Restoring Cast Iron as a Pathway to Creativity with Denise Jacobs

In this episode, I talk with Denise Jacobs. Denise is a creativity evangelist, a speaker, and the author of the book Banish Your Inner Critic, as well as several web design books. I've watched Denise on stage unleash her positive energy to an unsuspecting conference audience, and I very much had her in mind whenever I first hatched up this idea to put the show together.

We had a great conversation where we discussed restoring cast iron, connecting past and present passions growth through teaching. Navigating this current poisonous moment in time. Denise's incredible backyard garden and empowerment through creativity. Before we get into this conversation, I just wanted to say that wake up excited is a labor of love and is totally self-funded.

So if you want to support this show and my work, I'd really love it if you checked out our online courses about design systems, digital design, and web development, which you could find at brad frost.com/courses. All right. Without further ado, here is my conversation with Denise Jacobs. Denise, what are you excited about right now? What has you waking up excited?

tangible and physical that you can do that are more kind of traditional, type endeavors. I know during the pandemic, everybody got crazy about making sourdough bread and, so during Christmas of 2023.

Started following this guy called Cast Iron Chris on Instagram and watched his videos, watched some of his stuff on YouTube. Follow this other guy named Josh Shapiro. I did it with the easy off, hated it because the stuff didn't come off and I was like all grumpy.

And so then I went back to the videos and I was like, okay, do I need to make an The answer to that is no, I didn't need to make an electrolysis tank because one of the other things that I used to wake up excited to do many moons ago, moon, is make handmade soap, handmade cold, processed herbal soap, one of the things that you need to make that is sodium hydroxide, AKA lye, because I make soap, I literally have just hanging around.

And so one of the methods that you can use is to make what they call a lye bath. And you put in one pound of lye to five gallons of water. I was like, well, that's easy. I got lye. I happened to have just a pound put it in a bin that I had literally found on the side of the road. And I did it and I put the pan that I had been struggling with in there and like came back the next day and just went and took the crud right off. And I was like, oh. And then some more research.

It was like, Hey, you know, you can make this cast iron seasoning mixture with grape seed oil, sunflower oil and beeswax. And I was like, well, just literally happened to have these things lying around as one does. And so I made some of this, iron seasoning self. So did the whole process followed it to the letter and everything and came out the most gorgeous restored cast iron. I can read the, the, stamps on the back. Several of my pieces came from my grandmother. I, I was hooked. I was hooked.

It's been, a, it's been, I've been, I've done a lot, I keep doing 'em and they keep coming out. Perfect. And look at this, look at this.

I love making things.

You're talking about, the tactile aspect of connecting with something and like the importance of that. I also think it's freaking amazing that you're able to connect multiple things and you even said it like many moons ago, you were waking up excited about this thing.

And it sounds like you're not actively doing that soap as much but you're able to carry that forward like quite literally in these materials that you still have around so you're connecting these dots between these past and present passions, which is incredible.

You're bringing in community by going cool, I am excited about this, and I am wanting more and I want to bring people that same excitement and wanna bring people closer to this and through the spirit of helping and making things better and improving something that's old and worth preserving

One of the things that I think is very, very common in our culture sadly starting to be more of a dominant culture globally, this kind of fast consumption, getting things using them, when they stop working so well, throwing them away. I mean, the number of things

Like, this is a whole ass machine, it's not, it wasn't bought to be disposable, it was bought to be used, the thing I love about the cast iron is, no matter how jacked up it looks, for the most part, if you strip all the stuff off and re season it, you're literally, you are like starting from the beginning and you've got this perfectly service serviceable item that probably has tons of history, tons of people have touched

it, you know, tons of meals have been eaten at, is nourished countless numbers of people, families, children, people. So I think that's really cool. and I also really love, as a designer, as a musician, as a, all kinds of things that you've done in your life. love the process of building mastery of something like the process of like embarking upon something.

And then learning the tools and learning the actual, substances that you're working with and learning the thing itself and learning the processes and, and learning how I learn, like being aware of how I learn something and, and the observations and what you take and, oh, okay, that doesn't quite work. Let me try this. Um, lemme see what somebody else has done. Let me, there is, maybe there's a video, maybe there's an article, oh, there's this, oh, let me try this. I love that process. I love it.

And I love, I love like learning a thing

What's interesting to me, and this is like a little bit of what I'm kind of picking at with the show, is you don't necessarily feel that that's shared when you look out in the rest of your community or society writ large. It's like, you get it. You're like, oh yeah, like. Learning stuff, connecting with things, doing stuff, like, not just throwing shit away.

There's a lot there, and for me, there tends to be, you just see this chasm between seemingly like how other people are moving through life,

Are you kidding? Like the amount of the sheer lack of curiosity and, willingness or interest in learning and expanding mind and expanding your, your Perspective and expanding what you understand or know to be true. The lack of that that I feel like I see is just, is always like, wow. And it's also interesting too, because. I feel like in the industry that we've been in and in the cohorts and circles that we've been in, there are more people who are not like that, right?

There are more people who are curious, wanna learn and like to think and put things together and stuff like that, because we wouldn't have been drawn to. Tech and

just following him and seeing his struggles and seeing him struggle through pronouncing words and reading things, and he was like, oh, I wanted to read Harry Potter, but it's kind of too advanced, and so I'm gonna have to kind of ratchet back and read something that's not as advanced.

And, for me as somebody who learned how to read was two, like, I just started reading early and I just, and I love to read and I love words and I love like all this stuff that is such a. Polar opposite of my experience. And I realized that he's not an exception, but there's a

And sharing that journey Along the way, just as you're saying, it's like, I love picking up new things, going through that process and that act of sharing the hard parts, the going through the falling on your face, the saying, whoops, I'm trying to read Harry Potter, but I need to walk it back 'cause I'm not there yet. That is like massively empowering to, one themselves.

But two, to all these other people as well, and that's, it's something that I think that curiosity can, be sparked through the process of sharing the, the struggle and the creative act, because what ends up happening, whenever you just see the finished painting, or you just feel the final composition, is a bunch of people go, I can't do that. I can't do that. I don't know what that look. So that's what's I think is so incredibly freaking cool about the world that we operate in now.

And the fact that we have all of these different channels and outlets YouTube's a freaking miracle, right? But all of these things, right? Whether it's Instagram. Like when you see artists on Instagram, right? And Like me and my daughter we'll watch these things forever. , and some of the videos are are literal hours. Some of them are edited to shit and made to look like super cool and really processed and stuff. But what you see is that process. and it becomes a lot more attainable for people.

I think that there's something there. I don't know what the answers are, but what I found, and I'm curious to get your take on this, because I've seen you light up a room full of hundreds of people. And. It's freaking amazing, I, I mean that like it's been a number of years, but I remember it like it was yesterday, and I think what happens, and I'm sure you get a lot of people come up to you after you give a talk or whatever, and there's this attraction, right?

people want to be around you, and people are like, are, are like leaning in hard whenever you you are demonstrating a way of being that they were not up until that moment of hearing you speak aware of, or they've been aware of it, but you're giving them somehow permission to, to be interested, to be excited, to be enthusiastic. I hadn't said it out loud until now, just because like, I've had this idea for a podcast for a long time and you're like the first person that

came to my mind . That's the reason. That's the reason. It's like when you're out there and you're living life a certain way, what you're doing is Whether you're explicitly doing it or not, you're pulling people along and you're bringing people up

And I'm thinking to myself, yes. And I hope I gave you some tools to be able to actually start on the process yourself. Because I

and I have to say that in terms of like with my own creative endeavors or, craft, DYI, et cetera, et cetera creative expression and stuff like that. I mean, of the reason that we're even talking to each other right now is because I started making soap and then I ended up teaching soap making because people were like, how do you make soap? I was like, it's super easy. Come over to my house and I'll show you how to do it.

And then I started teaching soap making and then I started teaching it to like larger classes of like 20, 24 people, whatever. And then doing that led me to be able to, um, I was also incidentally doing tech work and doing like HTML and like front end development stuff. And so then I started teaching HTML and front end development stuff because was doing it and then I had this teaching experience. Then I'm teaching

Other people are signaling that they could also be into this and I am just gonna go for it. So there's this kind of stew happening. You're learning a new thing. You're figuring it out. You're trying, you're failing. You kind of cross a, a certain threshold. And then as soon as like you have something, you're like, well, that's, that's valuable. And other people can, can benefit from it. So, so let's make it happen.

actually, I have to say that that failure was really helpful because it made it so that when I finally went back to trying to make soap again and was successful, I was like, oh, okay, this was the problem, you

Like, if we need to be here for another hour, we will be, but you're not walking outta here without experiencing what that looks like and knowing what it feels like so that when you do it at home, you know exactly what you're doing. Because that's how I get down.

And so kinda like, need like a troubleshooting guide. I was like, I could write that too. Was like, really? And I was like, I used to teach, I had like a troubleshooting, like worksheet. I had for my students. Like, okay, if this, you've got a problem, check here, check in the head, check this check to make sure that your quote is finished. Check to make sure your bracket's finished. And she was like, oh yeah, let's talk. And that's, that

and then I would have to say that thing that got me into doing creativity was when I was writing the CSS detective guide and I was struggling so much. trying to keep motivated and all this stuff. I actually stopped working on one of my chapters because my inner critic was so strong that I couldn't even write anything. and I literally stopped what I was doing and went and looked up articles on like how to silence the inner critic.

And came across an article that said something, she had this quote from SARC or something like, banish your inner critic, uh, to go hunt rare lemurs in Madagascar. And I was like, banish your inner critic, word.

There's really something to the fact that you're doing this through the lens of not just how do I solve this problem for myself, but a real theme here is as soon as you're like, ah, there's something, or like, oh, I got through this, the immediate instinct, is to go, Oh, let me do a workshop on this or ultimately like, let me like write a book on the topic.

And I think that there's something really important there because there's a few different kinds of creative people on the planet, you probably know this a lot better than me, but there's, there are the hoarders and the people that are, so up their own ass than they're, you know, egocentric and whatever, and protective, and it's like that whole bullshit hero narrative and all of that stuff, and then there are the people who, by way of their work, understand that

bringing more people into these ideas and disseminating them out into the world and teaching people the tools of the trade, just like you said, giving people those tools, giving people the peek behind the curtain, whatever it is, is so much more satisfying Then doing the work yourself. You make that one bar of soap. Okay, like, that's great. I'll use this until it's gone and then I'll make another one. Right? it's like, that's, that's great. I, I'll make this website.

And oh, I like learned some things along the way. And like, I'll make the next website better. There's a finite number of websites that that I can make on this planet. But that ability to just go a little, a little further out and say, I'm just gonna put this here, put this idea out here, put this thing I learned out here, put this like whatever, you just see this cascade of, of, of just. It's, it's staggering.

And like, when we're talking about like the web, like that's why I love this thing so much all these years later is that you're like I. idea, like literally travels around the world.

And then you're like, Oh, it becomes addicting, but in the best, in most positive way possible, because it's creativity plus community, plus this this kind of like shared vulnerability slash we're working through it and we're building on each other's idea we're collaborating, E even if it's not explicitly called collaboration in that same way, um, but just holy smokes, like I write an article, someone else rebounds that article.

It's like, here's my thoughts on it and I freaking love it whenever they're like disagreeing and stuff too. But it's like, here's what I do instead and I'm like, yeah, like that's. That's it right there. It's like we we're just all kind

I, I don't wanna just use myself. It's like eating your own cooking all the time. You're like, I don't wanna just eat my own food all the time. I like eating other people's food 'cause it tastes different than mine.

Here's an interesting thing that's, that's kind of funny too, So when I decided to stop teaching soap making outta my house and wanted to it to more people. I was living in Seattle at the time and I went to the UDub extension, which is like the adult education extension that they

What we recommend is that you just have one, you just have one session and you don't have two sessions because, if it doesn't take on and not that many people sign up, it's better to just have like one course, that's like partially full or almost full than like two courses that aren't very full at all. And I remember thinking to myself.

you have no idea how popular this class is gonna be. But I was like, I was like, okay, that's cool. You know, whatever, we'll just do one. And they're like, yeah, you know, we'll just like, we'll see, and I can see if it builds up in popularity and all this stuff. I was thinking, mm-hmm. They put it into, they had, they used to do like this kind of like newspaper flyer thing that came out for the new quarter and everything. It

And I always had people on the waiting list, always, every time. it was like, because I

I started teaching and speaking and stuff because that the very first class that I taught to the 24 people.

The way I describe it to people is like, you know how when you jump on a trampoline and you jump up and that there's that beautiful moment where you go up in the air and you hit the highest point and then you come down and the higher you jump, the more that you can really feel that I was like, I felt like when the class started was when I jumped off of the trampoline and when the LA class ended was when I landed.

I. it was like that feeling of like elation and bouyance and, joy and lightness and brightness and everything. When I landed, it was just like, I have to do that. again. That was amazing. And I feel like that still. Like when I speak and when I go and I do a workshop, I still have that feeling of buoyancy and, and rightness and and do you know what I mean?

Enough people, I think, haven't read your book and they talk themselves out of things and they don't put themselves in situations, right? Because that requires a certain amount of vulnerability that requires a leaning in and what I tend to see with a lot of folks, even creative professionals, professional designers, they're like, Oh, I, I couldn't possibly, right?

It's it's this like total you are shutting the door just as soon as it's presented to it's like, just think about it even for a second, just consider it for a half a second and like bust through that knee jerk reaction of like, I don't know. That's that's unfamiliar. That's scary. That's whatever. Right? And because when you follow it and one when you sort of allow yourself to open the door to that curiosity and That interest in that pursuit, that's that high point of the trampoline.

Like you get there eventually, but you have to put yourself in situations that can give you the ability to have that. I kind of try to pick at it in just conversations that I have, it does just kind of seem like a lot of people just. expect it to just fall into their lap or for it to just show up or reveal itself. And it's like, nah, dude, you gotta, you gotta go find it. You gotta, you gotta go. You gotta do it.

I was at South by Southwest when I met my acquisitions editor and I met her 'cause she was had, um, friend of mine, she was his editor and so I ran into them and he introduced me to her. two days previous to running into her. I was talking to a friend and I was actually pathetic and pitiful and lamenting and whining and I was like, I just wanna speak at web conferences. I don't know why I can't speak at web conferences. I'll be so good of a speaker. Why can't I just do that?

most of the people I know who speak at web conferences have a book. dude, I was like, the only book that I could write is a book on HTML, and Lord knows the world doesn't need another one of those. And she was like, listen, I'm just telling you what I've observed. And I was just like, well, point taken. Thank you. Appreciate your input. Two days later, I'm on the stairs. I run into Wendy Sharp. she was like, oh, we're always looking for authors.

And I was like, oh yeah, I could like write a book on stuff. He was like, what? And I was like, well, I have this idea about like talking about this, like weight loss. We do tech books. I was like, right. I used to teach web design and web development, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And she was like, have an idea about this book about troubleshooting CSS. And I was like, I could write that book. now.

Had I not had the conversation with my friend two days ago, I might not have even been primed mentally to try to say

Recently, just because of it goes both ways that psychological priming right when all you hear and all that's around you and all the news says and all that the just sort of general zeitgeist. Is negativity, is threat, is fear, is whatever. When things happen, go, Ah, ah, there it is! We notice that, right?

And so, one of the things that I am, I'm contemplating, and I know that we're all struggling right now, and maybe we can maybe use that as an opportunity to get into that, because there's this like, total incongruency. With what we're talking about, and what this moment in time is seemingly at this, at this kind of macro level. And that priming, and that like, the, the water is poisoned, just the air is poisoned, the water is poison.

everything that we are just bathing in, is so unhealthy, and so negative, and that primes our brains, collectively. To be looking for threats, to be more fearful, to be more disconnected, to be less trusting. And I find myself, right? 'cause I'm a human being and I, and I'm susceptible to went to my niece's basketball game last night. And I'm like scanning the bleachers just kind of going, I caught myself doing it.

and I'm just like, there it is, The, the things that we are primed for, what our brains are primed for, impacts how we operate in the world, how we're thinking, who we're talking to, what we pick up, what we don't pick up, and it's just so incredibly toxic, the whole everything right now, it seems, And you mentioned this before we started recording, not jumping into the toxic river seems to be a pretty sensible, coping mechanism in this moment in time. Right.

I mean, one of the things I, I think we have to do to maintain our sanity and to create a barrier between ourselves and this toxicity is. how can we create safe spaces for ourselves? right? How can we create sanctuary? how can we create Safe insulation. one of the things that I feel that we can do that with is through community and is through connecting with other like-minded

And where I'm starting to realize is the way to fight. Is through putting love and positivity out into the world. And that's not some hippie dippy shit there. Like that's like actually like a really profound, it's really hard to do. It's, but it's really important work. So it's like, yes, there's sanctuary, but there's this, there's this outwardness to it that isn't just like, Oh, we're circling the wagons and we have like our little tribe that's here.

It's like, no, no, no. We need to like demonstrate. to others, that there are different ways of being that reject this, this just absolute toxic reality that, that I see everyone in my life consumed by right now.

And, and again, It's, there's no fault there, but like what I'm finding is like a personal mission as someone who I feel like has like this perspective and this ability to exude positivity and to put that stuff out there, like I feel a real drive and responsibility, just like you're talking about with like, with teaching that instinct, I'm like, my instinct is going. I'm not gonna get out there and start railing on things. That's not going to help the dialogue. That's not gonna help anything.

I'm going to show another way of, of existing, of being, of showing up, of, of fighting. I'm gonna, I'm gonna fight with some dollars. I'm gonna like, Uh, this is, this is something I'm gonna try this out on you. And I really wanna get your take on it because People get outraged because there's real harm being done to real people. So putting your head in the sand and just being like, I'm not, just not going to pay attention to it. It's not acceptable. That's not an option.

But also, what I've learned is that these, these ghouls, who are very deeply psychologically unwell, attention is their lifeblood. That is their fuel, right? So recognizing those two things, real harm is being done to real people. And these people want nothing more than me to just be thinking about them all day, every day. And I refuse to give them that fuel. But I also need to keep and pay attention to the real harm of the

real thoughts, words, actions . So, what I'm trying to do and it's very, very difficult is to create it, create a separation where I'm able to stay laser focused on like the real things. And that's going to help me understand. Who do I need to donate money to? Who do I need to show up for support and, how should I cast my vote? How should I exist in my community? Like, et et cetera, et cetera, that stuff matters. But at the same time, I'm just going to be like.

Yeah, somewhere out there, bad people are doing bad things, and they could just kind of stay in amorphous blob that's like off in the distance or behind a curtain somewhere. Like, I'm gonna be over here trying to care about people and those people that are having harm done to get them. But I'm also going to just recognize this, this negative presence, encounter it by showing up with positivity. So I don't know

Yes, and there's a source of poison in the river and if we can get to the source and neutralize those poisons. Then we have a chance.

I wanted to say that the second thing that uh, makes me excited to wake up is having turned my whole yard into an edible food forest,

one of the things I love about gardening is having this opportunity to learn a thing all the time. So, you know, every single plant in my yard, I myself in tank, which means. went out and I found it. I, you know, I bought, I sourced it. I bought it. I planted it. I, you know, some things I had in pots for a long time before they actually went into the ground into their kind of final place.

And then some things got moved because it turns out that in the process of and paying attention and looking at it, I realized that it actually wasn't in the right place, that I didn't put it in a place where that would allow it to thrive. And that's also something that I think is, you know, very valuable is having time to observe something. So that you can figure out how to make the most of it and get the best out of it.

if that's a plant, if that's a person, if that's a team, so I mean, I think that that's also a really important, a really important part of kind of all of this contributing to encountering kind of grander level of levels of toxicity that awareness, being grounded for yourself then being able to, from a grounded place, being able to make observations and then make changes and take action based on your observations, I think is a really powerful combination.

And I mean, just all of these things, you know, some wood for free, Off of Offer Up from this guy who took apart his mom's cedarwood, cabana in her backyard. and was like, hey, if you can pick it up, come and take it. And I was like, I will be there tomorrow with pickup truck. all of this. Wouldn't have been possible without, first of all, creative constraints, second of all, without being like, what have I got?

how can I take this thing that somebody literally would've put in landfill and how can I take

The immediate thing that comes to mind is like whenever you, you look at just the, the stark juxtaposition of how much it takes to to educate someone versus to jail them, there's where like the the money is is, is far better spent. the fact that this is just available, and all it really does is to kind of take a bit of a shift in perspective. That to me is so incredibly powerful that is like with the exact same materials, with the exact same resources, infrastructure, people, whatever.

And that's where that idea of of vision of being able to imagine, to be creative, So I live in Pittsburgh. There's all these bridges. Anytime there's any sort of thing about like bike lanes or, or, getting rid of any stretch of road in order to make it a little bit friendlier for non-car, it's this big uproar. It's this big thing. My neighbor was just showing me Had a rendering of like, what if we were to just take one of the bridges and like turn that into a park?

And so like, you know, there was a, a, a really beautiful artistic rendering of this thing. It would just be a pedestrian bridge. It's the bridge right by the, the baseball stadium. So all these people, whenever a baseball game's happening, all these people are walking across that bridge anyways. And she's like, just do that all the time, right? And plant some trees and it'll be freaking great. it's a very inexpensive.

investment, but would radically transform the, a space that desperately needs some, some more green space. and it's just like, that's, that's the kind of thing it's like kind of coming back to, it's just like there's this negativity, lack of imagination, lack of, of just can-do attitude versus the qualities that you embody so perfectly, I think, I, I feel like that before and after is just like a real exercise in here's what vision Gets to you.

Here's here's what this this kind of attitude can yield and I think it's such like just a beautiful embodiment of the spirit of, of the show and what we're like, kind of trying to do here is to just be like, what is that like, after picture Can we teach people to be more curious? When we look at these moments and what's in front of us, a lot of times. It doesn't necessarily show itself as, as totally obvious, but there's this kind of instinct.

And again, this is kind of something that I'm picking at there's this instinct that it's like, it's, it seems like challenging the moment at hand or trying to change the moment at hand. By way of just, like, trying to, make people happy or trying to, like, sort of promote positivity, or creativity, or, like, it feels almost insulting, especially as, like, real people are, like, being harmed in this moment, right?

And so it seems shallow or naive to, to be like this actually doesn't feel like a trite, peace, love, dove, kind of, like, weird sentiment, but it actually feels like more potent and, and has more, like, gravity than I think that I. we, we give it credit for. And I don't know, I, I'm kind of, like, feeling around here, but it's like my overwhelming instinct as I'm like, like, this has to be met

I know I keep talking about my, first book and stuff like that, kind of this lovely moment, you know, now that I have this.

Vantage point of gosh, that was 15 years ago, and so much has happened since 15 and 16 years ago, but it's like now I have a really clear, way of looking back at this and kind of seeing all the things that were happening that I just couldn't see at the time. And, I remember when I was. trying to write my book that it was just like, you know, who am I to write a book? Like, who am I to do this? And how can I possibly do this? And I don't even know if I can.

And then at the end of it, when I did it, I was just like, Oh my God, I wrote a book. Not only did I write a book, but I like designed like websites as examples, which I wasn't even sure if I was a very good web designer, but I was actually able to design these things and break them and build them and write about it in story format. I was just like, well, Jesus, if I can do this, what else can I do?

the empowerment that I got from being able to do this thing that I wasn't sure I was able to do made it so that it transferred. And I was like, if I can do this, what other thing that I didn't think I could do or wasn't sure I could do, can I actually do?

But then that will guide you to a place of inner strength, that you didn't know that you had, and that you could start to address those things.

And, and so there is this, you know, the ecosystem that is, it's like, Oh, the reason why the plants are, are failing down here is because like, you know, 30 miles upstream There, you know, there's this like kind of gross industrial plan or whatever, like, so it's all. It's all connected, even if it feels very indirect, and it doesn't necessarily feel like you're, you're fighting things head on.

That's like a bit of my like frustration with like, a lot of the response to the toxic river is that it's like, ah, yes, we need to fight fire, with, with fire, and we need to fight everything, like, head on. And don't get me wrong, like, they're absolutely Like, people need to be doing that, certain people are wired for that, and they're like really good at it. I learned through the, like, the last round of this, like, I'm actually not wired that way, like, I'm, I'm not a fighter.

Like but I think that there's there's a lot of danger in the, if you're not attacking this, if you're not outraged by this, if you're not addressing it head on. Then, uh, you're part of the problem. And I think that there's like a lot of ways that we can, we can show up and, and, and counter the negativity that, that isn't maybe as, as obvious as like, I'm gonna go toe to toe with this, with this issue head on.

And that stuff that feels like it's again, like a little like, Oh, I'm just tinkering off to the side. I love how you said it. It's like, what you're doing is you're cultivating this sense of self-empowerment, of this ability, this, this, attitude that allows you to start showing up 'cause literally once you do it once, obviously, and you're the one that wrote the book on it, but it's like, it's always there. But like, it gets easier. It gets easier over time with each rep right with each round.

By the time you're building a deck for your hot tub, you're not super worried.

Like, that's how you grow. That's how you show up. That's how you live authentically. And in a way that, that kind of snowballs upon itself in a positive direction.

percent.

so basically, I like all Start with Little Ghost and then work Your Way, kind of just backwards through their albums. like soulful and stuff, but, when you see them, you're just like, these people are making this music and it's just like, yeah, they are, They're

get inspired, uh, and, and Denise, one, one last thing is like, where could people find you or what do you wanna draw people's attention to of like sort of what, what you're up to besides, or or maybe including your, your forthcoming cast iron, uh, class.

And so, if you have a premium LinkedIn account, then you should be also getting LinkedIn Learning. If not, you can always do courses a la carte, But I have a baner in a Critic Course. a Creative Collaboration course, Developing Creativity as a leader. the Business case for Creativity, Unique Ways to Generate Creative Ideas and Productive Creativity, well as Hacking the Creative Brain as part of the creativity every day series.

So all of those courses are nice digestible ways of, getting to know me and my content. and then, if you need a great keynote speaker for your conference to talk about creativity and or the inner critic, I'm your woman