Thirty Minute Mentors Podcast Transcript: Interview with OneRepublic Lead Singer Ryan Tedder

I recently interviewed Ryan Tedder on my podcast, Thirty Minute Mentors. Here is a transcript of our interview:

Adam: Our guest today is a three-time Grammy Award winner. Ryan Tedder is the lead vocalist of the band OneRepublic, and a songwriter and producer for just about every artist out there, Ryan, thank you for joining us.

Ryan: Pleasure to be here, man.

Adam: Before we talk about how you got to the top and your best advice for listeners, I want to ask you a little bit about your work. Can you describe your creative process for the work that you do as a part of OneRepublic, and for the work that you do when you're creating content for other performers?

Ryan: Yeah, you know, it's two different disciplines. When you're writing for yourself, there's an expectation obviously, that you're creating something from your worldview and your personal experience and extrapolating your thoughts and feelings and vulnerabilities and all those things. And it's almost a requirement. You know, unless the art and the artistry that you have created is a character, you know, like, Lady Gaga or The Weeknd who is not a real person, it's Abel, who created the character The Weeknd so he can write everything from the viewpoint of that artist, right? Which is, at times, I wish something I had done because then it requires much less of a degree of vulnerability and life experience. You can just kind of write about whatever. Wonderful. But that's not the case because I can very much be worshipping artists like U2 and The Police and Oasis and Jeff Buckley and a lot of these songs are very much you know, it's their point of view. It's real, it's vulnerable, and so that's the avenue that we chose. So to that end there are far left on and great places for me to arrive at from the OneRepublic spyglass than from me writing for other artists because I am a human I have, as one person, I have a limited amount of life experiences. It's measurable. There's only so many songs you can write about certain topics without talking about yourself. And there's only so much life you can live. There's only 24 hours a day, etc. So, for OneRepublic, our songs are much harder for me to write. It's a much more painful process. It's much more time-consuming. It's why we only put out an album like every three to four years because it just takes me a while to feel like I want to hear myself saying no. And writing for other artists, though, is a lot more freeing. It's a lot more frustrating because you don't control any of the process. So I may hand what I think is a number one record to some, you know, artist, and somewhere in between me handing it in and their album coming out, it gets lost in the shuffle. It doesn't come out or it comes out, but it's buried on the album, or it comes out but they went and changed it and without asking me or any number of, you know, unlimited hindrances that prevent the song from actually seeing the light of day and becoming a hit record. So writing for other people is much more freeing but it's also more frustrating because you have no control. Unless you're executive producing a project you're relying on everybody on your song to basically just cut through all the noise and end up being one of the focus tracks. They're both rewarding writing- for myself writing, for the artists, it's both rewarding on different levels, probably leans a little more in favor of when OneRepublic has a hit. Little more excited than if for another artist, but I really genuinely get a thrill anytime it works for anybody else because at the end of the day, it's like, you know, a songwriting is a very esoteric, bizarre profession. You're walking into an empty room full of nothing and creating something that you want to hear. And then you're hoping that the thing that you needed to hear that didn't exist in the universe two hours ago, you're hoping that that thing aligns with 7.5 billion people and aligns with what they want to hear. And when those things align, it's called a hit record. And when they don't align, it's called a song. It's either good or bad or in between. It's subjective, not very little is empirical. And that's it. That's really the kind of breakdown of the architecture of the process. That's what it is. It's like, there is no true formula. It is a skill set. There is a natural ability or talent that some people are born with that precludes them to be, you know, more likely to be a good songwriter than some other people. But much like Kobe Bryant, or, you know, LeBron, or Jordan or any of the great, they might have been born six foot six or seven and with agility, but then it's like, do you stay after practice and shoot free throws? Do you show up before the team gets there? Do you work out on your off days? What do you do during the offseason? All those things come into play. And so how much time you assign to the skill of songwriting once you realize that you're naturally gifted at it; that's the difference between a successful songwriter and a hack. They have equal levels of God-given talent is the disc. The difference between the two of them is directly related to how many hours they both put in, and the sacrifices and all those things much much like any other profession.

Adam: Right. One of the things that I found really interesting about your background and the trajectory of your success is that, and tell me if this is true or not- I read that from the time you were a little kid until the time you were 18 you sang every day for two hours a day. Is that true? And if so, how did that shape your work ethic and how has that ultimately shaped your career today?

Ryan: My work ethic has never been an issue. Even from my early childhood, my mom would tell anybody, you know, Ryan just picks a task and he'll bury himself in it for six hours, I have a moment. You’d have to come get me to remind me to eat when I was like seven, eight, because I wanted to be a cartoonist. And I would sit down and I would draw Disney cartoons. I'd go through all the instructional books on how to be a cartoonist at age seven, age eight. And I would sit there and draw the same drawings over and over and over again for hours and hours and hours on end. I was an only child, I didn't have the distraction of siblings, so that's part of it. I mean, there's a lot of things that go into success that people don't consider. Being an only child, having unlimited time, I wasn't getting roped into like the video game wormhole that so many kids do. I didn't have social media so I wasn't wasting, like years of my life on Instagram or YouTube. I can do that now, but I wasn't doing it then. And so all these things feed into it. And it wasn't just music. It was anything I was fascinated by, I would just pour myself into it. I got into magic for two years and spent every dollar I had on magic kits and learning magic tricks and hours and hours and hours. And I was forced to practice piano and drums and those things. So that was my mom, you know, and my dad. Forcing that issue really paid off in the long term. But the singing every, you know, for a couple hours a day. That is true. I mean, was it seven days- I don't know if it was seven days a week. But in my memory It was definitely more than half of the week every week for as long as I can remember until my voice was pretty much sore. I would sing whatever hit songs were out at the time that I loved. So from age five, it was I Just Called to Say I love You and The Glory of Love- that Karate Kid Part Two soundtrack. It was like everything from that to, you know, The Police, The Beach Boys. I would sing anything that I loved. I would just go in a closet so my parents couldn't hear me and I would sing into the clothes basically ao they'd absorb the sound until I could hit every note and every riff and then when the R&B explosion happened in the early 90s, like Boyz 2 Men, and Shy and High Five and all these acts, then my head really exploded. And I was like, this white kid in the middle of the country on the furthest outskirts of Oklahoma City, singing Boyz 2 Men like seven days a week, and I learned all my vocal risks and agility and everything via all those early 90s R&B acts and all the Babyface songs in the world were pretty much what got me to become a singer. And, and yeah, I never saw it as work. It was like, I love this. I'm just doing it because I love it. And I learned lessons early on when I was 12, 13 Wow, if I put crazy amounts of time into something that I love, good things happen. And that was really, at its most simple core, truth that I discovered. Good things happen. When you take passion, multiply it by crazy, amount of time, good things happen. You get better. You get better than the rest, and with music and singing that was my application and I just poured myself into dissecting popular songs and trying to figure out what made them tick and why and what are the relationships between the melodies and the chords and, and lyrics where did those come from like, and all these things and I just spent the next five or six years from probably 15 to 21 delving into songwriting as a teacher trade, I guess you could say.

Adam: Ryan, can you talk about your daily routine? I mean, along those lines, what is your daily routine when you're at home and what's your daily routine when you're on the road?

Ryan: I'm wildly different when I'm home, and there isn't a global pandemic happening. For the sake of this conversation, my mornings are very similar. I wake up, I take the kids to school, I drive to Santa Monica- a decent drive from here. I dropped them off. We talked and played music in the car. And then the moment I dropped them off, I'm on my phone with New York and different people. I do a lot of different businesses outside of just spreading songs. I own about half a million square feet of Class A commercial real estate, and you know, tons of like, office buildings in Vegas, from Vegas to North Carolina to New York, to L.A. and Colorado. So I deal with that stuff. Anything that's not music related I divvy up my day in terms of the different verticals that I'm involved in. So vertical one being family, right? So from like, call it 6:30 to 8:30. It's kids and drop-offs in schools and all that. 8:30 to 10 is commuting and driving and whatever I'm on the phone with in New York, going over our real estate stuff. What are we trying to acquire? What new tenants do we have? Who's leaving? Who's coming? Do we want to sell anything etc. I own a beverage company called Mad Tasty. It's a 20 milligram CBD beverage based out of Santa Monica, that I initially started with the Charlotte's Web guys. The guys that are Charlotte's Web is the market cap leader in CBD globally, and they're the first company that started the whole CBD craze about eight years ago. I went to high school with those guys and invested in them and long story short, I started a functional better beverage company about a year ago, a little more than a year ago called Mad Tasty. We're now in thousands of locations across the U.S. and in spreading faster. And of course, slowing down a little bit during the pandemic, but still moving. So I'll jump from real estate to the beverage company, I'll call my CEO, I'll call a couple of people to deal with anything that needs to be covered and by around 10:15 I'm at my studio, and I have my personal trainer- I was poorly against hiring a personal trainer for my entire life. I thought that was the dumbest hobbyist like most bougie-ass thing we could possibly do. And then after like a year and a half of not consistently working out all I do is- for years I've been a runner, so I've run and run and run and do push ups. But kind of just maintaining the status quo, not really getting in tremendously better shape, just kind of maintaining what has been and after years of that I had a friend point out to me they're like, “Dude, you'll drop, you know, on a dinner at a sushi place what it costs for two or three sessions with a personal trainer who can actually get you in the best shape your life. You're looking at this all wrong,” and I acquiesced. And so now I have a guy that three days a week shows up in my studio, and kicks my ass for an hour. That's like 10:30 to 11:30. By the time I finish that, I usually have at least two or three more phone calls, but at this point, it's shifting into music and television. I'm moving away from real estate, moving away from the beverage, moving into the creative. So basically, from noon on, it's all things creative. So I’ll have a call with NBC or my other executive producer to produce a show called Songland. I'm on the show on NBC. I've another show, and development at NBC for 2021, and a couple other shows and movies that I'm executive producer of. I'll field a bunch of those calls between like 11:30 and like 12:30 and I'll deal with the business side of creative and then by 1:00 PM I'm moving into just music and I normally turn my phone on its face. And if someone needs to get a hold of me they go through my assistant at the studio. I'm checking on my songwriters; what songs we have going on like, how's the Katy Perry song or how's the Jonas Brothers song sounding? Are we done? Have we wrapped the mix? I'm dealing with my songwriters and songs and I'm currently working on Apple within my publishing company, and usually by no later than 2:00 PM a session is starting; a writing session. And that means an artist is at my studio or a group of writers that I normally write with, and we all hunkered down and between, let's say 2:00 PM and 6:00 PM we're writing. Pure creative. I'm not taking phone calls unless it's an emergency. I'm not answering emails, I'm off my phone as much as possible. And doing pure creating around 6:00, 6:30 I start to wrap it up. And then I'm texting with the wife. Am I picking up dinner? Are we making dinner? I live five minutes from the studios. By 6:30 the latest I'm in the car driving home, get home, put the phone down, and it's dinnertime and it's family time and putting kids to bed and tucking them in and reading books. And then you know, by, I'd say by like, you know, 8:00 or 8:30 it's just the wife and I and we're hanging out or watching something on Netflix or you know, whatever. And that is a very, very standard 20 to 24 hour period. I'm definitely not the guy- I crack up anytime I hear these, like founder podcasts or like, like all these guys that are the most successful people the world and they're like, I only get four hours of sleep. I only get three hours. I think they're insane. I think that I try to get eight hours every single night as much as possible. And you know, other than that, I am a very, very busy person, right?

Adam: Most of the people who I talk to most of the people who I've interviewed- and I've interviewed hundreds of the most successful leaders in the country; leading CEOs, founders, thought leaders, and I consistently hear the same thing that you said- the importance of getting seven to eight hours of sleep a night. I actually just recently did an interview with the #1 New York Times bestselling author who wrote a book specifically on the topic of how to optimize your health and a big part of his book was the importance of sleep and one of the things he said in our conversation was, which was interesting to me was, if you get seven to eight hours of sleep, one night, that will completely reset the way you feel for the week. So I think that your point about prioritizing health, getting a personal trainer, prioritizing sleep, that's really important, but I also wanted to point out that you just described to our listeners an extremely full and extremely productive day. So you're optimizing your day, you're maximizing every moment, you don't need to be awake for 20 hours because the moments that you're awake, you're, you're really crushing it.

Ryan: Time is the most valuable asset on Earth, and what you do with it, and it took me a while to figure that out, and it wasn't, you know, that phrase, give a man who's got all the time in the world tasks to do and, you know, good luck. If it ever gets done. Give the busiest man you know, a task to do, and it'll get done. Sure. And that- that's me. It has been since day one. You know, when people call me and they know I'm strapped, they know that if it's the right thing, no matter how busy I am, I will figure out how to get it done if I have to delegate it. Whatever I have to do, I'm going to get it done. And again, there is a downside to this. There's a double-edged sword to all good things, you know? The sweetest cake, how much does it cost and there's a caloric trade-off there. You know, there's always a cost no matter how good something is or how sweet it looks and to have unlimited work for unlimited drive, which I have, the downside is that I don't know how far my bandwidth goes until I hit the wall. And learning how to maximize your time is absolutely everything and I actually feel depressed if I don't capitalize on a day.

Adam: When someone takes a look at your accomplishments from afar, and someone who listens to this podcast, you're really a model of success. You have won three Grammys you've written and produced songs for the most successful artists in the world. You've started a successful beverage company. You've had these successful real estate investments. What are some of the failures you've had in your career? How did you bounce back from them and what advice do you have for listeners on how to overcome the failures in their lives, big and small?

Ryan: Yeah, I've had many, many failures. I got dropped at age 25. It took me three or four years in L.A. and in New York to get my first record deal with Columbia Records. We made a gorgeous, amazing album. In 2006 it was to be released. We performed a showcase at the Viper Room that all the heads of Columbia Records have flown in from New York to LA and they wanted to see all the artists perform. I had come down with the only instance of bronchitis I've had in my entire life one week before the performance. I didn't physically have a voice. I got steroid shots, I had therapy. I did everything and I can sing my ass off. And I could not. I couldn't. That was my selling point. So that's the kid that can sing anything like, and they show up to the show and it was a disaster. I couldn't sing three out of four songs. And we got dropped. Two weeks later, as we were going to play Coachella for the first time we got dropped. I saw my entire life's ambition to that point shattered. I'd already been dropped previously as a solo artist. So I've been dropped twice now at age 25 Which in music years is always like being 45. I'm 25 and we've been dropped. I took the songs, I threw them up on YouTube- or sorry on Myspace I had “Apologize.” We got dropped. While we have the song “Apologize” on our album and “Stop and Stare,” two songs that combined have now sold around 40 million copies. We got dropped with those two songs. And I went through about 24 hours of feeling sorry for myself. One day of it, just like, I was incredulous. Then next there's this thing called MySpace at the time. That was huge. We reached about almost 300 million people using MySpace, the predecessor to Instagram and Facebook. And it was a very music-friendly platform. And I thought through it, I don't care if Columbia technically owns these records. I'm gonna do it. They're telling me these aren't hits. They're a bunch of stuffy British guys in suits, who made a judgment call from one bad show, and they're wrong. I think everything about my gut tells me “Apologize”, because I had to- if  “Apologize” isn't a hit song I will quit the music industry. And I told my wife, my parents, everybody that if “Apologize” isn't a hit. I will pick a new profession. So God help me. So I took the song and I took it and I put it on MySpace. And I put “Stop and Stare” on MySpace. And over the course of 60 days, we went from- I changed our classification to unsigned artists. Myspace had three categories; signed, independent, and unsigned. I changed this to unsigned and within 60 days of it all went from number 3000 to 300 to 3210. By three to one, it was the number one song globally on Myspace, number one most listened to globally. In the end, we were the number one unsigned artists on MySpace, the largest platform in the world at that time, two months after getting dropped by Columbia Records. And the third month, an A&R from Columbia called not knowing that we used to be signed there, and not knowing that it only been 90 days since we got dropped. He called me, “Hey, I'd really like to discuss, you know, bringing you guys in to do a showcase.” I said, “Um”, I said, “Dude, do you even know? Like, any? Do you know anything that your record label is doing right now?” And he was like, “What?” And I was so mad. And I said, I said, “Man, you guys dropped us three months ago. You dropped us from Columbia Records,” I said, and he was like, “What? Well, that wasn’t me. I didn't do it.” I said, “Do me a favor. You and everybody at Columbia lose my number,” and then hung up. That was one of the only times I've ever been able to tell anybody off but, yeah, the level of like certainty for you is that it's not in my nature to do that type of thing. And I had um, I had at that point every label calling, I told them all, you know, I'm not doing any showcases. We play actual shows. We’re an actual band, come to our show. They came and then we ended up getting signed and the rest is history. “Apologize” came out nine months later, you know, that same time period. I got told by two different record labels when I handed in “Bleeding Love,” they told me to my face, this is not a hit record. It's not a hit song. We're not going to put this out. I then said okay, I'll take the record back then. And then eventually cut it with Leona Lewis and it came out as number one in 39 countries. And those guys, when I saw them again I reminded them. I have had rejection and failure my entire adult life if you go into entertainment, it is notes for everyone. Yes. And that is my whole life I got told “Counting Stars”- you know, at this point I'm in my 30s we've come off successful albums as OneRepublic. We had a good life and “Secrets,” “Apologize,” stuff is here, all these hits. I'd written tons of hits for other artists. I had won a Grammy for Adele, had a number one album, countless number ones. And my label tells me “Counting Stars” is not a hit record, it’s for different people. I'm not throwing anyone in particular under the bus, but multiple people told me “Counting Stars” is not a hit. You know, we think it's a good song. It should definitely be on your album. But we don't want it to be a single. So they forced my hand and released another song first. It did okay. Then we released a second song. It did okay and did a little better. At this point, we were in jeopardy of losing the entire album and the label pulling the plug on us. And I finally begged him. I said, “Can I please put out my song now? Do I get to pick now that you've picked wrong twice? Can I actually pick the song that my band puts out? I want to put out “Counting Stars.” “But we don't think it's a hit.” “Well, let the world decide. Who are you to tell them?” We put it out and it went straight to number one in like 30, 40 countries. It's now the number one selling song in the history of Interscope Records where it's 39.4 million sold on “Counting Stars.” And that's from a song that everybody, from the top label down, told me wasn't hit. So the point of all that is, it doesn't mean everything that you think isn't going to work is going to work. That's not the point. The point is, if you take people's carte blanche, no rejection at face value, and you allow that to dictate what you do next, you will never succeed. Never have a plan B and that's been my maximum from day one. If you have a plan B, you will never ever work hard enough for Plan A to actually have a shot because when it gets hard, when it gets really, really difficult, you'll be thinking about that backup plan. And that will get so appealing in the dark hours of the night when you wake up at 3:00 in the morning and you're not sleeping, Plan B will seem like plan A so you can't have Plan B.

Adam: Ryan, I want to get to the rest of your advice, but I do want to probe that point a little bit more deeply because I think it's very profound and very interesting and counter to what most people will say. And I think that's one of the reasons why you've become so successful. So, if someone approaches you and asks you, Ryan, I'm trying to make it in this industry. This is such a competitive industry and the industry could be music, the industry could be entertainment, the industry could be sports, and they're really struggling. How does someone know whether it's time to push forward or time to give up?

Ryan: The universe gives you signs, it just gives you signs. When, and I believe in that, you know, I do believe in God too. I believe that there are divine things that are guided by a much higher force than us because look, there are people that I've met that are in their 30’s that tell me they've been pursuing songwriting their whole life and writing nonstop, and then they perform a song or I hear a song and it's really not great. And, I go, “Man, you're 34. And you've been doing this since you're 20. Like, that's called a sign.” And what I'm stating here isn't that anybody- I'm not saying that anybody on earth is capable of being a world success at any topic or in any vertical or any endeavor. That's not what I'm saying. I do believe in that quiet, still small voice in your gut, that thing that you quietly have told yourself, you would do for free. That job that you would have done for free because it's just so stimulating. It's so enraptured. I mean, that was music for me. I would have done it for free. And I know that isn't a new Maxim or quote that's been tossed around a lot. Do a lot of these 10,000 hours and like, you know what, pick a job you do for free. We've all heard this right? Every motivational teacher or speaker in high school said the same things. But there is truth to the 10,000 hours thing is debatable. There is truth to picking something that you would do for free and pursuing it with all your mind, because then you're being driven by pure passion. I found that even in the gigs that I get now. And I get rejection all the time. When I'm coming out after it with pure passion, and I'm doing it even at my skill level, if I'm approaching a project or a song, knowing that I would do it for free, if that's my mindset, nine times out of 10 I land it. I end up getting the gig because my motivation is pure. I think that knowing when to pull the plug is awesome. You need to know when to cut bait. And I can use other examples. There's a lot of projects in music that once I kind of get a little bit into them, I've been doing it long enough that I can get a sense for when I should pull the plug on things. When you see a song not reacting on Spotify globally, you get these telltale signs that we get. I can read the data and go, you know what? Doesn't matter how much gas we're going to pour on this. This isn't the song that's the world once right now.” And you have to know when to cut bait when it's a life pursuit. You also have to know- when I moved to L.A., I mean, I could talk for hours on this, but when I moved to LA, my apartment, my four-plex that I lived in, I had two actors, one producer, one comedian, one agent, one bartender, and one television producer, in terms of what they all ended up doing. I watched, I would say, out of eight people, I watched two, other than myself, stick to their guns and stick it out and end up converting that dream into success. I watched six people cut bait. Of the six people that cut bait, I can tell you with utmost certainty that at least two of them, so 33% of the people, at least two of them, 100% in my gut, I know would have made it. I know because now I've been doing this long enough that I can spot when somebody has what it takes to make it in the entertainment industry. And I know that at least two or three of my former roommates would have when instead they cut bait. I know now even being around them now when I see them, they still have it and they just gave up. They just cut bait too soon. And I also had one roommate, who stuck it out for far too long. Everything in the universe was telling him, dude, this is not happening for you. And if listeners want specific examples, you know, I would cite, it's so hard to give- because every single person’s situation is different in whatever venture they're pursuing. But I would say someone saying “No, that's not it.” That's not a time to cut bait, for people saying no, that's not a time to cut bait. If you have a situation where you're pursuing something you've been going out at, let's say for four or five years, you haven't had one break every single thing has slipped through the cracks. You've had absolutely no success whatsoever. And it's just like, you can feel the universe. It's hard to put any quantitative descriptor or description on what those things are because they're so different for every human being. The most successful writers and producers I know have one thing in common; they are the most self-critical of all the others. They're the most objective. The most agnostic. Being a pragmatist and being agnostic when it comes to yourself - that is the single biggest hurdle that anybody will have in pursuing success- self-objectivity, because if you cannot truly see yourself through the lense that other people see you, you have no objectivity. You don't have the ability to ascertain if this is really better than other things or not and I'm blown away by people sometimes who will come and present me with a piece of art or an idea or a song that is inherently not up to snuff. But they will present it as if it's as good as a number one record or The Weeknd’s songs and I can spot those people. Those are people that are in danger of pursuing something for infinity and never getting a clue. And I don't know how to teach anybody what signs to look for because you can just sense them. You can just sense when the universe is collapsing on itself while you're pursuing something.

Adam: Right. And I think you gave tremendous advice. I hope that every listener, regardless of what industry they're in, regardless of what they're trying to pursue, really takes every word that you shared to heart. I want to ask one last question. And you know, this conversation is obviously a low-pressure experience, but you've had many high-pressure experiences; high pressure, high stakes performances. You talked about one of them in depth. I mean, that fortunately was a performance that you were able to bounce back from, but I'm sure when you were performing, whether it was that time or other times in the course of your career, you felt like your career was on the line. How did you learn how to perform under pressure and what are your best tips for listeners on how to manage ad excel under pressure and in high stakes moments?

Ryan: The number one thing that I learned the hard way was muscle memory. So I approach music and entertainment from an athletic standpoint. This is one of those things where my years of playing basketball and soccer and football and baseball- all those things all actually came into play. And it took me unfortunately, halfway through my career in OneRepublic performing live for me to realize that for me to get confident and be comfortable in my own skin. Now I will say this; it's a little chicken or the egg. Success breeds confidence. Confidence breeds success. Like there's two things: one of those things, which came first, chicken or the egg> I'm envious of people, like God who I've known for years, who came out of the womb with nothing but unbridled confidence and Usher, who just drips with confidence. For the rest of us though, like myself, it's learned. I was in theater, I was in front of people a lot, but I was also, I'm actually like, a super private person. You wouldn’t know that I've overcome it. But I was very, very much like, private and insecure in childhood, I think. Performing in high-pressure situations, to me, the thing that I learned was like, free throws. Everything, everything in life can be compared to shooting a free throw. The only way to nail a free throw if the entire arena is staring at you or you're on TV and the clock's counting down and the game hangs in the balance is the knowledge and the confidence that comes from the knowledge that you have done that activity so many times that you can do it with your eyes closed, in your sleep. Your muscles take over so when you're anxious and your anxiety spikes in front of people or when your job’s on the line, your career’s on the line- when all of that stuff mounts up and you have the quiet resolve and understanding that you have prepared so much for that moment that nothing can shake you. It's that Olympic level of galvanized resolve that only comes from repeating the same activity or action over and over and over. And so when I'm going to perform a new song on the Today Show live at seven in the morning, which is by the way, the absolute worst time ever to sing for any singer is right when you wake up, you know, you have to wake up at 5:00 AM to warm up to then be in an ice-cold studio. And there is nothing more nerve-wracking than a live stream, than a live television show. And I'll tell you this- I'll give you one anecdote as an example. I have cracked under pressure. When you're on TV- there’s performances where I completely dropped the ball back in the day that I still will never live down because I wasn't prepared. I did a performance with Pharrell Williams. We had this Stevie Wonder tribute. The Grammys Gives Back or Grammy presents surrounding the Grammy Awards about three or four years ago- I think about four years ago. They called me to say that they want me to do a Stevie Wonder cover in front of Stevie Wonder. Now just to set the stage for you, I've been performing for a while but this is more nerve-wracking than playing the Grammys or anything surrounding it as you're on stage at this event. Front and center is Stevie Wonder. To his right as Alicia Keys, to his left is Paul McCartney. To the right of Paul McCartney is Beyonce and Jay Z. To the left of Stevie and all of them is Taylor Swift and Kelly Clarkson. That's just the front row. That's why I'm staring down at Quincy Jones in the second row. This is the crowd you're performing in front of the world's greatest, most talented singers and writers in the world and you're singing the hardest Stevie Wonder song in my opinion in his cannon, which is Don't You Worry About a Thing. It's one of the weirdest melodies and hardest songs to sing. I didn't know the song that well. I know Stevie Wonder really well, but that particular song was not one that I listened to at the time. And I went into a full-on panic attack three days before the performance. I was super busy doing other stuff. And I just said, you know what, cancel tomorrow, I am going to shoot free throws with the song. I'm absolutely out of my mind scared and the most scared I've ever been. And I went into, you know, my room and my real house. I played the song in my headphones, and I watched the video of him performing it. And I sang that song for probably three hours straight. And then the next day, I did the same thing. And then the next day I did the same thing. And on the drive to the venue I did the same thing. And then up until the moment I took the stage I was singing every single note in the bathroom, in the car. You name it. By the time I got on stage, I had a full-on panic attack for like five seconds but I looked down and Jay Z gave me the whole, like, you know, that's my boy, you know? It was like one of those moments because I've written a lot of hits and I'm standing on stage. Second, it triggered my brain and the muscle memory kicked in and I don't physically remember the next three minutes at all. It was complete muscle memory and in like exuberance, not only muscle memory. It's one of the best performances I've ever done in my life. And you can see it on YouTube because my instinct and confidence kicked in because all of a sudden, from the first note, I knew that I knew what I was doing, because I repeated it so many times. And it's like NASA rehearsing a space shuttle launch. That's how you don't kill people. That's how you don't mess up. There is no replacement for just gratuitous repetition. That gives you the confidence and then the confidence is how you end up blowing people away and winning and getting the next gig and landing that contract or landing that deal. And it all starts from simple repetition.

Adam: Ryan, thank you so much. I really enjoyed it. Thanks for joining us.

Ryan: Thank you.