April 12, 2024 • 36 mins
From selling millions of records to walking across America and climbing Mount Everest, Mike Posner’s journey is nothing short of extraordinary. Mike shares valuable thoughts on creativity, personal growth, and the limitless potential that lies within each of us. With his infectious enthusiasm and genuine wisdom, Mike aims to inspire others to embrace their own unique paths and strive for greatness by making the intentional choice to stop talking and start doing.
- The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: A Brief Guide Download our guide for a summary of principles and practices that can help you cope with change in resilient, creative ways.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:10):
Hello and welcome back toFranklinCovey's twice weekly podcast,
On Leadership with Scott Miller.I'm your host each week, six years,
350 plus episodes whereevery week, twice weekly.
On Tuesdays and Fridays,
we shine what is FranklinCovey'smegawatt spotlight onto different thought
leaders from all different walks of life,
generally themed aroundhow to be a better leader,
(00:34):
how to be a more effective individual.
And some weeks we interview Hollywoodcelebrities, world-renowned athletes,
people that have set world records,researchers, business titans,
bestselling authors,
people who may not be a householdname but have done something
Herculean or survivedsomething tragic or traumatic,
(00:56):
and have shown the courageand vulnerability to come on and teach the lessons
through their own journey.FranklinCovey, of course,
the most trusted leadership firm inthe world, co-founded by Stephen Covey,
the author of the seminal book, The7 Habits of Highly Effective People.
This book has sold morethan 50 million copies.
Hundreds of millions of professionalsand leaders have attended a
(01:18):
multi-day 7 Habits work session.We are 40 years in business,
all with the common mission to helpmake you better at whatever it is you're
trying to accomplish. Todayour guest is Mike Posner.
You know him as a poet, an author.He's a musician, a songwriter,
a performer,
and today we're going to talk about allthe different facets of his journey that
(01:41):
I think you will find fascinating.Mike Posner, welcome to On Leadership.
Thank you, Scott. Greatto connect with you.
Mike, off camera,
I mentioned to you that last night mysons were super impressed that I was
interviewing you. Like MatthewMcConaughey, whatever, Deepak Chopra,
I don't care. Mike Posner. Are youkidding me? My kids have your song-
(02:02):
and I mentioned that you lookexactly like you do in your videos.
For those last few people under arock that may not know who you are,
I'm going to remind them.
You are well-known as a record producer,
writer, vocalist.
You are probably best known for yourown videos and songs that are in my head
(02:23):
on perpetual loop, including I Tooka Pill in Ibiza from your album.
31 Minutes to Takeoff. Your songPlease Don't Go is on loop in my head.
You co-produced Sugar by Maroon 5.
Love that music video.
You have written songs forJustin Bieber, for Labrinth,
(02:44):
Pharrell Williams, Big Sean, 2 Chainz,Wiz Khalifa, Nelly, TI, Snoop Dogg,
Nick Jonas, Avicii, IggyAzalea, Olly Murs. I mean,
the list goes on and on and on.
What I want you to do is I don'twant you to show any humility.
I would like you to take a coupleof minutes and rewind a few decades,
reintroduce yourself, howyou got into the business,
(03:09):
why you've had such impact on people.
We're going to talk aboutthe Walk Across America.
We're going to discuss the snakebite,
all things Mike Posnerover the next 40 minutes.
Reintroduce yourself to our audience.
Hi,
my name is Mike and I'm anArtist with a capital A.
(03:30):
I didn't get into music. Music gotinto me since before I can remember.
My mother tells me stories of me being a
little, little kid two years oldand hearing the birds chirp in the
backyard in Detroit where I'm fromand me trying to sing the notes
(03:51):
back to the birds.
So I think this whole musicthing was very much nature,
not nurture, came with myincarnation this time around,
and I just have alwaysbeen fascinated with these
melodies that show up inmy head. I believe in God,
(04:12):
I think they come fromGod or a higher power,
and I try to just translate thethings I hear in my head into
recordings. And so I started doingthat when I was about eight years old.
I'm 36 years old now, and
I've been called Everything from agenius to the next Justin Timberlake
(04:35):
to a one-hit wonder,
to some other four-letterwords that I won't
repeat here.
I've had amazing highs in mycareer and even lower lows.
I've just tried to tellthe truth the entire way.
You know what's specialabout my journey to me
(04:59):
is at age 22, Scott,
I was given everything that Ithought would make me happy.
I found myself richer than my parents.
I found myself getting attentionfrom the opposite sex in
amounts that I never dreamed of.
I found myself famous and
(05:23):
I didn't feel happy.
And the next 10, 15 years of my life,
the chapter that's mostexciting for me to talk about is
me going on a journey, a spiritualjourney to understand, okay,
if those things don't change mymoment to moment experience of life,
(05:44):
they don't create fulfillment.
If they don't connect me to my purpose,
then what does?
And so I've been onquite a ride since then.
And you mentioned the Walk Across America,
you mentioned climbing Everest andfound myself in wild retreat scenarios
and just stumbled onsome tools and answers.
(06:05):
And my intention and my
purpose and purpose for being here todayis just to share what I've learned and
hopefully can help someone else on theirpath. My father, before he passed away,
he said just be healthy and happy.
And so my mission is just to helppeople be healthier and happier.
So I hope we can do that here today,and I appreciate the opportunity.
(06:29):
Mike,
I'm looking forward to digging into reallywho you are and what you've learned.
You are a record producer.You are a songwriter.
You are a singer of a poet, an author.
A few months ago I had the privilege ofhaving breakfast with Marcus Buckingham.
Most people know him as the formerGallup researcher that really
(06:51):
galvanized the Strengths movement.He wrote the books First,
Break All the Rules, andNow, Discover Your Strengths.
It became the Strengthsfinder,
probably the most ubiquitous assessmentmost organizations use to help people
identify their strengths. When peoplethink of the Strengths movement,
they think of Marcus Buckingham andMarcus said something profound over
(07:11):
breakfast. He said in his experience,
he finds that most people
follow what they're good at fortheir careers, not what they love,
what makes them happy. Thatbecause you are good at something,
it doesn't necessarily mean that shouldbe your career or your identity or your
(07:33):
passion.
Is there a particular one ofthe things that you are good at,
but it's not your passion, or is yourpassion also what you are good at?
And what would you sayabout that combination?
I'm not sure if I totally agree withhim. Cal Newport would disagree with him.
(07:53):
He says, when you getreally good at something,
you start to like it more,
and I'll just use thatas a tangential point.
One thing I've discoveredis that most of us undersell
ourselves in our capacity,
our potential to becomeexperts at something.
(08:14):
And I see here feel and know frommy own experience that I can do
pretty much anything. I couldbecome an expert at anything.
I'm not saying it's easy to do,
so it's a lot of hard workand dedication and discipline
that goes into becominggreat at something.
But that opportunity to do so is there.
(08:37):
And so for me,
I have an insane amount ofself will and discipline.
And if I point myself in a direction,I go really far in that direction.
So for me,
it's more of an issue of making sureI'm pointed in the right direction.
I find myself at a place in life now where
(08:57):
there's just more things that I'minspired by than I could probably do.
I probably have twolifetimes' worth of ideas,
things I want to do. So for me, that's,
that's a question of faith andthe ability to connect to one's
(09:17):
own heart, to prioritize and go, okay,
what can I do that no one else can?
How can I serve the most and the deepest?
And that's what I'm goingto dedicate myself to.
Mike, I asked that question by theway. Thank you for your answer.
Because you're obviously a multifaceted,talented, passionate artist.
(09:40):
You've had significant successand fame on some of these
singles and albums thatyou've produced. I mean,
nine years ago I Took a Pill inIbiza, was I Took a Pill in Ibiza,
was top 10 in 27 countries. I mean,I can't get it out of my head.
You could also take a bill to Ibiza.
I guess you could take a bill to Ibizaand hope the legislature passes it.
(10:02):
I'm sure I'm not the first person who'sgotten that backwards. But you also are
very successful in helping otherpeople become successful. I mean,
I don't know what your role is and dozensof these artists that you have also
contributed to.
I'm guessing you found your voice inhelping other people and not always being
(10:22):
in the spotlight.
When do you decide you're going to bebehind the scenes versus out front,
metaphorically on stage,literally on stage.
I'm just a creative guy.
It's not as deep an answeras maybe you might expect.
And really, I just traditionallywrite a lot of songs
(10:45):
and I write more thanI can put out myself.
One of the bains of my existence andstones I grind against the music industry
is I often write songsfaster than I could put them
out.
Or sometimes I just write songs and I'mcreating an album and the songs don't
fit on the album. So then I'll say, hey,
(11:08):
who else could sing this thing? And yeah,
I've been very blessed to work withsome of the best artists in the world
and to have them sing some of the wordsand melodies I've written is pretty
cool to be part of their journey.
So Mike, tell us how that works.
I know the audience will be interested.
So you write a song and for whateverreason you decide it's not the song you
(11:32):
want to sing, you've written it,
but you want Pharrell to sing it oryou want Wiz Khalifa or whoever it is.
Do you text him and say, I'vewritten a song and you're my guy?
Or how do you decide and whodoes decide who brings your
song to life for the world?
I decide, they're my songs. So yeah,
(11:53):
that's the best way is if youhave a personal relationship,
you just send it to them.There's also a whole backwards,
archaic infrastructure ofmanagers and ANRs and agents
in LA that supposedlycan get your music to
someone else to sing it.And sometimes that works,
(12:13):
but most often it's easier tojust send it to them for sure.
And do you have a name in mind? Like youwrite a song and you think, no, no, no,
this is Nelly. Only Nelly, no oneelse. And if Nelly doesn't sing it,
this song's never being published.
No, I don't. I'm just writing, I'm justcreating what I think is beautiful.
And if there are any artists outhere listening, I'm sure there are,
(12:36):
artists at any medium, if you'rea writer, a painter, whatever,
I can't tell you how many times I'vegiven this advice to people and I didn't
make it up. It's from Maria Popova.
But your job is just to createthe art that you want to exist.
If you're creating art, then chancesare you're a fan of that kind of art,
(12:58):
and so you have this beautifulopportunity to put something into the
world that you love. You'renot putting something else,
putting something into the world thatyou think your friend will love or your
mom or your manager or your fans.You're just creating something
that you want to exist and you'rethe only one that can do that job.
(13:21):
And that's it. So when I'm writing,
I'm just creating somethingI think is beautiful,
something I'm proud of,
and if someone elsesinging it or that's way
later, way later, but I don'tbring that into the studio,
I don't bring anyone elseinto the studio in my head.
It's just me and the placethat the ideas come from.
(13:46):
Mike, would you share with uswhat is your creative process?
What do you do to nurture andfeed your creativity that other
people might actually findinteresting or inspiring,
whether they do the same thing or itinspires them in some other place?
Do you have any rituals or practices orhabits or things that help get you in
(14:07):
the space you need to be to unleashyour art in many different forms?
Yeah, I have a lot of them. One is -.
I'm guessing one was a pillin Ibiza, I'm guessing, right?
No, quite the contrary. I mean,I wrote a song about doing that,
but I wasn't having ideaswhile I was doing that. So
(14:29):
I would say no.
First I would start withtake ideas seriously.
To this day,
my girlfriend could tell you if I havean idea at three in the morning and I'm
half asleep, it's kind ofannoying, but I got to get up.
I got to get up, and I record it intomy phone. So when those ideas come,
(14:52):
you got to take 'em seriously.Another is, especially with music,
music can be very collaborative,but it also can be very solitary.
I can write songs alone or Ican write them with others,
and these are powerful toolsto play off one another. So
if I'm writing alone and Ifeel sort of stuck, well,
I'll go work with someone else becausebring something else out of me.
(15:17):
Conversely,
if I've been working with a lot of otherpeople and I'm kind of sick of having
to bounce my idea off of somebody elseand I just want to say the thing I want
to say, well, then I'll stop working withother people and go work with myself.
So those two can be played offone another to keep creativity
flowing. When one starts to feeldry, bring out the other one.
(15:37):
And when that one starts to feeldry, go back to working by yourself.
Furthermore, I believe like a person,
a person's values are notreflected by their words.
A person's values arereflected by their calendar.
It doesn't really matter ifyou say you take creativity
(15:59):
or writing seriously.Those are just words.
What matters is if you actuallyschedule time to do it.
And so I would say if you think that youwant to take creation seriously, well,
there has to be time in your calendarto do that every day. For me,
I like the morning.
(16:19):
There's nothing better than when 9:00AM rolls around and I've already been up
since five and I already finished a songor already wrote a chapter in my book.
It's really fulfilling to gointo the Zoom calls like that.
So I like that time. Otherpeople like that time at night.
I also meditate twice a day.When you have a clear mind,
(16:44):
there's space for inspiration tocome in. When you have a full mind,
there's no space.
So any practice that clears themind is good for creativity.
I also use the ice bath. Ialso use exercise every day.
All these things areproductive and beneficial,
and you just want to keep thatchannel clear. The other thing is,
(17:06):
and this is the last thing I'll addis creativity is you have to keep
going back.
So there's a tendency afterthere you write something great,
great by your own definition,something you're proud of,
there's a tendency tokind of want to sit back.
But really you shouldgo back again the next,
you should immediately as quick asyou can go create more, go write more.
(17:32):
Don't rest on what you wrote yesterday.
Just keep building on that momentum.And it should be a daily thing,
a daily thing. There shouldbe time for creation.
Mike, did you always knowthis would be your path?
Did you ever think you were going tobe a chemical engineer or a barber or a
commercial airline pilot?
(17:52):
Did you know early in lifethat this would be your path of
success?
Very early on, I wrote in a journal,
this was maybe like eightyears old, and my teacher said,
what is something, if you accomplished it,
(18:12):
you would know that yourlife had really worked out.
And at that eight years old, I wrote down,
I want to be interviewed by Scott.
That was it. My life has turned outexactly how I planned it. Man, this is it.
The worlds have alignedto support Mike Posner.
(18:37):
I'm teasing you. I'm teasing you.But in all actuality, my friend,
my life is, my real lifehas exceeded my dreams.
And that's something
I like a skinny Jewish kid from Detroit to
(18:59):
sell millions of records,
to be nominated for Grammys and then go,
you know what I'm going to do next?
I'm going to walk across the continentand not say it, do it, and then go,
I'm not done.
Now I'm going to climb thetallest mountain in the world and not talk about it.
Do it. This wasn't even onthe menu of my wildest dreams.
(19:22):
And these are not dreams. They'resomething more valuable than dreams.
They're memories.
And so I have a fulfillmentof pride that is worth
more than any trophy orany award knowing that
I have. I have like a dish rag.
(19:42):
You squeeze it out. It's likethat's what I do with my,
whatever talent I was given,which isn't that much.
I'm like ringing that thing out, dude.
So it is been an incredible journey,
and I'm beyond blessed.
I've come close to death a few times,
(20:05):
and I'm here for a reason,
and that's to helpothers on their journey.
But yet my real life is biggerthan my dreams ever were.
What a great metaphor. Ringinglife dry, like a wet rag.
I love the inspiration you gave us. Okay,
so let's talk about thisWalk Across America.
(20:26):
As I remember this story, you were like,you were somewhere overhearing someone,
talk about someone else who had donethis, and you're thinking, yeah,
I think I'll do that. I'msure I have that wrong,
but will you kind of just take fiveminutes and tell us the why and
the what and the how. We'll getto the snake. Save that for me.
(20:47):
But let's talk about, Idon't why in your byline,
it's going to say hundreds of millionsof records, wildly successful,
rang it dry like adishcloth, climbed Everest,
walked across America and surviveda snake bite. I don't know why,
but that's going to be in your epitaphforever. Hold that for a moment.
Talk about the inspiration, what youdid, and perhaps more importantly,
(21:09):
what the hell, man? Why didyou walk across America?
Yeah, I walked acrossAmerica because of pain.
I want to be really honest aboutthat. I was stagnating in my life.
I found myself looking in themirror and questioning everything,
questioning is this it?
(21:30):
There's got to be more to life than this,
and I have everything thatwas supposed to make me happy,
but there's just no compelling reason toget out of bed in the morning. I mean,
the juice was all gone. My fatherdied. My friend Avicii killed himself.
My friend Mac Miller overdosed and died.
(21:50):
My friend Ronnie had aheart attack and died.
And I'm looking in the mirror and I'msaying, if all those guys are dead, well,
that means I'm going to die oneday too. Hopefully not soon,
but this is a return trip,and maybe before I die,
I should actually try tolive not the life that my
(22:10):
agent and manager tells me Ihave to live the life that I was
meant to live. Maybe Ishould try to do that.
Maybe I should give myself a compellingreason to get out of bed in the morning.
Maybe I should put something in my futurethat enlivens my present because when
the future is empty, thepresent's unbearable.
(22:30):
And so this idea, yeah,
I heard about someone talkingabout it five years before.
I'm looking in this mirror. Havingan idea was an unimportant moment.
No one cares about your ideas.
No one cares about the thing yousay you're going to do someday.
You don't even care. Theimportant moment is when you say,
(22:51):
the time is now, it's enough.
And it was not some funnything that I was doing for
press.
It wasn't some funny bucketlist like woo-hoo thing.
No, this was,
I'm going to walk across America or I'mgoing to die and I'm not going to die
the way my dad or Avicii orRonnie or Mac Miller died.
(23:12):
I'm going to die away sad or deathif I don't do this, I will die.
The kind of death where my body'sstill walking around spewing hot air,
but my dreams have decayed into a corpse,
and you don't have to look very farto meet one of those kind of people.
It's a way sadder death. Andso I knew it was a crazy idea.
(23:33):
I've since learned that notall crazy ideas are great,
but all great ideas are crazy.And so I made the decision to go.
I needed to change my, noone was coming to help me.
It wasn't anyone else's fault.
I had to change my own life,
and I knew that there was morefor me. I didn't know what it was,
(23:55):
but I knew I had to escape whateversandbox I was playing inside of
in West Hollywood with alife designed solely around
becoming more famous andgetting other people to like me.
On April 15th, 2019,
I stood off the coast of NewJersey. I was in the Atlantic Ocean.
(24:17):
I was scared.
I was scared because peopletold me I was ruining my career.
I was scared that I was going tocause irreparable damage to my body.
I was scared that I was going to fail.
I didn't know if I could actually completethis mission and I would look like an
idiot in front of everyone.
But I stood off thecoast and I took a step.
(24:39):
Step one is take one step.And when I took that step,
all those fears about whatmight happen if I did this,
they disappeared because I was doingit. I walked across New Jersey,
I walked across Pennsylvania.I walked across Ohio.
I walked across Indiana, Illinois,
walked across Missouri during a heat wave.
(25:01):
My feet started to hurt horribly.
I could barely stand up inthe morning, but I kept going,
and I walked across Kansas,I walked into Colorado.
I could just see the RockyMountains on the horizon,
and ow, pain shot up my left leg,
and then I heard thesound that was the snake
(25:24):
that bit me in my left leg.
So talk about this, becausethis just wasn't a snake bite.
This was a pretty significantinterruption in not just the walk,
but your life, your life. You make it
65% of the way acrossthe nation. By the way,
by the time you got to Colorado,
(25:45):
you've been doing this for howmany months from New Jersey?
Yeah, I would beestimating, I can't recall.
I remember the mile marker4 I was at was
1,797,
so probably four months. Yeah, at least.
And I mean,
(26:05):
not to mention all the people you met andthe instances and I'm sure the life or
death scenarios and thebody, the toll it took. Okay,
so you're walking across Colorado,
you're 65 or so percent the wayto your destination or more,
70 something percent. What happensnext? A rattlesnake bites you.
Yeah. What happens next isI start to lose awareness.
(26:29):
What happens next is-.
Mike, Mike, stop a second. Sorry.You're alone. Where are you in Colorado?
Are there people with you? Arethere cars? What's the situation?
My walk manager, Colin, was there.
And before this event, I postedon social media and I said,
(26:50):
if you find me, you can walk with me.
And people came from all over theUnited States to walk with me.
So that day, there were twopeople there walking with me.
We were between La Junta and Walsenberg in
Colorado, easternColorado, and Colorado 10.
(27:12):
It is the middle of nowhere,middle of nowhere. And yeah,
I started to lose awareness.
I would come to kindof wake up and realize,
this is really serious.This isn't a bee sting.
And called 911. I spoketo dispatch. She said,
(27:32):
I sent two ambulances, one fromeach direction, one from the east,
one from the west, and a chopper. Shesaid, whatever gets there first, get in.
I said, am I going to die?She said, I don't know, sir.
I spent five nights in the hospital.
My leg swelled to thesides of an elephant trunk.
I went from walking 24 miles a day tonot being able to walk to the bathroom.
(27:57):
I had to go home to Michigan.
Then this funny thinghappened while I was resting,
and that was I started toget better and I healed.
And so now I had this decision to make.
I could either return tothe sandbox, to my old life,
could return to trying to be more famous,
(28:20):
and ordering Uber Eats and justthis fake life that brought
me nothing but disillusionment.
Or I could go back to the side of theroad where the cars almost hit me every
day. I could go backto the sweltering heat.
I could go back to the blistering footpain. This path sucked. It hurt a lot,
but it taught me that when itcomes to things I care about,
(28:43):
my reasons to quit are always just
excuses in disguise. I had thebest reason to quit of all time.
I was bit by a poisonoussnake, almost lost my leg,
almost lost my life. Andso if I chose to quit now,
it wouldn't look like I was quitting.
(29:05):
It would just be a cool storywith honestly a badass ending.
It was such a good reason to quit thatmost people wouldn't even think I was a
quitter, but I wasn'tdoing it for most people,
and I don't know howto explain this to you,
but there was no other way forme to become the man that I
now am,
the man I knew I was supposed to bethan to walk the remaining 1000 miles.
(29:29):
There was no book I could read about it.
There was no podcast I could listento about it. There was no document.
They're like, I had to do it.
And so I went back to the exactspot that the snake bit me,
and I took a step and Ikept taking steps until I
went over the RockyMountains, across Colorado,
(29:50):
across Navajo Nation. Kept takingsteps until I walked across Arizona,
across Nevada, across California,
across the Mojave Desert,across Los Angeles.
I kept taking steps until thepavement turned in the sand,
and after six months andthree days, 2,851 miles,
(30:12):
I dove into the PacificOcean and I was that
person that I dreamt of becoming.
Mike, what did you learn mostfrom this walk across America?
What did you learn aboutmaybe yourself and about
humanity?
(30:32):
I learned that the potential thatlies inside each human heart is
darn near infinite.
Most of us create our future based on some
version of the past, and Iwas doing that. I was, hey,
I'm a successful artist.I'm a successful songwriter.
(30:56):
I make music inside ofrooms with no windows.
That's what I do.
And I thought my futurewould be just some version of
that going forward.
Me a little older with a little moremoney just doing that. I took this risk.
I tried this project and I crushedit, and it got me thinking,
(31:19):
well, what else can I do?
And so I now see that mypotential so far exceeded what
I even thought was on themenu to order from life.
I think that's true of every human being.
There's a few human beingsthat uncover their full
potential. And I think most of ussell ourselves pretty far short.
(31:45):
We think, I can't do this.
Or easy for that person to say, or no,
you're capable of greatness.
And most of the pain that a lotof us feel is knowing that deep
down, we have more giftsto give than we are.
And sometimes we can't figure outthe right place or the avenue.
(32:05):
That's your journey.
I believe that God gave you aheart to figure out what to do
and a mind to figure out howto do it. But don't flip them.
Don't use your mind tofigure out what to do.
It's a tool to help you figureout strategies and things,
but use your heart tofigure out what to do.
(32:28):
Mike, off air, we talked aboutthe impact that Dr. Covey's book,
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Peoplehad in your life. You had it handy.
You talked about how you'd markedit up. What's one of the ideas?
I don't mean for this all to bepromotional for FranklinCovey at all.
What's one of the ideas that Dr.Covey taught you or reminded you
(32:50):
of that's been helpful for you?
I mean, there's so muchstuff in there, and frankly,
a lot of the principles have permeatedthe culture so much that I had
encountered them before, but thenrealized this is where they came from. But
this show is called OnLeadership. Correct.
One of the things I love.
(33:11):
Well, Mike, Mike, Mike,Mike, Mike, Mike, Mike.
Technically it's on Leadershipwith Scott Miller. I mean,
at least get the titlecorrect. Okay. I mean.
Listen, I told you earlierhow much you mean to me. Okay.
People know, you don't have to overdoit. Just play it cool. Play it cool.
Too late. Too late, my friend,too late. You called me out.
(33:31):
So one of the things that stuckwith me and the title of your
show brought it to mindwas the definition of
leadership. Leadershipis articulating another
human's potential so clearlythat they are inspired to see it
themselves. And that gives megoosebumps just repeating it.
(33:53):
That stuck out, the time matrixbetween what's urgent and important.
That stuck out. Thinking win-win,
that's helped me immensely in my life.
It is so full of wisdomthat it's almost, yeah,
there's a reason it sold 50 millioncopies and made such an impact because
(34:17):
anytime someone reads this book,they're going to tell everyone about it.
I've told my audience about it,I've told my friends about it.
A bunch of them are reading itnow. And so it's just incredible.
So those a couple.
Thanks for indulging me. I'd love to endour conversation. What's next for you?
What will people seepotentially on the horizon?
(34:38):
You've written a book of poetry.
Have you thought of writing a bookabout your wisdom and your own journey?
Are you producing more?What's next from Mike Posner?
Yeah, thank you for asking.
I am writing a book right nowthat's just about the walk.
And then as you know, you startwriting. It's kind of about everything.
So I'm in the thick of that. I haveno idea how long that will take me.
(35:01):
I've made, I think 12 or 13 albums,but this is my first full-length
book, not of poetry, so I have noidea how long that will take me.
I've also started The Mike Posner Podcastwhere I just share distinctions that
have made a difference in my life.
And I talk to people thatinspire me to this day.
(35:23):
And we take questions from theaudience, sometimes just me,
people dealing with real things and tryto give them distinctions to empower
them to lead healthier and happier lives.
So people would check outThe Mike Posner Podcast.
And then I also have a new albumcoming, so doing a bunch of stuff, man,
all of it's good.
(35:45):
Mike Posner, singer, songwriter,producer, poet, walker,
survivor, podcaster, author,
sage of the human experience. I mean,
I love your concept of beforeyou die you want to live.
And that really resonated with me.
I think a lot of people willtake enormous benefit and wisdom
(36:06):
from listening to this episode. I thinkpeople will listen to it multiple times.
Who knew Mike Posner wasthe new Stephen Covey,
we appreciate you joining us today.
Thanks for being OnLeadership with Scott Miller.
Hey, God bless you, man. Appreciate you.
Thank you, Mike.
And we'll see you back here next weekfor a new conversation On Leadership.
Hello and welcome back toFranklinCovey's twice weekly podcast,
On Leadership with Scott Miller.I'm your host each week, six years,
350 plus episodes whereevery week, twice weekly.
On Tuesdays and Fridays,
we shine what is FranklinCovey'smegawatt spotlight onto different thought
leaders from all different walks of life,
generally themed aroundhow to be a better leader,
(00:34):
how to be a more effective individual.
And some weeks we interview Hollywoodcelebrities, world-renowned athletes,
people that have set world records,researchers, business titans,
bestselling authors,
people who may not be a householdname but have done something
Herculean or survivedsomething tragic or traumatic,
(00:56):
and have shown the courageand vulnerability to come on and teach the lessons
through their own journey.FranklinCovey, of course,
the most trusted leadership firm inthe world, co-founded by Stephen Covey,
the author of the seminal book, The7 Habits of Highly Effective People.
This book has sold morethan 50 million copies.
Hundreds of millions of professionalsand leaders have attended a
(01:18):
multi-day 7 Habits work session.We are 40 years in business,
all with the common mission to helpmake you better at whatever it is you're
trying to accomplish. Todayour guest is Mike Posner.
You know him as a poet, an author.He's a musician, a songwriter,
a performer,
and today we're going to talk about allthe different facets of his journey that
(01:41):
I think you will find fascinating.Mike Posner, welcome to On Leadership.
Thank you, Scott. Greatto connect with you.
Mike, off camera,
I mentioned to you that last night mysons were super impressed that I was
interviewing you. Like MatthewMcConaughey, whatever, Deepak Chopra,
I don't care. Mike Posner. Are youkidding me? My kids have your song-
(02:02):
and I mentioned that you lookexactly like you do in your videos.
For those last few people under arock that may not know who you are,
I'm going to remind them.
You are well-known as a record producer,
writer, vocalist.
You are probably best known for yourown videos and songs that are in my head
(02:23):
on perpetual loop, including I Tooka Pill in Ibiza from your album.
31 Minutes to Takeoff. Your songPlease Don't Go is on loop in my head.
You co-produced Sugar by Maroon 5.
Love that music video.
You have written songs forJustin Bieber, for Labrinth,
(02:44):
Pharrell Williams, Big Sean, 2 Chainz,Wiz Khalifa, Nelly, TI, Snoop Dogg,
Nick Jonas, Avicii, IggyAzalea, Olly Murs. I mean,
the list goes on and on and on.
What I want you to do is I don'twant you to show any humility.
I would like you to take a coupleof minutes and rewind a few decades,
reintroduce yourself, howyou got into the business,
(03:09):
why you've had such impact on people.
We're going to talk aboutthe Walk Across America.
We're going to discuss the snakebite,
all things Mike Posnerover the next 40 minutes.
Reintroduce yourself to our audience.
Hi,
my name is Mike and I'm anArtist with a capital A.
(03:30):
I didn't get into music. Music gotinto me since before I can remember.
My mother tells me stories of me being a
little, little kid two years oldand hearing the birds chirp in the
backyard in Detroit where I'm fromand me trying to sing the notes
(03:51):
back to the birds.
So I think this whole musicthing was very much nature,
not nurture, came with myincarnation this time around,
and I just have alwaysbeen fascinated with these
melodies that show up inmy head. I believe in God,
(04:12):
I think they come fromGod or a higher power,
and I try to just translate thethings I hear in my head into
recordings. And so I started doingthat when I was about eight years old.
I'm 36 years old now, and
I've been called Everything from agenius to the next Justin Timberlake
(04:35):
to a one-hit wonder,
to some other four-letterwords that I won't
repeat here.
I've had amazing highs in mycareer and even lower lows.
I've just tried to tellthe truth the entire way.
You know what's specialabout my journey to me
(04:59):
is at age 22, Scott,
I was given everything that Ithought would make me happy.
I found myself richer than my parents.
I found myself getting attentionfrom the opposite sex in
amounts that I never dreamed of.
I found myself famous and
(05:23):
I didn't feel happy.
And the next 10, 15 years of my life,
the chapter that's mostexciting for me to talk about is
me going on a journey, a spiritualjourney to understand, okay,
if those things don't change mymoment to moment experience of life,
(05:44):
they don't create fulfillment.
If they don't connect me to my purpose,
then what does?
And so I've been onquite a ride since then.
And you mentioned the Walk Across America,
you mentioned climbing Everest andfound myself in wild retreat scenarios
and just stumbled onsome tools and answers.
(06:05):
And my intention and my
purpose and purpose for being here todayis just to share what I've learned and
hopefully can help someone else on theirpath. My father, before he passed away,
he said just be healthy and happy.
And so my mission is just to helppeople be healthier and happier.
So I hope we can do that here today,and I appreciate the opportunity.
(06:29):
Mike,
I'm looking forward to digging into reallywho you are and what you've learned.
You are a record producer.You are a songwriter.
You are a singer of a poet, an author.
A few months ago I had the privilege ofhaving breakfast with Marcus Buckingham.
Most people know him as the formerGallup researcher that really
(06:51):
galvanized the Strengths movement.He wrote the books First,
Break All the Rules, andNow, Discover Your Strengths.
It became the Strengthsfinder,
probably the most ubiquitous assessmentmost organizations use to help people
identify their strengths. When peoplethink of the Strengths movement,
they think of Marcus Buckingham andMarcus said something profound over
(07:11):
breakfast. He said in his experience,
he finds that most people
follow what they're good at fortheir careers, not what they love,
what makes them happy. Thatbecause you are good at something,
it doesn't necessarily mean that shouldbe your career or your identity or your
(07:33):
passion.
Is there a particular one ofthe things that you are good at,
but it's not your passion, or is yourpassion also what you are good at?
And what would you sayabout that combination?
I'm not sure if I totally agree withhim. Cal Newport would disagree with him.
(07:53):
He says, when you getreally good at something,
you start to like it more,
and I'll just use thatas a tangential point.
One thing I've discoveredis that most of us undersell
ourselves in our capacity,
our potential to becomeexperts at something.
(08:14):
And I see here feel and know frommy own experience that I can do
pretty much anything. I couldbecome an expert at anything.
I'm not saying it's easy to do,
so it's a lot of hard workand dedication and discipline
that goes into becominggreat at something.
But that opportunity to do so is there.
(08:37):
And so for me,
I have an insane amount ofself will and discipline.
And if I point myself in a direction,I go really far in that direction.
So for me,
it's more of an issue of making sureI'm pointed in the right direction.
I find myself at a place in life now where
(08:57):
there's just more things that I'minspired by than I could probably do.
I probably have twolifetimes' worth of ideas,
things I want to do. So for me, that's,
that's a question of faith andthe ability to connect to one's
(09:17):
own heart, to prioritize and go, okay,
what can I do that no one else can?
How can I serve the most and the deepest?
And that's what I'm goingto dedicate myself to.
Mike, I asked that question by theway. Thank you for your answer.
Because you're obviously a multifaceted,talented, passionate artist.
(09:40):
You've had significant successand fame on some of these
singles and albums thatyou've produced. I mean,
nine years ago I Took a Pill inIbiza, was I Took a Pill in Ibiza,
was top 10 in 27 countries. I mean,I can't get it out of my head.
You could also take a bill to Ibiza.
I guess you could take a bill to Ibizaand hope the legislature passes it.
(10:02):
I'm sure I'm not the first person who'sgotten that backwards. But you also are
very successful in helping otherpeople become successful. I mean,
I don't know what your role is and dozensof these artists that you have also
contributed to.
I'm guessing you found your voice inhelping other people and not always being
(10:22):
in the spotlight.
When do you decide you're going to bebehind the scenes versus out front,
metaphorically on stage,literally on stage.
I'm just a creative guy.
It's not as deep an answeras maybe you might expect.
And really, I just traditionallywrite a lot of songs
(10:45):
and I write more thanI can put out myself.
One of the bains of my existence andstones I grind against the music industry
is I often write songsfaster than I could put them
out.
Or sometimes I just write songs and I'mcreating an album and the songs don't
fit on the album. So then I'll say, hey,
(11:08):
who else could sing this thing? And yeah,
I've been very blessed to work withsome of the best artists in the world
and to have them sing some of the wordsand melodies I've written is pretty
cool to be part of their journey.
So Mike, tell us how that works.
I know the audience will be interested.
So you write a song and for whateverreason you decide it's not the song you
(11:32):
want to sing, you've written it,
but you want Pharrell to sing it oryou want Wiz Khalifa or whoever it is.
Do you text him and say, I'vewritten a song and you're my guy?
Or how do you decide and whodoes decide who brings your
song to life for the world?
I decide, they're my songs. So yeah,
(11:53):
that's the best way is if youhave a personal relationship,
you just send it to them.There's also a whole backwards,
archaic infrastructure ofmanagers and ANRs and agents
in LA that supposedlycan get your music to
someone else to sing it.And sometimes that works,
(12:13):
but most often it's easier tojust send it to them for sure.
And do you have a name in mind? Like youwrite a song and you think, no, no, no,
this is Nelly. Only Nelly, no oneelse. And if Nelly doesn't sing it,
this song's never being published.
No, I don't. I'm just writing, I'm justcreating what I think is beautiful.
And if there are any artists outhere listening, I'm sure there are,
(12:36):
artists at any medium, if you'rea writer, a painter, whatever,
I can't tell you how many times I'vegiven this advice to people and I didn't
make it up. It's from Maria Popova.
But your job is just to createthe art that you want to exist.
If you're creating art, then chancesare you're a fan of that kind of art,
(12:58):
and so you have this beautifulopportunity to put something into the
world that you love. You'renot putting something else,
putting something into the world thatyou think your friend will love or your
mom or your manager or your fans.You're just creating something
that you want to exist and you'rethe only one that can do that job.
(13:21):
And that's it. So when I'm writing,
I'm just creating somethingI think is beautiful,
something I'm proud of,
and if someone elsesinging it or that's way
later, way later, but I don'tbring that into the studio,
I don't bring anyone elseinto the studio in my head.
It's just me and the placethat the ideas come from.
(13:46):
Mike, would you share with uswhat is your creative process?
What do you do to nurture andfeed your creativity that other
people might actually findinteresting or inspiring,
whether they do the same thing or itinspires them in some other place?
Do you have any rituals or practices orhabits or things that help get you in
(14:07):
the space you need to be to unleashyour art in many different forms?
Yeah, I have a lot of them. One is -.
I'm guessing one was a pillin Ibiza, I'm guessing, right?
No, quite the contrary. I mean,I wrote a song about doing that,
but I wasn't having ideaswhile I was doing that. So
(14:29):
I would say no.
First I would start withtake ideas seriously.
To this day,
my girlfriend could tell you if I havean idea at three in the morning and I'm
half asleep, it's kind ofannoying, but I got to get up.
I got to get up, and I record it intomy phone. So when those ideas come,
(14:52):
you got to take 'em seriously.Another is, especially with music,
music can be very collaborative,but it also can be very solitary.
I can write songs alone or Ican write them with others,
and these are powerful toolsto play off one another. So
if I'm writing alone and Ifeel sort of stuck, well,
I'll go work with someone else becausebring something else out of me.
(15:17):
Conversely,
if I've been working with a lot of otherpeople and I'm kind of sick of having
to bounce my idea off of somebody elseand I just want to say the thing I want
to say, well, then I'll stop working withother people and go work with myself.
So those two can be played offone another to keep creativity
flowing. When one starts to feeldry, bring out the other one.
(15:37):
And when that one starts to feeldry, go back to working by yourself.
Furthermore, I believe like a person,
a person's values are notreflected by their words.
A person's values arereflected by their calendar.
It doesn't really matter ifyou say you take creativity
(15:59):
or writing seriously.Those are just words.
What matters is if you actuallyschedule time to do it.
And so I would say if you think that youwant to take creation seriously, well,
there has to be time in your calendarto do that every day. For me,
I like the morning.
(16:19):
There's nothing better than when 9:00AM rolls around and I've already been up
since five and I already finished a songor already wrote a chapter in my book.
It's really fulfilling to gointo the Zoom calls like that.
So I like that time. Otherpeople like that time at night.
I also meditate twice a day.When you have a clear mind,
(16:44):
there's space for inspiration tocome in. When you have a full mind,
there's no space.
So any practice that clears themind is good for creativity.
I also use the ice bath. Ialso use exercise every day.
All these things areproductive and beneficial,
and you just want to keep thatchannel clear. The other thing is,
(17:06):
and this is the last thing I'll addis creativity is you have to keep
going back.
So there's a tendency afterthere you write something great,
great by your own definition,something you're proud of,
there's a tendency tokind of want to sit back.
But really you shouldgo back again the next,
you should immediately as quick asyou can go create more, go write more.
(17:32):
Don't rest on what you wrote yesterday.
Just keep building on that momentum.And it should be a daily thing,
a daily thing. There shouldbe time for creation.
Mike, did you always knowthis would be your path?
Did you ever think you were going tobe a chemical engineer or a barber or a
commercial airline pilot?
(17:52):
Did you know early in lifethat this would be your path of
success?
Very early on, I wrote in a journal,
this was maybe like eightyears old, and my teacher said,
what is something, if you accomplished it,
(18:12):
you would know that yourlife had really worked out.
And at that eight years old, I wrote down,
I want to be interviewed by Scott.
That was it. My life has turned outexactly how I planned it. Man, this is it.
The worlds have alignedto support Mike Posner.
(18:37):
I'm teasing you. I'm teasing you.But in all actuality, my friend,
my life is, my real lifehas exceeded my dreams.
And that's something
I like a skinny Jewish kid from Detroit to
(18:59):
sell millions of records,
to be nominated for Grammys and then go,
you know what I'm going to do next?
I'm going to walk across the continentand not say it, do it, and then go,
I'm not done.
Now I'm going to climb thetallest mountain in the world and not talk about it.
Do it. This wasn't even onthe menu of my wildest dreams.
(19:22):
And these are not dreams. They'resomething more valuable than dreams.
They're memories.
And so I have a fulfillmentof pride that is worth
more than any trophy orany award knowing that
I have. I have like a dish rag.
(19:42):
You squeeze it out. It's likethat's what I do with my,
whatever talent I was given,which isn't that much.
I'm like ringing that thing out, dude.
So it is been an incredible journey,
and I'm beyond blessed.
I've come close to death a few times,
(20:05):
and I'm here for a reason,
and that's to helpothers on their journey.
But yet my real life is biggerthan my dreams ever were.
What a great metaphor. Ringinglife dry, like a wet rag.
I love the inspiration you gave us. Okay,
so let's talk about thisWalk Across America.
(20:26):
As I remember this story, you were like,you were somewhere overhearing someone,
talk about someone else who had donethis, and you're thinking, yeah,
I think I'll do that. I'msure I have that wrong,
but will you kind of just take fiveminutes and tell us the why and
the what and the how. We'll getto the snake. Save that for me.
(20:47):
But let's talk about, Idon't why in your byline,
it's going to say hundreds of millionsof records, wildly successful,
rang it dry like adishcloth, climbed Everest,
walked across America and surviveda snake bite. I don't know why,
but that's going to be in your epitaphforever. Hold that for a moment.
Talk about the inspiration, what youdid, and perhaps more importantly,
(21:09):
what the hell, man? Why didyou walk across America?
Yeah, I walked acrossAmerica because of pain.
I want to be really honest aboutthat. I was stagnating in my life.
I found myself looking in themirror and questioning everything,
questioning is this it?
(21:30):
There's got to be more to life than this,
and I have everything thatwas supposed to make me happy,
but there's just no compelling reason toget out of bed in the morning. I mean,
the juice was all gone. My fatherdied. My friend Avicii killed himself.
My friend Mac Miller overdosed and died.
(21:50):
My friend Ronnie had aheart attack and died.
And I'm looking in the mirror and I'msaying, if all those guys are dead, well,
that means I'm going to die oneday too. Hopefully not soon,
but this is a return trip,and maybe before I die,
I should actually try tolive not the life that my
(22:10):
agent and manager tells me Ihave to live the life that I was
meant to live. Maybe Ishould try to do that.
Maybe I should give myself a compellingreason to get out of bed in the morning.
Maybe I should put something in my futurethat enlivens my present because when
the future is empty, thepresent's unbearable.
(22:30):
And so this idea, yeah,
I heard about someone talkingabout it five years before.
I'm looking in this mirror. Havingan idea was an unimportant moment.
No one cares about your ideas.
No one cares about the thing yousay you're going to do someday.
You don't even care. Theimportant moment is when you say,
(22:51):
the time is now, it's enough.
And it was not some funnything that I was doing for
press.
It wasn't some funny bucketlist like woo-hoo thing.
No, this was,
I'm going to walk across America or I'mgoing to die and I'm not going to die
the way my dad or Avicii orRonnie or Mac Miller died.
(23:12):
I'm going to die away sad or deathif I don't do this, I will die.
The kind of death where my body'sstill walking around spewing hot air,
but my dreams have decayed into a corpse,
and you don't have to look very farto meet one of those kind of people.
It's a way sadder death. Andso I knew it was a crazy idea.
(23:33):
I've since learned that notall crazy ideas are great,
but all great ideas are crazy.And so I made the decision to go.
I needed to change my, noone was coming to help me.
It wasn't anyone else's fault.
I had to change my own life,
and I knew that there was morefor me. I didn't know what it was,
(23:55):
but I knew I had to escape whateversandbox I was playing inside of
in West Hollywood with alife designed solely around
becoming more famous andgetting other people to like me.
On April 15th, 2019,
I stood off the coast of NewJersey. I was in the Atlantic Ocean.
(24:17):
I was scared.
I was scared because peopletold me I was ruining my career.
I was scared that I was going tocause irreparable damage to my body.
I was scared that I was going to fail.
I didn't know if I could actually completethis mission and I would look like an
idiot in front of everyone.
But I stood off thecoast and I took a step.
(24:39):
Step one is take one step.And when I took that step,
all those fears about whatmight happen if I did this,
they disappeared because I was doingit. I walked across New Jersey,
I walked across Pennsylvania.I walked across Ohio.
I walked across Indiana, Illinois,
walked across Missouri during a heat wave.
(25:01):
My feet started to hurt horribly.
I could barely stand up inthe morning, but I kept going,
and I walked across Kansas,I walked into Colorado.
I could just see the RockyMountains on the horizon,
and ow, pain shot up my left leg,
and then I heard thesound that was the snake
(25:24):
that bit me in my left leg.
So talk about this, becausethis just wasn't a snake bite.
This was a pretty significantinterruption in not just the walk,
but your life, your life. You make it
65% of the way acrossthe nation. By the way,
by the time you got to Colorado,
(25:45):
you've been doing this for howmany months from New Jersey?
Yeah, I would beestimating, I can't recall.
I remember the mile marker4 I was at was
1,797,
so probably four months. Yeah, at least.
And I mean,
(26:05):
not to mention all the people you met andthe instances and I'm sure the life or
death scenarios and thebody, the toll it took. Okay,
so you're walking across Colorado,
you're 65 or so percent the wayto your destination or more,
70 something percent. What happensnext? A rattlesnake bites you.
Yeah. What happens next isI start to lose awareness.
(26:29):
What happens next is-.
Mike, Mike, stop a second. Sorry.You're alone. Where are you in Colorado?
Are there people with you? Arethere cars? What's the situation?
My walk manager, Colin, was there.
And before this event, I postedon social media and I said,
(26:50):
if you find me, you can walk with me.
And people came from all over theUnited States to walk with me.
So that day, there were twopeople there walking with me.
We were between La Junta and Walsenberg in
Colorado, easternColorado, and Colorado 10.
(27:12):
It is the middle of nowhere,middle of nowhere. And yeah,
I started to lose awareness.
I would come to kindof wake up and realize,
this is really serious.This isn't a bee sting.
And called 911. I spoketo dispatch. She said,
(27:32):
I sent two ambulances, one fromeach direction, one from the east,
one from the west, and a chopper. Shesaid, whatever gets there first, get in.
I said, am I going to die?She said, I don't know, sir.
I spent five nights in the hospital.
My leg swelled to thesides of an elephant trunk.
I went from walking 24 miles a day tonot being able to walk to the bathroom.
(27:57):
I had to go home to Michigan.
Then this funny thinghappened while I was resting,
and that was I started toget better and I healed.
And so now I had this decision to make.
I could either return tothe sandbox, to my old life,
could return to trying to be more famous,
(28:20):
and ordering Uber Eats and justthis fake life that brought
me nothing but disillusionment.
Or I could go back to the side of theroad where the cars almost hit me every
day. I could go backto the sweltering heat.
I could go back to the blistering footpain. This path sucked. It hurt a lot,
but it taught me that when itcomes to things I care about,
(28:43):
my reasons to quit are always just
excuses in disguise. I had thebest reason to quit of all time.
I was bit by a poisonoussnake, almost lost my leg,
almost lost my life. Andso if I chose to quit now,
it wouldn't look like I was quitting.
(29:05):
It would just be a cool storywith honestly a badass ending.
It was such a good reason to quit thatmost people wouldn't even think I was a
quitter, but I wasn'tdoing it for most people,
and I don't know howto explain this to you,
but there was no other way forme to become the man that I
now am,
the man I knew I was supposed to bethan to walk the remaining 1000 miles.
(29:29):
There was no book I could read about it.
There was no podcast I could listento about it. There was no document.
They're like, I had to do it.
And so I went back to the exactspot that the snake bit me,
and I took a step and Ikept taking steps until I
went over the RockyMountains, across Colorado,
(29:50):
across Navajo Nation. Kept takingsteps until I walked across Arizona,
across Nevada, across California,
across the Mojave Desert,across Los Angeles.
I kept taking steps until thepavement turned in the sand,
and after six months andthree days, 2,851 miles,
(30:12):
I dove into the PacificOcean and I was that
person that I dreamt of becoming.
Mike, what did you learn mostfrom this walk across America?
What did you learn aboutmaybe yourself and about
humanity?
(30:32):
I learned that the potential thatlies inside each human heart is
darn near infinite.
Most of us create our future based on some
version of the past, and Iwas doing that. I was, hey,
I'm a successful artist.I'm a successful songwriter.
(30:56):
I make music inside ofrooms with no windows.
That's what I do.
And I thought my futurewould be just some version of
that going forward.
Me a little older with a little moremoney just doing that. I took this risk.
I tried this project and I crushedit, and it got me thinking,
(31:19):
well, what else can I do?
And so I now see that mypotential so far exceeded what
I even thought was on themenu to order from life.
I think that's true of every human being.
There's a few human beingsthat uncover their full
potential. And I think most of ussell ourselves pretty far short.
(31:45):
We think, I can't do this.
Or easy for that person to say, or no,
you're capable of greatness.
And most of the pain that a lotof us feel is knowing that deep
down, we have more giftsto give than we are.
And sometimes we can't figure outthe right place or the avenue.
(32:05):
That's your journey.
I believe that God gave you aheart to figure out what to do
and a mind to figure out howto do it. But don't flip them.
Don't use your mind tofigure out what to do.
It's a tool to help you figureout strategies and things,
but use your heart tofigure out what to do.
(32:28):
Mike, off air, we talked aboutthe impact that Dr. Covey's book,
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Peoplehad in your life. You had it handy.
You talked about how you'd markedit up. What's one of the ideas?
I don't mean for this all to bepromotional for FranklinCovey at all.
What's one of the ideas that Dr.Covey taught you or reminded you
(32:50):
of that's been helpful for you?
I mean, there's so muchstuff in there, and frankly,
a lot of the principles have permeatedthe culture so much that I had
encountered them before, but thenrealized this is where they came from. But
this show is called OnLeadership. Correct.
One of the things I love.
(33:11):
Well, Mike, Mike, Mike,Mike, Mike, Mike, Mike.
Technically it's on Leadershipwith Scott Miller. I mean,
at least get the titlecorrect. Okay. I mean.
Listen, I told you earlierhow much you mean to me. Okay.
People know, you don't have to overdoit. Just play it cool. Play it cool.
Too late. Too late, my friend,too late. You called me out.
(33:31):
So one of the things that stuckwith me and the title of your
show brought it to mindwas the definition of
leadership. Leadershipis articulating another
human's potential so clearlythat they are inspired to see it
themselves. And that gives megoosebumps just repeating it.
(33:53):
That stuck out, the time matrixbetween what's urgent and important.
That stuck out. Thinking win-win,
that's helped me immensely in my life.
It is so full of wisdomthat it's almost, yeah,
there's a reason it sold 50 millioncopies and made such an impact because
(34:17):
anytime someone reads this book,they're going to tell everyone about it.
I've told my audience about it,I've told my friends about it.
A bunch of them are reading itnow. And so it's just incredible.
So those a couple.
Thanks for indulging me. I'd love to endour conversation. What's next for you?
What will people seepotentially on the horizon?
(34:38):
You've written a book of poetry.
Have you thought of writing a bookabout your wisdom and your own journey?
Are you producing more?What's next from Mike Posner?
Yeah, thank you for asking.
I am writing a book right nowthat's just about the walk.
And then as you know, you startwriting. It's kind of about everything.
So I'm in the thick of that. I haveno idea how long that will take me.
(35:01):
I've made, I think 12 or 13 albums,but this is my first full-length
book, not of poetry, so I have noidea how long that will take me.
I've also started The Mike Posner Podcastwhere I just share distinctions that
have made a difference in my life.
And I talk to people thatinspire me to this day.
(35:23):
And we take questions from theaudience, sometimes just me,
people dealing with real things and tryto give them distinctions to empower
them to lead healthier and happier lives.
So people would check outThe Mike Posner Podcast.
And then I also have a new albumcoming, so doing a bunch of stuff, man,
all of it's good.
(35:45):
Mike Posner, singer, songwriter,producer, poet, walker,
survivor, podcaster, author,
sage of the human experience. I mean,
I love your concept of beforeyou die you want to live.
And that really resonated with me.
I think a lot of people willtake enormous benefit and wisdom
(36:06):
from listening to this episode. I thinkpeople will listen to it multiple times.
Who knew Mike Posner wasthe new Stephen Covey,
we appreciate you joining us today.
Thanks for being OnLeadership with Scott Miller.
Hey, God bless you, man. Appreciate you.
Thank you, Mike.
And we'll see you back here next weekfor a new conversation On Leadership.
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