

I even met people that had walked across America. I interviewed them. I did everything except walking across America. My fantasy stayed a fantasy for not one year, not two years, not three years, not four years, five years. And after five years of putting it off, saying, yeah, I'll get around to it. But right now I got an album to finish. Right now I got a tour I got to go on.

Right now there's a wedding I'm invited to that I don't want to go to but I feel like I have to go to I'll get around to it when the time's right after five years of doing that you said it my dad died my friend Avicii killed himself Mac Miller OD my friend Ronnie had a heart attack and died. And I just realized that I'm going to die too. And before that happens, I'm either going to walk across America or not. But it's going to happen this year or it's never going to happen because there's never going to be a freaking right time. No one's going to roll out a red carpet for me and say, hey, this is it. In fact, the opposite is going to happen.

If I decide to do this, I say I'm going to do it, people are going to give me reasons why I should not. They're going to tell me I'm crazy, and that's what they did. They tell me I'm crazy, tell me I'm going to hurt my body permanently, say I'm going to ruin my career that I've worked so hard to build permanently, and tell me no one's going to care. And on the path to doing something great, there are a thousand reasons. Forget about to quit.

There are a thousand reasons. Forget about to quit. There are a thousand reasons to not even start. I broke my toe before I even, a month before I was supposed to go, I broke my toes hanging off my foot sideways. I mean, there are a thousand reasons to not even start. Forget about to quit. And if you want to do something great,

you have to learn to not listen to every single one of them. And so five years after that unimportant moment came an important moment. And that was April 15th, 2019, where I stood off the coast of New Jersey and I was done making plans. I took a step and step one is take one step. And that's what I did. I want to go on the five lessons you learned from that trip in a minute. I think they're all very,

very important. And I think they're applicable to everyone who wants to do anything in their life that's important. But I also want to talk about challenges. So I want to talk about your near-death experience. And why is a baby rattlesnake more dangerous than a papa or a mama rattlesnake uh from what i understand you know uh the the the baby rattlesnakes have not learned resource allocation so where where uh where an adult rattlesnake if they bite you they'll they'll hit you with a dose of venom the my understanding is that a baby rattlesnake will will dump all of their venom inside you um because they they're yet to learn asset allocation gotta give them some financial lessons here so that's why yeah so what happened So you're at mile roughly 1800. Yeah. I walked, um, listen, man,

is it, is it long, crazy journey? But I walked across New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Ohio, Indiana. So we did out of order, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri during a heat wave and do like this hurt. I'm saying the state's fast right now they weren't fast 24 miles a day yeah and I'm walking 12 hours a day I'm walking through heat waves and I'm walking through unthinkable physical pain like my body hurt to the point where I wasn't sure if I was hurting myself permanently or not I thought there's a good chance that this arthritic, deathly pain feeling that I have every time I stand up now is going to last the rest of my life. It was bad. It hurts. But I kept going. I walked across Missouri. I walked across

Kansas. I walked into Coloradoado and i i could just see the rocky mountains on the horizon and yeah i'd walked 1797 miles i can't believe i'm off by three miles what's wrong with me yeah and uh and i put in 16 that day. Like you said, typically I did 24 a day. Finished taking a break and just felt this pain shoot up my leg. And then I heard the rattle of a baby rattlesnake and realized, dude, I've just been bitten by a poisonous snake, and this is serious. I'm in the middle of nowhere, and thankfully there were two fans that had showed up to walk with me that day,

and one of them got service to call 911, and I spoke to dispatch on the phone. I said, am I going to die? And the voice on the other end of the phone said, I don't know, sir. I ended up spending five nights in the hospital. My leg swells to the size of an elephant trunk. And I went from walking 24 miles a day to I can't walk to the bathroom. You were airlifted? Because I know you called an ambulance and who got there first?

I went in the ambulance to La Junta Hospital. I got the antivenom there and basically they gave me all the antivenin they had, at which point I got airlifted to a larger hospital in Pueblo. What was that hospital called? I can't remember. But, yeah, so I took an ambulance first and then a chopper second. Scary. What was the Looney Tunes moment, and how did the near-death experience affect the rest of your life? The Looney Tunes moment was darkness started to just come in from the edges of my awareness.

And similar to the end of Looney Tunes where the circles get smaller and it says, that's all folks. That was what was happening, but it was just black. The near death or as near death as I was, it reminded me of the fragility of life, how precious life is. And also, man, just the gift of that snake bite, I really think that was medicine for me. You know, the snake is a symbol of rebirth. It sheds its skin every so often and leaves that chapter of his life behind. And that's exactly what I was doing on that walk. I was shedding a layer of skin to become the new me. And so the snake, like this was an accident. I was supposed to get bit by that snake. And one of the gifts of the medicine of that venom was not quitting. You know, I had the best reason to quit my walk

of all time, which was I almost lost my foot, almost lost my life. And it was such a good reason to quit that, you know, other people wouldn't even think I was a quitter if I'd quit. It would just have been a cool story with a really cool ending that frankly, I'd probably still be getting interviewed on podcasts about. But this was about me becoming the new me. And that skin that I was shedding, it wasn't fully off yet. And so I knew I had to go back to the place that that snake bit me and I had to keep walking. And when I did so, and when i went up and over those rocky mountains that's when i got the

gift of that snake bite medicine and that gift was i could do fucking anything if that can't take i could i could do anything and we all can do anything we're so much more powerful than we believe but when i think about like about like the guy six months before that was just bopping around depressed in studios that thought his whole life was just writing songs to who I'd become then, the dude that got bit by a rattlesnake and then kept going, it just gave me the juice that I fueled the rest of my life with.

It's an incredible story. I want you to talk about, you said there were five major lessons you learned on this walk. We could talk about them for 12 hours, but can we just go through them one by one? What were the lessons? Because I think they're applicable to anything all of us do

where we think about our dreams. Yeah. I'll give you a bonus one too that couldn't fit in that ted talk i love it so number one was not all crazy ideas are great but all great ideas are crazy you know so when you when you make the decision to do something great, people are going to tell you, you lost your mind. And that's a good sign. That's a great sign. You know, people are saying, Hey dude, I don't know about this. Or are you all right? Or are you sure about that? That's a good sign.

That means you're, you are leaving the rut, the grooves that you have made with your life and you are really charting a new path now. That's number one. The second big lesson I got from the walk was, I mentioned earlier, step one is take one step. Before I started the walk, there's all these doubts and negative thoughts circling in my head bouncing off the walls of my mind it's like am i am i hurting myself permanently am i gonna fail you know am i gonna ruin my career all this stuff is just going in your head and but once i took the first first step, the doubts about what might happen disappeared because I was doing it. I wasn't considering doing it anymore. I had started. So that's number two. Step one is take one step. Now, the third one is the bonus one is as I walked across America on a daily basis, I was exposed to people doing incredibly kind things. you got a picture I'm a man with a ghastly beard

I stink and people don't know who I am in these parts of the country and they would they would pull over the side of the road and say hey I saw you walking out here and I bought you this Gatorade

they would they would they would find me in a park and they'd say hey like who are you what are you doing here i tell them and it's hey i spoke to my wife we'd like to have you over for dinner tonight and if you'd want to sleep in our home you're welcome to you know i i think we're nice guys but we don't go to parks and invite people back to the house no this was a daily thing there was a kid named rowan and i i tell this i've told the story a lot but it's it's the best i was on the wallapai reservation and this f-350 pulls over the side of the road. I used to always ask people two questions. One was, why'd you come here?

And the second was, if I pray for you, what should I pray for? And people, mind you, they came from all over the country to talk to me and walk with me. So this kid named Rowan gets outside of the car, and we talked for a while, and we kind of just had small talk, but there was this feeling like something more was supposed to happen between us, so I hit the, like, you know, what do you say, break glass if necessary.

My conversational version of that is, if I pray for you, what should I pray for? That gets me below small talk. So I said, if I pray for you, what should I pray for? And he said, Mike, five years ago, my dad died from drinking. Three months ago. Sorry, three years ago, my only brother, my big brother died from drinking. And just three months ago, my mom died from drinking. So if you pray for me, pray for my sobriety.

Because I'm the only one left. And he reached back in his F-350, and he put a leather satchel in my hand, sweetgrass and sage. He said, this will keep you safe while you walk on our land. I thought he got out of that F-350 because he wanted something from me. He got out of that F-350 because he had something to give me. So the third lesson is,

don't be afraid of strangers. We live in this culture where we get exposed to the worst stories, all the worst stories. But I learned on my walk 99.999999% of strangers are nice people. I wish anyone the least bit misanthropic or cynical about the state of humanity could walk across America because this was the norm. Number four, we talked about the difference between reasons and excuses. Your reasons to quit something you care about are always excuses in disguise. And they're logical,

they're convincing, and they have the voice of your own thoughts. They know how to speak to you in a way that you want to be spoken to. But in order to do something great, you have to go beyond reasons. You have to be unreasonable. Greatness requires you to be unreasonable. And so you got to look at those reasons for what they really are. Those reasons are excuses. Those reasons are your mind trying to convince you to not do something great. And you're stronger than your mind. The fifth lesson I learned when I made it to the other side, I dove in the Pacific Ocean after walking six months and three days, 2,851 miles. 5.7 million steps?

Something like that. That's true happiness. It comes from growth. It's not from getting where you think you want to be. It's not from those where you think you want to be. It's not from those external circumstances magically changing. It's from knowing you're on the path towards where you want to go. A lot of people listening to this right now might be in a moment of pain or suffering in some part of their life. Even if some part of your life is crushing it, there might be another part where there's some pain there,

if you're really honest. And the antidote to that pain is quite simple. It's moving it in the right direction, taking some sort of action, even if it's small, in the right direction. And when you find when you're on that path, there's great peace from being on the path. So true happiness comes from growth. And the last lesson comes from realizing I'd done the most incredible thing in my life. I changed my life.

But I had waited so long to do it that Ronnie didn't get to see me. Mac didn't get to see me. Avicii didn't get to see me do this. And my dad didn't get to see me do this. They were all dead. They're all dead. And they're not coming back.

And so the sixth lesson was don't wait. There's never going to be a right time. We already talked about it, but don't wait. Even on a more daily, regular basis, I was saying in the office, do it now. Don't let your two weeks get back. I mean, you're talking about major goals. I have a personal business plan. I have long-term goals. I believe in writing your goals down, but to be productive at work, I tell everyone at work, your to-do list should be taken care of that day for the things that need to be taken care of that day. Email responses one hour or less when you're in the office on the weekend and two hours or less, because things just pile up and to be efficient and be productive, I think you have to do it now. I've run that way in my personal life as well. I think it's important for relationships. I think

it's important for business. Let's talk about more ingredients of success. And I want to talk about discipline and in our path to excellence, how important is it never to hit that snooze button? Oh, it's really important, you know, and I learned that from David Goggins. You hit the snooze button and then you're starting the day off with a loss, right? So you want to start the day off with a win, you know? So my walk, unfortunately, is really hot. I'm walking through june july august my i learned the difference between june and july by the way and august i thought june and july they're both summer july is a lot harder than june you know you learn that you learn the subtle differences in the

seasons and so i couldn't roll out of bed at 8 or 9. I needed to clock miles before it got super hot. So yeah, man. There wasn't really any days where I wanted to wake up at 4. But I wanted to walk across America. So there's a rub there. If you want to walk across America, you need to wake up at four every day. And so you just get really good at doing the little things you don't want to do.

And that discipline, like Jocko says, discipline is freedom. That's true. Freedom isn't the ability to do whatever you want, whenever you want. It's the ability and the freedom to choose a path, commit to it, and follow through. See, because I have incredible discipline I've developed over my life, I have the freedom to do things like climb the tallest mountain in the world. I have the freedom to do things like walk across America. I have the freedom to do things that require discipline. And most people never know what that's like, unfortunately, but anyone can know what it's like. It's something all of us can develop. So you finish the walk, you're exhausted, can hardly walk. You dive into the ocean.

And then what was the feeling? And then tell us about calling your boxing coach the next day and going to see him at 4 30 and what developed from that that's important you know is is you you asked me what it felt like to dive in the water it felt like the beginning it didn't feel like an end and beginnings always hide themselves in ends why beginning and not end i mean it's six months 24 miles because it uncovered a new part of me it's like it's like you i pushed a button on the garage and that i didn't know i owned and there's a Ferrari in there and it's mine and it's like dude I want to take this thing for a spin I want to see what this thing can do I had uncovered a warrior inside of myself a motherfucker that I didn't recognize a dude that woke up at four a dude that that went

over mountain ranges after getting bit by snakes a a dude that never quit, a dude that showed up no matter what, a dude that walked 24 miles in heat waves, a dude that, like, this was, this, I didn't know this existed inside me. I uncovered it. And so when I finished the walk, it was like, wow, I don't recognize myself. I started this thing

thinking maybe there's a little more inside me. There's a lot more inside me. And so let's see what else we can do. And that's why it felt like the beginning. And so it was important for me to cement that not only as a concept and a theory but into my my my body my mind my spirit and my actions so that's why the day after calling the day after diving in the ocean i didn't want to sleep in i didn't want to go back to who i was before i didn't want to forget that garage was there i wanted to remind myself I I got a Ferrari in here you know and so I wasn't gonna like go party I was gonna go wake up at four the next day and I'm gonna put ACDC on and I know I need to rest my body's

jacked up it's it's hurt it's messed up for sure but i'm gonna i'm gonna go work hard tomorrow morning because i need i need my body my spirit my mind to know we're not done we're just getting started so we had another idea not not another small feat did it just come to you one morning say i'm gonna climb mount everest no do this no it came to me when i when when uh after the snake bit me and i went up and over the rockies you knew you were going to finish the walk and you knew after that when you saw the mountain say i want to climb the top i started dreaming about it i started dreaming about it and listen a dream either grows into a plan or it withers into regret one of the two and so i knew that for me to go from never climbing a mountain to climbing the

tallest mountain in the world is nothing but blood sweat tears and pain like this is going to be harder than walking across america but i do hard shit now yes let's talk about this we've talked about one of the ingredients of my success which is called extreme preparation i want to talk about the preparation that anyone has to do to climb mount everest and colin brady was on my show. I texted him this morning. He said hello. Yeah, I love Colin. Yeah, he was part of my journey. For sure. Tell us how extreme your preparation has to be to climb Mount Everest. How long does it take? Well, it doesn't have to be. You could show up there right now. Someone will take your money. Right, and die.

Yeah, you got a lot of it so you don't have to prepare that wasn't that wasn't what i wanted to do i wanted to show up to mount everest and i wanted to belong there and succeed i wanted to succeed and to succeed to me let's be really clear was to make the summit and come back down safely that was success and and it was belonging there it was i didn't want to show up like some white dude who didn't know what he's doing i wanted to be by the time i got there i wanted to be a real mountaineer and so that was the game i wanted to play i wasn't interested in just showing up even if you said mike you just show up you can can make the summit. I didn't want to do that. I wanted to go through the transformation of not knowing anything to becoming a guide up along there. And that's what I did. So a lot of people don't do it that way. And some of them make the summit.

Some of them die. Some of them, you know, it's a different thing. For me, this was a spiritual journey that Colin was a part of, and he introduced me to John, my coach, Dr. John, who was a part of him. I spent the next year and a half climbing mountains. Dr. John Kedroski, he was my coach, he has a great line. He says, train for climbing mountains by climbing mountains. So that's what we did. A year and a half, I climbed 71 mountains. And some of those training climbs, I risked my life on. This was real.

And we would do things that you know they weren't they obviously weren't as tall as everest and you weren't subject to the same lack of oxygen but we did moves that were way harder than anything you got to do on everest and i'd look at john i go why the fuck we we have to do this? This is fucking crazy, like fall you die kind of shit. And I say to John, why do we have to do this? You don't even have to do this kind of move on Everest. He said, because when you're on summit day and you're on that ridge and you look to your right and there's a 10,000 foot drop,

you look to your left and there's a 10,000 foot drop, but you to your left and there's a 10,000 foot drop, but you're on a fixed line. You're not going to be scared. He was right. When I got on summit day and I looked to my right, there's a 10,000 foot drop. Left 10,000 foot drop.

I wasn't scared of the heights. I was scared of some other things like my toes were getting cold and some other stuff. But, you know, you train for climbing mountains by climbing mountains. I think it's incredible you did that. And I know on the way up, you're also passing dead bodies of people who were just there a couple weeks before you, who have the same dream that you have. Mm-hmm.

Pretty sobering. Mm-hmm. When you saw a dead body on your way up, you probably saw a bunch of dead bodies. Did that scare you? No, it didn't scare me. At the time, this might sound callous, but this is the truth.

They're just in my fucking way. There's one line line and these guys god bless them but they're already dead and you know i believe in god i don't think they're in that in that sack of skin and bones anymore so my job was to get around them as efficiently as possible and make sure I didn't die. So it didn't scare me, it was just in my way. So we talk about ingredients of success. We talk about extreme preparation, discipline,

not hitting the snooze button. How important is vulnerability in our success, both accomplishing things and as a leader? And tell us about the famous Werner Herzog quote that you love talking about so much. Oh, the Werner Herzog quote is, the poet must not avert his eyes. What does that mean? That means if you're a real poet, and I extrapolate that to mean artist. Artist with a capital A. That means that you're honest about both the divine and the ghastly. You got to do both when you're an artist. You got to

be honest about the things that scare you, the things that are hideous about yourself and the world, and also honest about the things that are miraculous and beautiful about the world. And you can't avert your eyes from either one. What are three other important elements of our success? And what's your advice to everyone out there when they think about those three elements? Number one, your smiles don't result from good things. Good things result from your smiles. So what does that mean? That's like we wait for the external circumstances of our life to give us an excuse to be happy.

But my understanding of the way the universe and life works is, if we can find a way to feel how we think we would, were those external circumstances the way we want them to be now, well, we create a space for those things to actually happen. So you don't have to wait for something to happen outside of you to be joyous. You can be joyous now. And I would argue you making that decision will make those external events happen faster. That's number one. And if I'm wrong, which I don't think I am, at least you're joyous. Number two is keep going. You know, that became my mantra on the walk came

from my friend Don Drill. Most of us just give up way too early. And we have this saying in our society, which is it wasn't meant to be. Bullshit. Yeah. Most of the time, most of the time when we're saying it wasn't meant to be, we're really saying I'm fucking quitting. And so when you're making the decision

to do something really great, you're going to be gifted opportunities to quit many times over. And those are gifts because if you learn to not quit when all reasons point to you quitting, then you'll get the gift of possibility. You'll get the gift of possibility. You'll get the gift of transformation. You'll get the gift of liberation. You'll get the gift of living an unreasonable life.

Number three is love yourself. Have you had Kamal Ravikant on? No. Yeah, you should. He wrote an amazing book called love yourself like your life depends on it a lot of us men we're type a right we're competitive we make shit happen go forward right we hear those words love yourself and we're kind of like fuck that i might lose my edge you know if i stop beating the shit out of myself mentally, maybe I'll stop achieving.

It's not true. In fact, you achieve more. And when you start to love yourself, you start being real honest about what's not serving you. You start being real protective of your time. You start being real protective of your mission, of your loved ones, and you're able to love others more, which at the end of the day, fuck everything I said, everything in the last three hours we've been talking or whatever. We're here to love. That's what a human human being like the highest expression of a human being is the human being in love loving others serving others and the way you can do that

in an effective way is to love yourself you're one of the most thoughtful people that i've ever met and i i learned that from you before even meeting you. You're very insightful. You're very deep in your answers, your thought process. I know you're very big into meditation. Can you talk about the importance of meditation in your life and then your singing bowl and who Charlie is? Meditation is an incredible tool. You're not your mind. It's really simple. You're not your mind. I mean, if you spend some time, forget about even meditating, just close your eyes right now and start observing the thoughts going through your mind. Most of them are repetitive or negative. They're not you.

They're not you. Human being is so much more than the mind. Because the mind, what is the mind? The mind is a device that was evolved not to make you happy, to make you survive. The mind is mostly a scanning device for what might hurt us, what might go wrong. And so to try to use this thing to find happiness is sort of a fool's errand. Meditation is a way that we can observe the mind and actually shift our identity from the mind to the awareness of the mind. You're so much more than your mind. I mean, your mind is one tiny part of you. And when we learn to dwell in that new identification,

that's when magic starts to happen. That's when miracles start to happen in our lives. That's when life becomes beautiful. We're still showing up. We're still honoring our commitments, but there's a space there. We're going, hey, I'm not in control. I'm in love. And so meditation is so funny.

All the secrets of life are not secrets. The enlightened beings, Jesus, Buddha, they made it really clear. And so, yeah, meditation, whether you do a Vipassana retreat, which is free. You can sign up for a 10-day Vipassana retreat. Or you do TM, which is mostly what I recommend to other people because people that do TM tend to stick with it or I've been studying recently Krishnaji and Pritnaji I think they have one world academy

there's so many resources and different kinds of meditation but meditation is an incredible tool and it's not all theory, right? There's a lot of peer-reviewed studies on the real data-proven, science-proven medical benefits of meditating.

Any disease that has stress as a factor, heart disease, cardiovascular disease, like these are our top killers in the US. You meditate, you decrease your chances of it because you'll be less stressed. It just makes sense. And anyone can do it. Anyone can do it. So we're getting toward the end of the show and I appreciate you being so generous with your time. I want to talk about just something real now because you're living in LA. You've had this crazy life.

You've had all these friends when you're famous. How do you make friends when you're famous today? Are you, you live on a mountaintop, basically this incredible pad. you going out i mean do you have a core group of buds are people approaching you when you go out to the the supermarket hey mike you want to have a beer with me down at father's office listen um i'm blessed you know maybe your podcast gonna change this for me but you know

I'm famous enough where I don't have to get a new job I guess you know it's like but I

I'm not so famous that I can't go to the farmer's market or I can't go I might get recognized there but it's not such that I can't go

and and there, but it's not such that I can't go. Um, and I make friends the same way we all should make friends, which is with my heart, you know, and, um, I'm, my friends are the best part of, one of the best parts about me. I have like, if I never made another friend, I would be abundant in that area of my life. And I've been abundant in that area of my life for a long time. And I have friends, I have, my only thing with friends is not having enough time to be with all of them as much as I'd like. I got friends in Pakistan. I got friends in Nepal. I got friends in Pakistan. I got friends in Nepal. I got friends

in Ecuador. I got, I mean, I got friends and my core group is, it's incredible. You want to have a family? Absolutely. I will have a family. And are you, where do you go to meet women? I have a few famous friends. Well, I'm in love, so i don't go anywhere to meet women okay all right all right love it i go to my girl's house and that's it so uh let's talk about doug evans who again i want to yeah we're gonna well we we've we've got we got to talk about entrepreneurship and Sprouts.

So you and Doug have a company. It's a sprouting company. And when he was explaining to me, I'm like, what? What are you talking about? So what are you guys up to? And what's all the hype about Sprouts? Well, listen, Sprouts is something I fell in love with. Something that you eat, by the way.

Yeah. Those are the kind of Sprouts we're talking about right now. Yeah. Sprouting is something I fell in love with doing and the process of it is just so, it's spiritual. So what are we actually talking about? You can grow in one of our kits or you can make your own kit if you have the time to do so or the wherewithal. In a glass jar on your kitchen countertop

you can grow your own superfood and the process of doing so just changes your relationship to health food and and it's kind of cool to have like one square foot on your countertop and to be able to grow this thing, like without sunshine, it doesn't need soil. It doesn't need fertilizer, just the seeds and water. And you rinse them twice a day. It takes like 20 seconds total of work. And like, dude, I'm a busy guy i travel like i don't have time to have a garden if i have a garden it's gonna die right and so sprouting is a way

that i can i take my health serious like really serious and so when you read the health benefits of broccoli sprouts, it's kind of like miraculous. Doctors have treated cancer, some forms of cancer, with broccoli sprouts. And I typically, when I'm not traveling, I eat two to four ounces of broccoli sprouts every day. And if I grow them myself, it's even better because they're alive. So just from falling in love with this process,

Doug had already started a company that was creating basically a comprehensive kit because before our company, you had to get the seeds from somewhere, you had to buy a jar from somewhere a top from someplace else so we just try and make it easy for people to to be healthy and it just dovetailed with my mission we talked about the very beginning of the show which is to help people be healthier and happier so the sprouting company is one way we do that we just sell the kits to to grow your sprouts and just like up-level your health. What's that called and where can they find it? It's called The Sprouting Company. So you can go to sproutingcompany.com and yeah, man, eat sprouts.

It's good. It's good. They're like a drug. You know, they give you a little buzz. I'm going to try it. Before I met Doug and he was telling me about this, I've never once thought about or heard about eating sprouts i don't remember ever eating a sprout before but yeah i'll be all over it i'm

gonna come back to you and tell you how i feel about that yeah yeah yeah so before we finish today i want to go ahead and ask some more open-ended questions i call this part of my podcast fill in the Blank to Excellence. Are you ready to play? Yes. The biggest lesson I've learned in my life is? Have fun. My number one professional goal is?

Right now, it's finish my book. What's the name of the book? And when's it coming out? I don't have all that yet. Okay. Yeah, I gotta write the mother first. We ain't talking about release yet, dude. It's like I wrote the first song on the album and you're like, what day is it coming out?

It's like, hey, I got some more work to do. My number one personal goal is? I have family. My biggest- Healthy and beautiful family. Someone told me this, my friend Rick Rivera, who had kids well before my friends had kids. And he said, you'll find out the meaning of life once your first child is born. And that is the understatement of the century. I have five beautiful, thankfully healthy kids. And I live for my kids. There's

nothing I wouldn't do with them, for them. And every second of my life with them, I cherish. That's beautiful. Especially as I get older and they don't want to with them, I cherish. That's beautiful. Especially as I get older and they don't wanna hang out with you anymore. Yeah, thank you for sharing that. I very much look forward to that more than anything else. I got some pretty lofty career goals, all that stuff. And none of them excite me more than that.

So thank you for sharing that. You're welcome. The biggest regret in my life is? When my dad was dying, I got in a big fight with my mom, like a screaming match. And we were supposed to be creating an environment that made it safe for him to go, was basically to say in words but also in actions

like hey when you die we're we're gonna miss you but we're gonna be okay and when we were in that screaming match and he could hear us we were doing the exact opposite. Were you harmonious before he died and he was more comfortable that you were doing that? Yeah, my relationship with my mom is the best ever now. I mean, we were both grieving. We were both scared of losing dad. And we were expressing it in all the wrong ways. My biggest fear in life is? Mediocrity.

My purpose in life is? I see, hear, feel, know my purpose is to be a leader who unlocks the magic potential in myself and many others. When I'm 50 years old, I'm going to be? Laughing. The craziest thing that's ever happened in my life is I climbed Mount Everest. The one thing that I've thought about doing for a very long time, but haven't is. Man, I've done, I'm proud I've done most of those. I think, you know,

I won't be repetitive, but I think like, you know, having a family again. Ten years from now, I'm going to be doing meaningful work. What's the one question that you wish I had asked you, but didn't ask you? Oh man, you ask me a lot of questions. How good can life get? How good can life get? Really good. How good?

Really good, man. Magical. Magical. And, like, that's coming from somebody who has had extended periods of life where I was thinking like, can it get any worse? And you just gotta keep going. You just gotta keep going. You've had this remarkable life

and I'm so happy to meet you in person after being a fan for such a long time. And you're a very deep, very real guy and you've shared a lot of things, personal things, deep things that I think are going to resonate with all the people listening and watching my show today. So I'm really grateful. And it's just another example that anything is possible, no matter where we are in our life.

Anything is possible. That is right. You could be, do, or have anything. Anything. This was the best, man. Appreciate you so much. Thank you, Randall. Appreciate you. Super appreciate it. Absolutely. have anything anything this is the best man appreciate you so much and i appreciate you

appreciate it absolutely