[This transcript has been automatically generated by a digital software and will therefore  contain errors and typos. Please kindly take note of this and only rely on the digital transcript for reference.]

00:00

Hello, my friends, this is Ted, your friend and host speaking now Have you ever wanted to give a speech at a TEDx event? If you said yes, then this episode is for you. Today we’re joined by Mr. Ryan Hildebrand, the founder of viral message lab. Now Ryan helps entrepreneurs craft their unique message to stand out from the crowd and to get them booked to speak at TEDx events. As the founder of the second largest TEDx event in the United Kingdom’s Ryan has literally seen over 1000 accepted and rejected applications. At this point, he has helped dozens of people become TEDx speakers themselves. So in today’s episode, Ryan shares his tips on how you can get booked to speak at a TEDx event. Why should not worry about having a bad draft at First, and most importantly, having some self doubt is completely normal. So guys, if you’d like to support the show in the best we can do this is to subscribe, leave a review and to share with somebody who find it useful as well. Now it’s a way to say thank you to you guys. If you actually do subscribe and leave a review on Apple podcasts by the end of September, you stand a chance to win $50 worth of gift vouchers from Amazon. one lucky winner will be chosen at random. And now guys, let’s dive right in. Ryan, thank you for joining us today. It’s so nice to have you here. Hey, thanks, Ted. Ryan, we’re gonna start with a very simple icebreaker so we can all get to know you a bit better. Could you share verse who is Ryan who to brand when he is not working?

 

01:16

Oh, man, I’m Ryan Hildebrandt. Well, today, I spent over an hour in the pool swimming laps. I’m trying to swim the English Channel, which is the stretch of ocean from England of France. 33 kilometers. So, Ryan, when he’s not working, he likes to do in durance challenges that push me beyond what I think I’m capable of. Oh,

 

01:42

so when do you plan to actually swim the English Channel? It’s in a

 

01:45

year’s time. So summer of 2022. So yeah, to me, like I love the process of pushing my, my physical boundaries, my mental boundaries as well. And I get a lot of satisfaction out of that out of doing things that are beyond my comfort zone. And somewhat related to the topic of today’s conversation as well. So yeah, that’s kind of that’s, that’s what I did.

 

02:09

Right? And so let’s dive right in. Today, you help coaches, YouTubers, CEOs, and everyone in between grabbed their expertise into a world changing message and to get invited to TEDx events. But before we speak more about this, could you share with us your own journey? I know you’re organizing your own TEDx events in England, but what made you want to do

 

02:27

this? Yeah, so actually, it goes way back even farther than that. My background is in engineering. And so I started out my career as this like young 20 something year old dude at a smallish engineering company. And I, like I’m sure a lot of people listening like wanted more out of my career, I felt like I was really smart. And I wanted promotions and raises and new opportunities and things. And I eventually got to the, I realized that, if not a lot of people, like if only my boss, and a couple of colleagues know, the quality of my work, I’m severely limiting my own opportunities. So I read the real made the realization that I should try to start, like writing for trade magazines to try to get my name out there and try to get exposure for my own ideas beyond just a couple of people in, you know, in my office. And then at the same time, I was really interested in travel. And so the company opened an office in the UK, I moved to the UK, I started the TEDx events. And that made me realize just the number of people that wanted to speak on that platform.

 

03:44

So Ryan, after running a few rounds with the TEDx events, what was the gap in the market that you realized that you could feel was there a particular problem that the applicants tend to face

 

03:52

a lot of them almost all of them did a really bad job of explaining to us why their idea was good, it all kind of sounded. They’re not beginners, either. These are, you know, CEOs, and, and bestselling authors and very experienced speakers. So the engineering side of me thought, Well, how do I like solve this problem? How do I figure out what it is that people need to do to create a really good idea? Because you can’t just tell people like make a good idea, right? That that that evaluation is very subjective, like what you think is going to be and may not be what I think is Nvidia and vice versa. And so you need something you need a more robust procedure, if anybody here in the world had access to had seen 1000s of pitches, they would be able to figure it out, too. So I don’t I don’t think like what I did was like special genius. I just had kind of unfair access to what works and what didn’t work and enough patience, I suppose to, to try different things and see what was working and what wasn’t working.

 

05:00

So, Ryan, I’ve been running the TEDx events for a few years, what was the biggest takeaway for you? Oh, man,

 

05:05

I mean, the experience was amazing. The so that I’m big on creating things, I think that you get so much more benefit for you personally. And it’s much more beneficial for the world to make something rather than just participate in other people’s things. So I haven’t like an a massive amount of admiration for people that start restaurants or make apps or make a film or, you know, any anything like that. Right. So, um, the biggest thing that I experienced were just, you get this overwhelming exposure to other opportunities when you put yourself out there, right? So And the same thing is true. Like I did a TEDx talk myself, maybe I’m skipping ahead a little bit for like your next question. But when you say to people, like, Oh, I ran a TEDx events, you get this immediate recognition, everyone kind of gets it. Whereas if I, if I did, like, Oh, I ran like Ryan’s conference, the reaction will be completely different. Yeah, because there’s a huge branding behind the TEDx events. Right? Right. And if people trust it, people trust it, right? Yes. So just the power

 

06:09

of a good brand, right? The moment you speak of a good brand, such as a TED talk, people start associating certain qualities such as a high standard of professionalism, storytelling, and great ideas that are being shared. And if you can get to speak at these events, then these trees start to get associated with you as well. Now, Ryan, you’ve just shared that you spoke at your own TEDx talk. So talk to us about what you were sharing, I noted, the title was called Do your worst, create your best? What was the message that you wanted to share?

 

06:35

So there’s these two schools of thought, right. One is, you should not be a perfectionist. And the other school of thought is we should try to do the best that you can. Right? And they seem to be in conflict, right? Because the people that are that are saying, like, don’t be a perfectionist, they’re coming from a good place, they’re coming from a place of like, try, don’t don’t let your your fear of what other people will think, you know, stop you from creating something, and don’t let kind of your own internal evaluator just opt out or whatever, stop you stop you from making something right. At the other end of the spectrum, like, obviously, everyone wants to do a good job. Like, it’s, it’s kind of ridiculous to tell somebody like No, no. It doesn’t matter how good it is like, of course, you want it to be good, right? People want, people want to be proud of their work. So I had this experience of years ago, interviewing a number of people who had created things, be at board games, or apps or theatre companies and whatever else in a broad spectrum of industries, because I was really interested in it. And one of the things that kept popping up is they would say, Well, you know, like, there was a guy who made board games, and he would invite his friends over to, and it’s got to make millions dollars selling board games, right? If you make millions doing like, you’re in tech, it’s like, okay, like everyone in tech does. Who does? Well makes lots and lots of money, right? But this guy was making money doing board games, which is kind of unusual.

 

08:17

Yeah. And it’s a very hard industry to break into. Yeah, it’s

 

08:20

like, it’s like a billionaire selling yo yos, like. So I asked him, How he made his games fun to play. Because I, how do you make something fun? I have no idea, right? And he said, Well, what we do is we make this game out of like cardboard, and, you know, pieces of paper and stuff and invite some friends over to like, do a sample round or two of playing it. And we watch how they play and get feedback from them. And I sort of immediately assumed that they were making it really bad looking because it was faster and easier.

 

08:54

I guess the intention was to get the players to focus on the mechanics of the game itself.

 

08:58

Well, so yeah, it’s right. So they weren’t making it crappy looking. Because it was easy to do it that way. They were making a crappier looking because they wanted people to not really focus on how it looks and to signal to them, that everything was up for feedback, anything can be changed literally in seconds. And so this was so what I realized was that this the idea of not being a perfectionist, and the idea of being perfect, like creating something really good are it’s not that one is in opposition to the other. It’s the you apply different strategies depending on where you are in the creative process. So when you’re first starting out, what you need is feedback on literally every aspects of what you’re doing. Not just the look and feel, but fundamentally what it is. And to get that feedback. You have to signal the people that you’re uncertain about a lot of things because otherwise they won’t give you that feedback. So I For anyone starting out, whether, regardless of what you’re making, whether it’s a podcast, or new ebook, or whatever, if you make something that intentionally looks really bad and ugly and terrible at the start, you will get that will signal you to get the best feedback to then create the best thing and then in the end, and so that’s fundamentally what I do with my clients is we start with a sentence or two of their idea, rather than a full talk, that’s all polished and tweak from there, we tweak from, give me one sentence, okay, let’s add a couple other details are, let’s test it in this way. Now we can change the entire concept of it. And it only took us a couple seconds really to, to write out what we’ve written out.

 

10:47

So it’s about, you know, being able to create something in the first place, be ready to tear it down. And to improve from there. I think maybe the problem a lot of people face is that they actually want to already set a certain standard in their head. And they want to achieve it before they publish their first episode, their first video, or their first podcast. But the problem is, if you’re first starting out, you don’t even have a technical skills to achieve what you have in mind. So it’s a bit of a chicken and egg problem. And it’s about being comfortable with being where you are, and saying that this is the best that I can do at this time. And I know I can get better with the feedback, the training and the skill sets that come along the way. So I fully agree with your approach. And I think that more people should adopt it and not be afraid of the criticism that they may potentially face when you know they published something out in the world.

 

11:32

Yeah. And you’re you’re in that. So you’ve done stuff in the tech world, right? I know, we talked about and so like in tech, what they call this is the minimum viable product. So they say, Okay, well, what’s the smallest thing that we can, we can create so that it’s useful for other people, and we can measure, so we can, we can measure how useful it is for them. And we can measure if they’re, if it’s grown, if we have a growth strategy that works, right. So it’s the there’s a book called the Lean Startup by Eric Reese, or rice. And it’s a really good dive into this, right. So this is not a concept that I’m made up necessarily. It’s something that’s like, borrowed from other people, and sort of rephrase, but in tected, they call this a minimum viable product. And what’s interesting, interesting kind of anecdote, Dropbox, the file sharing platform, their their start was not software, it was a website with a video of the founder going, alright, when Dropbox is made, it’s not made yet, but when it’s made, it’s gonna be able to let you, you know, put a file over here, and then it’ll show Oh, it didn’t, it didn’t exist, there was no software, he was just talking somebody through what it what it will do. And he said, Okay, put your email address here, if you want to know, when it’s created, he had like 25,000, people that put his email address, put their email address in the box. So when you’re talking about like doing something that is bad, and literally does not exist at all, in order to, to make sure it’s working and get like actual data. And the Yeah, so that’s what I do with clients with their message, right, you can treat the message like a product, do the minimum job like a sentence or two, and you can very effectively measure from like this core concept how people will respond, get really good feedback, and then use that to tweak further.

 

13:31

So guys, is Ryan has shed Do your worst and create your best is very important for you to get your first minimum viable product out. So you can actually work to make it better. Don’t get hung up about being a perfectionist, if you kind of even create something in the first place for you to improve on. You know, a lot of times when you’re trying to make something perfect before you’re willing to release it to the world, there could be a certain level of insecurity that’s actually holding you back. Now, of course, you want there to be a certain standard to the work that you release. That’s because you have standards yourself, I get that. And the trick really is to find that balance, Just promise me that you won’t let this pursuit for perfection eventually stop you from even pursuing your dreams at all. Now, Ryan, before we get any further, I wanted to take some time to explain to the listeners the difference between the TED talk and a TEDx talk. So from my understanding the TED Talks actually helped by the official organization of Ted itself. But a TEDx event is more of a localized event that is being run by the people of a specific city itself. Can you confirm this for me?

 

14:27

Technically and legally. Ted is the kind of parents brand if you will, and they run a couple of conferences. They run Ted, which is I think, normally in Vancouver, sometimes California, they run Ted global, and they were in 10 women and so there’s like three events that they run.

 

14:50

Then what about a TEDx brand? No TEDx talks.

 

14:53

It’s like a franchise. So you go to Ted, you say hey, I want to apply to run. You know TEDx London and they say you Sir, no, they can build turn you down if if you don’t make a really strong case about why you’re going to do a good job. But there are some TEDx events that if you looked at video from them, they would they would rival or exceed the caliber of production at TED. So one of my clients, for example, he spoke at a TEDx event and Buenos Aires. And there was, like, 10,000 people in the audience over two days. This is, and this is this dwarfs, Ted in terms of size, like it’s not even close. So there are some TEDx events that are incredible production, right? And some other TEDx events, because these are run by local engine entrepreneurs, that are very, very, very small, as in like, don’t have video, it’s a very small room. And so one of the things I mean, absolutely, yeah, absolutely. So one of the things that’s very much true for TEDx events, and really, for any opportunity you get, is, you can’t just assume the opportunities like, like a good one without understanding a bit about where you’re going to.

 

16:12

Okay, so it’s more of a case by case basis. But Ryan, could you share with us how can one actually find TEDx events to apply to

 

16:20

areas so Ted has a has a list of every TEDx event in the world, it’s kind of hard to navigate. And so if people are interested, they can reach out to me I have either like a monthly product that’s like a, that compiles all that info from 10, as well as whether they have a website, social media profiles, all the info from like, a bunch of different sources. So it’s much easier.

 

16:47

So Ryan, can you share with us? How do you actually help your clients refine the message that they want to share, and get accepted when they make an application to a TEDx event?

 

16:54

So for anybody listening to this, everybody listening to this has expertise, you have like a like a thing that you know about, maybe you’re a leadership coach, maybe you’re a computer programmer, maybe you are, you know, you help people like lose weight, whatever it is. So you have the first step is to think about what your what I call your outcome. So what is the thing you actually help people do? Or what is the thing if you have like a cause that you want to talk about? So some people are like, they’re environmentalist, for example. So maybe you’re sort of out your outcome, like, the thing that you want the audience to do, at the end of watching your talk is, like, start to recycle or treat the environment better, you know, become a vegan or whatever else, right? So that’s a thing that I always start with, because that’s the, that’s the kind of the focal point, if you don’t have if you don’t have that sometimes people go like, Oh, I want to just share my story. And I hope people are inspired by it. And I’m, like, wonderful, inspired to do what exactly like, specifically, what are we talking about?

 

17:56

So you need to be very focused on what is the outcome that you want to provide for the listeners? Right?

 

18:00

Right. Um, if you don’t have that it’s a little like, making a product and saying, Well, I hope people buy it and like, like it, like, what are they using it for? Well, I don’t know, I just whenever they want to, well, analogy, if you don’t know what the value is they’re getting, the likelihood of them buying it is, it’s not zero, it’s just really, really, really low. So anyway, that’s the first thing. And then the second thing is to realize that, you know, because you have an outcome in mind that not everyone has achieved, there is a reason why they haven’t achieved it. And there are beliefs that you have, like you TED or you know, whoever listening to this have about how to get there, that the other people in the audience don’t have yet. changing our belief can happen really fast, actually. And so what then the next step is, okay, what are what what are the beliefs that you have about how to do this? Do you think most people would disagree with like one of the myths around how to do this? Well, most people think that to lose weight, you have to do X, and I think you have to kind of do why. And so then that’s kind of the next step. Then we test that out with a bunch of different tools. So I have people do like debates, and interview their audience in different ways. And so what we actually do so like, I’ve had people all the time where they go, Oh, like, I want to talk about this with a wonderful what’s the belief there that you think most people have that? You know, you want to share? And and they go off and do an interview though. Well, people didn’t believe that at all. And they were surprised right? find their the audience’s actual beliefs where it’s a little bit off from what they what people thought they were. And so we tweaked like a couple of words about their message and all of a sudden it was working way better. And so that like messaging, messaging is very much like a product if you I mean, people okay, entrepreneurs, right. So if anybody here is like me an ebook or a course, as usual course you try to sell a course you can, you can do that if you never have conversations with the audience that people you’re trying to sell to, and you can make assumptions about what they will, what they will buy. But if you do that, you’re probably going to have a really bad time, probably no one’s gonna buy your, your product or service at all, what a better way of doing it is to talk to people that you think are going to buy your thing and ask them all about their pain points and whatever else, right? And actually ask them before you make it, hey, I’m thinking of making a product that will do this, this and this. Would you be interested in buying that? And if they say, yes, you say, wonderful, I was gonna charge $100 for it sound good. And if they say yes, then you make the product and you’re good. If you don’t have that, if you don’t have that data, the chances are very low that they will actually buy. and developing a message to get on a really competitive platform is very much like a purchase, people are investing an opportunity in you. And it doesn’t. So it doesn’t matter whether anybody likes your idea. That’s not the most important thing. People can like it and still turn you down, right? Everyone, like everybody who pitches The New York Times, or TED or TEDx, or whatever, has a good idea. It’s just not good enough to get someone to invest the opportunity in that. So these interviews and like debates and things are really important, because in doing so we’re measuring the audience’s real response. And it’s it you know, it’s not that this takes months and months and months and months and months to do, right. This just takes a couple hours longer than most people spend developing a message. And it requires a bit more humility, frankly, and realizing that well, like maybe your maybe your assumptions about the best way to communicate something are not true. I’m not even saying that I have the best way of communicating something either I’m all I’m saying is listen, like let’s just figure it out. Let’s just go and have that conversation ax ask somebody about this belief that they may or may not have, and actually listen to what they say. And then use that to inform the best way to message it going forward.

 

22:20

I see. So those are the steps that you will go through with your clients to help them craft a killer message to get accepted for TEDx events. So Ryan, after having rejected 1000s of applicants, could you share with us? What are some of the common reasons that causes an applicant to be rejected from a TEDx event?

 

22:34

I want to preface this by saying it’s it think about this very much like a product if people approach the message in a in a product centralized like fashion, it’s, it’ll make a lot it makes a lot more sense. So if somebody walked around the store and said, like, hey, these are a bunch of T shirts, or I’m going to bookstore, I can buy all these books. And you ask them, like, why didn’t you buy this particular book? It’s not because that one book wasn’t well written, it wasn’t because that one just didn’t stand out, or that one t shirt, you know, wasn’t, wasn’t made with care or whatever else, right? It wasn’t like a good t shirt. It all comes down to like relativity. So if somebody else’s idea was more clear, and more, it was more clear that it was like a brand. It was, it was an idea that spoke to like where people are at and that they are clearly an expert, anything. If those things are more true, then that’s what causes one person to get books over others. So that’s how you can, you can do perfectly well pitching a really small events, and the biggest stage is going to be so much harder. Yeah. If you take the same thing in a more competitive place. It’s like, what could you sell something for? $1? Yeah, probably, could you sell the exact same thing with the exact same approach for $1,000? Or 10,000? Well, maybe you could if you’re but only if you’re approaching it for $1 was like really on point. Right. And so the good news is, though this often doesn’t come down to the sort of absolute credibility or experience level of the speaker, it often doesn’t come down to their presentation skills, both of which take a long time to, to get better at. Like it takes a long time for someone who’s like, not a professional speaker, and not an like actor level communicator to get to that level. It’s a it’s a really difficult skill. You know, someone can be like, good enough at both of those things. It doesn’t really matter that much. But to craft that idea, like it notes doesn’t take half an hour, but it’s you know, it’s like 510 15 hours and you can get somebody to like that type. Next level, as long as long as they’re willing to kind of go through those steps.

 

25:04

So Ryan, what are some of the problems that your own clients face? Is that is trepidation of sharing their message or being unsure whether you’re even ready to share a message in the first place.

 

25:13

Right. So it’s like this process of self doubt is very normal. And this is true, by the way, even with things that don’t have anything to do with ideas and content and things. So like, when I was doing Ironman training, there was many moments where I doubted whether or not I was physically ready enough to do this race. Even though even though like training is biology, if you if you run, you know, 5k, a bunch of times, eventually your body will adapt, and you’ll be able to run 6k this is this is a, this is a fact, right? We have, there is so much data, like there’s an obscene amount of data around how the human body works, and how to adapt to stress, right? Even still, even despite all that I was still in really doubtful about whether I could do it. And really that doubt never went away until I crossed the finish line. So the same kind of thing is true with my clients. I’ve had many clients tell me after they got booked, and after they did it, you know, they said, Yeah, you know, even though I said I was confident, I still kind of wasn’t sure the whole time if I could really do it. And everyone, like, I could show you videos of people that are that have millions of views on their TEDx talks, and they say, I can tell you for a fact that a week before that talk was delivered, this guy was freaking out and almost quit on me. Wow. Yeah. Where they almost dropped out, even after they had been booked. Right? Because they still doubted? Well, you know, I don’t know, like, this is totally normal. This is not you’re not, it is not doubt is not a sign that you’re actually not ready. It’s just a normal process.

 

26:56

You know, maybe it’s the adrenaline into fight or flight response kicking in?

 

26:59

Yeah, yeah. And so I yeah, I try my best to manage that, um, that the test that I have people do, like, they’re designed to give people confidence in their message as well. So I’ll do all how somebody like say, hey, like, phrase, your message, like, phrase, the core idea in this way and post it on this debate forum. And then I’ll have them go through the responses. And one of the things I’ll say that I was like, Look, here’s all these people, they don’t know who you are, they don’t care at all about you at all. And they’ve taken time out of their day to engage with you about and have a conversation about this idea. They’re, they’re investing effort already. It’s kind of like having somebody say, you know, hey, Ted, this product doesn’t exist yet. But here’s money for it in advance. So someone paying attention to the thing is, is amazing. If someone’s your if, well, yeah, so um, you know, I have this one test that called the disagreement tests. And so I have people post one element of their message, and if, like, kind of, like a core, the core belief behind it. And if nobody disagrees with them will like that must mean that everyone already agrees with them, which is a very bad thing, which means their message doesn’t need to be spread. It’s common knowledge. And so sometimes that does happen, we have to tweak it and try it again. Right. And we try to get in to get, you know, 1020 3050 people commenting on their, their thing and saying, like, I you know, I think you might have misunderstood something here. Like, here’s like, a new way of looking at it. I’m like, Listen, these people have told you, they don’t already agree with you. That means these are your this is your audience. That means as well. This idea is so important to them, that they have taken time out of their day to invest effort into discussing it. Right? This is like this is not no one who cares if someone says your idea is good, that’s irrelevant. No, it doesn’t matter. What if you can get people to engage with it, vote like volunteer their time, volunteer their energy to engage with it, that’s just like them giving you cash for a product that doesn’t exist yet. This is what I did with with my TEDx talk idea. And you can shape it right? It’s a sales technique, you if you know someone’s objections to you to why they want to buy your product. you incorporate those objections in the sales process. Yeah, I can make the product better you make the entire product better and and you address their objections in like, this is copywriting. Anybody who’s ever done marketing or copywriting knows that you read a sales page, you you put the objections in the sales page, that’s just what you do. So yeah, that so so yes, if people come with doubts, I have ways to mitigate that. But just know that if, if you’re out there and you have doubts about whether or not you’re ready for this, I’ve heard that from basically every client I’ve ever helped, and I can show you their TEDx talk, you know, as Proof if you would like it, but is that the dope thing is very, very, very common.

 

30:07

So guys, it’s Brian shed is very common to have some self doubt when you’re pursuing a new challenge that scares you. Just because something scares you doesn’t mean you’re not able to rise up to the challenge when the time comes, believing yourself, and you’ll get there. So, Ryan, if our listeners only remember one thing from today’s conversation, what we like it to be

 

30:25

opportunities in life that you get are proportionate to the number of people that know how smart you are. So that and that, Okay, I’m going to do bonus one, because I’m a bit cheeky that way. Yeah, sure, go ahead. And then I would say, if you have a credential, and your clients don’t know what it is, like, they have never heard of your university, they’ve, they’ve never heard of the certification that you have. It isn’t very good. And in helping you get trust, the better. You can get endorsements from organizations that your clients trust doors open wide, right? Imagine what your experience of life would be if you had those things. Everyone’s industry is different, right. But yeah, I would say those two things.

 

31:04

So Ryan, how can our listeners get in touch with you if they need your help? Yeah, so

 

31:08

links via message lab.com, they can check that out. They can send me an email, whatever, I can leave the email in the show notes for people. No,

 

31:17

Ryan, thank you so much for joining us today. It’s been such a pleasure to have you here sharing all your knowledge about TEDx events. Yeah. Thanks, Dad.

 

31:22

It’s been a pleasure. So guys, thank

 

31:24

you for joining Ryan I on today’s chat. So if you have any intentions of giving a TEDx speech in the future yourself, you know who to reach out to? Now my biggest takeaway from today’s episode was that no matter what you do, you always have a bad first draft. But what is important is you’re able to get that first job out in the first place, get proper feedback, and improve yourself from there. Now your first draft will never be perfect. So don’t allow that to get in the way of you achieving your goals. So guys, if you enjoyed today’s episode, and you’d like to show your support, and don’t forget to subscribe, leave a review and share this with somebody who will find it useful as well. And as a way to say thank you to you guys. you’ve subscribed and leave a review on Apple podcasts but it ended September, then you may stand a chance to win $50 worth of gift vouchers from Amazon. one lucky winner will be chosen at the end of the month. That’s all for me today. I’ll see you next time.

[This transcript has been automatically generated by a digital software and will therefore  contain errors and typos. Please kindly take note of this and only rely on the digital transcript for reference.]

00:00

Hello, my friends, this is Ted, your friend and host speaking now Have you ever wanted to give a speech at a TEDx event? If you said yes, then this episode is for you. Today we’re joined by Mr. Ryan Hildebrand, the founder of viral message lab. Now Ryan helps entrepreneurs craft their unique message to stand out from the crowd and to get them booked to speak at TEDx events. As the founder of the second largest TEDx event in the United Kingdom’s Ryan has literally seen over 1000 accepted and rejected applications. At this point, he has helped dozens of people become TEDx speakers themselves. So in today’s episode, Ryan shares his tips on how you can get booked to speak at a TEDx event. Why should not worry about having a bad draft at First, and most importantly, having some self doubt is completely normal. So guys, if you’d like to support the show in the best we can do this is to subscribe, leave a review and to share with somebody who find it useful as well. Now it’s a way to say thank you to you guys. If you actually do subscribe and leave a review on Apple podcasts by the end of September, you stand a chance to win $50 worth of gift vouchers from Amazon. one lucky winner will be chosen at random. And now guys, let’s dive right in. Ryan, thank you for joining us today. It’s so nice to have you here. Hey, thanks, Ted. Ryan, we’re gonna start with a very simple icebreaker so we can all get to know you a bit better. Could you share verse who is Ryan who to brand when he is not working?

 

01:16

Oh, man, I’m Ryan Hildebrandt. Well, today, I spent over an hour in the pool swimming laps. I’m trying to swim the English Channel, which is the stretch of ocean from England of France. 33 kilometers. So, Ryan, when he’s not working, he likes to do in durance challenges that push me beyond what I think I’m capable of. Oh,

 

01:42

so when do you plan to actually swim the English Channel? It’s in a

 

01:45

year’s time. So summer of 2022. So yeah, to me, like I love the process of pushing my, my physical boundaries, my mental boundaries as well. And I get a lot of satisfaction out of that out of doing things that are beyond my comfort zone. And somewhat related to the topic of today’s conversation as well. So yeah, that’s kind of that’s, that’s what I did.

 

02:09

Right? And so let’s dive right in. Today, you help coaches, YouTubers, CEOs, and everyone in between grabbed their expertise into a world changing message and to get invited to TEDx events. But before we speak more about this, could you share with us your own journey? I know you’re organizing your own TEDx events in England, but what made you want to do

 

02:27

this? Yeah, so actually, it goes way back even farther than that. My background is in engineering. And so I started out my career as this like young 20 something year old dude at a smallish engineering company. And I, like I’m sure a lot of people listening like wanted more out of my career, I felt like I was really smart. And I wanted promotions and raises and new opportunities and things. And I eventually got to the, I realized that, if not a lot of people, like if only my boss, and a couple of colleagues know, the quality of my work, I’m severely limiting my own opportunities. So I read the real made the realization that I should try to start, like writing for trade magazines to try to get my name out there and try to get exposure for my own ideas beyond just a couple of people in, you know, in my office. And then at the same time, I was really interested in travel. And so the company opened an office in the UK, I moved to the UK, I started the TEDx events. And that made me realize just the number of people that wanted to speak on that platform.

 

03:44

So Ryan, after running a few rounds with the TEDx events, what was the gap in the market that you realized that you could feel was there a particular problem that the applicants tend to face

 

03:52

a lot of them almost all of them did a really bad job of explaining to us why their idea was good, it all kind of sounded. They’re not beginners, either. These are, you know, CEOs, and, and bestselling authors and very experienced speakers. So the engineering side of me thought, Well, how do I like solve this problem? How do I figure out what it is that people need to do to create a really good idea? Because you can’t just tell people like make a good idea, right? That that that evaluation is very subjective, like what you think is going to be and may not be what I think is Nvidia and vice versa. And so you need something you need a more robust procedure, if anybody here in the world had access to had seen 1000s of pitches, they would be able to figure it out, too. So I don’t I don’t think like what I did was like special genius. I just had kind of unfair access to what works and what didn’t work and enough patience, I suppose to, to try different things and see what was working and what wasn’t working.

 

05:00

So, Ryan, I’ve been running the TEDx events for a few years, what was the biggest takeaway for you? Oh, man,

 

05:05

I mean, the experience was amazing. The so that I’m big on creating things, I think that you get so much more benefit for you personally. And it’s much more beneficial for the world to make something rather than just participate in other people’s things. So I haven’t like an a massive amount of admiration for people that start restaurants or make apps or make a film or, you know, any anything like that. Right. So, um, the biggest thing that I experienced were just, you get this overwhelming exposure to other opportunities when you put yourself out there, right? So And the same thing is true. Like I did a TEDx talk myself, maybe I’m skipping ahead a little bit for like your next question. But when you say to people, like, Oh, I ran a TEDx events, you get this immediate recognition, everyone kind of gets it. Whereas if I, if I did, like, Oh, I ran like Ryan’s conference, the reaction will be completely different. Yeah, because there’s a huge branding behind the TEDx events. Right? Right. And if people trust it, people trust it, right? Yes. So just the power

 

06:09

of a good brand, right? The moment you speak of a good brand, such as a TED talk, people start associating certain qualities such as a high standard of professionalism, storytelling, and great ideas that are being shared. And if you can get to speak at these events, then these trees start to get associated with you as well. Now, Ryan, you’ve just shared that you spoke at your own TEDx talk. So talk to us about what you were sharing, I noted, the title was called Do your worst, create your best? What was the message that you wanted to share?

 

06:35

So there’s these two schools of thought, right. One is, you should not be a perfectionist. And the other school of thought is we should try to do the best that you can. Right? And they seem to be in conflict, right? Because the people that are that are saying, like, don’t be a perfectionist, they’re coming from a good place, they’re coming from a place of like, try, don’t don’t let your your fear of what other people will think, you know, stop you from creating something, and don’t let kind of your own internal evaluator just opt out or whatever, stop you stop you from making something right. At the other end of the spectrum, like, obviously, everyone wants to do a good job. Like, it’s, it’s kind of ridiculous to tell somebody like No, no. It doesn’t matter how good it is like, of course, you want it to be good, right? People want, people want to be proud of their work. So I had this experience of years ago, interviewing a number of people who had created things, be at board games, or apps or theatre companies and whatever else in a broad spectrum of industries, because I was really interested in it. And one of the things that kept popping up is they would say, Well, you know, like, there was a guy who made board games, and he would invite his friends over to, and it’s got to make millions dollars selling board games, right? If you make millions doing like, you’re in tech, it’s like, okay, like everyone in tech does. Who does? Well makes lots and lots of money, right? But this guy was making money doing board games, which is kind of unusual.

 

08:17

Yeah. And it’s a very hard industry to break into. Yeah, it’s

 

08:20

like, it’s like a billionaire selling yo yos, like. So I asked him, How he made his games fun to play. Because I, how do you make something fun? I have no idea, right? And he said, Well, what we do is we make this game out of like cardboard, and, you know, pieces of paper and stuff and invite some friends over to like, do a sample round or two of playing it. And we watch how they play and get feedback from them. And I sort of immediately assumed that they were making it really bad looking because it was faster and easier.

 

08:54

I guess the intention was to get the players to focus on the mechanics of the game itself.

 

08:58

Well, so yeah, it’s right. So they weren’t making it crappy looking. Because it was easy to do it that way. They were making a crappier looking because they wanted people to not really focus on how it looks and to signal to them, that everything was up for feedback, anything can be changed literally in seconds. And so this was so what I realized was that this the idea of not being a perfectionist, and the idea of being perfect, like creating something really good are it’s not that one is in opposition to the other. It’s the you apply different strategies depending on where you are in the creative process. So when you’re first starting out, what you need is feedback on literally every aspects of what you’re doing. Not just the look and feel, but fundamentally what it is. And to get that feedback. You have to signal the people that you’re uncertain about a lot of things because otherwise they won’t give you that feedback. So I For anyone starting out, whether, regardless of what you’re making, whether it’s a podcast, or new ebook, or whatever, if you make something that intentionally looks really bad and ugly and terrible at the start, you will get that will signal you to get the best feedback to then create the best thing and then in the end, and so that’s fundamentally what I do with my clients is we start with a sentence or two of their idea, rather than a full talk, that’s all polished and tweak from there, we tweak from, give me one sentence, okay, let’s add a couple other details are, let’s test it in this way. Now we can change the entire concept of it. And it only took us a couple seconds really to, to write out what we’ve written out.

 

10:47

So it’s about, you know, being able to create something in the first place, be ready to tear it down. And to improve from there. I think maybe the problem a lot of people face is that they actually want to already set a certain standard in their head. And they want to achieve it before they publish their first episode, their first video, or their first podcast. But the problem is, if you’re first starting out, you don’t even have a technical skills to achieve what you have in mind. So it’s a bit of a chicken and egg problem. And it’s about being comfortable with being where you are, and saying that this is the best that I can do at this time. And I know I can get better with the feedback, the training and the skill sets that come along the way. So I fully agree with your approach. And I think that more people should adopt it and not be afraid of the criticism that they may potentially face when you know they published something out in the world.

 

11:32

Yeah. And you’re you’re in that. So you’ve done stuff in the tech world, right? I know, we talked about and so like in tech, what they call this is the minimum viable product. So they say, Okay, well, what’s the smallest thing that we can, we can create so that it’s useful for other people, and we can measure, so we can, we can measure how useful it is for them. And we can measure if they’re, if it’s grown, if we have a growth strategy that works, right. So it’s the there’s a book called the Lean Startup by Eric Reese, or rice. And it’s a really good dive into this, right. So this is not a concept that I’m made up necessarily. It’s something that’s like, borrowed from other people, and sort of rephrase, but in tected, they call this a minimum viable product. And what’s interesting, interesting kind of anecdote, Dropbox, the file sharing platform, their their start was not software, it was a website with a video of the founder going, alright, when Dropbox is made, it’s not made yet, but when it’s made, it’s gonna be able to let you, you know, put a file over here, and then it’ll show Oh, it didn’t, it didn’t exist, there was no software, he was just talking somebody through what it what it will do. And he said, Okay, put your email address here, if you want to know, when it’s created, he had like 25,000, people that put his email address, put their email address in the box. So when you’re talking about like doing something that is bad, and literally does not exist at all, in order to, to make sure it’s working and get like actual data. And the Yeah, so that’s what I do with clients with their message, right, you can treat the message like a product, do the minimum job like a sentence or two, and you can very effectively measure from like this core concept how people will respond, get really good feedback, and then use that to tweak further.

 

13:31

So guys, is Ryan has shed Do your worst and create your best is very important for you to get your first minimum viable product out. So you can actually work to make it better. Don’t get hung up about being a perfectionist, if you kind of even create something in the first place for you to improve on. You know, a lot of times when you’re trying to make something perfect before you’re willing to release it to the world, there could be a certain level of insecurity that’s actually holding you back. Now, of course, you want there to be a certain standard to the work that you release. That’s because you have standards yourself, I get that. And the trick really is to find that balance, Just promise me that you won’t let this pursuit for perfection eventually stop you from even pursuing your dreams at all. Now, Ryan, before we get any further, I wanted to take some time to explain to the listeners the difference between the TED talk and a TEDx talk. So from my understanding the TED Talks actually helped by the official organization of Ted itself. But a TEDx event is more of a localized event that is being run by the people of a specific city itself. Can you confirm this for me?

 

14:27

Technically and legally. Ted is the kind of parents brand if you will, and they run a couple of conferences. They run Ted, which is I think, normally in Vancouver, sometimes California, they run Ted global, and they were in 10 women and so there’s like three events that they run.

 

14:50

Then what about a TEDx brand? No TEDx talks.

 

14:53

It’s like a franchise. So you go to Ted, you say hey, I want to apply to run. You know TEDx London and they say you Sir, no, they can build turn you down if if you don’t make a really strong case about why you’re going to do a good job. But there are some TEDx events that if you looked at video from them, they would they would rival or exceed the caliber of production at TED. So one of my clients, for example, he spoke at a TEDx event and Buenos Aires. And there was, like, 10,000 people in the audience over two days. This is, and this is this dwarfs, Ted in terms of size, like it’s not even close. So there are some TEDx events that are incredible production, right? And some other TEDx events, because these are run by local engine entrepreneurs, that are very, very, very small, as in like, don’t have video, it’s a very small room. And so one of the things I mean, absolutely, yeah, absolutely. So one of the things that’s very much true for TEDx events, and really, for any opportunity you get, is, you can’t just assume the opportunities like, like a good one without understanding a bit about where you’re going to.

 

16:12

Okay, so it’s more of a case by case basis. But Ryan, could you share with us how can one actually find TEDx events to apply to

 

16:20

areas so Ted has a has a list of every TEDx event in the world, it’s kind of hard to navigate. And so if people are interested, they can reach out to me I have either like a monthly product that’s like a, that compiles all that info from 10, as well as whether they have a website, social media profiles, all the info from like, a bunch of different sources. So it’s much easier.

 

16:47

So Ryan, can you share with us? How do you actually help your clients refine the message that they want to share, and get accepted when they make an application to a TEDx event?

 

16:54

So for anybody listening to this, everybody listening to this has expertise, you have like a like a thing that you know about, maybe you’re a leadership coach, maybe you’re a computer programmer, maybe you are, you know, you help people like lose weight, whatever it is. So you have the first step is to think about what your what I call your outcome. So what is the thing you actually help people do? Or what is the thing if you have like a cause that you want to talk about? So some people are like, they’re environmentalist, for example. So maybe you’re sort of out your outcome, like, the thing that you want the audience to do, at the end of watching your talk is, like, start to recycle or treat the environment better, you know, become a vegan or whatever else, right? So that’s a thing that I always start with, because that’s the, that’s the kind of the focal point, if you don’t have if you don’t have that sometimes people go like, Oh, I want to just share my story. And I hope people are inspired by it. And I’m, like, wonderful, inspired to do what exactly like, specifically, what are we talking about?

 

17:56

So you need to be very focused on what is the outcome that you want to provide for the listeners? Right?

 

18:00

Right. Um, if you don’t have that it’s a little like, making a product and saying, Well, I hope people buy it and like, like it, like, what are they using it for? Well, I don’t know, I just whenever they want to, well, analogy, if you don’t know what the value is they’re getting, the likelihood of them buying it is, it’s not zero, it’s just really, really, really low. So anyway, that’s the first thing. And then the second thing is to realize that, you know, because you have an outcome in mind that not everyone has achieved, there is a reason why they haven’t achieved it. And there are beliefs that you have, like you TED or you know, whoever listening to this have about how to get there, that the other people in the audience don’t have yet. changing our belief can happen really fast, actually. And so what then the next step is, okay, what are what what are the beliefs that you have about how to do this? Do you think most people would disagree with like one of the myths around how to do this? Well, most people think that to lose weight, you have to do X, and I think you have to kind of do why. And so then that’s kind of the next step. Then we test that out with a bunch of different tools. So I have people do like debates, and interview their audience in different ways. And so what we actually do so like, I’ve had people all the time where they go, Oh, like, I want to talk about this with a wonderful what’s the belief there that you think most people have that? You know, you want to share? And and they go off and do an interview though. Well, people didn’t believe that at all. And they were surprised right? find their the audience’s actual beliefs where it’s a little bit off from what they what people thought they were. And so we tweaked like a couple of words about their message and all of a sudden it was working way better. And so that like messaging, messaging is very much like a product if you I mean, people okay, entrepreneurs, right. So if anybody here is like me an ebook or a course, as usual course you try to sell a course you can, you can do that if you never have conversations with the audience that people you’re trying to sell to, and you can make assumptions about what they will, what they will buy. But if you do that, you’re probably going to have a really bad time, probably no one’s gonna buy your, your product or service at all, what a better way of doing it is to talk to people that you think are going to buy your thing and ask them all about their pain points and whatever else, right? And actually ask them before you make it, hey, I’m thinking of making a product that will do this, this and this. Would you be interested in buying that? And if they say, yes, you say, wonderful, I was gonna charge $100 for it sound good. And if they say yes, then you make the product and you’re good. If you don’t have that, if you don’t have that data, the chances are very low that they will actually buy. and developing a message to get on a really competitive platform is very much like a purchase, people are investing an opportunity in you. And it doesn’t. So it doesn’t matter whether anybody likes your idea. That’s not the most important thing. People can like it and still turn you down, right? Everyone, like everybody who pitches The New York Times, or TED or TEDx, or whatever, has a good idea. It’s just not good enough to get someone to invest the opportunity in that. So these interviews and like debates and things are really important, because in doing so we’re measuring the audience’s real response. And it’s it you know, it’s not that this takes months and months and months and months and months to do, right. This just takes a couple hours longer than most people spend developing a message. And it requires a bit more humility, frankly, and realizing that well, like maybe your maybe your assumptions about the best way to communicate something are not true. I’m not even saying that I have the best way of communicating something either I’m all I’m saying is listen, like let’s just figure it out. Let’s just go and have that conversation ax ask somebody about this belief that they may or may not have, and actually listen to what they say. And then use that to inform the best way to message it going forward.

 

22:20

I see. So those are the steps that you will go through with your clients to help them craft a killer message to get accepted for TEDx events. So Ryan, after having rejected 1000s of applicants, could you share with us? What are some of the common reasons that causes an applicant to be rejected from a TEDx event?

 

22:34

I want to preface this by saying it’s it think about this very much like a product if people approach the message in a in a product centralized like fashion, it’s, it’ll make a lot it makes a lot more sense. So if somebody walked around the store and said, like, hey, these are a bunch of T shirts, or I’m going to bookstore, I can buy all these books. And you ask them, like, why didn’t you buy this particular book? It’s not because that one book wasn’t well written, it wasn’t because that one just didn’t stand out, or that one t shirt, you know, wasn’t, wasn’t made with care or whatever else, right? It wasn’t like a good t shirt. It all comes down to like relativity. So if somebody else’s idea was more clear, and more, it was more clear that it was like a brand. It was, it was an idea that spoke to like where people are at and that they are clearly an expert, anything. If those things are more true, then that’s what causes one person to get books over others. So that’s how you can, you can do perfectly well pitching a really small events, and the biggest stage is going to be so much harder. Yeah. If you take the same thing in a more competitive place. It’s like, what could you sell something for? $1? Yeah, probably, could you sell the exact same thing with the exact same approach for $1,000? Or 10,000? Well, maybe you could if you’re but only if you’re approaching it for $1 was like really on point. Right. And so the good news is, though this often doesn’t come down to the sort of absolute credibility or experience level of the speaker, it often doesn’t come down to their presentation skills, both of which take a long time to, to get better at. Like it takes a long time for someone who’s like, not a professional speaker, and not an like actor level communicator to get to that level. It’s a it’s a really difficult skill. You know, someone can be like, good enough at both of those things. It doesn’t really matter that much. But to craft that idea, like it notes doesn’t take half an hour, but it’s you know, it’s like 510 15 hours and you can get somebody to like that type. Next level, as long as long as they’re willing to kind of go through those steps.

 

25:04

So Ryan, what are some of the problems that your own clients face? Is that is trepidation of sharing their message or being unsure whether you’re even ready to share a message in the first place.

 

25:13

Right. So it’s like this process of self doubt is very normal. And this is true, by the way, even with things that don’t have anything to do with ideas and content and things. So like, when I was doing Ironman training, there was many moments where I doubted whether or not I was physically ready enough to do this race. Even though even though like training is biology, if you if you run, you know, 5k, a bunch of times, eventually your body will adapt, and you’ll be able to run 6k this is this is a, this is a fact, right? We have, there is so much data, like there’s an obscene amount of data around how the human body works, and how to adapt to stress, right? Even still, even despite all that I was still in really doubtful about whether I could do it. And really that doubt never went away until I crossed the finish line. So the same kind of thing is true with my clients. I’ve had many clients tell me after they got booked, and after they did it, you know, they said, Yeah, you know, even though I said I was confident, I still kind of wasn’t sure the whole time if I could really do it. And everyone, like, I could show you videos of people that are that have millions of views on their TEDx talks, and they say, I can tell you for a fact that a week before that talk was delivered, this guy was freaking out and almost quit on me. Wow. Yeah. Where they almost dropped out, even after they had been booked. Right? Because they still doubted? Well, you know, I don’t know, like, this is totally normal. This is not you’re not, it is not doubt is not a sign that you’re actually not ready. It’s just a normal process.

 

26:56

You know, maybe it’s the adrenaline into fight or flight response kicking in?

 

26:59

Yeah, yeah. And so I yeah, I try my best to manage that, um, that the test that I have people do, like, they’re designed to give people confidence in their message as well. So I’ll do all how somebody like say, hey, like, phrase, your message, like, phrase, the core idea in this way and post it on this debate forum. And then I’ll have them go through the responses. And one of the things I’ll say that I was like, Look, here’s all these people, they don’t know who you are, they don’t care at all about you at all. And they’ve taken time out of their day to engage with you about and have a conversation about this idea. They’re, they’re investing effort already. It’s kind of like having somebody say, you know, hey, Ted, this product doesn’t exist yet. But here’s money for it in advance. So someone paying attention to the thing is, is amazing. If someone’s your if, well, yeah, so um, you know, I have this one test that called the disagreement tests. And so I have people post one element of their message, and if, like, kind of, like a core, the core belief behind it. And if nobody disagrees with them will like that must mean that everyone already agrees with them, which is a very bad thing, which means their message doesn’t need to be spread. It’s common knowledge. And so sometimes that does happen, we have to tweak it and try it again. Right. And we try to get in to get, you know, 1020 3050 people commenting on their, their thing and saying, like, I you know, I think you might have misunderstood something here. Like, here’s like, a new way of looking at it. I’m like, Listen, these people have told you, they don’t already agree with you. That means these are your this is your audience. That means as well. This idea is so important to them, that they have taken time out of their day to invest effort into discussing it. Right? This is like this is not no one who cares if someone says your idea is good, that’s irrelevant. No, it doesn’t matter. What if you can get people to engage with it, vote like volunteer their time, volunteer their energy to engage with it, that’s just like them giving you cash for a product that doesn’t exist yet. This is what I did with with my TEDx talk idea. And you can shape it right? It’s a sales technique, you if you know someone’s objections to you to why they want to buy your product. you incorporate those objections in the sales process. Yeah, I can make the product better you make the entire product better and and you address their objections in like, this is copywriting. Anybody who’s ever done marketing or copywriting knows that you read a sales page, you you put the objections in the sales page, that’s just what you do. So yeah, that so so yes, if people come with doubts, I have ways to mitigate that. But just know that if, if you’re out there and you have doubts about whether or not you’re ready for this, I’ve heard that from basically every client I’ve ever helped, and I can show you their TEDx talk, you know, as Proof if you would like it, but is that the dope thing is very, very, very common.

 

30:07

So guys, it’s Brian shed is very common to have some self doubt when you’re pursuing a new challenge that scares you. Just because something scares you doesn’t mean you’re not able to rise up to the challenge when the time comes, believing yourself, and you’ll get there. So, Ryan, if our listeners only remember one thing from today’s conversation, what we like it to be

 

30:25

opportunities in life that you get are proportionate to the number of people that know how smart you are. So that and that, Okay, I’m going to do bonus one, because I’m a bit cheeky that way. Yeah, sure, go ahead. And then I would say, if you have a credential, and your clients don’t know what it is, like, they have never heard of your university, they’ve, they’ve never heard of the certification that you have. It isn’t very good. And in helping you get trust, the better. You can get endorsements from organizations that your clients trust doors open wide, right? Imagine what your experience of life would be if you had those things. Everyone’s industry is different, right. But yeah, I would say those two things.

 

31:04

So Ryan, how can our listeners get in touch with you if they need your help? Yeah, so

 

31:08

links via message lab.com, they can check that out. They can send me an email, whatever, I can leave the email in the show notes for people. No,

 

31:17

Ryan, thank you so much for joining us today. It’s been such a pleasure to have you here sharing all your knowledge about TEDx events. Yeah. Thanks, Dad.

 

31:22

It’s been a pleasure. So guys, thank

 

31:24

you for joining Ryan I on today’s chat. So if you have any intentions of giving a TEDx speech in the future yourself, you know who to reach out to? Now my biggest takeaway from today’s episode was that no matter what you do, you always have a bad first draft. But what is important is you’re able to get that first job out in the first place, get proper feedback, and improve yourself from there. Now your first draft will never be perfect. So don’t allow that to get in the way of you achieving your goals. So guys, if you enjoyed today’s episode, and you’d like to show your support, and don’t forget to subscribe, leave a review and share this with somebody who will find it useful as well. And as a way to say thank you to you guys. you’ve subscribed and leave a review on Apple podcasts but it ended September, then you may stand a chance to win $50 worth of gift vouchers from Amazon. one lucky winner will be chosen at the end of the month. That’s all for me today. I’ll see you next time.