The School of Greatness - 321 Chase Jarvis on Creativity and The Art of Entrepreneurship

Episode Date: April 27, 2016

"The things that make you weird and quirky are your biggest strengths as an artist." - Chase Jarvis If you enjoyed this episode, check out show notes, video, and more at http://lewishowes.com/321

This is episode number 321 with Chase Jarvis. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin. Welcome everyone back to the School of Greatness podcast.

I'm so glad that you're here today. If this is your first time, make sure to check out the rest of our episodes as well by subscribing to the podcast over on iTunes. And if you are a regular listener, thank you so much for checking out this episode. And make sure to share the love at lewishouse.com slash 321 to get the message out about this interview. I've got my good buddy on, Chase Jarvis. And Chase is well known as a visionary photographer, director, and fine artist. And as a photographic master, Chase has won numerous awards. He's been called one of the top 30 most influential photographers of the past decade.

He is a widely sought after presenter and has been a keynote speaker at Fortune 500 companies, top universities, TEDx conferences, and much more. He's also an extremely successful entrepreneur, having recently started one of the world's fastest growing online education companies, creativelive.com. I'm super pumped to introduce you guys to him. And here are some of the main things that we're going to be talking about and covering in this interview. First off, we talk about some of the insecurities that Chase has had his entire life and how they actually helped cultivate creativity for him. Then we talk about how to overcome a creative block and the things you can do to move forward when you feel like you're in that creative block space. Next, Chase talks about the importance of taking care of your health if you want to be a successful creative.

Then we cover the three things that are hugely important to make great art and how to get into the zone to create awesome work consistently. All this and so much more on episode number 321 with the one and only Chase Jarvis. What's up, everyone? Welcome to the School of Greatness podcast. I'm here with my man, Chase Jarvis. Good to see you, man. Super happy to be here.

Thank you. I'm pumped to be here. We're in your studio. This is a different setup. We're in LA downtown. You're filming for something right now called 30 Day Genius. 30 Days of Genius. Yeah, it's a series of videos on CreativeLive.

We're going to make sure this comes out at the right time because I haven't even announced this stuff yet. Okay. What's the link going to be, just so we're aware? CreativeLive.com slash 30 Days of Genius, the number 30, Days of Genius. Okay, cool. We'll time it up. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Make sure it's out there. You go there and you click a button and then you get a badass interview every day for 30 days from Game Changing.

Awesome. We just did one, which was fun. So thanks for having me. Hey, you're, you're in the, in the club, man. I appreciate it. I appreciate it. Tight club. Now, uh, I'm curious for those that don't know who you are, the way I've just told them a bio about you just before this, but for those, um, that don't know who you are and your backstory, I'm curious, who is the most influential person of your childhood? And what was the biggest lesson they taught you? The most influential person from my childhood?

Wow. I'm going to cop out and say I've got two people and it's my parents. I'm an only child. Okay. And I think for a lot of people that means spoiled. Entitled? Yeah, entitled, spoiled. I can pretty much demonstrably say that wasn't the case for me.

I had upside-down Nikes. I had Adidas with four stripes. That came from humble, middle-class upbringing. But my parents were of the type of people who were very, very supportive. And in particular, they encouraged me to pursue what I wanted to pursue. That's not without a bunch of social pressure. I feel like that social pressure was less about family and more about culturally for me. We can talk about that a little bit later. But my parents played a huge impact in helping me create the life that I wanted. And I think there's a lot of heat. They unintentionally put heat on me to pursue those dreams. I'm super grateful for that heat now looking back.

So it was a very small unit. I have no cousins. I have no brothers and sisters. I'm an only child. And so there's nobody to carry on the Jarvis name after me. And so that's why they were so influential. Interesting. They were very small, like a little baby wolf pack. Right, right, right. I like it. And who would you say was more influential?

Wow. Who was more influential, and then which one taught you the most important lesson? I think that they have taken turns at different times. I think when I was younger, so my dad was a cop. And my mom worked in admin at a biotech company. My mom stayed home a lot when I was younger, and so she was very, very impactful for me. She's a neat freak.

She's very, I'd say, organized, and she's very much a doer. And so early in my career, early in my life as a young'un, she was very, very influential. And then a little bit later when I think, and this is also probably biological as well, I started connecting more with my father because he was working basically. He was building houses for us to live in during the day, and then he would work the night shift from literally, gosh, I think 11 until 11, not 2 in the morning, until 11. So he was basically gone.

Actually, earlier, I think I got that screwed up. So he was gone during a lot of my childhood working, um, as a cop. And then when I started, you know, graduating or getting further along in school and sports started to become a real big thing, my dad was always there at the game, you know, being very supportive. My mom was as well. But I think there's some correlation to biology as well. What would you say is the biggest lesson then? Wow. I think the lesson from my... From like 5 to 18, was there a big lesson that stands out?

I think there is a certain stubbornness, and that cuts both ways. I like double-edged swords, And, you know, that cuts both ways. I like double-edged swords. Yeah. But I think a lack of or a desire for greatness, a desire to achieve. I've come to find out later in life that that's also a little bit of a crutch.

You know, it's sort of a substitute for intimacy and a substitute for connection. Right. If you are just trying, we were talking about this at dinner last night with some of the crew who was sitting here in the room, if you are so great that if you get first place, it's really hard to argue with that person's ability or qualities or whatever. And so that was a defense mechanism. But the good side of that double-edged sword is I think my parents instilled that into me, which is success is often directly proportional to hard work. And I always put in the work.

What did you think was the biggest fear for you growing up? Did you have big fears? I think the biggest fear for me, just total transparency, we're going there in this interview, I can tell already, but was, it was a specific question it was the biggest fear i think um obscurity just like not being present in the conversation whether that conversation is about greatness or just like being being nothing not being in the conversation yeah being being nothing being vanilla vanilla, being obscure.

Was that in the teen years or was that in college? I think that was a theme. I'm an extroverted person, generally speaking, although I feel like I'm getting in touch with my introverted self in a sort of second arc of my life.

But early, it was very much about achievement, greatness, being successful. And again, you have the book and the podcast, The School of Greatness, being great and lifting others up around you. And it's a very complex thing, being great, being a great leader, being a great... Just being a great doer isn't the whole picture, ultimately. Yeah, yeah, of course. And so I think there was a fear about... the fear around being obscure and not being noticed or relevant um and then dramatically

overcompensating by you know being the captain of a ball team the captain of the soccer team and hanging out with the skate punks and you know getting academic scholarship and getting athletic scholarship and how can you try and be great at everything so that you can silence all the haters and ultimately like that's a that's kind of a not so awesome existence trying to not achieve for the sake of achievement or or sort of self-fulfillment or actualization but achieve to shut up people who might criticize you right it's a different it's the same result of greatness but i believe deeply in the mentality of how you got somewhere. You know, I had a lot of insecurities when I was in middle school, high school, even before then.

I feel like I was very insecure and unsure of myself. What were your biggest insecurities? One of the things that I have learned about myself is that I'm rarely aware of insecurities in the moment. I'm just living that, that sort of fear cycle or that conversation that goes on inside you. And then I'm only able to identify them by looking backwards. I think that's a saying you can only connect the dots looking backwards. So, uh, as I try and connect the dots looking backwards, I think I was very insecure as a very young person. I wore glasses and Did you need them? I needed them because one of

my right eye was developing much faster than my left eye. Doc says, this is a problem. So in first grade, I think at the end of first grade, I got glasses, big, like foghorn, leghorn glasses. The cartoons would be fantastic if someone could see these pictures and draw them. the cartoons would be fantastic if someone could see these pictures and draw them. So big, like tortoiseshell thick glasses from second to, I think, fifth grade, second or fifth or sixth. And I remember, like, oh, wow, you know, I had a little line of defense mechanisms. Like someone would say, hey, four eyes. I would say, well, four eyes is better than two.

Just like little childish thing, but I could tell looking backwards that that had an impact on me. And I was really attuned to it when in either fifth or early, I think fifth grade, I got them off. And all of a sudden, the girls came back into my life as a fifth grader. But I was very aware of that. So that would be one thing that I was very insecure about was my big-ass glasses. And I was a jock. I was a high performer. Even as a little pike, I didn't know that I was good, but I would score more goals than anybody else.

And it was weird to have big-ass glasses and be playing basketball. You had to wear them playing because you didn't have contacts then. Yeah. I think it was probably literally't have contacts then. Yeah. I don't know. I think it was probably literally before contacts or anything. Yeah. So those are some key, very young developmental insecurities that I really wasn't aware of at the time. Right.

Do you have any insecurities right now? Yeah, absolutely. What are they? Well, first of all. What's the first thing that come to your mind? First thing that comes to mind is how to sound like I'm a professional speaker, basically. So how do you come off as authentic and have answers not be polished in podcasts like this right like my goal is uh connection i've tried to connect with people through my art for

my whole entire artistic career i've built a platform called creative live whose sole goal is trying to connect people with their dreams and career hobby in life we have millions of students all over the world um i i think I'm really good at connecting with you, but I also don't want to come off as too heavy. My background is in philosophy. I went to school. I was in a PhD program in philosophy, so I can talk a lot, and I'm in my head a lot.

And how do I sort of deliver value to your listeners? That's in the moment. That's the current insecurities, what you're saying. Yeah, well, you said current. I'm trying to think, like, right now. I want to add as much value as possible in the next 45 minutes to your audience. Personally, right now, like, larger life. Life skills?

Do you have any insecurities in your life right now? Larger life. In life, yes. Do you have any securities in your life right now? Yeah, it's, I think I stopped, I'm going to rephrase that, about 18 months ago or 24 months ago now. Five years ago, I founded a company called CreativeLive and built it up very, very quickly. How many employees do you guys have now? About 120 employees. And built it up very, very quickly.

How many employees do you guys have now? About 120 employees. And then about a year, 18 months in, I hired a CEO, a guy named Mika Salami. He came in, did a great job. He was the former president of Viacom, billion-dollar business. He'd had a $200 million exit before then. He came in, and I learned a lot from Mika. But about 24 months ago, it came time to raise a Series B, so I got really involved in the company again.

And it became clear that I needed to come back and be the CEO of the company. So I moved Mika to the board very amicably. And I had always been a leader, a natural leader. I was the captain of every team I've ever played on. And when there was an employee that shortly after I came on, he'd been frustrated for a little while. He was on the product team. And he left the company. He's like, okay, I just want to let you know I'm giving my notice. I'm going to move on and do something different. And I was like, I asked him for a piece of feedback.

What's a piece of feedback? For you. Yeah, for me personally. And, you know, that's something'm i try and be really open and and accessible and uh and the feedback is he said you've made a career out of leading people who are naturally prone to follow you because of what you've achieved and in this new role as a ceo you're leading other leaders. And those are different. And that was like a gong right on my forehead. That was like, wow. And it's a very different sort of role to be in. And I still consider my work as a photographer and a director

still very alive and well. But my primary focus is very clearly on Creative Live and taking that to the next level. And so the ability or the requirement to step in and lead, as again, there's a natural skill set there for me, but to lead in a different way, lead other leaders. As opposed to followers. Yeah, yeah. I think fans are followers. And boy, it's a phenomenal challenge.

And I think it's my biggest challenge. And it's something that I love. I'm putting a ton of energy into that. That's what's taking up my time outside of all the day-to-day decisions of running a 100-person venture-backed company. What have you learned about yourself since that feedback? What have you applied or tried that you learned something new about yourself? That I'm capable of it.

And I see glimpses of it, but I don't yet have it mastered. Welcome to the club. Yeah. But it's so fun. I go back to the earlier thing, confession about a desire for mastery as a life. If you're just crushing

everything and you work super, super hard, then you can silence all the haters. And so for me, going to town and doing the work to be a different kind of leader than I've been before at this point in my career is just a phenomenal challenge. I think I honest, like total transparency, I think I was resisting it early on. Yeah, sure. And just the opportunity to be open to new things. I think ultimately it's not ironic that one of my A biggest skills,

but B biggest passions is lifelong learning. It's not a surprise that I created a company around lifelong learning. So this has been my biggest challenge. Wow. Okay. I love it. I'm going to step back one step and talk about insecurity, not with you, but I'm, this is just coming up from where, as we were talking about this, cause you are known for creativity. You're extremely talented artist, photographer, world-class. A lot of people know about your work how does insecurity cultivate creativity love this question and hold artists back from being successful at the same time because i as i'm thinking about it right now insecurity actually drives a lot of yeah people to being super creative whether it be a musician or an artist

or photographer but also i can see it holding them back. No, I love the question. Let me think for just a second. And do you need insecurity to be a great artist? I'll start with that one because that's easy. First of all, the things that made you weird as a kid, those perspectives that you were afraid of, that actually makes you great. Going there is part of the, that's the sauce that people can connect with. And you being bulletproof and perfect and all these other things that we try and be,

and obviously there's no chance at that, but we posture. And those are all the things that sort of alienate and disenfranchise and create a division between you and your fans or followers and people who might love your work. So what made you weird and quirky? Those are your biggest strengths as an artist. So you said there are artists for whom insecurities drive success. Those are the artists that are willing and able to capture that and go there. And then there are artists who have the insecurities and the folks that when they stand off from those things, they are

unable to connect with their audience. And I don't mean to say that some artists haven't mastered and other artists are still on that journey. I mean to say even within one career, there are things where we are able to go there and tap into that weirdness that we have as a kid or that unique perspective. And then there are other times in the same life or same arc or maybe even the same album for a musician where you weren't able to really go there and you can tell it has this sort of veneer to it. So ultimately those things are so core to creativity. There's a designer, a friend of mine named James Victoria, who I often quote,

he says, in the particular lies the universal. So what is it about your particular situation right now that is a story that you could tell through a piece of art, through creating something that seems super, super focused and finite and very you-centric? But ultimately, those are the things that there's millions of people who have experienced that in some way, shape, or form, and that allows the connection. Wow. So would you say that if you've achieved your success as an artist, everything you touch turns into millions or impacts people, that in order to continue doing that and being successful as an artist, and whatever success means to you, that you need to still be insecure?

Or can you be completely secure in yourself? No. I know a lot of super, super famous people that are crazy insecure. Right. And I think there's the belief that you've achieved success and success is overnight. It's the classic 10-year overnight success. I really don't know an artist who's ever made it in the classic sense, whatever it is, but I'll just go the cliche, made it. Right.

Where there wasn't 10 years hard work underneath that. I've often used the artist Macklemore. He's a friend, a Seattle guy. He was living in his basement when he sort of got, sorry, living in his parents' basement early on in his career. He just got out of rehab and had been making music for 10 years before he was an overnight success. He and Ryan Lewis got together, made an album, the album through singles,

and the album was a 15X Platinum album as their freshman album, the first album ever. And the belief is that, oh, wow, that just happened. And there's always all kinds of hard work that's happening underneath the surface that people don't look. It's sort of like a swan, right? It looks calm on top, but underneath you're kicking like hell. And even that sort of level, again, keep pulling on this Macklemore thread, his next album is very much about exploring the insecurities that he had at the Grammys,

winning four Grammys your first year. It's crazy. Performing, you know, Artist of the Year, Album of the Year, Rap Album of the Year. Being friends with every big celebrity and still just like want to crawl out of your skin when you're alone with yourself so there's this dichotomy and I don't think anyone's ever mastered it and if they have

I don't know, I haven't experienced it myself, it's more like waves like waves come and go and waves are different size and you catch some waves and you don't catch others Sure Yeah, sure. Yeah, I'm really interested in this sort of arc of my life around exploring our shadow selves, which is that side of us that we don't really want to look at or pay attention to because it's like in their lives, I think, a lot of the answers to what we're dealing with right now.

Right. Biggest opportunities. Now, did you ever have a corporate job starting out? Were you ever? The job that I have right now, standing on this couch, is the most corporate thing I've ever had. But you went right into finishing school

and being a photographer pretty much right away. Yeah. And I should say that I felt, I think this may or may not, but may resonate with your listeners, or watchers, because we're recording this here. I guess the reason I ask is I'm curious is I was going to ask you, what did you do to transition from corporate life to being an artist? And so there's probably a lot of people listening who want to be more creative or want to do something on their own or like jump out into their art.

I get it. What type of feedback or thought would you give them? Let me tell a little story. Yeah. So I cited my parents earlier as big inspirations. Neither one of them completed college. They both started in some way, shape, or form and ended up just putting food on the table and paying rent

and raising a little tyke like me instead. on the table and paying rent and raising a little tyke like me instead. But at some point, I believe that there is pressure from our parents, sort of endemic in the relationship between an offspring and a parent, that they want things for you. And then there's the cultural things, like what does success mean culturally? Is it monetary? Is it you're on TV? Is it you can Is it you're on TV? Is it you can provide for yourself and your family? There's all kinds of different things. But certainly not being a drug addict on the street, whatever the opposite of that is.

Some sort of like when you're able to provide for yourself and the people you care for. And then there's what like greatness. You have the school of greatness. There's a lot of pressure to be great in that culture. And what ultimately ended up happening for me was I got stuck in this loop of what I was supposed to be. So I was very creative as a kid. Go back to my childhood, very creative. Since I didn't have any brothers and sisters and we live in the suburbs, I was like, I was, you know, in the backyard, riding my bike, doing stuff pretty much solo, had to come in. There was no kids table. There was only one table. So I had to sit with the adults, but very creative. And yet the kids in my school

who were creative, it was like always talked about with that, with air quotes, like, oh, it's so creative. I was like, I don't want to be creative. It's like, oh, there's, you know, Sally in the corner. She's so creative. So I basically went the opposite direction. I said, okay, well, what's the opposite of that? Oh, it's the jock or the captain of the football team or the whatever. And so I ran to that with everything. Oh, great. I can, I can do that. That's this earlier sort of defense mechanism. And yet I had been sort of repressing this part of myself. It's very creative, expressive part. And this continued on until, I mean, like well into high school. The thing that saved me, I feel like was skate culture, skate surf sort of, because in that world, it was the first time I'd seen creativity and athleticism fused where there's a lot of self-expression. I mean, we spray painted.

We shot videos. Music were the things, shot videos, expressed yourself through movement. Because I broke the rules. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There was a little bit of a rebellious sort of anarchist element to it, even if it was just play on anarchy. But that gave me insight that, you know what, wait a minute. This is the subculture that's come up that's made its own rules.

And it was like a light switch went off. Like, wait a minute, the rules were made by nobody smarter than us. Right. And they're as random as which way the wind's blowing. And wow, so there's a paradigm for me to do the things that I want to do in life. But it's certainly, there is a grain and you do have to go against it. Even with that knowledge, I still, so I went to college on a soccer scholarship, not dissimilar to you. It's like, okay, I obviously am going to become a professional

soccer player because who wouldn't want to do that? Four and a half years into my college soccer career, I went to the team that, you know you know, the year I was, uh, recruited, we lost in the national championship division one, like top of the top. I was on the Olympic development team. Um, and yet four years in, I'm like,

I don't want to do this. Not for you. And it's very hard when something like you, and you have the opportunity to go do it. And everyone in the world would think you'd be not, who wouldn't want to go play pro soccer. Are you kidding me? Right.

And he had pathways to Europe and that's where soccer was huge. It was still developing here in the U.S., and I had to say no to that. And I had to say no to it from inside first, and then breaking that news to my team, my coach, my parents, my family that was close to me. It was a very big deal. team, my coach, my parents, my family that was close to me. It was a very big deal. Follow on to the next thing is, well, what else is, oh, great. Well, I'm just going to, I'm going to get a degree. I'm going to do pre-med because that's literally like,

how can you make it so that there's no haters? Right, right. Just become a doctor. So I pursued this path of pre-medicine, got good grades, took the MCATs, was doing the interviews. And the last second, not just in order to soccer, I was like, this is totally not for me. Um, I had brought myself to the doorstep of that and was just ready to step, step over the threshold. Oh no. And, and so I bailed on medical school. And then I said, wow, my parents, you know, my poor parents, right? Like-athlete, oh, doctor, oh, yeah, that's cool. And then how about a different kind of doctor? I'll get a Ph.D. in philosophy because I got really interested in the ability to think critically. And I think there's a little bit of a brooding side to philosophy and to young artists.

And so I was tapping into that. Like, oh, I'll be a philosopher. I'll get a Ph.D. in philosophy because it's a doctor. It's a different kind of doctor. Well, I'm two years into that. No, got to quit. And what I wanted to quit to do was to go back to that creative roots, the stuff that I saw and tapped into through skate culture and that I had lived my whole life internally, but never really expressed. And so I stopped everything and I said, I'm going to become a photographer. And that was a like mind exploder for most of the people in my, in my world, in my community, in my family. What year was this? Um, gosh, that would have been 1996, young punk and realized a handful of things happened to coincide.

One, right at my college graduation, my grandfather, who was a hobbyist photographer, my father was as well. I was inspired by photography because as an athlete, I was often in the newspaper. And I was articulate enough that I would be able to speak to the press for my team, and we were a top 10 team in the country, so we were on television every week, and I got to interface with the press that gave me a sense of, like, wow, photography isn't just pictures. It's about stories and about moments, and there's this beautiful story in this thing. So I started getting obsessed with that, and I mentioned both my father and grandfather were hobbyists, about moments and there's this like you can oh it's a beautiful story in this thing so i started

getting obsessed with that and i mentioned both my father and grandfather were were hobbyists and my grandfather died about four or five days before my college graduation dropped dead of a heart attack completely out of the blue and well obviously that was traumatic as hell however the silver lining is that I was given all his cameras. Perfect timing. It was incredible timing. And I packed my bags with my then-girlfriend, now-wife, Kate, and set off to Europe.

And I walked the earth for six months on a journey trying to find my will to say that I didn't want to do all of these other things that I had prepared for in life, to become a doctor, to become a professional athlete. And I came back and basically quit everything that everybody else wanted me to do. I flirted with graduate school and that PhD program. With philosophy. Yeah, with philosophy. And then said, F it. Like, I've got one life.

And I don't remember the actual moment. I think it was during those travels that I had convinced myself that if you don't write your own script, someone else will write it for you. And I wasn't prepared for that. I didn't want someone else to write my script. Interesting. Was there a moment before then where you realized what you were born to do do you remember like a day or moment in your life where you're like you learned like this is why i

was born i didn't but i did have i don't remember a particular moment but i remember recurring visions and the recurring visions were um i was on stage. How old were you? This is young. I mean, this is like single digits. And it was a very, when I was that age, I did not understand that. I understand, like, I was always, my parents were sharing this just the other day. My dad turns 70 tomorrow, so we're talking about what we're going to do for his birthday. And we were joking around.

We went on a family vacation to abita spain the club he joined this is a long time ago but uh i was into break dancing as a young young punk and uh i just we're at this man in front of 2 000 people at this performance and they said anyone can get up on stage and dance wow for just in the intermission so i went up there and just started throwing down a windmill. Wow. And it's pretty cool. Yeah. I still got it. No way. I do. I want to see it after I do. I have, you have to get married or some big life event and then I will throw it out. You have to get on the school of greatest podcast. There you go. Or yeah. Um, but I still got it. It's rusty, but I still got it. Um, Yeah. But I still got it. It's rusty, but I still got it. And so there was always a little bit of a performance thing on stage. And I thought of it more about leadership than I did about acting or performing. But I didn't understand it then. It was just a thing that I was and again I was only able to connect the dots looking backwards looking back like wow that was always a piece that was a thing so that's cool present yeah yeah I like it uh let's talk about health and wellness why is uh health and wellness so important for creatives obviously it's I think it's important for everyone but yeah talk about specifically

for creatives well there's a story that our culture has manifested about how creatives are these brooding souls. And if, like Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain, if you live this tormented life, that your art is so real and so pure. And that's just fiction. That's a terrible thing that we've painted for our culture. And that's not to say that artists as a bunch don't draw inspiration from many places and sometimes our struggles are a key place like we talked

about earlier things that made us weird and quirky and the things that were hard for us that's a great place to draw inspiration and right um universality and the message of the art but the fact that that is required to create great art is absolutely a myth. The reality is, in fact, longevity and stamina and presence and all these things that are certainly not requirements, but increased in their level of manifestation when you're most alive, when you're most in tune with yourself, with the world around you. And it turns out that health is required for all those things, for that stamina. So I'm glad you asked the question. It's a mission for me in particular to try and shed light on that. I think it does come out of the sort of the taking care of oneself,

the sports background that we have in common. We've talked about it a lot. You talked about it on your podcast a lot. We've shared those stories together. I realized that sort of physical and emotional wellness has this sort of, it creates a propulsion, an energy of vitality that is, you know, that at least for me is it allows me, it becomes a vessel through which my art can move. And when I'm not living in those truths or with that sort of amount of integrity towards my health, I'm less creative.

that integrity towards my health, I'm less creative. And I would love for our culture to not, to sort of usurp that traditional vision of what it means to be, A, I hate the term starving artist, I hate troubled artist, all those sort of things. I don't think, we can't escape that. That's a thing, and that does produce great art because it's real emotions that are coming out. But I just hope, hopefully we can

sort of usurp and stomp out that that's required. In fact, I know so many, so many artists that come from, I'll just use the example, the cliched example of middle America, suburban, white came from relative privilege. And I think there's a belief that, well, came from relative privilege. And I think there's a belief that, well, they don't have anything to say. And to me, being aware of your privilege is absolutely important. But that you don't have a message which is human and that your own life can't be a blueprint from which great art can spring, to me, that's a really dangerous thing for us to sort of believe as a culture.

Awareness of your privilege is absolutely, especially relative to other social economic status, other people in the world, that's awareness. It's not a requirement. Right, sure. So let's stomp that out. I think Liz Gilbert, I don't know if you know Liz, she talks about having created her life's

best work. I think, I think she says best. She may have well created her best work when, when she wrote eat, pray, love, which is X million books sold, you know, Oprah, she's all that stuff. And her, her, I think she did a great Ted talk following that. And certainly her next book around, wow, now what do I do? Exactly. Cause it's quite likely. Your best work is behind you.

It's quite likely I've created the best work of my life. And now what? 40 more years, potentially, or whatever. Yeah. I've got a lot of vitality. I still have stories to tell. And so I identify with that. And I hope that, like the way we talk about it at Creative Live is one of our sort of

core visions is that creativity is the new literacy and creative qualities are not an all-time high with, you know, we were just talking about there's a robot camera we have here in the room shooting, but it's not as good as what TIFF's capturing on the inside of that lens right there, that lens over there. And that, I don't know, just that creativity is so, so valuable. We talk about innovation. We're hungry for all these things, not just new products, but new way of unlocking human potential.

And those mechanisms are going to come from humans. And what if we could put as much energy into creativity and supporting that as a concept that we did put into literacy back in the post-Gutenberg press, 1400s. I mean, before that it was called the dark ages for a reason, like literacy provided, they were like life expectancy, all these things increased dramatically. The, the infant mortality rate went down and all these things changed when you could communicate ideas. What if we put that same amount of energy culturally into creativity. So I would prefer we shift towards that mindset

culturally than that, A, there's not a creator of all of us and artists are this weird disenfranchised bunch. And I think it's bearing true right now is all these things are at an all-time high. Sure. When people say that they're in a creativity block or they feel stuck as an artist or they're not able to put out the next best thing or whatever, what would you say is a good place to come from to facilitate creative ideas? Like if I feel like I'm a writer's block or artist block, whatever it may be, I just can't take the right photos anymore. I have no idea what you're talking about. It never happened to me. the right photos anymore. I have no idea what you're talking about.

It never happened to me. What's something that someone could do, or in their business, in their entrepreneurs, to, is there a process that you do? Can we get into this? Let's get into this. Let's do it, man. All right. I want to know the process. So I think having many solutions is the answer.

And there's not one go-to thing that solves all things. So having a couple tools in your toolkit. I don't know how many there's going to be. We're going to list them out though. There's probably a few. One of them is to have many things. So if you're a writer, you have a novel that you're working on, you have a short story, you have an essay, and then you have some poetry, and then you have a journal. So you're not putting it all in one basket is what you're saying. Yeah. And the reality is that on deadlines and things, you need to focus on the thing that you're trying to get it across. But even in those moments, having other activities within that same sphere of writing,

say if you're a writer, we have many friends who are writers, and I think this works for many of those folks. I just read some study about the ideal number of creative projects to have if you're a designer. I think it was the lens through which the study was given. That five is the magic number. You need to have five things. I wish I was smart enough to. Working on it one time.

Yeah. And, of course, there are different levels of development, different levels of intensity. Writing in your journal is a lot less than. Writing a book. Yeah, than writing a book or a piece for the New Yorker or something. But having multiple things. So if you're blocked on one thing, shift gears, go to something else. Interesting.

That's one tool. I like that. Another tool that I frequently embrace is get away from it. There's this desire, especially when you're a stubborn jackass like I am, to just like, nope, I don't care if it's 2 in the morning. I said I was going to finish this thing. I'm going to finish it. I'm going to push, push, push, push, push. And then you wake up or you decide, all right, I'm done. I'm like gibberish is coming out or

my photographs, I'm editing them and it's not turning out the way I want. You walk away and you come back with fresh eyes, just unlock. So like literally walking away from the thing that has you blocked. Um, I would prescribe something in particular when you walked away. Sometimes it's just going to bed, like just giving up. But in particular, the way I talk about it is get into adventures. Do something that's very, very, very different. Often the act of play, it has many sort of solutions. I don't know if you're familiar with Charlie

Hone. Do you know Charlie? Of course. Yeah, he's got a book called Play It Away. Play It Away, yes. Yeah, and it's very much around sort of relieving anxiety and stress and that it's just a huge missed opportunity and a manifestation for sort of human potential to play. We do it really well. It reduces stress. And it gets in touch with that most simple sort of crocodile human side of us and just joy. So what gives you joy? Go and do that thing. And sometimes that's, I think a lot of people, when I say get into adventures, they translate that into like, all right, I got to go backpack through Europe for six months. Well, certainly that's a thing. Go play some Frisbee for an hour.

Literally go play some Frisbee for an hour, exercise, do something, get into an adventure, even if it's to go people watch. So to me, that's another thing is get away and get into adventures. God, I could probably keep on trucking, but there's just a handful of these. And they're very simple. That's the thing that the twisted irony is actually in the awareness that you're in that state. It's less about what you're going to go do to get out of it. So take up something else more creative.

You're going to do all these different things, but the key thing is actually recognizing that you're blocked. And when you're really aware you're blocked, you're like, that means you're super blocked because it's not like, ah, the word. You're just like blank page. Should you push through it? Like you said, is there ever a point where you're like, no, I'm just going to push through this even if I can't?

Well, when you're on deadline and when you're a professional, let's pretend you're Phil Mickelson, the professional golfer. Random example. Sorry, I'm using golf. Nobody on the PGA or his sponsors really care how he's feeling today. Right, right. He's just got to do it. As a pro, you are paid to step up and hit the ball out of the park or hit the ball down the middle of a fairway or whatever your analogy is. And as a professional creative, very much the same is true.

Like the people who are showing up on set to shoot a Nike commercial, for example, if you're not feeling it, you're not going to say, oh, I'm not feeling it today because there's hundreds of thousands of dollars being spent all around you. You're actually paid to deliver. And so I do take a certain amount of pride in being able to produce creativity on demand. But that in and of itself is exhausting. It's not always there. So sometimes you have to, you do have to push through. But I think most of the folks in your community here for whom like being a professional creative at that level is not

really the, I think the point that you're trying to make. So pushing through not, uh, I think it's contextual. If you're a professional and you're on deadline, that's what you're paid to do. If you're not, then I would advocate one of those other things. Step away, get some other perspective. We talk a lot about community, too. That's one of the things that whether you have a mentor, a friend, a partner in business, a team that you work with, the idea of bouncing ideas off one another and getting away and sort of getting unstuck is very powerful.

The exchange of ideas, for me at least in the people that i i run around with it's a powerful that's a powerful mechanism when you are i mean like behind the camera and everything you shoot is like award-winning like every photo is just like wow this is a masterpiece which is probably all the time for you but when that happens when you're just in the zone you're just like like, man, this shoot, nothing, anything I click, it turns into magic. Like they could use any one of these photos and it would be on a billboard.

What is, how do you get in that zone? Like what is that, how do you facilitate that for yourself? Or is it just, it just happens when it happens for you? I think it's pretty intentional. And, you know, go back to the life of, this is an area where I think I want to split hairs for your audience, because let's talk about, you're asking the question to me on your podcast. So for me, who is a professional creative and has spent their whole life creating, and many times on demand, in very pressured situations where hundreds of thousands of dollars

are being spent on that particular day, and if you don't get the job, you don't, not only do you not succeed at this job, but no one calls you. Your reputation is gone. Yeah, because the people, the level of people who do that work is very small. And that circle is a small circle. So you have made a career out of delivering. I believe that there's, you're certainly hotter and colder but roger federer is hotter and colder but roger federer is still roger federer still the top yeah and it's very much about going to what you know um and that has to do with sort of routines and beliefs and self-talk

i think is very important um what do you you say to yourself before every shoot or project? I visualize success for everything. I think Ira Glass talks about this thing called the creative gap, which when you're first starting out at something, what you see in your mind, like, oh, man, I want to make this particular photograph, or even build a business. I want to build a business that looks like this.

And then you invest a year of your life to create this business or a week of your life or a day of your life to create this particular picture. And the gap between what you see in your mind and what you're actually able to create is the creative gap. And through repetition, practice, skill, self-talk, visualization, the goal is to move through repetition, practice, skill, self-talk, visualization, the goal is to move those things closer and closer, what you saw in your mind and what you're actually able to produce. And as a professional who is paid to hit the ball and down the middle, is paid to create great things, whether for inspirational companies or for myself,

when that gets to zero and the creative gap is zero, I believe that I can make the things that I see in my mind now. I have the tools. I have the resources. Experience. Yeah, the experiences. And that is the zone that you get in over the course of a decade. Certainly years, but I think it was probably a decade before that was zero for me. And then there's a new game that starts all over again,

which what is the thing that you will be building? Because it used to be I want to be able to make a picture. And for me now, it's like what is the most compound thing? I want to make a picture, and I want to tell a story about making the picture, and then I'm on both sides of the camera. I'm shooting, and I'm in the campaign. Producing. Yeah, yeah.

It's like I try and sort of build up a level of complexity, and how do you manifest that, or how do you build companies? Like CreativeLive is a project for me. What does visualization look like for you then on a daily basis? Is it a daily basis thing? Absolutely. What is it? Yeah, absolutely.

Visualization for me started as an athlete. I, as I mentioned, went to college on a soccer scholarship and colleges are basically laboratories. You know, we had trainers that were, you know, taking care of us and they're in school, but they're taping our ankles every day. And, you know, the training staff that's learning to be trainers is actually taking care of the student athletes. The training staff that's learning to be trainers is actually taking care of the student athletes. And one of the vehicles that we were exposed to was sports psychology, the act of sort of visualizing the outcomes that you wanted. I dabbled in it in high school, and I had one experience that was a life changer for me. Really? And that was I knew that going to college and getting a soccer scholarship was important to me. And that was, I knew that going to college and getting a soccer scholarship was important

to me. I also had the same option for football and visualizing the outcome that I wanted at the end of the season. And when I went to school, soccer, football was in the fall and soccer was in the spring, so you could actually do both, which was very different than most other places in the country. Sure, it was the same time. It was the same time. But for me, I started dabbling with this visualization in football, and I saw myself scoring touchdowns and intercepting passes and things that were prudent to the positions that I was playing.

And I sort of was a little bit lazy about the practice, but I was, I realized that I was manifesting these things. I actually, I, I, I realized that I didn't score the number of touchdowns that I wanted, but actually intercepted the same number of passes that I saw at the beginning of the season at the end. Wow. Well, that's, well, that's interesting and powerful. So you declared a number that you wanted to intercept and then, yeah. And you know know, I'll state or whatever, I need to hit these numbers to be able to have colleges interested in offering me a football scholarship.

And that worked. But I saw it very sort of nebulously. And it was so powerful. And then I was like, wow, what if I really apply this? So I spent the time between my football season and soccer season, like reading about visualization, going to workshops, anything I could find and get my hands on the literature. It was pretty lean at that time. This is literally pre-internet. And it was so powerful. I scored exactly the number of goals. I actually sadly don't even remember what it was. I remember just being, holy crap, I scored exactly the amount of goals I thought.

And I ended up choosing to go to college on a soccer scholarship instead of football. That was very powerful. And then when we got the opportunity to apply that at the collegiate level with trained professional psychologists, I was like, this visual, there's something here that's sort of putting it out there in the universe, creating a narrative around what you have achieved. And you talk about this a lot in your book, in School of Greatness, and certainly on the podcast. Building things with the end in mind, setting goals is the way you talk about it. And so visualizing now the outcome of a shoot or the outcome of building a company or success milestones with CreativeLive, I very much intentionally sit down and do that every day. In fact, I have 10 things that I do every day.

And I track them with an app called Habit List. And one of those is I put these – it's really two things that I smush together, gratitude and visualization. And I do it immediately following meditation in the morning. I meditate 20 minutes every morning and every evening. And just immediately following Transcendental Meditation, I spend somewhere around five minutes with a gratitude practice and then visualizing the things that I want to happen in the world. And some of those are around the outcomes of shoots and making things.

Some of them are around relationships and personal development. It's just a powerful tool. I love that, man. What's the app called? It's called Habit List. Habit List. You have 10 things on there? Yeah, I just have 10 things on there and I track this behavior.

I track 10 behaviors. And I do that instead of actually saying, like, I want to be able to bench press 250 pounds or run a 4-4-40 or whatever the thing is. It's if I do these things every day at the level that I've written here, there's almost no chance of not achieving that goal. You just get results, yeah, yeah. And for me, that's a different thing than just being outcome-focused because then it's sort of like you can ring the bell, but then you go back to being your slovenly self. I seek to create habits because habits stick, I feel like.

That's great. Final few questions. What's something that's non-negotiable for you that you do every day? Besides those 10 things, I guess. Besides those 10 things? Wow. I'm going to dip into number 11, 12. What's a non-negotiable for you though that's really important? You must do it every single day. It could be one thing, a few things, but it's like every day I have to do this no matter what.

I think meditation. Why? I'm thinking a few things, but it's like every day I have to do this no matter what. I think meditation. Why? Meditation for me has become, it's the single biggest game changer for me in my adult life. Gave me the ability to sort of tap into the oneness. I'm looking at you and your Lewis house and I'm sitting over here, but the way I think about it when I'm in that still place is that we're

absolutely 100% connected. And whether it's energy or there's all kinds of different ways that we are the same, there is no other. And that sort of the unifying feeling that that creates is a very powerful way to start the day it makes things like intention and um the best analogy for me is i don't know if you've ever heard interviews with michael jordan but michael jordan talks very clearly about playing the game of basketball and it appears in slow motion for him. And so he's able to very easily see what the right choices to make are, where to pass the

ball, whether to shoot or not shoot. And meditation has that experience for me. There's this sort of a calming, a unifying, a simplifying, such that when challenging things come to you, you're presented with a very clear path, a clear decision for what you should do. And I feel like this, you know, I've shared this with other friends that we have in common, and there's a real paradigm there of it being a powerful thing. So that's something that I can't not do. I think maybe there's five days in the last two years that I haven't meditated.

Wow. Two or three years. I'm freakish about it. Sometimes it's not always 20 minutes. Sometimes it's not always in the morning and the evening. That's my target. Sure. And I got 20 minutes this morning. That's good. I only got 10 minutes yesterday morning, and I was okay with it because something's better than nothing.

Sure, sure. So meditation would be that without a doubt. I love that. Okay. I don't want to be preachy and weird. You don't got to meditate. It's fine. It's just what works for you right now.

It's just for me singularly the most powerful device that I have experienced in my adult life. What made you want to try it out? I think it had very much to do with the spiritual side of what I experienced in visualization. To me, those things were very tied together. But you just started the practice two or three years ago? I think I'm about four and five years old. Okay, cool, gotcha. Four years in, five years in.

But again, as I mentioned earlier, I'd flirted with the visualization concept through sports. Meditation is very similar to just visualization. In the way it is. For sure. And there's many different types of meditation. I've tried several, and one in particular, several didn't stick, and one did stick,

and that was the transcendental meditation. That's great. And what was the question? You had another question. It was a follow-on to that. What made you want to start it? Oh, yeah. I think it very much was the...

The visualization stuff? Yeah. I experienced power, like fundamental human sort of genesis power, like, wow, the power to create the life that you want to live. And we talk about creativity and what you're going to make, and you're going to take pictures, you're going to build businesses, but also there's the power to create the life that you want to live. And we talk about creativity and what you're going to make, and you're going to take pictures, you're going to build businesses, but also there's the power to create your own life. I feel also I'm personally not religious in the classic sense,

but I'm very spiritual. And trying to reconcile those two things when I move through the world and I don't identify with any one particular religion, but I see the synthesis of all of the religions and how there's, there are basically many different angles on the same, same topic, uh, and craving something to tap into. And that, you know, that's the underlying sort of the, the energy of the world. And this gave me access to that in a way that felt really natural and in touch with myself. Cool.

What are you most grateful for in your life recently? My wife, Kate. She has been my sort of spiritual guide. She's helped me sort of understand a lot of these things. I think I'm a classic extroverted, type A male. And for a long time, I believed that everything I had came from that. And so why would I want to give that up? And actually, she was the one who really moved me into meditating, to trying this meditation with her around transcendental meditation.

And that unlocked so many things to me that made me in part realize that the thing that I thought was my edge that had got me all of this success or any success that I'd had in my life shouldn't have caused me a lot of pain, but success came from being this sort of aggro, intense dude. And what I've come to find out since then is that actually that level of intensity and aggro was an anchor. And in sort of finding this sort of balance and this peace that everything in my world accelerated. And that was an aha moment, or aha five years worth of moments. And I attribute, there's personal work involved for sure,

but I attribute the desire to embrace that personal journey to my wife Kate who's she's awesome I hope I know she'll listen to this because she's she's always tapping into these things but Kate Kate Kate's great that's cool what's something small that you've done or something that people don't know about you you've done that you're really proud of uh when i move to the world on a daily basis a very small i help strangers i seek helping strangers and these are things that nobody knows about acts of acts of kindness um and it almost feels weird talking about it right this second i just realized i had a little bit of a pang of anxiety right there because it's somehow tarnishing those things. But I think I come across, you know, I've always got my headphones on.

I'm always on my phone and there's sort of an intensity and I preach the hustle. But I'm anxious talking about it, but I help strangers put their bags in the overhead compartments on the airplane. I fly like three or four times a week. I help. Why do you do these things? When I see someone who's in trouble, I go to help. I've caught burglars breaking into other people's houses. Wow.

I don't know. I feel a sense of connection and i think there's probably something in there that when i'm doing it to strangers it's a little bit of an avoidance of intimacy with like the people that are really real and close to me right um and this is the way to sort of check a still doing good things for the world box, you know, in total transparency and openness. Maybe that's going on. But I delight in small, small gifts to strangers. That's cool. I like that. Okay, this is the question I told you about before.

Most people don't tell this question, too. But if everything is erased from time that you've ever created, any photo book, creative live is gone. This is 50 years from now. It's all erased. And you have a piece of paper to write down three truths that you know to be true about what you've learned in life. You would pass on to people. What would you write down? I had an awesome answer earlier. I'm not going to lie to you. I like it just gone, but I think, I think I'm going to be able to get there. So the first is love.

I think that love is a solution to every human problem. Integrity is, to me, a foundation of how to move through the world. And these are all things we all come in and out of, for sure, but I think these are truths. Love, integrity, and creativity. I think the human spirit is very, very, very powerful. And there is a creator in all of us. And using that power for good

would be something that I would want anyone who's left on this planet in a post-Chase Jarvis world to take to heart to create things. I think the answer that I had before might have been a little bit better but that's that's what's great that's perfect it's probably upon me right now love um integrity integrity and and creativity i love it okay uh before i ask the final question that wasn't the final question no no oh man i was like before i asked you where um where can

we connect you online not dissimilar to mr lewis house i'm basically sort of chase jarvis everywhere everywhere yeah uh i'm super passionate about snapchat right now i'm having a lot of fun it's relatively new platform for me i have a long-standing youtube channel it's got more than 250 videos there uh 10 tens of millions of views. Creative Live is, I think, the single most powerful thing that I've ever been a part of creating. I get to go to work with 120 super talented and hardworking people who are dedicated to creativity and helping other people live their hopes, dreams, and fears and manifest great things for themselves. Creative Live is, I put that before my personal stuff,

but I feel like I just had the connection with it. We have the Chase Jarvis moniker for everything. Sure, sure. Yeah, so you can find me online under the Chase Jarvis handle. But please, if you do one thing, go to Creative Live. Yeah, it's a great site. And there's 1,500 classes from the world's top creatives and entrepreneurs. People like yourself, Tim Ferriss, a lot of people who have been on this podcast have classes at CreativeLive. And it's a place to get great inspiration and help unlock your creative potential.

Yeah, I love it. Okay, before I ask the final question. Oh, my God, they keep coming. You know this, don't you? Christine is sitting across from me. She has Lewis's podcast. She knows all this is coming. I'm just flying right into your trap.

Right into the trap. There's one more question before I ask it. I want to acknowledge you, Chase, for your friendship. I want to acknowledge you for the incredible friend that you are to me, but to so many people. And you open up possibilities in everyone you interact with. You open up creativity. You open up love in so many people.

And I want to acknowledge you for your consistent dedication to bringing education to the world in the format you're doing it. It's really expanding and allowing so many people that weren't able to create the lives they want to now have it because of what you're doing. So I acknowledge you for all those gifts. I am grateful for your acknowledgement. Thank you, buddy. I don't take it lightly. Yes. And the final question is what's your definition of greatness?

Lewis Howes. My definition of greatness is living the life that you desire. I feel very wary of putting particular milestones out there. To me, there's so much subjectivity in the world that the life that you envision for yourself and the people near you, if you are on that path, then that is great. I hope it's got love in there.

I'll just throw it in there. Sure, sure, sure. Love in your heart and living the life that you imagine for yourself. Chase Jarvis. Thanks, man. Appreciate it. Thank you very much, buddy. Bye, people.

There you have it, guys. I hope you enjoyed this episode with my good buddy Chase. If you did, make sure to share this out and give him some love over on Twitter and Facebook and Instagram. All at Chase Jarvis over on Twitter and Facebook. Tag him. Let him know what you think. And again, you can watch the full video interview over on YouTube or go to lewishouse.com slash 321. And if you're not a subscriber of our YouTube channel yet, we just hit over 50,000 subscribers. So thanks to those who are. And

again, if you're not, make sure to subscribe because we do weekly videos, either interviews or inspiring videos every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. So make sure to subscribe there and get inspired every single week. That's it for this week, guys. Thank you so much for your generosity, your love, your warmth, and your sharing of this information. It means the world to me. We're getting over 1.2 million downloads a month, and it's because of people like you. So make sure to subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, share it out with your friends if you found this valuable, and let me know what you think over on social media. I love you guys.

Thank you so much for being here. And you know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great. សូវាប់បានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបា Bye.