Tom: Hey everybody, welcome to another episode
of Impact Theory. You are here my friends, because you believe
that human potential is nearly limitless, but you know that having potential is not
the same as actually doing something with it, so our goal with this show and company
is to introduce you to the people and ideas that are gonna help you actually execute on
your dreams. All right, today's guest is an award winning
photographer, entrepreneur, educator, app developer, kino speaker, which he's done by
the way on five continents, director and author. His multifaceted talents and creations have
not only garnered him a social following measured in the millions, but have led him to create
some of the most groundbreaking campaigns for some of the biggest companies on the planet,
including Apple, Nike and many many others. His unique style and insane amount of hustle
have made him one of the top thirty most influential photographers of the past decade, according
to photo district news, and his ability to bring really fresh eyes and creative solutions
to old problems, has won him countless awards and helped him fundamentally alter the landscape
of photography and creative education. He has helped pioneer many of the things that
we take for granted today by the way, including photo sharing apps, he created one a year
and a half before Instagram. Behind the scenes documenting and virtual
step by step mentorship. He was a championship for transparency long
before it was trendy to do so, and realizing that really a core part of his calling was
to help other people, he founded Creative Live, a revolutionary online education resource
with over 1,000 teachers including people like Sir Richard Branson, Mark Cuban and Tim
Ferriss. They've roughly 1,500 classes and over 10,000,000
students who have consumed over 2,000,000,000, that's with a B, billion, empowering minutes
of content. So please, dearest friends, help me in welcoming
the man who quit pursuing a career in professional soccer, dropped out of medical school and
abandoned getting his PhD in philosophy, so he could help change the world. The incomparable Chase Jarvis. Chase: Incomparable, I'm gonna remember that
one. Tom: Thank you so much for coming. Chase: I recorded all that shit, I'm gonna
play that anytime I feel bad about myself. Tom: As you should. You should give it to Kate, like on a loop
and just let her know. Chase: She would eye roll right now. She's gonna watch this and she's like, oh
my god, if I don't get enough of that. No, thank you so much for having me on the
show. Great spot, big front door, I love it. Tom: Yes. Chase: It's great, it's great to be in your
home. Tom: Thank you man, it's great to have you. Super excited about this one as we were talking
about, before the cameras started rolling. For me the big thing is, I know I'm gonna
have to do a lot of research on somebody, and so it needs to be somebody that the more
I go into it, the more I'm empowering myself. The more I'm learning about something that
I want to be able to put to use. And dude, just a treasure [inaudible 00:02:53]. What was crazy is, before this, I knew you
really well as an influencer, so I'd seen a lot of your interviews. You, both sides of the camera. I actually didn't know your creative work
very well. Chase: Aha. Tom: So that was fun for me to really go deep
on the things you've actually created, and just, it's amazing. It's not a surprise that you've had the kind
of success you've had. Chase: Thank you, again, just keep layering
it on, [inaudible 00:03:14] it in. No it's very, I pinch myself everyday, I wake
up. I woke up this morning, here to say an extra
day to do the show, got a little surf in, the fact that we're coming here to hang out
with you and your crew, share the information that we've cultivated and learned from our
wins and losses over the last several years. Then onto San Francisco, to basically do more
of that, to go back to Creative Live this evening. It's, yeah, I pinch myself everyday. I feel lucky to be alive. I feel thankful to have been able to tap into
my passions. I mean, imagine if more people would have
both, to be put in a position where you could, and then to be able to tap into the things
that you love and put those together into making a living or a life. It'd be a better place, the world would, wouldn't
it be? Tom: Yeah, for sure. It's interesting that you say, you feel lucky
to be alive. One of the things I didn't know, is that you
were caught in or almost caught in an avalanche. Chase: Caught, for sure. Tom: Walk me through that. What near death experience obviously has to
be a pretty mind altering thing. What was it like, what did you take away from
it? Chase: Yeah, it's, I haven't been very public
about that. I'm trying to figure out how to tell that
story in a way that doesn't disrespect the fact that I really shouldn't be sitting here. I'm like a one half of a one percent, that,
short story long, I was caught in an avalanche in Alaska. Working on a campaign for, well just, so I
don't put anybody at risk, just one of the world's top 50 brands. Tom: Wow. Chase: I was very knowledgeable, I had spent
a whole lifetime in the back country, shooting the worlds top ski and snowboard athletes,
and just mother nature, she has a way of reminding us that she's boss and a 100 small things
stacked up, there is no one big indicator. Everybody was with our crew, we had decades
and decades of experience in the back country with avalanche safety. I just, my number got pulled. It's a numbers game ultimately, when you spend,
you know, that was where most of my early creative work was, in the action sports world. Ski, surf, snow, skate world. When a 100% of your time is in the 2 or 3%
of the time that's most dangerous on unskied slopes, in the way, way out back country that
never been touched. Just after a storm, it starts to become a
numbers game and my number got pulled and I had just photographed a woman who had made
a bunch of turns, and we were starting to pay attention, there was just, you know, mother
nature gives you a little bit of a sign about the changing snow conditions. Then I was just skiing down to get into position
for the next shot and the whole mountain let go, and it was about 1,800 vertical feet,
about 200 or 300 feet across and about 10 feet deep. Just to give you a picture, that's enough
to fill up five or 10 football fields with 10 to 20 to 50 feet of snow. I, without going into the details, I managed
to escape with my life. I thought I was living the dream then. You know, traveling ...
Tom: How many years ago was this? Chase: This was a long time ago. This was maybe 10 years ago. But I was, what I thought living the dream,
traveling the world, shooting for the top brands and after that, it's something that
shakes you to your core. I got up and went to work the next day, which
was something I had to deal with. But it definitely made me feel like who I
was really in service of was myself. I was living a fairytale life, traveling all
the world, it's as good as you think it is when you read about it in the papers. There's plenty of grind that's not talked
about, but it certainly made me look beyond what I was currently doing. It's like, wait a minute, this is not actually
impact. This is, you know, it's fun, but I'm taking
pictures and I'm not really shaping public opinion or changing the world and so it helped
me look more carefully at the work that I was doing, how I was spending my time. With whom I was spending my time. Re-assess, and that certainly was a massive
pivot or catapult onto the next phase of my career, which was how do you integrate what
you love with having impact. Tom: So you're a philosophy student, at least
at one point. You said part of what drew you to philosophy
was that it gave you critical thinking skills. Walk me through, or walk us all through, what
does that introspection look like? Because you've had, I mean, from the outside
it looks like two major moments where you're really reflecting that, and then when you
decide that you're gonna leave everybody else's dreams to the side and you're gonna do your
own thing, whatever that's gonna be. I think it'd be super helpful to understand
what that critical process, or was it total gut and you were just looking for instinct. Chase: I think I got into philosophy based
on trying to have an out for the career that everybody else wanted for me, which was, oh
you're smart and hardworking, I went college on a soccer scholarship first of all, and
I think that's, when you do that, your whole world is focused on that thing. There's a small fraction of folks who actually
get to do that. Then have an opportunity to go on and play
professionally. I had that path available to me. I started second guessing that path, and philosophy
was this thing that I was interested in, mostly out of curiosity. I had some experience with visualization and
meditation early on, specifically around sports and sport psychology. How to be an elite performer as an athlete. Tom: I was introduced to you by the teams
that you were working with? Chase: Yeah. I was on the Olympic development team, which
is just basically the team that they're getting ready to go for the Olympics every four years,
but they keep it going in-between the Olympic cycles. When you have to go to school and you have
to pick a major. I didn't know what I wanted to do, I was pretty
focused on soccer, and so what's the fallback. I remember just asking friends and peers and
the answers were like, oh if you're smart and hardworking you should be a doctor or
a lawyer. I was like, okay. I just literally started taking classes in
pre med, and started volunteering at hospitals and just setting up that path, realizing only
way in, it's like, wait a minute, I'm very different than anyone else who's on this sort
of path. Didn't feel good, so philosophy. Tom: Because they had like a drive for that? Chase: Yeah, a drive, a passion. Not that I didn't like caring for people,
I mean I worked in children's hospital with super sick kids as my rotation and getting
experience. It was just so depressing, so, I mean, the
people that do that work, it's unbelievable. They're level of character and passion and
focus that you have to have to stay on that in a world where you're, all of that stuff
is so good at tearing you apart. Tom: I could imagine, literally. Chase: But philosophy, to get back to your
original question. It was an escape from that world. I was like, wait a minute, you mean I can
get college credits for reading Nietzsche and Heidegger and thinking about creativity. It was actually the philosophy of art, that
got me most interested in art. I had always been creative as a kid, but fundamentally
stuffed that down, because where I grew up, suburbs outside of Seattle. Being creative, you know, oh he's the creative
kid, that wasn't a good thing. That was like, wait a minute, you're saying
I'm creative? That means I'm weird? I didn't want to be weird, I wanted to fit
in like most young kids. I was like, what fits in? Oh, the captain of a football team, great,
I'll do that. It was really, I was chasing that dream which
was someone else's dream, I happened to be a decent athlete and that ended up guiding
me to college, but I had always repressed the creative side. When I started taking philosophy classes,
specifically the philosophy of photography, the philosophy of aesthetics and this was
just part of the normal course of study. I was like, oh yeah, it's a part of me. Started leaning more and more into that. Tom: Is it just like a sense of being more
alive when you're doing it, that you say it's a part of you? Chase: Yeah. I think It's the part that you said at the
end of the question around, is it really just intuition. What I was doing was justifying my intuition. Hey, I'm still gonna get a PhD mom. I bailed on medical school, after doing all
the MCATs and all that stuff, the interviews. Gonna go to the University of Washington Medical
School. Freaked out, bailed on that. It's like, okay, I'm still gonna be, it's
gonna be okay. I'm gonna be a doctor, but just a PhD, how
is that? Does that meet up with everybody's expectations
of what a hardworking son should be? Ultimately, the philosophy part of that extension
or the bullshit that I was feeding myself was critical thinking. I was like wow, these people, I might not
feel like the graduate student who's over there, with the beret and the cigarette, smoking
and talking about Nietzsche, but I was learning and I was reading and being informed by everybody
from Playdough to Seneca to Nietzsche to just these big old philosopher names. I realized only now, that that was a foundation
for A, critical thinking but also it opened me up to, when you apply critical thinking
to yourself. Like, wait a minute, what am I doing? I'm actually living everybody else's dream,
for me. Rather than writing my own script. That element of self reflection that I gained
from studying philosophy, helped me shake up the whole scene. Like, wait a minute, this is not who I am,
this is not what I'm supposed to be. And, you know, you go back to your childhood. What are the things that you're excited about
as a young kid and that was making things. I was an only child, I didn't have a lot of
toys, it was like, block of wood, go entertain yourself. I had wild imagination, that I had sort of
been repressing for my whole life. As soon you talked about intuition, ultimately,
I think this is intuition at work. Fighting against a lot of cultural forces. I talk a lot about this today. I bet if I surveyed everyone here in the room,
that a good bit of them had been shown a path, shown the door, this is actually, this is
what you should do. I'm trying to get with Creative Live and with
being on your show here. Trying to get people to think, like wait a
minute, am I doing the thing that I want to do or is it cultural pressure, pressure from
my parents, pressure from the [inaudible 00:14:18], the family to do some other thing. Tom: Right. Chase: I just lo and behold, there's a lot
of people for whom that has been a bigger shaper of what they're on their path to do,
as opposed to the thing that they actually want to do, which is governed by intuition. In a long roundabout way, through a bunch
of experience, I learned the hard way, but ultimately found my path. Tom: One of the things you said, this is gonna
be close to a direct quote. The most important thing that you could cultivate
is the ability to listen to your intuition. Chase: Yes. Tom: How do you cultivate that? Chase: Self awareness is huge. That monologue that I just went on about. All of the steps that I took to be able to
self reflect. Tom: Does it start from a feeling? Chase: It certainly, there's always a feeling,
and that's the thing that we are told, we are taught to ignore feelings. We've done a terrible job culturally, not
just in the US, but in the west, we have done a very bad job of cultivating ones desire,
expectation, ability to listen to our intuition. It was, you know, we all have different paths. Some through grief, some through achievement,
some through struggle, to start to listen, we all have that compass. Tom: What is it about grief? That one really stuck out to me, so ... Is
it a big event that just sort of slaps you out of your normal way of thinking? Chase: Yeah. This really, this shit gets me up in the morning,
so I've talked to thousands of people. I ended up being, you know, when you do find
your path and you're lucky enough to grab onto that string that gives you a hell of
a ride, which is what I feel like I've been on. Ended up being a career counselor. I love it, I ended up talking to people. I mentioned grief just off the cuff, because
I have had so many people toe to toe, after I get off stage at an event or something,
saying I knew who you were, but your message really resonated with me, when my mom died. When I lost my husband, when I broke up with
my girlfriend, I lost my house. This process of grieving and realizing that
either recognition of our own mortality or just some event. You're like, wait a minute. This is not, all this stuff that I'm being
programmed and told, that's not what this is about. Tom: Are you familiar with Jamie, I know you
know Steven Kotler. Are you familiar with Jamie Wheal, Steven
Kotler and their new book? Stealing Fire? Chase: Yeah. I was exchanging emails with Steven in the
car on the way up here. Tom: Really? That's crazy. Chase: Yup. Tom: Have you read it yet? Chase: I haven't. Tom: Oh dude you're gonna love it. The reason I'm going so deep in this question
is like, so many people come to me and they have a sense that they could do more, they
could be more, but they don't quite know what that is. They don't even know how to put words around
this feeling that they have in their mind. Chase: They don't know how to start, what's
the first step? Tom: Exactly. One of the parts of Stealing Fire is, you
have to learn to tap into non ordinary states of consciousness. Which is why when you said grief, I thought
wow, because they don't touch on stuff like that, but I think that that is literally what's
happening. It's that ...
Chase: You need someone to slap you out of the day today, because it's so easy to blame
anything. We can blame the political environment, we
can blame our health, we can blame so many things on, oh it's just easy to stay on this
path, and whatever the thing is, that's why I mentioned grief. Whatever the thing is that gets you out of
that state of numbness. For me, was an avalanche. For me it was a 10 year recognition. Just to be clear, just for a second, small
departure. I grew up middle, lower middle class. White, suburban, and it was hard for me to
resist all of the things that culture was telling me I had to be. Imagine people who have less opportunity. Who are people of color, who are females. I'm a huge, I'm on this mission down here
in LA, I've been focusing on interviewing some of the strongest females I know, trying
to get the feminine as the new energy that I think our culture needs. But imagine if you had all those other disadvantages,
how much harder it would be than it was for me. And it took me, well, half a lifetime. To me that's catastrophic, failure of our
culture, that's sad. Tom: Dude, you sent me chills. Chase: The flip side of that then, is if we
can increase our self awareness. If we can program people through non traditional
channels and ultimately I would like to see the school system change. I don't have a lot of optimism for that, just
based on the [inaudible 00:18:54], which is one of the reasons we created Creative Live. But if we can create a longstanding, something
that has durability, a vein in culture, which helps people understand that you have to write
your own script. If you don't, someone else will surely write
it for you. If we can change that mindset, that's one
of the things that I'm chasing. We get little glimpses of it day to day, we
get a big dose of it at Creative Live. That's the thing that I'm focused on, so the
fact that we all, collective consciousness, you, Steven, Gary, Tim, Ariana, Brene Brown. There's a real, what I feel like, is finally
sort of a movement towards some of these new ideals. To me that's exciting. Tom: So you gave me the chills a few minutes
ago, talking about culture, talking about the need for feminine energy, which is something
that we're working on. But the whole thing at Impact Theory is that. If growing up in a middle class environment,
white, with privilege and all of that. You still have a hard time, how do we adjust
culture enough to make sure that anybody, no matter where you grew up. Impoverished, undereducated, whatever the
thing is that you got going against you, how do we really impact that culture? It does to me also feel like a movement, there's
a lot of people creating a lot of energy. Creating social content, certainly. But where it gets really interesting to me
is, like what you're doing with Creative Live, where it's foundational and I don't think
that we have to change the education system from within. You doing what you're doing with creative
live becomes like a whole another thing. We're trying to create not only social content,
but traditional narrative content, because don't try to change behavior, that's my thing. Leverage behavior. Chase: Exactly. Tom: I already know people are gonna be watching
movies, reading books, watching Netflix, all that stuff. Now, I want to incept them with ideology,
by understanding how mythology works, how can humans consume that and pass on that ideology. Chase: Yeah. Storytelling, it's been like a campfire. Cavemen time. Tom: You've said that the world thinks in
narrative. Chase: I do. Tom: What do you mean by that? Chase: That's how we remember stories. That's how ideas are passed along that are
sticky. Just, I think it's, as we're hardwired for
language, if you, you know, read any Noam Chomsky, we're also hardwired for narrative. Narrative is a product of language. If, yeah and you see that in pop culture,
great story tellers, it's like the pied piper. I forget who wrote the book, Tell to Win,
was it Peter Guber? Great book around creating narratives to attach
ideas, ideologies and inspiration to. I think ultimately that's one of the reasons
that I, certainly not the original reason I went into it, but now looking backwards,
that I was focused on telling stories as a creator, as a photographer and a director,
was, you know, that's the use case that I can now carry into this part of my life, telling
people stories not just about avalanches, but about other people tapping into their
most internal authentic selves in order to direct their living life, career, whatever,
path. That's what makes that sticky, is narrative. Tom: It's interesting. Going back to narrative and narrative's ability
to juxtapose ideas, that may otherwise seem totally unrelated. I find it interesting that you created a lot
of your success being a type, a hard driver, like busting ass, but that you've also found
meditation and which, and also use my own experience, I see meditation as being very
soft, like a nice contrast. Chase: Yeah. Tom: I meditate right after I work out, because
I like that juxtaposition of the intensity and then how rapidly can I sort of [inaudible
00:22:53] everything. How has that friction helped you between being
a type, a hard driver, because I know at one point you were concerned that meditation was
actually gonna soften you in some way. Chase: Right. We have, I think, Tim Ferriss and I, who,
Tim is a lovely, him and I have been friends for a long time. First of all, A, it was I remember a couple
of conversations about, isn't this edge, this like, at your core, you got a fire in your
belly, you're driven, you mentioned sort of type a, hard charging, whatever words that
you had associated with that. You start to believe your own story, that
that is what has created your success. We don't stop or pause. We're unwilling to part with that, even long
enough to see if that narrative, that self narrative is true. Because if we stop that hard charging, type
a, aggro, you know, undercurrent. Will we lose a step? Will we lose two steps? Will we fall from the position that we've
worked so hard to get ourselves into? I remember, specifically, exactly what I've
said when talking to Tim, and he was feeding me this line. I was like, all those things you said, I thought
the exact ... I can only say what my truth is, I can't say what your truth is Tim, but
just give it a shot. How about, what if you were able to think
about that thing that you thought was propelling you, is actually an anchor? That is the thing that is keeping you down
or small or at some percentage of your potential rather than that way around. Try and tell yourself that narrative, just
long enough for you to take a break from your aggro, hard charging, type a life, and you
know, there's any, one of these types of meditation I happened to steer Tim, and I found transcendental
meditation, TM, tm.org as one that was sticky for me. Tim ended up gravitating to that same thing
and when you're able to make that switch, you realize as I did, I think as Tim did,
that ... Tom: When you say switch you mean switch in
the narrative? Chase: Yeah. Switch the narrative and change your daily
habits, such that meditation is a part of your day today. For me, I was quickly easy to see that. Oh my god, this is actually, it's like a rocket. It's like a booster, because now everything
around me is happening in slow motion. I don't get fired up. It was a fundamental change in the way that
I interacted with the world. I don't want to preach meditation because
it's not for everybody. There is just, if you read Tools of Titans,
Tim's book? Tom: I have, oh, of course. Chase: The number one correlated thing across
all those people is some sort of mindfulness practice. Tom: Now, you ready? Chase: Yeah. Tom: I'm gonna be the asshole that says it's
for everybody. Chase: There you go. Tom: Because I'm just taking it from a neurological
perspectively. Purely from a neurological perspective, because
I know what's happening. You're tapping into the parasympathetic nervous
system, your calming down the sympathetic. It's biochemistry, right? Chase: Yeah. If you believe in biochemistry, then give
it a shot. I'm a huge advocate. I try not to sell it too hard, because anytime
someone's trying to say something it feels inauthentic, but it's just giving me a lot
of joy. Tom: Yeah. No, I think that it's like you, you embraced
it pretty quickly. Like Tim, I did not. I really felt that it was super soft and I
never thought of it as taking a step off my edge. It just felt like, probably because my self
narrative. Growing up, I was not good at sports. I did not feel overly tough, and so toughening
up was lesson number one for me as an entrepreneur. Chase: Got it. Tom: To not be the guy reacting like, hey
this guys is falling, I just really had to steal myself and work on mental toughness,
and so that was like, I put so much energy into that for such a long time, that by the
time people were telling me, hey, you should meditate. I was like, what? Chase: Yeah. Then how long into it, before you felt a change
in your own? Tom: The first day. Chase: Yeah. Tom: It was so immediate and so massive, because
I was coming to it from the place of a navy seal, told me stop being a dumb ass, understand
what meditation is doing to your brain and just try it. Then I was like, okay, I understand what's
going on from, I'm trying to, you know, you have gas and brake. The gas is your sympathetic nervous system,
and your brake is rest and digest. It's the parasympathetic nervous system. Once he could explain it to me like that,
then it was like, okay, it's not woo woo anymore, it doesn't make me feel like I'm reverting
back to my less than tough days. Chase: Yeah. Tom: When I sat down to do it and I could
imagine what I was trying to do to my brain, and the breathing and understanding diaphragm
breathing and all of that. If you are used to breathing shallow, you
just do one breath from your diaphragm, you'll feel it right away. Chase: Yeah, it's like a self buzz a little
bit. Tom: Yeah. As somebody who naturally runs at a high stress
level, which I'll call background radiation. If I don't meditate, my background radiation
levels just creep up, creep up, creep up. Chase: I like that, that's a good name for
it. Tom: It was really really, it was a life saver. In the sense that I think if I had continued
to not meditate, I would have ended up overwhelmed or depressed. I didn't but once I started doing it and could
reflect back, I was like whoa. It felt like dodging a bullet. Talk to me about visualization. How specifically do you do it, how concrete
are the images in your mind, what's the end goal? Chase: I read headlines. Actual words in an article. I write an article ...
Tom: In your mind? Chase: I write an article or a press release,
or like I'm literally reading the outcome as if it has already happened and being reported
to ... Tom: Chase Jarvis wins an award for revolutionary
new photo technique. Chase: Sure, yeah. I try and be less me centric. Tom: Really? Chase: My goals are a little bit, involve
movements or groups of people or Creative Live. But I have personal goals, for sure. But anything that's more public facing, I
have a press release written in my head and I read it in my mind's eye everyday, every
morning. Tom: The same one? Or you're constantly creating new ones? Chase: I have a base narrative that I go to,
and so it's not literally the same exact words, but it's same in principle and I do it everyday. Tom: Damn, I had never heard that before. It's super powerful. Chase: With sports, it was very much about
trying to involve, there's a component of relaxation prior to it, so I do it just after
meditating. You're more receptive, I've learned through
research and my own personal experience. That you're more, your body, your mind are
more receptive to the suggestions and I, in the sports worlds, I would like, you could
smell the grass, see the ball going in the net. Tom: Would you say I smell the grass? Or would you actually ...
Chase: I have in some cases. I talked to myself. I will like literally say the words out loud
to give it an extra dimension. The audio dimension. Tom: Wow. Chase: But incorporating sights and smells,
what did it smell like. The paper of a contract being signed. Or what did the ink smell like, what did the
grass smell like on game day? What was the experiences in your body was
you saw the ball hit the net. Again, whatever, I'm telling myself a complex
narrative, that I have 100% made up about the moment after you realized the dream has
come through. Tom: I've never heard anybody use words before,
and that's so liberating for me, because I'm actually really bad at seeing something in
concrete detail. Especially coming from you, I would figure,
as a photographer, you can just sort of close your eyes and imagine ...
Chase: Yeah. Sure, and I'm painfully visual. That's part of the reason that I have sought
these other senses. Auditory, words, even smell. Again, I mentioned a couple times already,
like smelling the grass. What it felt like to be in the moment on the
soccer fields when you scored the winning goal or whatever the thing is. I just tried to incorporate more senses. Tom: Wow, that's really incredible. Chase: Yeah. Tom: Using words. That, I'm gonna try that. Chase: Language is powerful. Tom: Yeah. Chase: Words matter and choose them, you know,
obviously they can, especially in our culture now, there's a sort of, in a post truth world
... Tom: That's terrifying. Chase: Yeah. There's this goal to erode the word, but the
thing that my reason for knowing that words are powerful is the effect that they have
on our bodies. I think Tony Robbins talks about, I might
get this wrong, but you have to have the right state, before you can tell yourself the right
story, before you can get the right strategy in place. Anytime you try and go right to one of the
other things, like if you try and go right to the right strategy, but you're in a shitty
head space. You're not gonna get the strategy right. He calls his daily routine priming. Whatever the activities that we all do every
day or morning or in this case visualization. If I realize that those things are true for
me too. If I first and foremost and control my state,
my emotional state. I can be in a positive head space, and know
that the world's out there, looking out for me and that I am in part, in control of my
destiny. That helps me create a great narrative, whether
this is a narrative of self empowerment or supporting others or just creating the world
that I'm hoping to create. The strategy is like, oh I have to wake up
and I have to go do this thing, or help this person or be receptive to these ideas, such
that I can tap into my dreams. Again, I look at that whole world as really
valuable. I think it's massively underappreciated and
again, I'm sort of, I feel like an everyday guy. Everyday Joe. I have put these techniques to work for me. I don't preach them, but I can't think of
what my life would be like, you know, you talked about how would your stress level be,
what your health would be without some of the practices that you've made use of. I'm in the same boat. I can't even imagine, I wouldn't be on the
show, if it wasn't for some of these techniques and tools. Tom: Yeah. I love that. You said that habits are like really important
in your life. I feel exactly the same. When one of the goals of doing this show,
and I've got to imagine it's similar for you, is to one, I don't want people to think that
what I've achieved as a result of being extraordinary. Nobody thought anything of me as a kid. Not voted most likely to succeed, grew up
in Tacoma, Washington, undereducated in my opinion. But just started, brick by brick, like today,
I will start visualizing using words, which I have never done before. Chase: Great. Let me know how it goes. Tom: That's incredibly powerful. For sure. Chase: Yeah. It's powerful. Tom: Taking those bricks, you get enough of
them and then you're able to execute at a higher level, that's like the point that we're
wanting to do in the show. Chase: Sweet. I want to talk, I also have a show, called
Chase Jarvis Live on Creative Live, so it's somewhat a selfish behavior. Because you want to sit down with the world's
top experts. You know, that's actually why Creative Live
exists. Because I wanted to learn from these people. Sure, I certainly wanted to give them a platform
and connect the audience that I had built over years and years of hard work. Accidentally, built an audience and wanted
to connect that with my friends who are the best in the world. But my personal interview show, and in part
Creative Live is very much about, how can I be next to people who inspire the hell out
of me? If you can add enough value to them, I'm clearly
gonna get value from being on your show, and I'm hoping that, you know, tell me, is that
one of the reasons that you started the show? Tom: A 100%. It's close to the only reason. Chase: Yeah. Tom: Just wanting to learn, you know. Wanting to encounter people and so, at the
time that we started, it was originally a show called inside quest. We have 1,400 employees. And we had, in fact, this is something I want
to talk to you about. We had this list of our core values and I
didn't want them to memorize it and not live them. I wanted to bring people in, just because
I was utterly convinced, that some, there were 25 bullet points. That every guest that came on, would relate
to and just naturally [inaudible 00:35:04] one, two, three, four, five of the different
bullet points and people would see. Like, hey, these are, because it wasn't like
this is what you need to do to successful at quest. This we needed to do to be successful at anything. Hearing these high level people come in and
talk about it naturally and then be able to go, okay, yeah, that really is exactly what
is on this list. That was real big driver for me as well. Chase: So true. We talk about the same thing at Creative Live. We have core values. It's the thing we spend the most time talking
about in our all hands meetings. Tom: Your core values are amazing. Walk us through a couple of the ones that
you think are just critical. Chase: Since you asked me to choose a couple,
I'll just choose the first three, because I think they're the top ones. Which is, creativity, access and community. Creativity, I think it's the thing that differentiates
us from so many of the species on the planet. The fact that we can take two disparate ideas
that weren't otherwise together, put those things together to make something new, and
ideally useful. Tom: Do people train themselves to do that? Chase: Absolutely. It's not a skill, it's a habit. Tom: Love that. I just want to get into that habit. Chase: You get into it by doing it. That's the thing. It feels very unnatural at first, and then
try things like morning pages, try things like creating something everyday. Since we all have phones with this, it's very
easy to do these things. Playing the guitar, taking pictures everyday,
writing in a journal. All those things will make you better brain
surgeons, a better athlete, a better, like there's, the science is abundantly clear,
that creativity creates creativity. I should know the study, there's this great
study that unequivocal creativity creates creativity. It doesn't really, it's not necessarily field
specific. Tom: Yeah. Chase: Just those few pathways in the brain
of connecting unlikely things to make something new and useful. Having that as a core value is a no brainer. It is also, you know, that's one of my core
missions as a human, is to make the world a more creative place. Second one, access. I realized, when I decided, you know, threw
away everybody else's narrative for me, that I wanted to be a creator, a professional photographer
and a director. When I looked around that, I didn't have access
to experts. This is really pre your early net, the idea
of behind the scenes video, those words didn't even, they were never put together. Behind the scenes video. It wasn't a part of the lexicon of culture. I was like, wait a minute, this is terrible,
because there are so many people. They did call it mentors, but mentors are
behind locked doors and Ivory towers and building covered with ivy and I didn't have access
to any of that. I had to take the swings myself, learn from
experience. Why am I doing this and so many other people
could benefit, so I started sharing that. That first inclination of access is in part. I believe, why I was sitting here today. Because I'm, I have cultivated a world where
that is normal. A world around me that's what Creative Live,
obviously it's a core value there, but I started out as a photographer by sharing trade secrets. This is what it's like. This is my behind the scenes, with professional
athlete, x, y or z or this famous snowboarder or whatever. This is what it's like to suck, this is what
it's like to get a job and lose a job. Providing access to my life, it was totally
incidental. I was trying to help my industry, because
I figured if I could send a paradigm for sharing secrets about photography, that I could actually,
someone else would reciprocate and I can learn something too. That's access and community. Was there a third one? Community is also, I think it's fundamentally
one of the reasons that I'm sitting here on your couch. Having built community and having, you know,
when I mentioned earlier. Why did you start the show. You're also, you're building community, you're
serving your own needs by having people that are inspirational to you, sit here on the
chair, in the chair next to you, but everyone in the room and beyond, ultimate that distills
to community and if you've given value to that community, I'm sure you've also received
a ton of value of the folks, who are liking and sharing, and helping support your vision
and mission here. Same is true for Creative Live. We have 10,000,000 students, we serve every
country on the planet. This is crazy, global community of creators,
who are all trying to figure it out. Who are all told that, you know, only some
of us are creative, we're all told that in order to be a greater artist you shouldn't
touch business, and in order to be a business person, then you just have to be cutthroat
and you know, I just don't believe in those paradigms and if we can learn and leverage
one another's skills and share information, then how much better would the world be? That's sort of three of the core values, three
out of seven. These are how we make decisions in the company. Tom: I love it. All right, where can these guys find you online,
before I ask my final question? Chase: Oh. That was fast. Whoa. I'm @chasejarvis personally, Creative Live
is @creativelive, all one word, on everything. To me, that would bring me great joy if, I
wonder if we could do something, do you guys have some show notes? We'll try and do something for your audience. Tom: Absolutely. Chase: We'll try and get a special, a discount
code or something, I'll work on that. Tom: Amazing. Chase: So that we can support your community. That'd be my first and foremost ask is to
go there, come find, I'm accessible, using my core value. All right, now you gotta be, I'm gonna drink
some water while you ask the question. Tom: Yeah dude, yeah, take a sip, take a sip. Here we go. The audience already knows what I'm gonna
ask. Chase: [crosstalk 00:40:53] All right. Tom: But yes. What is my friend, the impact that you want
to have on the world? Chase: Impact? I would like to help other people live their
dreams. Whether that's in career, in hobby or in life. To me, that is an impact that has a lever
behind it. But I have never seen or felt the world more
alive, the people around me more alive, than when they are doing the thing that makes them
feel great. If the impact that I can have is to provide
more opportunities and more options and more focus on that, as the goal of life. Living your truth, authentically, then I would
die a happy man. Tom: That's incredible. Then tell them why playing it safe is the
most dangerous thing they could do. Chase: If you head Cuban, recently came out
and said that it's not programming jobs that are the jobs of the future, because all of
those will be automated. Because when programming can program for itself,
what do you need? You need creativity, you need ideation, you
need the ability to differentiate not just on math, because it's not all about math. It's math plus the human element. Creativity is actually the most valuable thing
in the next generation. It is the first time in the history, that
were where those systems that have been in place that were, quote the safe bets. Go to college, get good grades, you'll get
a good job, then you'll work for a company for 40 years, you'll get the gold watch and
you'll have a great retirement. That's just fundamentally not true. A, the school system's changing. It's being, you know, it's leaving behind
so many people. B, employment. There is gonna be I think 53,000,000 Americans
are gonna have a side hustle by 2020. Tom: Whoa. Chase: The four year university is not at
all set up to accommodate that. Accommodate, that sounds like it's being graceful
to deal with that. If our parents had one job, we will have five,
the next generation will have five jobs at the same time. If you think along those paradigms. All of the old systems are completely inadequate. That is why creative live exists, that is
why that you will learn an infinite amount of skills over the next X number of years
in your life, in a way that's much different than the way you learned 10 or 15 years ago. Learning is the new master paradigm. It's the first time in the history of the
world, that the safe thing is now the riskiest thing you can do. If you're not paying attention to this stuff,
you need to wake up. I don't know if you read the headlines lately
but, it shouldn't be a fear thing. Maybe we change that and just like, what an
amazing time it is, where we have access to this knowledge, where it doesn't cost a million
dollars. Creative Live has a free options and there's
so many other learning sites. You just got freaking YouTube. What are you doing, what's the next thing
for you, that is gonna keep you on that path that I referenced earlier? Tom: I love that. Man, thank you so much for coming to the show. Chase: Super grateful for having me on the
show. Thank you. Tom: Guys. That last little bit of mental jiu jitsu that
he did there at the end, where don't think about it from a fear perspective, start thinking
about what an incredible opportunity you're living through right now in this world. That is Chase Jarvis, that is what you're
gonna find as you go deeper into his world, and realize that that is what this man is
about. He looks at the world with just a fresh set
of eyes and sees solutions that other people don't see. That's why as you dive into his content, he
is going to slowly draw you into a world that will change you if you let it. Trust me, it is amazing. I am very sad that we didn't get a change
to talk about Kate and a lot of other amazing things. I'm telling you, what we touched on here today
is a tip of an iceberg, that has just an abundance of give to it. It is going to offer you things that you can't
even imagine, so please take him up on it, dive into his content, see what it's all about. It's really really impactful and it's coming
from somebody who is truly a master of his game. Speaking on behalf of Creative Live, which
I am not in any way, shape or form affiliated with, but they have some of the greatest teachers
on the planet. People that have won Pulitzer Prizes I think. Richard Branson talked about that and in the
intro. Dive into it man, it's free. That's how you change the world. You get out and you do stuff. You do stuff, you do stuff. Chase Jarvis is a master of getting things
done. My friends, thank you so much for joining
us, this is weekly shows, if you haven't already, be sure to subscribe. Until next time my friends, be legendary,
take care. Aced. Chase: Thanks, that was awesome. Tom: Great close out. Chase: Thank you. Tom: Hey everybody. Thanks so much for joining us for another
episode of Impact Theory. If this content is adding value to your life,
our one ask is that you go to iTunes and Stitcher and rate and review. Not only does that help us build this community,
which at the end of the day is all we care about, but it also helps us get even more
amazing guests on here to share their knowledge with all of us. Thank you guys so much for being a part of
this community. Until next time. Be legendary my friends. How did we do? If you rate this transcript 3 or below, this
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