The Jordan Harbinger Show - 168: Mike Posner | 31 Minutes to the Other Side of Fame

Episode Date: March 5, 2019

Mike Posner (@MikePosner) is a musician, poet, record producer, and singer-songwriter responsible for hits like Cooler Than Me and I Took a Pill in Ibiza. What We Discuss with Mike Posner: Can two grown men who went to rival high schools as teenagers make nice on a podcast? How experiencing fame and fortune forced Mike Posner to reexamine his values -- and why he's glad it happened to him early in life. How Mike's lifestyle changed from a focus on fame, money, and materialism to one centered around self-care, creativity, and motivation. Why Mike looks at success and failure as waves that tend to follow one another -- not states of guaranteed permanence. Is Mike walking from sea to shining sea on his own two feet in an effort to prove that this Groves Falcon is way better than any Seaholm Maple could ever be? And much more... Sign up for Six-Minute Networking -- our free networking and relationship development mini course -- at jordanharbinger.com/course! Like this show? Please leave us a review here -- even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so we can thank you personally! Full show notes and resources can be found here. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. As always, I'm here with my producer, Jason DePhilippo. I've always wondered what it's like to hit widespread fame and fortune early on in life. And today's guest, Mike Posner, has done just that. He's written hits such as I took a pill in Ibiza, which has billions of plays on various platforms. He's also written for a lot of other artists like Maroon 5, Justin Bieber, Snoop Dog, Avichy. But fame has had an interesting effect on Mike. Once he got it, he realized. he didn't need it, and he ended up in a little bit of a funk that motivated him to change his entire life from how he lived to what he valued, and perhaps most importantly, what he didn't value any longer. This is an episode that spans from fame, money, and materialism to self-care, creativity, and motivation, with a few crazy stories thrown in for good measure. I really enjoyed meeting Mike. He's from my hometown, so we grew up in the exact same area, and getting to know him better was really a pleasure, and I think you'll enjoy this inside look at an industry, and insight into a human as well.

If you're wondering how I managed to book all of these amazing great guests, manage my circle of friends, manage my circle of business contacts. I've got systems, I've got tiny habits, I've got consistency, and I've hacked this system.

I want to teach you how to do it for free. Check out our six-minute networking course. It replaces level one, by the way. That's over at jordanharbinger.com slash course. Now, enjoy this conversation with Mike Posner. So I was going to ask you about how your walk is going, but you're here with a freaking boot on, man. Yeah, I got the boot on. So my walk is supposed to start today is February 14th.

Right. Valentine's Day. Happy Valentine's Day. Thank you. And my walk was supposed to start March 1st. But I did two things. I broke my pinky toe. And I have a, what's called, stress reaction. It's like the precursor to a stress fracture. Oh, man. It was called my second metatursal. Um, okay. So is that a fancy word for toe? No, it's like in the middle of the foot. Oh, that sounds worse. You know, there's the bones that go back through the foot through each one.

Those are, those are. Yikes, like in the instep. Yeah, basically it's, you know, it's not like a huge deal, but I'm like a great foot doctrine. You know, you can do the walk and I'm going to do the walk, but I'm going to let this heal first. I think that's a good move. Yeah, it's not a sprint. So I look at it as my first opportunity to give up and there will be many more. like this would be a great excuse.

Like, hey, you know, it just wasn't meant to be. Yeah. My foot is hurt. But, you know, I just have to move my start date back a little bit. I think that's, I mean, look, I've walked 10 or 20 miles in a day a couple of times. You're going to do that, what, every day for how long is it going to take? It'll take eight, nine months, ish, but there's no real way to tell. Because he's walking, you're walking across the whole United States.

Yeah. From Asbury Park, New Jersey, the Atlantic Ocean to Venice Beach, California. California, the Pacific Ocean. Are you going to like splash ocean water on your face in the beginning and splash ocean water on your face at the end? Definitely at the end I will be doing a full submergence. The beginning will see how cold it is. But definitely at least my feet. Yeah, good call.

Wow. That's actually one of the big reasons we picked that exact place because you can actually get in the water. Oh, good idea. Yeah. You don't want to just be like, oh, there's water down there, but I'm on railing. Yeah. I almost did the whole U.S. Wow. That's going to be, yeah, that would be, like, oh, except for this, like, three-foot stretch.

It's like, oh, sorry, you're disqualified. Didn't quite make it. Yeah, that's inspiring, and it reminds me of, along with your beard and facial hair, Forrest Gump, right? Is that a coincidence, the facial hair and the walk? I don't know. Obviously, we had this hair, facial hair before, I think, I decided to do the walk. You know, it's like, it's funny, like eight out of ten people that I talk about, the walk with, they go, oh, like Forrest Go. Like you said, it's the first thing to come to mind

because the movie's so great and it's such a iconic scene from an iconic movie. And the other day, I was at a party, like a New Year's-ish party with some friends. It's like a nice part people are passing guitar around singing, everyone's listening, you know, no one's drunk.

And friends like, you got to meet so and so. This is Mike Paul. You have to walk across America. Put my hand out. I look up. It's Tom Hanks. No kidding. Tom Hanks, man. Wow.

So he goes, you're about to do it walking. He says, where are you going to start? I'm starting at Asbury Park, New Jersey. He goes, that's just great. That's great. Wow. That's a very Tom Hanks thing to do. I felt like Forrest Gump has blessed my walk.

Yeah. It's destined for success now. I think that's probably true. That's a pretty incredible story. Tom Hanks seems like one of those guys where you want him. It actually must be a lot of pressure for him. Because if he's ever in a bad mood, like, you can't leave the house. You're Tom Hanks, man.

You got to, we got to be on your game at all times. Yeah. He's even really nice as expected. That's what, I mean, he has to be, right? What if he's just like, don't tell me about your walk? I'm not interested. Oh, man, that's not something. Your contention is that part of the time he's out there being nice, he really feels mean inside?

No, my contention is that he probably feels pressure to always be that way, which maybe is really easy for him. but if he ever wakes up and goes, oh, man, I just stub my toe on this table. I better get over it before I try to go to Starbucks because I don't want to walk in there and be like... That's a good pressure to have, though. It is, yeah.

Does it feel inauthentic, though? Something I'll never know until I interview Tom Hanks. By the way, happy birthday. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you. My birthday's next week. Congratulations.

We went to the same... Grow up in the same town. Adjacent high school's adjacent birthday weeks. Something going on here. I haven't put my finger on it. It's been fun. Rival High School. That's right.

Rival High School. Not just adjacent. That's right. Rival High School. Did you play sports? I vehemently hate your high school. Still. That's not true.

No. There is a little part of me that hates it. I understand that. I mean, I understand. There was a big rival. It is, man. The parking lot looks like a Mercedes dealership. All the kids I went to school with are like very, not all.

Many were very, like, wealthy. They clearly don't have to work right. now. They went to school for something and they're just living in their parents' other house in Chicago. Hate C-home. Man. It has been... Love you. Shout out Maple Leaf. That's right. Love you guys. Shout out of the Naples. What are the gross? What's your mascot from? Falcons. Falcons. That's cool than the Maple Leaf. I will give you that. It's been cool watching your career for a long time. Thank you. Yeah. Because you're one of the, not a lot of famous people come out of Birmingham, Michigan. Although...

I didn't come out of Birmingham, Michigan, no. You didn't. Not came out of South. Southfield, Michigan. Oh, okay. So different. You came out. It's pretty different. I came out of Troy. You came out of Troy.

Gotcha. Like insane compost. My school was in Birmingham schools. Yeah. Yeah. That's actually why we moved to where we moved. Because there's a little pocket of Southfield, which demographically is much closer to Detroit.

It's a middle class sort of city. It's, I think, 78% African-American. Wow. And there's a little pocket of it that is in Birmingham School District. And my mom, like, wrote the state and found this place. So the properties are a little cheaper there. But they still got these great schools that we were in the district of. Like, she kind of found a little...

My parents, same thing with Troy. Having hits in getting success is one thing. You've had this... I'll say a more complete experience in some ways, I feel like, because you had a roller coaster. I mean, you didn't call it a roller coaster in one of your songs. you've had a roller coaster, which I think most people who've had success do have, but you actually seem to have learned from this where I think a lot of people would not have tried

or would have just been depressed about it. And I was really struck by one of your most recent hits, which many people have heard of, I took a pill in Ibiza because this dance remix of it is so hype and happy, but then you listen to the lyrics and you're like, wait a second, this is not a super hype and happy song. So ironically, and what I really like a really like, about it was a lot of Instagrammy stuff, a lot of entrepreneur stuff, a lot of business stuff, or even just song stuff is like, I'm killing it, I'm winner, it's all positivity, it's all

optimism. And the lyrics stick out for that reason. Of course, I took a pill and a Biza to show of Ichie, I was cool. It seems like we do a lot to look cool. Like, we do a lot to show other people that were really great. And the whole culture seems to be like this now with Instagram and social media and we put ourselves at risk, like our image is everything. And I think that might come from fear, because I have this at some level where like, oh, if people know who you really are, they wouldn't want you to be at this party or like they wouldn't want, maybe they wouldn't want you to hang out with Tom Hanks and play the guitar. Do you have that fear in the back of your head? Is that where these lyrics kind of come from? This sort of imposter's syndrome. Imposter syndrome?

Not so much. Not so much. Any more. Any more. Yeah. Gotcha. younger definitely. I guess you have your first in the music industry, you have your first, like, big hit. You go, wow. And for me, it was my first single was a big hit. So I was like, oh, this is. This isn't that hard.

This is what happens when I put out singles. Whatever my mom goes, you know, most people are, I go, yeah, but that was them. Look at me. Yeah. I'm batting a thousand. You don't get it. And of course, so then you have your first way.

of crash and you think it's all over. And everyone called me at one hit wonder, which I was at the time. I had one hit. So then I just sort of wrote about, I thought that was interesting. Like you mentioned, this sort of rise, our successes are all very well documented.

So I wanted to document the downfall. I thought that was interesting to me. So I wrote about it and then in an impossibly ironic situation And the writing of this caused my next wave. And that's when I realized, oh, that's what my job is to ride these waves. And that's sort of what life is too, you know, right?

It goes up and down. And, yeah, you just sort of realize when you're having a huge success, you know that a failure is bound to follow this at some point. and when in the middle of a failure, a success is bound to follow it at some point. They're like, they're tied to one another. They're actually two different things. I think it takes people at least one crash to realize that, right? Because I assume when did your first hit drop, like when you were like 20?

2010. See, I think I was 22. Oh, man. That amount of... Oh, man. Because I'm thinking, you worked hard. I mean, I'm trying to cheapen that. But, like, most people or usually have, like, more of a struggle on the uphill so that when that comes, although I'm not sure if that's even better, right?

Like, but I do know one thing for sure. The amount of fame at that age is not a drug that most of us can handle, I think. And I say that we're drug very deliberately because it's, seems like any kid, because at that point, you were still definitely a kid. I mean, you were one year into being able to legally go to the bars where you were probably in the clubs where you're playing this stuff. That just must go straight to your head. Yeah, I thought, I thought I was the man, for sure. I mean, you were. Yeah. But like, you probably didn't think, oh, there's a cliff somewhere. You just thought it's all up from here. My self-identity got very much wrapped up in being popular

being the man, you know, being somewhat famous. And what happened was, as I put out more music, none of my subsequent songs replicated the success of my first hit. And so what happened was these words that I self-identified with started to not be true. Like I was becoming less famous. I was becoming less the man each month. You know, I was getting recognized less and less and less. And I had to figure out, well, those things aren't actually me, those words.

I mean, look, reality is like hit me in the face. So who am I? What am I? And it was at the time, one of the best things ever happened to me because I had got to go a lot deeper with myself. Well, 2020 hindsight, I assume in the moment it sucked, right? It was tough to, yeah. It felt like I didn't know what was going on.

It was confusing? Very much stuff. How do you measure it? You said you were getting less and less popular and people were recognizing you less and less. Is that kind of the measurement that you had in your head? Like, oh, the more people that are like, oh, dude, it's my poser. Is that like your, it's up?

And then when that happens, like, yeah. And, you know, at the time we were looking at charts, and sales of music and all the obvious pitfalls, like followers on social media, that kind of thing, just being, you know, deep in it. All external stuff you can't control. When I was freaking out earlier last year, because I had a bunch of business stuff go down, and our mutual friend Noah Kagan goes, hey man, focus on the stuff that you can control because that external stuff, you can't control that.

It's just going to control you. and I was like, I know that. And then I went home and I was like, that was amazing. That is so wise. Yeah, because it's a difference between knowing it and doing it. Yeah, well, yeah, that's story my entire life, of course. Everyone's, read a self-help book? Got it, no problem.

Applies self-help book? Well, not really. But, like, you, when you have charts that show, hey, you're here, and, like, your agent answers your phone really quickly in the beginning. And then, like, I don't know, less quickly later on. Or, like, they call you, and they're like, hey, man. we got to put something else out there. And you're like, oh, why do I have to do that?

Well, you know, we want to stay relevant. Oh, crap, am I becoming irrelevant? Like, I just couldn't handle that at age 22, and I don't think anybody can. Well, if you found yourself in it, you'd handle it, you know. In hindsight, I feel really blessed to have had that experience at that age, and I'll tell you why. Before that, I thought success,

popularity, attention from the opposite sex. I thought these things were going to make my experience of life better. And so I said about acquiring them, and I was pretty good at acquiring them. And what happened was, you know, I'm 22, and I get all that stuff, and I realize I'm 0% happier. I'm 0% more comfortable in my own skin. I'm zero percent more secure. So if it's not that stuff, then what? And so I feel like my audience has gifted me the opportunity to explore what life's

about when you stop chasing shiny stuff. And that's what I feel my job is. You know, go ask that question, go to the monastery, spend some time in solitude, come back and report back. That's what I feel my job is. You're listening to The Jordan Harbinger Show. We'll be right back after this. Don't forget we have a worksheet for today's episode so you can make sure you

solidify your understanding of the key takeaways from Mike Posner. That link is in the show notes at Jordan Harbinger.com slash podcast. Thanks for listening and supporting the show. To learn more about our sponsors and get links to all the great discounts you just heard, visit Jordan Harbinger.com slash deals. If you'd like some tips on how to subscribe to the show, just go to Jordan Harbinger.com slash subscribe. Now back to our show with Mike Posner.

Speaking of trappings of success, though, you did achieve. all these goals of like fame, cash, and they didn't make you feel the same way. And I thought it was funny. I can't remember where I heard this. But I guess you asked your uncle who's like a big finance guy. Like, hey. How did you hear this? I don't remember where I heard this. Maybe Alex Benayan, possibly. And he says, he's like, yeah, I talked to his uncle and you're like, hey, I made all this money.

I'm famous now. And you know anyone who can help me? And your uncle was like, I don't know anyone who deals in this small of amount of money. He's a hedge fund manager. So he's like, get out of here with your meager seven figures. He, he's one of my mentors and an amazing person that, that I really look up to it. But yeah, I got like my first few checks. I'd made whatever it was. Yeah.

I called him up. He was a lot of money for a senior in college. And I knew, you know, my uncle is this very successful and is very successful investor. So I said, you know, what can I, can you help me, like, invest this or maybe? manage this stuff and he goes he wasn't being mean he's like i honestly don't know anyone that deals in that low of amounts that's so funny it's so like accidentally insulting right but it but it wasn't accidentally it was accidentally humbling yeah yeah it put it was a good thing for 22 year old me to hear like okay relax dude yeah like you're not the huge calm down you're not the first guy to

get a significant yeah ever in the world you know that is humbling but i think i'm that same phenomenon, that same phenomenon of achieving all these goals and finding out they don't make you happier, a lot of Olympic medalists and athletes that I have on the show, they have this same problem. And I don't know if there's a name for this phenomenon, but it's basically like, you go up and you reach this apex, you win a gold medal in, I don't know, luge, whatever. And you're like, I'm the best at this in the world. Hey, look, I picked something random, right? So you're the best in the whole world. And then you're like, oh, wait, I haven't. Luzer is a sport they offer. her at Seahom.

It is. Yeah. It's very fancy. We loogged down the hill into the footballs. I'm sorry. I interrupted you. It's okay. Mediocre joke.

For your mediocre joke. You know what? It's fine. It'll be a clip. Then you'll be, in 20 years, you'll be like, why did I do that? Everything was on the... Or I'll be like, yeah. So glad.

That one landed. That one landed. These athletes, they still, they haven't thought past this point, right? Like, you get to that point. It's like a big exam. Remember having huge exams in college? You get done with that exam. and you're like, oh, what do I do right now?

I haven't thought, like my world calendar ended at this test. And now I'm, I guess I'll have a beer with my friends. Oh, wait, I have the flu. How long have I had the flu? I'm going to go to sleep. Did it ever happen to you? That happened to me like every finals period. You realize you were sick after?

Yeah, I realized I was sick after. And I was like, oh, crap, I don't want to go drinking. I want to go to sleep. Like, I'm making myself sick. And so the mystique of fame and fortune, it seems like it wears off. Like you got it and you were just like, oh, crap. The value I thought these things had doesn't exist. Yeah, and then a party goes, well, maybe you just didn't get enough.

Maybe two hit songs. Right. Maybe, you know. Yeah, I think it just takes a little awareness to step off of that hamster wheel. It's tough, though, because I think people will, and I'm sure this happened to you, tell me if I'm wrong. Well, I'm like, you know, money won't buy you happiness. And you're like, you know what, though? It probably will if I just make some more of it.

Like, I'll make more than you did, and it'll work for me. Yeah, I thought that my whole life. My parents always told me that, and I would nod and smile. In my head, I'd say, you know, you just didn't make enough. Watch me go. Right. So I feel like that's what I meant when I said earlier, like, earlier than my fans, my audience, my listeners, whatever you want to call it, have gifted me this opportunity because collectively they gave me all this money.

And that's when I learned that lesson. learn it myself by actually going and making money and then finding out, oh, whoa, that cliche is actually a cliche for a reason. I know. Because it's true. Because it's tough to say it when you don't have money. Like, oh, money doesn't buy you happiness. It just sounds like sour grapes.

Well, what happens, I believe, is it's easy to group all of our woes and attribute them their source to being, hey, I don't have enough money. Sure. So in reality, it's some percentage of our woes, right? that resolved from not having enough money. But then when we make the money, we realize, oh, there's another percentage of these things that weren't related to that at all.

And for me, that was a lesson I hadn't learned on my own. Right. It's like your boat's sinking, and you're like, well, the problem is there's too much water in the boat. So you start bailing the water out, and this is, you know, the earning of money. And you're just like, man, I still have the same problem. and someone's like, hey, you should probably plug that hole in the boat. You know, like, stop. I'm bailing the water out of the boat here.

Don't interrupt me. And then you finally get as much of it out as you can, and you see it's rushing in through the hole. And then you go, oh, shoot, this is going to keep happening, no matter how much I do this, unless I fix this other thing. And that other thing is almost always uglier, right? It's like your outlook on life, untreated mental illness or depression or some, other thing that you neglected in the pursuit of money that you've made worse over time. Now I see you're trying to make up for the money thing with facial hair, which is,

I mean, how that strategy goes. Feels pretty promising. It's so far as good, right? Yeah. But like the, what about the fame? Like that must have gone. Well, look, the money thing, maybe not, but this sort of stardom, that's even more rare than money.

It's more valuable. I'm going to use that instead. That's got to feel good temporarily as well. It does. still does. It still does. Yeah, of course. That's good. That's honest. I like that. Look, there's a part of me that loves being liked, loves being loved by other people, and he tells me I'm great, it feels good. Let's be honest. That's very human, though. Okay. I think. I think, too. I mean, in my very unqualified opinion, as a human. I think probably, too. Like you said earlier, you

get to separate, you know, it's external, you know, and that can come and go. You're not in control of that. So you want to get too attached to that kind of thing. because it ebbs and flows. Fame and disrepute. You can enjoy that stuff, right? But I think it's the attachment to that stuff that causes a problem. Like, it's not the fame that causes people

to feel depressed about something. It's the attachment to the fame, and then when that dwindles, that caused the problem. And I just feel like I'm talking now, like, as some sort of Zen monk in a monastery, right? It's the attachment to the thing, not the thing itself. But it seems like you found,

possibly you found that out in some way, because I read that you began to feel uncomfortable with, like, being in the spotlight, and you felt some depression come on. But was it that you felt uncomfortable being in the spotlight, or was it that you felt uncomfortable with the spotlight dwindling slowly? Probably a little of both, you know. It shift happened for me. I remember I spent a week with Justin Bieber.

I was writing with him at the time. I wrote a song for him, and then we were messing around the studio. And before that, I used to be jealous of the people that were more famous than me. Yeah. It used to bother me. You know, friends with Big Sean, I came up, Detroit. Yeah. And we walked in room, and people would always recognize him.

My music was as popular as some of these other guys, but I wasn't. Right. So you felt a little cheated by that? I felt insecure about it. Like, something's wrong with me. Why? And so I spent this week with Justin and I went, I got to see what that was actually really like. What was that like?

Insane. You know, like, we're at a hotel and there's 500 to a thousand young girls outside of the hotel 24 hours a day. There's paparazzi following everywhere. There's fake cars that we'd send out, you know, like we'd send a May back out this way. and then he'd get in like a normal car to go out the back door. It's just crazy. That's nuts. It's just nuts.

And I thought, do I really want that? Is that what I'm chasing after? It is sort of like, no, actually, I kind of have it perfect right now, which is my music's pretty darn popular. Most people know my most popular songs. But when I walk in a room, most people don't. no me or my face. Yeah, the upside to the fame seems pretty lame, or not lame, seems pretty tough to compare to the downside, right?

Like, it's sure, getting into like a cool restaurant and not having to wait is probably really great. Getting an upgrade on a flight, I don't know. I don't know what happens with super famous people, being able to date a bunch. But then you find one person, then you're like, okay, now it's just a pain that all these people are chasing you to try to hook up with you.

And then other times you just want to go to Starbucks and sit down and, like, check your phone. because you're waiting for a friend and people are like, dude, hey, so you can't do that anymore. Hey, right? You can't do that anymore. It's like Bieber, we have a couple of mutual friends,

including, in fact, you probably know some of these people too, actually. And they'll go and hang out with them and stuff like that. And they very rarely tell me how great it is. They usually tell me how annoying the little things are. Like, oh, yeah, we were stuck in the hotel for an extra 90 minutes. We couldn't leave. Like, it's cool once. second, third, three hundredth time, probably more, less cool than the first few.

Like, it's validating and that it's just really irritating. And I can see writing music for other artists and being adjacent to that being kind of a cool thing, because you can kind of like peek your head through the curtain whenever you want, and then you can go, yeah, that's still there? Cool. I'm going to be over here hanging out with my friends and not getting trampled by preteen fans. Yeah. Did you take a break from writing music at any point?

Or did you just shift immediately to writing for other people? I never took a break, and I never stopped writing for myself either. What happened was my popularity dwindled, and two of my albums were a shell. That's what we call the music industry when you're signed to a record label, and they can't really justify spending the marketing dollars to, put your album out. So they hold on to you just in case something crazy happens, like you put some out and it blows up randomly.

But they have no plans of releasing your album. So do they own it and you can't even use it? Correct. Oh, that's the worst. I made two albums like that. So it's sort of a gap in my career. I put an album out of 2010. The next one was 2016.

I made two albums in there that never came out. But I never stopped making music. You can't even play those songs for, or can you? Yeah, I can play. Oh, that's good. I can't. But you just can't sell the CD or the single. I don't want, they own the actual master recording.

At least you can play them. I'd feel so violated somehow if I couldn't do what I wanted with something that I created. Yeah. Well, you know, I signed the contract. Of course. It's not unfair. It's kind of just a bummer. Yeah, so we work on getting the rights to them.

Yeah, I'm sure. It'll work out. You're listening to the Jordan Harbinger show with our guest, Mike Posner. We'll be right back after this. Thanks for listening and supporting the show. Your support of our advertisers really does keep us on the air, and that's no joke. To learn more and get links to all the great discounts you just heard, visit jordanharbinger.com slash deals. And don't forget the worksheet for today's episode.

That link is in the show notes at jordanharbinger.com slash podcast. And if you're listening to us on the Overcast player on iOS, please click that little star button next to the episode. it really helps us out. And now for the conclusion of our episode with Mike Posner. Did you find it in some ways more maybe artistically pure to write for other musicians instead of being the center of the performance spotlight? Because then you can kind of do whatever you want. No, I felt the opposite.

Really? Yeah, because I'm a writer. You know, when people see me, I'm always interacting with someone else in some capacity. Even if I'm doing a post, I'm speaking out to my followers. But what I think they don't realize about me and 90% of artists is 90% of our time is alone. I spend a heck of a lot of time alone in solitude writing. That's what I do. I write.

And what happens is when you're exclusively writing for other artists, In order for your work to come out, another person, the artist, has to connect with what you wrote in an almost like magical, deep way that it feels to them like they wrote it in some way. Like it's their song. For me, that's like 1% of what I write. So now I'm sitting here with 99 songs out of 100 that aren't going to come out. So artistically, there's nothing more pure than me being the artist and me being like, hey, this is what I want to create, this is it. I'm doing this all right. I want to say this word here, not that one.

I want this reverb to be up 3db right here. That's the most pure expression for me. When I write for other people, it's beautiful too because even with my own stuff, you know, if I write 50 songs for an album, only 10 go on the album. So it's not bad. It's just different. Often they'll change some words to personalize it to them. You know, so it's not, it gets filtered through them, basically. I know that you originally wanted to be a rapper from like age, what, 8 to 18.

Tell me about that. I'm imagining like white little bow wow at that point in your life. That actually had a fantasy because it was so interesting to say that name. At that time, there was this mini movement. of, or many wave, I want to say movement, the mini wave of kid rappers that were really successful at the time. So I think I was around the same age as Little Bow Well, maybe he was a few years older than me.

He was this famous rapper. And I thought, I'm as good as him. At rapping. At rapping. And there's hip-hop, so you always think you're the best. Right. And there's no white one of these kid rappers. Right.

And you didn't think like... I thought it was going to be me. Yeah. I thought it was going to be me. I thought it was going to be 13, 14 and blow up. What was your... Do you ever, like, a rap name? Yeah.

I think my first, first rap name, like, didn't even... I don't even think I released a song with this. It was more just like, I wanted to be called it. It was acrimony. Oh, that's pretty good. And then... Did it end, like, an I, though, and some fancy... No.

No. Why? Standard spelling. Standard spelling. And then I went by Mike P. For a little while. Very creative. And then in high school I just made a decision that I think was wise beyond my years,

which was that I don't want to make music that is a character making music. I wondered about that. At that time, I knew that I didn't want there to be this separation between who I am as an artist and who I am as a human. To me, they're the same thing. And I'm always trying to keep them as close as possible. And I still stand by that decision. 15-year-old Mike. It's a good call there.

I think that is wise because I always wonder about that. You know, when you meet somebody that, an actor is one thing. I get it. That is the art, right, to become somebody else for a short period of time. But I do wonder about music and writing. It's like, how do you then, because to be like white rapper from Southfield, You almost have to talk a little different than you would have normally the way that you were raised. You don't talk like the people around you.

You maybe don't think the same way you're talking about things that maybe I've experienced with. And people do criticize rappers a lot of the time because a lot of, you'll find out, remember when maybe you don't, vanilla ice, we found out he was like from a farm and everyone was like, this guy is a fake. Like this fake, forget it. Yeah, I heard about it. Yeah, it's a little before your time. I just totally dated myself here.

Backtrack, but yeah, I know of it. Yeah, and it seems inauthentic. There's something about being inauthentic in that way that people find this tasteful. Well, inauthenticity matters in hip-hop. If you say something in a song, it turns out not to be true. And most of my songs, some of my songs that are, like, blatantly fictional, that are, like, story songs.

But for the most part, that authenticity, even though some of my music, is not in the genre of hip hop. I try to bring that authenticity with me wherever I go, you know, musically. Yeah. Okay, so you're still rapping at 15, 16, whatever. Are you doing, like, I'm imagining you with, like, at Eminem era

going to these, like, rap battles. Does that really exist? Is that a thing that's real? Yeah, I battle all the time. Really? In high school. They're probably, like, I don't know, five to ten kids that thought they were good rappers. So I had to battle all of them.

Are these kids like at Groves in Birmingham? Yeah. Okay. But Groves is different than Seahom though. Oh, yeah. And there's a lot of kids that go to Groves that don't live in Birmingham or Southfield. That's true. A lot of them live in Detroit because it's a good school.

It's all right. A lot of them have like a cousin or. that lives in Southfield and they use their address. Oh, interesting. When I went to Groves, we had a trailer park in our district. We also had really wealthy neighborhoods

in our district. That's why Groves was so amazing to me. I'm very proud that I went there because we had really wealthy kids there. We had trailer park kids there. We had kids from Detroit that were faking their address to go there. So, yeah, it was a good mix of kids.

Some of them were from Southfield, some of them were in the trailer park, Some of them, I'm talking about the rappers now, some of them live in Detroit. And I was the best one. I beat everyone. Now someone else might have a different version of that, but they're wrong.

You know. And so, yeah, we'd wrap on to it. A lot of times during the football games, actually. Oh, okay. During the football games, they always have a battle under the bleachers. That seems an appropriate place to have a wrap out. Maybe about, I don't know, 30, 40 people in a circle around me

and another person, and I'd trash them. Nice. And his freestyle, you didn't write it beforehand? Correct. Oh, wow. Yeah, I know that I fell in love with freestyle. And so you practice at home. We had Napster out on the computer at home.

And so I could type in wherever my favorite hip-hop songs were at the time, I could type in instrumental. You could download just the beats. I just sit there, practice rapping, freestyle all the time. I got really good at it. I don't practice anymore, so I'm not as good at it now. But, yeah, it was like a big thing. It's a big deal for me at the time.

And then how did you sort of break out of wrapping in your high school under the bleachers, literally, to looking at the music industry and going, okay, this is a real thing that I'm going to do? Well, that's summer. After my senior year, I got a job at the radio station downtown. It's called Hot 1027. Of course. Used to be a metal station.

That's right. Yeah. And they had a thing on that station called Freestyle Friday, which was every Friday, rappers from Detroit could go on the air in freestyle. And you had to either know someone or you had to battle your way in. So there'd be battles in the lobby and the winter get to go on the radio. Now, I worked there and the host had heard me freestyle, and they let me go right in the booth. And I went there and I killed it.

And there was another guy in there named Pat Piff, who was my buddy. And there was a third guy who was his buddy named Sean. And he became Big Sean. And so I met Big Sean at the radio station and we became buddies. I started doing beats for him, doing hooks for him, writing songs. Then he got signed by Kanye West. And here was this guy that I freest out. with, you know, regularly, we wrapped together.

I always thought, like I said, hip-hop, I always thought it was better than him. I would say that if he was here, too. I thought it was better than everybody. I'm sure he thought the opposite. Yeah, he's probably like, and that's why. And so here's my buddy who I think I'm better

than he got a record deal. So suddenly this thing that felt really far away felt very probable for me. So it was inspiring. You weren't pissed off that he got it you were like not encouraged by this i go i'm next yeah it whoa of course watch me go you know and he helped me too he helped me you know i kept developing my sound and that's when i started to sing

i started to sing my raps oh okay which i thought was why like were you just kind of like screwing around thinking well i finished i finished um high school i went to college in north carolina i went to duke University, weather was a little different. I started playing around with different sounds. And I just thought it would be cool. Like, I liked hip hop music so much. Like is not the way where I was in love with hip hop music so much. I was such a student of MCs.

And I thought I'd never heard someone sing with a complex rhyme style that I like hearing at MC rap with. let me sing the way I want to hear a singer sing as a rap fan as a hip hop fan so my first hit song we talked about earlier

cooler than me has a complex rhyme scheme it goes you got designer shades just to hide your face so not just shades and face rhyme but hide your and designer rhyme as well

this multi-syllabic rhyme and that to me was just cool you know at the time I never heard a singer do that so that was like my whole style I was playing around with. And that was the first time.

By that time, you know, I'm 20, and I've been making music 12 years. And that sound I stumbled upon was, without a doubt, influenced by a myriad of artists that came before me. But it was unmistakably my own. And I knew it. And everyone around me knew it right away. You know, it's like, it just all changed when I started doing that. because it was my own thing. So you kind of went, wait a minute,

I've got my own style, I've got to lean into this. Yeah. Yeah, that's cool. Yeah, I recorded that song in my dorm room, you know, on software that I stole off the internet on a $200 microphone. Do you still have your first microphone? I don't think so.

Oh, actually, I think I gave it away to someone. And I said I had MySpace put it out. And, you know, I didn't go, yeah. God. I didn't go to parties because I lived in the dorm. Yeah. It was loud. All day is loud kids going out, you know.

And so the only time I could record was from 1130 to 2.30 when everyone else went out to the bar. Oh, right. So I was, or to party, whatever. So I stay there. And my friends would come back and go, man, we were at the party. And that song came on. And everyone knew the words. Your song?

Yeah. Hell yeah. I go, what? You know? And then my mom calls, she somehow, someone sent it to her. She goes,

I like that song, cooler than me. Mind you, my mom, always supportive, sure. But real, never told me

she liked one of my songs before. Never. No. So no, like, oh, honey, this is really good. No,

it's just, none of that. Wow. But, you know, support, like paying for lessons. Yeah.

Okay. You know, but she's just honest. She's never tell me she likes something. She doesn't. She said that. And then Sean called me. He goes, that, by this time, he's hanging out with, like, Pharrell and Kanye and Jay-Z. And he calls and goes, that cool to me. Sounds like a hit song to me. I go, what does that even mean? You know, I'm at my dorm room. And so, you're still, that's so crazy. You're, like, in your dorm room waiting for people to leave so you can record because you don't have a studio. Meanwhile, your friends are all out at parties listening to your music that's playing on the radio. And you're like, why won't people just be quick? quiet. Trying to write music.

And then your buddy calls and is like, I'm with Kanye, West, Jay, Z, and Farrell, and we like your music too. And you're just like, people keep calling me. Turn my phone off. It's surreal. It was, yeah. Yeah. It was. Speaking of rhyming, I know

and I took a pill on a Beezza, it's you rhyme girls and shit. I spent my money on girls and shoes, and I thought, why didn't he say girls and booze? That seems like an easier rhyme. And then I thought, wait a minute, maybe it's true. Maybe you did actually spend a lot of money on shoes. Did you have like a six-year-flo?

You don't seem like the type to have a lot of shoes. Well, anymore. Okay. But I had a crazy, crazy. That was my thing. Anytime I went to, if I made money on the road, I had a deal that I could go to flight club when I got home. What is that?

It's like a sneaker boutique with really high-end Jordans and rare shoes. And, yeah, I just had this gargantuan shoe collection. You know, I had shoes I forgot I had. And I just had a day, I was like, I can't justify this. You know, there's people not that far from here who don't have any shoes. And I have like hundreds of pairs. Wow. Yeah.

Yeah. So, you know, I was going through. It was sort of in that period after my first wave, it crashed. And I go, okay, I got this house in the Hollywood Hills. I got this nice car. I got all these shoes. can I be happy without this stuff, you know, or do I need this stuff? I started to feel like, way down by it.

So I bought a van, a conversion van. I still have today. And it has like a buck or bench seats in the back. They hold down to a bed. Baller. And it's like a 93 Dodge. And I just put some, put like the clothes that I actually wear in there and everything else I donated. And I just drove away.

I just drove away And I went to Utah I had some friends out there I hung out in the mountains and brought my guitar and what I realized yeah I couldn't be happy without all that stuff for sure

That's great Wow you stayed so you just What did you do with the shoes? Don't need them So other somebody who didn't have shoes Is wearing like 1994 Michael Jordan pumps or whatever Did those exist? I don't know if those exist

pumps are Reebok Yeah, my bad. This boot is a pump. I saw that. I saw you running pumps right now. Do you hear that? I do. Wow, that's official.

You've got to put a little Michael Jordan logo on there. Too materialist. He'd probably pay me not to put a logo on here. I think that might be true. Yeah. Good revstream. Getting Michael Jordan to subsidize your not using his logo. Listen, Mike, I have a great idea.

I'm getting ready to walk across America. We have a really dingy RV as a support vehicle. I'm thinking you could pay me, three, four mil for us not to put the juror and the logo on there. What do you think? He's like, hold on, let me have my lawyer get in touch about this real quick. Yeah. Yeah, you literally, you had hundreds of pairs of shoes.

Now you have one shoe. The other one's in here. In the backpack, yeah. Waiting for its day in the sun, literally. I actually have a small battalion of shoes I'm bringing on the walk. What kind of shoes are you going to, how many miles is it that you got to walk? 3,000? 3000. Is that just as the crow flies or is that the actual route?

No, that's the actual route. Oh, that's a lot of miles. So you're going to go through how many pairs of... As the crow flies is shorter, but I'm going up to Detroit. Oh, you are? That's awesome. Which is a little out of the way, but worth it. A little bit. Yeah, worth it. To walk past Groves, put some gum under a desk and keep walking. I think it might be summertime on there. But I want to go to a lot of schools, man. play and stuff.

Sure. That'll be awesome. See Home would gladly have you. I'd go to Seahom, man. I feel like they need me to come through. They do. I need a reality check. Yeah. Last I was there anyway. But you're going to go through like 20 pairs. No, more. Pairs of shoes, right? Do you know?

Have you calculated? No. Your aide de camp is going to be like, hey, man, you've got to change these shoes. These things are ratty or disgusting or holes in them or whatever. My aide de camp is a soldier, man. He ran 100 miles just for fun. That's... It wasn't a race.

Dang. He just did it. Just to see if he could. Isn't that crazy? That is literally crazy. Yeah. That's like those Death Valley Ultramarathons type things. Jeez, that's a whole different show. Well, anyways, man, I'm wearing the ultras right now,

which are cool because there's zero drop, which means that the heel is the same pitch as the toe. There's not a high heel. Many running shoes have a high heel, and they're sort of a... a theory that that may not be the best thing for one's Achilles and calves and overall health. I want to get back to the walk because I have a lot of questions about it. I think it is exciting, but I am curious, how did you end up getting your first offer

for like a record deal? Like, how did that happen? Because you sort of skipped like, I was doing music in my dorm room. And then the song came on the radio. I was like, well, wait a minute. Yeah. Somebody picked it up. Well, I'm playing this.

So I put this stuff out on MySpace. And what I did was I made a mixtape. which what is a mix tape a mixtape a mixtape is like a free album it often would include and it's a medium in hip-hop culture you know there's albums and there's mixtapes mix tapes are free first of all and they often include remixes of other people's songs um or using another artist instrumental like i was doing when i was a kid and and rapping your your own stuff on top of that so i I made a mix tape, and I had the king of mixtapes, one of the kings of mixtapes, Don Cannon, hosts my mixtape.

And at the time, when you made a mixtape, if you were an MC, you would put on this website called datpiff.com. Oh, I feel like I've heard of that. Yeah. And, you know, it would be on certain blogs, and there would always be a Z-Share link, which was like a file hosting company. Sure.

You'd click it, and Z-Share was sort of like, riddled with ads. It was very hard to navigate. There'd be a thing that said, like, download here, and you'd click in. It was actually an ad, a pop-up would come up. And you have to, like, find and right-click the right thing and do, like, save target ad. You know, it's kind of a nightmare.

Like, people who were really into hip-hop could easily navigate that, and they did it on a daily basis. But I realized, hey, my friends would tell me all these, like, kind of girls at Duke who are in more of the sea home demographic are loving this song too so these people like my music they're not going to datpiff.com and they're they ain't clicking in a z-share link so I found this loophole

with iTunes U iTunes U. iTunes U set up for professors to put up their lectures. Yeah it's an educational platform essentially you know so if you go to another school and you want to hear a lecture from this professor at Duke, you can go on there and you can hear their lecture and it's free. So I call up the guy who runs iTunes U for Duke, and he's from Southfield, Michigan, Todd Stably. So I wasn't the first person to do this, but I was one of the first. And I asked Todd, he said, yeah, man, you're a student here.

We can put it on iTunes U, your mixtape. so I get my mixtape on iTunes you so it's on iTunes it's safe technically yeah

but it's free and it's easy to get from like an iPhone or whatever iPhones like were just coming out yeah okay but people

weren't streaming but they get on their computer and it was free that was the main thing because this was right in the years where pirating was really big

before iTunes I get really caught on and you know, I was pirating music. I remember I was pirating Kanye West music, so I knew if I'm stealing Kanye stuff, ain't nobody paying for my stuff

because no one knows who I am. So, we get on iTunes, you know, I just started a Facebook event and group, and I asked all my friends I went to high school with who were going to different colleges

and all my friends who I went to college with at Duke to invite all their friends. And before I knew it, people at all these different colleges were listening to my stuff. I think just caught on. Wow. And viral success.

You know, before long record labels were contacting me asking for meeting. So I went and I met with, you know, a bunch of different labels at the time. And eventually I met with Jay-Z also. Oh, wow. Tell me about that. That must have been like take a deep breath before you walk in. the door. Yeah, so this story actually goes back.

Before I met with Jay-Z, the summer before, Kanye West was doing the glow-in-the-dark tour, which was an arena tour, and it was amazing. It would change, in my opinion, changed the way hip-hop music is performed forever after that. It was groundbreaking. And he played Detroit in the summer, and Sean got like 25 tickets. And so he invited a bunch of us. you know, we went. Nice.

So we got to see the show. And then I was doing an internship in New York for a record label. And I was just like hustling. I was taking meetings, all these different labels, like trying to sell beats to rappers because I make beats too. And nothing really worked out. And then the summer end, I went back to Michigan. My lease ended on my apartment in New York. And actually, my lease didn't have nothing about it.

But I just went back to Michigan. I was getting ready to pack up. Go back to Michigan. Duke. And Sean called me and goes, hey, I got tickets to glow in the dark at Madison Square Garden tomorrow. Jay-Z's probably going to be there. I can introduce you.

And I go, man, this sounds amazing, but I'm not there anymore. I'm in Michigan now. By the lights! So the phone is just kind of quiet for a little bit. And, you know, I'm in college. I don't have a lot of money. Oh, true. Yeah.

And I was like, man, I should fly back there. And he's like, yeah, you should. So I booked the flight, like you said, it made the obvious decision. I fly there. I go to the will call. I'm like, hey, I have tickets here from Mike Posner. And they check the list. They're like, no tickets here for you.

Oh, no. I'm like, shoot, man. So I'm like, maybe it's on this other list. They're like, no tickets here for you. So I called Sean. I'm like, hey, man, I'm at the will call. so there's no tickets. He's like, all right, just meet me at the studio.

I'm at the studio at Kanye. I'm like, even better. Yeah, upgrade. I get in the cat, go there. I'm with my friend George. Sean meets his downstairs. All these major studios, there's a lounge next to the studio. That's basically there for manager, as friends, to hang out while artists are working.

And so Sean goes, just wait in the lounge. and he goes in the studio. Studio is the next room over. I can hear what they're listening to. I listen in real loud. Kanye is there making his next album, 808's and heartbreak. Sean's, you know,

is other people that are assigned to Kanye playing the music. And then all of a sudden I hear a song that Sean and I did together. I call Who Knows. And I produced it and I sang the hook on it. And I go, I'm going, man, Kanye West is listening. to me right now. And he was the biggest rapper in the world right at that moment.

And I go, if he likes this, does change my life. This would change my life if he likes this song. The song ends. I see everyone walk by the lounge to leave. I'm like, okay, I guess we're leaving. I follow them. Sean's like, yo, Kanye, this is Mike Posen. He made the song, I just played you.

Kanye gives me a pound. And then it's just quiet again. And I built up all this courage and I go, so, man, did you like it? And he looks at me and goes, no. Oh. No.

And it wasn't, I got to say this too, because I love Kanye to this day. It wasn't rude. It was just honest. And I appreciate that. And then he said the coolest, like metaphor I ever heard he said sorry man Sean bumped it you said it I had to spike it

meaning Sean played me the song you asked me if I liked I had to tell you the truth yeah I'm saying like how do you think of that so quick and we get in the elevator all I wanted to do is make more music that's all I wanted to do so you weren't discouraged by that I feel like a lot of people might be like oh I don't have it but you got that far I knew and he said he qualified after he said you know that that song could maybe work for Lupe fiasco, but it's not right for Sean, you know, no. I just felt so inspired.

Yeah, I felt so inspired. I was like, man, I couldn't. I was in the elevator with them, and I just couldn't wait to get out of it and go work more. And I don't know why. I didn't have to, like, gear myself up or, like, listen to David Goggins to, like, change my line. I just wanted to go work more.

Sure. Right away. and I did. And then that's when I worked and I did more songs and I did my mixtape and this is about eight months later. My stuff's starting to catch on and I'm taking all these meetings with different

all the like companies I went to that summer when I was hustling where I was meeting with the lowest A&R and now I'm like in that same building with the CEO or the president and I do all these meetings. It's finals week. I come back. I'm writing this paper for sociology.

I'm behind on. And my manager calls. He's like, hey, man, you got to go back to New York. I'm like, I can't go back to New York, man. What I need to do is finish this paper. I'm behind. Because you got to go back to New York. Jay Z wants to meet you.

Like, Jay Z, you're ruining my academic career, man. I was like, man, don't mess with me. Don't mess with me. I didn't believe it. He said, no, for real. So I didn't tell anyone because I didn't think it was going to happen. Yeah, you thought you were just not going to. I thought I would go there and they would say, hey, man, really sorry, Jay got busy today.

We want you to meet with second in command. You know, here he is. So I didn't tell anyways. Went to the airport, flew the New York. And sure enough, man, they took me in his office. There was Jay Z in the chair. I was like, oh, my gosh. And I took my laptop out.

and I like fumble with the ox chords plug it into his system and I played him cooler than me and he just goes starts nodding his head like he loved it you know and we had this crazy meeting it was like almost two hours long oh wow and I'm about to leave

and I just had this good feeling I was like you know can I play one more song he said yeah so I replugging my laptop I played him who knows the same one the Kanye heard, he started nodding his head and he was like, man, this song's amazing. Don't ever forget to play this.

He was like, I can't believe you almost left without playing this. So I go back to Duke. I'm in the library writing my paper. I check my email. How did you focus after that? Exactly. I'm like, yeah, BSing my way through this paper. In the moment of procrastination, checked my email.

I had an offer from Rock Nation for a record deal. Were you like, I'm not finishing this? Did you finish the paper? Yeah, but it was the only C I ever got in all of my. I'm not surprised because after that, you're like halfway through with the middle paragraph and then you're like, in conclusion, I'm never going to use this. I just got an offer from Jay-Z. I'm leaving the library and I'm never coming back.

Send. I don't know if I could resist doing that. I don't know if I can resist doing that. I resisted doing that, thankfully. But I did get a C and I. It's the only C I ever got. Understandable. Anyways, I ended up signing a different record deal,

and that's how I got a record deal. On the note about remixing in the songs, we were talking about that before, I think it for me, and again, I'm not an artist, so take it with what you will, but I feel like I'd be a little bitter that I took a pill in Abiza,

the remix, has so many more plays. Like, how do you feel about that? Because that has like two billion plays. And your original song, is great and I really like it, but at some point, I don't know, I'd feel a little weird that somebody else who, like, redid some stuff, tweaked some stuff added their different beat that resonated with more people. That would be weird to me. It's not weird to me at all. I'll tell you why. One, like we talked about at length, man, I'm a hip-hop guy. And so much of hip-hop is about

making something new out of something existing, you know, sampling. And, and, you know, And we talked about mixtapes a little bit. On all my mixtapes, I remix other people's songs. I've remixed Adele. I've remixed Beyonce. I've remixed Electric Light Orchestra. I've remixed cold play. I've remixed a bunch of different people's songs over the years,

even before that, you know, most of before that remix. So whenever someone wants to remix my song, it's always a yes. I even take it a step further on all my albums. I release the just the vocal tracks alone. So anyone who wants to can download them and make new music out of it. Remixing is something, sampling is an ethos I believe in. I believe, you know, Andy Warhol should be allowed to, you know, paint the Campbell soup can. And that's art, you know.

So sometimes I'm Andy Warhol, sometimes I'm the Campbell Soup can. I'm cool with that. I believe in remixing. On another level, you know, when you're making art, especially that song in particular, you're taking your own suffering and trying to make some beautiful out of it. Now, you're right, the remix sounds more upbeat and uplifting. So I kind of step back and look at that and go, okay, people are having a good time. Having joy on my suffering. My suffering is turning into joy.

that's a good thing. That's like, there's nothing more you can really ask for as an artist. You know, so I don't feel bitter about it at all. You know, more people have heard the original one because of the remix as well. And, yeah, it's just, it's just, it's possibly ironic, and I think it's cool, man.

I can, I think that's probably a really healthy attitude to have. For me, I think my first reaction would be, oh, man, I want my version to be, be more popular. And then maybe I would, maybe I would process it later and you'd fool about it. His songs are so rare, though, you know, at least in my experience, you know, I write thousands of songs and I've had, now I've had six hit songs. That's a lot.

Six songs that have sold over a million. If you call that, if you can quantify it. Do you have the platinum records in your conversion van or do you keep them at your mom's house? I keep them in the room I grew up in. That's good. in Michigan on the wall. I'd be afraid to have that in my own house.

I think it's just cool. It is cool. Well, I tell you why I don't like to keep them in my own house, and it's because they freak out young artists, because they used to freak me out. Like someone comes over to kick it in a movie? I remember being young artists before I had a plaque. I go in the studio with a certain producer or songwriter

and his plaques everywhere. I just felt really intimidated, and I didn't feel comfortable, and it didn't help me right to be at my best. So I don't like to keep them around and freak out if I'm working with a young artist. It like adds pressure. Like this is who you're dealing with right now. Yeah.

And if they have an imposter syndrome like we talked about earlier, it flares that up in a second. That was my own experience, you know. So I try to just, it's not where I make music that plaques are somewhere else. Yeah. Anyways, I mean, it's just such a small percentage of the music I make that when it happens, that something catches on becomes really popular. I'm just grateful for it, man. You know, I'm not like, no, it should have happened this way.

It should have been this production on it. I'm just great. It's just cool to me, you know, that many people know that song. Yeah, that's a good point. I like that attitude is very positive. It looks on the bright side of each of these occurrences, and now that I think about it, there's more bright than there is anything else. You're right.

You can't just insist that these things happen your way. that's ridiculous to get success and then also have it be like no this is how i want to get my success it's a little greedy right like yeah and i believe i believe energetically i believe energetically you can you can prevent it from coming by doing that and i believe i actually oh sure i believe i actually was doing that for a year or two when i'm first made i took a pill and abiza the original one i was just very like closed off you know it's going to happen this way whatever. I remember a man's in my mind, like in a moment of

premonition, he goes, I have this vision, man, of going in a nightclub and they're playing a version of that song. No kidding. Wow. I go, yeah, whatever, man. With your acoustic? He's like, no, no, they'll have to remix it or something, right? I'm like, whatever. And then that, it happened.

And I'll tell you what I believe and this could just be coincidence, but I stopped worrying about it. And what I did was, I I started working on my group. I have a group called Mansions with Black Bear. And so I just forgot about my own music for like eight months.

And I went fully over focusing into mansions. And when we finished the Mansions album, I looked up and I took a billion bees that was blowing up. And I think a part of it was I wasn't there like worrying about it. To mess with it. Yeah, I feel that way too. And a lot of it's like, get to get away for it. Don't screw it up.

Don't screw it. Don't try to interfere with what's happening. Let it run its course. Totally. Is a musician, do you ever get tired of playing the same songs? Is it ever like, oh, hey, man, we want you to make sure you get that one track and you're like, I don't know, I want to play this again. You ever get sick of that?

It just happened a few times, but for the most part, it feels pretty good. I still like a lot of my, most of my music that I decide to put out. Sure. You know, most of the mediocre stuff, I feel like I've been good. about, you know, not putting it out. You know, it's like way more songs I haven't put out than that I have. And, you know, the only ones that right now I have a few songs that I, that feel like really misogynistic to me that I wrote that I won't sing right now.

That I just feel like. Interesting. So you, your mood changed and you sort of pack. It's like Eric Clapton doesn't sing cocaine anymore. Oh, yeah. That's how it feels to me. I could see that. Yeah.

Different era of your life, right? Yeah. You want to sunset it. Do you ever go up there and like, you're like tired or something and you go, oh, crap, I forgot the words. I mean, it's your own song, but it's got to happen sometimes. Yeah. Yeah? And that's when.

What do you do? The freestyle background comes in handy. So I'll just, yeah. Remix. Yeah, I just write new words as I'm going. That's pretty. That's pretty. awesome because I would imagine people are singing along and they're like wait wait

yeah and do you let people know that you forgot or you're like I'm just trying something else I'm trying something new usually I don't know usually if it's just in the middle of a song it's not even worth like stopping to yeah of course making it a moment it's so funny I because I'm thinking you know yeah you wrote the song yeah you rehearsed it a thousand times but some some days you get up and you can't remember what city you're in and you're two hours asleep and it's late at night and you haven't eaten and you're just like, did I already sing that verse already? I can't remember. How long is this track? I got to go. I have half a second to think of what's happening next. And yeah, you got to pull out white little bow wow. It's got to make an

appearance real quick. Yeah, totally. I know you're really big on self-care right now too. Like you've been meditating. You're doing all kinds of, you mentioned the conversion van, the getting rid of possessions. Now you're on this walk. I'm not yet. Or you're about to be out to be on this walk. On the walk. Yeah. Why are you doing this? I know that's the obvious question, but what's, why? We all have a list of things that we want to do when we're done doing what we have to do.

And for me, man, I just been around a dose of death in the last few years to remind me, hey, you don't have, you think you have forever to get to that list. You don't, you know. So my dad died. then Avichi die and then Mac Miller died recently and

this is on my list I'm going to do it it made me remind me hey I'm going to die one day too but until then I want to live man I want to live my life and this is something I want to do it's on my list so I'm doing it

you know it's like what's on your list go do it yeah I think a big lesson for me this year has been learning how to say no is a skill I would imagine you had to learn that skill as well. Yeah, yeah. Because a lot of people want you to do a lot of things. Hey, can we get another hit?

Hey, man, can you do a tour? Hey, do you have another album in you? And you're like, hey, I'm going to go for a long-ass walk. Very long. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's, you know, and there's a model that was a model that's sort of laid out for me, which is record tour.

Yeah. Record, tour. And the way that model came to be was that it yields. the most profits. And so, you know, I just had to take a step back and realize, hey, does my lifestyle match who I am as a human? Not really. It's kind of the lifestyle that matched, you know, what my goals were when I was 21.

Yeah. So let me readjust, you know, and let me make it match. And let me, like when I was 15, have who I am as an artist and who I am. as a human be the same thing. And so, you know, that's what I'm doing. Mike, thank you very much for coming by with your limping busking foot that's working the organ. Have you heard my avid song called Move On? Have you heard it?

No. A song goes, if I want to move on and have a remix to it, it goes, now I got my boot on. Boot on, boot on, boot on. So, I told the doctor, we're just adding to the legend now. That's right. You're going to have to add that to your discography on Wikipedia.

He'll this thing up. Start the walk and I'll see you in 10 months. It's right here. That's right. Or maybe a sea home for your concert. Negative. Wait, maybe. Yeah.

Maybe we'll do a stop by. Thank you, Jordan. Good to meet you, bro. Jason, Mike was super cool, right? He looks a little bit like Tom Hanks from Castaway now if you've seen that. Yeah, he does. He totally does. In walking across the country is something I've always wanted to do.

It's been on my bucket list forever. And I'm glad he's doing it, but I just can't anymore because I broke my leg and can't walk. But I'm just, I'm jealous. I'm supremely jealous. Maybe I'll, like, get in the car and run out for like a bit and do a little walk with him, I think, because that would be fun. Yeah. For everyone, in fact, if you follow him on social media, you can join his walk or segments of his walk. They're toying with the idea of being able to do that.

They haven't quite figured out the logistics of this. but if you follow him especially I think on Instagram they're going to try to do a map that updates and show people where they can meet and join them for part of the walk I'm thinking about doing the same thing as well we actually really clicked we've been texting a little bit and by the way there really was a pill in Ibiza the story behind that the short version is he was hanging out with evici because they had just done a collaboration and Vici who sadly has since passed away from stuff that they're not really talking about but probably having to do with a lot of the substance stuff that he was talking about a lot of the time. He decided, screw it. I'm not busy

right now. You know, I just did a collab. I'm in Ibiza because of Ichi's working there. I don't have anything to do. So he was drinking. And then some guy in the crowd was like, hey, are you Mike Posner? He's like, yeah. And he goes, you want a pill? And the guy, he's like, screw it. So he takes this pill and he just trips balls. And then when he- I was going to say tripping balls. Yeah. On the come down, he was like, uh, this sucks. I feel terrible. And so that was part of the inspiration for this song, which the original mix for this was not this hype dance mix. It was like this sad acoustic song about how life is empty. And it's ironic that it's now this anthem that's one of the top dance hits, party hits, of the entire year last year.

That's crazy. Yeah. And one thing we talked about post show or pre-show, I can't even remember now when this was off mic, I should say. One, Tom Hanks has said, you should definitely do this walk across. the country. How cool is that? Forrest Gump himself is that, hey, you should go and do this, which is probably what was in, you know, he did that in the movie. And the other thing is, you know, Mike says that he often would get jealous of his friends back in the day when he heard good news about them. And I really related to this because a lot of us struggle with this.

And it's been something that I've worked on for a long time. And my practical advice on fighting this is when you feel that pang of jealousy or envy, I should say, think of positives about your friend and give them props in public and in private. So if you're like, oh man, they got this deal, I should be getting this deal. Why aren't I getting this deal? I'm a little jealous. Remember that that's normal. Then think, well, this person's a great person.

I'm glad that it happened to them. And then write them a little note like, hey, I heard about your book deal. Congratulations, you're awesome. You've worked really hard. You deserve this. That will make you feel a lot better because it strengthens your. relationship with them, which puts you sort of closer to their success, if you look at it that way. But also, you feel great passing along that positivity. So you're not just thinking positive.

You're passing along the positive energy. And trust me, they'll appreciate it because they're probably getting that, they're feeling that envy from other people, and it sucks, actually, right? Because a lot of their good friends are probably like, no, whatever, I don't care. And they're not sharing in that. So having someone to share in that with, that basking that glory, it helps you and it helps them. So if you feel that and you're something that's something you're dealing with, go ahead and try that.

Trust me, it will help you. It helped me a lot. Great big thank you to Mike Posner for coming on the show today. If you want to know how I managed to get all these great guests and manage all these great relationships with people, it's about the systems,

it's about tiny habits. Check out our six-minute networking course. It does replace level one, and it's also free. It's over at jordanharbinger.com slash course. And don't say you'll do it later. It takes six minutes a day, and five-minute networking was taking,

So go and do it. It's just going to be compounded interest on all these relationships. You will thank me later. I wish I knew all this stuff a long time ago. Jordan Harbinger.com slash course. Speaking of building relationships, tell me your number one takeaway here from Mike Posner. I'm at Jordan Harbinger on both Twitter and Instagram. And there's a video of the interview on our YouTube channel at Jordan Harbinger.com slash YouTube. This show is produced in association with Podcast One, and this episode was co-produced by Jason I Took a Pill in the Valley, DePilippo, and Jen Harbinger.

Show Notes and Worksheets by Robert Fogarty. I'm your host, Jordan Harbinger. The fee for the show is they share it with friends when you find something useful, which should be in every episode. So share the show with those you love and share the show with those you don't. We got a lot more in the pipeline, very excited for what's to come. In the meantime, do your best to apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you listen, and we'll see you next time. This episode is sponsored in part by Something You Should Know podcast. Finding a new great podcast shouldn't be this hard, so let me save you some time. If you like the Jordan Harbinger show, you'll probably like Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers.

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