Episode Notes:

In this episode, I had the chance to speak with my good friend, Chris Denson, who is a marketer, innovation coach, multimedia host, and bestselling author of the book- “10 Essential Rules for Breaking Essential Rules”. Conversations around innovation in the creative, advertising or media side often focuses only on the outputs, so we focused this episode on everything else. We lifted the hood on the mindsets it takes, the internal conversations and day-to-day challenges and so much more.

Chris shares insightful stories about how his childhood experiences shaped his curiosity and influenced his current work, and highlighted the importance of maintaining relentless optimism even when things don’t work. We discuss a variety of topics related to innovation, the realities and challenges of bringing ideas to life, the significant role emotional intelligence plays in the field of innovation and so much more like:

In this episode we cover:

04:26 - Chris’s Origin Story: His shift from comedy to innovation
13:08 - The role of curiosity and openness in innovation
25:49 – The skill of connecting and collecting dots in innovation
30:39 - Emerging Tech Trends in innovation
33:19 - The key to balancing optimism and reality
35:37 - Dealing with daily struggles and taking mental health breaks
39:43 - Understanding self-identity and the power of self-talk
44:46 - The role of innovation in personal growth
50: 11 - Things to look forward to in the world of tech and innovation

If any of these topics excite you, then join us as we explore creative innovation!

Referenced on the Episode:

Innovation Crush

Drake Sutton-Shearer

Documentary: Jonah Hill’s Therapist

Gary Vaynerchuk

The Masters of Craft Podcast

Alex Hermozi

Melissa Bradley

Guest Bio: Chris Denson

Chris Denson is marketer, innovation coach, multimedia host, and bestselling author. He has spent his career building better companies, launching new ideas, and giving rise to cultural tastemakers through awe-inspired experiences, content, and advisory. Echoing an award-winning career across entertainment, marketing, media and technology industries, Chris has valuable insights, practices, and resources to thrive in an always-evolving cultural and technological landscape. He has done this alongside The United Nations, Fast Company, Omnicom Media Group, MullenLowe, The Emmys, Cannes Lions, The Nyah Project, HubSpot, The Obama Administration, and authored the 2018 #1 bestselling book, "10 Essential Rules for Breaking Essential Rules”.

Twitter/X | Linkedin | Site

Ep 07: What does it take to work in the creative innovation industry? An insiders perspective with Chris Denson
Chris Denson: [00:00:00] And so you start to think about what innovations will happen. I feel like some of the best innovation comes from the smaller, the blocks you get to play in, the more innovation required, right? If you give me a two acres worth of opportunity, I'm like, Ooh, would you give me this narrow hallway? And I'm like, all right, let's see how we can navigate this in a way that nobody else has ever done before.
Chris Denson: And so I think that's where the real opportunity is. Cause everything else, in my opinion, feels like it's in this experimental phase and we're still learning what it is. And every time I look, there's another platform that's popping up, but they don't have the staying power of their predecessor. So like looking forward to seeing what else pops up optically and creatively from an innovation standpoint.
Ariba Jahan: Welcome to Up Next in Tech, a podcast exploring the intersection of emerging tech. Responsible innovation and the way we live, play, and interact. I'm your host, Ariba Jahan. I have worked across many different industries from biomechanical [00:01:00] engineering and tech startups to design innovation and social impact.
Ariba Jahan: And I've been super curious about how new emerging technologies and new industries are built. So this podcast is essentially a reflection of that curiosity. In every episode, I bring on a guest who I'm deeply inspired by. And we dive into how they got started because these careers did not exist before.
Ariba Jahan: And we try to unpack the nascent industry that they're working in, as well as an emerging tech that they're building or working on. We also definitely get into the tensions that they grapple with because it's so new from endless possibilities and business potential to stressful uncertainties and the ethical considerations that really need to be kept in mind this episode.
Ariba Jahan: Marks our seventh official episode and we already have over a thousand listens and over a hundred followers Thank you So so much to people like you who's tuning in [00:02:00] right now into this brand new show leaving comments Sending me dms Resharing my post and following the podcast on social and if you're new to the pod Welcome.
Ariba Jahan: So excited to have you. And given how brand new we are, I'd really appreciate it if you could make sure you're subscribed to the podcast wherever you get your pods and leave us a review. Reviews and comments are super helpful for shows like ours where it's self produced and self funded. So on today's episode, you get to listen to a conversation between two friends.
Ariba Jahan: I am sitting down with my good friend, Chris Jensen. Chris is a marketer, an innovation coach, a multimedia host, and best selling author of the book, 10 Essential Rules for Breaking Essential Rules. He has spent his career on building better companies, launching new ideas, and giving rise to cultural tastemakers through inspiring content, experiences, and his advisory.
Ariba Jahan: He's worked at [00:03:00] amazing. World renowned agencies like Mullen Lowe and Omnicom Media Group and worked on really incredible projects with organizations like the Fast Company and the Obama administration. Here's the thing, working in innovation really varies depending on the industry, the type of company and what era of technology we're in and conversations around innovation in the creative media and advertising space often.
Ariba Jahan: Only focus on the output, the shiny new output that there's a lot of press about. So we decided to focus this episode on everything else. We wanted to really lift the hood on the mindset. It takes the internal narrative and conversations that. People in the innovation industry can go through the day to day challenges and so much more.
Ariba Jahan: Chris also touches on how his childhood and lived experiences played a role in how he shows up, approaches his innovation work, and what advice he has for others. I [00:04:00] am so excited for this episode. You'll. Also notice I'm excited about every episode because each one has meant so much to me. Fun fact, Chris's podcast, Innovation Crush, was my first podcast interview.
Ariba Jahan: So it was really fun to do some role reversal where I got to interview him this time. So I hope you enjoyed this episode and let me know what you think in the reviews or send me a DM or an email. Could you tell us about your origin story? How did you get to where you are today? A
Chris Denson: long, winding road of trial and errors of multiple careers.
Chris Denson: I started doing stand up comedy in college. My very first performance was opening for Cedric the Entertainer when he came to Michigan State University. Shout out to the Miss Fartons. And I just kept doing stand up for a long time, and I decided I wanted to do a writing career. And I ended up working as an engineer at Chrysler for a couple of years.
Chris Denson: And then I took a leap of faith and was like, You know what? I'm gonna try this comedy stuff out. And I moved to Los Angeles and I've been living both paths simultaneously since [00:05:00] then. One part of my brain is, how do we make this better or different? And the other part of my brain is, how do we tell this story better or different?
Chris Denson: And then those two worlds blend together. So through a number of different entertainment industry gigs and working with notable names and people that has a high rate. of failure, but you just go on hiatus from shows or they go away, they get canceled. My very first writing job, they fired the writing staff unexpectedly on a Friday.
Chris Denson: And so in between jobs, I would just always pick up like things that I found were interesting, or at least would pay the bill. So that ranged from being a PA on an independent film, like out in the woods to working with one of the largest fashion conferences in the country, if not the world, the magic conference, for those of.
Chris Denson: Before in the industry, working on music, it was just like a lot of different things. Over time, I just kept collecting experiences. Ended up at the New York Film Academy as their first marketing director. And most of the jobs I've had, I've never replaced anybody. So it's always blank canvas. I'm inheriting a blank canvas.
Chris Denson: American Film Institute, Digital Content Lab. Then fast forward to running the innovation practice for [00:06:00] Omnicom Media Group. And working with a ton of world class brands ranging from Disney to Apple to Warner Brothers to State Farm. A few years later, here I
Ariba Jahan: am talking to you. I think our friendship manifested from talking about my kids or not kids.
Ariba Jahan: I bring that up because at that time, when I met you, we quickly connected. We kept in touch. I view you as one of my closest friends in my adult life. And I feel like when I hear that story of your origin story, there's pieces of that, that's still new for me at this stage. And it's not pieces that I would have ever imagined.
Ariba Jahan: Meeting you at at ACES conference, and I think when you talk about the different types of roles you've had and different types of hats you've worn, what I also hear is someone who's super open to experimentation, but also being open to diving into the unknown with a certain level of maybe curiosity.
Ariba Jahan: Maybe fear just exists, but it doesn't get in the way. I'm curious what allowed you back then and to still lean into. new areas that you don't know, new roles that you don't know. Like you said, you've always had a [00:07:00] blank canvas job.
Chris Denson: But that's a similar question. Where did you learn your curious spirit? And I remember at the time I answered that question, I have a brother and sister who are 12 and 13 years older than me.
Chris Denson: And my parents got divorced around the year I was born. And so. Because my brother and sister were so much older than me. I was raised like a single child. So I was like, Oh, she didn't have a babysitter. I'm going sitting in on the roller skating class, or I'm sitting on the floor at the YMCA while she's like learning belly dancing and all these things.
Chris Denson: And I didn't know it at the time, but I always just tried new things. I always had different friends circles, but I was also the kid that was growing up in Detroit. I had these little bit of duality going on. It hasn't always been pleasant, right? You sort of have a ADHD. Around creative pursuits or like career pursuits.
Chris Denson: It could also just be a little bit daunting. I've been challenged with the question over the past month. It just keeps coming up and whether it's the meditations or it was another context, but it's like, who am I? And it's been a really interesting quest to put those pieces together. I
Ariba Jahan: feel like oftentimes in our industry or in all industries, there's [00:08:00] a pressure to have what's your tagline.
Ariba Jahan: What's your title. What's the thing that you want to be known for versus when you are in the innovation industry, you have to be sort of malleable. Malleable and flexible in the sense like you have to lean into that curiosity and want to know something new and be okay with knowing that you don't know anything about this new thing.
Ariba Jahan: And then you learn and then you figure out like what makes sense. What I'm also hearing is that you never really needed that one label when you're in
Chris Denson: this space. There's what you do. And then there's how you explain what you do when you're in the practice. I know exactly what it is. Right. But when I need to sell that or explain it, it's a little bit more ethereal.
Chris Denson: So you provide examples and context. And I think lately my phrasing has been, I help companies and individuals unlock new levels of ingenuity. And that can be on the technology side, that can be on the cultural side, that can be just purely what is your innovation culture, but they all sort of blend together and they're all necessary pieces to the same puzzle.
Ariba Jahan: I know that [00:09:00] once you've made those shifts from comedy and engineering really together, and then diving into more innovation in the media slash entertainment slash in the tech space, all of those coming together, how do you look at innovation? How are you defining innovation?
Chris Denson: I almost look at it as an operating system.
Chris Denson: Rather than most of us, I think we look at it as an outcome. Oh, that new artificial intelligence thing is pretty innovative or the new advertising platform is pretty innovative. Yes, that can be true. But when you look at the best in class, when it comes to innovation, it is like an always on appetite for experimentation, exploration, and it's not easy, right?
Chris Denson: If you're inside of a company and you got bottom line. Deliverables and KPIs and like all the other business measurables that people talk about, it's hard to set aside time and resource and money and intellectual energy to play the game of what if, but it's not impossible. So it's how do you weave that what if game into your daily culture, both from a structural standpoint and from an [00:10:00] emotionally intelligent standpoint so that you can keep discovering.
Chris Denson: New opportunity. So that is the operating system. It's like, if you're using iOS, we all use it a little bit differently. If you show me your home screen and I showed you mine, there's going to be some different things there, but it's all designed to do the same thing for everybody. So if you look at innovation as an operating system, yes, you can customize it and make it yours and do those sorts of things, but it's.
Chris Denson: The getting there and understanding what that means is a little bit of a mild hump
Ariba Jahan: to get over. When you think about your career now versus when you made those decisions, and I know maybe in hindsight, they all feel like they're connected and you've learned skills from each one. Can you remember a point that felt like, no, that was the moment that I knew this is the right thing to That I wanted to pursue.
Ariba Jahan: I
Chris Denson: remember leaving Machinima, RIP, but Machinima was like a nerd culture, giant monolith of a YouTube channel and beyond. Somebody had told me while I was working there, just in the conversation, they were like, oh, I, I wanna work on it, not in it. And like, as much as I [00:11:00] love gaming culture and going to Comic-Con and VidCon and like all the other columns, I was also like, I don't need to be here every single day.
Chris Denson: And even the job that I was hired to do, again, brand new, spanking job department created, built it from scratch. And I remember trying to sell innovation services for my next thing. I was like, I think I know, like, I want to do innovation for companies. And so the more I went around and was taking meetings and talking to people and cold calling and doing all this.
Chris Denson: Oh, so you're a creative director. You're like, Sometimes. Oh, so you're the digital person that is also incorporated in it. Right. Right. Exactly. And so I'm trying to explain it as I'm building it to the point of, I had an opportunity to create innovation crash, which we talked about a little while ago. I know there are people out there doing what I'm talking about.
Chris Denson: Even if they don't realize that's what they're doing, but some obviously a little bit more deliberate. And so, you know, innovation crushed, it kind of became my little collection of like minded toys. And it also helped me to understand a little bit [00:12:00] more how to explain it, how to be sort of this ambiguous, misfit toy inside traditional.
Ariba Jahan: I always feel like when I talk about innovation with you, I hear the most random but compelling metaphors for innovation and the people that do work in that space, like your analogy to operating system. I get that like the outputs and the way that it comes alive should look different organization to organization.
Ariba Jahan: But some of the basic mechanics or like the basic tools that exists, we all have access to that. Right. And then now about unlocking ingenuity with a group of misfits and understanding that there are individuals at companies who maybe they wear a certain title, but they wear multiple hats in that organization.
Ariba Jahan: And they're really trying to catapult their organization to the next frontier. You know, even if that frontier, nobody knows. So it sounds like you are the person that learns, that observes, that understands what. Things connect and what things don't connect, you bring people and ideas [00:13:00] together, but you're also someone that makes those ideas come alive.
Ariba Jahan: Could you lift the hood a little bit on what is the reality of bringing ideas alive? In our last conversation, you called it the underbelly of innovation. That was another phrase. I was like, Oh, that's. Sounds amazing. I want to know more about the underbelly of innovation. I like your under
Chris Denson: the hood analogy, right?
Chris Denson: Cause if you've ever watched an old school mechanic, or if you ever go to the shade tree mechanic and taken a beat up car, those hands are dirty and filthy, but you get a very amazingly working car, usually on the. So it's very similar metaphorically to like innovation. Like it's sure the car looks amazing.
Chris Denson: Like the end result is great, but lifting it up, seeing all the dirty parts is the part we don't talk about enough. There's been articles on projects I've done or awards that we've won. And then I think like for every case study or like thing that like wins an award, probably 50 ideas or versions of that idea that are dead in the water.
Chris Denson: Right. [00:14:00] That team was like, Oh, what if we did this? And the client was like. Um, why not? Like there's absolutely no like found reason or budget doesn't allow you to do something where you're trying to, you're constantly doing what I refer to as relentless optimism, right? Like you're going to find a way, which I think is the same thing if you've ever done this, I'm going back to your.
Chris Denson: Under the hood metaphor, it's just like, well, what if we fix it that way? Cause I only have 500 bucks. Actually, I know somebody else with a part, there's always pursuit for the way a path forward. And so yes, we can celebrate the shiny object at the end, but the getting there is often, I want to say a treacherous path, but it's not
Ariba Jahan: always sexy.
Ariba Jahan: What's something about that path that you wish was spoken about more or that you want to talk about? Because I think you're totally right. And I feel like, yes, you can celebrate the shiny objects and the results and the outcomes, but I think we don't have to get caught up in romanticizing it because there's a journey that people need to understand to get there.
Ariba Jahan: there so that if people want to learn, like, how do I do that? What can I learn from [00:15:00] that? Or what do I not want to do? We're not really sharing that out loud as much.
Chris Denson: I think there's an emotional intelligence part of it. I talk a lot about just sort of the idea of loneliness and just being cut off at so many different paths forward.
Chris Denson: And that could be like, if you're an entrepreneur and you're doing something inside of an organization, or you're the founder of a startup. It's like the loneliness of I have a vision of a product or service or a thing that belongs in the world and I now have to convince other people that I'm not crazy.
Chris Denson: And despite your intellect and accolades and resume, why would we do that? Do you like it? Right. You know, and I like to look at, I don't know, one of the examples I always point out is Uber. Somebody was like, what if everybody was a taxi? If we all remember how annoying it was to take people to the airport.
Chris Denson: Not only does it just catch on, it disrupts the taxi industry. It disrupts like civic [00:16:00] policy. There's so many other things once it grows to become a thing. And I'm sure at multiple points along that path. There were a lot of trials and errors. Why are we doing this? Yes, all the things, all the questions that come up that challenge who we know ourselves to be.
Chris Denson: I've spent even another cycle of the last two years of even revisiting who I am in this process and in the world and how do I want to show up despite whatever opposition might be in the way of achieving a goal for a client, a goal for myself, and whoever else might be a part of that journey.
Ariba Jahan: When you said the word opposition, it's a spark something for me when we hear that word, we think about external opposition, but I feel like when you're talking about this theme about loneliness and how lonely it can be when you're on this innovation journey, whether you're on intrapreneur entrepreneur, there's an opposition that can often manifest internally.
Ariba Jahan: Right. And you earlier talked about this EQ element of like emotional intelligence. What are some of those battles internally that you've had to grapple with [00:17:00] as you've grown in this industry?
Chris Denson: There's a guy who I interviewed a while back and his name is Michael. He is a high performance coach, coaches, Navy SEALs, and all these individuals.
Chris Denson: And if you're a high pressure situation and high pressure can be relative, right? One of us trying to figure out how to pay rent or mortgage next month might be high pressure. And it's not like life or death, like a Navy seal or somebody like that. So the pressure is relative. And one of the things he ended up talking about was doing the lonely work.
Chris Denson: And I was like, what is the lonely work? And the lonely work is sure. You and I are having a conversation or you just had a team meeting and everybody's all gung ho and, or you just got out of therapy, whatever it might be like, yeah, I'm gonna do this. And then there's that time when you're by yourself.
Chris Denson: What are you saying to yourself about that project? What somebody said or didn't say to you at work? Oh, the naysayers, like all the things are like, what are you, what does that self chatter? And that is something that takes a lot of work. It's an exhausting process to continually, and this is [00:18:00] just a light thing, to continually be aware and monitor and shift.
Chris Denson: How you are thinking about that. And to even recognize that a thought pattern needs to be changed. There's a multi pronged approach to listening and responding to your own self, whether there's outside stimuli or if it's just you, I think that's a big part of it, it can be super frustrating until it becomes second nature.
Chris Denson: I think of it like driving a car, but when you first learn how to drive, you're all right, 10 and two, I'm in the right gear. The mirror is correct. Tire pressure, right? Let me adjust everything. And then six months later, you got one hand, a sandwich in the other. You're on the phone, you're weaving through traffic, like everything that you were nervous about before.
Chris Denson: That was a lot of input and information now becomes second nature. And hopefully you stay as accident free as possible. I've been
Ariba Jahan: in therapy for six years now and I think about who I was that day one of going into therapy. I was like, I was packaging myself up for my therapist. I'm like, what version of myself do I need to process here, [00:19:00] right?
Ariba Jahan: And for her and I to work through versus everything else. And I. I think even now that 45 minute or that hour that you spend with your therapist is just that. And the work is really all the other time that you're with yourself when you're working through the stuff. There's been therapy sessions where I've opened up Pandora's box and then suddenly it's, well, it's time.
Ariba Jahan: The session ends right then and I'm like, I'm sorry. So now I'm left with my emotions. I'm supposed to go take care of my baby right now. What do I do with this? And that's the work, right? And it's not always in the context of work, but you're one whole person and that person shows up. Yeah. work. That person shows up to create creative endeavors.
Ariba Jahan: That person shows up to your family and all of that. I feel like it's taken me a long time to even let my emotions take up space and then to understand to your point, like understanding the reactions and the responses and like the way that you want to process it. And then that journey itself, you
Chris Denson: take your, what you just said about therapy and you take that into the workspace.
Chris Denson: I'm gonna call it a fun challenge. The fun challenge is to be a blank [00:20:00] slate. Every day, a shout out to Drake Sutton Shearer, who was a pioneer in the cannabis space and launched a company that was super successful. And he and I had a conversation and he was, well, we pitched our company 198 times before we saw a dot.
Chris Denson: First of all, you kept track of all those times. How was the second time different than the 150th? Or was it the same? Did you show the same enthusiasm? The same? What we created is amazing and fire. And if you don't get it, that's great. We'll just keep moving on, right? There's this again, relentless optimism.
Chris Denson: So can you approach every day with a blank canvas, right? Like I've gone, especially inside the agency world, right? You, you go and you pitch a client. 15 ideas, and then they'll complain, you should have just given us two, or we like all 15. Can you just do
Ariba Jahan: all 15 together, but like with half the budget? You
Chris Denson: got more work to do, and most of us think there's a finish line of some sort, and there really never is, and the project will be.
Chris Denson: over or the company will, you'll exit, but it's just, there is [00:21:00] a next level, new plateau, new assignment that will be given. And just back to your therapy comment, what other things are you filling your mind and time with in between that, that, that weekly or bi weekly session? What books are you reading?
Chris Denson: What Instagram accounts are you following? Are you doing the FOMO ones where all your friends are on vacation or you have the right motivational ones, right? Because there's some really bad ones out there. So the work, is it just that 45 to 55 minutes weekly?
Ariba Jahan: No, I just really relate to this theme of innovation having a lot of lonely moments.
Ariba Jahan: I think whether you're getting stakeholder buy in or sometimes you have to keep an eye on the meta level of change that's required as well as the project level as well as What is the next frontier of the industry? And then if you're connecting all those dots, sometimes you have to convince different people of each one of those dots and it gets really hard.
Ariba Jahan: So I'm curious being someone that worked in innovation, I feel like you worked in innovation and a few different capacities. I know you [00:22:00] worked at Milan low and OMD is also agency, but I feel like they both had a little unique differences as well. And then you've spoken to so many people in the innovation space where.
Ariba Jahan: There were a brand side, tech side, all the sides. What trends or patterns have you noticed as you think about the innovation role and what it is today?
Chris Denson: I think it's grossly overcomplicated and grossly underestimated. Either it's, Oh, I can do that. Give me a couple of hours and a glass of wine in the bathtub.
Chris Denson: I can come up with those sorts of ideas and or solutions. It's a real conversation. Now it seems too much to take on. It's finding that right balance. And I think one of the things you just touched on, the way I like to phrase it is personality management. It goes back into empathy and understanding human beings and so on and so forth.
Chris Denson: I know how to have a conversation with the bathtub comet person. I also know how to have a conversation with the person who feels swamped. And this seems like way too much to take on. And that's before we even get into the exciting quote unquote part of the work, since you mentioned them, [00:23:00] OMD and Mullen Lowe, two very different ones, a media agency and 10, 000 employees around the world and super duper fortune 50 companies.
Chris Denson: And then Mullen Lowe is a creative agency and they're coming up with a lot of visuals and copywriting and those sorts of things, but also informing campaigns and messaging and all those things that go along with it as a thousand person organization. So a 10th of the tithe, the innovation team out of this, I mentioned there's 10, 000 employees or 20 of us focused on what innovation means, but that was very highly supported by the CEO and almost every team here needs to have ignition factory.
Chris Denson: It was the name of our group as part of their scope of work with their clients, sell it in, do all the things like it was a very supported effort by leadership. And. Well accepted. On occasion, you feel like people feel like their toes are getting stepped on, but again, that's personality management and how do you share similar spaces and also divide and conquer.
Chris Denson: Then with Mullen, I was a one man show. So that's me. It's a [00:24:00] very different approach. And it's look, we've been around for 50 years. We've done innovative stuff. We haven't made a concerted effort. effort to be quote unquote innovative, those approaches are very different in terms of how you structure it, especially inside the agency world, they want to be at can lines and like, we want a titanium for this thing that we came up with or this partnership that we did or whatever it might be, but the cultures are very different.
Chris Denson: That's where the differentiation is. My listening exercise inside of a OMD is going to be a lot different than it is inside a Mullen Lobe. Listening is going to help me build consensus. Satisfy as many stakeholders and legacy people as possible. Be a non threatening voice in the room. I think you're inside of an organization.
Chris Denson: You get looked at as, oh, that person in that group is special. Or they get to do X, Y, and Z. Or they're loosey goosey. And, oh, they just get to go play. The amount of tools, [00:25:00] resources, process pushbacks that we have to do on a day to day basis is the job. That is that Relentless Optimism. I know you feel threatened, but how can I help?
Ariba Jahan: With that Relentless Optimism, I think what you just talked about, because of the context and the organizational differences, the context of the companies, the culture differentiation, and other contextual differences. between the organization that ends up scoping out a behind the scene job. There's the job on paper that is maybe feels, no, that feels like the same job I had between the two companies, but the under the hood job that you've had to do, they look different because of those environmental differences and the contextual differences.
Ariba Jahan: If someone was listening to this episode and they're like, not entirely sure. What innovation is, but I like the sound of the types of problems this guy solves. Like, how do I become this? What would you tell someone? Like what to learn, what skills to build, whether they're technical skills or soft
Chris Denson: skills.
Chris Denson: The first thing that comes to mind for me is. Developing an [00:26:00] ability to connect dots, right? I think some of the best innovations come from pairing two things that don't belong together. I said this on another podcast recently, which was technology gives us capability and art gives us possibility. And I was fresh off the heel of producing an art and technology event with Arriva.
Chris Denson: And I believe that, right? And I think sometimes some of us can develop a skill of a crystal ball or at least an intention. And pairing those things. One of the things we used to talk about was unlikely parents and how the best innovations come from that. And at the time I talked about two, one was a collaboration between Spotify and Ancestry.
Chris Denson: How does that even make sense? So on one hand, Spotify talks a lot about we want to super serve our talent. The audience is one thing they'll come and we want to give them a cool user experience. But we want to make sure we super serve the artists so that they're loyal to the platform. And Oh, check me out on Spotify, right?
Chris Denson: Where that's easy if you're a Justin Bieber or Taylor Swift or whoever else you listened to. But if you're a Joe Schmo indigenous artists from Australia and you got fire music, but nobody's [00:27:00] discovering it, then that's a whole other thing. Meanwhile, ancestry is a one time use. We don't get a lot of repeat customers, et cetera, et cetera.
Chris Denson: The relationship was such that if you got your DNA done and says, Hey, you're from these five regions of the world, here is music and artists that come from that region. So you can actually get to know your heritage or your DNA lineage a little bit more intimately. It didn't make sense when I first said it, and it didn't make sense when I first heard it, but again, this unlikely relationship and somebody had to go explore that and there were probably a few people that were like.
Chris Denson: That doesn't make any sense. When Hilton was a client of ours at OMD, one of the relationships I worked on for the good number of months that never happened was between Hilton and Airbnb. We have Hilton as the largest rewards program in the country and Airbnb is eating some of their lunch. When it comes to bookings and people staying and wanting like more authentic face, but why not?
Chris Denson: If I'm a Hilton member, if I go stay at a Hilton, I can Airbnb my place out and earn [00:28:00] rewards and points that way as well. And by creating a symbiotic relationship, it exists culturally, right? But why not monetize it or use it as a means of developing a deeper relationship with your customers, right?
Chris Denson: There's so many different ways to do that. So I think that's one skill and there's exercises and brainstorming. You can do to develop that skill of connecting dots. And I think the other part of the connecting dot is also collecting dots. That's what are you reading? What are you absorbing? Who are you talking to and asking questions to?
Chris Denson: Are you going to the same events and the same networking spaces
Ariba Jahan: all the time? Sounds like now you have a mastery of the skill set of collecting dots and connecting dots, right? When you first pitched ideas where people were like, I don't understand the dots you're connecting, Chris. And then by the time you've made your hundredth or 200 pitch, you've built more confidence.
Ariba Jahan: You've built up other skills, actual armature that allows you to say, okay, this is the way that I want to tell it. When you think about that first version versus the current version of the way that you connect [00:29:00] these dots, what are some other tangential skills that helps
Chris Denson: you? Not everybody sees what you see, right?
Chris Denson: And I'm not saying that I'm this, but it's probably like true geniuses. There's a frustration that they have. I can see what I'm. Talking about not having to like change the conversation. One of the skills I learned in stand up comedy is read the room. Okay. That person smiled. I see what kind of humor they like, but this person's still like dead.
Chris Denson: This person's cracking up. And so you start to collect the collective energy of the room. So I had to learn more detail, but digestible detail. I remember when we used to do a training reports at one of the agencies I worked. Uh, we do all these macro shifts in culture and technology. And at one point I realized that our clients are getting reports from all sorts of agencies and annual things that come out in whatever publisher or Joe Schmo futurist wrote a white paper on the future of what people were not getting.
Chris Denson: Was it translated into things that are relevant [00:30:00] actions that they can take? I realized we have to also be translators of the impact of a trend or technology or cultural shift or whatever it is, how they can activate against it. There's a personalization and a humanization of. These things we
Ariba Jahan: want to build earlier.
Ariba Jahan: You talked about how you see technology as a capability and art as the possibility on this podcast. I love to bring on people who are looking at different types of emergent spaces, emergent technology, or there's an emerging tech right now that it's one of the dots that I'm collecting and I'm keeping an eye on.
Ariba Jahan: And why?
Chris Denson: I think they change pretty quickly, right? Because I think there's a lot of hot topic things that have popped up in the last two years. AI is probably one of the ones that's a little bit more sticky. And it's interesting the amount of fear I encounter. around AI more so than any other thing that I've seen where like VR is more like the fear becomes like, what should we be doing about it?
Chris Denson: We don't want to miss out [00:31:00] on, we fill in the blank. Same thing with NFTs. Like, Oh, what is it? Oh, it sounds really cool. What can we do? AI is, Oh no. My job, future generations, this is like the writers are on strike right now. And I'm not saying it's blind fear, right? I think there are some things to watch out for, like as with developing anything, like there's always an underbelly to create.
Chris Denson: So I think there's these unintended consequences that come along with some of the things that we make. AI definitely is, I feel like the meter is running a little hot on the fear side of it. But I also think if we can continually be optimists. If we don't have to do these jobs anymore, now what are the possibilities?
Chris Denson: Now where can we go if we freed ourselves up? And I've heard arguments even with entry level jobs, especially for people of color. And now if those two bottom rung roles are gone, what sorts of human ingenuity skills are we teaching those individuals so that they can navigate the fact that The things always say we're in the middle of the fourth industrial revolution.
Chris Denson: If you don't think [00:32:00] multiple industries were disrupted and jobs were lost and new jobs became things like we forget other parts of our history where we've been through this either as a human being who's been on the planet for 20 to 50 years or humanity
Ariba Jahan: itself. We've been through this before in terms of like industrial revolution or like technology.
Ariba Jahan: evolving. It's not a theme of we'll get through it. We will survive. It's more about how do we leverage and how do we catalyze? What does it mean? What's the implication of it for me, for my community, for my industry? And what do I want to do about it? I think I brought this up with my husband earlier and he's a high school teacher.
Ariba Jahan: He's, I'm literally trying to figure this out. Because I have students who can easily go on Canva, type in a few words and stuff happens. Sure. It might not look good. I'm not so sure if it looks much different than if they would have done it on their own. So they're able to submit homework and the task for him is how do I detect?
Ariba Jahan: And I was like, is that the only task or does that now mean curriculums will need to get redesigned so that [00:33:00] it's going to change what types of assignments you give, what types of. In person activities you do, these are the things that they can cheat with AI or do with AI. So what are the things that we want to nurture more?
Ariba Jahan: This is oversimplifying it. I'm not a teacher. These are the types of questions that I think we're being pushed to ask. In terms of what you mentioned, keeping relentless optimism, when you hear so many different types of conversations, right? You're hearing people afraid of. The impact of AI for their jobs, for their roles.
Ariba Jahan: And then we hear really disappointing results coming out of the Supreme court, really giving the permission to hate, getting rid of affirmative action. There's so many threads happening all at the same time. And not all of them say be optimistic. Be hopeful, be creative, be innovative. So how do you wrangle the tension between all that and still
Chris Denson: show up?
Chris Denson: I think part of the relentless optimism, almost at the risk of doing it blindly, she had to continually be looking for solutions [00:34:00] and not just one of the arguments I overheard recently was with AI and biased and Oh, the blockchain can help with that. Sure. Okay. So that's fine. What is the one bullet that can kill most of this?
Chris Denson: And to me, it is. To the point of where your husband is like educating future generations on how to think and not what solely to think about. New industries, new careers always pop up. It's like when I go and speak to college students. They're like, what advice do you have for us? Be good with money. How many times have most of us taken a job or a role because we needed the money and not because we were passionate about whatever the thing was at the time.
Chris Denson: The financial tension can be a hindrance to like your own personal exploration and growth. And so it's looking for those hidden chambers or the uncommon chambers that should be explored a little bit more deeply. And I'm not saying the problems aren't real and it's not a [00:35:00] theory. Complicated set of problems, like you mentioned, Supreme Court, plus AI, plus add in 13 other things, plus you have a family and you're just trying to like figure out your normal day to day.
Chris Denson: Part of it is also, and this is counter cultural, counter intuitive. Put your safety mask on first. That's the best way to help somebody else is to get your shit together. That is whether that could be a financial goal, that could be a career goal. That can be like, I started this company before the Supreme Court's decision, and I'm going to continue doing it anyway.
Chris Denson: Now I need to do it to be an example, like whatever your additional goal is. Do you have days
Ariba Jahan: that despite how optimistic you're trying to be, it's just not working? What is that? Every day like? Like
Chris Denson: literally every day. I woke up this morning and I checked something and I was like, oh, come on. Like, it was just, I think if you ever watched the documentary Jonah Hill's therapist, so Jonah Hill documents his, the therapy
Ariba Jahan: sessions, that's the, the show that you recommended B to watch and I loved it.
Chris Denson: One [00:36:00] of the things his therapist said was like, I have experienced the same hangups as you. The only difference is I've been trained to get through I that a little bit quicker. Every day there's something. It's just the things that I've learned and how to process difficulties. I've tried to put those to use as often as possible.
Chris Denson: I'm also pretty silly and I bleed with humor and almost everything at the risk of cancel culture in most cases, like I lean into releasing that pressure valve with a little bit of levity. Especially in today's cultural climate where everybody is literally fighting to have their voice heard. And if we can inject a little bit of levity and release into that equation, like, it boils over and that can happen in your personal life to a healthy degree.
Chris Denson: There's escapism. And then there's also like, let me just not really release the pressure valve for a couple hours. I've had days where I'm like, Nope, shutting down a laptop. I'm driving to the park. I can't [00:37:00] do this today. Yeah. Little mechanism where you're like, not today Satan. And it's like, Those moments have to be okay because sometimes we feel guilty about taking those breaks as well.
Chris Denson: And they're
Ariba Jahan: an investment, you know, like those little micro actions, like giving yourself the permission to take that break to say, nope, I am shutting down that laptop today. Giving yourself those permissions, they accumulate over time and they turn into bigger actions. And then you normalize even around you.
Ariba Jahan: Like we can do that. We can prioritize our mental health, our mental wellness, and it. Just looks different on a day
Chris Denson: to day, especially in entrepreneurial circles, right? Every day the to do list gets longer and longer and the conversation becomes, I don't have enough time to do X, Y, Z. It was like something has to be a non negotiable.
Chris Denson: Something for you has to be a non negotiable. Is that my workout from five in the morning to six in the morning? Or are you going to get up even earlier and use it as a work hour? And because the to do list never goes away, but what does go away is your health, your sanity, all those things [00:38:00] that are probably even more important to the equation than whatever it is you're building, making whatever investors you need to get back their money, like all the pressures that we have on a day to day basis.
Chris Denson: But finding the space and the permission to give yourself that something that's just for you. I don't know, your therapist has probably asked you this before. Yeah, but what do you do for you, right? And for a really long time, it was hard for me to answer that question. Cause it's just, I got kids, like I'm being
Ariba Jahan: annoyed at that question to be honest.
Chris Denson: It's an annoying question. I had a coach who was like, he asked me a question that messed me up for three months. And it was like, what does being Chris mean to me? They start writing down the roles that you play, the job skills that you have, the things you're interested in and then what it means to me to be me.
Chris Denson: And so it's forcing yourself to go a few layers deep and that goes back to what we were talking about at the beginning. It was just like, The lonely work, the self [00:39:00] talk, because if you don't know what being you means to you, it's hard to like motivate yourself, help yourself process a thing in difficult times.
Chris Denson: We will probably give a friend a warmer words of encouragement and advice than we do ourselves. Eckhart Tolle wrote about this. He was on the bus once and there was this homeless woman. Who, he was just fascinated by the conversation she was having out loud with nobody. And it was, I can't believe you would talk to me this way, and blah, blah, blah.
Chris Denson: You owe me money, like whatever this woman was saying. And then the closer he got to the school, she was still on the bus. And then he realized she was getting off at the same stop that he was. And he said, at that moment, he realized the only difference between her and the rest of us is that she was saying it out loud.
Ariba Jahan: Right when pandemic started, I remember being on a call with you and I was like, Chris, I kind of want to do something on my own. I don't know what it is. And we brainstormed and you had a bunch of ideas. You're really good at breaking things down. What if... You had a LinkedIn series that was breaking down [00:40:00] really complex concepts.
Ariba Jahan: But what happened was it never turned into anything, right? It wasn't like, okay, Chris gave me a homework and now I have to do it. It's more like that could be a germ of an idea and it could have turned into anything that I put my mind or my work into, but I never did because of my inner chatter, right?
Ariba Jahan: My inner chatter was like, Who are you to have a LinkedIn series? What do you even have to explain? And my inner chatters have always perpetually held me back from doing so many things that usually involve me betting on my own self. Now, when it comes to intrapreneurship, like doing things within an organization.
Ariba Jahan: That inner chatter never holds me back, which I guess is interesting for me to observe because I am a very self driven, self motivated person. And that's why I've worked in the innovation space where I've had to be an intrapreneur and it is lonely and it is hard and it is all of that. And there's a ton of unknowns.
Ariba Jahan: And like you said, it's a blank canvas. And oftentimes this blank canvas year to year. And you have to shape and mold and you [00:41:00] have to figure out, like, what's the difference between last year and this year and all of that. But I somehow was not able to bring that level of, I will figure this out, into when it became my own idea, right?
Ariba Jahan: Like, without the wall or the protection of an organization. I think about that conversation that we had versus now, where I've started this podcast, something of my own. Something I never would have done. And I can see the big shift in the way that I talk to myself. I don't have that same voice anymore.
Ariba Jahan: Not that I don't have moments of like, who the hell are you to do this? Da da da da da. But what I have now is a quicker bridge to going from that thought into like, Hey, why not you? Versus back then I may have never gone to the thought of why not me. right? I would have just stayed in that spiral and then never acted.
Ariba Jahan: So to the example of the Jonah Hill movie, where he said, I go through the same things, I just have a different tool set, or the muscle memory [00:42:00] of using that tool set has shifted. And I I feel that now and I feel like if I heard this episode or this conversation four years ago, I would have been like, what the hell are they talking about?
Ariba Jahan: I don't understand. And so it's just weird because you have to go through some of that lonely journey or like some of that internal talk to understand, oh yes, like my internal narrative. can change. And you can follow all these Instagram accounts that say you should manifest or you should really think about the way that you talk about the things that you want and talk about yourself.
Ariba Jahan: You get that as a concept, but putting it into practice is so hard. I thought
Chris Denson: about a lot of things as you were speaking. I think the one that stuck the longest was natural risk versus perceived risk. And there are a lot of texts that talk about like, There's actually more risk in staying in that base, right?
Chris Denson: Or not exploring the thing. What's the other risk of what do I look like? Who am I? Plus, if I fail, that's going to be an embarrassment. And all the other things. And I've like gone through multiple rounds of that. I think one of my. [00:43:00] thing that they'll work on or through is imposter syndrome. It's like the same chatter pops up.
Chris Denson: It's like, Oh no, I hope they like it. I hope it's valuable. I've gotten to a place where same concept, those things, those moments last a very short amount of time and it's very freeing. I've gone through the last since the beginning of the year, like writing daily affirmation. And I remember in the beginning, I was like, this is, or days where I was just like in the shitty of some moods.
Chris Denson: And I'm literally got my head down and I'm writing like this. Cause I'm like, let me just keep the discipline of doing it. And eventually the perspective shifts, maybe in the last. Month and a half, two months. I'm like, Oh, okay. It's starting to click. It's like working out. It's so awesome. And you start working out and like most people quit because they don't see immediate results.
Chris Denson: And if you work out for a year, like you look back at a picture, you're like, Oh, I didn't, not that I'm. Working out, but I've started eating a lot better in the last couple of years. And it's [00:44:00] so funny. The number of people I've run into, they're like, you lost weight. And I'm like, nobody told me I was fat.
Chris Denson: They told me the results and I barely saw a difference in myself. Right. It was just my decision to commit to being mainly a pescatarian. And all right, let me make sure one of my non negotiables is I am going to work out three times a week. So that whole like metaphorical cycle of. intention, boundary setting, goal setting, and then pivoting as you need to along the way.
Chris Denson: Translates into business, innovation, family living. I think the practice of innovation actually can, if you allow it, affect so many different other parts of your existence because it's the idea of trial and error and getting used to what that feels like and holding on to who you are in the I feel
Ariba Jahan: like people don't realize how much emotional intelligence or self awareness or like self management or self starting, all of these layers are intertwined with innovation work and I think whether you're an entrepreneur or intrapreneur [00:45:00] or some combination of it all, it's there and if you feel it, then Just know like it's what is required of the task, because I think they're just so intertwined.
Ariba Jahan: To switch gears a little bit, you brought up that you were at CAN recently, and I know CAN is one of the places where a lot of different people bring the latest trends and the latest things to pay attention to. I was curious if there was any examples or anything that really got you excited or inspired you?
Ariba Jahan: I didn't get to see a
Chris Denson: lot of the work this year. I had an hour of production days, for those that don't know, like I host CanLion sort of digital path content. Then this year we did something that was interesting, which was these profile pieces called In The Making. And we did about 10 of them. But these profile pieces, Were people who are up and coming in the advertising and or adjacent industries from the very first one we did with a creative director from Pakistan, whose dad was a cop and got killed when he was four years old, [00:46:00] and he learned his perseverance and his grandmother.
Chris Denson: Creative optimism by watching his mom, right? And he's like, I saw my mom, like she never gave up. She never backed down from anything despite like her husband got killed. And like that translates into how he operates creatively. There's a lot more insertion of who we are and recognition of our authentic existence and how.
Chris Denson: That translates into, uh, creative and or business practice. Another one, a good friend of mine, Vincent Bragg, who's the founder of an agency called Concrete. And Vincent was in prison for a number of years, as was his co founder. And they ended up creating an agency that works with incarcerated and formerly incarcerated.
Chris Denson: Even asked Vincent about the importance of relationships. And he was like, when I was locked up, so many people I thought were close to me. Didn't show up. So I value relationships so much more intimately now in business. And so if you ever hang out with them, you get a very [00:47:00] familiar treatment. Another woman who recently acquired a disability, she had a pain in her legs and was almost paralyzed on the same day of her daughter's first birthday.
Chris Denson: But here she is at CanLions being celebrated for her creative outputs. And that informed how, how she's worked for the last three years. I enjoyed that because I think the award winning wow, will always be there. And there will definitely be things you can glean off of, and you can read the blog posts about certain things.
Chris Denson: And the last thing I want to point out, I think when we talk about innovation and whether it's AI or technology or whatever it might be, we also have to realize, at least in the U. S., that the industries do a lot of work in speaking to each other. If you spend all your time in your day job, you're talking to startups and founders and technologists and clients.
Chris Denson: You almost sort of think that's what the rest of the world is also thinking about. Until you go to Idaho. Like AI, what are you talking about? I think it levels your heightened sense [00:48:00] of what's possible, and it also grounds it in something that's a little bit more universal.
Ariba Jahan: We're wrapping up towards the end, and I'd love to do a rapid fire of questions with you.
Ariba Jahan: Are you an introvert or an extrovert?
Chris Denson: Both. I think it depends on the situation, the day, how I'm feeling. I can go to the thing and be a life of the party, and I can go to the thing and post up. on the wall and not socialize with anybody.
Ariba Jahan: Okay. What helps you stay curious? I
Chris Denson: just keep a sense of wonder for the most part.
Chris Denson: Like I try to find the wow. And then that could be if I'm talking to a founder and I'm like bored by the pitch. I'm like, I'm just looking for the one thing that like gives me a little bit of goosebumps. Just find the thing that is interesting to you, even if it's 90 minutes of content and there's two minutes that you're like, that was
Ariba Jahan: dope.
Ariba Jahan: Interesting, because you're totally right. We are in a culture of being able to instantly assess, do I like this? Do I hate this? Formulating like the rest of our opinion around that versus what I'm hearing is even when you don't like this, you're not looking for something to like from that lens of, I must always be positive, but more, what am I a little bit more curious about?
Ariba Jahan: Even if it's just [00:49:00] that one factor, that's something I haven't heard before. What's one thing that you're deeply grateful for right now? This conversation. Me too. If you could go back and give your 18 year old self just one piece of advice, Chris, what would that be?
Chris Denson: It's going to be bumpy. I think I really expected a very smooth ride, as we all know, life is nothing but a bunch of interrupted plants.
Chris Denson: I think it took me a while to learn how to navigate
Ariba Jahan: those. What's something you couldn't do without in your career? It could be anything. A routine, a person, a service, or an object.
Chris Denson: My Google Calendar and my Bose travel speaker.
Ariba Jahan: How do you nurture or what encourages play in your life right now?
Chris Denson: Probably music.
Chris Denson: Either I'm in the car or I have the stereo on and I'm just dancing. If you weren't
Ariba Jahan: doing what you're doing right now, what else would you be doing?
Chris Denson: I'd probably be doing forensics. I've always had an obsession with figuring out how and why certain things happen. And I think also, I was a really sneaky kid.
Chris Denson: And I think as a parent, I'm [00:50:00] like, What'd you do it over there?
Ariba Jahan: When you think about innovation, and I know on this whole episode, we've talked about innovation a little bit more broadly purposefully because innovation can exist across all industries, all roles. You don't have to have an innovation title to be an innovator.
Ariba Jahan: You can have any title and you can be in different capacities. So even though we've talked about it very broadly, I'm curious, what do you think is up next for us in the innovation space? And you can specify it if you'd like. Reach
Chris Denson: and engagement. I think all of us are creating things that we want people to engage with, right?
Chris Denson: To some point of critical mass. And I think that there will be a little bit of a dial back and getting back to like bread and butter kind of thing. Gary Vaynerchuk talked about this at Ken Lyons. He was like, we're all worried about what used to be and what's coming and we're not paying attention really to what is and like the top social media platforms are your primary means of reaching.
Chris Denson: audiences. And so you start to think about what innovations will happen. [00:51:00] I feel like some of the best innovation comes from the smaller the box you get to play in, the more innovation required, right? If you give me a two acres worth of opportunity, I'm like, Ooh, uh, would you give me this narrow hallway?
Chris Denson: And I'm like, all right, let's see how we can navigate this in a way that nobody else has ever done before. And so I think that's where the real opportunity is. Everything else, in my opinion, feels like it's in this experimental phase and we're still learning what it is. And every time I look, there's another platform that's popping up, but they don't have the staying power of their predecessor.
Chris Denson: And it's a really hard medium to take out. And so, like, looking forward to seeing, like, what else pops up opportunistically and creatively from an innovation standpoint.
Ariba Jahan: What are you feeling relentlessly optimistic about these days?
Chris Denson: There's a Masters of Craft series that we're launching and this is a very new format and a lot more moving pieces.
Chris Denson: We're doing audio and video. We shot a lot of Verizon. It's my first time [00:52:00] going out on video on something that I own, but also have my bread and butter baked into it, which is audio. And so I think that kind of should I, shouldn't I, am I, is this, I don't even feel prepared to launch. And I think you talk to any entrepreneur.
Chris Denson: If there's a dozen more things that they wanted to have as a feature set or in place or launching, they wanted to make Mm-Hmm. . But it was just time to go. It's time. Like when it's time to go, it's time to go. At the end of it, it is just like, yeah, it's me. And there's another thing that we're launching, like executive leadership and training space that incorporate psychedelics that I have a partner that I'm working with on that.
Chris Denson: And we did a little soft launch a couple weeks ago at a Mm-Hmm. , A conference in Denver. And that is also another.
Ariba Jahan: Besides yourself, who else would you say people should be paying attention to? Who is someone you would refer to as up
Chris Denson: next? There's a guy named Kevin Hermosi, who's an entrepreneur. And I probably watched like at least four or five hours of his content [00:53:00] recently.
Chris Denson: He is like an entrepreneur whisperer. He's Iranian. He started a fitness business. He's gone through. Oops, that didn't work. And oh, wait, this did work. And it's just philosophies and perspective on. How to build multi million dollar businesses are really powerful. So there's always like a wild number of kids who are doing really dope things.
Chris Denson: There's like this girl, she's like the NFT queen and created these characters and done all these and has, she's wrecked by CAA and like, like taking her a lot of her IP and blowing it up into all these other things. And it's. I think she was like, when I found out about her, she was 13 years old. Those are two that come to mind, like friends that I admire their perspectives on Melissa Bradley is a very outspoken entrepreneur, investor, thought leader in the space, uh, doing enjoy a lot of what Gary said, because he always has these like.
Chris Denson: Uncommon, but spot on approaches to how things can and should be done. Where
Ariba Jahan: can [00:54:00] people go to find your work? What do you want people to check out? Masters of Craft is coming out soon.
Chris Denson: So I think Dentonology, like wherever you find me, you'll find some point of reference to the things that I'm involved in.
Chris Denson: So my last name plus ology, the study of oneself. Everybody should have their own ology. And then cryptdenton. co is my website. But I'm pretty much. Actors on all the platforms, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, primary ones, and that's where I'll be. Chris, I
Ariba Jahan: had such a blast today. I knew this conversation was going to be fun.
Ariba Jahan: I didn't really realize how deep it was going to get. And I feel like it was the conversation I've been needing to have. And I feel like it's a topic we haven't had the opportunity to have. In a little while. So thank you for sharing, for being here and for everything. No, thank you.
Chris Denson: And this is awesome to see and be a part of it.
Ariba Jahan: Thank you for joining us for this conversation today. If you like what you heard, be sure to rate and review us on Apple podcasts and Spotify to help more people discover the [00:55:00] show. Really appreciate you joining us today and be sure to hit subscribe, leave a comment and come back next week so we can keep exploring what's up next in tech and shape our collective future together.
Ariba Jahan: Until then. Stay curious.

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