RyanHoliday.net - Meditations on strategy and life
  • Home
  • About
  • Newsletter
  • Reading List
  • Blog
  • Best Articles
    • Archive
  • Speaking
  • Books and Courses
  • Contact
Home
About
Newsletter
Reading List
Blog
Best Articles
    Archive
Speaking
Books and Courses
Contact
  • Home
  • About
  • Newsletter
  • Reading List
  • Blog
  • Best Articles
    • Archive
  • Speaking
  • Books and Courses
  • Contact
RyanHoliday.net - Meditations on strategy and life
Blog

Ideas

About 3 years ago, I was pretty early in signing someone off YouTube. At the time, the kid I represented had one of the top 20 channels and I thought we’d be able to turn it into something. I remember putting together this whole plan for where I thought it could go. Unfortunately, after a big rush of excitement, it limped to a close on both end – the agency kept stalling investing resources in some 16 year old kid and the kid himself eventually had a melt down. I left the whole thing feeling like my balls had been cut off.

Cut to many many months later, and the company pulls in someone else from online. His manager put together a strategy for his career and they asked me to look at it. Shockingly, it was a familiar sight. Two years had passed and someone is feeling out ideas I’d been begging them to try back then. I wanted to get angry. After all, what kind of fucking bullshit business is it where you’re getting pitched your own pitches and asked if you think they’ll work?

Then I realized that the real awful thing was the notion that I apparently only liked my ideas when I thought I was going to get credit for them. And my instincts were more inclined to let everyone know I’d been there first than to relish an opportunity to put them into action.

Here’s the thing I’ve learned about ideas. It’s your job to have them. It’s your fate that they’ll sometimes be ignored or unappreciated. It’s beneath you to throw a tantrum when this is exactly what happens. Finally, don’t fool yourself into thinking it’s enough to simply not mind getting credit. If you really want to get something done, go around looking for people for the credit to go to and work your execution backwards from there.

March 1, 2010by Ryan Holiday

“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.” - Murakami

© 2018 copyright Ryan Holiday // All rights reserved // Privacy Policy
This site directs people to Amazon and is an Amazon Associate member.