Meet Ryan Stewart

 

We were lucky to catch up with Ryan Stewart recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, so we’re so thrilled to have Ryan with us today – welcome and maybe we can jump right into it with a question about one of your qualities that we most admire. How did you develop your work ethic? Where do you think you get it from?

I attribute my strong work ethic to my mother. For as long as I can remember, she has been self-employed, dedicating long days and nights to her photography studio—editing photos, managing the countless details of running a business, and raising her children. Watching her balance these responsibilities was both inspiring and humbling.

Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?

I simply love elevating a project with any skill set that I have to offer. My passion started with music. I grew up playing, making, and listening to tons of music. This eventually transitioned into the formal study of music and then to film scoring. Through film scoring, I was able to meet many other members of the post-production industry who then had other audio needs such as mixing and sound design which I quickly found out I also enjoyed immensely.

As a composer I have scored many short films, and feature documentaries. This is some of the most fun I have had in this field. Screening night is simply just rewarding. Seeing your finished work on the screen and hearing the impact it has on the viewers is as good as it gets. I have been a sound designer on many incredibly fun projects: a sprawling campaign for the Pokemon company; a custom song and song design for a product launch for post cereals; and most recently a large digital campaign for GNC where I was able to play with and design around Push-it by Salt n Peppa. Extremely fun!

I truly dig working on any audio-related nerd for a project, especially when the passion is coming from the top down.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

I would say the three most impactful skills I have honed in this industry are the following:

1.) Be easy and fun to work with, or “don’t be an a**hole” is how it was presented to me. And that will get you far, as crass as that sounds. You will hear countless stories of people burning bridges because they behaved poorly under duress. You can’t do that. You gotta keep your cool, stay professional, and try to keep the relationships friendly, and in a genuine way. It is SO important for creating a meaningful, lasting work environment.

2.) Learn from your mistakes. You will make plenty of mistakes across many projects, but the important thing is learning from those mistakes and not repeating them over again. I was once working with a company where I was given advice, regarding working with the company’s owner, “it is ok to make mistakes here, but don’t make them twice.” I think it is important to keep that in mind as you grow.

3.) Slow is fast. Don’t rush your work. This industry moves very fast and there is a temptation to cut corners and race to the end result. But, doing revisions is much slower than getting it right the first time, or close to right. I like to take my time, within reason based on the project, to get as much polish on a first deliverable as I can. Better polish nets fewer revisions and happier clients.

If you knew you only had a decade of life left, how would you spend that decade?

I think the uncertainty of the future is the most pressing challenge for me right now, and probably always will. However, the advent of AI tools seems particularly scary to those of us in the industry. Will my work be replaced? Will clients be getting work to even hire me? But, like most situations, you need to keep your head down, be educated, and keep pushing forward. Expertise is always in demand. Pair that with trust you’ve built with people in the industry and you will have some safeguards in place and be able to adapt and overcome.

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