I did a lot of magic shows growing up. My dad is a graphic designer so he helped me brand myself and create a logo. So I was just rollin' with the magician crowd for a while. But I was really young, 10 to 13, doing table magic and balloon animals at this Italian restaurant.

When I was growing up, there were a few musicians who would have regular gigs at restaurants, and I always thought it was so cool and unexpected how they would spontaneously perform. Being the ambitious kid that I was, I got into it and really studied it. I was so inspired by it.

My music diet growing up was lots of sugar. Lots of retro-pop sugar. Motown, disco. A lot of English rock, like the Turtles, the Zombies, Bowie and stuff like that.

A big piece of my heart is definitely in Michigan and will always be in Michigan. Growing up there is definitely a big part of who I am as a person.

People are tired of just watching their TV set passively. They are playing interactive games today. They are on the Internet interacting. They want to be part of their TV set.

The Internet had a core innovation that made it valuable: The ability to disseminate data over a distributed network in a way that was significantly cheaper than the prior methods.

While everyone's purpose may be different, with social media we all have that platform to create the change we want to see in the world, and I spend a lot of time encouraging others to step up and use theirs.

With all the technology we're inventing and what they're coming up with scientifically, people are having longer lifetimes. It's scary, but in the same sense it's also very exciting.