65: Ryan Hildebrandt on Experimentation, Giving Value, and Creating Something Bigger Than Ourselves

Something a little bit different this week. Instead of a one way interview, I had a conversation with Ryan Hildebrandt of The Maker’s Journey podcast.  In it we talked about starting our podcasts, why you should provide value, writing a book, building  a TEDx event from scratch, and much more.

Here are three things I learned by talking with Ryan:

Everything Starts Off as an Experiment

If you look around at all the wonderful things people are able to accomplish, you might believe they were meant to do it. For them, things go off without a hitch. Their work sells like hot cakes. They look calm, composed, and confident all the time.

What you don’t see is how they got there. You didn’t see them struggling. You didn’t see them speak timidly about their work. You didn’t see how they doubted themselves.

We all have this mistaken belief that other people are special. Ryan believes everything starts off as an experiment. “When you create something, it’s almost always… it’s is a bit of an experiment really. You’re never really sure how it’s going to turn out.”

That’s the exact conclusion I’ve come to by interviewing and talking to a lot of people. Everything starts off as an experiment. No one really knows what they are doing when they start. The key is getting started. Find the thing you want to create and start experimenting.

You Must Give Value to Get Value

One of the things that is often overlooked when we try to make something great is focusing too much on ourselves. Most of the time, we try to see how something will benefit us, but the real moments of magic happen when we put other people before ourselves.

That’s exactly what happened when Ryan decided to make a podcast. He could have been selfish and kept that knowledge to himself, but he didn’t. He chose to share the valuable lessons from other creators with his Marker’s Journey audience.

Ryan feels that when you add value to other people’s lives, wonderful and unexpected things happen. “I think when you create something that’s of value to a lot of people, opportunities come back to you, and you never really know what they’re going to be until it comes, but when you create something, you’re giving a gift. You get to provide value to a lot of different people.”

We Can Create Something Much B igger Than Ourselves

My favorite part about chatting with Ryan was when he talked about starting his TEDx event. Ryan started the event because he wanted to do something cool, but he didn’t have a plan for it.

He thought throwing the event would act as proof for his ability to manage and run something. He also believed it would help build a network of interesting and successful people.

What he realized was, you can accomplish things much bigger than yourself if you ask for help. “It kind of showed me that it’s possible to do something that’s really really big, and that’s larger than yourself if you give yourself enough time to do it, and… if you’re willing to ask people for help.”

When Ryan started preparing for the event, he was the only one on the team. Things started slowly. His grew his list, but only had a handful of volunteers. That’s when the impostor syndrome crept into his mind. Would he be able to run a successful event? What if he couldn’t get good guests?

But then things started to change. His volunteer team grew from two people after one month to fifty people after three months. He had everyone from graphic designers to speaker liasons on the team.

What Ryan realized was, in order to achieve something big, you have to find the right people to help you. “It’s very possible to do something that’s that big if you are willing to ask the right people for help, really, and keep working at it, even when you have zero volunteers and your email list is ten people.”

Read more shownotes from episode 65 with Ryan Hildebrandt