Good Life Project - Chase Jarvis: Acclaimed Photographer and CreativeLIVE Founder

Episode Date: January 25, 2016

Imagine a career...no…Imagine a life where you travel the world earning your living by taking jaw-dropping photos of some of the most astounding athletes, action-sports, and breathtaking backdrops the planet has to offer.Sound too good to be true?—it’s not—this is the life of award-winning photographerChase Jarvis...but it almost wasn’t, nor is it where he's resting.Chase started down the beaten path, a scholar-athlete, headed toward med-school. It wasn’t until after taking his MCAT and interviewing with several medical schools that Chase’s took an unexpected turn and walked away from it all.IMoved by the call of the camera his grandfather left him when he passed, Chase stepped out of the path he'd been expected to follow and stepped into a part of him that had laid buried. He claimed his inner-artist and storyteller, and starting shooting images of friends doing what they lit them up. And a lot of that included skateboarding and snowboarding.The result?—entirely self-taught, Chase built a life most people only dream about as one of the top action sports and travel photographers in the world, shooting campaigns for many of the biggest brands, and making films along the way.Still, he wasn't done. Over the years, an even deeper call emerged. To teach. To inspire others and to create a different legacy.So, he co-founded CreativeLIVE, which has now grown into a global online educational venture with millions of students learning both the craft and business of a wide array of creative professions.In today’s conversation, we explore how this visionary photographer, director, fine artist, and entrepreneur learned to find comfort in uncertainty and, through that comfort, defy the external pressures driving him towards a career he never wanted.We’ll discuss why we’re so often compelled to pursue validation from the world, and how that pursuit forcibly pushes us away from our natural, creative passions. And, we dive deep into creativity, mastery and so many of the stories we tell ourselves that stop us from pursuing and experiencing both. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you 8 hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required, charge time and actual results will vary. If you had a loving lens on yourself, how much more could you create and how I bet you could do it with a lot less drama and pain and the power of positivity relative to that whipping voice, what would be possible? Imagine spending pretty much your entire adult life traveling around the world and photographing some of the most incredible adventures, action sports, locations that you could ever imagine. Well, that's what this week's guest, Chase Jarvis, spent the vast majority of his adult life doing.

Until a couple of years back, he decided to make a pretty abrupt change. Now, he still travels and he still shoots, but he became really focused on something much bigger, and that is the creative process. That's the opportunity to tap into something profoundly creative and make something. Not just make his own thing, but also turn around and teach other people how to find that in themselves. So he teamed with some people and he created a venture called Creative Live, which has now exploded into this huge global creative platform and community and online educational venture that's touched millions of lives.

In today's conversation, we sit down and we really trace some of the big moments of awakening and transformation in his journey. We talk about his career in photography, where that came out of, where he was born and what his early influences are, and then really dive into this major pivot that he's made in sort of like this new evolution of his life and what he's really focused on, the power of creativity and storytelling and the ability to tap into possibility and then take things that are in your head

and turn them into real powerful things in the world. I'm Jonathan Fields. This is Good Life Project. So we're hanging out right now in your hotel room, This is Good Life Project. are soon to have room service, so you guys will hear us chomping and drinking and doing all sorts of stuff when that arrives. I was just thinking back on my way over to hang out with you when we first met, and it was, I'm pretty sure it was when we were both doing a TEDx talk at Carnegie Mellon. Something else popped into my mind. I don't know if you know, maybe you know this, but the room that we did that talk in was

the same lecture that Randy Pausch gave his famous last lecture in. Incredible, incredible video. Yeah. And I didn't realize it. And when I first got into the room, I was just kind of getting settled. I'm kind of looking out. I'm like, I'm having deja vu. But I couldn't really key in.

And I'm like, and then it literally clicked before they started up and we started they they started up we started talking like oh wait did you reference that in your talk I don't think I did but I felt this astonishing sense of legacy like you know like I needed to do good you know I need to like honor that did you know that like that that was the same I I didn't at all and the sad twist for me is i think that's one of the worst talks i've ever personally given so from randy's talk to mine that's the spectrum and uh i forgot i was coming off uh just a long legacy of travel over the course of the previous two weeks or something and flew all day from something crappy landed at night and literally wrote my talk from like 11 p.m to 4 a.m slept for two hours and then i think i was um i don't

remember where in the day that i went but i remember watching your talk and there was someone else who was uh whose talk had a bunch of gravity behind it. It was really an important and powerful talk. I'm trying to remember. Do you remember who else was with us? Was Chris Guillebeau there? Yeah, Guillebeau was there. I don't remember what he spoke about. But I just remember being just, oh, my God.

Oh, there was another guy, actually. Super well polished. Super polished. Yeah, yeah. Who was he? Right. Yeah, I remember who he was talking about. And I just was like oh my god i'm

literally the worst i'm the worst you know that that doubt that the voice of the gremlins in your head like i don't deserve to be here this is terrible your talk is terrible you're talking about something that's totally outside your normal thing you haven't practiced so i'm glad that you have fond memories of being in the room where Randy delivered his talk. So what's funny also is that, and this is the way that we judge ourselves. So fiercely, that's not my recollection of your talk.

Fantastic. You know, I was like, holy shit. Like I, cause I didn't know who you were before then. And I start, you know, I'm like,

Oh wow, this is like a really fascinating guy. He's doing amazing things. He's building an astonishing body of work. And you showed a whole bunch of images and stuff like that I was like I was really drawn in by it so it's so interesting to see how like what you are feeling from the inside out was like a totally different experience than I had from the outside in I feel like that's a thing that I'm I'm working on trying to bring that message to as many of the people who will pay attention as possible that that 3am voice the voice that you think has driven you to succeed is actually not in fact your friend

take me deeper into this because i think it's an important conversation so i started meditating a few years ago and i'm a little bit trepidatious around going too deep into that just because it's like i don't know it's the new black, right? Meditation is the new black. But for me, I have a history of being connected to what I think is the power of the mind as a young athlete. I went to college on a soccer scholarship. This is like 80s and 90s. I got tuned into this like power visualization. It was very powerful for me then. And then as now as an adult, I don't know if I can say that, I started... I think you qualify. Okay, cool.

Sometimes I wonder. You just skated under the radar. Barely. I started meditating as an attempt to sort of integrate sort of the mind-body, the spiritual side, if you will. I'm not religious, but I consider myself very spiritual. And that meditation was a game changer for me. And that process of calming the mind and realizing that there's an immense power in that sort of calmness has helped me achieve is the wrong word. It just has helped me become or be what I think a better person, both to myself and

to others. And a question that I wrestled with through this time period was, all right, I'm so mellow now. I'm so calm. Am I eradicating, am I undermining my own success? Am I taking this part of me, the sort of hard-charging, type A, classic stereotype, and am I supplanting that with this just like mellow guy because i mean i'm not i'm still sort of spazzy as i'm standing here talking

you can't the folks at home are listening i'm waving my hands all over the place but am i eradicating the edge that got me to where i am today well it's like the comic who's like well but if i get happy and life is good yeah right, right, then I'm going to have no material. Right, like I'm just, there's nothing to talk about. Yeah, and I feel like the response, the appropriate response to that is all that, those 3 a.m. voices and the ones that are telling you you're not good enough,

you know, go back to my TEDx talk. We think those force us to get up early and stay up late and drive harder to be good. But the reality is that noise. And if there was sort of a self-loving voice that if you talk to yourself like you talk to the most important person in your life or like your mother talks to you, for most people, I guess, but if you had a loving lens on yourself, how much more could you create? I bet you could do it with a lot less drama and pain and the power of positivity relative to that

whipping voice. What would be possible? So that's a framework for how I've been trying to think about it. And my hope is that I can help other people. I mean, I'll just refer to a classic. Tim Ferriss is a good friend. I don't know if your readers are familiar with Tim. Sure, of course. He was asking me, he's like, man, you seem so zenned out. You're crushing it.

What's going on? I'm like, wow, interesting that you mentioned this because I started meditating a year ago. And he was like, oh, man, I'm worried if I get. It was the exact conversation that we're having right now and interestingly i just listened to a podcast where he and a woman named tara brock were having a conversation phenomenal teacher yeah yeah and they recapped basically this process of me talking to tim and tim feeling like he was going to lose his edge yeah which is just for me in the particular lies the universal so how can we take this message you and I Jonathan can we package this and share that with the world I hope I have a lot of messages but a core message for right now for me is trying to get other entrepreneurs creatives artists to realize that

this is you're not alone that you're good enough and that what matters is if you start to sort of just make things and go with your gut instinct and turn off those voices. Those voices aren't actually what got you to where you are now or aren't going to get you to where you want to be. In fact, it's just the opposite. How can you quiet that voice and get to work making the things that you're put on this earth to make and that, you know, where's this, how can we facilitate this sort of self-loving, not narcissistic, but this self-loving voice where you're taking good care of yourself and talking to yourself

like your best friend would talk to you. Yeah, and it's like, I totally agree with that, and I am, um, shh, don't tell anyone, fellow meditator. Fellow meditator, nice! Brothers in meditation. Yes.

But you know, it's really, and I agree, it's like mindfulness is in your black, but there's a reason for that. And it's because I think we become so addicted to pace and to expectation, and we become so fiercely self-judging at the same time that we've like completely lost the capacity to be okay with ourselves to be in a space of uncertainty for a sustained period of time and to slow down long enough for the really good stuff to emerge you

know it's like for me and I think for any seriously creative person, let me reframe that because I think everybody's For sure. Well said. Well said. For anybody who's on some sort of, who wants to build something in the world, business, body of work, whatever it is, if you develop a practice, and maybe it's meditation, maybe it's whatever it is, if you develop a daily practice that has the effect of allowing you to be in that place of not knowing longer without suffering as much where and that's where like the freaking the most beautiful things happen for sure but it but it kills most people because we're just we're so

ill-equipped to handle that space and then the time, the practice for me is that if you think about all of the time that we spend in our own internal voices of judgment, how much cognitive bandwidth does that take? If you could just free up a piece of that. That's right. How much RAM is getting

eaten up by that? Right. Just a slice of it to actually be proactively creative and innovative and problem solving and to see and pattern recognize.

Even just like a slice of that. You know, how much more could you breathe life into? It's a very astute commentary. And that's, so, you know,

that's one of the things that how can what I'm doing now, whether it's be on your podcast or my own podcast or in large part Creative Live was built to facilitate people living their dreams and career and life. And if you hear enough of these stories that remind you that it's okay to suffer and fail and all these other things that you can you know here's and here's a recipe for overcoming that and putting your best foot forward and you know regardless of the actual skill set that you're building to make whatever it is that you want to make like the the mental and emotional part without getting too sort of wooey is a huge plays a huge role in this stuff and to me that's a great worthy message that we need to get out

there yeah i so agree. Everyone's looking for, you know, like, what's the methodology and the technology that's going to allow me to operate at the next level? It's like, it's sitting between your ears. Literally. And from a photography standpoint, like, what's the camera that's going to get me there? I'm like, man. Yeah, it must be huge in your space. Oh, it has nothing to do with the gear. Like the gear is actually,

it's a really terrible, it's a proxy that leads to false understanding of what actually the process of taking a good photograph involves or what it is and what it means. And it's this, it's an erroneous stand-in that sometimes gets confused with adding value.

And in fact, I think it generally removes value and complicates things. And if it's in photography, it's the camera. And in company building, it's the, what are the daily tactics? No, no, it's really, like you said, it's between your ears. I think there's a lot that's going to come out about that

in the next chapter of human potential. I think there's a lot of conversation that has to happen around that stuff. Yeah. I think there's a lot that's going to come out about that in the next chapter of human potential. I think there's a lot of conversation that has to happen around that stuff. Yeah. And just the role of technology in a lot of this also. It's interesting. I don't know exactly when we'll air this, but I just sat down and had a conversation with Sherry Turkle,

who wrote a book called Reclaiming Conversation. She teaches at MIT. She's this big 30-year evangelist of technology and humanity and development. And she wrote a book a couple of years back called Alone Together, which kind of blasted technology. And now she's kind of like, well, it's here to stay, right? But let's at least acknowledge what it's doing to us and acknowledge what we're losing through it, which is empathy, and start to make deliberate choices about how and when to use it rather than just say it's here.

Let's just take full advantage of the technology. Everything that this device that's in my pocket can do, I'm going to leverage. Rather than that, just say, how do I actually want to live? Yeah, what print do I want to put on the world such that this will help me because you have to take you have to take the flip i know oh gosh i just spoke to someone i wish i could remember just the technology the the addiction to technology is a real addiction of dissimilar you know people are checking their phones on average like 86 times a day or something like that that's crazy that's crazy and you know the my hope is not to go down to any in any sort of dystopian tunnel with this thing because it is

the most amazing time to be a creator there's more opportunity now that it's the first time in the history of the world that we don't require permission to do so much of what we want to do whereby in all previous chapters, you needed a permission from a financier or a gallerist or a art director or a creative director or a publishing house or whatever. And now we don't need that. It might be a nice to have, but it's not a requirement. So it is really interesting. I just want to be realistic and let's talk about both sides of the coin because I've been someone who's just championing only the most positive things ever because that's my personality. But there is, you know, there's a bigger picture.

There's two sides of the same coin that we need to talk about. You brought a photography creative live and we've kind of jumped past. Sure. We went straight into the deep stuff, man, didn't we? So let's take a little bit of a step back so that those who aren't necessarily familiar with you, we can fill a little bit of your journey here. You grew up in Seattle. I got born and raised. Dad was a cop. Dad was a cop. What was that like? Danger. No, it was awesome. It's like filter must go up.

I'm an only child, so I think in some listeners' minds that might mean spoiled, and yet I feel actually just the opposite. It was a very pragmatic household. My parents were super, super supportive, but I didn't have, you know, it was very middle class also. I didn't have much. I've said before, I had upside-down Nikes. I had Adidas with four stripes.

What I could and couldn't do was laid out pretty plainly. My mom worked as an admin at a biotech company. And just the very sort of blue-collar mindset is what I grew up with. And because my dad was a cop wasn't actually, it didn't mean that I was, you know, I think I was kept down by the man. In fact, I think it was. It's like you'll be home at 10.30. No, I had, you know, an immense amount of freedom. I think there was a trust that I had with my parents

that when my dad's dealing with hard stuff on the street every day, he comes home and looks at his kid and is like, wow, you know, kid gets good grades, is as a scholar athlete like not much to complain about so have as much freedom as you want so i i don't want to i don't want to tell any false stories about it being hard it was pretty pretty normal i feel like that was also i mean seattle was a very different place then than it is now for sure it did as a young little little tyke or little punk before seattle was known for its music it really wasn't known for much rainier beer yeah i mean like literally there wasn't a lot it wasn't on the map in any i think meaningful cultural way and now

unlike now where it's music and technology and um yeah the the creative scene you. It's a leader in human rights. It's a leader in progressive law. I think it's a really amazing city. It was nothing like that. And that transformation that I've lived through, I haven't always been physically president in Seattle, but I certainly have a whole bunch of pride around the 206. Did you come up in a time where the music scene was really, because I'm thinking you would have probably been at an amazing age when grunge and that whole scene was just bam.

Yeah, it was right in the apex of that. I was in college basically 1990 to 1994, and that was the explosion of Nirvana and Pearl Jam and Soundgarden and Mudhoney and all those groups. Yeah, that whole scene came out of there. For sure. So again, sense of pride. Just going and seeing those bands in a 200-person venue was intriguing.

I went to college on a soccer scholarship in Southern California, so I was physically absent from it. But there was a sense of pride and a connection. Again, all my friends were very much tied into that scene we have dear friends who who own and run sub pop records which is the record uh label that first signed nirvana for example um so it's still into the ecosystem the takeaway these days is that a city can transform it's a living fabric of the people who make up that culture uh it's one of the reasons i actually did a book called the seattle featuring people in Seattle who are driving culture. But just it made an impression on me that anything was possible.

That the little sleepy town tucked up in the corner of the country could become an exciting ecosystem of creativity basically overnight so that reinforced so fast so fast yeah it reinforced that possibility and i cited earlier i grew up very very middle class and something i'm proud of but my parents while i may have had upside down nikes every year we traveled to europe and so i didn't like this, the thermometer was set at 57 in my house and you had to get a sweatshirt if you were cold, but we went to Europe every year for two weeks. And that sort of understanding and connection to culture. I remember Piccadilly circus in the eighties, like Mohawks and punk rock music was huge, hugely influential to me. And so it just to make the connection of what was going on in London with that punk or post-punk sound,

to have Seattle then explode in the 90s with the grunge, it just infused in me, A, that creativity is incredibly valuable, and B, that anything was possible. And there's so many things that are just under the surface that we know not what. And there's fertile seeds planted everywhere. So while all this is going on, like you said, you're in San Diego, you're going to school.

Scholar-athlete, so you're there playing soccer and studying philosophy from what I remember. Yeah. Which was like med school. Yeah, there's a great back story there. I don't know. Again, we don't want to go, I don't know how deep you want to go. It's okay, you can drop it.

We can always edit. I don't know. Again, we don't want to go, I don't know how deep you want to go. It's okay. You can drop it. We can always edit. I'll give you the shortest version. And I think this goes back to our earlier sort of heavier conversation around what is it we want to be and do with our lives and what kind of voices are we listening to? Are we listening to the good one that's inside of us that is our gut that tells us what we want to do

and be and become? And are we listening to that? I, you know, either given my middle class upbringing That's inside of us. That is our gut that tells us what we want to do and be and become. And are we listening to that? Right. I, you know, either given my middle class upbringing or giving just my disposition, it was like, oh, you're smart. You get good grades. Therefore, you should be a doctor or a lawyer. Right.

Those are the legit paths. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And or a professional athlete. And it was like, at first, I was like, it's like okay well i'm gonna go that way and then when you go i went to college on a soccer scholarship i could have played either soccer or call or football in college i ended up choosing soccer i went to a division one top 10 school and i got into that and really quickly realized that you know what

i know this is supposed to be amazing and even if I do have a chance to play professionally I'm not sure this is something I want to do. And then enter that sort of the beating of doctor, lawyer. These are paths that the world wants for us not what we want for ourselves. Well, you're talking to a former lawyer. There you go. I think that's another message

that if there's a takeaway from our conversation today for your listeners that it's you don't need validation from the world to pursue your passion I really felt like to say started living there's too much drama there I when I realized that I could say no to the thing that everybody else wanted for me and as soon as I started saying yes to the thing that was that burning feeling inside of me that I wanted to be a photographer and a creative entrepreneur, that's really when I feel like I came alive as sort of a young adult. And I had to reconcile, even go back and reconcile so much of my history with that idea of like pleasing other people for example and again i consider myself an extroverted confident person who had

plenty of means and what if you don't have those things yeah like how much harder would it be again so go back to the message that i'm trying to one of the messages that i'd like to see the world take in uh is that you really should, that your instincts are the right instincts. And you should be the thing that you want to be in the world, not the thing that everybody else. It was a very painful process for me. I did all the medical school stuff. Took the MCATs, was interviewing in medical schools. So you were really like going down that direction.

Oh, but the whole time against my gut. Right. And I will never forget the day I walked out of an interview for medical school at the University of Washington. I looked at everybody on the panel and I was like, you know what, peace out. I'm withdrawn. Thank you very much. I know what I want to do. And that was sort of the first step in a series of steps of me becoming a photographer, which is the thing I wanted to do. So I'm curious about the conversation that then unfolds with you and your hardworking,

middle class folks who've like, you know, you're living the dream, not just for you, but for them. Right. And then to sort of like, it's like, okay, we put everything into this one kid that we have. Right. And he's kicking butt. He's doing well. He's on track. He's going to med school. He's going to be a success. It's so true. This is the pressure that, again, very, I would say, very privileged position to be in to even have a shot at that stuff. So I'm going to first acknowledge that. But just that is a very real pressure.

How do you overcome that because i had very clear i had a great relationship my parents it was as much a friend relationship i mean i they you know i i respected the hell out of them for providing you know a great family for us but like there's i did feel a ton of pressure and i realized again you can only connect it off looking backwards that i was telling myself or telling them small lies about what it is that i wanted to do and just for the record i so i dropped out of medical school to pursue a phd in philosophy because well if i wasn't going to be a medical doctor and i would i would pursue the philosophy of art so i applied and got into a phd program in philosophy of art at the university of washington which is one of the top 20 philosophy programs in the country thinking that well if i

wasn't going to be an md i would be a phd and that's like right close second or whatever it's not a lawyer like you mr fields um but it it would at least be validatable, and I could then study art. And then I'm two years into that program, burning $25,000 a year or whatever in student loans, and digging a hole for myself and realizing that I'm the black sheep here. I'm like, these aren't my people. I'm writing about the things that I actually want to be, or the things that I want to be and do and make, which is I'm writing about the things that I actually want to be, or the things that I want to be and do and make, which is I'm writing about art.

So it did get me very good. The plus that came out of it is it got me very good at talking about the process of making and realization of an idea and being able to communicate highly conceptual, creative ideas to other people, which ultimately leads to that, leads to, that's part of what you're selling when you're selling art is you're selling air and vision. So it, in a roundabout way, it was very helpful, but it went from PhD, you know, from MD to actually from professional soccer path to doctor to PhD in philosophy to struggling

artist trying to put food on the table. And so my poor parents, first of all, thank them for being incredibly tolerant. And they were always supportive. I know for a fact that they were head-scratching, though. They were just like, wow. I'm going to watch our kid go down this really strange path. And I'm resilient enough to bounce back.

Yeah, as a parent, you always say, well, what's the most important thing you want for a kid? You know, you want them to be happy, but the truth is what you want more than happiness is safety. You know, you want them to be safe. And we equate that with security very often and security we equate to mainstream, you know, legitimate, like, you know, salary job. So I think it's really, it's, it's an emanation, you know, like as a parent and I'm a parent now, so I get it. mainstream, legitimate salary job. So I think it's really an emanation as a parent.

And I'm a parent now, so I get it. Because I think about, my daughter's younger, but I'm going to want that for her too. But I've got to constantly balance that with letting her forge her own path. Letting her go out there and stumble and fumble

and try and explore and kick around and make mistakes. It's got to be hard to think about that or hard to watch it. Yeah, I don't want to think about it anymore. For the readers at home, Jonathan is sweating now. No. Back to my meditation practice. But so right around this time also, or I guess like a couple years into this, where does photography come out of for you? Because, you know, you end up developing this astonishing career, and we'll kind of like talk about that a bit, but this whole time, like what's that other voice,

where is it coming from? Like was it just a slowly evolving thing? Is there an inciting incident or something that triggered this for you? I was always envisioning making films and literally I produced films when I was five and six and screened them to the neighborhood and sold candy.

I love that. The first film I ever made was called The Sons of Zorro and me and two other friends, we washed cars for a month and we bought this super eight film and paid a friend of mine's brother, I think a dollar to film it for us. And it was all in camera edited. So we had to get it right. But like there was always something there. And I honestly was repressing that because as I looked around,

creativity meant weird to me. And that was like, oh, he's that kid over there. He's so creative, like air quote. And those were kids that now, you know, you look back and saying, oh my gosh, they were bullied or because they were different. And I saw that it's like, Oh, wow, I don't want that for myself. So I overcompensated by, okay, great. I'm going to be the captain of the football team and the captain of the soccer team. I'm going to date a cheerleader. I mean, it literally did all those things. And again, connecting the dots, only looking backwards, like, wow, what a, I don't want to say I wished I had it differently, but I just'm in in my most honest voice you know when i'm talking to myself like that's one of the reasons you did all those things and i'm happy for the path but my god how many people are are still

sort of living with that and what if as a culture we could could value creativity? I've gone on record saying creativity is the new literacy. What if we gave creativity and the desire to foster creativity one-tenth the effort, the resources that we've given to making people literate in our culture? What would we have? You know what's so interesting around that is that, I think it was 2012 or somewhere around there, there was a big study that was released.

I don't think it was IBM. It was some one of the big consulting firms. It was like an annual survey of CEOs. And this particular year was kind of focusing on one of the big questions was, like, you know, rank in order of the most desirable or the most important, the things that you value, that you want most in, like, your players. And creativity was at the top number one number one not on the top five not the top ten was to say ibm did that study yeah number one right so you've got you know ceos and major corporations saying this is what we want but there's this disconnect right because i'm not not aware of an MBA program in the world that teaches people how, that teaches

like their students how to see like an artist. Hey, can we go back to that point you made about safety for your daughter? You'll start sweating on me again here. But there is a disconnect, a cultural disconnect, which that is, you know, what is not known or verifiable or scientific or quantifiable like that is there is some sort of some i think i would argue false sense of security or value placed on those things because it's measurable and something as nebulous as creativity is is scary it's the unknown and to go back to your point like, how can we as a culture feel more comfortable with that?

If we can crack that nut and be okay with the uncertainty, that's what creativity is. It's the ability to sit with something long enough till you can connect things that wouldn't otherwise be connected. And what if we could actually value that as a culture? I think it's the first time in the history of the world that it's more risky to take the beaten path.

When you talk about what you want for your daughter, I think if you surveyed most of the world, or I'll just say Americans, that they'd, oh, I want my kid to grow up and go to a good school because they're going to get a good job. And like, that's actually a false narrative.

If you go to nine, I think the math says, if you go to these nine schools, you're disproportionately able to get a better job. Otherwise, if you go to the other, like 5,000 other schools, whether you went to number 23 or number 223,

your chances of getting a quote, better job are exactly the same. So it's a false narrative. And it assumes that a, quote, better job is the ticket to a, quote, good life. There you go. Perfect. You know, so it's like you're stacking false narrative on top of false narrative. You know, it's like, OK, so I've seen those studies also where it then measures people. And it's like, because they're like, well, is there a really difference between colleges and what they look at the metric that they're measuring is their annual earning as a general rule. You're like, so 10 years out, 20 years out, like do people who went to this level school earn more than this level or during the course of their

lifetime? Do they earn this much more? And then, and they're like, well, because of this, you know, like we can make these conclusions. But are they happy? Are they fulfilled? Are they in good relationships? Are they healthy? Are they taking care of themselves? Are they joyful? Are they connected? Yeah. Those metrics are not even on the table when you do all this analysis, which is, I understand why they're not, but to me, I kind of, I agree with you. I do feel like we're in the early stages of the pendulum starting to swing the other direction. Maybe it's just wishful thinking,

because that's the world that you and I live in. And that's, I mean, you mentioned I was off a plane, what is it, 12 hours ago now or something, from Europe. And one of the stops was in London where I gave a talk at Virgin Disruptors on the future of education. Basically, they talk, they take on heavy topics, and they have gatherings of folks, like a conference, a day-long conference. And I was speaking about this exact topic. Like, it's the first time where it's probably, it is more unsafe to take this path. And let's try and end this false narrative around what a, quote, good education is.

And if our parents had one job and we will have five jobs, your daughter will have five jobs at the same time. That's just what the data and the research says, that we're all going to be a series of hyphens and my career matches that yours does lawyer turned x turned y turned podcaster turned author turned all these things that you are and if we're any sense of a trend which i believe we are that the current educational paradigm has is no way, or form capable of handling or preparing the world for the next chapter. And in part,

that's how Creative Live was born. I'm living, I managed, I eked out with the skin of my teeth the ability to stand up and do the thing that I wanted to do and say the things that I wanted to say and be the person that I wanted to be, barely escaping sort of the thing that I wanted to do and say the things that I wanted to say and be the person that I wanted to be, barely escaping sort of the thing

that everybody else wanted. And dear God, it's provided such an amazing run for me. Not all bliss. There's plenty of ups and downs, but it's the thing that I wanted to be. And if how can we give that to other people? That's, you know, in part what birthed CreativeLive. Yeah.

And I want to go back into actually CreativeLive because there's a lot of interesting stuff that's unfolded in the last year with that, with the company and with you, but let's fill in sort of like the photography piece of the puzzle. So you, you made the decision to leave the PhD program and basically be an artist, no official training, no, this is entirely self-taught. Um, and you're geeking out on photography as your form of expression primarily. Yes. And you did ask earlier, I think I might have strayed, but what was the background there? The background was I was a creative kid and had suppressed it through sports.

My dad and my grandfather were often on the sidelines taking pictures of me and my friends and my team doing this stuff or also as a young skate punk and a little BMXer. And I remember reflecting on these pictures as like, wow, that is like a moment. There's a whole story in there. And it wasn't because it was about of me or my friends. It was just like, like wow this is a moment in time and i became came deeply intrigued with that and my dad became sort of like a ad hoc storyteller for all these teams and at the end of the year he would give everybody pictures and i

just remember watching people just like oh my goodness the stories that people would tell at the end of the year party around these pictures it was so impactful and i think that attuned me to it and then as i mentioned going to college on a soccer scholarship the college was a very it was we it was a division one ncaa so we were at the sort of top of the soccer pyramid in college and we had lost the national championship the year that i was recruited to play there so there was a lot of media and again a lot of media a lot of cameras television cameras and as someone who was reasonably able to articulate clear points I kind of would do interviews for example I had a good relationship with the reporters and so I kind of got to see a little bit of what it was like to tell a story about a game. And these are very simple things,

but it sucked me into camera as storyteller and the ability to create a narrative or aspiration. And a couple things happened. One thing, my grandfather dropped dead of a heart attack. And the silver lining in there was that I was given all his cameras. That was two days after my college graduation. Or a couple days before, and then I. That was two days after my college graduation. Or a couple days before, and then I got his cameras a couple days after college graduation.

And then promptly took those cameras and went and walked the earth for six months with my then-girlfriend, now-wife, Kate. And taught myself how to be a photographer based on all my experiences of looking at images and hearing people retell the stories that they were seeing in photographs. Yeah. So for you, it's really about storytelling. For sure. Absolutely about storytelling. And I feel like now is the capacity to tell stories in different media outside of just the still photograph. You've got moving pictures. You've got short videos, long videos.

Go back to our earlier point or thesis around it's the most exciting time in the history of the world to be a creator because tools are accessible, platforms for expression are cheap and accessible, and how cool it is. But the storytelling part of me is the part that has sort of been the propulsion from a career standpoint. And propulsion made me think of compulsion. Like I feel like I'm genuinely motivated to tell stories because there's so much interesting stuff. And it's largely about people. That's, I guess, a little bit of the background.

And what's interesting also is you end up coming back shortly after, I guess, opening your own business. And then in what I think people in the industry would probably consider relatively short order, building a pretty astonishing high demand career. Like with a lot of emphasis on photographing outdoor events, sports, extreme sports, travel. And one of the things I think a lot of people would look at and say, okay, well, why him? You know, at the exact same time that you were doing this, there had to have been thousands, if not tens of thousands of people who had studied, who had come out of school, who had spent their lives, either spent their lives, like, you know, like learning photography or come out of school with,

you know, like a BA or an MA in like photography and fine arts, looking to do the exact same thing that you did. You came out of nowhere with no education, completely self-taught and exploded onto the scene. So, why you? I wish I had a great answer. I think that's a really powerful question. I think the best way for me to attack it, or to respond to it, is just on a very tactical, cellular level, which is what I was thinking at the time, which there are so few of things that differentiate us

from other species on the planet. We're pretty close genetically. I think we like to think we're really far genetically from a slug or a monkey or whatever, but the reality is that we're able to create. And to me, that always struck a chord from a philosophical question, go back to my philosophy about the philosophy of creativity, the philosophy of art. And I was just interested in making things and telling stories. And my motivation, it was not

external in the sense of, you know, I had to overcome all these external motivations and was listening to the thing that was actually inside me, which is like, you know, I had to overcome all these external motivations and was listening to the thing that was actually inside me, which is like, you know, go tell stories. And tell stories sounds so pretentious. It sounds pretentious as hell. But what I wanted to do was take pictures of my friends and my friends' friends and myself living a full life, living a good life, getting into adventures, skateboarding, snowboarding,

like climbing, doing all these things that we were doing that was basically document our lifestyle. And that someone somewhere agreed to give me money to do that one time when I produced a piece of art or let's just call it a photograph. It's like, like whoa wait a minute someone is willing to actually compensate me to tell a story of the lives that I'm leading with my friends god wouldn't it be awesome to ditch all this other stuff this normal world and try and find a way to repeat that because this life that it's affording me doesn't matter that I'm sleeping

on couches and struggling as an artist to be able to if this is what it is to tell stories and I want more of it yeah so it wasn't I don't want it to make make it sound profound I think the why me was probably just this a real passion a passion that was born from something that's deep inside me and maybe other people, they had artists that were parents and their parents said, you must be an artist. And they really wanted to be a scientist or something like that. So they weren't able to listen to themselves. But I think it's a little about, I don't want to frame it in the negative. I was to put it in the positive. It's that I knew that this is something that I really wanted. And if we could teach anyone how to listen to their true,

internal, authentic self, what an amazing world it would be. And again, we'll talk about creative life later, but that's why creative life exists. For all those people who've been doing everything that everybody else wanted

and you want to come in and step in, whether it's for career, hobby, or just a different, better, good life, that there is an opportunity to learn. So, all right, I, good life. Right. That there is an opportunity to learn, so. So, all right, I buy all that. Here comes the but. I can hear it. I can see it 100 miles away.

But, now I'm going to do the improv thing, and when I look at your work, whether it's video, whether it's photography, and when I look at the work

of a whole bunch of different photographers whose work I love, I don't need to see their name on the work I know it's theirs yep you know Nick Unkin is a friend of both of us like I look at Nick I know it's Nick's work when I see it because he there's a certain there's an airiness and the way that he sees light and the way that he crafts pictures it's the same thing with you there's like like this intense movement and energy and vitality to your... So beyond the drive, beyond the fact that you're like,

oh, hell yeah, like this, I'm stepping into the thing that I feel is like the thing that I need to do. There's the cultivation, what I see, of how do I... Is it a willingness to like have an opinion through your work? Is it just the way that you see differently

that in some way resonates the way that you... There's this story that happens objectively, but then there's this story that you're telling subjectively through the way that you capture it in your work. That's some heavy stuff there, man. Sorry about that. No, I love it. I think at my core i believe

in a lot of things but let i'll try and narrow it down to um aside from just love that's something i believe deeply in but there's sort of three things that i you know hearing your question i feel like i can look back on and say so so, um, creativity is, you know, as a, as a pillar, a cornerstone of what it means to be human, um, inspiration, like inspiration, just being inspired isn't, you know, isn't often in and of itself fuel for let's call it success or the ability to live the life that you want to live, but it's critical for taking the first or the first several steps.

And it's required because shake it's hard. And when shake it's hard, you've got to like have the inspiration to push through, not just the skills. And then lifelong learning, the ability to teach yourself how to become the thing that you want. So this autodidacticism, the, what is it? Many, gosh, there's poly. Oh, polymath. Polymath.

Yeah. Like the rise of the polymath. Now that we have access to all this information, like you literally can't. And people willing to mentor you from 10,000 miles away or online, there's community. I believe in those three things. So creativity, inspiration, and the ability to become, to teach yourself how to do something or through a community. And whether, you know, these seeds that I had planted helped me become the photographer that I want to be or have the voice that I want to have when I think like you know turn the lights out and make all the noise go away and like you're

in your own head when I believe these three things you don't really have my career makes perfect sense like oh of course that's what he does he he taught him and then you can again you see teaching yourself to you know to be able to make a living not just see teaching yourself to be able to make a living, not just take pictures, but to be able to make a living. I was all learned. There's no MBA. There's no school. Like literally no art school tells you how to make a living. They tell you how to paint and draw and stuff like that.

So I think it's the belief in those three things as foundational for me that have helped put me in a position to create the kind of art that I want to create and to the personal voice point of your your comment like you can recognize Nick's photograph or you can recognize mine that's again finding like what is inside of you what what kind of picture and how would you take this picture or make this build this company or this thing that you have in a way that only you could do it? How can you put your fingerprints, your DNA on it? It's funny.

I'm trying to remember where I was listening to a conversation, somebody who was talking to a longtime comic. And at some point in the conversation, one of them said, you don't know if you have what it takes to make it as a comic for at least seven years. That's not if like, that like, or it's like, you can't, you don't even, you don't know what your voice is. You don't know what your opinion is. You don't know for at least seven years. And so don't even like, you know, if you're five years in and you're like, I suck at this,

you're still two years too early to know if you suck at it. Right. Or if you're like, you should keep pushing. And it's like, you know, at seven and a half years, you're going to be like the most phenomenal person with a stunning lens and amazing stories and stuff like that. That's either really empowering or crazy dismantling. Because I think for so many people, and I think especially with just our lens, our expectation about instant everything these days,

I think going along with that is the expectation of instant recognition, instant voice, instant success. But when it comes, and tell me if you agree with this, it's been my experience, that when it comes to cultivating your creative voice on a way that's really powerful and you really know ideas and solutions and works of art, pushes them to bail so early now because they can't hack the cultivation of craft and voice. So true. That was incredibly eloquent. For those folks at home, rewind that and listen to that again, because that was some good stuff right there. I identify deeply with what you speak.

I think it's the classic, my experience with my own career. I mentored Nick a little bit. He came to me and was like, man, you're doing all this. And I've said, lots of coffee shops. And actually, I lived in Paris for a number of years. And Nick did a little stint in Paris trying to do some fashion photography. And I remember playing ping pong with him. And he's saying, gosh, I got this great job for Nike.

And then it's been crickets for like two years. And that actually is, you know, it's the classic. It's the 10-year overnight success. And now that information is moving quickly what we spend so much time doing this goes back to that earlier voice conversation we were having like what is the voice that's inside your head and when with social that you're comparing your real life to everybody else's highlight reel. And that's a dangerous thing. And,

you know, how can we turn off those voices that say, I'm not good enough. I should do this. I, you know, I'm, I need to prove my X or Y.

What can we do to quiet those voices? Because none of that, I just did it in a vacuum because there wasn't a lot of media. I did it so long ago with actual film but that it's just a 10-year overnight success and the voice i think that's the question i get asked the most that's the hardest to answer just how will i know my voice and the literally the only way you know it is by making enough stuff that you realize that this feels authentic to me and this doesn't and this feels authentic and this doesn't,

and you just over and over and over. And that's an answer that no one wants to hear. Right. Because it involves the doing. Yeah, and it involves time. Yeah, time. There's no shortcut. Right.

There's no way to leapfrog that. It's just, it is what it is. Because a part of it is, you know, you need massive, massive iteration. You need massive, massive data. And you need, like, you need time for your brain to rewire itself around all of this. For sure. And you can't accelerate that process. It's actually, I'm curious how you feel about this, sort of given this conversation too.

If you had asked me five years ago, even, should everybody go out there and do the thing that they absolutely love as their full-time living? I would have been like, oh, hell yeah. I'm not entirely sold that that's appropriate for anyone anymore and part of the reason is it was actually have you ever read the book daily rituals i have not really interesting like this person basically took you know hundreds of the most productive most creative people in the world from science from writing from art from painting all this and they they did a ton of research and they deconstructed each person's daily ritual like what does 24 hours in this person's day look like and there were a number of those people who kept full-time jobs and there was never a thought of leaving that full-time job

because in their mind the fact that they had that covered meant that they didn't have to even consider yeah manipulating their voice in the name of whether it's commercially viable or not. And they didn't want to have to consider that. For sure. Gosh, I gave an interview recently, and the interviewer was like, so this entrepreneur thing, it's really bad at all. And I was like, I don't want to be a naysayer.

To your interview, you want to show some respect. show some respect like that's actually not it at all it's i think one of the one of the secrets that people who've built the things that they like is that it took a lot of iteration and the thing that they should be teaching in whether it's an art school or business school or wherever the school of life is how to keep the thing going i don't advocate that you jump at some point you have to make the leap of like doing the thing that you really want to do but it's not always an either or and that's a terrible decision like if you're juggling what you need to be able to do is you know i call it your sort of five to nine like not your nine to five like what are you doing between five and nine that will put your

and i will push your personal goals your personal agenda that's the things that you aspire to will build those because you you shouldn't just bail on your job because that puts an immense amount of pressure and even if you're solo you're you don't have a family as as you do you talked about what you want for your daughter like i wouldn't advocate that at all in fact it's how do we teach people to cultivate the things that interest them on the side because your side gig is your next real gig to use sort of an adage that i was if as an artist i was giving people a fish what i wanted to do in the next chapter was build tools and platforms to teach people to fish for themselves because if it gives

anybody if anyone can get close to having what i considered to be the life that i had which was really has been interesting and fulfilling from a creative standpoint instead of just giving them a piece of art whether it's a photograph or a film or whatever what if we could teach them to make that for themselves so at some point those switches flipped, and it flipped on two axes. One was an app called The Best Camera, which was an iPhone app that I created in 2009. And it was the first photo app that shared images direct to social networks. Then it went to number one in the App Store as the app of the year for Wired magazine. New York Times' Phil Schiller, the famous Apple exec, you know, said it was his favorite app along with Facebook and CNN.

And what that helped me do is, you know, through giving content away as a photographer and letting people into the black box of what it was like to be a photographer, there was no such term as behind the scenes videos, by the way. It didn't exist. And we were sharing them on then Google videos pre YouTube. But when we launched best camera and it went to number one, it was like, okay, it'd taken me five years to build an audience, say of a million people. And this did it in five weeks. So this is creativity scaled. This is using technology to scale creativity. And the stories that came back, again, I'm taking pictures with my iPhone, finding it way more valuable than the, you know, I'm at the pinnacle of my career as a photographer, you know, 50 people going to New Zealand for a

month to make six pictures or eight pictures. Like in theory, it doesn't get any higher level than that, you know, campaigns for Nike, for for apple for all these great brands and yet i'm taking pictures like every down moment i'm taking pictures with my iphone and so in giving people that holy smokes this scaled in five weeks this is a tool this transcends me as an individual this now my mom went from being told that she's not creative to posting pictures on facebook and being told she's the most creative of all her friends. And Oh my God, this is like overnight. Right. So I got a whiff of that.

And so you can say that that was like starting a new company because, you know, that had great success with that. But what that really did, aside from putting me on a PR tour all over the world and seeing that as photography industry was a small swimming pool that instead of fighting over that small pie how could we make a much bigger pie how could we turn the world from you know you know 40 million photographers to 4 billion right and that concept was very challenging for the for my industry at

the time but when you see it go mass culture and i get to stand on stage and say that the best camera is the one that's with you. It was like that was living my dream of seeing technology scale creativity. So that was a tool. And then shortly thereafter, with my co-founder Craig Swanson, we launched Creative Live, which was we knew that people wanted to learn about this stuff, but there was no platform. I didn't want to be a teacher i knew that there were my peers who were the best teachers of creativity of photography design music in the world how can we make a platform that instead of being having the name on the door that we could connect the best teachers in the world the pilcher prize winners new york times bestsellers with the

millions of people that i knew they're out there who wanted to express themselves or learn more about how to become a creative entrepreneur. So CreativeLive was born. You can see I figured it out for myself. And then with my co-collaborator, Craig, on CreativeLive and my photo studio on The Best Camera, one was a tool to actually do the thing and one was a platform to learn. So again, I wish I had some master plans that i'm gonna have this like just for anyone who's listening out there none of this stuff well

i don't say none but it certainly didn't happen that way for me it sounds like a well architect architected vision for my career but it was just a series of small steps and plenty of missteps along the way so i want to finish the conversation around creative life but what you just said makes me really curious because one of the popular recommendations about life success is that

if you don't know where you're going, you'll never do anything to get yourself there and you've got to define exactly where you want to be. What's your five-year vision? What's your ten-year vision? Make it as clear

as humanly possible. Reverse engineer the steps and then get yourself there. It hasn't been my experience that the people who i surround myself with who are often very successful by almost any metric they're joyful they're connected they're you know doing nicely they're doing great work and they're doing well that it's been almost the exact opposite approach and you're kind of laying out the same thing with your story to a certain extent like there are sort of immediate things that you key in on that are like internal hungers and a willingness to see where it goes for sure for sure i do like the if there's

uh maybe we can sort of marry the vision of not knowing anything and taking a bunch of steps and having this precise plan if i think there's a middle ground where you follow your instinct and so there is a path and you're listening to the thing that says oh what do you want to you know like what do you want to do today you wake up you're tinkering you're tinkering you're doing stuff and when you find an area that's of interest you do more in that area to me that's a path it's a loose path but when you start to pull on that string and it starts to go somewhere, then you're sure, oh, wow, well, what could this be like? You start to sort

of build a vision and a dream for yourself. But at first, for sure, it has to do with listening to what's inside of you and just taking a step. That's why, you know, go back to the three sort of things that I have deconstructed about myself, creativity, inspiration, and then lifelong learning. I mean, those are the pieces of what we're talking about right here. The inspiration to, you have to be inspired to look under that rock. Yeah, no doubt. And if you're not inspired to look under the rock, you're not going to ever get anywhere,

so that you need that spark, and whether that spark is something inside you or something externally, you start pulling on that thread, then the lifelong learning part kicks in which then you're teaching yourself through doing how to to um move into the like the thing that that got you to take that next step you don't feel like you don't have to have the answer you have to have the willingness to take another step yeah no i so agree talk to like, you don't have to have the answer, you have to have the willingness to take another step. I so agree. Talk to me, like, I don't want to, this is your show, so I don't want to flip the switch, but

your readership, your listeners are so well attuned to you. And you talked about your experience is really just taking one step and then taking another step. So I feel like it could maybe emphasize the point if you tell us about yours. Yeah, well, I mean, Now Company is a really interesting example of that because it started largely as a PS on a blog post. So I start, like the end of every year,

I got into the habit as a blogger of writing a year-round reflection post, a long thing. So at the end of 2011, I guess it was, the end of every year, I got into the habit as a blogger of writing a year-round reflection post, a long thing. So at the end of 2011, I guess it was, so January 2012, I started working on that. And I started writing more and more and more and more. And it turns into, like, a 39-page designed and, you know, Warren Buffett-style, you know, deeply contemplative annual report type of thing. And while I was doing it towards the end, I was really thinking about what I want moving forward and what do I believe about the way that you contribute

to the world in building businesses and building bodies of work. And it's kind of like these ideas just dropped into my head and I had fun with them. I threw them at the end of this thing and called them the 10 commandments of business building or epic business, whatever it was. And I kind of teased.

I said, hey, listen, stay tuned. If you like this stuff you know if you like this stuff you know I'm going to be doing something called good life project now honestly I had no idea what that was at the time whether it would ever come to life what was going to happen I knew there were pieces that I would like to do and it would be a cool umbrella to do it the response to that was so strong that that then turned into the next thing, which actually we started with education, which a lot of people don't realize. And the decision I made there was that, thankfully, like you, I already had an existing audience and I could serve them in a particular way. And I knew that through education, I could quickly offer a service that would then fund the level of media that I wanted to produce.

And we turned around and bootstrapped and did that, funded that and started to build around that, you know, and then we started to release the audio because why not? Right. And then I started to realize that I actually, the audio was growing a lot faster and I was having more fun doing it. And the conversations were more intimate. Yeah. So then we made the transition after about two years. We basically just pulled the plug on video, not because it wasn't working, but because there was something else that was growing on the side that was working a lot better, both for those who I wanted to serve and for me. This is the 10-year overnight success, though. You're just taking one step after another step after another step,

and you realize that, oh, my God, here I am. Right. And if you had asked me when we started this, which we're only three years old, whether three weeks ago. You look great for three, by the way. Started shaving when I was three months old. We just wrapped up a camp where we had 350 people from around the world come and play together, you know, in a kid's sleepaway camp outside of New York. If you asked me whether we'd be doing that, you know, in the beginning of this, like, was that, was your master plan to do that?

No. So, but I agree with you. I think it's really useful to sort of like have a sense for like the deeper values that you have and the things that you would love to see come to life. But really almost like force yourself to remain open to serendipity because the things that will be the greatest opportunities are the things that you don't see sitting where you're sitting right now. Oh, that's for sure. You can only see around the corner if you take a few steps yeah and without a step you're you can only really wonder and i don't know anything that was built in a day you know i mean no don't go off and show me how i'm wrong by showing me all these things that were built in a day but you get it you get the point like from from a um a conceptual standpoint like doing usurps the action of thinking yeah and as someone who's a philosophy major like i place a lot a premium on thinking and thinking critically but the doing

and the making and that goes back to the creativity sort of cornerstone of my like that's creativity is a highfalutin word, I feel like sometimes. It's just like actually doing stuff, like putting stuff out in the world. It's in technology world that's called iteration. In business, it's fail fast. It's art, it's try things. It's the combination of all of those things that I think make a rich or good life, a rich or good product, a rich or good service.

They've been iterated on and built. You can have the perfect vision. I do like building something with the end in mind, but just know that that end is going to continue to move. It doesn't actually matter as long as you're on the path to that end and that path can curve and you can continue to take steps that pursue it. No, I love that. So in agreement with that. So as we sit here now, a good five years after CreativeLive has launched, it's become this kind of global phenomenon with millions, I'm assuming, of students all over the world. Yep. At this point, thousands of courses taught?

Yep. Yeah. Gosh, it depends on how you decide what a course is. More than 10,000 hours of content. Right. 1,000 instructors. Thousands. I don't actually know.

I shouldn't know the count. But it's well over 1,000 courses. Yeah, I mean, like... In photography, design, music, crafting, the maker movement. Right. Just tremendous, tremendous resource. Broadcast studios in San Francisco and Seattle, too, right? Yep.

Here's my question. Maybe we'll start to wrap up around this because it kind of ties in with, you know, like, where are you going? Sure, sure. And I get this feeling

that you're at a moment right now, just personally. What's your sense of where tomorrow leads for you? Well, hopefully I'll answer them sort of me and creative live one of the same like where are we going but maybe your question is more personal but i think

you're right in sensing that there is like a there's an inflection point if you will and it was creative live was started as a project as i mentioned with Craig, with the goal of creating a platform. And when we saw that that basically worked overnight, it's not to say there hasn't been a lot of hard work done in between. There's 120 people who go to work there every day now. We've raised money. We have some of the best investors in the world. But that chapter, the chapter of sort of dedicating myself and my personal resources into what creative life can do and become, and it's essentially trying to help people live their dreams. Because we all have dreams, whether you're sitting in a cube or you're at Amazon or you're

living what you think is your dream today, that dream is going to change and it can evolve. And go back to my earlier comment about education, The current system is not at all built to help you succeed with the new world paradigm. And I look very much at shifting from, I say the word just in air quotes, just being an artist to being an artist and an entrepreneur. And whether I'm making a photograph or a fine art commission or building creative live with 120 super talented people who go to work there every day it's all just art it's all just making and you know you've advocated a similar like you know you're building your camp like that's making that's doing and I very much look at the next chapter as how do I, A, live that, B, help CreativeLive be wildly successful, but C, I think most importantly, help other people do the same thing.

There's a little meta thing going on here, which is I've found a way to make that possible for me, but the real juice is in, like I said earlier, instead of giving people a fish, how do you teach them to fish? I had to, I struggled with, I guess I've been quiet for a year, basically, while I've been coming over, you know, I took over as CEO about maybe 15 months ago now, after founding the company with Craig, and we brought in some folks to help us run it and I've just come back to run the company as the co-founder now I've been in a in a building mode a quiet mode which is a very unnatural mode for me and sort of built a new executive team of people who are preparing creative live for its next chapter and now I get to go back to sort of the like this basically not just evangelizing but helping people understand that creativity is the new literacy.

And I want to stand behind this thing. And if I can help people relate to a company like CreativeLive as an individual, then that's a great role for me. It is an inflection point where it's not just about making art. It's about making this thing to help other people live their dreams and career or life or hobby or whatever. That's the perfect place to come full circle. So the name of this is Good Luck Project. So if I offer that term out to you to live a good life, what bubbles up for you? What does it mean?

I think there's trepidatious to use the term, but I don't know a better term. And that's like, what's authentic to you? What is your inner voice? How can you be you without the filter? How are you? You're good enough right now. You're strong enough right now. You're receptive enough right now.'re receptive enough right now you're

gentle enough you're kind enough like you're enough and go do that thing like that's that whether it's just I say do but it's there's just at its core an authenticity that if you're listening to that inner voice the good part of that voice not the gremlins like that's the good life. And I, I think I know for myself, I can say that I'm still chasing that. I don't want to project. And in fact, exactly the opposite. I want to project the reality, which is that I don't, I don't have it figured out. I don't want to pretend that I have it figured out. I don't think success, external success or perceived success equals having that good it figured out. I don't think success, external success or perceived success equals

having that good life figured out. But I know that those ingredients, specifically the ingredient of authenticity and love and listening to your true calling, that's where I want to spend as much time as possible. It's slippery. It's fickle's like I, it's fickle. But that's what I'm chasing, that authentic thing for myself and the people around me. How can we add value to others and ask nothing in return? What's your answer for that? You have to have one because you ask all your guests and you've heard the best answers ever. I do.

My answer is I want to be Chase. Come on. What's your answer? I want to be Chase. Come on. Come on. What's your answer? I want to give me the real one. You know, it's funny. One of the first things that I realized is that I no longer believe

there's a universal answer. I believe the answer must be subjective to each individual based on who they are, what they've been through, the life that they're living in the moment. But having now had this amazing blessing to spend years now sitting down, just having great conversations with amazing people like this,

patterns emerge. So the big patterns that I've seen emerge are really a powerful focus on meaningful contribution, meaningful, joyful, authentic contribution. A powerful focus on being connected and that may be love it may be friends and a strong sense of belonging connected to source yep something bigger than yourself something bigger than yourself um and a powerful focus on your own vitality you know like taking care of what you know liz gilbert i love the way she phrased it when i talked to her she calls it your animal yeah yeah it's it's beautiful because that's without that there's nothing we

touched on a little bit but the taking care of yourself is the thing that is so often not talked about again you sort of you could put people up on a shelf and say wow like what they've done up there is great but are those people taking care of themselves in a way that's sustainable? Are you, am I, is that a part of the good life? For sure. Because as you said already, or at least you hinted at, without that, what do you got? Yeah, I so agree. I think it's one of the first things that goes out the window for so many people.

And isn't that ironic? It is. Especially the people who go on and do and build great stuff. Yeah. Agreed. And eventually, you are going to have to come back to it. It's just a matter of whether you want to take care of it a little bit every day or whether you want to take care of it, you know.

By stopping everything and beating this disease or whatever for a year. Right, by being destroyed first. You know, there's no if. It's just a matter of how do you want to apportion your attention to it. Ah, that's a powerful idea. I feel like that's a, I don't know, maybe at another time we can talk about

specifically taking care of oneself so yeah I overtly talked about how I was you know didn't need sleep biologically for a long time and I didn't realize that was just basically a ticking time bomb and you know that five hours of sleep so you might have a genetic disposition where you don't need as much but i started sleeping it's like my new thing it's amazing and i was like yes it's incredible yeah it's like note to my uh younger self totally hashtag wrong wrong wrong yeah take care of yourself those are um maybe that's a good way of like circling back and your your three things again are... Yeah, contribution, connection, and vitality.

That's maybe... Don't title this my name. That's the best takeaway of this whole talk. I don't know about that. No, seriously. Those things are... I identify deeply

with each of those things. Yeah, me as well. It's a good takeaway for me. I appreciate it. Thank you so much, brother. So good. Hey, thanks so well. It's a good takeaway for me. I appreciate it. Thank you so much, brother. So good. Hey, thanks so much for listening to today's episode. If you found something valuable, entertaining, engaging, or just plain fun, I'd be so appreciative if you take a couple extra

seconds and share it. Maybe you want to email it to a friend. Maybe you want to share it around social media, or even be awesome if you'd head over to iTunes and just give us a rating. Every little bit helps get the word out and it helps more people get in touch with the message. I'm Jonathan Fields, signing off for Good Life Project. The Apple Watch Series X is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping.

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