Chris Denson on Innovation, Imposter Syndrome, and Writing a Book That Still Opens Doors 8 Years Later

Transcript

Eric Jorgenson: So to kick things off, thank you, Chris, for being here. Thank you for having me, Eric. I'm excited to have you. We've gotten to spend some time together in some office hours, and you've been a veteran of Scribe. So I'm excited to have you here. Your book has been out for a really long time. But before we get into the sort of results of the book and what you've been doing with it, I want to just set the stage. So can you give us a little bit of your background and what you've been up to that led to writing a book in the first place?

Chris Denson: Yeah, you know, I've just had one of those lives and careers that's meandered a lot and I had to find a thread for that. And really what it came down to was idea building. So, you know, through marketing lenses, through stand-up comedy, through writing, through leading innovation programs all over the world, it's kind of just been this like, how do the best ideas happen? And that's just kind of been a spark of curiosity that's just driven me forward and so, and led me to the book eventually.

Eric Jorgenson: What did the common threads turn out to be? Like that's a, that is a fun and wide ranging set of things to meander through.

Chris Denson: Well, Eric, you have to read the book. No. Okay. All right. Fine. No, no, no. For me, you know, like I have a degree in engineering, right? And I went to shout out to Michigan State Spartans. Go green. Go, oh, go white. Wait, hold on. Yeah. Yes, sir. Okay. All right. That's going to be a whole other conversation. So yeah, I got an engineering degree, worked at Chrysler, and then I always had this draw towards entertainment. And so there was just kind of these two very different disciplines. One is very scientific, mechanical, methodical. Another one is like, what if this was a concept? Right. And, and let's play with that. And so I think both of those muscles that have just continued to evolve, where I tried to bring some form of entertainment value to the things that I do, but all of it is kind of create a problem solving, whether it's like. You know, you've heard a dozen jokes about dating right from 30 different comedians, but like the next person that doesn't have to think of it, presenting it in a different way that the audience reacts to that people go like, Oh, I feel that. And that is also true for me. And I think the same thing happens in, you know, entrepreneurship, another social media platform, another AI tool, another. Thing that we've seen before, but how do I do it differently? And in a way that's a little bit more sticky, a little bit more long lasting and easily monetizable. And also the thing that I really started to nerd out about over the last few years, especially like kind of kicked off with the book is just what are the internal mechanisms that are going on and what are the synapses that are firing emotionally and scientifically that are in the way or also fueling the things I'm trying to build and create.

Eric Jorgenson: Very cool. So when you started writing the book, did you have a clear sense or was the book a sort of method of figuring out?

Chris Denson: Well, luckily, so it was coming off the tail end of me having done probably 300 interviews with folks in the innovation economy. I'd also, at the time, was running the innovation practice for the largest media agency in the world. And so not only was I practicing innovation, I was also just being really nosy about people who were in the innovation economy and people of notes, whether there's celebrities or celebrity entrepreneurs or a nine-year-old kid who figured out a way to raise a million dollars for his best friend's disease and it was just extracting these principles. So I was able to organize it through working with Scribe. It's funny because I was like, I think I'm going to do an A to Z guide and just make some words up that are definitions and you guys were like, you don't want to do that. I spent a few weeks just kind of growing, going back to the drawing board and what I landed on was the 10 essential rules for breaking essential rules, right? If you are going to like, oh, here's how everything is done. Innovation goes, nah, we're going to try it a little bit differently this time. So you have to know what those rules are in order to like navigate them in your own way. And that's what I started to find. Like I think one of the best driving questions and working with scribe was, you know, what are some common questions you get asked about the innovation process? I was like, oh, OK, they kind of all like whether it's sports or deep tech or something, you know, analog, it's like, oh, there there are certain things that still are like resonate and are the thread. Go back going back to your other question throughout those different verticals and mechanics.

Eric Jorgenson: Yeah, I think it's such a cool like it is a great essential rules for breaking essential rules is cool because I feel like there's so many. truisms around this of like, you know, the great artists break the rules, but they followed them first. They knew they know how and when to break the rules. And that's how you get that mix of things that you sort of alluded to in the comedy world. It has to feel both familiar and fresh and useful, like all at the same time, that kind of like the parameters have created problems. I mean, so you got to know which barriers to knock down so that it feels fresh and which to leave in place so that it feels familiar and useful and still solves the problem for, you know, Yeah, your audience, your reader, your user, whatever it is. Oh, yeah.

Chris Denson: No, it is a little bit of a matrix of things to navigate. And I think keeping a lot of the folks who have an idea, whether it's your startup founder or your CEO of a 10,000 person organization, it's like you have some vision of the future and that vision doesn't always match the baby steps that you need to take. You're like, oh, well, unless we get all these 25 things in place, then we need to pause and hold on it. One of the best rules of the game is start where you are. We've all toothpicked a thing together. We're like, oh, well, it'll stand up on its own. If we can just make it last for this amount of time. What you're alluding to on a more macro scale is this concept that I love and I talked about in the book is just like some of the best innovations come from constraint. We don't have enough time, resource, know how, bandwidth, money. Like there's a long list of things you wished you had in order to make the move that you want to make. And so like that can be a really emotionally confronting space. You know, it's like, ah, the frustration or the sadness or the self-worth or the doubt or whatever else comes up. And I think it can be, look, it's going to sound altruistic, but it can be a really healing process building anything. If you're aware and open to that like avenue.

Eric Jorgenson: Yeah, the constraints are your friend and enable a creativity that you might not have had otherwise, or embracing the constraint maybe keeps you from being blocked by an illusion. I feel like for some people it's a way to say like, oh, I don't have this, so I can't achieve this. And it's like, well, that's just your excuse to not try. And if you embrace the constraint, you'll figure something out. You'll get creative on a new dimension. Absolutely. I love it. Do you find that you are teaching with this book now as you're still running workshops and coaching people? I know you still do a lot of innovation work. Has it transformed how you do the day-to-day work?

Chris Denson: Yeah, surprisingly it's like, it is sort of a really easy guidebook, right? And it's, I think what I find for me is that it affirms something that I feel is evergreen. I think you can write AI for the golden age and five years from now, that might be irrelevant or fit what you may have written about AI 15 years ago might be irrelevant. But I think when it comes to the mechanics, it's like the 22 immutable laws of marketing. It's a book that was written very analog and it still holds up. I'm always just like, that still does work. Things like empathy. This was the first rule that I wrote about. How does empathy go into the creation process? Understanding deeply who you're creating for, that end user, who you're creating with, what's happening with your team and understanding their strengths, gifts, weaknesses, hurdles, and then who you are in that process, having empathy for yourself. That is an ecosystem for creation. It's funny, for me, it's the springboard. But then there's things like, hiring a team of misfit toys, hiring for invisible skill sets and transferable skills, which will then get you fresh eyes on a problem or an issue rather than somebody who has a resume that is stacked with the things that you need. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but I'm just bringing that up as an idea and a concept that was presented in the book and still kind of holds true today, especially now with the world being topsy-turvy. And it's like, the number of layoffs that are happening and just how people are feeling about what's going on. You have to be very, I don't know, observant in how other people can be able to assist you in casting that vision.

Eric Jorgenson: Yeah. Were there, speaking of constraints, were there constraints on the book that changed sort of the course? The creative course of the book?

Chris Denson: The first thing that comes to mind is like, I remember I wanted the book to be out by South by Southwest, which is in Austin. And so we started the process, maybe the September before, like October, maybe. So I have from October to March to, you know, to go from Blake pages. Not a lot of time. Not a lot of time. I remember specifically being at CES in Las Vegas. It was my birthday. I was also leading a team of maybe like 20 people. We were giving tours to clients all over the CES show floor. We were putting on a startup event and I had to book time with you all to like review the book in quarters. So I had like, all I was like, I don't know how I'm going to get through this week. Obviously I did, right? You talk about constraint. It's like that's four days in a city of planning and leading and like presenting and then also like reviewing. I didn't remember how many pages the book was, but it's not, it was no easy feat. It was two hours per quarter that I had to dedicate with you guys to like. So, you know, I think when you get squeezed through a portal like that, you're like, oh, I'm actually capable and have a lot more capacity than I thought I may have. And that is, again, the best innovations come from constraint. I did, you know, I also was like achieving a new level of output and, you know, it becomes a new baseline after that.

Eric Jorgenson: Yeah, that's incredible. One of my out of the pocket taglines is we help busy people write books, and that's about as good of an example as I've ever heard of. Everybody's busy. Everybody has a lot of commitments. We tend to work with coaches, entrepreneurs, executives, and it's like, Yeah, you don't have a thousand hours to put it a keyboard you want. You need like leverage and process and you show up for that call like a really here's the three most important things that need to change about this or that I want to reinforce or get filled in or whatever. And yeah, so that is a really that is a good we're not going to worry. We're not going to quibble about the commas. We're going to like tackle the big stuff. Yeah, exactly. Right away and stay on the timeline.

Chris Denson: No static constraints force you to really recognize what's important. Right. And I think we talked about this on our last call, but like the, the commas and things, or sometimes even verbiage, like these kind of like, I call it minutiae for the sake of the conversation. Not that I think every detail matters, but also some of them don't. Right. And I remember speaking to a director friend of mine who's like a documentarian and you know, has made several award winning documentaries. And I was like, do you ever feel like you're finished? And she goes, no. Like there's always something I wish I could have changed or I watch it and I go like, ah, or just there's just you're never quite done with the process until you like you're finished. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

Eric Jorgenson: Yeah. Until it gets published and then you start another one. Exactly. But, you know, and you remember that those things are invisible for for pretty much everybody else. Okay. So, so we are now eight years, little more than eight years from the book being out. You know, you were, you were early with Scribe and publishing this and that's a great opportunity because most authors that we talk to and have on this podcast are pretty freshly published. And so they're still kind of like, how do I, how do I hit my stride? What's the long-term of this thing? What, what is kind of the enduring. impact of this book going to be. I'm excited to get an eight-year-out snapshot of what is the payback start to look like? What things have you experienced? as an author now for, for so long and how it's impacted like your, your life and your work.

Chris Denson: Yeah. That's a, that's such a great and loaded question. No.

Eric Jorgenson: Yeah, that's, that's a, that's a like, here's a very big box. There's no constraints.

Chris Denson: Just tell me where you want to go. I'm, I'm just fishing for good stories in this very, no, I like, I think I went into this. I think one of the best parts of the process was like, and I didn't use this to some degree in my coaching is like what. Do you want to get out of this process? And, you know, the altruistic answer is like, I want to give people tools and wisdom and help their journeys be easier. And then the, the push that I was given from you all was no, what do you want from it for yourself? And so to like really think selfishly and non altruistically, I was like, I want to be able to introduce myself less. When I walk into a room, I want to have, you know, people sort of already know how I think what I've done, what's, you know, but what, how I see the world and to, you know, in a lot of rooms, that was the case. I was. thoroughly flabbergasted in a positive way about how receptive people were just to the fact that I'd written a book, not even having read a page. In some cases are like, Oh, well, can you come speak to our thing? What's your book about? Oh, we need that. Right? Like the sort of. Ease that it created in some spaces and then just to truly level set it's like it matters to a lot of people that it mattered to and some people have never heard of me at all and both of those being able to hold that duality and like the lesson of like I am still who I am centered as a human being. But also, yeah, the creating that ease of an on-ramp to a conversation or a project or an opportunity was really great. I had gone to New Zealand, Australia, Africa, London. I did a book launch at South by Southwest with the Michigan house. My full circle moment is sitting and being interviewed by Josh Luber from StockX and going, This is, I mean, I'm a kid who left Detroit, went on a crazy series of journeys and then here I am full circle with the things that I've learned. I mean, like the opening of my book talks about how my first stand-up performance was at Michigan State University and how I compare stand-up comedy to innovation. So it was just like, it was really wonderful tapestry of moments. but then to this day. I had a call two weeks ago and the guy was like, I'd already read your book and just humbled by this conversation. I'm showing up almost with a little bit of dysmorphia. It's just me. He's pouring it on thick and having had to come across the book and some other things that the book led to.

Eric Jorgenson: Yeah. I say often that a book ends up being a force multiplier for everything else that you do in life. So that kind of question, it opens doors that you didn't necessarily know were there. What are some of the things that you said that the book led to? Two things come to mind.

Chris Denson: One was being able to create a workshop for the UN General Assembly. On paper, I have no business doing that. But because this book was a tool and because at the time they were knee deep in the sustainable development goals, and I'd been doing some work adjacent to fintech financial technology, and we're like, to accomplish all of these goals, finance, is a part of each and every one of them and how we look and think about money. And so using these principles of innovation and empathy and tactical ingenuity to go like, hey, guys. have you ever thought about it this way?" Again, a little bit of imposter syndrome, a little bit of all-inspired moment. That was a really cool outcome. I can tell you similar stories a dozen times over about that. There's another one, I'm drawing a blank, but that one was pretty cool. That was one of my favorites.

Eric Jorgenson: Yeah, UN General Assembly is a really cool, I'm sure that's just a fascinating room. It is, it is.

Chris Denson: The other one, I'd gotten invited to PayPal and let's keep in mind that the book did become a number one bestseller in its category and going to PayPal working with their innovation team. and not only just being interviewed on stage, that was broadcast to the entire company. They had a book club already and so my book was part of their book club and then I got invited to just do an intimate Zoom presence with that entire team. It's just like those are Things you hear about, but you don't necessarily experience until you experience and you're like, oh, people really do do like this is a possibility for me. And I think, yes, it just, I think it opened up a flood gates of what even I thought was a possibility for my own career, my own journey.

Eric Jorgenson: Yeah, the doors you didn't even know were there. I think that's such a cool thing. There's a few things that you exemplify in here that I think are really amazing and useful for authors. One is introduce yourself less, but not in the sense of I want to be a famous author. In specific rooms is such a helpful and important frame of when the CMOs or chief innovation officers of the Fortune 1000 are in a room. I want one third of the room to know who I am. That's a really clear and specific goal that a book can absolutely help you achieve that can totally change your life. But it's so much more specific and actionable than this, I want to be a famous author. I want to be on Oprah's couch kind of thing. This specific room's frame is really, really useful.

Chris Denson: Yeah, I think even when I got introduced to Scribe, it was, I think that was just conversationally and anecdotally, it was like, oh, if an author comes to us and says I want a New York Times number one bestseller, like that's a flag for us. And it just, you know, not that I was, not that that's what I came to the table with, but it was a really good reframe, like, I don't know. Impact, I guess, is more of a, you know, a better word. Like what impact do I want to have so that that third of the people in the room is like, oh, yes, like these have been really good insights. I'm excited to hear or learn more from this person. And so, yes, there are a lot of different avenues of doing that, but I think a collection of thoughts, you know, that are neatly laid out. And even as we were constructing the book, I was like, I'm a lazy reader. I want something that if I flip and I just randomly flip the book open, I can find something and I don't want to have to have read chapter four to understand chapter nine. I'm like, I just want to be able to extract one thing. And that's how I tried to create the book. So that if you read it linearly, great. If you just crack it open, also great.

Eric Jorgenson: But yeah. I think that's a, that is a very fun type of book to read and write. Um, so I, I think that's a really, also it's a constraint that helps you find your format, right? The other one that you mentioned was indirectly. It's like, I think you said people were like reaching out to you who had probably not read the book, but you're like, they, They knew the book existed and they wanted, they were like, I know this book existed. You're the kind of person, if you wrote this book, you're the kind of person we want to speak or lead or bring us in or teach my team. And I think maybe reasonably so for all the work that goes into writing a book, but God, so many more people hear of your book than ever actually read it. that it's easy to underestimate the impact. You're like, oh, there's only, you know, a thousand people that are going to like read this thing. I hope I impact them. But it's like, yeah, but a hundred thousand people, for a thousand people to read your book, a hundred thousand people will have heard of it. And that's actually in so many cases, way more impactful than. And I think, you know, I've talked about this concept of the invisible domino effect, right?

Chris Denson: So let's say one person read the book and they use 30% of the principles in it, they're gonna show up differently in the things that they are dedicated to. And then that person is gonna go like, oh, you seem like I like that process we use. Oh yeah, I read it in this book. And then if that person who was having that conversation goes on to a new job or a new venture, they're going to be using that thing that they learn from that person. And so, you know, I find that, and this is talked about in the book because for a long time in the agency world, our volume of ideation output far outweighed the things that were actually implemented. So it's just like we might present Warner Brothers with 25 ideas. One of them gets picked and even that one is torn apart and like bastardized in some way. And I had to go the value of our thinking is that somebody's going to go, oh, I didn't know that. And then they're going to tell somebody else something that they've learned and that person is going to implement it in some way. And there's this like invisible ripple effect that happens, you know, just by like having tried to up your game five percent.

Eric Jorgenson: Yeah, that is a fantastic story. I love the love is like. tools of thought to help recontextualize this book and this author journey. What would you offer as advice or earned wisdom for somebody who's maybe where you were 10 years ago, which is contemplating the journey, but feeling unclear maybe? They haven't just had that one moment of this is happening and they're trying to figure out if this is the right road for them to go down.

Chris Denson: You gotta have an appetite for exploration. You know, I think most of us want to show up with the answer or they want the answer easily like. in a box. And I think, you know, just using my lens, like innovation, creativity is a very exploratory process. You step into it, you don't really know what you're going, like you're heading in a direction, but you don't really know what the real outcome is gonna be. And I think you have to like up your appetite for that unknown, that playing in the gray, you know, way of being. So that's one. Two is, I'll speak for myself, is just like the imposter syndrome is like, if I write it, will they come? You know, kind of thing. And to your point, it's like a synopsis and a bio and outreach to the right handful of people can like really be your first exponential step. You know, and that was, it was very affirming for me to go like, Oh, people are reacting and responding already and. Maybe I don't fully know why, but I do. It's that underestimation of your own value when you're doing these things. Then we live in social media generations. Every other post is like, look what I've done. Look at the amazing things I've done or they're crying. We live somewhere in this like, we need to sensationalize or we need to show up in a certain way or a certain perceived level of quality. And everybody starts with this baby step, the unknown, the like, maybe I should, like the sort of stutter stepping.

Eric Jorgenson: I think it's just embracing the process, like, and seeing where it goes. How did you win that wrestling match with imposter syndrome? I feel like that's a nearly universal experience for authors in particular, new authors, but you know, to some extent. Well, the big answer is self-love.

Chris Denson: That is a practice that feels really strange at first to like whatever it is you think you want from other people when you walk into that room to go like, oh, you are the right person. You didn't fool us. Whatever imposter syndrome tells you, it's just a reflection of your own sense of your own value. It's a tap on the shoulder to go, maybe we should work on this. Right? From a tactical perspective, I was like, it just became a little bit of a superpower. It was like, well, it's also a driver for me to do excellent work. It's a driver for me to show up and go above and beyond because I think that they, you know, that I don't belong here. So guess what? I'm going to definitely prove it. And you can have a healthy relationship with that tension. I think that's where it gets troubling is when, you know, at least all these other emotional experiences that are a little bit more challenging. I think if you're talking about some of the world's best basketball players, you talk shit to them on the court and you tell them they're not good enough. You're like, oh, well watch this. There's this bravado, there's almost a leveling up that happens in that moment of doubt. It's finding your way to use it as a leverage for tapping into a superpower. Yeah.

Eric Jorgenson: So much so that they would actually do that to themselves in some cases. Like I remember the, you know, yeah.

Chris Denson: I mean, I used to run cross country and I remember like going on 10 mile runs and I'd be like, and shit to myself, you know, and like cussing myself out. And like, but it was, you know, this was high school, but like, it became like a weird motivational driver, like to really like, you see him in the movie, the crazy person slapping themselves. We're not allowed to say crazy anymore, be careful. But yeah, so it can be a motivator if you have a, if you learn to have a healthy relationship with it and don't let it like go off the deep end.

Eric Jorgenson: I love it.

Chris Denson: Yeah. There's also great books on it.

Eric Jorgenson: There's books I've read on it and just kind of like studied it enough to go, OK, I'm OK. Yeah, I like that you have a kind of almost opposing solutions at two different levels. It's like at a very high level. self-confidence and self-love and at a very tactical level, embrace it and use it to just do better work. If you get those reversed, it's actually probably not so practical, not such a good outcome.

Chris Denson: With any of those experiences, it doesn't go away. Even talking to you now, I'm like, but I think you learn to better manage some of the things that get in the way. The bird that's talking to your shoulder, you're like, okay, not right now. As opposed to like, yeah, I know, you know, you're having this. I know I'm terrible. Right. You're like, it's just like, it's still there. It doesn't go away. It's just like, I'm gonna get a little cracker. And this is really crazy metaphor. So excuse me.

Eric Jorgenson: No, it's a, it's a, it is, it is useful. And it's probably useful to like externalize it metaphorically too, because it helps you. understand that. I say all the time, and this is a good context for it. Writing a book isn't one decision to start, it's a thousand decisions to not quit. That imposter syndrome, I think for a lot of people is that little bird saying, you should quit, you should quit. I'm giving you excuses to quit. You're not good enough to finish this. You don't know what the next step is. And managing that voice is why I wanted to go so deep on it here. Managing that and knowing how to either give it a crack or give it a flick and just get through the day or at least not quit that day, even if you lose the battle, that day is a huge part of just continuing to move forward, which is how some of these big accomplishments get done. Yeah. Oh yeah.

Chris Denson: No, I mean, I think we all know how to perform despite ourselves. It's just when we're performing in a new domain. that like for some reason the rules change, right? And I think learning a lesson as a writer, I mean, you know, coming through the comedy and television world, just like writing is rewriting. You always got to do something over. And guess what? You're going to a writer's room every day. It doesn't matter if your mom yelled at you that morning or your kids misbehaving or you don't feel good. It's like you just show up and you put some words on the page and you'll have a chance to revisit it. And it may not feel like your best quality work, but I think sometimes like. you're feeling 70, 60% is still somebody else's 120, especially if you're an expert in this specific domain. So me writing about innovation and creativity is like days where I wasn't feeling it. I'm like, I'm still like, people are still finding value in what I'm bringing to the table. I just have a different like lens of quality that I'm looking at.

Eric Jorgenson: This has been awesome, Chris. I appreciate so much the stories and the encouragement and the wisdom that I know is hard-won and well-earned. It's great to meet a fellow Spartan on the road. This is fantastic. Where should people follow along to learn more about you, your book, the workshops you're doing, the type of work that you're doing?

Chris Denson: I am a Densynology on most social platforms. Pretty active most on Instagram. LinkedIn is always pretty easy and visionology is what the practice is called. Kind of this level of tactical ingenuity and personal expansion simultaneously. I've been using that to like drive innovation forward.

Eric Jorgenson: Awesome. And I think the book is excellent and recommend it. And I learn something from you every time we talk. So I appreciate you taking the time to share with me and with our listeners. Thank you so much.

Chris Denson: Yeah, absolutely.