A 'Choose Yourself' Way to Become an Artist | Chase Jarvis

26:47That was an entirely new world for me. I even developed some iPhone apps. It was sort of like an interim stage between being a photographer. That was my on-ramp to the startup world is I did the first iPhone app that allowed you to take pictures, add cool effects called filters and then share that on social media. It ended up being a, photography is pretty popular today. Um, but that helped me understand that creativity could be scaled using technology. And that was a hybrid step between there and creative live. And I had all kinds of mistakes along the way. So was I fearful learning new things?

27:18Yes. Uh, was, did I make a lot of mistakes? Of course I did, but. And were you feel fearful of losing your connection to your roots in photography? I was, to me, I'd never left photography. I just stopped doing it for Nike and Apple and a lot of the biggest brands in the world and hanging in galleries and stuff like that because I really had, and I still feel this, I have a deep connection of photography. It underpins everything that I do. I'm a visual learner. I think photography is its own language. So I don't feel like I've left it, but I used everything that I learned in that universe to try and experiment and step into some of the new areas for which I was curious, inspired, and again, motivated to continue to try and have impact.

28:03You know, while you were talking, like you kind of like touch your heart, like in terms of, you know, when you were talking about which, you know, when you start doing photography, you realize this was the right path for you. And then it's kind of that feeling of each step of the way where, I don't know how to describe it, like where the, where the fire is lit and where it's not lit. So for instance, you started taking photographs, but then you, you got involved in another thing that you were interested in, which let's call it extreme sports or snowboarding, skateboarding, whatever. And that kind of fueled the fire more.

28:42So suddenly you, you know, combining these two things, you became very quickly to the top, you know, the front of the line in terms of the best photographers of photographing these types of things. And that was led completely, you called it intuition, but again, you're like touching, you were touching your heart. So like some fire is lit that, that points you in that direction. And I'll give you a simple counter example. I have, uh, I had and have an opportunity to do a TV show about something and I had pitched it. I'd gone through all the steps. Everybody was interested, you know, networks were interested, are interested.

29:19And, but I, I stopped for a second cause I realized there's something wrong. Like, I feel like there's something making me unhappy about the amount of work this is going to require for me and why, and that normally wouldn't bother me, but why does it bother me? And I realized I had an ulterior motive. I simply wanted to do this to increase fame level, not that I loved it. And so I've been kind of shifting direction since then. And I think it's important to realize, you know, what, what is the reason you're making? What are the reasons you're making a certain decision? You're going down a certain path and you need that, that flame a little bit, you know, not even a little bit.

30:03I think it's one of the most important things in our culture. And sadly to me, and one of the reasons I needed to write the book was because we need to acknowledge that and imagine it's not just you, James, our entire culture is very busy for not always malevolent reasons. People have good reasons that they want you to do the thing that's safe and predictable and expected. And I call it beige. It's right down the middle. And two things are true. One, that that is a lie. So the two things are true is one that that is a lie. It comes sometimes from bad motives, but usually because people actually care about you.

30:42And the people who don't want to see you take risks are your parents. and your high school counselor, and your teachers, and your friends, and it's because they care about you, and putting yourself out there can be risky, all the other things that can go along with failure, we understand that. So first of all, that whole thing that you were just sold is a lie. Second of all, and to me, this is the part that I think is interesting, maybe, is that it is, it's not safe. What they're telling you to do, they think they're coaching you to do the safe thing, but now is the riskiest time in human history to do the thing that has always been safe because the world is changing so fast.

31:25If you don't have a love and a connection and a passion for what you're doing, you're going to be isolated. You're going to be lonely. You're going to be sick. And in a world where we do now have access to tools that we never had that would be free, We do have the democratization of a lot of the platforms, for example, used to have to be judged by gatekeepers, whether they're the gallerist or the movie producer or the publishing house to decide if you could write a book or just express yourself. Now, it's the first time in human history that those gatekeepers are not in a position of power or less power than they had before.

32:03So not only the people that told you those things, they were wrong. And they were wrong to think that you would be safe because it's not safe to do the thing that everybody else wants. The safest thing in your journey is to be inexcusably, unapologetically you. Right. Well, think about it from your own experience. you know you you you you took this offbeaten path of photography and then you further uh took your own path by combining it with your interest in again i'll call it exports or extreme sports whatever you want to call it and it's that intersection that this that your passions took you that allowed you to sort of you know comfortably develop the skills and become the best in that intersection.

32:53And I think, I think that's very interesting that because then by following that inner flame and, and, and making turns several times along the way, because it's not, you know, you didn't take the same path every photographer takes. You didn't, you probably didn't take the same path every photographer who likes extreme sports takes. It's probably still was a few more turns that took you to your specific location that only where only you would live. And that's where you're able to find kind of the pot of gold. And not that you did it for monetary reasons, but that is how you monetize is when you are able to take this passion and creativity and use this intuition or this flow or this flip, whatever you want to call it, to find the place where unique.

33:40And that's, usually there's a way to monetize at that point, which is what you found. Yeah. And several ways to monetize you've, you've, you've spent, you spent the past 10 years finding several ways to monetize. For sure. Everything that you said is, is absolutely true. And I think the part that is, um, the only layer that I would add is that this is not what we're taught. This is, and it's because it's inconvenient for the school system. It's inconvenient for our economic engine for employment to teach us these things. And again, there's no malevolent puppeteer that's telling you that's trying to channel you into working at the factory.

34:17But the reality is that our entire culture, the images we see, the parents that we have, the peers, our teachers, our counselors, they, for reasonably good reasons that you and I already articulated, they're not meaning harm, but they're giving you advice that is outdated. And there was a time where that was the right advice. If you go to this college, you'll get a good job and if you get a good job you work there for 40 years get the gold watch and everybody will be happy that's fiction that's gone that doesn't happen anymore and i would question whether it ever happened there was a time where in industrial revolution and what productions and factories and and schools were that were that functioned at a very high level but the reality is that now more than ever before it's an open field and we've all now also more than ever before have an opportunity to carve our own path.

35:10And what that requires is a whole new set of dialogues internally and externally. My book's trying to be that external dialogue and it hopes to be able to guide that internal dialogue because the answers about should you pursue stand-up comedy, should I pursue photography, what part of photography would I do it, how would I do it, all those things are internal. Right. And think about it. Even asking those questions, you can't think your way to an answer. You can only do things and see if, oh, was the flame lit? Nope. Okay. I'm going to try. I'm going to do something else. I'm going to, and I think experimentation is, is a large part of this.

35:49Huge, huge part. You know, like you mentioned earlier, 10 ,000 hours, it's almost, I've also heard people refer to it as 10 ,000 experiments. Like you have to do something each day to kind of guide you in your own unique way. But let's take it a step back. So we know, everyday creative is important, but like, let's take you for, with photography. How did you, how did you initially start developing the skills? How do you start recognizing that internal flame, you know, and what it means? Cause it means something different at each level. Like in the very beginning, when you have no skills, it means this is cool.

36:29I want to do this. I want to get better at this. I don't care what people think. I'm going to do it. That's what it means the very first time you feel it. Yeah.

36:53So what happened? How did you start to go down the path? How did you develop the meta learning skills to get better? So I'm going to do two things. I'm going going to put one thing out there, which is a statement that I also worked very hard on the book is that I find books that give you the perfect path from A to Z are totally useless because nothing like all of these processes, whether you're building a business or trying to improve yourself or whatever nonfiction book you're reading that pretends to have it all figured out. Life does not mimic that. Life is messy. And so when you ask me what my path was, I want to be sure to identify that I can now deconstruct what I think a good model is to follow, but I don't come from a place of holier than thou.

37:36I mentioned earlier all my missteps and I did the first iPhone app way before Instagram that did the same thing. Instagram is basically a lift and stamp copy of best camera and I'm not the billionaire. I lost a billion. Like, so there's plenty of - Oh, and we're definitely going to talk about that as well. There's plenty of mistakes along the way. And so in discovering what I know now, I just want everybody at home who's listening to know that it's all going to be imperfect. And because I'm talking on a podcast with you, I don't want to pretend I've got it all figured out. And by the way, I think that's important.

38:09That's a good way to kind of good litmus test on self-help books, which is I prefer self-help books that are like Mad Libs versus How To. Yeah. So yes, being healthy physically is important, but then it's a fill in the blanks. For everybody, it's going to be different. Some people will eat keto. Some people will eat vegetarian. Some people will go to the gym. Some people will walk up and down the stairs. So for everybody, it's a more, like at some point, there's a fill in the blanks component. And I think the more of that, the better. Alice, it's just like, well, okay, then you write in your gratitude journal, then you juice kale and all that stuff's like too hard.

38:49so I get anxious. Yeah, I just started a list of the things that you have to do in order to fill in the blank. Yeah, I get it. Right, but I do think how you describe your process will extrapolate. Of course, there's no question. That's why, it's just a qualifier, but I do think that there's value in answering the question and talking about my individual process. So I remember very distinctly, as if it was yesterday, my second grade classroom. I loved telling stories. I would perform magic whenever anyone would give me the time of day. And I could just capture two or three people in the hallway.

39:30I carried around little magic tricks. And I loved to draw and write. I used to draw comics. I had my own comic. His name was Clyde. And he looked like a combination of Garfield and Grover. And I drew comics. and then I remember at the student teacher conference I overheard my mom and my second grade teacher talking and my second grade teacher said you know Chase is much better at sports than he is at art and I remember in that moment as if it was yesterday that's a horrible thing to say but she said it with a smile and they were talking about something innocent and rather innocuous I heard it in passing I don't think she meant it it's not like I was horrible at art But it stuck with me.

40:19And it was clear to me that how my personal path at that point changed. I mean, it was in an instant. And I didn't like not do whatever. If we had an art class, I did the projects. But I began, it shifted my identity from creator or creative to, oh, I think I need to be a jock if I'm going to find acceptance. Well, and also, right. So it depends on where your center of personal gravity is. For sure. So if it's outside of you, if it's somewhere in between you, your mom, and your teacher, and sports is kind of at that center of gravity, then that's where you're going to gravitate. For sure. And I did that.

40:58And so why I'm recounting this is, A, how valuable and important it is to understand the words that we use. Labels matter. And we're not all a little special. Precious snowflakes. we're adorable creatures. Um, and I'm living proof of that. Cause I just went on a bet that now for basically 20 years or 18 years, virtually alienated me from my creativity. I dabble, I got to connect the two one time in my teens when I really, not one time, but for a, uh, uh, one path in my teens included the skateboarding. And this is where I sort of tapped into that action sports culture and punk rock and what i realized about skateboarding and i didn't realize it at the time but i felt comfortable because it was this connection between being wildly creative and expressive punk rock um spray paint building skate ramps with your hands and um and borrowed tools and then exploring the streets and defining little little pieces of the concrete and the architecture that you would skate on like that was wildly creative and was also very athletic And also, as you were describing, but I'll summarize it in one word, skateboarding has this subculture in a way that other sports don't.

42:17Yes, there's a subculture of people who love football. We all love football. Here's the football stats. Here's fantasy football. But skateboarding, there's the clothes. There's the music. There's the graffiti. There's the youth. There's the rebelliousness of it. You grew up in Seattle, but in California. The whole West Coast, yeah. It was kind of made illegal for a while because kids were getting hurt. So that made it more underground. And then, you know, exports made it big again. So again, you were looking for some kind of subculture as well that was creative. Connection is part of what I was seeking and an explanation of, wait a minute, how can I?

42:57I've been put in a box by my second grade teacher. I was happy to live there because I didn't know any better. And, oh, then it's like you got a whiff of something that gave you a fuller picture. and that connected more dots than you were able to connect on your own. And while I tapped into that, again, as soon as it got to being able to go to college on a soccer scholarship, that skate scene sort of goes away. It's never completely gone because it's a part of you. And it was for me. But my point here is it put me on a really long detour away from my creativity, almost denying it in favor of where I was getting social and cultural acceptance.

43:34And I went to college on a soccer scholarship but one of the top soccer schools in the country. And I was on the Olympic development team. It happened to be a year where there weren't an Olympics. So I didn't get to do that part of it, but I was just rewarded and it was good enough to be able to make my way in that area. And then something really horrible happened, which is my grandfather dropped dead of a heart attack. No foreseen, like didn't have ailing health and just boom, here one day, gone. and he had been, both he and my father had been hobbyist photographers and while I was doing those things, skateboarding and playing soccer and football, the things that I was getting some connection and or some acceptance for, I remember being motivated and inspired by that this is a moment that will never happen again.

44:24It wasn't that it was about me or my friends, it was just I understood the language of photography as this moment in time and there was a whole narrative in a single moment, a thousandth of a second. And when he died, something happened. And it was in that grief. And in that moment, I think I was sort of cracked open enough to just take a beat, even at 20, 21 years old and evaluate my life, just even, even for a moment. And these large moments in life, the birth of a child, the death of a friend or a family member, some trauma that you may have experienced yourself, they can cause us to reflect.

45:06And I think they're very, very useful. And yet I wish we didn't have to, I wish we were able to be more in tune with ourselves on a regular basis, such that you could get this from a road trip or a Vipassana or some nice way to stumble into this information. But for me, I was cracked wide open and that, you know, the cracking open of the heart, it helps you understand things about yourself. So it was there just long enough for me to acknowledge that I was denying what I now know is a very important part of myself, which is my creative self. So that kicked me into pursuing photography. I was given his cameras.

45:40I was willed his cameras. I'd been basically creative, curious, um, photographically inspired because I'd been on the other side of the camera and was attracted to it. And then, um, had got a little bit of money from his passing and his cameras. And, um, I got it like a 14 stop plane tickets to Europe with my then girlfriend, now wife, right on the backside of, of graduating college, ate beans and tuna fish and lived out of a backpack for six months and taught myself how to take pictures. And, and when you say taught yourself, like obviously you, cause you're going to so many places and you're, you're, you're on the move.

46:17You weren't, you didn't sign up for like, you know, the school of photography and here's like courses Monday, Wednesday, and Friday with this professor. Like you were, what did you do? You just took pictures and how would you, how would you, um, do, you know, kind of the deliberate learning as Anders Ericsson, uh, calls it like who was giving you feedback on the pictures so that you could then learn and then you repeat and so on. So my two biggest inputs were one comparing my work to the work of others. And in Europe, I remember standing in front of hundreds of magazine stands and looking at the work of the photographers that I admired that lined those pages of those art books and magazines and saying, wow, my stuff is really, it's a far cry from this.

47:04And at the same time, sharing it with my then girlfriend, now wife, Kate. And because it was of us or she and I or her or a moment that we'd shared together, there was an emotional connection. So I got sort of both the technical understanding of like literally comparing my work to the work of people who were much further along in the process than I was and still getting some emotional validation that images were more than technical. They weren't about megapixels and dynamic range and perfect composition, that there was some language, some emotion that actually was arguably maybe as important or more important than the technical aspects.

47:41So, so two things to unpack there. One is, uh, mentorship is fine, but virtual mentorship also is fine. In fact, in some cases is better because you could have thousands of virtual mentors and those were the people taking those photographs in those magazines. This was the internet. This was the early, this was internet before the internet was the magazine stand for me. No, I, I, I, this is like, I'm assuming this is like mid, mid nineties. That was kind of like i think the peak of magazine culture like all these indie but very you know high um production magazines like they were beautifully produced your nail was out there it was kind of like um the movement from zines to actual magazines so zines was like in the 80s early 90s but then they became glossy magazines in the mid 90s you're nailing the the cultural arc there and those both my wife and the the unadulterated like non-judgmental emotional connection that reviewing my photos with her created.

48:36And then the technical aspect, that combination was powerful. And I used to literally, so this was back in film. So I would take a picture and I would literally write it down. Frame one, F8, a two fiftieth of a second, you know, St. Peter's Basilica, cloudy day. And then when I got the film developed, I would look at the picture, you know, here's frame one. And then I would look at the exposure and like, okay, was this good? Did I nail it? Or what was I learning? And so two things are true. One, how painful that was. And if I understand if I skipped one frame, all of my information would be off.

49:16And two - What does that mean if you skip one frame? Well, if I didn't write down, if I forgot to write down one particular exposure, then the rest of my, if I skipped one, then I wouldn't have accurate information to then, you know, because you develop your film like sometimes weeks later and I would not be able to learn effectively if I didn't capture the right information and be able to look at, oh, this was a terrible picture. It was really underexposed. And then I go to look at my notes. If I hadn't taken the right notes or put them in the right spot, then I wouldn't be able to learn from that experience.

49:49So it was very slow and painful, very analog way of learning. But that documentation is really critical. Super critical. So like for instance, and I'll just say it as an analogy, but in standup comedy, you have to take video of your performances. Because there might be a time where I think, man, I did great. But then I'll watch the video and I'll see, oh, for some reason I'm hunched forward a little more than I should be. It looks like I'm a little nervous. And now nobody seemed to pick up on that. But the audience, just like with photography, the audience is an x-ray machine. They know what's going on behind the scenes and they would just react better if my shoulders weren't hunched.

50:30But the other thing I noticed in what you said is you would get feedback or you would see if these photographs would elicit an emotional reaction from Kate. Which implies you have to have someone around you. You're not going to be defensive. You're going to trust. yeah like if she said I don't feel it you probably I don't know what what happened but my guess is you didn't argue with her oh you're like that's what I was looking for I was like because there is someone that trust you talked about um and in the in the book I really framed you didn't say like but but but Kate this is just the exact same as the other photograph that you did like what's the difference and and she would be like I don't know it just doesn't feel the same you wouldn't you You want to get into that rabbit hole?

51:11No, because she is someone who's wickedly creative in her own expressional ways. And I valued her opinion. I was really looking for that unadulterated, unfiltered, like, how does this feel when you just pick it up or connect with it? And it was the combination of, again, that technical, but that emotional to realize that there's a relationship between them that sometimes you carry in a lot of emotional baggage, both good and bad, to looking at a picture or experiencing some art. and just helped me understand that it was more complex than just technique. And I think this is a really important point.

51:44And while technique is sort of what I consider the get-in-the-door fee, like you have to be able to put an exposure together that's good enough in a photograph to be able to see something on the film, beyond that, it's less about all of those other technical trappings and more about telling a story and making this connection that we talked about earlier with your subject and why I can look at that picture in a minute and say that's a powerful photograph. so this this these two areas of feedback that i have and the fact that it was very slow going and then i was also a pain point involved like if i in order to develop the film we were very i mean it sounds luxurious because we were quote traveling in europe but we were literally eating cans of beans and there were days where i literally would not eat in order to in three days from now when we were in budapest to be able to develop film and you'd spend 20 bucks on the film development rather than eating.

52:36And I recognize that this is that, you know, there's a certain amount of privilege to be able to say and do that. And there are people who don't actually have food. But for me, that was my little universe. And I would trade food for the ability to learn. And right now, if you don't care, if you don't give any cares about photography, you'd say, who would ever do that? This goes back to the earlier point we were talking about when you're doing the things that feel good to you, where you're creatively curious, or you're finding an an outlet for your expression, that this doesn't seem like a big trade-off.

53:08It doesn't seem like a big deal or where learning gets really easy for you because you're doing something that feels good and resonates internally. To me, all these things are starting to dovetail. For me, you ask the question like, what was it like to learn photography or to teach yourself? To me, this is the paradigm that we all are on in some way, shape, or form when we learn anything. There's a little bit of curiosity, you pull on the thread, you learn a few things, you get inspired, or you learn a few things. I didn't like this. I used to be an oil painter, too freaking slow. I hated the waiting for the paints to dry.

53:42There's lots of stuff that I, so I only did that for a little while. And then I, you know, you talked about your zigzag path and I got back on the path of photography and whether you, it's photography or cooking or building businesses, I can look at a lens through this lens now and look backwards and connect the dots that this is the learning process. and why aren't we taught that it's imperfect and nonlinear and exploratory and that you're going to make mistakes along the way? Because if we were framed it like that, we would be A, much more willing to learn and B, probably much more open to it.

54:15So, so, so this is a couple of things I want to ask there. One is when, when you're first starting anything that A, you're passionate about and B is worth doing, it's a hundred percent chance you're going to suck badly at the beginning. I have a chapter called permission to suck. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Yeah. You say embrace the suck in this, but there's also part of the reason many people keep going. I think part of the reason why I kept going in writing is there's this bias called the Dunning Kruger effect, which you, you, you tend to think you better than you are at the thing you love. Yeah. And did you ever go through that?

54:57Did you find yourself like thinking, man, I'm the best photographer. And I thought I was pretty good by the time of six months of traveling with my grandfather's camera and developing film, you know, every other, every two, three weeks. And, you know, and then you come back to camera equipment. Yeah. And you come back to an area where you have more, like a little bit more resources than I had when I was on the road in Europe, like access to libraries and more books around photography and technique and and importantly like how to figure out how to make some money doing this thing and you start to realize that all these other factors are factors that i had been ignoring and you know this is like life right the more it's like a language you feel like you can communicate and then you're like oh there's lots of different tenses to these verbs like every layer of the onion you peel back it's like there's a whole nother world of learning.

55:47Well, that happened to me with photography. And part of how I think you know something is something that you love is that either excites you or frustrates you. And there can be a little tinge of frustration and the excitement, even if you love it. But there are also times you're like, okay, I'm completely done. I do not need to spend another minute learning to cook or painting with oils or whatever. I'm fed up, I'm good. But for me, when I got back from that trip, realized, as you said, the Denning whatever effect, oh my god, I really actually suck. I need to keep doing this. But I have energy and I see aptitude and opportunity and it brings me joy and attuning to these characteristics in not only our creative lives, but our lives in general.

56:33To me, that's where the best stuff is. And I think you used the word joy. I think overall joy is more important than, let's say, this kind of constant happiness. So for instance, if I'm watching my favorite TV show, I'll be constantly happy. And then at the end of it, I'll just have spent 300 hours watching my favorite TV show with nothing much to show for it. But like, if you're, again, if you're trying to get good at something that's difficult, there's going to be a lot of points of feeling horrible. Because you realize, like you're looking at these photos in the magazines and then you're looking at your own photos.

57:11There's, at some point, every now and then, you're going to say, oh my gosh, I am horrible. I'm never going to be this good. I'm disappointed in myself. This is not worth it. I'm not happy. It can't be all joy. I mean, it can't be all fun or else you wouldn't try to get better. For sure. And this is also where you cited my wife, Kate, on this earlier, but that's why community is so important. And having the right community. For sure. Not just any community and finding a community where you both are welcomed and feel welcome And there are two sorts of community I talk about in the book. One is the communities that you tap into that exist out in the world.

57:49And another is a community that you start to build around your very own work. And to me, like you tap into other communities. You know, I use my own examples to what we've already talked about, the photography community and the action sports community. And then there is a community of people who were action sports photographers. So there's all kinds of communities and sub-communities for you to tap into. and learn and get validation or support or criticism or all those things. And all that is very, very, very useful when there's that gap that you recognize between where you are and where you want to be.

58:24And you can get both encouragement and feedback and all those things from those communities that exist. And then there's also the work and the community that you start to build. Sorry, there's the community that you start to build around your work. and at first it maybe it is just a community of two myself and my wife kate when we're backpacking we didn't have any other audience there were no other friends and no internet i wasn't showing it to the random strangers on the on the street and then that community when i got back expanded to include my parents and my friends and etc etc etc and you start building a community around your work and this community doesn't have to be millions of people we can reference kevin kelly's article, a thousand true fans.

59:05If you have a thousand fans in your corner, you can basically make a living and a life doing what you love. It doesn't mean you have to have millions of followers on Instagram. What if you're a blacksmith in Jackson Hole, Wyoming? Your community, people who appreciate your work, maybe is the 12 restauranteurs who you take care of their knives. Whatever the size community, it's not about that. But having a community to reduce all this last, you know, 90 seconds into how important community is to growth, to connection and to our creativity. And so, so, and, and just to also reiterate what you said earlier, I think every path is different.

59:44Like, uh, my entrance into writing, for instance, is different than your entrance into photography. For sure. There might be some intersection in terms of sacrifice because you're always, because you're going to, you're about to embark on spending a lot of hours on something. There's got to be some sacrifice in exchange. But my reasons for starting were very different and from continuing were very different. I think also that's related to, it doesn't matter what age you are. Like you could have started this journey today. You could start this journey. You mentioned someone who's 63 years old who starts their creative journey.

1:00:19I don't think, you know, there's all that saying. The best time to start a new creative endeavor is 10 years ago and today. And I think that's really important to, to, to note. And again, as part of this Mad Libs approach to creativity, but, um, uh, you know, one thing about community though, that I'm curious about when you start entering into the community of photographers, or if you're any creative and you start entering into the community of the creatives, there's a danger point there too, which is you don't necessarily have the ability to judge if this particular group of creatives is good community for you or not.

1:01:00You're not entering just a community. You're entering a hierarchy where tribal animals rank from alpha to omega. And so if you think to yourself, oh, well, I should be, if this guy's getting published his photographs in this magazine, I should be. And, you know, there's a little bit of competition. Not everyone has your best interest at heart. and I could be telling my own story, but I have a feeling I'm telling every creative story. You got to just be careful when you enter into any hierarchy. There's a ranking and not everybody wants you to immediately be the alpha. For sure, for sure. And to me, the barometer there, the limit, is how does it make you feel?

1:01:38I think that's really important. And connection and inspiration and a little grit. Like those are lots of really helpful alchemy, those things. and there are also communities that feel toxic and where and again this is going to be up to each you know each their own but i think your point is super well taken that this is not uh just sign up at the nearest community these are it's not dissimilar to how to decide how to spend your time like you want to spend your time doing things that you love around people that you like and with goals in mind that inspire you and the same is true with community i i think this is such an important point because, and I don't, and, and by the way, it's not, I'm not saying this from the point of view of someone who, who did it.

1:02:25I think I spent at least a good 12 to 15 years, not doing that, not paying attention to how certain people or situations made me feel. And that threw me off path. Now, fortunately, I was able to bring all those experiences eventually back onto the path, but they were certainly experiences I could have avoided if I paid attention more to how different situations and people made me feel. And I was deluded by thinking, okay, I have to be around these people because maybe there's money and I have to take care of a family. And I just, again and again, I made the wrong decisions for myself. and it's my, and the fault is not, the fault really boils down to not paying attention to how certain people made me feel or certain situations.

1:03:18And it's not their fault. It's my fault that I didn't pay more attention to this. But don't beat yourself up because we're taught culturally that there is, that the answers are out there and it's very external and you get validated and you fit into tribes and all those other things. And I think that's part of being awake enough to hear what we're supposed to be doing in our lives is a similar level of woke to how does something make us feel. And the reality is, you know, the science is pretty clear. Rational cognition relative to sort of intuition. Like rational is really slow and loaded with biases and all these things that we basically over-index and give it too much credit.

1:03:57And yet when you have a feeling about somebody, sometimes you get proved wrong, but you know, like it doesn't matter. It's not really a matter of right or wrong. Is this person good or bad? It's just, you should decide to spend time and energy on things that feel good and matter to you rather than something that doesn't. And if you're going to be too loud for some people, you're going to be too fill in the blank for other people. The challenge is understanding that those just then aren't your people and start to find who are your people and what can you do to trust that intuition. To me, that's, you know, there's a handful of metaphors in the book, some, you know, conceptual and others really like right on the nose.

1:04:37And two that come to mind are listening to this calling. And it's not always some trumpet that's 10 feet in front of you. It's a whisper and that whispers inside of you. And it doesn't look or feel like a map because a map shows you I'm here and I'm going to follow this path, then I'm going to end up here. It's way more a compass. And a compass is just an arrow that gets you in a direction, right? It's, it's, it's, I can't stand it. Like you're using all the words I use. It is a compass and it is, the compass is determined. Oh, you step in this direction. You feel it. You step in this direction.

1:05:12You don't feel it. I think it's very, for me, it was very hard to learn that compass. Now I feel a little bit more aware of it, but that was a very, a big difficulty of mine. And, and, you know, and that, and that's that balance of, am I going for validation? Am I going for money? Am I going for internal improvement and skill acquisition and joy? It was very hard for me to balance all of these things. I'm going to tell a short story that sows together a couple of those things and my intuition. So let's go back to my career as a photographer. I was at the peak of my photographic career and it's as good, it's better than you could possibly imagine when you're in the top very teeny weeny percent of photographers.

1:05:53It is all of the travel, whatever you're thinking, it's better. Okay. I'll just say that. And I was experiencing a little bit of burnout and I noticed something that was happening in culture and I had a palm trio and the palm trio, the newest one was shipped with a camera. It had a little camera. It was 0.3 megapixels. You really couldn't, if you took a picture with the thing, you could barely, the resolution on the screen and ultimately the camera was so bad. You could sometimes not actually even be aware of what you took a picture of. It's just like a fuzzy thing. But I started getting so much joy of always having that camera in my pocket because it was my phone.

1:06:39And you got to keep in mind, I have hundreds of thousands of dollars of the very finest photograph equipment that you can possibly have in the world. And I started getting joy from having a camera on me at all times. And I could take pictures of the donut while I was waiting in line to get my morning coffee and just whatever inspired me when I saw the light hit. And that's not something you get from carrying around a hundred thousand dollar digital Hasselblad. You have to like, there's a whole crew that comes with that thing and you set it up and you have computers and monitors and it's just, there's all this burden.

1:07:08And I remember thinking, you know, one of the things I find so much joy in, initially it was the Palm Trio and then it was the Razor and then it was the first iPhone is, wow, like I'm not burdened with X, Y, and Z, but you know what else? This is never going to amount to anything because it's virtually useless, this camera, but it feels good. So I'm going to keep doing it. Go back to your compass story. That ended up being one of my biggest professional, both successes and failures of all time. I did the first iPhone app that allowed you to take a picture, add a cool thing called a filter and share it to social media.

1:07:47And it was the first photo feed in the best camera app. I had to get special approval from Apple to be able to send photos in real time out to an audience who would consume and view them. And it ended up being the app of the year in the Apple iTunes store in 2009. I sold millions of those things and they were three bucks a piece. It was a money factory. And most importantly, it came from something that I was sure was going to be useless because I had all these external beliefs of what was valuable and not valuable. And I just decided in a rare whim of actually listening to myself that this felt good.

1:08:24Yeah. Because, because you loved, I mean, just think from the perspective of when you started, imagine if you had something in your pocket that could take amazing pictures, like the phones we have now are probably as good as the equipment you had 20 years ago or better. I don't know. For sure. And, and it was an amazing thing. Like people, I started using Instagram, which followed your app, best, best camera. So, so, but it's interesting though, because your your sense of photography your expertise in it brought you to this use case for the world but you didn't have you hadn't racked up yet the let's call it the 10 000 hours of business expertise sure which is a common thing you know where you don't people don't even realize business is a skill but it is and you made kind of the basic mistakes you can't even blame yourself but what were some of the mistakes you made?

1:09:20Most of it. I mean, again, we're saying those mistakes because a very similar app called Instagram got sold for a billion dollars right after your thing disappeared. Yep, right. And that's chronical in the book. Again, this is part of not trying to gold plate my story. My story is one of pitfalls and as all of our stories are. But yeah, the mistakes that I ultimately made, I don't even think I could have foreseen them because they were around very technical contract elements about when you were going to do, you were trying to write a contract today that was going to see what future versions of the software were going to have to be like.

1:09:58And so because software changes so much, you can't realize that in two years, I'm going to want to be able to follow and like my friends because it's just, you don't have, you can't really see around the corner. Social networks didn't really, hadn't matured at that point. So I don't throw myself on a bus too hard. And I think that's part of, I definitely did make some very fundamental mistakes. Like I gave my, even though contractually I owned the IP, I had hired a developer and the software, I didn't have a copy of it on my own servers. The software lived on their servers. I used their Apple iTunes account to publish the thing to the store.

1:10:39So I didn't actually get the metrics. I got a check from them after they received a check from Apple. There's a bunch of little technical things that led to my demise. And for that, I'm both not a billionaire and disappointed. But also, like, that's a learning experience that I was then able to leverage into Creative Live because I learned a ton from that. But the reason I went down this path and the story was this thing that I thought was it couldn't amount to anything. And yet I was obviously deeply intrigued at the intersection of creativity and technology and convenience. And, um, it, it, it, it was the intersection of all these things that I loved, especially relative to what I had grown reasonably bored with, despite being at the top of my profession.

1:11:26And I just pursued it anyway out of, cause it felt good. It was the compass that said, when I did this, I felt better. I remember intellectualizing that, nothing can really come of this. And yet it was arguably one of my biggest professional successes to sort of be a pioneer in mobile photography. So, so, you know, it seems like the crit, the, there's several critical things. One is finding where your compass is pointing, um, building up the basic skills, which you discuss a lot in the book, like how you can do that. Like, you know, find the photographers you admire, find their work. Yeah. Yeah.

1:12:02Find the, the, the things you like to photograph photograph that the very question you asked me when we when we first met what what do i like to look at that's probably what i would like to photograph giving yourself kind of increasing challenges um for you going into you know extreme action sports scenarios where nobody else would go taking those photographs you go to the place least crowded that's where you're going to be the best as you develop these skills uh and then you know seeing where it takes you, but I'm always intrigued. But, oh, and then, you know, again, finding the community of people you can learn from and, and, and benefit from.

1:12:36But I'm always wondering, like, let's say someone's listening to this. They're 40, 50, 60 years old. They want to, they've kind of maybe for whatever reason, good or bad, blocked out or not listened to that inner flame or that, that compass. Yeah. How do you, how do you start to listen to it when, when it's been so long? Right. First of all, you're not alone that's the thing you need to know is that there are more people that are like you than are not like you that denied this part of themselves or that uh shoot it because it was not practical and i'm here to tell you that creativity is the most practical lever that you have in your life again it can it can unlock um areas of life that you didn't know or existed It can help personally transform you.

1:13:25To me, creativity is so fundamental. It's as fundamental as exercise or nutrition, right? And we're creating machines. And by not even acknowledging that you are creative and that you have agency over what you do and don't do and how you spend your time or don't spend your time, you sort of cram down and ignore that beautiful sixth grade or that first grade six-year-old self that said, I want to come up to the front of that room and draw a picture. and it's not just that you suppress it and nothing happens that sort of eats away at you it's because we're fundamentally human creating machines so by telling people that they're not alone this is a this is a lie that you were sold a long time ago when it wasn't convenient for culture it was inconvenient for it to have a bunch of wildly creative uh people who question the status quo and so we had we had a school system we had an employment system that were different It's fine.

1:14:21I'm just here to say that now, even though you're not alone, now is the right time. And this does not mean giving up, you know, you have to move into a different house or move to Paris or get a new set of friends. That is the wrong vision that you have of creativity. What creativity means is acknowledging that you are a creator and that you can put two more things together to form something that's new and useful. And reality says you do it every single day. You're just not acknowledging it. So the first thing I want you to do is to call yourself a creator. Words matter. And if you understand that you say, oh, I'm not really all that creative, that's fine.

1:14:56Maybe you think of yourself as a math head, but just so you know, math is wildly creative. Wildly creative. Science, all science is like the wheel is mechanical engineering plus creativity. Like we've just been fed a definition that creativity equals painting. And that's not the case. So one, when you start thinking of yourself as this infinite creative superpower. You've got this little core of creative plutonium in you and you just really haven't used that. What's cool is this is the one resource. This is a ripoff of a Maya Angelou quote where the more you use, the more you get. It's not something that's depleted.

1:15:33It's something that's empowered. And if you can start to think about that, it doesn't matter if you're 18, 35, 55, or 95. Acknowledging and putting that creative muscle to work becomes effective today. The first time you do it a second time, you've seen a benefit from creativity, even if you took a step backwards, because you're exercising the muzzle that ultimately will shape your life. So, so, so, you know, and this goes along with what you're, what you say throughout the book, which is daily, and you really cement this at the end, but daily creativity, doing something that you consider creative, more creative than your normal output, doing something every single day that's creative.

1:16:12What would be, if someone, again, is just clueless on where the compass is pointing them, they want to know, they're listening to it, they want to know, what are some things they can try? Let's call them experiments. What are some experiments or ways to think about experiments, depending on how abstract we want to get, that someone can do today? Sure. So I would actually bet that 90, I'm going to go on a limb and say 90 % of the people listening right now have taken a photograph with their phone in the past 24, maybe 48 hours. and it might even have been taking a picture of a receipt to submit for your expense report at Deloitte.

1:16:48If you thought of that, even for a moment, that what I'm doing right now is choosing this thing, I'm choosing to take a photograph and express myself, you can lift that phone up from that receipt and take a picture of anything within your field of view, do it with a little bit of intention. That is a little creative moment that you are choosing. And again, that might not be your ultimate creative expression, but what that will do is realize that you just made a choice and that in that choice you have agency. And in agency, you can see that you can do this again and again. So you don't have to look far.

1:17:21When you're preparing a meal for your family tonight and you're tired, you got home from work, kids are hungry, the whatever narrative that each of us have, if you think of that as an opportunity to just do one thing a little different, to add one little special either spice or presentation or you can get joy from that. And that is just awakening that muscle. And then if you decide that I get more joy from cooking and less from photography or more joy from playing the guitar than I do from coding, then start to do more of the thing that brings you joy. And what I'm hearing right now in someone's mind in, I think it's in Indiana, they're saying, I don't have time.

1:18:00I've got the kids. I've got no extra time in my day. Great. What are you doing? like cooking, do you have to provide for your family and put food on the table? Yeah. Great. There's no extra time involved. This is a mindset shift. You can acknowledge that instead of just making the Kraft macaroni and cheese out of the box, maybe you went to the store and you bought some special pasta or maybe even gasp, you made your own pasta. My belief is that the kids are probably going to say, wait a minute, I like the Kraft better. But your husband, your partner, or on your own, you can say, you know what?

1:18:34That was, I brought me joy. And I don't know. I don't, I'm not trying to be prescriptive of what the joyful thing is. I'm saying that if you can find those things, it doesn't actually take extra time. It takes just an awareness and a mind shift that you can start to immediately get value. You know, um, I can't believe I just got the sign to wrap. Jay, are we actually going for 90 minutes? Oh my gosh. There's so much stuff I want to cover. No, that's good. Let's make a lot of value in this last 10 minutes. Let me see. I'm going to look. I've got things underlined. I've got things folded. While you're looking for a thing, James, that is in the book you're flipping through, I want to say that before we recorded and you said, I look at you as wildly creative.

1:19:21You're an amazing writer. You've mastered that stand-up comedy. You've built businesses, business after business, and that the book resonated with you as there's truth in here. to me that that's helpful. I really appreciate it. I thought this was almost like, like, even when you use words like compass, which I've used as well, I felt like this was an outline for how I've approached my creative efforts. Uh, you know, one thing that you write about that's really interesting is what you call rejection therapy, like kind of trying to do things that are going to get you rejected because a, you build up that muscle of being able to handle rejection and perhaps learn from it.

1:20:02But I think also if you're trying to be creative at something and you want to, there's no shortcuts, but I'm going to say, if you want to skip the line in ability, you don't want to take the safe path. You want to go where it's, if you were given the choice to do this or to do another thing with your creativity, you would take the harder choice. So in comedy, you know, a night of standup comedy is usually seven or eight comedians perform. The third spot, the fourth spot, the audience is warmed up. They're not too drunk. There's not so much noise. They're ready for you. The worst spot is called the check spot.

1:20:39It's towards the end. They're tired. They're drunk. So they're all talking to each other rather than listening to you. And you have to perform. And you get crushed if they don't laugh. But they're not going to laugh. They're figuring out their tip. They're doing math. So the way to get better is to always take the check spot. or to perform after the world famous comedian. Perform after Jerry Seinfeld. No one cares about you. They're thinking about Jerry Seinfeld. So if you're given the choice, do you go before or do you go after? You go after because that's where you're going to learn is those challenges.

1:21:13And I'm just mentioning, I think we all want to improve as fast as possible, but it's not easy. You have to do these very specific hard challenges. You have to plan on it. You have to plan what's going to be the challenge and what I do next. If I just write an article like, oh, this, this, this, if it's the same as everyone else's, it's not going to improve me. If it's something that I'm afraid to publish, that will probably improve me. If it's time, I'm afraid to perform. If it's a speaking engagement, I'm afraid to do because it's an audience I have no experience with. Those are the things that will improve me.

1:21:51And I'm just curious your take on that. So I think being willing to be uncomfortable is a huge opportunity. And it's for all the reasons that you just cited. And I think just generally we have a biology that is doing two things. One, it's out there to make us alive, not happy. And two, it's designed to keep us safe. So it's always dragging us. No, no, no, you don't want to do that. No, no, no, no, you really don't want to be uncomfortable. It's just dragging you right back to the middle. Right, yeah, right. You have this like surge in cortisol, which is actually painful. And there's only two ways to solve that surge.

1:22:34One is to give up. That is, there's no problem. You don't have to have that cortisol, just give up. And the other is to kind of do it and get good at doing it. Yeah. And, you know, I think under recognizing that going out and doing the standup in a check spot, But it's not like what your biology is fighting against is a saber-toothed tiger. And there is no saber-toothed tiger at the comedy club. If people are not laughing hysterically at your joke because they're doing math around what the tip they're going to give to the server, like that isn't about you necessarily. And it's certainly not about a tiger.

1:23:10This is about being willing to make yourself uncomfortable and to develop that muscle, that habit of being willing to do it over and over and over. And that is certainly a mechanism for quick growth, as you talked about. Where did you do it in photography? I did shows way before I was ready to do shows. I put my work on the walls of coffee shops that would anyone who'd give me the time of day. I did slide shows. I held very public slide shows at a time where my work was very immature. And I don't mean that in like a childless, but just like not mature as in development as an artist. And all of those things, they both came with joy of doing something and some rejection.

1:23:54And, you know, there's countless examples in my past. I think, you know, part of what I tell a story in the book about a guy named Jia Zhang, and he's written a book and he had a very, really, really cool angle at this was he found rejection professionally after a series of just crushing defeats in at a startup and and set out to cultivate what he calls rejection therapy. And the book chronicles this little story. And he goes, I think it's, I forget how many days in a row, it's maybe a hundred days of rejection. I think that might've been his chronicle of it. And he does things like ask, he tries to get rejected every day.

1:24:34And it gets so absurd that people are saying yes to the most absurd things that he can possibly make up, of which he asked a cop if he could drive the cop car. And the cop said, yes. he asked crispy cream donuts. He's like, I really like the donuts here, but you know, it is the Olympics right now. And I was wondering, could you make me the five Olympic ring donuts in the right colors? And the person was like, went and got the manager and they did it. Like these things, these are crazy things. And so it does two things. One, it's really the asking that makes us uncomfortable or in Jia Zhang's case, asking to drive the police car because you think, am I going to get arrested?

1:25:11And then when things start actually happening for you, You got the benefit of both. You got the benefit of making yourself so uncomfortable that you ask a cop if you can drive his car and you realize that people want to help you when you do crazy shit. And that result also is creative. You got to drive a cop car and then write about it and then write a book about it. Right, for sure. And so I think for me, that is like rejection therapy and getting comfortable being uncomfortable. uncomfortable like I take ice baths every morning if I'm at my home in Seattle I have a cold plunge where I get in it and it's 50 degrees or 40 something degrees and I don't do that I mean sure there's all kinds of other benefits and you can talk to Tony Robbins or Tim Ferriss about that I do it because it's like every morning am I willing to be uncomfortable for like five minutes and if like this morning turn on you take a hot shower do what you need to do clean and then just cold and it's I never am like you know what I can't wait for that cold water But I do it every day because it's just a reminder that being uncomfortable in small ways, you know, builds that muscle of being uncomfortable in large ways.

1:26:18So, Chase, I feel like we could talk for hundreds of hours about this. This is like kind of understanding the DNA of creativity and learning and this compass that we discussed is like I'm obsessed with this topic. Like mostly because I think I ignored it for so many years and I was just so miserable during that time. We all have. And that's like, I don't want anyone to feel bad for a second. I mean, we all can look at our past and say, oh man, we effed up here and here and here and here. It's not too late. And you're living proof of it. You're living proof of it. You've started like starting standup comedy.

1:26:54Like we're sitting here in the club. It's amazing. It's inspirational as hell. That's like, I want to support you because I see you doing those things. Like Zia Zhang. And I want to make those donuts for you. I want to come show up at your standup because you're doing something that makes you uncomfortable. And the fact that you have had the success you've had and you're still looking backwards, that tells me that we're all always going to be wanting and wishing a little bit more. It's never too late to start. And the only thing you can do wrong is to deny that that's a part of you and you're not denying it.

1:27:22So fist bump and thank you for being a huge inspiration to me, man. Well, thank you, Chase, for coming on the show. And the book is Creative Calling by Chase Jarvis. The subtitle, establish a daily practice, infuse your world with meaning and succeed in work and life. Again, the book is creative calling. I think this is like a Bible of, I do think it's like a blueprint to creativity and thanks for writing and thanks for coming on the show.

1:28:01Thank you.