The Tim Ferriss Show - Episode 8: Chase Jarvis, Master Photographer

Episode Date: May 26, 2014

Chase Jarvis is a master photographer and the CEO of CreativeLIVE.com. He is the youngest person ever to be named a Hasselblad Master, Nikon Master, and ASMP Master.Since opening his own studio, Chase has photographed for Nike, Apple, Columbia Sportswear, REI, Honda, Subaru, Polaroid, Lady Gaga, Red Bull, and many more. He is known for a hyper-kinetic style and an emphasis on sports, lifestyle, and portraiture. CreativeLIVE.com, of which he's CEO, is an online learning platform that broadcasts live, high-definition classes to more than 2M students in 200 countries. All classes are free to watch while live and can be purchased for repeated viewing. They are amazing. Teachers include Pulitzer Prize winners, business luminaries, and beyond.In this conversation, we explore his personal story, the most important choices he's made, common mistakes of "creative" professionals (or people in general), and how he reached the pinnacle of his industry. His lessons learned can be applied almost anywhere.For full show notes, please visit www.fourhourblog.com. Say hello to Chase on Twitter at @chasejarvis. Enjoy!***If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. I also love reading the reviews!For show notes and past guests, please visit tim.blog/podcast.Sign up for Tim’s email newsletter (“5-Bullet Friday”) at tim.blog/friday.For transcripts of episodes, go to tim.blog/transcripts.Interested in sponsoring the podcast? Visit tim.blog/sponsor and fill out the form.Discover Tim’s books: tim.blog/books.Follow Tim:Twitter: twitter.com/tferriss Instagram: instagram.com/timferrissFacebook: facebook.com/timferriss YouTube: youtube.com/timferrissPast guests on The Tim Ferriss Show include Jerry Seinfeld, Hugh Jackman, Dr. Jane Goodall, LeBron James, Kevin Hart, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Jamie Foxx, Matthew McConaughey, Esther Perel, Elizabeth Gilbert, Terry Crews, Sia, Yuval Noah Harari, Malcolm Gladwell, Madeleine Albright, Cheryl Strayed, Jim Collins, Mary Karr, Maria Popova, Sam Harris, Michael Phelps, Bob Iger, Edward Norton, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Neil Strauss, Ken Burns, Maria Sharapova, Marc Andreessen, Neil Gaiman, Neil de Grasse Tyson, Jocko Willink, Daniel Ek, Kelly Slater, Dr. Peter Attia, Seth Godin, Howard Marks, Dr. Brené Brown, Eric Schmidt, Michael Lewis, Joe Gebbia, Michael Pollan, Dr. Jordan Peterson, Vince Vaughn, Brian Koppelman, Ramit Sethi, Dax Shepard, Tony Robbins, Jim Dethmer, Dan Harris, Ray Dalio, Naval Ravikant, Vitalik Buterin, Elizabeth Lesser, Amanda Palmer, Katie Haun, Sir Richard Branson, Chuck Palahniuk, Arianna Huffington, Reid Hoffman, Bill Burr, Whitney Cummings, Rick Rubin, Dr. Vivek Murthy, Darren Aronofsky, and many more.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This episode is brought to you by AG1, the daily foundational nutritional supplement that supports whole body health. I do get asked a lot what I would take if I could only take one supplement, and the true answer is invariably AG1. It simply covers a ton of bases. I usually drink it in the mornings and frequently take their travel packs with me on the road. So what is AG1? AG1 is a science-driven formulation of vitamins, probiotics, and whole food sourced nutrients. In a single scoop, AG1 gives you support for the brain, gut, and immune system. So take ownership of your health and try AG1 today. You will get a free one-year supply of vitamin D and five free AG1 travel packs with your first subscription purchase. So learn more, check it out. Go to drinkag1.com slash Tim. That's drinkag1,

the number one, drinkag1.com slash Tim. Last time, drinkag1.com slash Tim. Check it out. This is Tim Ferriss. This is the Tim Ferriss Show. This episode is brought to you by HipDial. HipDial is how I do conference calls. Anytime you need more than two people on the phone, you give out a phone number, no pin required, and you will get a text message when people join. So you don't have to sit around staring at the ceiling, watching paint dry or otherwise. It's great. So go to hipdial.com forward slash Tim. That will get you a free month. You can play around with it. It is awesome. It is carefree. It removes some of the headache from your life. Give it a shot. This episode is with my friend Chase Jarvis. Chase is a professional photographer and the CEO of creativelive.com,

which I'm also an advisor to. He is the youngest person to ever be named a Hasselblad master, Nikon master, and ASMP Master. Since opening his own studio, Chase has photographed for Volvo, Nike, Apple, Microsoft, REI, Honda, Subaru, Lady Gaga, Red Bull, the list goes on and on. He is very famous for a hyperkinetic style. He was one of the first people to use octocopters, and he emphasizes lifestyle, lifestyle sports and portraiture really made his name with a lot of very high stakes skiing, alpine photography. Creative Live, his company,

is an online learning platform that broadcasts live classes to an international audience. They have more than 2 million students in 200 countries. If you can imagine sort of PBS on steroids, you have these live classes with masters of all sorts of disciplines, including photography, creativelive.com. You can check it out. I've done a class there as well. You can watch for free. It's high def. They have many different cameras, dollies, et cetera. And then if you want access to the classes later, you have to pay. That's how it works. That's the business model. You could call it a freemium pricing model and it's pretty rad. So check it out. The company has headquarters in Seattle and San Francisco. I've been on there, like I mentioned,

Pulitzer Prize winning photographers have been on there, top entrepreneurs of all sorts, including people like Reid Hoffman from Greylock, who's considered the Oracle of Silicon Valley. And that's it about CreativeLive. But the story of Chase, the story of the development of his art, and not only that, but bridging the gap, crossing the chasm from artist to entrepreneur to very fast scaling a successful startup is a fascinating one. And I hope you enjoy it. At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking. Can I answer your personal question? Now would have seemed the perfect time.

What if I did the opposite? I'm a cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal endoskeleton. Me, Tim, Paris, Joe. So, Mr. Jarvis. Yes, sir. Tables have been turned. They have been. I'll cross my legs like you've crossed yours.

I'm not sure what to do. This is a new scenario for you people who can't actually see what we're doing. This is an experiment with the Tim Ferriss Podcast, also brought to you in moving pictures. Yes. Normally you don't videotape it, right? I normally, meaning the first two episodes, did not videotape it. So I'm trying to sit somewhat like the host from Masterpiece Theater. I feel like that's appropriate, given the professional setting.

Why don't you tell us where we are? We are in a studio called Creative Live, which is a startup based here in San Francisco and in Seattle. I'm the co-founder with my good friend Craig Swanson, who's not here. And it is an education platform that connects the world's top experts in creative fields with a global audience all over the world. That's what global means. I was always wondering what that meant. So we first met, how? I actually was trying to think of it today, and I couldn't piece it together.

I don't know. Had to be a good number of years ago. Several. But we've had a lot of adventures together. We have had some good adventures. Spent a lot of time OTK, lots of travel, always bumping into each other in airports. Around the world. But what I'd love you to perhaps do first is just give people the Chase overview.

What's Chase? Who is Chase Jarvis? Just a little bit of background, because I can obviously pontificate, but I want to give people an intro. I'll give you an opportunity to pontificate later. No, I was born, and I'm just kidding. I have spent my whole life as an artist. The career as a photographer is really the only career I've ever had until co-founding CreativeLive with Craig about three years ago now, three years and change, in a little grimy warehouse in South Seattle.

We launched, I think it was in April, actually, and to rapid growth and success. And then about a year later, we nailed some venture funding, and we just closed our Series B, and now there's about 100 people there employed here in Creative Live. And so there's this transition from myself as photographer, artist, traveling all over the world shooting for the top brands, and I sort of scratched my own itch because when I bailed on medical school and dropped out of a PhD in philosophy to pursue my dream of becoming a photographer,

and there was nowhere to get any damn good education. I didn't want to go back to school school. It was a very closed world 10 years ago. There's not a lot of access to information. I said, man, if I'm ever in a position to change this, this sucks. I want to change it. By collaborating with my friend Craig some 10 years later, we did exactly that. And so it's working. Shazam.

Shazam. So I'm glad you started with the artist bit because I want to delve into that. The first few guests we've had ranged from sort of investors to chess competitors. Oh, wow. People are going to be so disappointed with this podcast. So I was hoping we could really lower their expectations

by having you on this time. Good, good. He's a homeless guy. He's not doing real well. But the fact that you went from being an artist and getting to that point, I want to delve into a little bit, because obviously getting to the point

where you're doing shoots with huge brands and flying octocopters before that was a thing and so on and so forth, you don't just jump into that as your first gig, I have to assume. For sure. But moving from that to really ending up in more of a management position, I want to talk about kind of how that's felt.

Did you just call me manager? You're middle manager, really, is what it comes down to. You seem dumber, right? Perfect, yes. Pointy-haired bosses. I had that little part in office space. That was me. But given how professional I want to keep this,

I also want you to start sort of gestating on a question, which is related to a concept I'm going to borrow. It's from Aisha Tyler, and it's called self-inflicted wounds. So at the end of our talk, I want you to think of some ridiculous story, could be laughable, catastrophic. Oftentimes, it could be involving alcohol. Something where you've just made a complete ass of yourself. And I know you have a pretty good selection to go through. I just went, I got a whole memory bank full of that.

My RAM is full. So photography. Yes. How did you first get into photography, and how did you get to your first, what was your first paying gig? My first paying gig was. Well, let's backtrack. Sure, okay. How did you get into photography?

I'm going to try and sort of relate the artist mentality to whatever audience is watching, because I feel like the artist mentality is actually, if we take one step back, it's a creative mentality. And I also believe that creativity is the new literacy. So that creativity, like a lot of the investments you do, highly creative, your approach to them, what the founders are making of those companies. So whether you're taking pictures, building a business,

managing a hedge fund, there's a ton of creativity involved. And so art is sort of but a subset of creativity. And I think that's a theme that's going to continue. I'm forecasting the future of our conversation today. That's a theme that I'm going to continue. You're already time traveling. I'm going to continue to bring us back to that because I think that's a really important core.

My personal experience growing up, I was a very creative kid. And yet being an artist as a kid was always like, oh, that kid's really creative. Where did you grow up? I grew up in Seattle. Okay. And I'm an only child because I was a little bastard. I don't know if I can say bastard. You scared him off.

I did. Oh, come on. I don't know if I can say bastard. Coming from Long Island, I was hoping to drop F-bombs when I'm seeing this. It's all yours, man. Self-conscious here with all these professional cameras. But my childhood was a very creative childhood. My parents gave me a block of wood. I'd go play in the backyard for hours. I sat at the adult table because there was no kids table. Just the solo kid table. Go sit in the corner. Basically. What did your parents do? My dad was a cop, and my mom was an executive assistant at a big biotech company called,

actually, they did Cialis. Oh. Yeah, they founded Cialis, and that was sold. I explained so much. Yeah, so she did okay on that one. So I came from a very middle class background, and there was a good work ethic, but the whole creative artist thing, I felt very creative. But I was also sort of in a jock's body.

So I was good at sports. And I could never reconcile those two things as a kid. Soccer and football. Which were you better at? I had opportunities to play either in college. Both Jackson and both. I ended up playing soccer at San Diego State, which is a top 10 D1 school. So it was a good way to go to college. But I had a hard time reconciling to artist and jock. They didn't

go together, at least in my high school. You had to sort of be one or the other. And I sort of took the jock path because it could lead to school and at least at that time it was safer. Yeah, sure. And it was really in that sort of the punk, skate, surf, punk scene in Southern California where I moved to go to college that I sort of was able to understand that those two things could coexist. And actually that was a powerful combination. That's interesting.

I never really thought of that. I mean the surf culture is so pervasive there. Yeah. And surf, skate, and it was sort of a DIY ethic, hacker mentality. I think that's part of a, that was something that I definitely took away from Southern California after going to school down there. And photography was something that I had grown up being on the other side of the camera. At my college, I was the guy who would get interviewed after the soccer games and television whatnot because I was reasonably Well associated with cameras. You were gonna say somewhere. Yeah, I'm dashing

Dashing if you could only smell I don't know if an airplane. It's not terrible. It's not terrible But photography was a really low barrier way and I had grown up around pictures and I remember a particular picture Muddy soccer game that made me want it made me me realize, oh my god, that's like a moment that's never going to go away and now that I have it sort of locked in a picture maybe I can do that over and over again but then that reality voice kicked in

that voice, part of the reason that CreativeLive exists is because we have this, culturally there's this bias against, oh I don't want my kid to grow up being an artist because he's going to be homeless or a drug addict or he's going to play music. Or a starving artist. Yeah, starving is a whole.

Those two go together. They do. I'm not saying in reality, but in mass perception. Yeah, culturally. So I, again, sort of recoiled from that thought. So your first active photography was then in college? Immediately after college. My grandfather died on my college, like two days before my college graduation,

which was a terrible, terrible thing. Dropped out of a heart attack. The silver lining in that was I got his cameras. I was gifted his cameras. And it sort of was a permission to go explore the world. So I threw him in a backpack and walked the earth for seven months with my then-girlfriend, now-wife, Kate, who you know. After graduating.

Yeah. And we just took, literally, my grandfather passed away. I got his cameras. We said, look, let's just go explore the world, and I want to learn to take pictures because I want to get in touch with this side that I've sort of been repressing. And taught myself how to use a camera and came back. I was a ski bum in Steamboat, Colorado.

Started taking pictures there. It was where I first sold pictures. In Colorado? Yeah. And taking pictures of what I was passionate about, which is hiking, climbing, fly fishing, basically extreme sports, skate, surf, that whole world that I'd grown up in. And I was very passionate about it, so it was easy to make connections in that community. And I had good pictures of fancy people

that started being sold for lots of money. So wait, hold on. So I mean, I find it, this is part of the fun for me, and the reason I wanted to start the podcast is because we've spent years hanging out, but normally you hang out. I don't know this stuff,

and I want to dig into it because it's fun. But if I sit down, I'm like, let me ask you 70 questions for two hours. It's just weird, and it's like a CIA interrogation. But this is a good pretext. There was that one time. There was that one time. Sorry about the sodium pentothal. But the first, do you remember the first sale?

For instance, I remember when I had my first real business anything in college, teaching this accelerated learning seminar. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I felt richer than I'd ever felt in my life because I was making $8 an hour in the college library. Guest library. So tell me about your first sale or few sales. How did those come about? The first sale came about because I grew up skiing and snowboarding, was very familiar with the subject. I got into some, with the good crowd, had photographs of people on next year's equipment because I knew the people, the manufacturers and the reps and all that stuff. And if you

have the right pictures of the right people and the right equipment, then the manufacturers come knocking for next year's stuff. So a manufacturer saw my work, got in touch and said, hey, we like this picture, this picture, and this picture. I ended up licensing, not selling outright, but licensing an image for $500 and a pair of skis. Nice.

That's my first, yeah. That's a big first sale. And when you're, I would think I was probably literally making $10 an hour at that time. And you're like, wait a minute, I just sold that for 500 bucks

from going skiing for a couple days with my buddies. I'd like to replicate that. So what did I do? What worked? What didn't? And then I sat on a Tim Ferriss learning experiment on how can I replicate this and just started doing that over and over and upping every time. What were you doing for $10 an hour?

I was tuning skis at the local ski stop right at the base of the mountain in Steamboat, Colorado. When Kate and I got back from Europe, we were totally broke, so we threw everything in a car, drove to Colorado, and we were just deferring education and life a little bit and ended up having the time of our lives. Ironically, you know very, very well, better than most, about adventure and how that propels one's life. Yeah, you have some.

I mean, if people want to get a taste of, what are your favorite videos? Obviously, the stuff with the octocopter did really well, which you can look for on YouTube or anywhere else. But if people want to get a taste of the international man of mystery, who is Chase Jarvis? I have a pretty good YouTube channel. It's just YouTube slash Chase Jarvis.

And I think there's a couple hundred videos. And several of them with more than a million views. But mostly they're adventures all over the world. Pretty much every continent

except for Antarctica. A lot of, you know... You've got to do something with your life, man. Exotic locations. When are you going to make Antarctica happen? Oh, I know.

My dad, he just stuck a stake in the ground and said, I'm going to beat you to Antarctica. So I've got to do something with your life, man. What are you going to make Antarctica happen? I know my dad, he just stuck a stake in the ground and said, I'm going to beat you to Antarctica. So I got to find a way to get there in the next 12 months. But that, that there's a lot of adventure and you can go to my YouTube channel or my website and see it. So,

I mean, I think that a lot of people listening or watching probably hear this and they go, Oh my God, like that's a dream scenario. I got to travel the world, probably had brands or clients pay for most or all of it. And yeah, you get paid very well on top of it.

And you get paid very well on top of it. So how did you- Helicopters and yachts. It's really ridiculous, but it didn't start that way, I promise. Well, of course not. So a lot of people sort of enter the creative funnel, right? I would like to try to be a photographer or I want to be a photographer or fill in the blank, right? Sure. Painter, dancer, whatever. Writer. And then you have all these different.

You're blocking my shot there with your hand. Oh, yeah. No, I'm doing that on purpose because I don't want the awesomeness of your face to overwhelm people. And I know what I'm doing. I know. You're a professional. It's like.

See if I can get my big Danish head right in the way. So where was I? I was going Danish head right in the way. Where was I? I was going to... You're saying that there are a lot of people at the top of the funnel. Oh, yes. So how did you end up... What do you think... What were the milestones or inflection points or chance encounters

that led you to the point where you're flying around in helicopters with top athletes, paid by the top brands like i mean sure because i can point to a handful of things right with the four-hour work week like 2007 south by southwest yep was one of the big one one of the typical lounge you told me about that right like how it's global exactly like there i can identify these points so what were some of those points for you um a couple of the key, actually taking the camera that my grandfather passed to me when he died and actually teaching myself the art in a very unencumbered sort of way where there was a lot of freedom, freedom to make mistakes, freedom to learn, and a reliance on yourself. So to me, that's a great way to learn and to learn from others. And not just similar to CreativeLive, how the world's best.

Like I would meet up with people all over the world and just connect with them around photography. So the learning phase, there was a lot of opportunity for exploration and making mistakes, and there wasn't a lot of stakes early on. But as soon as I decided that I wanted to do that, I threw myself into a lot of stakes. I know I want to do this professionally. How can I do it?

Move to Steamboat, meet the right people, and then there is instantly stakes. I know that's a big thing for you with increasing the stakes so it can accelerate learning. So the camera and having a little freedom to explore and play, basically, like get familiar in a way where there's not pressure. Then I put myself in a little bit of a pressure cooker by saying, and I didn't really declare it. I declared it to myself, but not overtly. I said, I'm going to try and do this.

Being in a community, putting yourself at the heart of where that stuff is happening, if you want to do a startup, it's much easier in Silicon Valley than it is in Detroit, for example. I did the equivalent of move to that I wanted to shoot skiing and snowboarding. So I went to a hardcore ski town. That was a big catapult. And then another inflection point was when I was setting my prices, not necessarily for the very first sale or the second sale, but when I realized that, wait a minute, once you are great at your craft, everything else is vision and the ability to execute.

So let's put execute and craft in the same bucket, and then everything else is vision. inside a big company or whether how to hack the system from an entrepreneurial standpoint or an artist standpoint the way that i hacked the system was my first hired like day rate or gig was at several thousand dollars a day so i sort of i pushed myself to a level that was incredibly uncomfortable and required myself to deliver at the highest level right and i i charged accordingly because i had done the work done the research and knew what the top guys required myself to deliver at the highest level, and I charged accordingly, because I had done the work, done the research, and knew what the top guys and gals were getting, and I put myself in that caliber right away.

Did they accept it right off the bat, or did you have to negotiate? I mean, did you have some guy who was like, wait a second, kid. Like, I know that so-and-so, the Michael Jordan of, you know, ski photography is charging X, but all due respect, like, this is your first big gig or second big gig. I mean, how did you, ski photography is charging X, but all due respect, like this is your first big gig or second big gig. I mean, how did you, or did you just ask and you were surprised

they said yes? I had a body of work that I hadn't actually done a lot with commercially. So I felt like the quality, and I was doing, I was comparing my work to the work that I saw in the marketplace, honestly, and I was getting like peer reviews and whatnot. And I knew that I had talent, but it really came to the boldness of where do I want to put myself in the marketplace? I'd rather have my first sale be here and not have anything down there. Because if you're the $400 dude. Then you have to claw your way up to anything. And that whole idea that when, oh, wait, when we get some more budget, we'll call you if you just do it for $400.

No, no, no, they don't call the $400 dude. They call the $4,000 dude when they have a $4,000 budget. Yeah, no. They don't call the $400 dude. They call the $4,000 dude when they have a $4,000 budget. Yeah. So the first, uh, you know, and I had to, I wasn't bluffing. I knew that I could do the work, but I said, you know, I think I said it was 2,500 bucks a day, 2,000 and 2,500 bucks a day. And they said, okay, well it's a six day shoot. So I was like, in my head, I'm shitting myself and doing the math. And, uh, more than I made last year and I'm going to make it next week and they said okay that sounds fine we might need to add an extra day

let me check my schedule and literally okay I'll get back to you on that I'm going to go throw up in the bathroom but again there were some stakes there. There was, I knew that I could do the job.

But I also, I feel like I had an understanding of the marketplace and where, it was an indicator of where I wanted to go as well. I knew I wanted to be at a top price point and I wanted to do less work, but do high-end stuff. And again, I don't want to pretend that I didn't do a shitload. This is like a 10-year overnight success program here.

Like I was working in the trenches day in and day out, everything. I was eating, breathing, sleeping, photography. But when I was able to start to sort of monetize my craft, I did so at a very high price point. And little note, if someone ever says yes that quickly, you didn't ask for enough. Of course. So what happens? That's why the good negotiators, even if they want to yes that quickly, you didn't ask for enough. Of course. So what happens? That's why the good negotiators, even if they want to say yes quickly, they'll push a little bit so that you feel better about the deal when it's done. And that's exactly, I did some iteration of that the next time, if I was dealing with someone who was at a commensurate level of experience across the table for me, that I, and if I could do a great job on this job, that I could ask for more.

You're talking about your wife for photography? You just leave Kate out of this. She won't flip you like a cheese on the. No, you're lifting. I can see. You've been working on the biceps there. Tim Ferriss Experiments got you. Two ostriches a day.

That's my quota, at least. You know I love Kate. I do. Oh, yeah. I just spoke with her. Amazing woman. You're a very lucky guy. I think that there's a way to extrapolate that to every profession.

Negotiating. We've talked to Ramit about this. Ramit is the man for negotiating, right? And he actually came on my podcast, Chase Drivers Live, and talked a lot about this, but that's sort of prizing yourself. And that is a learned thing. It's totally learned. That's the thing. I think it's such a huge misconception because I always see so much resistance to negotiating it's like no no no you memorize a couple of lines

try them out and you're going to want to puke in the bathroom like you said and then you get through it and you're like okay I'm kind of smelly now but that was pretty awesome didn't get an extra 50% got an extra 20% and it's just role playing and rehearsal it is practicing

and showing up and letting the beast wet know, be sweaty, but putting yourself, and I think I don't have to tell you or your listeners that they are familiar with your work. Like, put yourself in some low or not too serious stakes and negotiate against. Yeah, go to the state fair or something.

Sure. You know, go to the Alameda Fair that they have every whatever, you know, a couple of weeks, and negotiate for stuff that you don't actually really want all hell of a lot. And like, you know, a couple weeks, and negotiate for stuff that you don't actually really want all hell of a lot. And like, don't be a jerk about it, but it's like, you know, buy some low-stakes stuff. It also helps with, I think, some confidence. You repeat that thing, you get a little more confidence. And in a weird way, it also helped

me understand the seriousness of the work, not in that the photography of skiers and snowboarders or skateboarders or surfers was serious, but in that the people that are on the other end of this transaction, they are betting their ass on me. If it doesn't turn out, they are fired. They're done. Yeah, because, you know, and it started off small, but then as the budgets got to be, you know,

$50,000, $100,000, half a million, some big productions, the people that are betting on it. If it goes sideways, they're done. Yeah, yeah. And you don't, in photo and video, you don't really get too many, you can't be a dick because word gets around pretty quickly that you're not pleasant to work with, and you can't blow it because people are making big bets. Well, I would imagine at that level, too, there are probably only a half a dozen to a dozen people they're considering.

It's a small community. Oh, yeah, super, super tight. So what are the most consistent mistakes that you see? We can stick with, I think, because you know the photography community so well, and you've interacted with so many photographers, this can, I'm'm sure be extrapolated to creatives in general which is pretty much everyone right and that's your cyborg unless

you're like bishop from aliens you have to be creative in some fashion yes uh what are the most common mistakes that you see or just like the repetitive problems that you see so there's a handful and i think it does apply like you just prefaced in across every discipline. Um, the being great at your craft is a requirement. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm not, I wouldn't suggest that you stop, that you don't try and get work or hustle or do all those other things while you're coming up. Cause that's a part of the game. And that's, you know, Gary V is a big advocate for hustling. And so you got got to hustle your whole way. But being great at your craft actually matters.

Yeah, yeah. And having, like, the camera is like an extension of my arm. And you think about it, I have used the pro-golf analogy. I don't know why I'm not crazy about golf. But those guys have to, and women, have to stand up on the tee and hit the ball down the middle because that's what they're paid to do. It doesn't matter if it's raining, sunny, windy. If there's 10 people watching or 10 million, they're paid and hit the ball down the middle because that's what they're paid to do. It doesn't matter if it's raining, sunny, windy. If there's 10 people watching or 10 million, they're paid to hit the ball down the middle. And as an artist, you're paid to make.

And as an entrepreneur, you're paid to deliver the ROI to the shareholders. And as a wrestler, you're paid to win. Or like whatever your thing is, you have to be great at your craft in order to, I think, achieve. So there's this 10,000 hours, hardcore, the folks that I think are great, whether they're hacking the system and doing it in 10 hours or 10,000, that is, I think, people want to skip that step. Yeah, I get, you know, for every email that I get about the craft of writing, I get 1,000 about how to market books. And I'm just like, hold on. The ratio is all wrong.

So no, I would agree with that. And so that gets overlooked. Like, I just want to be this awesome fashion photographer and hang out with like awesome, you know, beautiful people in crazy locations. And it's like, dude, you got to be like actually pick up a camera and get good at that shit first. And then you might be able to do part. All the glamorous.

Yeah, the second part. So I think that's a common mistake. The second one is that I think there's a belief that people who are successful, either they can sell themselves really well and they're natural at it. I was a natural hard worker, but not a gifted positioner and seller.

And that was all learned in the same way that some of the stuff we talked about earlier was learned the art of negotiation the art of positioning yourself in the marketplace

of telling your story that is not at least it wasn't innate for me and I had to learn that so there's another belief that oh if you have talent then you just actually you just are successful which is a total crock of horseshit. It's total

bullshit. Ryan Holiday talks a lot about this. You have to like, I mean, it's someone else's quote, but it's like, there's nothing more common than what is it? The unsuccessful man with talent or something like that. They're tired for sure. Cause there's so many of them. That idea of once you make something that if it's great, it will just be discovered is totally fiction. The people that I know that are successful as soon as it's done, the making part, then it's about packaging. And frankly, the narrative, like being a good storyteller, is mission critical to having your idea, project, vision company whatever spread so being able to tell a good story is another thing that people overlook so being great at your craft actually working hard to sell and position the art of storytelling as a mechanism to get your your

stuff out there those are huge things both of which either people want to skip or where people think that I don't have that gift, therefore I can't do it. Or that guy's a jackass because he's not a real talent, he's actually just as great at selling himself. But what actually matters is that that person over there is doing the shit that you're not doing. They're a New York Times bestselling author. So Tim got up, sat down at his computer, wrote every day until he had an 8,000-page book

and then narrowed it down to 400 pages and then sold a million copies. You just stopped that 8,000-page stuff. Oh, my God. I think you had a backpack full of them. I was like, are those actual pages that are in there? Oh, my God. On those two points, then, aside from, obviously, this tool that you've helped create, which is CreativeLive, and you guys just, particularly in photography and a lot of those areas, you just dominate. Yeah, we're killing it in audio right now.

And it's been fun to watch, as obviously an advisor and investor with the company, just from the nascent stages to see this thing explode. It's been really fun. But aside from that tool, obviously, which exists now, what books, resources helped you become better photography? Sure. And then also helped you get better at positioning, storytelling? Sure.

Wow. Don't have to be books, but just tools that people might be able to use. Yeah, tools, a little bit of, this is going to be a date myself idea here, but when a date is going on, it's a mandate, it's a two-hour mandate. Mandate not as in a thing that you have to do,

but as in two men getting together. At first it was the library. Literally, it was books like How to Negotiate Photography. Even the idea of licensing an image so you maintain the intellectual property instead of selling it. So there was some early stuff

way back in the, God, 90s. Yeah. As soon as I realized that I was good at the craft and that that was developed primarily through repetition and feedback loops that I cultivated and created on my own, it was learning about sort of the business side of it. And I think there's a weird, you have to know your industry for sure. That's very, very beneficial. But all the big hacks, the leaps, the sort of the leapfrog things that I did in my career came from outside my industry. So instead of learning from other photographers, well, I have a huge respect for the masters that have paved the way before me. But I took a lot of cues from Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat and Robert Rauschenberg, the artists in New York in the 60s, 70s, 50s, 60s, 70s,

because they were sort of, again, they were hackers. They were finding out how to hack the system, and they were making art about making art. And they were sort of reinventing the game while they were playing it. And I was always motivated to try and apply that to my work. And not so literally in the way of taking a picture of a picture, that would be too literal. The meta thing was fine. But I'm talking about how do you differentiate yourself in the marketplace?

If I look across and everyone else is doing this, how do you zig when everyone else is zagging? As opposed to trying to get better at zigging. Yeah. Be different, not better. I mean, again, we've already agreed that the work has to be good. You have to be a good writer before you sell a million books. That's just fact. At least a decent writer. And so the same is true in the way that I approached it. And I learned that basically from those artists in the 50s, 60s, 70s in New York. So I've read all of their, a lot of artist biographies of people who have actually led amazing lives, done amazing things.

What were the names again? Jean-Michel Basquiat. He took sort of graffiti off the street and brought it into the gallery. Robert Rauschenberg, you know, large-scale guy. Crazy mixed media. They were just people that were hacking the art scene in in that era in New York and they applied non-traditional techniques to getting noticed to making art to they were zigging when everyone else is zagging basically the way that I zigged

when everyone else was zagging in photography was I chronicled my exploits of learning my craft. Smart. It was 10 years before it was cool to be transparent, and I was actually sort of vilified for sharing trade secrets. So I would go out and try something, and it was before YouTube. Trader to the guild. Literally. I was like, well, I sort of saw the future that information was going to be free, and you couldn't keep secrets, and the art industry in general,

photography specifically, was very closed. So the way I approached it was like, well, here's how I'm going to be different. I'm going to share everything. And in doing so, made a couple of haters. But slowly, there was a rather large audience that would show up to not literally the shoots, but to the behind the scenes. There was no such thing as behind the scenes videos. Before YouTube, it was Google video and Yahoo video, just these terrible, terrible things. But I had no idea what I was doing.

I just knew that if more people were looking at my work and if I could come across as someone that did good work and had a sort of a passion for life and what it is they're doing, that's a contagious sort of infectious thing. And that was the generally the life that I was living. So I figured, oh, I'll just point a camera at me. And ultimately that was responsible for sort of a increased trajectory in my career. Because then you're like, have you heard this guy who's sharing all, you know, fancy Nike shoots and stupid little local shoots, the full gamut. And in doing so, you've already referenced a couple of videos on my YouTube channel. In doing so, created a large following.

And it was in large part that following which helped unlock so many other things for me. Because as we've seen in even the last, let's call it five years, people are now, as artists, we no longer require permission, there's no more gatekeepers, the gallerist and the magazine and, you know, my personal social following and the blog that I write at Chase Jarvis is larger than a lot of the media companies outlets that hire me. And so when that sort of transformed, that became an added value and a key differentiator. So again, what started off by sharing my experiences ultimately hacked the system, and then hacking the system gave me a lot of opportunity. Now, to go back to your question, like what books, what tools, I was literally just sort of analyzing pop culture. The business books for our work week was really inspirational.

It was a long time ago because you're about 110 years old now, right? It was one of your first. Yeah, I've been taking all the 275 pills a day. It keeps my skin very supple. Yes, you look great. But again, taking inspiration and ideas from other genres. So instead of reading like How to Be a Better Photographer, it was was digital new media books. It was business books from guys like Guy Kawasaki and Tim Ferriss and literally hacker books and avant-garde artist books that talked

about not getting attention for the sake of attention, but how to create transformative art. Where do you go? What do you think about? What kind of permissions do you give yourself? I think that looking outside of the usual suspects and one's own industry is so undervalued and it's so easy. I mean, it's incredible

how many things I've been able to personally pull from, say, I read a biography or business history of Absolute, like the brand, everything. And I also read about Sky. And I don't really drink either, but I was so fascinated by how in a crowded market, these two mega successes had been produced. Similarly,

single SKU companies really fascinate me. Well, there are more than one now, but like Red Bull, how do you license something from a company in Thailand and turn it into a multi-billion dollar company that now is becoming a media production behemoth? So as an example, I was the first photographer within the USA to license images to Red Bull.

Oh, no kidding. Yeah. That's cool. There was a couple Austrians that had very thick accents. How far back was this? This was 90s. Yeah.

It's not that long ago, I mean, all things considered. To have a multi-billion dollar brand now. But it was the 90s, and it was at Squaw Valley, and there was a guy who had this Red Bull outfit and rolled up a jersey, and I happened to have great photographs of him. It was like a qualifier for one of the early, early X Games. And these guys approached me and said, we see you taking pictures of this guy.

He's my god. And, you know, he ended up being, it just sounded like Arnold. That was pretty good. That was very Arnie. Yeah. California. Yeah. He literally gave me his card, and I had great pictures.

And so I started licensing stuff. And I was like, here's this brand. It wasn't available anywhere in the U.S. And so lo and behold, I ended up doing a lot of work for those guys through their cultural stuff with hip-hop, and I shot large swaths of the top break dancers in the world for them, some of the best graffiti artists. Yes, I didn't know that.

I became obsessed with their BC One breakdancing competition back in the day. Lords of the Floor was the first one they did. And that was a gathering of a group of breakdancers that weren't ever together before then and will never be together since. And I've got some pretty amazing photographs. But that's an example of no one was actually interested in licensing images to a company that no one had ever heard of. But going outside your industry, I'm not just looking for outside magazine and REI. I'm looking like, wow, here's this Austrian beverage company that has this crazy history. And then I start to see it in the US. And so grabbing sort of those coattails

and grabbing at threads that no one else was sensing, that was helpful for me. There were two books that I found. Did you know we just leaned together and did that at the same time? Should we do it one more time? I did. I thought we were going to Lady and the Tramp for a moment. That was very romantic.

I got a little palpitation, but neither of us have shaved. It's too much. So the two books that really helped me or continue to help me to think of being different, good and different, right? Sure, yeah. It's necessary but not sufficient.

There are two that are on the older side and one that's relatively new. The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing. Yep. Really short read. Super short. Super short and just gives fantastic examples of how, say, like Amstel Light

becomes the only light-imported beer. Boom. Like, defines a category, owns it. Yep. Right? And the second, Blue Ocean Strategy. Oh, yeah. Really interesting book.

And then the third, which is a little tech-centric, but I think there's still a lot to be gained from it, is Business Model Generation. Don't know that one. It's a list of, it's a compilation of different business and revenue models. Just a list? Just like a hundred different profiles of companies with different models. Wow. Whether it's distribution, manufacturing, customer segmentation. And there are two or three pages in that book that are checklists that allow you to go through and identify opportunities that you might not have seen or even thought of up to that point.

Because it's like you can take the same product and sell it higher market, right? You can take the same product, sell it lower market. You can take the same product and distribute it differently, right? Going direct versus through retail versus distributors, whatever. And those three I've found really, really helpful for brainstorming. What are the... Oh, gosh. So I want to talk more about books. I haven't really dropped any real books. I know. It's like freaking bleeding a stone here. I know. I'm having this weird... Let's talk a little bit more current rather than sort of like way historical. Like what, 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing is like a classic.

Yeah. That's way back. I feel heavily influenced by, and we have a similar circle of friends, books that you have written, books that Gary Vee has written, Ryan Holiday with Trust Me, I'm Lying, How to Understand the Media. Yeah. You know, Gary has been pounding his chest for a long time about all the stuff that he pounds his chest on, besides the jets. But, again, I look at those things. For those of you who don't know Gary Vee, that's Vay-ner-chuk. Vay-ner-chuk.

Yes. V-A-Y-N-E-R-C-H-U-K. His most recent book, Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook. Guys like Austin Kleon wrote books called Steal Like an Artist. His most recent one that just came out, Share Your Work. I haven't seen that one. Steal Like an Artist is a fast read, good book. Super small, fast read.

And the premise on that book is basically if you steal from one person, that's stealing. If you take, I took your idea, the four-hour bike ride or whatever, it's not really that original. Get in line. It's 100 Facebook ads. I know. I've seen your face next to this Facebook ad. The day of reckoning is coming, I assure you.

But drawing something from all of the people who you respect and appreciate and admire, that's called research. Yeah. And Picasso's, you know, good artists borrow, great artists steal. There's a million quotes out there. And it's just a book about inspiration. It gives you some courage to sort of hack the system, to remix and reuse.

And everything that's out there has been done. And it's just how can we sort of undone or redo what's already out there, chunk it up into new pieces. So those are some more contemporary ones that, again, very much outside photography. I feel like I've nailed my craft, and reading books in photography, I do that for pleasure. I respect and admire Leibovitz and Mapplethorpe and, like, there's a dozen greats, but my inspiration comes from outside. So a lot of artist biographies and whatnot too.

What, how about Charlie's new book? Can we talk about that for a second? Or I just hijacked that. You go back to your thing. We can, we'll come back to it. Okay. I'm curious to know what was, what was your favorite day last week and why?

My favorite day last week and why? My favorite day last week, I was in Miami photographing Serena Williams for the upcoming Wilson campaign. I got to shoot Serena, Roger Federer. That's cool. Mika Aserenka. Serena could kick my ass, right? I mean, she looks like she could totally decapitate me. You're just like, you're done.

No chance. You're done. You know, I don't have a bad thing to say about any of those. There's like five or ten of the people that I shot of the top 20 tennis players, not just now, but ever in the history of tennis. Federer, just like legendary. The guy speaks five languages, just looks like a GQ model. He's like Thomas Crown, but good at tennis.

Yeah, never been injured, never opted out of a match before due to injury. He has 300 matches more than anyone. Like, these super athletes, basically. And just get to spend legitimate, real time with these people on the court and make great pictures of them that they've never had made before. So that was a great day last week. That sounded like a good day. It was a good day.

But I will say that I'm, to change it to creative life for a second, I am more enamored and more fired up on the power of creativity to change the world more than ever before. I'm spending a huge and complete inordinate amount of time learning from basically the people that are in the startup world. I've learned a lot from you. I'm doing some angel investing, but focused very, very specifically on the creative space. It's a really interesting... Do you know Mark Echo?

Yeah. Echo Clothing. Mark's a really interesting... Do you know Mark Echo? Yeah. Echo Clothing. So Mark's a friend. Yeah, well, he did a guest post on my blog. Oh, that's right. He launched his book, right? Yeah, yeah, he's a good guy. When what Mark thinks about startups

is something that I have just, I just hopped on his coattails. These companies aren't, they're called founders, but the companies aren't found. They're made. They're created. And so this idea of creatives and artists discovering or unlocking

or creating the next sort of product, whatever it is, whether it's the next Facebook, Instagram, we could list any number of companies. That, to me, this vision of creator, artist, making things, and these things being businesses, nonprofits, that's a beautiful picture of the future, I think. And that's one of the reasons I'm out there advocating for creativity. So my shoot with Serena and Roger Federer and Asarenka is actually very related to having an authentic understanding of

what it takes to make and be and do, build businesses and shoot ad campaigns. They're not all that dissimilar. No, I don't think they are at all. And in a way, I think it's really exciting to see the return of the polymath. So you used to, back in the day, you had people like Benjamin Franklin or fill in the blank, who would be like amateur scientists and politicians and printers. And they would have these five or six different buckets of activities, and they could become world class at each of them. And then we moved into this period, which was pretty extended, of the hyper-specialist, right? And it's like, all right, no, you're not going to make the radio. You're going to screw this one screw.

That's the factory mentality, which is sadly the same mechanism that our education system is based on. Yeah, yeah. Which, what is a factory good at? It's making a bunch of things that are the same. Yeah, exactly. You're good at one thing. You're good at screwing the screw in, and that's what you do.

And out pops the radio at the end. And it started with a bunch of raw material, and then you got the radio. But schools shouldn't be like that, because people aren't like that. And the goal is not to turn out a bunch of people that people don't learn at the same rate, the same stuff that's a soapbox. No, it's true.

And it's like, see... It's a bullshit system, to be honest. And then you have... Well, it's also just a societal norm, right? And I think they're intertwined. So you have, let's say, I think it's Isaac Asimov, the science fiction writer, who said specialization is for insects.

And, like, any man should be able to, like, captain a ship and gut a pig. And, like, oh, there's a long list. It's pretty awesome. But it's great to see with Kickstarter and Indiegogo and YouTube and blogs, much of which is free, right? You can certainly use WordPress. Right. I do. Thank you, Matt. And I do I do. Thank you, Matt.

And I do too. Thank you, Automatic. Yeah, thanks over there. And it's incredible how you can, it is now permissible to become the equivalent of what Ben Franklin was. I was told my whole career, you have to specialize, specialize, specialize.

And I specialized in pursuing the things that are interesting. I talked a lot about action sports. But then I also talked about fashion. And I talked about breakdancing. And I talked about all kinds of different cultural stuff. I've made TV shows, shot commercials, done ad campaigns, created startups, did the first iPhone app that shared images to social networks. And these are, I historically would have been called a dilettante.

Yeah. But to be able to touch all these things and find out that they ultimately inform one another and they made at least my contribution to CreativeLive possible. Yeah. Well, I think perhaps the disconnect, it seems, is that back in the day, let's just call it The 80s. The 80s. Back in the day, let's just call it... The 80s. The 80s.

Back in the day, back in the 80s. Back when we all had mullets and were happy about it. I was more of a rat tail man myself, but I was handsome. It was a dashing look. Braided? Did you braid it?

No, no, no. I didn't braid it. I just went ruffian. Roughneck. So the... I was a townie, man, townie. I know, I know. You got to make it.

You got to work with what you got. So what I was going to say is I think historically people have thought of specialization as a necessary evil because if you spread yourself too thin and do six different things, each of those requires like four years of internship, however many years of schooling, because the information wasn't freely available. All of these were closed silos, like photography was not too long ago, right? Just a decade ago. And you're able to become very well known very quickly by being open with your knowledge. And I think what's underestimated is how quickly you can actually

delve into a subject. And if you have some modicum of intelligence and diligence, you can become, if you have any predisposition towards it, if you choose your sources good, you can become pretty damn good very quickly, right? So if you want to learn how to run a nonprofit, if it were 30 years ago, where are you going to go? How are you going to figure it out? Now it's like, oh, you can watch,

you can do a live Facebook Q&A with Scott Harrison or the CEO of DonorsChoose. Yeah, exactly. And so I think that it's possible that the dilettante or jack-of-all-trades is in some ways an outdated notion if people take advantage of the tools that are at their disposal. And you have been instrumental in unlocking that for a lot of people. I think that is one of my gifts or passions and gifts is to be able to learn quickly. It wasn't necessarily a gift that I was born with, but just threw myself into something and not afraid to make some mistakes. I think those three things help.

But you're doing a great job. Thank you. Nice job, man. Thank you. Literally unlocking it. I appreciate that. It is a sentiment that, again, I am continually sort of bombarded with people asking questions about how to end up being more of a career counselor. And I think you probably do, too. It happens a lot, yeah.

And it's following your passions. And you can't always, Steve Jobs said it, you can't connect the dots looking forward. You can only connect them looking backwards. And now, again, knowing that my career as an artist and then developing the iPhone app, Best Camera, which allowed me to see scalable technology at millions of users really quickly,

I'm like, oh my God, it took me five years to build an audience of a million people, and then I did it in five weeks. And then all of that feeds into CreativeLive. And those are very disparate things. How did you navigate the transition from, for lack of a better term, like solopreneur, right? You're a diehard, talented creator who's hustled,

made it happen, figured out a niche, making pretty good money, to building out a company and delegating, not getting into all the micro bits yourself. Because I think it seems to me that one of the biggest challenges that people face, and I face, quite frankly, in a lot of ways, is working on the business, not in the business. And obviously, you still have your time to do your creative work, which I think is very unique. Because a lot of people are like, ah, you know, I used to be in the

trenches, it was fun to code, but now I'm a management guy. Ah, well, that's just the way it goes. But you've managed to actually do both. So how did you navigate that? What decisions did you make? What epiphanies did you have? I mean, maybe you could just talk about that a bit. Sure.

That, I think, intention plays a really big role in all of the scenarios you just sort of carved out. In ad hoc, you're thinking, I did this and this and this. I was just waving my hands. Yeah, it was good. You made some good noises. Brain vomiting on you, yeah.

You made some good noises. You grunted a little bit. It was good. I inferred what you were saying. No, but intention, I feel like it's a little bit of a fantasy life. What do you want to do? And it doesn't matter what you've heard.

This is not possible. You can't be both of this and of this. You can't work four hours and get to travel the world and live like the new rich in Tim Ferriss' parlance. My version of that was I want to be able to make my living making things. And then I realized that artists as individuals were not that scalable. Yeah. Right? Yeah, sure.

Dr. Dre made more from Beats selling his headphone company than he did from his music. Yeah, sure. In a year, just boom. Yeah. company than he did from his music yeah sure in a year just boom and so when i was thinking about an artist and making because i always want to continue to make things but you start to look at making and creating as not just the thing of pushing the shutter or saying action or directing the commercial or whatever and making something that maybe is more scalable or following your passion so being able to to and that was, again,

something I was told was not possible. And so it's really looking to inspiration, to aspiring to the work that other people have done before you and thinking, oh my God, I thought it was not possible. Now I see this is possible. Go back to Bo Jackson playing football and baseball. No one had ever done that before. It's like, that's mind-blowing.

And why not? These are the best athletes in the world. Of course, they're probably good at a lot of things. And you're talking about the rebirth of the polymath. That was inspirational to me, and it helped me unlock a lot of that stuff. And I did so very intentionally. So what does a life look like where I get to do this and this and this? If you just sort of walk in the woods, you're likely to just bump into some trees. If you sort of have a plan.

Well said. Yeah. Sort of. Sophisticated podcast you've got here. Best and brightest. All right. And his third and final guest, Chase Jarvis. And then the podcast was pulled.

Go figure. But a life that has some sort of intention. And without being a militant planner, because that's not my... I think I have a nice balance of... I know where I want to go and set some goals. And plenty of failure built in there. But I think intention is a really overlooked thing. Like, you have to decide where you want to go if you want to get there.

Now, did you, what, how did that affect what you said no to? Like, the before and after. So you decide, this is what I want. Oh, wow. What did you start saying no to? What did you start? Things that didn't ladder up to the things that I wanted to do. And there's not always a direct, like, if I want to be a rock climbing

photographer, then I should say no to climbing trees. Because there's still climbing involved, so that might help my climbing skills. That's a terrible analogy. But there's a connection there, right? And it's not always like, oh, I only take rock climbing gigs.

Do you remember any gigs or clients that you said no to or fired that were kind of milestones? I mean, not necessarily by name. Sure. I won't name them, but two things, or maybe three takeaways, and I'll see if I can remember them. Sometimes when I say three things, I can only remember two. That's all right. Later. You can just sub it in later. Okay, cool. So one is saying no has a strong effect on the person who's trying to buy something from you, hire something. And I absolutely frown on being a dick. There's no reason to be a dick.

Almost ever in the world, there's no reason to be a dick. So if I'm turning down work, it's like, thank you so much for thinking of me. It's just not in line with the work I'm doing right now or the budgets aren't quite in line or my schedule isn't. Like whatever, make a relationship, be cordial. But there's this beautiful thing of if you are able to say no, usually for a budgetary reason, when they get more money, if you've turned them down before,

they remember that you were that prize that they couldn't get. And when they do have more money, they are more likely to call you back if they liked your work. Yeah. So being able to say no, mean it. Yeah. It's a little bit of a luxury, too. So this is not like day one of photography, start saying no to everybody. You've got to hustle.

But once you sort of are able to be choosy and think on principle, is this going to move my goals forward? Yeah. Saying no will often make them come back. See, I already forgot thing two and thing three. Wow, we didn't even get to two. Oh, my God. Let me try.

Let me try. So any particular clients you've fired, maybe that you had to cut the ballast. Plenty of those. And again, trying to be cordial. And if the scope changes, if the... Dear John, your role in my life has been made redundant. It is to steal Pareto's law. Yeah.

You know, you, at the end of every year, um, and I think this can be said for a lot of customers or client relationships that you make 80% of your money from 20% of your clients. So start looking at what did that 20% look like and how can you find more people or more customers or more x yeah like that and when someone is a pain in the ass when they call and they're a pain in the ass or the last job they were paying the ass yeah you basically fire them not in the middle of that job because you wouldn't

want to harm your reputation you do a kick-ass job you finish all the way through and then the next time they call you are miraculously busy yeah. Indefinitely. Indefinitely busy. And you can control that with price. Like, oh, it's just my prices have got out of hand because there's a high demand. And they go, well, what are they? And then you drop it. And they're like, oh, God. Then sometimes they'll say, okay, well, we can, you know.

And then if you put a price tag out there that was totally absurd, then you might be willing to take a couple of gut punches to make that. But so understanding where your bread is buttered and what clients are ones that you enjoy working for. Again, keeping in mind that all of these things should ladder up to the big goals that we were talking about earlier.

What do you want to be, do? Where do you want to go? Or do you want to just walk in the woods? That's two or three. I don't want to walk in the woods because, as you said, I just walk in the trees. Bop into trees. So what are some of your goals currently? I have huge aspirations.

Personal or otherwise? I'll go straight to CreativeLive. I have huge aspirations to CreativeLive. And we've already educated millions of people in every country around the world. And the hope is that by creating free education that we can make the world a more creative and better place. It just so happens that there's a great business model behind it, which is a freemium one that anyone in the world can watch for free while the content is being created live. And if you want to own a copy. I'll be smirking just because I have to cut in.

Because I remember I was so curious at one point. And obviously, I've sort of been along for the ride for a while. And there are a lot of... Launched a four-hour chef on Creative Live. Did. Did indeed. And I think the quality, just the background that you have in production and the people you've hired bring a level of professionalism to the production that is broadcast quality with multiple cameras. I mean, you've got dollies.

You've got stuff on lines. I mean, it've got dollies, you've got stuff on lines. I mean, it's... You were going to record this with an iPhone. There's always... I was going to record this with an 8-track, and then I'm glad you vetoed me. But I think that there's always a market for quality. Like, I was just talking to some entrepreneurs today.

I'm digressing for a second. I was talking to some entrepreneurs today, and they're like, all right, we're going to compete on price against Company X. And I'm like, if Company X has a lot of money or simply doesn't know how to do math properly and they want to bleed you, they can compete on price. And they can hurt you for a long time.

But there's always a market for highest quality. Yeah, huge, huge kudos to the team that produces this podcast, for one, but all the work. This episode. This podcast. Yes. Unless I'm going to get a call from you after, like, you know, boy, that studio just worked out really good. I got another one next week.

We want someone who's nice and smart and dashing, so you won't be asked back. That being said, there's a passion for quality here, for sure, and a passion for education. So I have big goals there. What I was smirking about, if I could just tell a funny story. Please keep smirking, keep telling a story. No, no, no, because I remember when we were first,

when you were telling me about CreativeLive, and then I heard you telling somebody else, and generally you'd be like, it doesn't matter if you're a techie in San Francisco or if you're that 12-year-old boy in Malaysia, and I heard that a couple times, and I'm like, I want to meet this 12-year-old in Malaysia. He is a go-getter. That man is on it.

I've said it a couple times in a row recently, whether you're in Nebraska or Nairobi, and I don't know where that came from. The alliteration. How about it? But it's true, right? And I think, well, just explain the model briefly because I mean a lot of people have an exposure to it. Sure. We bring world class people in photography, photography filmmaking design um any sort of the the arts audio engineering music the maker movement crafting business too I mean yeah entrepreneurship startup week yeah sure Guy

Kawasaki, Reid Hoffman uh yourself there's you know Lewis Howes, Ramit Sethi there's all kinds of really great courses and we bring those people on and film like you said in super high quality HD usually between four and eight cameras and broadcast live while we're making this workshop. So instead of a TED talk that's like 15 or 18 minutes this is one, two or three days

with that same quality person. So you go really deep on something. And if you tune in while it's live it's completely free. Anyone can watch it. And if you do decide that you want live, it's completely free. Anyone can watch it. And if you do decide that you want to own the thing and watch it over and over obsessively like people do with your Tim Ferriss show, then you have to buy it. And so for the people that don't have the ability to, don't have money, they can get all of the same benefits. If you do have money and you prefer convenience, you just press buy.

And so it's a beautiful business model that cultivates creativity, access, community, some of our sort of key values. So it's working, too. It is working. It's working. What is, so on the personal side. Yep. What are some of your goals, priorities, resolutions?

Charlie's book. Let's get back to that. Oh, yeah. Play. Is it called Play It Away? Play Your Anxiety. Play Your Anxiety Away or something. I don't necessarily suffer from anxiety.

Play It Away. Play It Away. Of the classic, like, I'm going to seize up when I get on camera, but I keep a lot of balls in the air. I've got a brain that's whizzing at three in the morning. And the idea of taking care of yourself and finding a way to play. Charlie's example is the home run derby.

This is Charlie Hohn. Charlie Hohn, yeah. H-O-E-H-N. Oh my, this is a refill? Wow. Do you get this on the random show? You know, I'm going to have to switch to that. Ginger and Jack, Looks pretty good.

Good one. How about it? So that's a big Ginger and Jack with no rocks. But the idea of introducing play, because we work very hard at CreativeLive and as a creative professional, long hours,

a lot of stuff, a lot of balls in the air. And we've got investors. There's your asses on the line, so to speak. And just taking 30 minutes or an hour to try and find some way to play, to be active in a day, is just incredibly helpful for me. So kudos to Charlie, wherever you are out there. What have you been doing? So what have you built in? Horseshoes. There's a horseshoe park by my house in the Green Lake area of Seattle. Randomly, and it's lit, so you can have a really intense work session, and then after work or at

midnight, you can go throw horseshoes. Do the meth heads come and congregate, and they try to catch the horseshoes, or what happens? Oh, no, horseshoe, but it's a totally random thing. I'm not a big horseshoe guy. I was thinking that guy looks like he's throwing me a horseshoe. I'm seeing, you know Kelly Starrett, a good friend of ours, I'll say.

He recommended Dave Werner who is basically an athletic trainer, former Navy SEAL in Seattle and I've got terrible shoulders I had a couple blowouts from football and soccer and so I've had reconstructive surgery and they've never really quite been the same

but Kelly from his knowledge base and Dave Werner up in seattle they have amazing approach to sort of physical therapy and they're they're badasses they're like mobility experts and so i'm working from the ground up on rebuilding the small muscles in my shoulder instead of just doing the big stuff and so that i can surf again because surfing is a big passion of mine for a long time and I can't really paddle out. You've got me the swimming video you sent to me. On the total immersion? Yeah, total immersion. But my shoulders have been so bad. So I'm being really physically active,

going to see those guys, Dave, at least twice a week, sometimes three times a week, so that I can enable some of these passions of mine like surfing. Cool. You should get some sissus quadrangularis for your shoulders. Yes? Yes. We can talk about that.

Please. Really helpful for knees and shoulders. Isn't that guy who rolled the boulder up the hill? That's sissifus. I'm just kidding.

Bum bum. That would be great. It's all laughed all the time here on the Tim Ferriss podcast. I could have my line of supplements that are all named after Greek tragedies.

Wow. If people didn't think I was pompous already, that would really do it. It's that Princeton in you, my friend. I know. It comes out. You can take the kid out of Princeton, but wait. You can't take the mullet off the Long Islander. I know.

Sorry. Mixing up my metaphors. Cool, man. You know, I mean, at this point, obviously, you've done a lot. We've done a lot, too. We have done a lot. But I'm going to, won't keep you too much longer. Dude, I'm happy.

I just, I always say consider all men. Speaking of happy. What's that? I wanted to ask you. Speaking of happy. What do you feel have become your top priorities in feeling happy or fulfilled? What are the things, as you become wiser, that you've learned to prize more or prize less? Health.

Having a Jim Morrison-type career where you explode at 28 in a fiery ball is not cool. Yeah. The Kurt Cobain's, you know, the artists that have, well, we all know that Magic, 28 or 29, whatever that evil year is, it's taken so many amazing artists from us, but that's not cool. Health and longevity and being able to enjoy it is fundamental.

And until it's taken away, you don't actually. Until you have a couple of surgeries, you break yourself a little bit. And that's not to say I'm encouraging people to push themselves athletically, whatever. I'm not saying don't get hurt. But one's health and being active is incredibly valuable yeah and these are i feel like an old person saying this next one which is sleep i have lived on four to six hours sleep for the last 10 years yeah and i go really hard and then i will like nosedive for 18 hours this is why you can only remember one thing on your list of three. I know, there you go. And I've found sort of

a new passion for sleep. I can't ever not never but I rarely get the eight, nine, ten. But if I get seven, eight, I have a completely different experience in life. So what have you shifted? Has it been simply a matter of scheduling? How are you making decisions? It's an intention.

Should I go out and have one more cocktail with my buddies? Or I'm going to be more fresh if I go to sleep. Eat some yogurt and watch Golden Girls and call it a night. That's right. Boom. High five. I'm out.

No, but so just prioritizing sleep. Yeah. Definitely. And the third one is meditation. Meditation. Oh, yes. We haven't talked about this in a while. Uh-huh.

You were on it for a good bit. I was. I fell off the wagon. But yeah, you're one of two people that I credit with finally kind of kicking me in the ass to take it seriously. It has really been a game changer. Yeah, specifically TM, so Transcendental Meditation, for those who don't know, or trademark. But I have my issues with almost every form of meditation. There are pros and cons. We talked about them before. But tell me about, so tell me about your meditation practice.

My meditation practice is not perfect and none are. Yeah. I just sit down between 15 and 20 minutes twice a day. Sometimes I only get one time a day. Sometimes those are a little compressed or they happens or you're on an airplane and the captain comes on and pulls you out of it or whatever. But I make a conscious effort to just observe my thoughts and practice TM in the morning and the evening before dinner. And it has

made, it's sort of the analogy that I can most simply put here on your show is it's when you're in the zone, say playing sports or playing music, and things just seem effortless. It's called the flow state. Steven Kotler's new book, which is a good book, The Rise of Superman, check that out. A little plug for his book about creativity and flow states. But that sense of flow, it's when things sort of happen in slow motion. Now you're not literally talking in slow motion, but you have the same clarity as if you're going through life and everything's happening in slow motion.

Instead of that, I'm hyper-caffeinated. My boss is agitated. I'm agitated. Dodging bullets. Instead, you're just like, I'm driving the bus here. And we're going to go here. And then I'm going to do this. And there's just certain clarity.

And it's like magic. It's really weird. And there's another thing. I don't know if you felt this, Tim. But it sort of aggregates. So you get good benefit from one, two, three, four. And then when you're on a roll, there's this sort of exponential, there's a little overdrive that it's like,

oh my gosh, I feel like I'm just floating. Yeah, I can't explain it either, but for me, and just for those people who might be thinking like I did for my entire life, like, bullshit, bullshit. No, just like, I don't want people oming me and freaking, you know, all this, yeah, yeah, yeah, shock or whatever,

like I'm not into it. Especially living in San Francisco, I've developed sort of an allergy to like sanctimonious, and I've been to Burning chakra, whatever. I'm not into it. Especially living in San Francisco, I've developed an allergy to sanctimonious, and I've been to Burning Man, but sanctimonious burner types who want to lecture me about chakras. I'm just like, honestly, please, I can't handle another minute of this.

So I've had this aversion to meditation, but when it's very sort of non-dogmatic, where it's just like, look, you're not trying to control anything. You're not trying to think of a candle flame. Like, just observe your thoughts and be okay with them.

Yeah. And sit with good posture for this period of time. That's it. And even if you think it's a shitty job and you're like running through your to-do list

or thinking of the stock market, that's okay. Just make it part of your routine. And what I found was, and some people who, well-known people who do TM, I mean, it's like Paul McCartney, Ariana Huffington. David Lynch.

David Lynch. I'm blanking on his name for some reason, but Bridgewater Capital, largest hedge fund in, if not the world, the United States. Russell Simmons. 100 billion plus. Ray Dalio, that's it. Russell Simmons.

So the list is, I think, like Howard Stern. The list is pretty amazing. Yeah, that's it. Russell Simmons. So the list is, I think, like Howard Stern. I mean, it's like crazy. Yeah, the list is pretty amazing. Yeah, Seinfeld. Yeah. And the physiological or psychological effects are so fascinating, like you said, because you'll do it for a couple days and you're like, man, like, yeah, okay, whatever. And then you hit this. Like, you hit this sort of inflection point where suddenly you just drop from like 200 rpms to 150 and you're

like whoa okay this is different and then the whole week you're kind of zenned out yeah and then after say a four-week period and i did my first retreat a few months ago before i i volunteered for the masochism that is television production i can just hit you with a stick yeah if you could just like yeah if you could put a nail through it first that'd be great uh but uh really had this tremendous effect on me um that oddly enough and maybe this is getting too out there for some people but very similar to my experiences uh post relatively high dose hallucinogens yeah this This extended period of calm and ease in decision making. Like uncluttered. Like you closed

every browser on your computer and turned off the antivirus and rebooted the whole thing. That type of feeling. So I did fall off the train. Question for you, because I find the morning session I usually find pretty easy. Yep. Afternoon is hard. I'm right now thinking of, okay, I've got to

go from here to the thing to the thing and when am I going to get my thing in? Sometimes I'll try to do it in a car, like Uber or whatever. But do you, when do you typically do it in the afternoon? I try and do it before dinner sometime.

Between work and dinner, we're entrepreneurs, we work crazy long hours. So I'll take it whenever I can get it. And it's usually a little bit less gracious than my morning one. Like you said, it's sort of like morning. It's your time. You carve out 20 minutes. So my afternoon one is often a little bit more piecemeal. But again, it's the act. I try not to judge the practice. The practice is the practice. When you meditate, are you sitting cross-legged? Are you sitting with your feet on the floor?

I try and sit in a comfortable chair, flat on the floor, hands on my lap. And there's a mantra that if you learn TM, you're given a mantra and say that word over and over. And if some thoughts come in, they're like, oh, there's those thoughts. Bye. And they go away and you just keep doing it over again. And then sometimes like, oh, my God, that was 25 minutes.

And sometimes it's like, oh, my God, that was one minute. It felt like a week. Like a week. And again, but just not judging that. And it's without, you know, continue to talk about it that and it's without you know continuing to talk about it because now it's getting weird because we're talking about it so much

but it's just a powerful it's a powerful tool that is so simple I'm just mind-melting while you're talking right now it's great you're meditating you're staring up

I haven't been listening to you for the listening people 20 minutes I've not been listening Tim is staring into space right now he's not paying attention to us okay so let's let's that is I think a huge takeaway for people. It doesn't

have to be TM. It could be Vipassana. It could be just anything. Building in a pause, which is like a warm bath for your brain, even if it's 10 minutes a day so that you're not in a reactive mode. It's really a game changer. Uh, and physiologically it had a lot of effects for me as well. So like when my cortisol level dropped I was able to lose body fat more easily in my abdomen for instance

really I became very sensitive to alcohol and caffeine so I dropped it but they dropped them both significantly not because I was getting

judgmental about it because I was oversensitized to it I'd grown immune to the effect so I could have like six cups of coffee a day and be like eh

and then I met TM for four or five weeks and and it was like I had one cup, and I'm like, wow. I didn't realize what my baseline was. So just maybe to wrap up. Makes you a cheap date, too, by the way. I've always been a cheap date. So for those people who might be wondering, well, Chase,

you started back in this period when YouTube wasn't even YouTube, and you had this opportunity to be the first to be transparent. And I could never do that because now it's too crowded, and now the world is different. If you were starting now, starting over, knowing what you know now, as a photographer, we'd use that as an example. Sure. How would you think about going about it? I mean, what would your process go straight to i think what again assuming you get good at your craft and you get good at your craft through imitation and practice and and hacking the system

taking it from 10 000 hours down to four or whatever the system is but let's just take it for granted you're good at your craft In the process of developing skills at the craft, I feel like the answers are actually in here. Yeah. And as what it is that we're all trying to do as entrepreneurs and our artists, I think, not all of us, I don't want to speak for everyone, but I think there's one of the differentiating characteristics, the zig instead of the zag, the how do you stand out in a loud, noisy world, is the answers are in here and trying to take pictures that no one else in the world can take and trying to make things that no one else in the world can make. Because you're the product of a unique sort of life and trajectory.

I've said it earlier in the podcast that everything is sort of a remix, but what is your version of the remix? Say I have a relationship with a bunch of celebrities so I might be able to get a photograph of them in a way that no one else could because they were on my couch playing PlayStation or something in a way that you're not

going to see that person. That's a terrible example. We've got a lot of terrible examples in this here, but the point is thinking about what is the unique mojo that I bring and how can I try and amplify that? Amplify your strengths rather than sort of fix your weaknesses.

Outsource. Something that came to mind is take if you're not perhaps the best person at capturing something visually, but you're a good storyteller, you have your visual art, and then you have an incredible narrative to go with it. Absolutely. And when I go into art galleries, and this is not my particular,

I don't have the budget for it, but it's also, I'm more of a classical type guy, but if you walk into, say, the Gagosian Galleries in New York, and you'll see stuff on the wall, $10 million, you can't figure out what it is, but you read the plaque next to it and you're like, that's a damn good story. Yeah, it's beautiful. I see how they are selling these things. The narrative plays in.

And also that, well, that there is a narrative and that it's a compelling one. I think both those things are true for anything that you're sort of positioning or selling or creating. I want to know the back story. I feel that that is, that's sort of, it's an underappreciated art to be able to tell a good story. And that's another weird background thing on me is I was in a PhD program in philosophy of art. So I learned how to talk really critically about art. And then you think of the learned skill of being able to talk about

why I shot it like this. And people, that is a part of their experience when they have hired me as an artist in the past. So there's a value add there that being able to tell a story and talk about what it is that you're making is valuable. So rewind a little bit to go back. What would you do? I would focus on doing things that I know that I'm passionate about that I can do differently or better or more uniquely based on what's in here, not necessarily what's out there. Got to learn from out here and imitate and hack and steal and all those things that we do. But then as soon as you can start applying it to very personal sort of vulnerability.

Brene Brown is going to be on my show on April 9th. Darren Greatly. We're dropping a lot of good books now. And I remembered Mark Echo's book is How to Sell You Without Selling Out. Sell Yourself Without Selling Out. These are other good titles. But sort of vulnerability, what is a place that you can come from that when you're vulnerable, you're actually showing strength? Yeah, I remember, I think it was Neil Gaiman, one of my favorite writers, or maybe someone else, but it's like when you're writing and you start to feel really uncomfortable,

that's when you know you're starting to get it right. And I'd imagine that applies to photography, applies to everything. And I feel it with CreativeLive. When the stakes start getting high, you're like, wow, this is going to be a big deal. That means now you're poking some hot spots. Awesome. I think that's an important takeaway. I know there are probably others. That's solid, man. No, I'd say we'll have everything in the show notes for people to check out. Obviously,

creativelive.com and maybe we can just close on one of my favorite quotes. It's actually also a commencement speech that everybody should check out by Neil Gaiman. Neil, I was going to

reference it earlier. Make good art. Make good art. Cat exploded, make good art. Got divorced, wife ran away with the pool boy,

make good art. Make good art. That is the bedife ran away with the pool boy? Make Good Art. Make Good Art. That is the bedrock. That is. And you don't want to end the podcast quite yet because you said you were going to come back to a horrifying story that I had experienced. Oh my god, you're totally right. I'm glad you saved me from that embarrassing call out. You asked me to save you in your text

to me. I said, what do I need to do for prep? You said, nothing. Just save me if I need saving. I said, be your charming and unshaven self. And secondly, if I fuck up the conversation, you need to save it. So thank you. No problem. Well done. Professional saver. Catastrophic self-inflicted injury. Yeah, let's hear it. It doesn't have to be catastrophic.

Self-inflicted injuries. I'm sort of young. I don't remember quite the exact age. I'm at a wedding. Yeah, okay. I'm sort of young. I don't remember quite the exact age. I'm at a wedding. Yeah, okay. I'm just, I'm my, what is it called? I'm an only child, so I'm just kind of cruising, looking for some other, maybe let's say I'm 10, looking for some other 10-year-old girl to dance with or something,

just cruising the wedding in my little tuxedo. And there's this commotion over in the dance floor. I'm probably like misering the cake or something. There's a commotion on the dance floor. I'm probably like, like misering the cake or something. There's a commotion on the dance floor. Like, what's going on over there? And I see there's this group of brides. And then there's the, or sorry, a group of women. Yeah, or women, yeah.

And then there's the bride at the front. And she has this flowers. And she's doing this thing. She's like, she's going like, what? Dude, it's a gigantic wedding. And I'm in the wings. Steve, you can follow me in here. And I'm like, oh, she's going gigantic wedding. And I'm in the wings. Steve, you can follow me in here. And I'm like, oh, she's going to throw that flower.

And then I'm just, I come just banking around the corner on full speed sprint. Sure enough, she throws the flowers. Flowers end over end. Just see this in slow motion. Just dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot. Full laid out swan dive. Grab the flowers in front of 50 outstretched arms, pull it in, come sliding to a stop on the dance floor,

hand in the air with the bouquet. God! Fucking silence. 250 people, like... And she had to do it again. Oh, nice. Retake. It was so retake. That is amazing.

It was so terrible. I think that's like the essence of Chase right there. Oh. That's right. Record scratch. Oh. But there's so many. I got lots of embarrassing moments with that.

I like that. I like being 10. Maybe I was 8. I don't know if that's too old to know. I guess I should have known what was going on, or I have no idea what age I was. You were just overflying with amazing Pele-like soccer ability.

I didn't know what to do with that at a wedding, I think. We'll have around two, man. We'll have more stories. Thank you. And thank you for coming on the show. Yeah, pleasure. I will pimp it. I'll share it far and wide as much as I can. Ciao. Bye, everybody.

Thanks for staying late. Arigato gozaimasu. Arigato gozaimasu. If you want more of The Tim Ferriss Show, you can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes or go to 4hourblog.com. F-O-U-R-H-O-U-R-B-L-O-G.com where you'll find an award winning blog

tons of audio and video interview stories with people like Warren Buffett and Mike Shinoda from Linkin Park the books plus much much more follow Tim on Twitter at twitter.com slash tferris that's T-F-E-R-R-I-S-S or on Facebook

at facebook.com slash timferris until next time thanks for listening.