How Mike Posner built a music empire from his dorm room

Shaan Puri

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

Mike Posner

Mike Posner.

Shaan Puri

Breakthrough Artist of the Year Award

Mike Posner

Then you have the crash. My career had plummeted. I had a hit, and my career plummeted.

Shaan Puri

And then you have the rebirth, one of Spotify's top 10 most streamed songs of all time. Mike Posner is enjoying sweet success.

Mike Posner

At the time, it was scary. The fame, the adoration, the money... really, the fame. Yeah, the money and...

Shaan Puri

All that stuff was nice, but the...

Mike Posner

The fame was the fame, man.

Shaan Puri

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

Mike Posner

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

Shaan Puri

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

Mike Posner

Yeah, absolutely! I'm a giant hip hop fan. I started rapping when I was 8, and then I got to Duke, you know, 12 years later. I started to sing, but really, I was singing almost from a hip hop perspective. I'd use these complex rhyme schemes, polysyllabic rhyme schemes. Even in my first hit song, "Cooler Than Me," it's got a complex rhyme scheme. So you got "designer shades" just to hide your face. It's not just the last syllable that rhymes—"shades" and "face"—but also "designer" rhymes with "hider." This is a rapper thing, right? I was combining hip hop with melody in a way that I thought was dope. I thought it was cool, and I hadn't heard anyone do it before, really. So I started to share my music, and I was getting a little bit of traction on these hip hop blogs, which were important in hip hop at the time. Blogs like "2 Dope Boys," "Nah Right," and even Kanye's blog, which was a really big deal at the time. This was an era of piracy, so everyone—you probably remember when...

Sam Parr

We were.

Mike Posner

At Duke, we did not pay for music. You know, so you'd go on.

Shaan Puri

LimeWire

Mike Posner

Cosmoire, BitTorrent... yeah, that whole thing. I knew no one was going to pay for my music because we weren't paying for Kanye's music. We weren't paying for Jay-Z, the artists we love the most. We were stealing their music, so no one's going to pay for my music because no one knows who I am. I understood that it was important to be on these hip-hop blogs, but I was kind of a shy kid and really into my music. I would always stay in, and then my friends would come back, stumble into my room drunk, interrupt my song, and push me out. This whole thing happened. One day, I went to this kid's room down the hall named Xander. He was a really cool kid, you know, and seemed to have a more robust social life than I did.

Shaan Puri

There's only cool Zanders. I have never met a not cool Zander.

Mike Posner

Exactly, dude. So, he said to me, "Hey Posner, at the party last night they played your song and all the sorority girls knew the words." I said, "What? Really?" Yeah, that's mind-blowing! I've been making music for 12 years now, and that's never happened. He goes, "Yeah, and dude, they played it twice! They played it twice in a row, and everyone was singing the words." So then I said, "Wow, okay." The next day, my mom calls and she says, in passing, "By the way, I really like that song you made, 'Cooler Than Me.'" I don't know how she heard it; her friends sent it to her. It was my MySpace at the time. So I said, "Okay, that's kind of peculiar. It's on the hip hop blogs, sorority girls like it, and my mom likes it." The next day, my friend Big Sean calls. I came up with him in Detroit, and he had gotten a record deal with Kanye. He's a rapper from Detroit and a dear friend of mine. He said, "I love 'Cooler Than Me.' I think that could be a hit song." I said, "Hold on. If Sean, my mom, and the sorority girls all like the same song, something's going on here." That never happened before because I've been making music for 12 years, and nobody seemed to particularly care besides me. My mom was always supportive and loving; she paid for music lessons but never told me she liked one of my songs. I'm 20 years old, so I realized the way these hip hop blogs work was you'd go on the site, there'd be a blog entry with your song, and then you kind of had to do some right-clicking. There were always these weird links that would throw you off into some sketchy websites, and you had to click the right thing and then save, you know, "file as," and that's how you download the song. But it was really convoluted and hidden behind advertisements. I just realized that these sorority girls were never going to do that. They were never going to go to these hip hop blogs, and if there was a snowball's chance in hell they would, they wouldn't ever be able to download the song. So I realized, you know, iTunes was just starting to come out, and it was the safe place you could get music. I knew I needed to get my music there. But then I had this other rub that I alluded to earlier, which is no one's going to pay for it. So I needed it to be free, like it is on the blogs, but I needed to be on iTunes. Then I saw iTunes U.

Sam Parr

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

Mike Posner

So, iTunes U was this section of iTunes that was set up for professors to post their lectures. If you weren't there or you went to a different school, you could listen to this professor's lecture. It's supposed to be purely educational, and the cost was free for everything on iTunes U. There was no charge.

Shaan Puri

It was an...

Mike Posner

The educational arm of iTunes... So I said, "I gotta get my music there." Now, this is where **life** (capital L) comes in. I'm from Southfield, Michigan; it's a suburb of Detroit. I was born in Detroit and moved to Southfield when I was 2 years old. I grew up there and lived there until I was 18. I then went to Duke University. I did some searching and found out who was in charge of iTunes U. So, if you're a Duke professor and you want to post your lecture, how do you get it up there? I found out it's a man named Todd Stabley. I cold emailed him. Remember, you could type in any name and the director could get the email. So, I got Todd's email, cold emailed him, and we did a phone call. He gave me his number, and his number is the same area code as mine. "Hey, Mia, 2248 area," he goes. "Yeah, I'm from Southfield, Michigan. Where are you from?" I said, "Come on!" I still get goosebumps to this day. I said, "Look, this is what I'm trying to do. I'm a student artist, and I want to share my album. I want to put it on iTunes U." He goes, "Oh yeah, man! From Southfield? You're a student? We can put it on iTunes U, no problem." Life set that up for me, man! So, I got my music onto iTunes. You just search on iTunes like any other thing, but when you went to my album, it came up with the price as **free**. Any other music cost $1.1 or $9.99 or whatever it was; mine was free. Then I got busy on Facebook. I created a Facebook event, and there was a link to that album. I activated all my communities. I was from Michigan, and a lot of my friends went to different colleges across the country, including Michigan, Michigan State, gosh, friends at Northwestern, friends at Marquette, you know, just wherever they went. Then my friend... I was in a fraternity, and we had pledges. These older guys would do mean things to the pledges, making them do, you know, 1,000 push-ups or whatever. I said, "Look, you guys are gonna do something for me. You're gonna send..."

Shaan Puri

The push-ups.

Mike Posner

You're going to send the invitation to this Facebook event to everyone in your Facebook network—every single person. There's a way I had a protocol: five steps, and you could send it out. All of you are going to change your profile picture to my album cover. All my friends changed their profile picture to my album cover, and my fraternity brothers did the same thing. So, all their friends at different schools sent it out. And here's the last thing: the music was good, right? If the music wasn't good, none of this matters. But my music wasn't always good. Like I said, I started when I was 8, so it's been 12 years of making songs—lots of songs to get to that one song where my mom likes it, right? And Sean likes it too. So, this iTunes U thing was pivotal for me. From there, pretty much every college in the U.S. was listening to Mike Posner that year. It started off small; it would be, you know, 50 people. I'd get a show in Dayton, Ohio, or I'd go to Dayton, Ohio, and be booked to play at some bar. You know, at colleges, there's always a hustler guy that throws the parties, and those guys would book me.

Shaan Puri

Are you even getting paid to do these at the time, or...?

Mike Posner

At the start, I had $500. So, my boy Pat Klein became my manager. Later, he booked me in Dayton, Ohio. I go there, and there are 25 to 50 people. I do my set, and they know every word to my song. A month later, he booked me to come back, and there would be 300 people there, knowing every word to my song. So, I just started to expand like that. And yeah, the iTunes view was a really great hack.

Shaan Puri

I've never heard that story. That's an amazing story! So, because of what you did, you kind of stacked these, right? You did that, then you started doing the shows. Normally, correct me if I'm wrong, you kind of did it backwards, right? It seems like normally you'd have a label that would get you set up with tours. You were kind of underground, so if I remember correctly, because you already had tours and fans, when record labels became interested, you were like, "Yo, I'm de-risked! I'm more de-risked than the average artist because look at this! I'm already playing shows with real fans all around the country." I remember being at Duke and we would hear, "Dude, this guy flies out every weekend, does a show at a different college, and flies back to take his tests." Yeah, that's what you were doing.

Mike Posner

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

Shaan Puri

It seems like one of the unique things about you is that you may not be the best rapper, the best singer, or the best beats producer. However, because you're good enough to be dangerous in all three areas, you were able to be like a one-man machine. This allowed you to get a bunch of practice reps in and keep going through trial and error without being dependent on someone else's time, interest, or taste. Is that fair?

Mike Posner

No, I don't think so.

Shaan Puri

How would you say it?

Mike Posner

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

Shaan Puri

Being a writer is like your A+ skill.

Mike Posner

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

Shaan Puri

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

Mike Posner

Yeah, well, there are two things in that. First, I think it speaks to a plan I made. At that time in my career, I was in a cold spot. So I said, "Hey, let me use this time to get better at my skills." If I'm being honest, I didn't know how to play. I had a hit song, but I knew how to play guitar. I didn't know how to really sing. I was a rapper who had started singing, and I didn't know how to play piano. So, I thought, "Why don't I learn some of those things?" I remember I was at a campfire kind of situation, and that guy Psy was there. You remember him? Open Gangnam Style? Yeah, and Tori Kelly was there too. They were passing the guitar around the fire, and Tori Kelly sang this song. It was so beautiful. I had just written a song that day, and I wanted to sing it. I asked her, "Could you play the guitar for these choruses?" She was trying to help me, but I couldn't play the guitar, and I really wanted to sing my song. It didn't really work out, and I remember leaving thinking, "That's stupid that I can't do that. That's never going to happen again. I'm going to learn to play the guitar. I need to be able to sing a song at a campfire." So, that's one part of it. Being an artist is about growth. It's similar to being a human; it's about being a better artist than you were a year ago. Your relationship to music, or any art form, deepens throughout your whole life. Art is not like the NBA; you don't peak at 30 and then can't jump as high anymore. No, this is a lifelong journey. You can always go deeper. That's part A, but then part B was... yeah, I realized kind of to the...

Mike Posner

Right before this, I was in a singing class. I took an online course at the Berklee School of Music. There were these great singers in there, and yeah, I was in the bottom quartile of that class. But I was a successful recording artist, and those people all wanted my job. I realized I had something that most people don't, which is my writing. I have a way of connecting the music I make. Music is not about hitting the high notes; it's like life. It's not about hitting the perfect note or doing the run. It's about whether this part of my humanity speaks to that part of your humanity. I'm raising my hand, I'm taking my clothes off out here in this vulnerable state, and going, "This is what it's like for me to be a human. Anyone else?" If I do a good job, someone else hears it. I'm so glad you said it because that's how I've been feeling for years, and I didn't know how to articulate it. Now, I don't feel as alone. That's what an artist does. I realized in that singing class that I already know how to do that. I can add colors and refinements and make things more sophisticated by adding to my skills. But at the end of the day, even if you have no skills and you can do that, you're a great artist. You're a great artist.

Shaan Puri

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

Mike Posner

Like you, sorry, by the way, that's why you're a great artist. We talked about this at the beginning. You always say, "I'm a little lowercase artist." No, you're making the thing, and it obviously connects with other people. You're following your own curiosity and going, "Hey, I'm making the thing." There are a million podcasts in the freaking world, dude! But you're doing something in a way that connects with other humans. You're not doing it because you're trying to; you're doing it by trying to connect with yourself, connecting your own creativity and curiosity to the art you're making or the pieces that you're creating, whatever you call them. And so, yeah.

Shaan Puri

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

Mike Posner

It takes courage.

Shaan Puri

You gotta go do it, you know.

Mike Posner

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

Shaan Puri

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

Mike Posner

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

Shaan Puri

I remember that.

Mike Posner

Yeah, yeah.

Shaan Puri

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

Mike Posner

It's not that most people don't know that. We went to clear it because that's a Carly Simon song, "You're So Vain." So, there were two lines in the verse we had to clear. We said, "Hey, you know, I used this part of your song in my song. We want to give you credit for it. Can we work out a deal?" Yes, her representative said, "No problem, we'll just take 80%." Her name is 70 or something. Like, dude, yes, it's just two lines of the verse! So, I had to change that. The first thing I had to do was go behind Jamaica. Nobody knows who you really are. Who do you think you are? So, we changed that out. Then I thought I was going to make this new hit song. Benny Blanco is a big brand because I have a record deal now. When I played the new version of "Cooler Than Me" without the Carly Simon part, my record label said, "It's not as good. It's not as good anymore." So, I thought we should use one of the new songs to be your first real single. "Cooler Than Me" has now been out for two years to us college kids. I'm in New York City, about to go to some meeting or studio or something, hanging out with a friend. My manager says, "We gotta do a meeting with this radio promoter. His name is E and C. We need to have a meeting with this guy. His job is to get songs on the radio." Usually, the label is supposed to do that, but we need to pay him to do it ourselves. I said, "I don't want to go to that meeting. I want to go to the studio. I'm an artist; you go to the meeting." He goes, "This is more important." I said, "No, it's not." He says, "Yes, it is." I said, "Why?" He said, "Well, 'Cooler Than Me' is your first single. The label doesn't know it, but I know it." This is my manager, Daniel Weisman. I said, "'Cooler Than Me' is old. It's two years old. It's been out for two years, and everybody has already heard it on the sidewalk in New York City." He looks me in the eye and says, "Nobody has heard it." I said, "I'll go to the meeting." We go to the meeting, we hire E and C. I think we paid them, what was it, $5,000? $10,000? And he's going to get this on a few radio stations. No guarantee how much they're going to play it, but I can get on a few stations. So, he gets on a few stations, and this thing starts catching on. People are calling into the station, "We like this song." You know, I'll say it's before Shazam was released, but they had some way to test it. The tests are going crazy. These few stations, Patty Moreno in Sacramento and Shorty, they start playing the song 50 times a week. That's a lot! Then DJ Reflex in LA, Power 106, he plays the song, and it does well here. So, it starts catching on here. Now the label calls, and they go...

Shaan Puri

We told you "Cooler" to me is your first single. Dude, what a great idea, right?

Mike Posner

And that's what labels are great at. They're great at starting fires. But if you could start a fire, they've got a hell of a lot of gasoline. So, they then go into hyper mode, do their things, and start getting it on all the other stations. That was how I got on the radio, and at that time, the radio drove.

Shaan Puri

It mattered, yeah.

Mike Posner

It still matters, but if you win Spotify and get on the radio, or you win YouTube when you get on the radio, then it was the opposite.

Shaan Puri

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

Mike Posner

We're going to change that.

Shaan Puri

Today, we're going to change that. But then I got excited. I was like, "Oh wait, that means when I'm doing the research, look for the gold." Because there's usually like one thing that I'm like, "Wow, that alone made this trip worth it." For me, that was this one, which was about, I guess, making art or making songs. It was, you know, do you try to make a hit? Do you try to think about what the audience wants? And the quote was, "I just do what's cool to me, and sometimes the whole world agrees." I like that. Can you talk about that a little bit? Like, where does that mindset come from?

Mike Posner

That's a good question because I could talk about that mindset really easily. But you asked me something different, which is where?

Shaan Puri

Where does that come from?

Mike Posner

Come from? I've never been asked that before, so we're off to a good start. That's an answer I give to other people when artists are struggling. I tell them, "You know, your job is to make the thing that you think is beautiful." That's it. Don't do what I think is beautiful for you, your manager, or your fans. So, that's an answer I give to others. Now you're asking me a question about my answer, the root. Okay, let me try to tell the truth or find what's true for me. In part, it comes from messing it up. Undoubtedly, I experienced a lot of success in my early twenties, and I got addicted to it. The fame, the adoration, the money... really, the fame. Yeah, the money.

Shaan Puri

It was nice with the fame one of those had.

Mike Posner

A had a higher high than those freaking fame, dude.

Shaan Puri

It's oh.

Mike Posner

And so, I can remember trying to replicate the success I had from my first hit song, which is "Cooler Than Me." If I could write you a song to make you fall in love, that's all in it. I just wanted that feeling. I wanted to be that guy that everyone was looking at. I can remember going into the studio and thinking, "Oh, I'm trying to make a..."

Shaan Puri

Make a hit.

Mike Posner

Make a hit that everyone else likes. Whenever I tried to create from that vantage, the only thing I succeeded in making was something I hated. Sometimes I think, "Wow, even if I don't like it, maybe everyone else will." It kind of checks all the boxes: it's the right BPM, it's got a catchy melody, and a cool lyric. It doesn't really meet my standards for my aesthetics, what I think is beautiful, but who cares what I think? This is about me being famous.

Shaan Puri

Right.

Mike Posner

And of course, if you don't like it, nobody's...

Shaan Puri

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

Mike Posner

And so, I think life—or God. I believe in God; sometimes I just call it life. So, I'll use those interchangeably in this interview. It's life with a capital "L." You know, I thank God that it never gave me success with one of those because it wanted me to learn that very lesson.

Shaan Puri

Right.

Mike Posner

That I could teach to others. But gosh, could you imagine if one of those things I didn't really like got really popular? That would have been even worse, right?

Shaan Puri

Mhmm, you'd have been trapped on that path.

Mike Posner

I'd still be doing interviews about that song now. I'd still be singing that song at my shows now.

Shaan Puri

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

Mike Posner

Cool.

Shaan Puri

I already know it.

Mike Posner

Great man.

Shaan Puri

So I said, "What am I actually curious about?" I realized that I wanted to know that, like, "Hey, you said something that resonated with me, which is my job is not to make a hit; it's to make something that's cool to me, and sometimes the world agrees." So that was the first place I wanted to start. The second one is, you know, I'm not a musician, but I'd like to be. I'm maybe like a lowercase "a" artist. I write, I have a podcast, and I do things like that.

Mike Posner

That artist. Capital A.

Shaan Puri

Thank you.

Mike Posner

Some exist now out of that, which used to just be an idea in your head. You're an artist.

Shaan Puri

Alright, you heard it here first, Mike. Those are things I'm an artist. Here we go.

Mike Posner

Absolutely.

Shaan Puri

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

Mike Posner

There's a part of me underneath the part that I let people see. That part...

Shaan Puri

Is the good part? Good part, exactly! Oh my god, yeah. I love that underneath the part that I let other people see, that is the good part. I was like, "Man, he's really good at the one true sentence." Is that a technique you use at all? Like honesty to write the song or to bake the core of the song?

Mike Posner

Yeah, you know, there's an old adage in studios that gets thrown around, more so in Nashville and LA, where they say, "Don't try to write a good song; write a true song, and then it'll be good automatically." My music journey began when I was 13. I was already a rapper; I started rapping when I was 8. By the time I was 13, I started to consider creating a stage name. I would go through phases; I remember I had this rapper name, Acrimony, and then I had another name for 6 months. Eventually, I threw it out and decided that my name from here on out would be MCMP. The world will know MCMP. I was about 13 and a half at that time.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, like AIM screen, AIM status.

Mike Posner

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

Shaan Puri

Which most people don't know.

Mike Posner

The original is just... and I thought, "Dude, like whatever is left of my career will be destroyed by..." And what is funny now, like at the time, it was horror. It was scary. It will be destroyed by me making such a drastic change in my music. Like, none of my fans that liked what I did before will like this. It's so different. I started contemplating again, maybe I should change my name for this project. I remember thinking, "Oh, maybe I'll change my name to 'The Truth'." It's like, no, the truth is...

Shaan Puri

Your name is Mike Koesner.

Mike Posner

And so, I quickly got my head out of my ass on that one again and went, "Hey, you know, this is my story." The three X story you talk about, you know, is I've owned it for better or for worse, or tried to.

Shaan Puri

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

Mike Posner

Yeah, absolutely. A huge, huge barometer of something I should be writing is that, "Oh, I really don't want to write this." This moment was so painful; I don't want to talk about it or think about it. So, yeah, it's not the only thing... you know, it's not to say the converse is not true, which is that the only thing that should be written is something that caused you great pain. That's not true. But often, that is an entry that is worth examining, right? Absolutely.

Shaan Puri

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

Mike Posner

That's right.

Shaan Puri

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

Mike Posner

What's hard now is choosing what not to do. That's the hardest part—killing things. On paper, I may be doing too many things right now. I'm writing my book intensively every day, spending a lot of time alone on my computer. I'm putting an album out, and we're expanding our business in a lot of different ways. So, on paper, if I was making the menu, I would cross two of them out. But your question was how I decide. The same internal compass that I use in the micro, when I'm creating, is when I'm writing a sentence in my book. I go, "That word is not quite right. No, not that." And then boom, that one. It's an internal knowing; it's a feeling. So, that's it. Mark Twain said, "The difference between the almost right word and the right word is the difference between a lightning bug and a lightning bolt." Right? And isn't that the truth?

Shaan Puri

Has it happened in your songs? Oh yeah! Like, is there a song today that we all know that almost was Florida?

Mike Posner

Took a pill in Sacramento.

Shaan Puri

She didn't have the same ring to it. She just kept trying to make it work. This one doesn't hit. No.

Mike Posner

No, but just in the song, the same way a lot of times in the production. Gosh, that's not the right snare drum sample. We'll work for an hour to go through every altered sound, and then that's the one. You just know there's this quote.

Shaan Puri

That Rick Rubin has that I love, which he says, is: "The best way to serve your audience is to ignore them." This means to not try to reverse engineer what they might want or what they might like. Instead, just make what you want or what you like. That is the best way to serve them.

Mike Posner

You know.

Shaan Puri

When you hear something, you're like, "Oh, that's probably the truth. I think I just heard the truth." Okay, now the rest of my life is coming to grips with that truth. I don't need to search for the answer; I got the answer. Yeah, it's just a question of how long I'm going to deny myself. You know, how many roundabout ways I'm going to avoid facing the answer. Now I know the answer. Has that been easy for you? Kinda back to that first question about making what you want. If music is pretty easy now, and honestly...

Mike Posner

Taking care of my finances has been a big part of that. What do you mean by that? I'm financially secure. I don't need to make another dollar from my music again. So logically, I was able to just talk to that part of the voice in my head and go, "Hey dude, you never need to make a song that you don't want to make ever again. You never need to be in the studio with a person you're not a fan of ever again." That made me a much better artist.

Shaan Puri

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

Mike Posner

Both are twofold. I had, you know, the analysis of what they do, a Monte Carlo or whatever. You know, so you spend this much or this many more years, you'd be okay. So that was...

Shaan Puri

Like a money manager did that for you.

Mike Posner

Or yes, that was part of it, right? Just knowing, "Hey, I'm okay." You gotta shift at some point. When you're coming up, you say yes to everything. You don't know which opportunity is going to work. Then, when you get successful, you have too many opportunities, and you gotta learn to say no. There are paradigm shifts along the journey, and that was one of them. That's the logical part. Then, the illogical part, or the spiritual part, is realizing what true wealth, abundance, or success is. To me, my definition of true success or wealth is health. It's the ability to have joy in the present moment. If you can do that, you're a wealthy person. And if you're grateful for what you have, you're wealthy.

Shaan Puri

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

Mike Posner

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

Shaan Puri

There's a great clip on YouTube of Jim Carrey when he gets some award. He goes up on stage and gives almost the same speech he gave. He's like, "You know, this is my second Emmy." You know, I used to be... oh yeah, the Golden Globes! The Golden Globes, he's like...

Mike Posner

One time, Golden Globe plagiarizing that.

Shaan Puri

In my rant, it reminded me of it. It was great. I was a one-time Golden Globe winner, Jim Carrey, and tonight I'm too tired. He's like, "When I go to bed at night, I will dream about being three times." He has this great quote: "I wish the whole world could be rich and famous so they would know that that's not the answer." You know, you got to taste that, and you've found out yourself that's not the answer for you. It doesn't seem like the answer for most. I have this goofy analogy that I want to ask you about. So, do you ever watch the show *Survivor*?

Mike Posner

When I was a kid, I watched it.

Shaan Puri

I guess I'm one of the doofuses that is still watching it in season 47.

Mike Posner

On with you, man.

Shaan Puri

So, we all have a thing. I got my thing; some people have weird things. This is mine: I want to go on *Survivor* someday. That's part of my angle here. There's this thing that they do on *Survivor*, which I think is a good analogy for life. In life, and in *Survivor*, the best thing every player wants is the immunity idol. It's this one thing that, if you have it, you're safe. You can finally relax; you've got the one thing that everybody wants. That's been the case for many years. Recently, they made a twist called the "beware idol," which is basically you pick it up and it says, "Beware! This comes with some disadvantages." The player has the opportunity to just put it down; they don't have to take any of the disadvantages. So far, 100% of players— not a single player has ever put it down, even though it says on the label, "Beware! This thing has disadvantages that come with it that will hurt you in this game." Yet, every player can't resist; they take it. I was thinking about this while I was watching *Survivor* and prepping for this podcast. I was like, I think fame is the beware advantage of life. It's the thing that...

Mike Posner

Well said.

Shaan Puri

We all think we want the money, the fame, and the love of others. It could say on the label: **Beware**. People who become pop stars when they're young aren't necessarily the happiest people. But we would all take it over again, right? So, there's something to that. I was actually curious: for you, if you could go back and meet the next Mike Boazer—he's 21 years old—and you get 15 minutes in a room with him, just like this, what would you tell him? And do you think he would listen?

Mike Posner

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

Shaan Puri

I saw a great example of that from you, which was, I think, you either missed a flight or you were delayed on a flight or something like that. I love this example because it's so relatable. Everybody's been in this moment where travel is stressful, and then travel often feels out of your control, whether it's a flight delay or you've missed your connection or whatever it is. There's the common cliché reaction to that, and we actually all kind of have that reaction, but it's not always the response. Yeah, can you tell that story? Because I think that example... Yeah, absolutely! It stood out to me. Not everybody's going to relate to being a pop star or making great music, but this was something everybody can relate to. So, I'd love if you could share this one.

Mike Posner

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

Shaan Puri

To be the only guy I wanted to have.

Mike Posner

A life that was cool to me and unique to me... and yeah, part of it was ego, like, "Hey, I want to be unique." But also, I wanted my life to be inspiring to me. Every element, every one of the stories we share today—whether it's a story from you, a story from me, a survivor, or what have you—has human emotions underneath that are universal. So, the story you're talking about is... yeah, I did a post. I never talked about this; this is a podcast world premiere. I had this horrible travel day, man. The day before wasn't good, and I didn't sleep. I woke up early, and we had to drive three hours to the airport. We were in Colorado, and there was an accident on I-70. We just got into this traffic jam, and we were in the car for seven hours. We missed the flight. It was just... yeah, I was feeling sorry for myself. It was a bad day, man. I didn't feel good physically or emotionally; everything was off. I remembered that I was on a Zoom call in a Tony Robbins conference about time and scheduling efficiency. In one of the breakout sessions, one of the other participants said, "When you're having a bad day, ask yourself, 'What could I do to make this a great day?'" It just flashed back in my head while I was in that car. I said, "Well, this... okay, this is a bad day. Check."

Shaan Puri

Right, we got the first part.

Mike Posner

Right, I said, "What can I do to make this a great day?" I thought, if I could use the fact that I'm having a bad day to do something nice for others, that would be a really cool thing. It would make me proud of myself. So, I called my assistant and said, "Yeah, this is all messed up. You know, it's supposed to be family time, and I only get so many days with my family every year—my mom, my sister—and I was missing one of them. I was just bummed out." I said, "Look, we have to spend the night in Denver tonight. Can you find me a place where I can just go volunteer? Not with money, but actually show up and serve." Stacy, she's amazing. She found me... I forgot the name of the establishment, but it's set up for people who are getting off drugs. They can live there, get a roof over their heads, and some meals while they find a job and receive training. I just showed up to serve food. When I arrived, I was still tired and physically had a headache, but I felt proud. I said, "Hey, I used my suffering, my having a bad day, as an excuse not to go to bed, not to complain, and not to take it out on someone else. Instead, I used that as an excuse to do something good for someone else." So, I did alchemy today. I turned my suffering into service. I turned my suffering into connection. That pride I felt in myself was significant because I usually wouldn't do that. I would typically have a pity party in the hotel and look at my phone. It just gave me all this pride. I say this often when I speak: true happiness comes from growth. True happiness comes from growth. It doesn't come from getting everyone to like you. It doesn't come from getting the most followers. It doesn't come from a million dollars. It doesn't come from things going the right way for you. The right way for you comes from playing a part in the evolution of your own soul. It's just saying, "Hey, I usually do things this way. What if I did something this way?" That day, I can truly say, was one of the best days of my year, without a doubt.

Shaan Puri

I love it.

Mike Posner

**Bed proud. And by the way, so much energy!**

Shaan Puri

Yeah, there are certain things that seem like they take energy but actually give it. It's like going to the gym. Anyone's going to feel tired and not really want to go to the gym, but you go, and suddenly you have energy. It's like, "Wait, how does that math work?" I was supposed to lose energy by going to work out, but I have more than I had when I started. It doesn't make any sense, but it does to anyone who's ever done it. It makes perfect sense.

Mike Posner

It makes sense because if I had stayed in the hotel room and played on my phone, I would have gotten more and more tired. I was engaging in an activity that I knew I didn't care about. But when I engage in an activity that I know is going to help my soul grow, it's unlimited energy. So sometimes, doing more is easier than doing less. Sometimes, a hard goal is easier than an easy goal.

Shaan Puri

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

Mike Posner

Hey man, what's going on, dude?

Shaan Puri

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

Mike Posner

That experience was stellar.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, exactly. So, it's like a 1 and a half star experience. He's like, "Oh man, the reason I haven't been going is that I've been dreading the DMV." I love this because it's like everybody dreads the DMV.

Mike Posner

So, I love this.

Shaan Puri

He looks at that 1.5-star rating and thinks, "Okay, but I'm a sovereign being. I don't have to have a 1.5-star experience. That's the average experience. I'm going to have a 5-star experience." How do you have a 5-star experience? It's not by going there and expecting them to give you 5 stars; it's by you walking in as a 5-star customer. So, he gets in his car, drives to the DMV with no appointment, and walks in proud, happy, and excited. He opens the door for a lady and helps some people. He says, "Hey, why don't you guys go ahead of me?" Instead of everyone in the DMV rushing to the line, he encourages them to go ahead. While he was joking around with the lady he met in the parking lot, it turns out she works at the DMV. She sees him inside and asks, "What are you here for?" He replies, "I've been driving around with this expired license. I've been so stressed out about it, but I said today is the day." She responds, "You're right, today is the day." She then cuts the whole line, gives him the necessary paperwork, and he doesn't even have to take the test. He walks out of there in under 30 minutes with a 5-star DMV experience.

Mike Posner

5 star

Shaan Puri

And so he took that and he was like, "Yo, this is like watching somebody part the seas." It's like you have seen an act. If you didn't believe in manifestation before, if you didn't believe that you control your experience, well, look what I just did with the DMV! I love that story. So I always held that one as like, "Yeah, you get to choose your experience." I also like that message of, "Don't expect the world to be giving you this 5-star hospitality." Be a 5-star customer and watch how the universe sort of responds to you.

Mike Posner

I love that.

Shaan Puri

So, I thought you would like to... Yeah, thanks for...

Mike Posner

The story, dude. Yeah, I want to remember that one.

Shaan Puri

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

Mike Posner

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

Shaan Puri

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

Mike Posner

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

Shaan Puri

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

Mike Posner

My songs come from all over, you know? That's my personal favorite way to do it. But it's not about what I like; it's about the songs coming through. So, I gotta get this out. I've written songs on airplanes. I've written songs here. I've written songs in the morning, at night, starting with piano licks, starting with lyrics, and starting with melody. So, pretty much every different way.

Shaan Puri

Hey, bye.

Mike Posner

The way we are having fun.

Shaan Puri

I'm having fun.

Mike Posner

Where are we measuring up to your research, dude?

Shaan Puri

It's higher because that's what I tried to do. That iTunes tune... I'm better in real life. That iTunes tune story was amazing. That's like, you know, everybody's got their favorite dish; that's my favorite dish. It's a combination of the serendipity of things working out for somebody 10 years in the making. I love that! Everybody who's trying to do something wants to hear stories that, after 10 years, it starts to work out. This is something we all need to hear—those stories. But then also, you did engineer it in a way too. You weren't a passive observer to some lucky circumstance. You took steps to observe and then double down on that. You did things that there's no textbook to say, "Make your pledges change their profile pictures and invite people." But it makes sense at the same time. So, I love that story.

Mike Posner

Thank you.

Shaan Puri

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

Mike Posner

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

Shaan Puri

Can you take me back to one of those moments where life is easy but doesn't feel quite right? I don't have the same level of joy that I should be having on paper. Then, what was the decision? What did the voice say that made you go do one of those things? Can you walk me through that?

Mike Posner

Yeah, with the walk across America, I was at a friend's jewelry shop when someone across the room said, "My friend just walked across America." It was like a tractor beam. I went over and said, "What did you just say? My friend walked? I go, you can do that?" I guess he did it. No one else cared about it. I thought, "What's up with you, man?" I said out loud in that jewelry shop, "I'm gonna do that one day." I actually don't think I said, "I want to do that one day," but the sentence lingered in the jewelry shop like a fart no one wanted to claim. Everyone just sort of went back to whatever they were talking about before I said it. Fast forward four years later, my father dies from brain cancer. About six months after that, my assistant at the time, Nick, comes to pick me up to take me to a studio session. That day, he said, "Hey man, Avicii's dead." Avicii is a friend of mine that I worked with in the music studio. I had worked with him a few weeks before. I said, "Don't fuck with me, man." He replied, "I'm not fucking with you. Avicii's dead." I said, "I can't, I can't believe this." I got in his car, and as he drove to the studio, I kept saying, "I can't believe this." While I was saying that out loud, there was one thought going through my head that I couldn't make stop: **I have to walk across America. I have to.**

Shaan Puri

I have to walk across America. I have to walk across America. I have to walk across America.

Mike Posner

America. It was this proximity of death. I'm saying, "Hey dude, you see that man that gave you your life, the one that you look just like? He's dead. That's what's gonna happen to you." You see that other man who does the same job as you? You guys do the same concerts; you're in the studio with him. Last week, he's dead. That's what's gonna happen to you. Maybe not in the same way, but this is a return trip. Another couple of weeks pass. I'm in this **shitty little guest house** that I'm renting in West Hollywood, bouncing around studios trying to make my next hit. My friend Willie calls me. He goes, "Hey Mike, I got bad news. One of our best friends that we grew up with, his name was Ronnie, he goes, 'Ronnie's dead.'" Shit, man. I just realized, dude, I'm gonna die before I die. I want to live the life that I actually want to live, and I wasn't doing it. I was living the life that I thought my manager thought I should live. Truly, I was living the life that 20-year-old me had set up. It was pain. I walked across America because I was in pain, and I wanted to figure out a different way.

Shaan Puri

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

Mike Posner

I found a part of myself that was so much stronger than I ever knew was even there. Not only did I find a part of myself, but I also unleashed a part of myself that I previously didn't know was there. Dude, I got bit by a poisonous rattlesnake. I spent three nights in the ICU. I got airlifted and was told by dispatch that I might not live. I was told by doctors it might take me eight months to heal, and by other doctors, I might lose my foot. This is like... I did a crazy thing, dude. I went back. I kept going. Everyone expected me to quit, probably because the old me was such a... well, a "bitch." You know, my whole life was about me and everything being comfortable. So, I thought, "I'm going to do the opposite. I'm going to be a five-star walker."

Shaan Puri

Right, but do it differently.

Mike Posner

I'm going to do it differently. I'm not going to use this injury as an excuse to do less. I'm going to use it as an excuse to do more. Yeah, I get to do podcasts and talk about it, and this thing is on my Wikipedia page. The real trophies that you asked for are that I became someone new. That part of me is so different. Having an inkling you're strong versus really knowing you're strong because you were strong... I was strong in a way I hadn't been before.

Shaan Puri

That's amazing! I think that there's this concept of **misogi**. Have you heard of this?

Mike Posner

uh-uh

Shaan Puri

We've talked about it in the pod before. It's got Jesse Itzler came on.

Mike Posner

I love Jesse Itzler. He's a good friend, man.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, so, Jesse.

Mike Posner

Came on anything for Jesse Itzler?

Shaan Puri

I like that.

Mike Posner

For real.

Shaan Puri

He's one of my... I don't ever use the word "mentors" or "heroes" or anything, but I call him a "blueprint." So, I look for people who live interesting lives. I'm like, "Oh, that could be... I like the way that house is laid out. Maybe I could steal some of that blueprint."

Mike Posner

He's got four for me too. And by the way, a friend spent time with him off the...

Shaan Puri

Off the record, yeah.

Mike Posner

He's that guy.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, that's actually something I always wonder because on the podcast, you always see people's, you know, hopefully best.

Mike Posner

That guy, dude, 24. I've been with him. I've watched him with his kids. He's that guy.

Shaan Puri

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

Mike Posner

That's dope, dude! I wanna try.

Shaan Puri

**That**... but that's a superpower.

Mike Posner

Not in your mouth, in your head, dude.

Shaan Puri

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

Mike Posner

So good, man.

Shaan Puri

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

Mike Posner

It's so well said, and I believe the person that Tony was talking to was Krishna Ji. Krishna Ji and his wife, Pritan Ji, are amazing. They teach that there are only two kinds of states: **beautiful states** and **suffering states**. There are all different types of suffering states and types of beautiful states—joy, laughter, calm, serenity, or pain, depression, self-pity... you name it, right? But there's really only two states. So, I think what all of us really want is to have more beautiful states and fewer suffering states. We're talking about tools to get there. What do you want? That's what you want, I think.

Shaan Puri

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

Mike Posner

Anything you want, you want because you think it's going to give you a better state, right? And maybe it will, momentarily. But the trick of the game is, hey, you don't have to wait for the thing. Feel it now. Feel it right now. And if you can win that game, you've won life.

Shaan Puri

Right.

Mike Posner

Right, and so nobody's perfect. I don't know anybody... you know a lot of these guys too.

Shaan Puri

We just met, so now you know.

Mike Posner

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

Shaan Puri

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

Mike Posner

Thank you, bro.

Shaan Puri

It's been a great, great day.

Mike Posner

It has been great peace.