I've Never Said This Before With Tommy DiDarioThis week, Tommy is joined by Jason Derulo, the award-winning singer, songwriter, entrepreneur and now author of his part self-help, part memoir, Sing Your Name Out Loud. Jason opens up about his childhood dreams of becoming one of the biggest pop stars in the world, overcoming one of the darkest times in his life, the rules he lives by to find success and stay on a path to greatness, and how even the biggest global superstars can feel vulnerable.
Hey, guys, welcome to I've never said this before with me, Tommy Di Dario, I am pretty confident in saying that you have jammed out to today's guest while either driving in your car, or maybe working out and breaking a sweat, or while just dancing with your friends. I'm raising my hand because I am in the category of accomplishing all three of those. The award winning singer, songwriter, entrepreneur, and now author Jason Derulo is hanging out with me today now. Jason is easily one of the most dynamic forces on the global pop landscape. Period. He has sold over two hundred and fifty million singles worldwide and achieved fifteen platinum singles since the start of his solo recording career back in two thousand and nine. His music has earned get ready for It over eighteen point two billion streams. He has even become one of TikTok's biggest superstars, currently the fourth most followed mail on the entire platform, which I think is pretty damn cool because it's really become a place where he can connect with his fans, and he prioritizes that time. It's very important to him. Now on top of all of his musical brilliance. Jason has a new book out, part self help, part memoir called Sing Your Name Out Loud, in which he shares his fifteen rules for finding success in any pursuit, and he invites everyone yourself included, especially artists and creators and creative minds alike, to start on their path to greatness. As he says, and let me tell you, Jason has some incredible pieces of advice to share that are going to just leave you feeling so inspired and ready to take on the world. So let's see if today we can get Jason to say something that he's never said before. Jason, my man, how you doing today?
Oh man, amazing, amazing? How about yourself?
I'm awesome. Thank you for joining the show. Listen before we dive in, I have got to tell you that you are responsible for two years of my life making me feel like I was in a music video every day that I woke up.
Oh word, how so well?
Two thousand and nine Gossip Girl like the show that took over the world. Your first smash hit. What you say was in this like epic dramatic Thanksgiving scene where everybody was fighting and you know, throwing fists on the table and pushing their chair out to the beat of your music. And I went to bed that night and I woke up the next day like imagining myself in ten million scenarios thinking I'm in a music video. So thank you for that. You clouded my mind for two years.
I love it, love it.
It was awesome. So humble, brag on your behalf. Okay, you have sold over two hundred and fifty million singles. You are one of is it six artists that have had a number one hit in three different decades? Is that right?
That's right.
I mean the accolades, they go on and on and on and fast forward to today. You have a brand new book out that is absolutely fantastic. It's called Sing Your Name Out Loud. Tell me about this book.
Really exciting, man. I wanted to write this book because there's a lot of dreamers.
Out there that are giving up their dreams for what they feel like they should be doing.
You know, I feel like we have this kind of we built the system where.
We're supposed to, you know, go to high school, then you know, go to college and get a trade, and you know, it's that that's kind of like the norm and there's a lot of dreamers. There's a lot of creative people out there. There's just so many talented people out there that are just giving up their dream because they feel like they have to do a specific thing.
So I wanted to write some sort.
Of of handbook, you know, that could be an aid, you know, that could be a support system to these dreamers out there, because I mean, for myself, if I would have had.
Some sort of.
Handbook myself, if I would have bought my head a lot less times, and you know, if I was ever feeling a certain kind of way, I could turn to this you know, handbook and you know, get some help or try to figure out a question that I had by looking within this book. So I, you know, took a part in my life and tried to figure out what I thought were the fifteen rules that.
Got me to be successful, you know, got me to where I am today, you.
Know, not just in music, but in business and with social media as well. What are those fifteen rules that apply to success in all facets, you know, and not just one.
And I don't know if there's been really any other musicians who have come out with this sort of self help book, right Uh no, not that I know of. So was that something that just felt really natural for you?
It did, man, and it was it was a very selfless actor. I didn't do it for anybody else but young Jason Derulo.
You know. I went that that young dreamer.
Out there to be able to have something to hold on to, and not just young, right. I mean, I think there's also a lot of older dreamers that feel like it's too late, you know. And I don't think that's the fact that that's the fact of the matter at all. It's never too late to start, especially in twenty twenty three with how socials has kind of changed the world.
So you just kind of beat this ball, right, it's my dog.
We love a dog, cameo. Sure, this is Ice Ice.
He's literally right right next to me, just just chomping on his book ball.
That's amazing. Well, I love that you just hit on that too, man, because a lot of people think your dreams and your successes have to be twenties thirties. But there's so many people CEOs, billionaires, I mean, the list goes on and on that hit their sweetest success fifty and above.
Yeah, I mean a lot of times you don't even know who we are or what we want to do until later in life. So I mean, you know, there's definitely time. You know, it's not something that you have had to figure it out when you were young. You know, it's just literally no rules, especially nowadays.
Well you talk about the fifteen tried and true rules to success, right, So what are one or two that like really quickly came to you when you were writing this book.
One that came really quickly was the power of the time.
You know, when I was a kid, my mom used to always tell us, you know, be very mindful of the days.
That you say, you know, and she was practiced what she preaves.
Instead of saying, you know, this desert is to die fortune to say this desert is to live for so very early on I adopted that and started to speak my truths and my future into existence.
You know.
It was not life, uh, I you know, really want to be this singer one day. It was like when I become a singer and then that's just how I learned to speak. So that was something that came from from my upbringing, you know, being uh you know, a young Christian man. I mean, it was it was something that we were brought up on, so that was was a really easy one.
But I adopted it so much so that I started to believe it myself, you know. And you have a trillion cells in.
Your body, and when you speak to your to your body, your body really listens. So I'm going to act differently, right, and when I wake up in the morning, I'm gonna wake up as somebody who was on the on the journey of someone who's gonna be on the.
Most successful musicians of all time.
I'm going to uh make sure that I'm practicing the amount of hours that one of the most successful musicians about time practice. I'm going to take all of those steps because it's no longer just a dream. It is something that is going to be in my future. And you know, it's one of those those, uh those things that I learned very early on about one of those ones that I feel like is very very.
Necessary.
And how do you believe it?
Right?
It's one thing to say it. It's one thing to put it out there and and think you believe it. But I mean, I truly, honestly feel in your core when you were growing up, you believed that you would become this huge success.
I really did, man, I really did. I think it starts with just saying.
It starts with just saying it. I tell people all the time. So I just had a show about four days ago, and I was a little under the weather, and you know, it was really tough to get out of bed even what I was thinking about.
You know, all the people that.
You know spent all their hard earned money and wanted to come to the show. So there was no way I was going to cancel the show. But the simple thing as putting a smile on my face, even when I did not want to smile, I started to just smile, and instantly my body started to react to that smile and I started to feel different, you know. So it's one of those things like you when you start to speak something.
When you start to say.
It, you'll eventually start to move it, you know, but you have to keep on doing it over and over and over and over again.
It's not going to happen overnight, but it will happen to visually.
So you start to see it and you start to do the things within your life that is leading to wherever that that end goal is, and you know your body will start to slowly believe.
It and getting out of bed. That story of you having to push through not feeling great to deliver that show reminds me of something else you said, which was that obstacles are a chance for opportunities, right for sure?
For sure?
I mean, can you get any more poetic than that? That's freaking brilliant.
Yeah.
Man, I think at my in my lowest moments, where the moments where I thrived the most, you know, thinking back by moments like when I broke my neck in two thousand and fourteen, fifteen one of the two I broke my c two vertebrate and it was.
A very.
Could have been a very dark moment, as you can imagine. It was a Hayman's break. So most of the time when somebody has that break is you know, you end up being a preparaplegic or worse. And for me, I came out very different, thankfully. But I couldn't time I owned shoe, I couldn't bathe myself.
I couldn't clothe myself.
It was a very strange time and a very you know, very I would say, a dark time. Yeah, But in that time I started to rely on.
Started to rely on my routine, you know.
So instead of being down on myself, I woke up at the same time every single day.
I tried to do what.
Little physical therapy that I could do at the same time for the same amount of time every day. Then then I wrote music for the same amount of time every single day. So it was like that was my craft and I was going to work from this time for this time every single day. It didn't matter if I felt good, if I didn't feel good, I had to put in those amount of hours. So it was not about if I felt prolific that day or if I felt like down. I was going to do my hours and I went to bed at the same time and did rent repeat.
It is the same thing over and over and over and over and over. But when I looked up one day, I had written one of my most famous projects. You know.
It was a tough, dirty album and that album have flat five platinum songs on there, and it was in a time.
Where it was a very dark time in my life, you know.
So I say that to say that obstacles sometimes, you know, can be that blessing.
I think that's such a cool way to look at life, right. We all go through really tough times in our lives, and some people by default kind of crawling the ball and cave and they're not sure how to put one foot in front of the other. For those kinds of people who are listening and say, man, I want to be more like Jason, like that is such a badass mentality. How do you get there?
It's just by creating your routine, you know. And sometimes you don't want to get up and go do what you're supposed to do, right, And sometimes you do. You're like, this is my passion. I love to do this, That's why I want to do it.
But you can't. The problem sometimes is that we're start.
Negotiating with ourselves, right, and it's like, Okay, if I don't, if I don't go get up and work out today, tomorrow gonna go twice as hard, you know what I'm saying.
But you can't.
You can't have those negotiations. It has to be non negotiable. So like when you set your routine, your routine is your routine, no matter what you know, and you cannot miss it.
You can't.
You can't sway from it. Your routine is your routine. You can't say I'm going to just go twice as hard tomorrow. No, you got to do it today because it's a non negotiable. And when you when you lean on the routine, when you look up one day, it's it's gonna be like, damn, I'm so much closer to my goal than when I started.
So that was one of your lows to tell me about one of your all time highs. And then what did I feel like?
My favorite moments, man, are are moments in the grind?
You know? I wish I could be like it was like when I got this.
Accolade or when I sold this in my I mean, it's really not anything like that. My favorite moments in the world is writing music. So I remember, uh.
It being.
Four in the morning and I wanted to go to bed, and my friend that I was with it.
Was like, let's write one more song. I was like, man, I'm trying. I'm trying to go to bed.
I don't think I'm gonna be worth anything if I write another song is probably.
Not gonna be good. So it's like we might voice go to bed. It was like, come on, man, one more.
Four in the morning, and I'm like, a cool So we're going through the beats, and I'm like, these basic trash, So we picked the beat that, uh we thought it was least trash. And and then I ended up writing a song called writing Solo, and it a song.
Thank you Man.
And it was a song that had really real meaning in my life, and it was it was something that I didn't think was going to happen because I was so tired, you know. And and in that moment, I learned that the non negotiables matter because I could have missed out on that blessing. I could have missed out on that opportunity if I was like, oh, I'm just gonna go to bed.
But thank god my friend was there because.
You know, he he uh, he pushed, He pushed the envelope, you know. And that's the reason why I stayed. It wasn't it wasn't myself. It was honestly him and.
I.
But from that moment on, I learned that I can't only just work when I feel up to it, you know. I have to work because it's an amount of time that I set for myself. This is I'm gonna work from this time to this time. So it's not like only when I feel like, oh, this is good. You know, this is a good time to work. But those are one of my favorite stories. You know, this is one of my highlight moments, you know, Like I mean, I have all sorts of those, but my favorite moments are in the grind, especially when I'm making music.
Something tells me it's very hard for you to turn off your mind, your I feel like your creativity is always going.
For sure, for sure. Man, I love creating. I love creating something from nothing.
So whether it's uh, you know, interior design for real estate, whether it's content for socials, whether it's music, I just love creating.
Well in this book gives you the tools to be able to be your best creator, which I think is so cool. It's also part memoir. Was there something that was harder than other areas of the book for you to write down and actually like put out in vapor and put out into the world.
I talk about some of my failures within the book, and I don't think that's a very normal thing to have done. I debated on putting certain things in there, but I wanted to be as real as possible, you know, And I talked about failures of businesses that I had, you know, two companies in particular that I had that didn't work out. You know, I was following in the footsteps of people who musicians before me and trying to do the business things that they did, and just because it was successful for them, this doesn't mean it was going to be successful for me. But I thought it was important for me to put my failure, my failures in there so that people understand that it's you know, it's not happy days.
You know. I have very successful companies.
Now that that thrive, but I have been through the failure after failure as well, and I think it's important to know both sides.
You know.
I think far too often when we see people that are successful in business or anything else, right, we think that the road is just like smooth sailing, but not I have had failures that I've learned from so that I can be the success that I am today, because I don't think without those failures, if like I would like hit it big from from the from the top, you know.
As a businessman, I don't think I would I would know these tools.
So I had to fail to kind of you know, understand the landscape of business.
But you're not afraid to fail. You don't strike me as someone afraid to do that.
Definitely not.
And I think once you once you failed, you know, you get you get a little less afraid of it.
You know.
You you kind of got to prepare. You got to kind of prepare for the for the worst as well.
Hm, You've had such a insanely brilliant career. You put in the work, You deserve everything that's come your way. How is the Jason Derulo from two thousand and nine when that first smash hit what you say came out different from the Jason today.
I think the biggest change is me growing up as a man.
You know, I was, I was a kid in that song came out, and I was trying to figure out my way, and I was trying to do anything to be successful, you know whatever it was like, I was going to do that, like whatever it took, and even if it meant me not being myself necessarily. And I talked about that in the book as well, and trying to follow in other people's footsteps to try to to try to see what success was exactly right when Yeah, when you're a teenager man, you don't know the proper steps to take.
So my.
Instinct was to look at other successful people and see what they did and kind of.
Do my version of that. And I think I I'm in a place now within my life that I've learned so much from from so many other people that now I really pull for myself a lot.
I really pulled from my own ideals as opposed to pulling from other people so much.
As a kid. Did you want to be one of the biggest pop stars in the world.
For sure? Undoubtedly.
I wanted to be able to share my music with the world right.
Not just specific marketed people.
I wanted to be able to go to Germany and have a concert, and be able to go to China a concert. And that was the goal, to to make music that spoke to to the globe.
And it still brings you that same excitement and then same joy as when you started out.
That's for sure. Man, I'm a music lover. I'm obsessed with my craft, for sure.
Well, you've had so much great music coming out, even over the last you know, year, a few months for you, I imagine it's fun to see a song and put it out in the world and see how the world reacts. I loved one of your most recent songs one love Sucks. That's awesome. How did that song come about with such a great collaborator.
Yeah, man, so I wanted to tell this story about a toxic relationship and I wanted to utilize diitos thank you, And I was like, who who could do this? This whole justice, you know, And I thought of doing it myself and I was like, no, I think the male voice is right boom, and I thought what female could do it?
And I was like, damn night, why don't I.
Just actually died of it, like it, like she would like redo it, you know and do it in twenty twenty three fashion, and yeah, and hit her up and then she was all for it.
Man.
So being a huge fan of thank you, and what also what she did with uh Stan, you know, is an honor to be able to to to work or that.
And it's such a catchy song. But you have this gift of being able to make something that's so meaningful in a topic that so many people can relate to into a bop.
Appreciate it, man, Thank you. And I was going to say is one of my favorites too, And I'm.
Glad that you that you fighted about appreciate it.
Yeah, it's awesome. So what's next for you?
Man?
I mean, it seems like you've done it all. You've you've checked it all off the list. What do you want to keep doing? What's next?
I'm doing a lot of really cool things.
In a bit on the business side, uh So, I purchased a volleyball team in Omaha called the Supernovas and this first season is coming up, which I'm really excited about. Because women's volleyball, like if you played college volleyball you have to go overseas, you would have to go overseas to play professionals.
We had no professional league until now.
Pro Volleyball Federation is brand new, and I think it's going to be massive, man, because this is one of the sports where women are the leaders, right, and I think I think that's important. Especially in today's day and age, women are proving to be as as powerful as as.
Imaginable, you know.
So I think having this sport on television with women leading the charge, I think it's going to be really really important for all women's sports.
So doing that, I have.
A car wash company called Rocket car Wash with my partner Danny White, that we have hundreds of locations across the country, and that's really thriving and doing really well.
And music music is on the horizon. Man, I have an album coming out. It's been a very long time since I've put an album out, but the album is coming in November, available for pre order in October, and it's coming alongside with a podcast.
I did a podcast with.
Warner Brothers and the producers of Twilight Clamor, and it's really exciting because I wanted to take this album experience and turn it into something totally different this time, because I feel like a lot of people are They're just waiting for the next one song, one song, and song and so onto the next song for the next. So I was like, if I'm gonna do an album, I want to do something that's gonna be totally different and give some and give an experience.
So uh, in me.
Working out, you know, I like to watch Netflix while I'm on the treadmill, just kind of pass the time, right, But like when I start to like lift weights, I can't I can't get that same cinematic experience because I obviously can't do something and then get a cinematic experience. I was like, what if I created a similar experience but just audio, and you can hear the experience as opposed to having to watch it. You can see it with your ears. So it was using ASMR and these incredibly talented people that I've partnered up with, We've created an audio an audio TV show so to speak, that is I think going to change the way people, UH experience music. So my music will be the backdrop to this TV show that is Ah, that is a thriller.
It's a romantic thriller.
Due, that's sick, and I feel like that hasn't even been done before.
Yeah, not, it hasn't, man.
And I have fantastic actors and actresses that have you know, graced us, you know with with their talents and brilliant, brilliant writers. So it was just a project that was brought on together by all of these amazing people that were like minded and shared in this this this this you know, you know, trying to change the world, you know what I'm saying and give people something totally different.
That's awesome, man, Well we look forward to that for sure. And you know it's that time in the show. The show was called I've never said this before, so I asked all of my guests to share something could be silly, would be deep, could be anything you want. But what is something that you've never.
Said before, something that I never said before.
I know it's a tough one because you're an open book, but there's got to be something.
I never said this before.
But I'm a little nervous of my album coming out in November. It's been a very long time and I really want to make this project something that will be remembered, you know, and be something that people can really sink their teeth into and appreciate. So yeah, I think I'm nervous for this new upcoming out.
I love that you said that because people listening are going to think, WHOA Jason Durro gets nervous too.
I should do for sure. For sure.
I love that man. We look forward to the album. You got so many great things going on. We're here to support you in any way we can and keep rock. It's been a pleasure chatting with you.
Ah pleasures, MOML thanks so much.
I've never said this before. Is hosted by me Tommy Didario. This podcast is produced and edited by Mike Coscarelli, and executive producers are Andrew Piglici, and Katrina Norvel at iHeartRadio. I've Never Said This Before is part of the Elvis Durant podcast Network on iHeart Podcasts. For more, rate, review and subscribe to our show and if you liked this episode, tell your friends. Until next time, I'm Tommy Dedario.
