Chase Jarvis on the Dangers of Playing it Safe | Transcription

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Introduction

Intro (00:00)

- Everybody, welcome to another episode of Impact Theory. You were here, my friends, because you believe that human potential is nearly limitless, but you know that having potential is not the same as actually doing something with it.

Intro (00:09)

So our goal with this show and company is to introduce you to the people and ideas that are gonna help you actually execute on your dreams. All right, today's guest is an award-winning photographer, entrepreneur, educator, app developer, keynote speaker, which he's done by the way on five continents, director and author. His multi-faceted talents and creations have not only garnered him a social following measured in the millions, but have led him to create some of the most groundbreaking campaigns for some of the biggest companies on the planet, including Apple, Nike, and many, many others. His unique style and insane amount of hustle have made him one of the top 30 most influential photographers of the past decade, according to photo district news, and his ability to bring really fresh eyes and creative solutions to old problems has won him countless awards and helped him fundamentally alter the landscape of photography and creative education. He has helped pioneer many of the things that we take for granted today, by the way, including photo sharing apps. He created one a year and a half before Instagram, behind the scenes documenting and virtual step-by-step mentorship. He was a champion for transparency long before it was trendy to do so and realizing that really a core part of his calling was to help other people. He founded CreativeLive, a revolutionary online education resource with over 1,000 teachers, including people like Sir Richard Branson, Mark Cuban, and Tim Ferriss. They have roughly 1,500 classes and over 10 million students who have consumed over 2 billion-- that's with a b-- billion empowering minutes of content. So please, dearest friends, help me in welcoming the man who quit pursuing a career in professional soccer, dropped out of medical school, and abandoned getting his PhD in philosophy so he could help change the world. The incomparable Chase Jarvis. Incompanble. I'm going to write it down. Thank you so much for coming. I recorded all that shit. I'm going to play that anytime I feel bad about myself. As you should. You should give it to Kate, like on a loop, and just let her know. She would eye roll right now. She'd go, oh my god, if I don't get enough of that. No, thank you so much for having us. For this show. Great spot. Big front door. Yes. I love it. No, it's great. It's good to be in your home. Thank you, man. It's great to have you. Super excited about this one, as we were talking about before the camera started rolling. For me, the big thing is I know I'm going to have to do a lot of research on somebody. And so it needs to be somebody that the more I go into it, the more I'm empowering myself, the more I'm learning about something that I want to be able to put to use and do just a treasure trove of stuff. What was crazy is before this, actually, I knew you really well as an influencer. So I'd seen a lot of your interviews. You, both sides of the camera, actually didn't know your creative work very well. So that was fun for me to really go deep on the things you've actually created. And just, it's amazing. It's not a surprise that you've had the kind of success you've had. Thank you. Again, just keep layering it on. I'm drinking it. No, it's very-- I pinch myself every day. I wake up, woke up this morning here to say an extra day to do the show. Got a little surf in. The fact that we're coming here to hang out with you and your crew, share the information that we've cultivated and learned from our wins and losses over the last several years. And then, on to San Francisco to basically do more of that, go back to CreativeLive this evening. It's-- yeah, I pinch myself every day. I feel lucky to be alive. I feel thankful to have been able to tap into my passions. I mean, imagine if more people would have both-- to be put in a position where you could, and then to be able to tap into the things that you love and put those together into making a living or a life be a better place the world would be. Yeah, for sure. It's interesting that you say you feel lucky to be alive. One of the things I didn't know is that you were caught in or almost caught in an avalanche. For sure. So walk me through that. Like, what near-death experience obviously has to be a pretty mind-altering thing. What was it like?

Philosophical Discussions And Personal Anecdotes

Intro (00:00)

- Everybody, welcome to another episode of Impact Theory. You were here, my friends, because you believe that human potential is nearly limitless, but you know that having potential is not the same as actually doing something with it.

Intro (00:09)

So our goal with this show and company is to introduce you to the people and ideas that are gonna help you actually execute on your dreams. All right, today's guest is an award-winning photographer, entrepreneur, educator, app developer, keynote speaker, which he's done by the way on five continents, director and author. His multi-faceted talents and creations have not only garnered him a social following measured in the millions, but have led him to create some of the most groundbreaking campaigns for some of the biggest companies on the planet, including Apple, Nike, and many, many others. His unique style and insane amount of hustle have made him one of the top 30 most influential photographers of the past decade, according to photo district news, and his ability to bring really fresh eyes and creative solutions to old problems has won him countless awards and helped him fundamentally alter the landscape of photography and creative education. He has helped pioneer many of the things that we take for granted today, by the way, including photo sharing apps. He created one a year and a half before Instagram, behind the scenes documenting and virtual step-by-step mentorship. He was a champion for transparency long before it was trendy to do so and realizing that really a core part of his calling was to help other people. He founded CreativeLive, a revolutionary online education resource with over 1,000 teachers, including people like Sir Richard Branson, Mark Cuban, and Tim Ferriss. They have roughly 1,500 classes and over 10 million students who have consumed over 2 billion-- that's with a b-- billion empowering minutes of content. So please, dearest friends, help me in welcoming the man who quit pursuing a career in professional soccer, dropped out of medical school, and abandoned getting his PhD in philosophy so he could help change the world. The incomparable Chase Jarvis. Incompanble. I'm going to write it down. Thank you so much for coming. I recorded all that shit. I'm going to play that anytime I feel bad about myself. As you should. You should give it to Kate, like on a loop, and just let her know. She would eye roll right now. She'd go, oh my god, if I don't get enough of that. No, thank you so much for having us. For this show. Great spot. Big front door. Yes. I love it. No, it's great. It's good to be in your home. Thank you, man. It's great to have you. Super excited about this one, as we were talking about before the camera started rolling. For me, the big thing is I know I'm going to have to do a lot of research on somebody. And so it needs to be somebody that the more I go into it, the more I'm empowering myself, the more I'm learning about something that I want to be able to put to use and do just a treasure trove of stuff. What was crazy is before this, actually, I knew you really well as an influencer. So I'd seen a lot of your interviews. You, both sides of the camera, actually didn't know your creative work very well. So that was fun for me to really go deep on the things you've actually created. And just, it's amazing. It's not a surprise that you've had the kind of success you've had. Thank you. Again, just keep layering it on. I'm drinking it. No, it's very-- I pinch myself every day. I wake up, woke up this morning here to say an extra day to do the show. Got a little surf in. The fact that we're coming here to hang out with you and your crew, share the information that we've cultivated and learned from our wins and losses over the last several years. And then, on to San Francisco to basically do more of that, go back to CreativeLive this evening. It's-- yeah, I pinch myself every day. I feel lucky to be alive. I feel thankful to have been able to tap into my passions. I mean, imagine if more people would have both-- to be put in a position where you could, and then to be able to tap into the things that you love and put those together into making a living or a life be a better place the world would be. Yeah, for sure. It's interesting that you say you feel lucky to be alive. One of the things I didn't know is that you were caught in or almost caught in an avalanche. For sure. So walk me through that. Like, what near-death experience obviously has to be a pretty mind-altering thing. What was it like?

Adventure/Philosophy of Art/Motivation/Relationships (04:19)

What did you take away from it? Yeah, I haven't been very public about that. I'm trying to figure out how to tell that story in a way that doesn't disrespect the fact that I really shouldn't be sitting here. I'm like a 1/2 of a 1% short story long. I was caught in an avalanche in Alaska working on a campaign for it. So I don't put anybody at risk, just one of the world's top 50 brands. And I was very knowledgeable. I spent a whole lifetime in the back country shooting the world's top skin snowboard athletes. And just mother nature, she has a way of reminding us that she's boss. And 100 small things stacked up. There was no one big indicator. And everybody was with our crew. We had decades and decades of experience in the back country with avalanche safety. And my number got pulled. It's a numbers game. Ultimately, when you spend-- that was where most of my early creative work was in the action sports world, ski surf, snow, skate world. And 100% of your time is in the 2% or 3% of the time that's most dangerous on unskeed slopes. In the way, way out back country that had never been touched just after a storm, it starts to become a numbers game. And my number got pulled. And I had just photographed a woman who had made a bunch of turns. And we were starting to pay attention.

Avalanche Story (05:54)

There was just mother nature gives you a little bit of sign about what the changing snow conditions. And then I was just skiing down to get into position for the next shot. And the whole mountain let go. And it was about 1,800 vertical feet, about 2 or 300 feet across and about 10 feet deep. So just to give you a picture that's enough to fill up, I don't know, 5 or 10 football fields with 10 to 20 to 50 feet of snow. And without going into the details, I managed to escape with my life. I thought I was living the dream then. Traveling years ago, is this? This was a long time ago. It was just maybe 10 years ago. But what I thought living the dream, traveling the world, shooting for the top brands. And after that, it's something that shakes you to your core. I got up and went to work the next day, which was something I had to deal with. But it definitely made me feel like who I was really in service of was myself. And I was living a fairy tale life, traveling all the world. It's as good as you think it is when you read about it in the papers. There's plenty of grind that's not talked about. But it certainly made me look beyond what I was currently doing. It's like, wait a minute, this is not actually impact. It's fun, but I'm taking pictures. And I'm not really shaping public opinion or changing the world. And so it helped me look more carefully at the work that I was doing, how I was spending my time with whom I was spending my time. And reassess. And that certainly was a massive pivot or catapult onto the next phase of my career, which was how do you integrate what you love with having impact? So you're a philosophy student, at least at one point.

On Why He Became a Philosophy Major (07:48)

And you said part of what drew you to philosophy was that it gave you critical thinking skills. So walk me through or walk us all through. What does that introspection look like? Because you've had, I mean, from the outside, it looks like two major moments where you're really reflecting that and then when you decide that you're going to sort of leave everybody else's dreams to decide and you're going to do your own thing, whatever that's going to be. I think it'd be super helpful to understand what that critical process or was it total gut? And you were just looking for instinct. I think I got into philosophy based on trying to have an out for the career that everybody else wanted for me, which was, oh, you're smart and hardworking. I went to college in a soccer scholarship, first of all. And I think that's when you do that, your whole world is focused on that thing. Because it's a small fraction of the folks who actually get to do that, then have an opportunity to go on and play professionally. And I had that path available to me. And I started sort of second guessing that path. And philosophy was this thing that I was interested in, mostly out of curiosity, I had some experience with visualization and meditation early on, specifically around sports and sports psychology. I had to be an elite performer as an athlete. And that was introduced to you by the teams you were working on. Yeah, I was on the Olympic development team, which is just basically the team that they're getting ready to go for the Olympics every four years. But they keep it going in between the Olympic cycles. And when you have to go to school and you have to pick a major, I didn't know what I wanted to do. I was pretty focused on soccer. And so what's the fallback? And I remember just asking friends and peers. And the answers were like, oh, if you're smart and hardworking, you should be a doctor or a lawyer. Or I was like, oh, OK. And so I just literally started taking classes in premed and started volunteering at hospitals and just setting up that path. Realizing only way in, it's like, wait a minute. I'm very different than everyone else who's on this sort of path. Didn't feel good. So falafel. Because they had like a drive? Yeah, a drive, a passion. And not that I didn't like caring for people. I mean, I worked in children's hospital with super sick kids as my sort of rotation and getting experience. I was just so depressing. So I mean, the people that do that work, it's unbelievable. The level of character and passion and focus that you have to have to stay on that in a world where you're all that stuff is so-- I can imagine literally that. --tear you apart. But philosophy, to get back to your original question, was it was an escape from that world. I was like, wait a minute. You mean I can get college credits for reading Nietzsche and Heidegger and thinking about creativity. And it was actually the philosophy of art that got me most interested in art. I've always been creative as a kid. But fundamentally sort of stuffed that down because when I grew up, suburbs outside of Seattle, being creative-- oh, he's the creative kid. That wasn't a good thing. That was like, wait a minute. Oh, they're saying I'm creative. And that means I'm weird. Like, I didn't want to be weird. I wanted to fit in, like most young kids. And so I was like, what fits in? Like, oh, the captain of the football team. Great, I'll do that. And so I was really-- I was chasing that dream, which was someone else's dream. I happened to be a decent athlete. And it ended up guiding me to college. But I had always repressed this sort of creative side. When I started taking philosophy classes, specifically the philosophy of photography, the philosophy of aesthetics. And this was just part of the normal course of study. I was like, oh, yeah, that's part of me. And started leaning more and more into that. And is it just like a sense of being more alive when you're doing it that you say it's a part of you? Yeah, I think it's-- the part that you said at the end of your question around, is it really just intuition? And what I was doing was sort of justifying my intuition. Hey, I'm still going to get a PhD moment. I bailed on medical school after doing all the MCATs and all that stuff, the interviews. Going to go to the University of Washington Medical School, freaked out, bailed on that. It's like, OK, I'm still going to be-- it's going to be OK. I'm going to be a doctor, but just a PhD. How does that-- does that meet up with everybody's expectations of what a hard-working son should be? And ultimately, the philosophy part of that extension or the bullshit that I was feeding myself was critical thinking. I was like, wow, these people, I might not feel like the graduate student who's over there with the beret and the cigarette smoking and talking about Nietzsche. But I was learning, and I was reading and being informed by everybody from Plato to Seneca to Nietzsche to just these big old philosopher names. And I realized only now that that was a foundation for a critical thinking. But also, it opened me up to when you apply critical thinking to yourself, like, wait a minute, what am I doing? I'm actually living everybody else's dream for me, rather than writing my own script. So that element of self-reflection that I gained from studying philosophy helped me shake up the whole scene. Like, wait a minute, what-- this is not who I am. It's not what I'm supposed to be. And you go back to childhood. What are the things that you were excited about as a young kid? And that was making things. I was an only child. I didn't have a lot of toys. I was like, block of wood. Go entertain yourself. So I had wild imagination that I had sort of been repressing for my whole life. And as soon as I talked about intuition, ultimately, I think this is intuition at work, fighting against a lot of cultural forces. And I talk a lot about this today. Like, I bet if I surveyed everyone here in the room that a good bit of them had been shown a path, shown the door. This is actually-- this is what you should do. And I'm trying to get with CreativeLive and with being on your show here, trying to get people to think, wait a minute, am I doing the thing that I want to do? Or is it cultural pressure, pressure for my parents, pressure from the mortgage and the family to do some other thing? And just lo and behold, there's a lot of people who for whom that has-- that has been a bigger shaper of what they're on their path to do as opposed to the thing that they actually want to do, which is governed by intuition. So in a long, roundabout way, through a bunch of experience, I'm in the hard way, but ultimately found my path. One of the things you've said-- this is going to be close to a direct quote-- the most important thing that you could cultivate is the ability to listen to your intuition. Yes. So how do you cultivate that? Self-awareness is huge. Like, that monologue that I just went on about all of the steps that I took to be able to self-reflect.

How to Cultivate Self Awareness (15:00)

And does it start from like a feeling? It's certainly there's always a feeling. And that's the thing that we are told we are taught to ignore feelings. And we've done a terrible job culturally, not just in the US, but in the West. We've done a very bad job of cultivating one's desire, expectation, ability to listen to our intuition.

What Does Grieve Make You (15:20)

And we all have different paths, some through grief, some through achievement, some through struggle, to start to listen to.

Listen to our compass (15:29)

We all have that compass. What is it about grief? That one really stuck out to me. So is it like a big event that just sort of slaps you out of your normal way of thinking? This really gets me up in the morning, so I've talked to thousands of people. I end up being-- when you do find your path and you're lucky enough to grab onto that string that gives you a hell of a ride, which is what I feel like I've been on, you end up being a career counselor. And I love it. I end up talking to people. And I mentioned grief just off the cuff, because I have had so many people toe to toe after I get off stage at an event or something, saying, I knew who you were, but your message really resonated with me when my mom died, when I lost my husband, when I broke up with my girlfriend, when I lost my house. So this process of grieving and realizing that either recognition of our own mortality, or just some event, you're like, wait a minute. This is not all this stuff that I'm being programmed and told. Like, that's not what this is about. Are you familiar with Jamie-- I know you know Stephen Kotler. Oh, yeah. Familiar with Jamie Wiehl, Stephen Kotler in their new book, "S Apfire." Yeah. I was exchanging emails with Stephen in the car on the way up here. Really? That's crazy. Yep. Have you read it yet? I haven't. Oh, dude, you're going to love it. So the reason I'm going so deep in this question is like you. So many people come to me, and they have a sense that they could do more. They could be more. They don't quite know what that is. They don't even know how to put words around this feeling that they have in there. They don't know how to start. Like, what's the first step, exactly? And one of the parts of stealing fire is you have to learn to tap into non-ordinary states of consciousness, which is why when you said grief, I thought, wow. Because they don't touch on stuff like that. But I think that that is literally what's happening is it's-- Yeah. But you need someone to slap you out of the day to day. Because it's so easy to blame anything. We can blame the political environment. We can blame our health. We can blame so many things on, oh, it's just easy to stand this path. And whatever the thing is-- that's why I mentioned grief. Whatever the thing is that gets you out of that state of numbness. For me, it was an avalanche. For me, it was a 10-year recognition. And to be clear, just for a second, small departure, I grew up middle class, white, suburban. And it was hard for me to resist all of the things that culture was telling me I had to be. Imagine people who have less opportunity, who are people of color, who are females. Like, I'm a huge-- on this mission down here in LA, I've been focusing on interviewing some of the strongest females I know, trying to get the new-- the feminine is the new energy that I think our culture needs. But imagine if you had all those other disadvantages, how much harder it would be than it was for me. And it took me half a lifetime. And to me, that's catastrophic failure of our culture. That's sad. So the flip side of that, then, is if we can increase our self awareness, if we can program people through non-traditional channels-- and ultimately, I would like to see the school system change. I don't have a lot of optimism for that, just based on the variant trends, which is one of the reasons we created CreativeLive. But if we can create a longstanding-- something that has durability, a vein in culture, which helps people understand that you have to write your own script. And if you don't, someone else will surely write it for you. And if we can sort of change that mindset, that's one of the things that I'm chasing. We get little glimpses of it day to day. We get a big dose of CreativeLive. That's the thing that I'm focused on. So the fact that we all-- collective consciousness, you, Stephen, Gary, Tim, Ariana, Brene Brown-- there's a real-- what I feel like is finally sort of a movement towards some of these new ideals. To me, that's exciting.

How to change culture (19:41)

So you gave me the chills a few minutes ago, talking about culture, talking about the need for feminine energy, which is something that we're working on. But the whole thing at Impact Theory is that. So if growing up in a middle class environment, white, with privilege, and all of that, you still have a hard time, how do we adjust culture enough to make sure that anybody, no matter where you grew up, impoverished, under educated, like whatever the thing is that you've got going against you, how do we really impact that culture? And it does, to me, also feel like a movement. There's a lot of people creating a lot of energy, creating social content, certainly. But what gets really interesting to me is what you're doing with CreativeLive, where it's foundational. And I don't think that we have to change the education system from within. For sure. You doing what you're doing with CreativeLive becomes like a whole other thing. We're trying to create not only social content, but traditional narrative content. Because don't try to change behavior. That's my thing. Leverage behavior, right? Exactly. So I already know people are going to be watching movies, reading books, watching Netflix, all that stuff. So now I want to sort of incept them with ideology by understanding how mythology works, how can humans consume it and pass on that ideology. Yeah, storytelling.

The World Thinks in Narrative (20:57)

It's a fun-- it's like campfire, caveman. You've said that the world thinks in narrative. I do. What do you mean by that? That's how we remember stories. That's how ideas are passed along that are sticky. Just I think it's-- as we're hardwired for language, if you read any Noam Chomsky, we're also hardwired for narrative. Narrative is a product of language. And if-- and you see that in pop culture, great storytellers, it's like the Pied Piper. I forget who wrote the book Tell to Win with Peter Gruber. Great book around creating narratives to attach ideas, ideologies, and inspiration to. And I think ultimately that's one of the reasons that I-- certainly not the original reason I went into it, but now looking backwards that I was focused on telling stories as a creator, as a photographer, and a director, was that's the use case that I can now carry into this part of my life, telling people stories, not just about avalanches, but about other people tapping into their most internal authentic selves in order to direct their living life, career, whatever path. That's what makes that sticky is narrative. So it's interesting, going back to narrative and narrative's ability to juxtapose ideas that may otherwise seem totally unrelated.

Meditation & Mindfulness from a Neourological Perspective (22:27)

I find it interesting that you credit a lot of your success being a type A hard driver, like busting ass, but that you've also found meditation and which-- and I'll use my own experience. I see meditation as being very soft, like a nice contrast. So I meditate right after I work out, because I like that juxtaposition of the intensity and then how rapidly can I decelerate everything. How has that friction helped you between being a type A hard driver? So I know at one point you were concerned that meditation was actually going to soften you in some way. We have, I think, Tim Ferriss and I, who Tim is a lovely him. We've been friends for a long time. First of all, I remember a couple of conversations about isn't this edge, this-- at your core you got a fire in your belly, you're driven, you mentioned type A, hard charging, whatever words that you would associate that. You start to believe your own story that that is what has created your success. And we don't stop or pause. We're unwilling to part with that even long enough to see if that narrative, that self-narrative, is true. Because if we stop that hard charging, type A, aggro, undercurrent, will we lose a step? Will we lose two steps? Will we fall from the position that we've worked so hard to get ourselves into? I remember specifically exactly I was sitting talking to Tim and he was feeding me this line. I was like, all those things you said? I thought the exact-- and I can only say what my truth is. I can't say what your truth is, Tim. But just give it a shot. How about, what if you were able to think about that thing that you thought was propelling you is actually an anchor? That is the thing that is keeping you down or small or at some percentage of your potential rather than their way around. Try and tell yourself that narrative just long enough for you to take a break from your aggro, hard charging, type A, life. And there's any one of these types of meditation I happen to steer Tim. And I found transcendentalmeditation, TM, TM.org. As one that was sticky for me, Tim ended up gravitating to that same thing. And when you are able to make that switch, you realize, as I did, I think as Tim did, that-- And when you say switch, you mean switch in the narrative? Yes, switch the narrative and change your daily habits, such that meditation is a part of your day to day. For me, I was quickly easy to see that, oh my god, this is actually-- it's like a rocket. It's like a booster. Because now everything around me is happening. It's still on motion. I don't get fired up. And it was a fundamental change in the way that I interacted with the world. And I don't want to preach meditation because it's not for everybody. There is just-- if you read Tools for Titans, Tim's book-- Of course. The number one correlated thing across all those people, some sort of mindfulness practice. Now, you ready? Yeah. I'm going to be the asshole that says this for everybody. There you go. Because I'm just taking it from a neurological perspective. There you go. Purely from a neurological perspective, because I know what's happening. You're tapping into the parasympathetic nervous system. You're calming down the sympathetic. It's just-- it's biochemistry. So-- If you believe in biochemistry, then give it a shot. I'm a huge advocate. I try not to sell it too hard because anytime someone's trying to sell you something, it feels authentic. But it's just giving me a lot of joy. Yeah. No, I think that it's-- like you-- actually, you embraced it pretty quickly. Like, Tim, I did not. And I really felt that it was super soft. And I never thought of it as taking a step off my edge. It just felt like probably because myself narrative-- growing up, I was not good at sports. I did not feel overly tough. And so toughening up was lesson number one for me as an entrepreneur. To not be the guy reacting like, hey, this guy is falling. I just really had to steal myself and work on mental toughness. And so that was like, I put so much energy into that for such a long time that by the time people were telling me, hey, you should meditate. I was like, what? Yeah. And then how long into it before you felt a change in your own? The first day. Yeah. It was so immediate and so massive because I was coming to it from the place of a Navy SEAL told me stopping a dumb ass, understand what meditation is doing to your brain, and just try it. Then it was like, OK, I understand what's going on from-- I'm trying to-- you have gas and break, right? So the gas is your sympathetic nervous system and your break is rest and digest. It's the parasympathetic nervous system. And so once he could explain it to me like that, then it was like, OK, it's not woo-woo anymore. It doesn't make me feel like I'm sort of reverting back to my less than tough days. And so when I sat down to do it and I could imagine what I was trying to do to my brain and the breathing and understanding diaphragm breathing and all that, if you are used to breathing shallow and you just do one breath from your diaphragm, you'll feel it right away. It's like this little buzz. Yeah. And so as somebody who just sort of naturally runs at a high stress level, which I'll call background radiation, like if I don't meditate, my background radiation level is just creep up, creep up, creep up. Like that's a good name for it. Yeah.

Tony Robbins (27:46)

And so it was really, really-- it was a lifesaver in the sense that I think if I had continued to not meditate, I would have ended up overwhelmed or depressed. So I didn't. But once I started doing it and could reflect back, I was like, whoa. It felt like a dodging a bullet. Talk to me about visualization. How specifically do you do it? How concrete are the images in your mind? What's the end goal? I read headlines, actual words in an article. I write an article in my-- In your mind? And I write an article or a press release, or I'm literally reading the outcome as if it has already happened and being reported to-- Chase Jarvis wins an award for revolutionary new photo techniques. Sure. Yeah. But I try and be less me-centric. Really? My goals are a little bit involved, like movements or groups of people or creative live. But I have personal goals, for sure. But anything that's more public facing, I have a press release written in my head, and I read it in my mind's eye every day, every morning. The same one? Or you're constantly-- I have a base narrative that I go to. And so it's not literally the same exact words. But it's same in principle. And I do never heard that before. It's super powerful. With sports, it was very much about trying to involve-- there's a component of relaxation prior to it.

Athletic Visualizations (29:13)

So I do it just after meditating. You're more receptive. I've learned through research in my own personal experience that your body, your mind are more receptive to the suggestions. And in the sports world, I would-- you could smell the grass. I'd see the ball going in the net. Would you say I smell the grass? No. Or would you actually-- I have, in some cases, I talk to myself. I will literally say the words out loud to give it an extra dimension, the audio dimension. But incorporating sights and smells, what did it smell like? The paper of the contract being signed, or what did the ink smell like? What did the grass smell like on game day? When the-- what was the experiences in your body as you saw the ball hit the net? Or like, again, whatever, I'm telling myself a complex narrative that I have 100% made up about the moment after you've realized the dream has come true. I've never heard anybody use words before. And that's so liberating for me because I'm actually really bad at seeing something in concrete detail. And especially coming from you, I would figure as a photographer, you can just sort of close your eyes and imagine-- And I'm painfully visual. And that's part of the reason that I have sought these other senses, auditory words, even smell to-- again, I mentioned a couple of times already-- smelling the grass, what it felt like to be in the moment on the soccer field when you scored the wind goal or whatever the thing is. I just tried to incorporate more senses. Wow. That's really incredible. Using words that I'm going to try. Now, language is powerful. Words matter. And obviously, they can-- especially in our culture now, there's a sort of-- in a post-truth world. That's terrifying. Yeah. There's this goal to sort of erode the word. But the thing that-- my reason for knowing that words are powerful is the effect that they have on our bodies. I think Tony Robbins talks about, I might get this wrong, but you have to have the right state before you can tell yourself the right story, before you can get the right strategy in place, and any time you try and go right to one of the other things, like if you try and go right to the right strategy, but you're in a shitty headspace, like you're not going to get the strategy right. So he calls his daily routine priming, whatever the activities that we all do every day or morning or in this case visualization. I realize that those things are true for me, too.

Podcast Goals And Core Values

Jim's Goals for the Podcast (31:51)

If I first and foremost can control my state, my emotional state, I can be in a positive headspace and know that the world's out there looking out for me and that I am in part in control of my destiny, that helps me create a great narrative, whether this is a narrative of self empowerment or supporting others or just creating the world that I'm hoping to create. And then the strategy is like, oh, I have to wake up and I have to go do this thing or help this person or be receptive to these ideas such that I can tap into my dreams. So again, I look at that whole world as really valuable. I think it's massively underappreciated. And again, I'm sort of just, I feel like an everyday guy, just everyday Joe and I have put these techniques to work for me. I don't preach them, but I can't think of what my life would be like. You talked about how your stress level would be, what your health would be without some of the practices that you've made use of. I'm in the same boat. Like I can't even imagine. I wouldn't be on the show if it wasn't for some of these techniques and tools. - Yeah, I love that. You said that habits are like really important in your life and I feel exactly the same. And one of the goals of doing the show and I've got to imagine it's similar for you is to, one, I don't want people to think that what I've achieved is a result of being extraordinary. Like nobody thought anything of me as a kid, not voted most likely to succeed. I grew up in Tacoma, Washington, under educated in my opinion. And, but just started like brick by brick, like today, I will start visualizing using words, which I have never before, right? So that's incredibly powerful. - Incredible, it goes. - Yeah, it's powerful. - So taking like those bricks, you get enough of them and then you're able to execute at a higher level.

's Goals for the Podcast (33:38)

I mean, that's like point number one to do in the show. - It's pretty cool. - And I want to talk, I also have a show called Chase Jarvis Live on creative live. So like it's somewhat a selfish behavior because you want to sit down with world's top experts. You know, that's actually my creative live exists 'cause I wanted to learn from these people. I wanted, sure, I certainly wanted to give them a platform and connect the audience that I had built over years and years of hard work, accidentally built an audience and wanted to connect them with my friends who are the best in the world. But, you know, my personal interview show and in part creative live is very much about how can I be next to people who inspire the hell out of me and if you can add enough value to them. Like, I'm clearly gonna get value from being on your show and, you know, I'm hoping that, you know, tell me, is that one of the reasons that you started the show? - 100%. - Yeah. - It's close to the only reason. - Yeah. - Like just wanting to learn, you know, wanting to encounter people and so, and at the time that we started, it was originally a show called Inside Quest and we had 1400 employees and we had, in fact, this is something I want to talk to you about. We had this list of our core values and I didn't want them to memorize it and not live them.

Core Values (34:48)

And so I wanted to bring people in just 'cause I was utterly convinced that some, there were 25 bullet points that every guess that came on would relate to and just naturally espouse one, two, three, four, five of the different bullet points and people would see like, hey, these are, 'cause it wasn't like this is what you need to do to be successful at Quest. This is what you need to do to be successful at anything. And so hearing these high level people come in and talk about it naturally and then be able to go, okay, yeah, that really is like exactly what is on this list. That was a real big driver for me as well.

CCL Core Values (35:22)

- So true. We talk about the same thing in creative life. We have core values. It's the thing we spend the most time talking about in our all hands meetings. - Your core values are amazing. Walk us through a couple of the ones that you think are just critical. - Since you asked me to choose a couple, I'll just choose the first three 'cause I think they're the top ones, which is creativity, access, and community. So creativity, I think it's the thing that different JSAs from so many of the species on the planet. The fact that we can take two disparate ideas that weren't otherwise together, put those things together to make something new and ideally useful. - Do people train themselves to do that? - Absolutely, it's not a skill to have it. - I love that. - I think we can get into that habit. - You get into it by doing it. That's the thing, it feels very unnatural at first. And then try things like morning pages, try things like creating something every day since we all have phones with this. It's very easy to do these things. Playing the guitar, taking pictures every day, writing in a journal, all those things will make you better, brain surgeons, a better athlete, a better, like the science is abundantly clear, that creativity creates creativity. I should know the study, there's this great study that is unequivocal, like creativity creates creativity. And it's not necessarily field specific, just there's pathways in the brain of connecting unlikely things to make something new and useful. So having that as a core value is a no-brainer. It is also, that's one of my core missions as a human is to make the world a more creative place.

Access (37:00)

Second one, access. I realized when I decided, through everybody else's narrative for me that I wanted to be a creator, a professional photographer and a director, that when I looked around that I didn't have access to experts, this is really pre or early net. No, the idea behind the scenes video, like those words didn't even, they were never put together behind the scenes video. Like it wasn't a part of the lexicon of culture. And I was like, wait a minute, this is terrible because there are so many people, they did call it mentors, but mentors were behind locked doors and ivory towers and buildings covered with ivy and I didn't have access to any of that. And so I had to sort of take the swings myself, learn from experience. It's like, why am I doing this? And like so many other people could benefit. So I started sharing that. That first sort of inclination of access is in part, I believe while I was sitting here today 'cause I have cultivated a world where that is normal, a world around me, that's what creative live, obviously it's a core value there, but I started out as a photographer by sharing trade secrets. This is what it's like, this is my behind the scenes with, professional athlete, X, Y, or Z, or this famous snowboard or whatever. And this is what it's like to suck, this is what it's like to get a job and lose a job and providing access to my life. And it was totally incidental. I was trying to help my industry because I figured if I could set a paradigm for sharing secrets about photography that I could actually, someone else would reciprocate and I could learn something too. That's access and community, is our third one. Community is also, I think it's fundamentally one of the reasons that I'm sitting here on your couch, having built community and having, when I mentioned earlier, why did you start the show? But you're also you're building community, you're serving your own needs by having people that are inspirational to you, sit here on the chair in the chair next to you, but everyone in the room and beyond. Ultimately, that distills to community. And if you've given value to that community, I'm sure you've also received a ton of value to folks who are liking and sharing and helping support your vision and mission here. Same is true for CreativeLive. We have 10 million students. We serve every country on the planet. So this is crazy global community of creators who are all trying to figure it out, who are all told that only some of us are creative, we're all told that in order to be a great artist, you shouldn't touch business and in order to be a business person, then you just have to be cutthroat. And I just don't believe in those paradigms and if we can learn and leverage one on others skills and share information, then how much better would the world be? So that's sort of three of the core values, three of our seven. These are how we make decisions in the company. - I love it. All right, where can these guys find you online before I ask my final question? - Oh, that was fast. Whoa, I'm on, I'm at Chase Jarvis personally, CreativeLive is at CreativeLive, all one word on everything. And to me, that would bring me great joy. If I'm wondering if we could do something, I guess have some show notes. We'll try and do something for your audience. We'll try and get a special, a discount code or something, I'll work on that, so that we can support your community. And that'd be my first and foremost ask is to go there, come find me.

Impact (40:41)

Accessible using my core value. All right, now you gotta be quick, I'm gonna drink some water while you ask it. - Take a sip, take a sip. Here we go, the audience already knows what I'm gonna ask. - All right, but yes, what is my friend, the impact that you wanna have on the world? - Impact. Ah, I would like to help other people live their dreams, whether that's in career, in hobby or in life. To me, that is an impact that has a lever behind it. But I have never seen or felt the world more alive, the people around me more alive, than when they are doing the thing that makes them feel great. And so if the impact that I can have is to provide more opportunities and more options and more focus on that as the goal of life, living your truth authentically, then I would die happy man. - That's incredible, then tell them why playing it safe is the most dangerous thing they could do.

Closing Statements

Playing it safe is the most dangerous thing we can do. (41:53)

I don't know if you heard Cuban recently came out and said that it's not programming jobs, other jobs of the future, because all those will be automated, because when programming can program for itself, what do you need? You need creativity, you need ideation, you need the ability to differentiate, not just on math, because it's not all about math, it's math plus the human element. So creativity is actually the most valuable thing in the next generation. It is the first time in the history of the world where those systems that have been in place that were quote, the safe bets, go to college, get good grades, you'll get a good job, then you'll work for a company for 40 years, you get the gold watch and you'll have a great retirement. That's just fundamentally not true. A, the school system's changing, it's leaving behind so many people. B, employment, there's gonna be, I think 53 million Americans are gonna have a side hustle by 2020. - Whoa. - And the four year university is not at all set up to accommodate that, not accommodate it, sounds like it's being graceful to deal with that. And if our parents had one job, we will have five, the next generation will have five jobs at the same time. And if you think along those, those paradigms, all of the old systems are completely inadequate. And that is why creative life exists, that is why that you will learn an infinite amount of skills over the next, you know, X number of years in your life in a way that's much different than the way you learned 10 or 15 years ago. And learning is the new sort of master paradigm. It's the first time in the history of the world that the safe thing is now the riskiest thing you can do. And if you're not paying attention to this stuff, like you need to wake up. I don't know if you've read the headlines lately, but, and you know, it shouldn't be a fear thing. It's maybe we change that and it's like, what an amazing time it is where we have access to this knowledge, where the, it doesn't cost a million dollars. Creative life has a free option. And there's so many other learning sites you just got freaking YouTube. Like, what are you doing?

Outro (44:00)

What's the next thing for you that is going to keep you on that path that I referenced earlier? - I love that. And thank you so much for having us. - Super grateful for having us. - Thank you. - Thank you guys. That last little bit of mental jiu-jitsu that he did there at the end, where don't think about it from a fear perspective, start thinking about what an incredible opportunity you're living through right now in this world. That is Chase Jarvis. That is what you're going to find is you go deeper into his world and realize that that is what this man is about. He looks at the world with just a fresh set of eyes and sees solutions that other people don't see. And that's why as you dive into his content, he is going to slowly draw you into a world that will change you if you let it. Trust me, it is amazing. I am very sad that we didn't get a chance to talk about Kate and a lot of other amazing things. I'm telling you what we touched on here today is a tip of an iceberg that has just an abundance of give to it. It is going to offer you things that you can't even imagine. So please take him up on it. Dive into his content, see what it's all about. It's really, really impactful and it's coming from somebody who is truly a master of his game and speaking on behalf of Creative Live, which I am not. In any way, shape or form affiliated with, but they have some of the greatest teachers on the planet, people that have won Pulitzer Prizes, I think. So Richard Branson talked about that and in the intro, dive into it, man. It's free. So that's how you change the world. You get out and you do stuff, you do stuff, you do stuff and Chase Jarvis is a master of getting things done. My friends, thank you so much for joining us. This is a weekly show, so if you haven't already, be sure to subscribe. And until next time, my friends, be legendary. Take care.

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NEW 2.0 Creative Live Commercial (45:34)

- Thanks, buddy. That was great close up. - Hey everybody, thanks so much for joining us for another episode of Impact Theory. If this content is adding value to your life, our one ask is that you go to iTunes and Stitcher and rate and review. Not only does that help us build this community, which at the end of the day is all we care about, but it also helps us get even more amazing guests on here to show their knowledge with all of us. Thank you guys so much for being a part of this community and until next time, be legendary, my friends.