Episode 14: Sheletta Brundidge

In this episode, host Frank Sentwali chats with Emmy-winning comedian, media powerhouse, and autism advocate Sheletta Brundidge about her remarkable journey, from breaking barriers in broadcasting to founding a media company that lifts up Black voices and families like her own. 

Sheletta talks candidly (and hilariously) about the power of faith, grit, and creativity in tackling life’s toughest challenges, including raising three children with autism. She reflects on how laughter is her calling, and how she uses it, alongside bold action and relentless community-building, to change systems, open doors, and bless others. If you’ve ever needed a reminder that your gifts are meant to be used and shared, this is it.

🔗 Listen now on Spotify and Apple Podcasts

About COMPAS
COMPAS (compas.org) is a nonprofit with 50 years of experience delivering creative experiences to millions of Minnesotans of all ages and abilities, particularly those from historically marginalized communities. COMPAS connects professional teaching artists with students, older adults, and other community members to inspire creativity and empower voices.

About Creativity on Tap
Creativity on Tap is produced by COMPAS. In each episode, Creativity on Tap brings together educators, entrepreneurs, elected officials, parents, and other community leaders to discuss creativity and answer the question: What is creativity, and how can it solve the unique challenges facing today's world?

Creativity On Tap is part of Creativity Saves the World, an initiative led by COMPAS to explore, celebrate, and emphasize the pivotal role creativity can and must play in shaping a world that prioritizes equity, justice, and inclusivity.

Theme music, "Krank It," was produced by COMPAS Teaching Artist Bionik.

#COMPASCreates #CreativitySavesTheWorld #CreativityIsForEveryone 
#CreativityOnTap #COMPASCreates #ShelettaBrundidge #BlackCreatives #AutismAdvocacy #MinnesotaVoices #WFNU94_1FM #ShelettaMakesMeLaugh #WomenInMedia #BlackMomsLead #EmmyWinner #CreativeChangemakers #UseYourGifts

Transcript

Creativity on Tap - Sheletta Brundidge

Welcome to Creativity on Tap. Creativity on Tap is a series of conversations produced by COMPAS about the value and importance of creativity. 

For more information about Compass and how creativity saves the world, visit c-o-m-p-a-s dot org. I am your host, Frank Sentwali and I hope you enjoy this episode of Creativity on Tap. Our guest this week is Sheletta Brundidge

Sheletta Brundidge is an Emmy award-winning comedian, radio host, and founder of SheLettaMakesMeLaugh.com, a multimedia platform she launched in 2020. Frustrated by the lack of diversity in traditional media, Sheletta built her own table, producing podcasts, launching marketing campaigns, publishing books, and building meaningful partnerships. While continuing her roles on WCCO Radio and TPT's Almanac and in the Minnesota Star Tribune, she remains a leading voice in comedy, public policy, and advocacy for small Black businesses.

Welcome to Creativity on Tap, Sheletta Brundage. Welcome. Thank you so much for having me.

It's such an honor to be here. I really appreciate you calling my name and inviting me to be on the show. Thank you so much, Mr. Frank.

Well, we are excited and delighted to have you. You are a fascinating personality. You do what I consider to be the most difficult thing in all of entertainment business, which is making people laugh.

Yeah, so right now that is a bit of a challenge, but you know, if it's a gift, it's not hard. You know, we all have a gift. You know, one of the things that my pastor Adrian Williams at Sanctuary Church was preaching on this week, there's a series and it's called Gifted, right? And so I was sitting in church and I'm listening because I think I'm gifted, right? I think, you know, we all think whatever the gift is that we gifted and we're using our gift because we want God to enlarge our territory and make our name great.

And when you said gifted, it reminded me of, you know, what he talked about in church on Sunday. And that was that the gifts that we have are not just for us. They're for other people.

Like God has given each one of us a gift, something special and unique specifically for us. And that gift is supposed to be used to help other people. And so what happens is, is that some of us are just too scared to use our gifts.

We're scared of failure. We're scared of trying. We're scared of rejection.

And so we have this amazing gift that God has given to each one of us. And some of us don't even unwrap it. Yes, ma'am.

Don't even take the bow off. Some of us will unwrap it, look at it and close the top because it's a little overwhelming. And so because laughter and joy are my gifts, it's a lot easier to do, right? Because before I go into the room, the spirit goes ahead of me.

Right. So when I go into the room, the hearts are already softened. The people are already ready.

You know, the name of my company is not Shaletta Makes Me Cry. It's Shaletta Makes Me Laugh. And so people's hearts are not so hard when I get in the room.

And even the people whose hearts are hard, God already working on them. All I got to do is keep operating in my gift and using my gift to bless other people. And eventually they'll come on over to the light side. 

I say, you know, if they don't want to come over here, they in the dark side. So they'll come on over here to the light side. So when you are operating in your gift, whatever that is, whether that is gardening, whether that is speaking, whether that is writing, whether that is cooking or sewing or taking care of children or cutting hair or shining shoes, whatever your gift is, when you operate in that gift, it's so easy.

I heard Steve Harvey say one time, people say, well, I don't know what my gift is. I don't know what my gift is. And he says something, you know, he country like me.

So he broke it all the way down. You know, he said, your gift is the thing that you do the best with the least amount of work. Your gift is going to be whatever it is that you do that doesn't require you to work.

Like I can come in a room and light up a room. Like it don't require nothing. But if you give me a spreadsheet, I'm going to have a brain bleed.

I got four cells before I shut it down. You sound like me. I'm like, keep numbers away from me.

I'm a spoken word artist. Give me a paper, give me a pen, give me a keyboard, but don't put them numbers in front of me. Don't you put no numbers in front of me.

Tell us your origin story. Where is Shanetta Brundage from? How did she end up in Minnesota and doing what she does? Well, I am from Houston, Texas, home of Beyoncé. Hey, Beyoncé.

And so when I graduated from college, I started immediately working in broadcasting. This is my 24th year in news and broadcasting. How about that? Wow.

Thank you. So I started out in news and broadcasting down south. And then the guy I was dating, Shawn Brundage, at the time he had just graduated from medical school and he got a fellowship at M Health Fairview.

They were recruiting African-American health care professionals. And so he was chosen to come up. And so I came up here and saw all these black men dating white women and all these single black men and black women who was on the few single black men and dated black women.

And they was on him. I said, oh, hell no. And the sisters was liking him.

And Phil was dating white women. I didn't know what the hell was going on up here when I came to visit, but I knew I wasn't going to leave him here by himself. Not today, Jesus.

I have worked too hard to reel this man in. And some other sister is not going to get the benefits of my rewards. I'm going to take the money and vote up here with him.

He was like, what you doing? I was like, I'm moving in. And so he just happened to move across the street from a TV station, which was KSTP. It's before the light rail.

So I literally like walked across the street and got it. And worked at Hubbard Broadcasting for about four or five years. And then the housing market happened and our house was underwater.

We both got laid off. So we moved to Houston where I'm from. I was working at the Legacy Station, ABC there, working with all the people that I grew up watching on TV.

My grandparents were proud. My parents were proud to say, you know, Shaletta works at Channel 13 because that's been the number one station in the country for years. And so I told my husband at the time, I said, listen, if we want some more babies, now's the time.

Because at the time we only had one child. I said, so we have got to go ahead and crank out these kids. Because we getting old.

You know, I'm 46, everything ain't swimming and these eggs are hard boiled. Let's go, let's go, let's go. And so we had three babies in two years.

And we were having children so quickly that we didn't realize that something was wrong. So my oldest son, we've had him in Minnesota. He was a super intelligent kid who could read before he was one.

He probably trained himself. He could count money. He could perform.

He was modeling. He was doing speeches in church. I mean, he was just like the perfect little kid, right? But the other three kids, they weren't looking at me.

They weren't reading. They weren't engaging. They weren't following simple commands.

I couldn't tell them stop. I couldn't tell them come over here. They couldn't call my name.

They didn't know if you called their name. I was like, something ain't right. And so we got them tested.

And the three younger children all had autism. And so I was like, okay. So I went to a social worker down in Texas and said, what services do you have for my children who have autism? And they said, well, you can put them in a group home when they turn 14.

I said, wait, they're four. They're four. What do you mean put them in a group home? They said, well, the waiting list for kids with autism is 10 years.

And so I thought that's not going to work because everything I'm reading says early intervention is the key. So I looked around in some of the other states that I lived in because, you know, in news and broadcasting, you move around to different markets. So Minnesota had the shortest waiting list.

So I devised a plan. I sent my husband at the time up to Minnesota. He moved into an apartment.

He got a driver's license, which got us an opportunity to get on the wait list. And I stayed back with the kids. So he could get up here, establish himself, work really hard, find us a place to stay, move us in.

And once he got off the wait list, we moved up. And so the kids got the therapy that they needed. And by the grace of God, my children went from not talking to talking back, and one of them even liked cussing.

I said, I don't want my kids to get help. I want them to get healed. And so Brandon, Cameron, and Daniel are doing so well in their autism journeys that they're a model for schools and therapy centers across the country.

And they offer hope to parents that things can and will get better. Well, you know, that segues into what I was going to ask you next, because you describe yourself as a bulldozer in the autism community. And that's a quote from you.

And it's clear that you're pushing through barriers, but there's a lot of creativity in how you get people to listen to what you need as a parent and how you explain your children's needs as a parent and then get people to act on those things and then get people to listen and act that are outside of the autism community. So tell us a little bit about how creativity, and you've kind of shared some of it, sending your husband ahead and things like that. Tell us a little bit how creativity has helped you in opening eyes and ears and creating change in the autism community.

You know, my prayer every day, I pray for three things, creativity, connections, and resources, because I can have all kinds of creative ideas, but if I don't have connections and I don't have the resources, it's just going to be ideas. You know, and so many, especially for black and brown people and creative people like us, so many creative people, our books die on the dining room table. They live just on the phone with our friends.

I remember T.D. Jakes saying that success is not a dollar amount. Success is an idea that you can take from inside your head and put it in front of your face. So it's so important that we, especially as creatives, step out of the box, do it afraid, and take that creativity and connect to some resources and some connections.

Creativity, connections, and resources. So for instance, one of the things that I did a couple of years ago when I realized that the unemployment rate for adults with autism is larger than any other group is I said, I'm going to have an autism job fair. That's a great idea, right? That's an awesome idea, but I need some connections.

I need to be able to call Hy-Vee and Rimmer Bank and M Health Fairview and Krauss Anderson and Minneapolis Police Department and Metro Transit and get them all in a room to recruit these adults with autism. I have to be connected to the autism community, right? That these mothers and fathers who have children, adult children with autism, will trust me to bring their children to me, right? That I'm not trying to scam them. I'm not trying to sell them something.

I'm not trying to take advantage of them. They have to trust me. And so we had 400 people to show up that day.

That was the first ever job fair for adults with autism. You mean to tell me that little old me, little old me, who got four kids, you know, divorced mother, running a business, trying to run my house, trying to get this laundry put away, right? Because the laundry's not going to jump out the dryer into the drawer. You know, the tubs are not self-cleaning, right? Right? My daughter got a rash on her leg right now because I ain't cleaned the bathtub for three weeks.

Hello? And we're going to just about it, right? But that creativity, you got to have some connections, right? And you got to have some resources. So I'm trying to connect. Every time I meet somebody, if I'm on the elevator, I'm connected.

Who are you? What is your story? Why does the Lord have the two of us on an elevator together? What are we supposed to be doing with each other? How are we supposed to be helping each other? So connections are so important. You know, a lot of times, creative people, we have to work alone to write the poems. We have to work alone to write the articles.

We have to work alone to do these podcasts, but we got to come outside of that. You know, one of the things that we say at ShalettaMakesMeLaugh.com is our podcasts are just a platform to connect to people, to help people, to engage people, to inspire people. And you're not going to do that closed up in the house.

You're not going to do that closed up because you got to get out the house. You got to show up at everything. You got to be there.

You got to be engaging. You got to be working because that's the only way you're going to make connections. And when you make connections, you get the resources.

I cannot tell you how many times the Lord has told me there's a blessing in the room. Your blessing is in the room. I could pray all day in that closet.

I really could because I love Jesus that much. But at some point, I'm going to come out that closet and get this work done. And my blessing is in the room.

I remember one time I was at home and the Lord told me to go to the Business Hall of Fame luncheon, right? And I said, well, I don't know nobody here. What am I going here for? I don't know anybody in this room. He said, just go.

We'll get in there and I'll meet Keri Rehm. Keri Rehm owns a trucking and real estate company and the woman is worth 220 million dollars. We're going to the Earth, Wind and Fire concert together.

We're going to see the Doobie Brothers together. I get to speak at an event for her female employees. Keep the blessings in the room.

I meet John Hemley. John Hemley's retired and rich and he used to do the thing that I'm trying to do now. So he's giving me all of this free advice about how to run my business properly and what I need to build for and how I need to work and hire people.

My blessing was in the room. But here's the thing about creators. We want people to come to us.

You know what I mean? We want to just do it and put it out there and think it's great and everybody's going to gravitate to it. That's not the case. We got to go and take the thing that we do, our talent, our gift.

We talked about gift at the beginning of this, right? We got to take that gift and we got to shove it down people's throats and make them eat it. Like, I shove my gift in your throat and make you eat it. I'm going to shove these jokes down your throat.

I'm going to shove these children's books down your throat. I'm going to shove these pond cans down your throat. I'm going to shove me down your throat and I'm going to make you eat it.

And guess what? You're going to love it. It's so tasty and you're going to be full. You're not going to want to eat nothing else.

You're going to love eating off my plate, right? Because I got creativity, connections, and resources. And the resources are only going to come if we get in the room. And so, you know, people say, well, how are you so successful? First of all, I pray and ask God to lead me.

But second of all, I don't mind working. I don't mind doing crazy stuff that don't make no sense during the time that I'm doing it, right? I decided I wanted to have a prayer service for parents who have kids with special needs, because I understand how hard it is to have a child with autism. And nobody got registered.

Nobody, you know, said they were coming. And so I called the church and I said, listen, we're going to cancel this. And the girl was like, how are you going to cancel the prayer service? I said, because ain't nobody showed up.

And I'm a businesswoman. I got four kids. I don't have no time to show up for no prayer service where ain't nobody going to show up.

And she was like, well, what if somebody shows up? What do you want us to do? I was like, tell them it's canceled. She said, look, I'm so glad she did it. She said, why don't you just show up, bring your laptop and work.

And then if somebody shows up, you pray with them. And I was like, okay. But I came in with a horrible mindset, right? Which is why the Lord probably didn't send nobody my way.

And so I went and two of our elders at the church showed up and they said, Ms. Shaletta, nobody's here, but let's just pray for the kids of the church. Let's just walk around the church and pray for the seats. Let's just, let's pray for the people who are not here.

And it changed my mind frame. And we began to just pray and pray and pray. And one woman showed up.

One. Like this was one to three. She showed up at 2 57.

I'm like, I know damn well she ain't at 2 57. She was out of school at 3 15. It was like she had her baby with her, but she also had a lot of bags.

And so she was telling us about how her daughter had autism and how it was so hard. And so we prayed for her. And then afterwards, you know, like she didn't know where to go.

I said, mom, where are you going? And she said, I'm homeless. Lord, I know you ain't just send me no homeless woman at 2 57 and this ain't over at three o'clock. And I got to go home and take care of my kids.

Oh my God, Jesus, you tripping. Right. And so I said, okay, Lord.

I said, okay, ma'am, this is what we're going to do. I'm going to get you a hotel. I said, I'm gonna get you a hotel for like two or three days.

And when you are, you know, by that time you ought to be able to find you somewhere to stay. And so, uh, two, three days later, the hotel, she still hadn't found a way to stay. So I got two, three more days.

And then the Lord reminded me that I had been the MC at the Tubman Gala and Tubman is a center here in the twin city of houses, women who are escaping domestic violence and I'm the CEO. And I said, Hey, listen, I got this lady. She came to a prayer meeting in my Can you house her? She said, Oh, of course.

Come on. So the woman got an Uber. She went over there.

I'm like, good. Thank you, Jesus. I'm done.

That was my good deed for the day. I'm off the hook, but wait, there's more. So the woman calls and she says, do you have any bedding? I said, what do you mean? She said, they have a shortage of bedding, like pillows and blankets and sheets, because as people leave and transition into their own place, they take the blanket to pillow with.

And so I thought, okay, this is a great idea. So I called the CEO back. I said, Hey, I heard that y'all having a shortage of bedding and pillows.

I want to have a bedding draft. I'm looking for an MLK Day of Service project. And I want to help raise bedding for you guys.

So not just me buy it and take it over, but invite black women, because the MLK Day was also the same day as the inauguration. And black women were just crushed that Kamala Harris did not win. And they were not about to see the first black woman president in their lifetime.

They did not want to see Donald Trump take the oath of office. And they were looking for something to do. So I gave them something to do.

Y'all come on over here, bring some beds, bring some pillows, bring some blankets. We're going to have a kachucha reward. We're going to have some hot tea.

We're going to have some fun. Y'all come on. So hundreds of black women came.

They raised $13,000 and 700 pieces of bedding that day. Here's the most beautiful thing. It was one, because I told, I told white women, white women hard headed.

I said, listen, this is not y'all's event. This is our event. Okay.

Don't come over here. You have your own MLK event. This is not for you.

While white women showed up anyway, don't listen. So this one white woman came and she gave me a check for $10,000 to give to Tubman. And I was like, wow, I was blown away.

The Tubman people were blown away. And I said, I want to take you to lunch. Turns out this woman is in charge of a foundation.

I went to lunch with this woman last Friday. This woman said, what you working on? I said, well, you know, I have black entrepreneurs day every year at the state Capitol where I bring four or 500 black business owners and we lobby legislators. I feed everybody.

She said, how much does it take to put that off? I said, it cost me about $26,000. She said, I want to pay for the whole thing. My blessing was in the room, not at Tubman, but at church when nobody showed up and I wanted to cancel.

That lady at the church, Saida Lester would not let me cancel. And God needed to make sure that I would take care of the one person who showed up before he trusted me. With this, all the one person who was going to answer the prayer that I prayed as creators.

We have to remember that our blessing is in the room. Blessing is in the crazy thing that don't make no sense. My blessing is the thing that we almost give up on.

Our blessing is in the most absurd, in the least attended. God wants to know if he can trust us with the one. Yeah, that is an amazing story and it speaks to how you, when you tell the story, I think about how you can bring humor to tough subjects, right? Tough topics.

And just the whole transition from your work advocating for autism and your work trying to really help people, just connect with people. You know, you're doing comedy, you're doing journalism, you're doing advocacy, you're publishing, you're doing podcasting. But the common theme that I'm getting from you as we discuss your journey today is communication and connections and allowing yourself to be open to communication so that you can build connections and then being in spaces so that those connections ultimately loom into resources, not just for yourself but for a community, right? So it would appear to me just from listening to you that part of your creative approach is a broader community approach and really trying to extend your tentacles in as many places and to as many faces as you can.

And so I want to ask you, you know, you talked, let's go back a little bit, you talked about your children. How have your children shown you creativity and how to see the world through a different creative lens given that they see the world differently? You know, that's the thing I share with people all the time is that, you know, we were, Frank taught that you, you know, go and work for somebody and give them all your brain matter, give them all your creative ideas, let them flourish and benefit from your creativity. And the more creative you are, the more money they make.

And then at some point that'll trickle down to you in the great buy and buy, right? And that's not the case. You know, Black people have, creative Black people have made billions of dollars for white founders and that money has now made its way to us. Think about Run DMC and the Adidas song back when Adidas was pumping and, you know, they made that song My Adidas and, you know, Adidas gave them tennis shoes for life.

And in the meantime, they made billions of dollars off of young Black buyers who just wanted to have Adidas on their feet. That return on that investment wasn't a good deal for Run DMC. And so, you know, but they made the money for another organization, another company.

And so what my children know, since I'm a business owner and they're surrounded by business owners, that they can make money for themselves. They can work for themselves. And that was not something, I don't know about you, but that was not something that I was taught as a child, that I could work for me, that I could be creative for me, that I could make all the money for me.

I was actually... To get away, give away this brain matter. Yeah, I was actually shunned from doing so. I remember my father saying, boy, when are you going to go get a nine to five? And it wasn't until he saw me, I invited him on my birthday.

We were performing at First Ave in the main room. We were opening up for Burning the Spear. And I said, all I want for my birthday is you and my mom, my stepmom, to come and see me on stage and see what I do.

Because his whole thing was, he just thought I was running around just talking into microphones and not making any money. And I had a child and all of that. And so it wasn't until he saw 1,500 people at First Avenue chanting our anthems and me on stage before it all made sense to him.

And he left me alone about going to find a regular nine to five job. And, you know, until I got on staff with Compass, I worked for myself for 20 plus years. Never, never did.

But we weren't taught that you could create your own path. Yeah. Don't work for somebody else.

Let them tell you what to do. So there's a whole part of our brain that's untapped because we don't wake up every day thinking, how am I going to hit this lift? What creative idea that I'm going to have today that's going to get Oprah's attention? How am I going to make the world look at me and see me as a person? What am I going to do so that my name is going to be up on that billboard or be in those lights? And, you know, as a business owner, you've heard TDJ say one time, nobody's going to pay you to make you rich. Nobody's going to hire you to make you rich.

If you want to get rich, you have to work for yourself. And, you know, God has just so blessed me with the business that I have that this year I paid off my mom and dad's car. Like, you know, when they came to visit me, we went to dinner with Walls and I got a limo and they were just like, oh, my God, to your point about you have to see it to believe.

Yeah. And so now my children come up with creative ideas. They're like, hey, mom, you know, we got our books.

Maybe next year we can do a companion toy with our books. Like Brandon's book is a soccer book. So maybe we'll have a soccer ball.

You know, my book, maybe we'll have a backpack. My book's about going to school and Daniel's book is about music. And so they're thinking of ways to be creative, to generate revenue, to build momentum on the things that have already been successful in our lives.

And so I really believe that, especially for our children, that we have to give them some space to be creative. Yes. Yes.

That's what Compass does. That's what we are all about is going into schools, community centers, libraries and and giving space for young people to be creative. I had a young man ask me a couple of weeks ago when he found out that I teach spoken word poetry and he said, you know, I want to I want to get into teaching spoken word.

How do you teach spoken word? And I said, well, I teach spoken word as a title to get me in front of the students in the classroom. It gives it an academic connection. But really, all I do is I open portals.

I give young people some basic poetry writing skills and public speaking skills. But all I try to do is open a portal and let them walk through that portal and discover for themselves, because you can't teach someone how to do spoken word poetry. All you can do is open up a portal that says if this is interesting to you, this possibility exists for you.

And so I think that speaks to what you're you're talking about. But, you know, so many systems right now feel stuck. They don't have so many systems, don't have people like you and I right in them.

And they're in the same the same kind of hamster in the wheel mentality. So, you know, where are you seeing creativity spark real change and what's giving you hope these days and as we kind of combat these archaic systems that are just, you know, almost on autopilot as they, like I said, try to keep the hamsters in the wheel? And we gotta, you know, just not put any corners with it. Like I let my kids see the grind.

I help them understand that this is not just going to go viral. You got to get out here and work. You got to make your connections.

You got to leave the house. You're going to be up early. You're going to be working late.

It's going to take time. You're going to have to use your resources, your brain matter. You're going to have to make connections.

You're going to have to be creative and you got to keep feeding this beast. You know, every morning you wake up, you got to throw coals on the fire or the fire's going to go out, you know? And so it's so important that we make sure that these kids see the benefits, but they also, and the blessing in it, but they also see how it works. Are you seeing hope for the future as in relative to like... These kids are so much smarter than us.

These kids are so much more creative than us. They have so many things at their disposal, stuff that we had to learn about in school, things that we had to get trained for for months. They can pick that stuff up in like minutes.

They also understand their worth. We never understood that. We were just grateful to be in the room.

These kids are like, you got to pay me. How much are we making? Even my own children, they fill out an invoice. They expect to get paid just like any of the other podcasters.

They fill out the invoice, they drop it in my box and they stand there and wait for their check. You know, you've got content creators like DDG and Kai Sanat who are making millions of dollars. And so these children understand, the young people understand their worth and value, and they know what they want to get paid, and they're not accepting anything less.

You know, where we would come in and say, well, I'm gonna take this job, get my foot in the door, work my way up. No, these kids come in up. I'm not even mad at them.

And they are actually showing us, they're teaching us, they're training us how to demand our worth and value and not to accept anything less. Do you think that you using laughter is helping people open up or even shift their perspectives on kind of the social topics we're dealing with in the world today? And how are laughter and creativity connected? For me, it's life. For me, it's breath.

For me, it's all I know. Laughter and creativity are my core. It's like breathing for me.

It's like walking for me. One foot is laughter, the other foot is creativity. I come out of that prayer closet every day with five or ten ideas that I can't even get to.

I heard Tyler Perry say one day the ideas just keep coming. And it's a blessing when that rains down on creativity. You know, because you can say, okay, so I got this idea, and I got that idea, and this is happening, and that's happening, and this is coming to pass, and that's gonna flourish, that's gonna pop.

Oh, I can't wait to tell them about this, and this is happening, and this is coming. And so it's just a blessing to be able to use the laughter. And again, that's my gifting.

Poetry is yours. Shining shoes is somebody else's. Creating shoes is somebody else's.

Making dresses, doing hair, designing lenses and glasses, and making videos and graphic artists. You know, whatever the gift is. Whatever the gift is.

You know, for me, it's laughter. For me, it's fun. You know, for me, it's self-deprecating humor about myself and my family.

It's the ability to tell stories in a way that brings levity to difficult topics and situations. That's me, right? So for every creative, you have that gift. Don't leave it wrapped up.

God gave it to you. Don't be afraid to open that box. Don't be afraid to use it.

Don't be afraid to fail. Don't be afraid to take chances and take risks and leap. Don't be afraid to do the scary stuff, because the scary stuff is where the success is.

The scary stuff is where your blessing is. The scary stuff is where your money is. You don't open that gift.

You leaving your money on the table. I think that is a great final word on creativity and words that should be heeded, and I hope our listeners are really drawing in and drawing energy and spirit from you. You are such a vibrant personality.

I can see why you've had so much success in your life and your approach to problem solving is words to live by. It's prayer. You think you're going to sit out here and do it on your own? You're going to jump off that building because one and one is not making two these days, okay? Everything that's up is down, and everything that's down is up, and I think that we really have to lean on our feet and get back to the basics, because we can't do it on our own.

We can try and have the best, but unless God breathes on it, looks at it, winks at it, touches it, or tells somebody else about it, we're going to be sitting on million-dollar ideas, and I don't know about nobody else, but I don't want to have hemorrhoids sitting on million-dollar ideas. I want all of my million dollars ideas to make me and my family and the community wealthy, and so I just, I can't say enough about how important our faith is in this creative walk, in this entrepreneurial journey, in this movement of Black founders throughout the great state of Minnesota, and especially for our kids, that the faith walk is really going to help you get to that next level of greatness. Words to Live By by Sister Shanetta Brundage.

She is the founder of shelettamakesmelaff.com. She is an Emmy award-winning comedian, radio host. She is a little bit of everything, and she has been our guest on Creativity on Tap today. Shanetta, thank you so much for taking your time out to join us on Creativity on Tap.

I do look forward to hearing more from you, and we might have to do this again. Yes, that sounds like a plan. Thank you, and thank your listeners for spending some time with us today.

We got new friends, new family. We're all in this together. Yes, what's up? You have been listening to Creativity on Tap.

Creativity on Tap is a series of conversations produced by Compass about the value and importance of creativity and its role in solving the unique challenges of this era. Our guest today was Shanetta Brundage, and if you'd like more information about Shanetta Brundage, please contact her at her website. Again, that is shelettamakesmelaff, that is s-h-e-l-e-t-t-a-m-a-k-e-s-m-e-l-a-u-g-h.

You can rewind that so you get it all, and thank you so much. For more information about Compass, please visit compass.org.