The School of Greatness - 853 How To Find Your Creative Calling with Chase Jarvis

Episode Date: September 23, 2019

Often, we doubt ourselves and our creative ideas. We think that creative people were born with special abilities. And often, we doubt our creative talents. But, is that what we truly believe? If so, why are those creative ideas still in our heads? Ready to come out. Here’s the truth- they were given to you because you were born to create it. Creativity isn’t a birthright or destination, it’s a process. If you follow the I.D.E.A strategy and keep working, good things will happen. On today’s episode of The School of Greatness, I talk about how everyone has a creative force inside of them and what it takes to develop that creativity with an author, entrepreneur and photographer: Chase Jarvis. Chase Jarvis is an American artist, director, entrepreneur and author who co-founded the on-line educational platform Creative Live. Chase consistently uses his voice to educate and inspire people to achieve their creative potential. As a child, Chase Jarvis loved being creative and started making his own films, but after overhearing his teacher tell his parents “Chase is so much better at sports than arts”, he lost his creative passion and replaced it with a need to achieve athletically. In the following years he became a standout athlete in multiple sports, but his grandfather’s death reignited his creative spirit and since that time he has lived a creative life putting his creative spirit into everything he does. Now, his mission is to help people tap into their creative potential. So, get ready to learn how to unleash your creativity on Episode 853. Some Questions I Ask: Why do we shut down creativity? (13:20) How much happier are creative people? (19:44) How can you make creativity your daily practice? (33:40) Why is it important for artists to build powerful relationships? (38:09) Why did you decide to write the book now? (47:18) In This Episode You Will Learn: Why you should dream big (16:20) Why Mindset Matters (21:50) How to move with intent (34:00) Why building relationships is important (38:09) The I.D.E.A creative process (38:25) If you enjoyed this episode, check out the video, show notes, and more at http://www.lewishoes.com/853 and follow at instagram.com/lewishowes

This is episode number 853 with Chase Jarvis. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a 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. Pablo Picasso said, every child is an artist. The problem is staying an artist when you grow up. Welcome to today's interview. I've got my man, Chase Jarvis, who I've known for about a decade, who's coming on to talk

to us about creativity, how to find your creative calling, how to cultivate creativity in your life already. If you don't think you're an artist or you don't think you're creative, how to tap into that and so much more. And if you don't know who Chase is, he's a photographer, a director, an artist, entrepreneur, and the co-founder and CEO of CreativeLive, which is an online education platform that empowers creators with powerful new skills and inspirational mentorship. I've done a few courses on CreativeLive myself over the years. They do an incredible job. And anyone interested in learning has access to visionaries, leaders, and professionals within the area of expertise they want to learn. Today, CreativeLive boosts 1,500 plus curated classes,

650 plus world-class instructors, and more than 10 million students. Powerful platform. CreativeLive has been featured in Business Insider, Entrepreneur, Mixergy, to name a few. And Chase has got a new book out right now. It's super inspiring. It's called Creative Calling. And it's about establishing a creative practice to infuse meaning, vitality, and success into your work and life. And in this interview, we talk about how creativity is all around us. It exists in everyone and it's essential for work and life. We talk about the toxicity of the starving artist myth and how to empower yourself as an artist to make money. The power of reframing creativity as a practical, habitual practice in everyday life, how to manage a creative craft

when it isn't going anywhere, and how to know when to quit your creative craft, how to build powerful relationships as part of your art, as my belief is that's a secret to generating wealth as an artist, and so much more. I am pumped about this one. Get ready. Make sure to share with a friend who you know needs more creativity in their life or text it to a friend who's a creative artist right now. The link is lewishouse.com slash 853. Or you can just take the link on Apple podcast or wherever you're listening to this on Spotify or any podcast platform and text it to one friend, text it in a WhatsApp group message and post

it on your Instagram story and tag me, Lewis Howes and Chase Jarvis so we can know what you're listening to and if you're enjoying while you're listening to this. And without further ado, let's dive into this episode with the one and only Chase Jarvis. Welcome back everyone to the School of Greatness podcast. We've got my man Chase Jarvis in the house. Good to see you, brother. Super good. Super pumped that you're here. I feel like I've known you, I've known you for almost a decade. Maybe this is true. 2009, 2010, somewhere around there, right? Where did we meet originally? Swim team, eighth grade. I was in the swim team in like fifth grade. I don't know.

I think it was at actually Tim Ferriss' event. Might have been the first time I met you. Oh, Open Kimono. His book launch. School of book launch. Yeah, his kind of secret strategies on how to be a bestseller and write a great book and stuff like that. Something about Kimono. Yeah, Open the Kimono.

Yeah, something like that. When was that? I don't know. A long time ago. 2009 or 10? It had to be. Maybe 2010. Maybe sooner. Maybe. I'm sorry. Later? Yeah, something like that. When was that? I don't know. A long time ago. 2009 or 10? It had to be. Maybe 2010. Maybe sooner. Maybe. I'm sorry. Later? Later, yeah.

Something around 9, 10 years probably we've been friends. We've connected in a lot of different places. I feel like I see you all over the world. That's true. We're kind of like conference junkies for years, right? Because you're always networking at events or you're speaking or something. And we've done a great job of bringing one another along to those things.

Like, Hey, I did a cool thing. Yes. It was fun to be on stage at the summit of greatness. Yes. I could drug you to the Obama white house. Yes.

Was that you drug me there? Yeah. That was fun. Yeah. We had dinner with the Corey Booker afterwards. Was that right? Yeah. Yeah.

So we, I don't know. South by Southwest. We did like video shoot in a car that you were doing something. That's right. With Uber creative life partnered doing something. That's right, with Uber. Creative Life partnered with Uber. That's right. Interviewed about it.

That was fun. It was amazing. That was live, like rolling around live feed in the back of Uber for three days. You've had an amazing career. Weren't you a semi-professional soccer player? Yeah, I did play for the feeder team for some of what became the MLS, the Sounders.

And I was on the Olympic development team on the years where there weren't Olympics, which that's a bummer. That's a bummer, right? That sucks. Bad timing. But I think we've also connected a lot around sports. Sports played a huge role in my journey. And I credit it with a lot of things like discipline and understanding hard work.

And it's been a huge part of my life. And if I don't move every day, I guess I start feeling weird. Even, even now, do you feel like you can be creative without being, uh, mobile?

Like if you're just sitting around in stillness all day, it's very hard. I need, I need both extremes. I need like real quiet and I need real active and And active not just in the sports and physicality sense, but also travel, adventure. I think about them in two different modes. One is closed and focused and creating,

and then the other is gathering raw information out in life, adventure, connection. And yeah, I kind of oscillate back and forth. It's hard to be creative without experiencing life. For sure. That's like a- Isn't it true? Yeah, it's a fundamental piece of,

we are social animals and humans, it's fact that if a human baby is born and it's not held or coddled, it will die. So we're social animals and connection is not a nice to have, it's required. And we'll talk about my new book in a second that's one of the things i'm putting creativity in that same category as human connection as nutrition as movement it's it's absolutely fundamental to who we are we're of creating species that's what differentiates us from every other species on the planet

so um yeah it's it's not an accident that you're talking about all these things like quiet and connection and nutrition and exercise. They're fundamental. And for me, creativity is the same thing. When you were playing soccer growing up, was that kind of your main passion and your full focus and your dream was to be a soccer player? Yeah, no question. I'm going to go back one click further. And as a super young kid, I loved performing. I was like, I did magic shows for my neighborhood. I made a film called The Sons of Zorro when I was like six. Made the film on a Super 8, shot it, acted in it, directed it,

sold tickets, and made a profit on a film. I think it was a six-minute film as a young kid. And I remember just being, Oh my God, is there a way that I could just do this? Cause this is the most fun thing ever. You know, we washed cars to make money to buy the film. And, and, and then I remember my second grade teacher saying, go into like the traditional school system. My second grade teacher, I remember her over, I remember overhearing her tell my mom, Chase is just lovely and he's so much better at sports than he is at art. Wow.

In second grade. And so you just- Isn't that funny? What would we remember? For sure. You still remember that? Yeah. 30 something years later.

I can tell you exactly where I was standing. Wow. And it was weird because I liked being creative. And what that did to me right away was oh creative was sort of like I was bad at it or it wasn't cool or in any case I had to like run away from it and those were different times of course

but I think there's the cultural paradigm which it unnecessarily steers us. And largely, we have a paradigm in our culture of steering us away from creativity and expression. And I think that's changing now, but that's part of why I wrote the books, because we're creative by nature and we're fundamentally, that is, it's a birthright. It's a piece of who we are.

So I ran away from that. And I then then of course was wildly passionate about i was i consider myself an artist trapped in a jock's body right so yeah it was i basically played every sport you could possibly play every season of every yeah non-stop non-stop i was active football basketball baseball soccer, skateboarding, everything. And it became an identity. And what I realized looking back was I virtually traded that identity for a creator. And it was skateboard culture, actually, that helped me understand that you could be both. It was skate culture. It was like spray paint and punk rock music. And

of course it was a really, you know, athletic endeavor. And, and this was as a young, you know, young teenager, 12, skateboarding. Yeah. Oh, wow. Skateboard, BMX, all that stuff too. And I was like, wait, this is that thing that I had denied. I mean, even as like 13 year old, I remember going, wait a minute, this is the thing that I was denying as a young person, this creative part. And yet it feels at home here in skateboarding because, again, it was like literally you're building vert ramps and you're spray painting your favorite skate logos. And you're listening to punk rock music or skate rock. And it was also obviously super physical. And so I started understanding how those things fit together.

But to go back to your original point, yeah, I really relied on sports. And it was because it was super culturally accepted. As young people, we just really want to fit in, right? And I go, what's going to make it so nobody looks at me or the right people look at me? And I just want to like, OK, cool, go over here and stand out or fit in or just not be, quote, weird. And then it was easy for me for sports. Wow.

Did you continue in high school doing creative stuff as well? Were you more focused on sports? Way more sporty. So you weren't making the Zorro Part 2, Sons of Zorro 2? No. I have the film too. It's crazy. I do have it, yeah.

You should put it out online. Yeah, it's going to be a part of the talk that I give around this book. That's cool. That'll be exciting. Yeah, it's pretty fun. So yeah, very much oriented towards sports. When did you get back into creativity then? If sports was your thing in high school, college?

Yeah, I went to college on a soccer scholarship at a1 school and i mentioned the olympic development stuff and it was late in college where i started being really curious about photography my father was a hobbyist my grandfather was a hobbyist and these by hobbyist i mean they bought all the new gadgets and stuff and garage and just tinkered it yeah totally tinkered and had new lenses and all this stuff and they would take photographs of me and my friends and i remember looking at the photographs and not not necessarily like oh hey there's me i'm awesome but like whoa this is a moment in time and i could show this to anyone and it would they would understand that there's this there's a peak moment of peak action or sorrow or emotion or whatever, usually around sports.

And that always intrigued me. And then because our college soccer team was one of the top teams in the nation and there was always, you know, we're on TV for every game and there was always cameras. And I started giving the interviews, you know, after the game that like, Oh, he's, I can put some sentences together. And, and, and it just, it helped me understand that there was a narrative arc and that there was storytelling was important and, and I gravitated towards it, but I never did anything with it until a week before my college graduation, my grandfather, who someone I looked up to and was the hobbyist, he dropped out of a heart attack. I mean, no warning signs, no nothing, just boom, gone.

And it's horrible, obviously. The silver lining was that I was gifted his cameras. Wow, that's cool. And it was, you know, I think if you just replay that little history there, like young creative kid, if you walk into any sixth grade classroom or second grade, who wants to come up and draw me a picture? Every single hand goes up. But then we have this culture that sort of trains it out of us. And by creativity, I don't just mean like art, right? Creativity is building a business, wildly creative, that whole concept of the film that I talked about.

So, you know, and then culture trains it out of us because you ask the same, you know, ask some high school seniors who wants to come to the front of the film that I talked about. So, you know, and then culture trains it out of us because you ask the same, you know, ask some high school seniors who wants to come to the front of the room and there's, you know, jaded and all of those things about creative. And sure, there's some people that will do it, but it's just, we have a culture

that has historically trained that out of us. And then what happened when my grandpa died was it just like cracked me open. And the concept of my heart being open, the cameras being there, my curiosity that I've been building. And I decided to, um, I'd saved up all my money. I got a little bit of money from his, from his passing and decided to, uh, run off to Europe. I got some super, super cheap, like 42 stop discount tickets to get to wherever I could in Europe and and I basically spent six months walking through Europe trains planes automobiles all that stuff with my then

girlfriend now wife Kate and taught myself how to take pictures and that was you know the silver lining of my grandfather's passing and that cracking open and realized again that that in a really sort of innocent but pure way that this is fundamental it just felt good to to connect with my surroundings and to pursue something to focus on something and it activated a piece inside of me that i'd clearly been had shut down why do we uh start to shut down creativity? Is it because in school we need to learn how to make money or get a job or, and art or creativity is not a practical way to make money or is that? Well, that's the irony of this all. And that's, you know, one of the reasons I wrote the book is we have two things. We have an educational system and then an occupational system.

The educational system, it's really hard to educate around creativity. And it's much easier to pursue something that looks like a factory, which is you put kids in one end and you try and keep everybody learning the same stuff at the same time. If you are slow developmentally, they do everything they can to unnaturally drag you through it. We've talked about this before, about your experience and struggling to read and also being drug through it all. And that doesn't work. And the reality is that kids develop at different ages and different styles and we have different strengths. And just there's not a lot of room for creativity because we were taught to sit down and shut up. And so after 12 years of that,

12 or 15,000 hours later, what have you learned? You really learned to fit in, to be a cog in a machine. And this is like, again, my wife was a teacher for a long time. I founded an online learning company. Like I value learning deeply, but just the necessity of sort of modern culture created this factory system. And it doesn't actually encourage the necessity of sort of modern culture created this factory system. And it, it doesn't actually encourage the kinds of things that we need to be encouraging. And so to me, that's a systemic challenge.

And then with the employment universe, right, there's a creativity used to be a nice to have, Oh yeah, it's like, it's exciting, but you know how it's about management and it's about supply chains. And, but think of today, the most successful

people we imagine are wildly creative, you know, whether that's in business or art or film or any discipline that like Apple, the most valuable company in the world once thought it was totally crazy. Why would they make the circuit board beautiful even though you were never going to see it? Those little details, they matter. And if you look at pop culture today, we see the rise of creativity. It's having its day in the sun. And that's part of the reason I think the book is well-timed. It has been true all along, but now it's democratized. We have access to tools that used to not be able to forward. There are no gatekeepers. You couldn't have this show 20 years ago because there's no way to distribute it. And now that you can go direct and connect to people who love you in the work that

you do because of these tools that creativity has ultimately created for us. If you look around, of these tools that creativity has ultimately created for us. If you look around, everything in your world, everything was made, was created. It was drawn first. It was thought up in the mind of someone else. And it came to life largely as a result of someone who's probably no smarter than you are, no more talented. Again, I go back creativity is this this is this innate thing that we are all born with that is what defines us as a species we can put two unlikely things together to form something new and useful and to me now we we can look back at the school system look at our the future of employment and you realize that you know creativity is no longer it's a nice to have that it is absolutely as essential as exercise, as nutrition, and connection.

It's so true. And I really believe that the ones that dream the biggest are the ones that are changing the world. If you have a small dream and you're not able to imagine something greater for yourself, then you're probably not going to create that greater thing. So what happens to someone when they start to become more creative in general, whether it be for their work or their relationships with their life, what happens to their life when they break down the chains of creativity and start to express whatever their creative expression is?

No, it's a, it's a beautiful question. And the book is sort of founded on a couple of principles. One, it's just, it's not a radical idea when you just listen to it that every human is creative. And again, you go back to the first grade classroom. The next sort of what follows from that is that creativity is a habit. It's not a skill. It's something we're born with. And it's a practice, not a product. And it's like a muscle.

And as an athlete, you and I both know that what gets used, you build. If you need to do bench and you just spend a lot of time under the athlete, you and I both know that what gets used, you build, right? If you need to do bench and you just spend a lot of time under the bar, you're going to get stronger. The same is true with creativity. Now, if that logically follows, the third one is that the same things that we do to create small things in our life, whether it's your first business, washing cars, it's taking photographs every day. Creative writing. Yeah, creative writing, a morning journal, anything. The muscle that you're using in that moment, that creativity muscle that is innate in everyone, you use it or lose it. That is the same exact muscle that we use to create our lives.

So it's literally, when you go back to your question, you ask someone like, how does creativity help you? Creativity is literally the key to creating the arc of your life. All you're doing right now is creativity at a larger scale.

You go back to where you were on your sister's couch, injured, no longer a football player and struggling with depression. And you created the lives that you see, that you admire. They were created. You don't find secrets. You create them. You don't, you don't, uh, I think it's funny. They call them founders. Like we build companies. We've, I didn't find anything. You created it. I created it's funny they call them founders. Like we build companies. I didn't find anything. You created it. I created it.

Yeah, it's true. And so to me that the essence of your question is a kernel in the book that I think is emerging right now in popular culture that the things that we do, that those acts every day, that kid, that eight-year-old kid that made the zorro film and seeing that product of my work helped shape my understanding that i could actually create the life arc that i wanted for myself it's just creativity at a different scale how much happier or less happy are creative

people that are practicing on a daily basis their creativity it's yeah we've got this myth and they're like the miserable artist right but the reality is you do the science and that's just a myth right so there's two really toxic myths and we talk about in the book one is the starving artist richard branson lewis house debbie millman bernie brown jared leto i'm just like grand like they're some of the most creative people I know. We all have our shadow selves, but I think the power and understanding that you are in charge and you can create the life arc that you wish is, to me, that's empowering. The Starving Artist is a myth that came out of the Paris scene around a cafe called du magot where simone de

beauvoir and jean-paul sartre and these folks like it was a benefit to talk about how you would i would never trade my art for some money it's right and usually that's priceless but they couldn't actually sell their art and and and ultimately the other myth is that we're tortured. Only great art or creativity comes from pain, right? And I think that's another thing that keeps a lot of people from thinking of themselves as a creator. Like, I don't know. I have a 9-to-5 job.

I like my job. I come home. I've got a couple of kids. I kiss my partner. We have a nice meal or whatever. I'm trying to paint something that is a little more stereotypical specifically because like, wait a minute, I'm not, you know, strung out on heroin and, and homeless doing damage to myself living in someone's attic. Right. Right. And that's not required for creativity. There's no berets. There's no,

you know, you don't have to speak French. You don't have to go on some mission to find yourself. What you really got to do is you got to just acknowledge that you're a creator, like words matter, right? Words. And you do a lot of mental and visualization, what you tell yourself, how you think that matters, mindset matters. And the same is true with a creator. If you acknowledge that you're a creator, you're already 50% ahead of someone who doesn't feel like they are in charge and can control their own life. And again, the parallel between taking a photo every day, making a meal, being intentional about what,

and you don't have to, like again, you don't have to go take a class you can start tomorrow just thinking about, wow, this meal, it's an opportunity to do something different, to create. My morning pages, like maybe I'm going to draw a picture today. I'm just going to deviate a little bit. The pictures that I take at lunchtime when I walk around my iPhone, that's soothing and that's a muscle that I'm building that will ultimately add value to my life. So I think it's a pretty simple paradigm

and that's part of what people, I think, miss and what our culture has missed, which is one of the reasons I'm, I'm put it on a book. And I think we're early on in the movement. You can feel, you can feel it, right? The fact that you can be a YouTuber, like that, that's a thing. Most of the jobs in the creative economy, um, are not just movie stars and television directors, and they all are wildly creative writing code, creative you know so again it's not just art it's anytime you're putting these new things together and if you start to to clock creativity in that way you start to your mind is open to like wait a minute this is it's not whimsical it's not naive to pursue the things that you love and to pursue creativity it is the most practical

thing on the planet because it teaches you to build not just things in a small way, but whatever you want to do with your life. What would you say, I mean, rough estimate, maybe there's research out there, but people who are working on a job and kind of have that stereotypical life of partner, a kid, a couple of kids, dog, whatever. They've got that lifestyle. How creative are those individuals on a daily basis on a scale of like one to 10? Are they at a two or a five or what are they? I put them pretty low and I put them pretty low. I put their capacity at a 10. Everyone's capacity is a 10. I put what culture does to us and puts us at a two. And it's really important for me to put a pin in this and say, I'm talking about this like I had it figured

out from day one. But the reality is when I was hardworking and young and none of my parents graduated college, I was the first one to go. And if you're finding success in that system, I was actually programmed like, oh, oh, smart and hardworking, you should be a doctor or a lawyer or a, you know, I was given like five things. And my parents are cool, super cool. But culturally, like that is pressure. And to be crystal clear, I'm white. I'm male. I was born in America. I did come from a lower income family, lower middle class family. But I basically had every advantage. And acknowledging that I wanted to pursue something other than the stereotypical norm was the hardest thing I'd ever done.

Because I felt like I was abandoning. It was really confusing time. I was abandoning my parents, abandoning culture. What are my friends going to say? What are my friend's parents going to say? What is the person on the street going to say? And at the same time, I knew that I was passionate about something different. We all have this whisper inside of us. That's the calling that I talk about. And the feelings of not only betraying everybody else by not loving being the list of things that you should do, but the flip side of the same coin, the betrayal of yourself when you're not doing the thing that you're supposed to be doing, I think is a- It's the worst regret. It is. It's regret.

And it is a equation for pain. It is. It is. It's regret. And it is a equation for pain. It is a equation for suffering, for denial of yourself. And again, the book, we talk very, very crisply about hearing that call. And it's inside every one of us. And even if that call is just a whisper,

you'll have the ability to tap into that. And you've all done it before. Everyone who's listening right now or watching or whatever, you felt it. You felt that time where everything was like, where it was a flow state or whatever. You're doing the things that you loved with the people that made you excited,

with the focused on something that brought you joy. That can be every day. And it's not a myth or fiction that you can't and to go back to your question again like so everyone's a 10 on the scale of capacity creative capacity but our culture it's it's not beneficial especially in the most recent chapter of our culture around the factory and the farm and that you to you express that because what's Because again, get in line, sit down, shut up, do your job. And what are we missing as a culture? And I'm not saying everyone should go be a painter.

That's not at all what I mean. But if you can listen to that thing, exercise in small daily ways, this habit, build this muscle in the same way that you're taught to eat well and exercise as a core piece of what we're talking about, then you will unlock powers that you know not. It will rock you. And it starts out small. Sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes you do this and you're like, oh my gosh, I can do this on the side. Just think of something like 50% by 2020, 50% of US employed people will have a side hustle. 50%?

50. By 2020. What? By next year? I started this statistic back in 2017. 50% of the working American population, and this is not the whole population, not 300 million. It's of the working population, which is like 150 million or something.

50% of them will make some money on the side by 2020. Could be 20 bucks on the side. It could be 2,000 or whatever. Yeah, you could on the side. It could be 2000 or whatever. Yeah. You could design wedding cards, wedding invitations for your friend. And that's not going away. That's only increasing. And what that is, is that is this, we're breaking free of these old patterns. We're starting to acknowledge this really, really important piece in every one of us. And we're learning, we're developing tools to break out of the system that is the same reason that you have your own podcast, that you couldn't have had that 15 years ago. And that system is

coming along. I'm just asking everyone to grab hold of it and make something. It's not too late. Wherever you are in this paradigm, it's not too late to start something tomorrow. And again, it doesn't mean quit your day job, move to Paris, wear a beret, smoke a cigarette. This is not a requirement. Go on a drug journey or something. Yeah, none of these things are requirements. What is and what really is important is acknowledge those three things, right? That you're a creator.

There's creativity inside of every person. That if you use it, it's like a muscle, it will get stronger. And when you use it more often, that what you're really developing is your capacity to grow, change, develop, and shape your life in a way that provides the meaning that you seek. Yeah. Here's a question. The whisper, the calling that you talked about, that's inside all of us. I hear that all the time. And I usually go after those things. And some of the times I'm like, this doesn't make sense for my business or my brand. It's probably against making me money. Sure. So how do we manage the calling when maybe it won't make us any money or won't really make an impact in a bunch of people's lives or no one else is going to care about it, but we care about it?

Sure. And it's time consuming. There's unknowns and uncertainties to when we put it out there. Are people going to accept it? Are we going to make any side money? Or is it just going to take up a lot of our time? Is it still worth pursuing that creativity if no one else cares? Yes. Pursuing creativity has all of its own merits built in. Because even if you're not doing the thing that lights you up or makes you money

or whatever, this simple act of pursuing your own innate creativity will be the best guide that you have in the world to get you there. The combination of your intuition plus your ability to put two things together is the best. Notice it's a compass. It's not a map. There is no map. There is no thing that says I start here. And anytime you think you can see the whole path in front of you, you're wrong. What you, all you really need to do is to see a couple of steps. Because ask anybody if they visualize the whole, and I'm big into visualization and meditation, usually what will manifest is the end result, but you'll get it a different way. That's what I mean by you just

need to be going in the right direction. And that's why your creativity plus your understanding what you love, you put those two things together and it's the best compass known to humanity. I like that. So when should we give up on our creativity? We should never give up on our creativity. Let's say a certain project. I'm a painter.

I love to paint. No one cares. I'm a horrible painter. Totally. And you're chronicling my my life i don't like i've i've quit so many things i dropped out of a you know medical school i thought that was really powerful i i think i'm um as a creative craft goes i'm most well known for photography and building businesses and i started out painting painting painting with oil painting. And it was

so slow. I was just, it was driving me crazy, crazy. And I'm like, what can happen now? Faster, faster. So I actually moved to acrylics and then acrylics were, even though they dried in a single sitting, I was just like, photography was ultimately like, yeah, it's like a thousandth of a second. You're like, got the shot. So it's not about only about discovering your, your one creative craft, because we all, again, this is the thing when you start to understand the power of creativity, you start to see it everywhere, whether you're cooking a meal, writing code, even, you know, leading a meeting at work,

that can be a creative, creative act. leading a meeting at work that can be a creative, creative act. And knowing when to quit is if my friend, Chris Guillebeau, you know, Chris, he has got a really effective way. And I think I said this in the book, he's got a really effective way of like, is it working? And do you love it? And if it's, if you love it and it's not working keep doing it because you love it and what's the end result like start reshaping what your goals are because you love it if you don't love it and it's working you're like then you have a decision to make right this is goes back to like oh is it for my brand if it's not working and you don't love it, why are you doing it? It's a simple two by two. And I think it's brilliantly simple, but that is part of,

I think, what can shed some light on, do I keep going? What you have to keep going on with is your creativity. The subtitle subtitle of the book is establish a daily practice, infuse your world with meaning and succeed in work and life. And the practice part of it is, again, you don't have to drag out your canvas and this is not, yeah, totally.

It's not, it's not what I'm talking about with a nude individual every day practice. Right. But, but just acknowledging that the things that you're doing, that even what you decided to do the first thing you woke up, that you were in charge of that. Yeah.

Well, I've got three kids, two dogs, 60 hours a week job, tons of bills. How am I going to create? And I've got to work on my health. I've got to make my family happy. I've got no time at night. How can I add creativity into my life in a daily practice? What are things I can do? Sure.

You've had Tony on the show. We both know Mr. Robbins. He talks about net time, no extra time, not extra time. So this is not a thing that you have to, again, go into the closet and drag your craft thing. I really want to debunk that idea. Sure, it's helpful if you want to debunk that idea. Sure. It's helpful if you want to do that, it can be relaxing and stuff. But what if you just thought about,

like we're intentional with creating the meal for the family that night and you did something special, even literally the intention of setting that intention when you start to prepare the meal that you there, that you were designing this that you position it in a way that the uh just the intention behind it setting an intention um is enough and then morning pages for example can you get up so a journal yeah journal morning yeah journal you know get up at 5 15 minutes before you normally would and have that time to write down some things that you're grateful for. When you do see, I would say 90-something percent of the people

who are listening or watching right this minute have taken a picture with their phone in the last week, day. Rather than like, oh, I'm documenting i'm documenting that just like wow this is an opportunity to create a moment with my kids home run or with you know photographing this food beautifully or the sunset or whatever cliche we want to get to like if you can just pause and be aware that your creative agency is driving right right at moment. Don't just take a photo. Be intentional about how you want to do it. Yeah, just even for a moment. And you do that.

You put that on repeat. It starts to become a thing for you. And it is like the world opens up. So it's not actually saying, if you can take an hour a day and paint, great. But if you don't have that specific time, how can you be creative throughout your entire day? While you go to work, when you're driving,

when you're speaking to someone, when you're presenting, how can you reshape the way you present? Is that what I'm hearing you say? Yes, it is. Even if you're an accountant. Yeah, whatever you're doing. Creative accounting. It sounds like an anomaly.

Like the IRS might not love it. But as a coder, there's a beautiful way to write code. Yeah. I think you can embed this in everything you do in your life. You can make it a game every day where it's like, every conversation I have, I'm going to use a new word of the day. Be playful. Be playful.

Sure. There's a lot of play. There's a lot of what connects you to the things that mattered as you were a kid. And again, it used to be thought that this was naive for pursuing it or even whimsical, but just look around. The most successful people that you know, they created business models that didn't exist. They method acted. They got so into their characters that they were able to transform themselves. Yeah. And there's usually this connection, a kindness, a groundedness with the people that I am most attracted to

that I think inspire me the most. Look at him, wildly creative. And it's just basically it's a new lens that we're able to see the world with because creativity is sort of finding its day in the sun. Yeah, it is. Something you do that's really well is you're a master networker. And I think the successful creative artists that can monetize their art, some of them actually, I'm not saying this isn't you,

but some of them actually aren't the best artists or creatives, but they're really good at building relationships and branding themselves. How important is it for artists who want to make their living full-time as being creative to build powerful relationships as part of their art? The book, there's a framework for the book. And the framework is called IDEA. And it's just four steps to a process. And this process works if you're trying to create a meal or paint a painting or build a business or you're thinking of it in terms of your life.

And it's a repeatable creative process. I is for imagine. D is for design. E is for execute. And A is for amplify. So I'm going to rip through these real quick because I really want to hang on to amplify, which is the essence of your question. You've said it a couple of times already in this conversation. Like imagine, like what do you want for yourself? You get up, what's your perfect day? That's imagine you're visualizing. Yeah. What is possible? And if you're not doing that, you're really missing out on the best stuff in life, right?

I think you're a huge advocate of that. You're getting the scraps of life that are just around as opposed to creating what you want. Totally. You're corking the tide, and life is happening to you rather than for you. Exactly. So imagine what's possible.

Now, you have to design. There's no such – you don't actually get the thing that you imagine without designing a way to get there. If you don't know where you're going, you're never going to get there. Yeah, exactly. So like designing a system, and this is through a set of daily habits. This is through a visualization of what you see for yourself. It's how do I learn the skills or whatever's necessary to reach what I imagine and then execute, right? You have to actually do the work.

That's the part that people don't like. They want to shortcut that. The reality is if you are not, if you're shortcutting, you're not going to be, you know, how many people have said the 10,000 hours you talk about? Kobe Bryant or anyone who's the best in the world at whatever it is that they do. Melissa Arnaud, a friend of mine who's summited

and successfully returned from Everest without oxygen. First US woman to do that. These are executions. They're executing against a plan. And then the last one, which is germane to your point, and that is amplify. So many people do the first three, and if they're not sort of completing this cycle, they don't, they haven't built,

there's a huge section in the book about this. It's basically about community. You can call it networking. You can call it whatever you want, but you're building community. You're, you're, and something amazing happens when you build community. You know, I like to say, be the fan that you wish you had. If you want more likes and followers on your Instagram, like, like, and follow more people. If you want people to show up to your art show, if you want people to subscribe to your business, if you want, like, then you need to participate in all these other things because that's how it's built on effort. Yeah. It's effort. It's built on reciprocity. I talk about it also as the other 50%. This is the 50% of the things that no one that everyone who's successful does. Yes.

And no one who, anyone who's not successful in their own definition doesn't understand that 50% of that person's time was built around building community. And it can be built in all kinds of different ways, digitally, physically, relationships with very, very close relationships. All-on-advance, offline events, whatever it may be. Meetups, groups. Yeah. And the community part is huge. And we go deep on this. It's like, oh, I'm an introvert.

I'm an extrovert. How do I do this? So it's going to be okay. There's a path for everybody. Right. And your community is not about having a million people. If you're a blacksmith in Jackson Hall, Wyoming, your community could be the 16 restaurateurs that come to you for their knives.

That's it. You're building those relationships with those 16 people. For sure. So it doesn't need to be a million followers on Instagram. It is whatever it is. There's two types. One is a community that you can join and connect with that exists today. And the other is the one that you build around your own work.

And I'm really intentional in the book about this because this is, to me, this is like the, if you go back to the beginning of our conversation and how do you get, you know, it's like, great. We were creative and then we realized that there was all this shame around that. And so we hit it. And, you know, now we're talking about being successful and building big businesses. And like, oh, here's the black box and no one knows what happens in there. Now we're talking about being successful and building big businesses. Here's the black box and no one knows what happens in there. And to me, that's what I try and spell that out really clearly. I'm trying to be both really theoretical in how people understand how important creativity is as a human condition, as a human muscle.

And there's a bunch of tactics in it, like building community. I know how you built your community. We've talked about it a lot it's very intentional didn't happen on accident you just didn't walk walk through life you're like one person at a time too it's building yeah and i want to bring people on my journey with me and you know what that's contagious you see someone who's excited about what it is they're doing what does it feel like the most you want to be a part of it for sure too yeah or just connected to that person like that's great energy that i love what he or she is doing i love what they are building and i want to be a part of it like those are things that are again go back to us being

social animals it's what i'm saying sounds radical but you look around at the that the day-to-day and your empirical evidence it's just it just you can't argue with it. It's so true. Yes. There's two things I wanted to add to this that you just talked about. My brother is a jazz violinist. It's very hard making a full-time living doing jazz violin, right? Even the jazz world in general.

There's so many people that are making six figures in that world. And he always talks about it. He creates education for other creative string players and jazz musicians. And he builds networks and events and festivals and stuff. And he always says, you're not going to get discovered. You're not just going to be able to master your craft and hope that someone's going to discover you in your garage. You've got to be putting yourself out there constantly and doing these two things that you said. One is creating the community that you're going

to attract people into and then joining other communities. For sure. You've got to do both. You have to. And there is not an example of success, certainly consistent success, that hasn't done those things. Yeah. We're here in LA, right? How many actors moved to LA and they're great at their craft but they don't know casting agents right and they don't it's all about the people you connect with for sure and to me whether whatever it is you're trying to build in life this connection that you can make with other people is a huge part of it just take a mega super super band. I write about Metallica. Any, just fill in your blank. Even if it's a solo performer,

the amount of people that have to come together to create the performance that you watch. Lots. Yeah. It's a lot of people. And, you know, I think that's part of just this myth that an artist has a beret,

smokes a cigarette, goes into the woods and write something magical and comes out. No, what happens is they go into the recording studio, they work their ass off, or they have three or four failed products. And then they make one thing and they show it to a small group of people,

they get feedback. And it's a very slow process. It's team intensive. And whether your team is one or two or three or 10, it starts to think and feel like a community, right? And then as that community grows over time, human by human, one at a time or at scale on the internet, like that's how success happens. That's, you know, the part of succeed, not just in work, but in life. I think that the community aspect can't be ignored and go back to that idea system just for a second.

If you're not doing the full system, like imagining, designing, executing against it, and then amplifying it through your community, if you're just doing, say, you're imagining and you're designing a plan, but that's all you ever do, you're a dreamer. You're a poser. And let's just say you just execute against the plans of others, and then you do the work to build their thing. You're a copier or worse, you're just a cog in a machine that's not able to express yourself. So it's this whole system. And again, whether you're baking a cake or you're trying to define your life, part of my in distilling this was like, wait a minute, every success I've ever had, every success of the hundreds of people that I've had on my podcast, the Bransons, the Brene Browns, wait a minute, every success I've ever had, every success of the hundreds of people that I've had on my podcast,

the Bransons, the Brene Browns, the Damon Johns, that have largely been on your show too, they have done this thing. They may have had a different name for it, but it's a very simple structure that is proven. If you just deconstruct the work of the best people in any discipline, there's some shape to this system that I've laid out in the book. You've got a very successful business, Creative

Live, which is all about creativity for people and online learning and education. You've got your photography business. You've got your podcast or I guess show, chase jarvis live you've got a lot of different projects seems like it happening at the same time why create a book right now when you've got so much going on well two things i think that we we like to choose our projects but sometimes our projects choose us yes and this book has been a factor in my psyche for years and years. It's been a creative calling for years. It has. And I think it's important for the listeners to know that what good is a book that tells you how to do everything perfect?

It's like, oh, if you're going to build a business, always do this, never do this, always do this, never do this. And you're like, okay, I started at A and I go through it. always do this, never do this, always do this, never do this. And you're like, okay, I started at A and I go through it. No, this is like littered with my biggest failures, the failures of others, the biggest struggles, the muddy hills that we have to climb up to find who we are and do the things we want to do with our lives. So this particular book for me was, it's basically an aggregate of all these things. And I look at my own arc. I had to figure out what I wanted to do with my life. I had to become and identify with a creator. I actually had business cards that printed up that said Chase Jarvis photographer before I even had anything,

before I even owned my own camera. Really? Yeah. Wow. Because that's like you identify. my own camera. Really? Yeah. Wow. Because that's like you identify. You envisioned it. Yeah, for sure. But as I became a creator and then I started doing things and building communities and then I did an iPhone app that was basically a tool that was used by millions of people, preceded Instagram by a couple of years, app of the year in 2009. And then that's a tool. So I became a creator. Then I started building tools for creators. And then that's a tool. So I became a creator. Then I started building tools for creators. And then I created a platform for tens of millions of people to learn and pursue their creative fashions. And to me, what was missing in all this was the why. It's like, why do this? Why is this valuable? Why would I care? And so to me, the book, it was an essential piece of this

puzzle that I've been building of my life. And 10 years into CreativeLive, I was just like, wait a minute, what's the why? And I knew my why, but I felt like I hadn't drawn a circle, put a bow on the things that I'd been creating. And it's because it's the most powerful faculty that we have as humans, creativity and love. Those things come together. That is, again, that's the human condition at its peak. It is the connection of those two things. So to me, the book had to come out in a very sort of meta way. That's what I was thinking.

And then let's get really tactical for a second. I had to get this thing out of me. I was like, it's percolating. It's driving me crazy. I think about it. And I do love, I think this is another thing about creativity that we're taught to just grind, just put our head down and grind is the answer. And in reality, some combination of pursuing a couple of different things at the same time, when you get stuck on one, you kind of leaned into another, that's a really effective way to get unstuck. That's true. Having something in the pipeline as well, something else, right? For sure. And it's not just always drop something and leave it forever and go on to the next thing. That is probably you're running away from something.

It had a couple different functions. Love it, man. Well, the book is out right now by the time this comes out. It's called Creative Calling. Establish a daily practice. Infuse your world with meaning and success in work and life. Make sure you guys get this book. You've got some places they can get it online.

I think you might have some bonuses or something extra if they go to creativecalling.com. Creativecalling.com. There's probably an experience that you'll put through or some add-ons and goodies. A couple of options there for sure. You can get it wherever books are sold. And we're going to do a special thing for everybody who buys it right away before. I'm not quite sure when this is going to drop, but there's a class at class at creative live really are you leading a class i am when's the last time you led a class i've only led one other class like the first one or something no

it wasn't even the first one it was like the thousandth and it was a collaboration with apple wow we then took photography yeah it was an iphone photography class i remember this that rolled into all 500 apple stores i was with you when you were like, that was happening or something. Yeah. And so this, it basically is a digital understanding, an accompaniment that is, there's a bunch of stuff in there that's not in this book.

And that's at CreativeLive. Wow. So if you buy the book ahead of time. If you pre-order it. Yeah. The week before. Yeah, we'll put it out the week before. Yeah, something like this. And even if you don't, I think there'll be some element of it. A replay or something. the book at a time. Week before. We'll put it out the week before.

Even if you don't, I think there'll be some element of it. I think we're going to actually do not a chapter by chapter, section by section read-along where we'll bring the community along to have some discussion around it. There you go. Appreciate it. Creativecalling.com. You're going to do a course

or a class at Creative Live. Yep. That's a pretty special deal. Yeah, there's a lot of people using that. I mean, I'm not really a big hashtagger, but the book just was announced, whatever, two weeks ago. And there's already, I don't know, 2,000 or 3,000 hashtags. What is it, Creative Calling?

Creative Calling. Yeah, and to me, it's just really important that the takeaway is that this isn't just about art that creativity it infuses meaning in our lives and helps us it transforms our lives it gives us personal power in a way that nothing else in our capacity can i love it man i'm excited i'm gonna take the class too do it creativecalling.com love it, man. I'm excited. I'm going to take the class too. Do it. Creativecalling.com. Check it out. They can also follow you, Chase Jarvis on social media and Instagram. I'm at Chase Jarvis or slash Chase Jarvis. The same is true with Creative Live. It's at Creative Live or slash Creative Live. Or you can also just get it wherever books are sold.

Are you doing any bonuses if people buy bulk and they can get like a creative live class for free or something? Who knows? Yeah. It's actually- Throwing it out there as an idea. No, no. It's a little beefier than that. There's some mentorship.

Wow. There's a series of videos. Yeah. So- And that's all at creativeculling.com. They can see all that stuff. Yeah. I love it.

Love it, man. What's something that people need to know? This final couple of questions. Sure. What is something that most people don't know about creativity that they really need to know? That it's for everyone. And it's not just a thing that's imbued to a lucky few. It's a thing that we're born with. It defines us, gives us the agency over our own lives. And we've been sold, we're suckers who were sold a lie by

a machine that didn't, it wasn't intending to do harm. It was for the times that that was the best way that culture could wrangle, put its arms around humanity. And we're in a different time now and we need different tools. What got us here will not get us there. So creativity is going to underpin the solution to every problem we've ever known. The hunger crisis, any humanitarian crises, those solutions are all going to have an element of creativity. So it's much bigger than art, which is, it's a good place to start, but it is, again, it's much bigger than that. Everything, the planet problem, the issues with the ecosystem and everything, the pollution, plastic, all the biggest problems in the world, that's where we have an opportunity to bring out our creativity.

For sure. And you've seen it solve problems before. Like electricity, that's just electrical engineering plus creativity. The wheel, mechanical engineering. Let's just talk about some fundamental stuff. Like someone had to think around and figure that out, and they had to draw a picture. I got to take a donkey everywhere?

What's a faster way? Totally. And they drew a picture of it first. Every spaceship that you see, it was drawn first. Crazy, right? It was drawn by some artist somewhere, and everything around you, everything without exception, was designed.

Why not you? Yeah, I like that. Well, I acknowledge you, man. I love you. I appreciate you for being here because you bring a lot of permission for people to express their creativity when maybe they don't feel like they're capable of doing it. And I love that you continue to express it online, doing projects like this to give us tools and information. So make sure you guys get this book. You do it with so much joy and love. And that's what I appreciate about you is you make creativity fun.

Thank you. Art fun and built with community. Yeah, people involved. It's not just like, look what I'm doing by myself. You always bring other people involved in the creative process of your work of art. So I really love that about you. And I think that's the way art should be created.

It's collaborative. Thank you for acknowledging that. I really appreciate it. It means a love that about you. And I think that's the way art should be created. It's collaborative. Thank you for acknowledging that. I really appreciate it. It means a ton. And you know how I feel about you. We talk about it all the time. I love you deeply and appreciate all the work that you do in the world. Thanks, brother.

I appreciate it, man. I don't remember if I asked you this question last time. It's called the three truths. Let's see. I hate the three truths. I don't remember what you said last time, but let's see if there's a... I should have prepared. I should have known I was going to get attacked by the three truths. I don't remember what you said last time, but let's see if there's a... I should have prepared. I should have known I was going to get attacked

by the three truths. So imagine it's your last day on earth. You've created every creative project you want to put out into the world. But for whatever reason, you've got to take those projects with you. You've taken it all with you in your past, right? Hypothetically.

But you have a piece of paper and a pen to write down three things you know to be true about your life and the lessons you would leave behind. And this is all people have to remember you by. These three lessons or three truths. What would you say are yours? One, that every person is creative. We're endowed with limitless creativity that can power not just one life, but a billion lives.

The second is that this creativity is a process, a practice. It's not an end, it's a journey. And that it is strengthened through use. And so use it as frequently as you can, acknowledge it, embrace it, and train it like a muscle. And then third, that it is through using this muscle and using it regularly and mastering it, understanding it,

that it is through this and only through this that you will be able to craft the life that you love, that you seek, and that is in service of others, and nothing else will get you there. Love it, man. And the final question. And the final question. This is even worse than this worse what's your definition of

greatness these are just like any any all these like superlatives like i just felt like i just got pulled to the ringer i feel like i just passed a test barely barely that was the next test the final test um is spending time doing the things that you love with people that you love. There you go. Make sure you guys get the book, Creative Calling. Check it out. Follow Chase Jarvis. Love you, man.

Thank you. Love you too, bud. Appreciate your support. And there you have it, my friend. I hope you enjoyed this interview. For me, I've always felt like I wanted to be more creative and I felt like I've used creativity in different areas of my life. But sometimes it gets held back when we think about other areas of our life that need attention, when we think about the

responsibilities of life that need our attention. But the funny thing is the responsibilities of our life, like staying healthy and being responsible for our family and our kids and our partner and our relationship and our career, you can infuse creativity in every area of your life. And a lot of this is just about having fun. You know, being creative is for me about having fun and bringing the joy and bringing the magic to every situation. You don't have to be this unbelievable painter to say you're creative. You can just express yourself in different unique ways every single moment of the day to bring creativity to your life. So if you enjoyed this, please share with a friend, text one person, text a few people,

lewishouse.com slash 853, or you can use the link on the Apple podcast or Spotify or wherever you're listening to this. And just text one friend who you think this could be helpful to. Maybe who's lost some creativity in their life. Maybe they already are a creative or they're an artist and you think this could help them grow and earn more money and bring some more structure to their creative endeavors. Wherever it may be, share it with one friend today and spread the message of greatness.

You can be that champion in someone's life by sharing this message with them. If this is your first time here, we do this every Monday, Wednesday, Friday. We bring you some of the most inspiring people and ideas and topics from around the world to help you unlock your greatness. That's what this is all about,

constantly becoming a better human being. We all fall down. We all make mistakes. We're never going to be perfect, but if we can constantly grow, learn, and improve, that, in my opinion, is living a good life. If you enjoyed Chase, make sure to pick up his new book. Follow him at Chase Jarvis and tag me on Instagram stories when you're listening at Lewis Howes. I'd love to hear from you over there. I try to get back to as many people as possible. As Pablo Picasso said, every child is an artist. The problem is staying an artist when you grow up, never grow up. And you can always be an artist in my mind. I love you so very much. And you know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great. Thank you.