Chase Jarvis: Creative Calling

Transcript

[0:00:39] CH: What’s up everybody, you are listening to Author Hour. The show where we interview authors about their new books. Today’s episode is with Chase Jarvis. He is the author of Creative Calling. Now, Chase is an amazing guy, you’ve probably heard of him, he is the founder of CreativeLive which is the world’s largest live-streaming creative education website. He also runs the popular Chase Jarvis Live show where he interviews some of the world’s best creators, innovators, entrepreneur, people like Brené Brown, Daymond John, Tim Ferriss and he was also the creator of the first photo app, before Instagram, that allowed you to filter crop, can share photos. Chase has also done commercial work as a photographer for brands like Nike, Pepsi, Volvo, Reebok, Apple, Red Bull and he’s won tons of recognition in international awards for his work. He’s done a lot of amazing things but maybe the most important might be this book that he’s written, Creative Calling. Now, this book has an important message that life isn’t about finding fulfillment and success, it’s about creating it. Why has creativity been put in the back seat in our culture, that’s what Chase is trying to change. Because he believes that creativity is a force inside everyone. That when it’s unleashed, transforms our lives and delivers vitality to everything that we do. So establishing a creative practice is arguably our most valuable and urgent task while we’re on earth. That it’s as important to our wellbeing as exercise and nutrition. Whether your ambition is to have a creative career or to finish a creative project or just simply to have a more creative mindset, this episode will unlock your potential. Now, here’s our conversation with Chase Jarvis.

[0:02:48] Chase Jarvis: I remember like it was yesterday. My second grade teacher, her name is Ms. Kelly, it was the parent teacher conference and I remember her saying to my mom that Chase is XYZ, ABC, whatever she was saying and then she said, what I heard really clearly like I can recount it like it was yesterday that, "He’s a lot better at sports than he is at art." I remember hearing that and I wasn’t necessarily crushed emotionally that I wasn’t good at art. Although that definitely stung a little bit, it was more like what we’re rewarded for and encouraged to do. Because as a young person, and often as an adult as well, what we really want to do is we want to fit in. We want to hide and connect and be liked and when someone that you respect and admire that I did my second grade teacher, Ms. Kelly, you tend to take that advice and that’s sort of culture imposing its should’s and would on us. I remember it like a light switch, I stopped doing my comic strip, I no longer performed magic and I double down on what I was getting external validation on, which is sports. It’s not like I wasn’t playing them before but I said, "Okay, great." It sort of became an identity that I grabbed on to because it was safe, I was appreciated for it and I was steered toward it and there was definitely something about creativity being, well, you know, you have to be really gifted and special in order to do that. Maybe you have to gifted and special in sports to do that. But just, that’s your lane, go stay in it. And I recount that story because I think we’ve all been given a list of shoulds and ultimately, when we think about not just what we do with our day to day or our career but our entire life is steered often by the people that we care most about, right? The people that are closest to us, like my teacher or a spouse or a parent. That can have a huge effect on how we see ourselves and most importantly, I think, what we do with this one precious life that we have. To me, I’m going to ask the listeners to go back to that moment early in your life where you were given some sort of feedback about your own creativity to what it was or where you creative or not creative and just think about how it impacted your choices. For me, I would call it almost catastrophic on my creativity because I ran the other way and specifically, at that time, creativity and art and sports were seen in the opposite ends of the spectrum. It was like literally 18 years later when I dabbled in it a little bit about five or eight years later with skateboarding because I saw a way to connect creativity with physical expression, right? It was like punk rock and spray paint and skateboarding and all that stuff with the physical activity of skateboarding. Even then, that was sort of a dabble and it wasn’t until after I had dropped out of a – I went to college on a soccer scholarship. I played for the US Olympic development team and it was really after I realized that I didn’t want to go on and play professional soccer despite having the opportunity to and then I actually wanted to pursue my creative calling in life, that I recognized how damaging that had been and what an opportunity I had before me to actually do the thing that I wanted to do. Again, I’m white, I’m male, I was born in America in the '70s. And I was born lower middle, lower, economic social status but I almost had every advantage you could possibly have and it was still, I remember, the hardest thing to tell my parents and the people around me that I didn’t want to go to medical school or be a soccer player or I even dropped out of a PhD in philosophy, these three things in a row to become a photographer because that’s who I identified with and that’s what I wanted to do more than anything. If it was hard for me, what would it be like for everyone who came from more in culturally disadvantaged backgrounds? I ask the reader or the listener rather to go back and listen to that point in time and look at your life arc and now that you can be paying attention to this book or this podcast, you really do only have one shot and what are you going to do and are you going to let the opinions of your parents, spouses, teachers, friends, peeress, work, environment dictate what you’re going to do with it. I advocate that you don’t have to do that and through strengthening both the awareness of what creativity is and how it can affect your life, that you can begin, A, to create in small ways every day but ultimately that small daily creativity gives you the understanding that you have agency over your life and we got one shot. To me, that is a really, really critical way that we should think about what we’re going to do at the time on this planet.

[0:07:35] CH: You said something really important, Chase. Which was, "I didn’t realize how damaging it was." And I’m in agreement with you but for somebody listening, who might be in your position right now, the one that you were in, lay out the stakes. What are the cost of neglecting creativity or not creating. What are they missing out on?

[0:08:03] Chase Jarvis: First of all, we’re creating machines and we are sold the definition of creativity that it’s hard or it’s for a special few, it’s art, we were told that creativity equals art and I want the person listening to say, "Wait a minute, no," if creativity is art is a subset of creativity, but creativity is this thing that we were put on this planet to do, we’re creating machines, it’s what differentiates us from every other species on the planet and whether you’re making a meal, growing a family, baking a cake, building a business, taking photographs. It’s all creativity. This is the thing we’re never told, right? We’re putting these two things together. You have to understand that creativity is in every person, and it’s the back bone, it’s the framework for how we do literally everything. Because we have agency over our lives.

[0:08:51] CH: Yes, sorry to cut you off but I want to say I’ve had this conversation so many times with my dad who is like many people, doesn’t identify as being a creative person and I always jokingly say, "You created me. There’s that." But yeah, you're totally right, whatever the act is, it is very often the act of creation.

[0:09:15] Chase Jarvis: Yeah, if creativity is just putting two unlikely things together to form something new and useful, again, whether that’s a meal a cake or a business, you start to understand that that is the super power of the human. The cost of ignoring that is twofold and these are two really big things. One, if you ignore it, you have disconnected from your super power, which is not just creating small things on a daily basis that you think of like art or even building a business but most importantly that you are the architect and the creator of your life and you have agency over that and you’re not a cork bobbing the tide, the life of every person that you look up to, admire, respect, that was created. Life isn’t found, it’s not discovered, it’s created. If you're ignoring that aspect of it, you're denying what is potentially the most powerful aspect that you have while you’re on this planet. So to me, that’s a very important thing and if that’s true, then the opposite is also true that not using that is not benign. What you’re doing is you’re trading in that eight year old self that was told a message that you know, you're X or you're Y, you’re betraying that part of yourself. And unused creativity is not benign, it’s toxic. I think this is a really important thing for us to grasp and I’m going to quite a friend of mine, Brené Brown. She says, "There’s no such thing as creative people and none creative people. There’s just people who use their creativity and people who don’t and not using it doesn’t go without penalty." As it turns out, unused creativity is dangerous. The harm of not paying attention to this super power that basically, it’s the reason that humans exist on this planet is to be able to build and create things and emotions and connection and their lives. Turns out there’s some pretty heavy consequences.

[0:11:13] CH: To that Brené quote, what are some of the symptoms of it going unused? Someone might know intellectually, "Hey, you know, I’m trying to not be as creative as I want to be," but how does it show up in their life on an emotional level, a physical level in their relationships, in their work, in their spirit, how does it show up?

[0:11:34] Chase Jarvis: This is a classic. In the particular lies the universal, right? I’m going to tell you my story but I believe that as soon as I get into it, just you know, 30, 60 seconds like you know what? Come to think of it, that’s how it went for me too. It’s this. For me, everything looked great on paper but the voice in my head and the experience that I was having with my life, I started to realize that I was living the life that everybody else wanted, that everyone else’s had written a script for me and it wasn’t malevolent, these are the people that are closest to me and they cared about me. My parents wanted me to be safe and have a roof over my head and all these things and your career counselor, they want to place you in a good job so they get good marks and good feedback and the college stays in business because they place people in good jobs. There’s all these sort of layers of the onion. But here’s what it was like for me, it was, "What am I doing? I’m supposed to be happy because I got good grades, I’m destined for a medical school," and you know, it looks good from the outside but there’s this voice inside of me, there’s this disconnect that I’m actually not doing the thing that I was put on this planet to do and everyone’s telling me that if I ever leak this, just a little bit. They tell me it’s crazy, it’s impractical, maybe it’s even naïve. And to me, there’s this dissonance and this disconnect that culture programs for us that we buy into and for me, I did that to the tune of spending $100,000 in debt on student loans and graduate school in prep for medical school for example. And in graduate school and the PHD in philosophy, doing all, these are basically charades to try and keep everybody around and happy and I just, I find that through my own experience and having more than 150 guest like yourself and Richard Branson and Ferris and Brené Brown and Daymond John and a huge list of people that everyone has tapped into this. Everyone has experienced the whole world telling you what to do and it looks good on the outside but it feels terrible on the inside, the symptoms are anxiety and depression and lack of connection. Which — we’re social animals, you understand what connection does and you write about this a lot and Play it Away. If a human baby doesn’t have connection, isn’t held that baby dies, right? Human connection is not a 'nice to have' and when you’re getting these inputs from culture, again, there is no malevolent to like dictator or puppeteer, crafting all this for you, this is people who love you deeply and they’re telling you that you need to be safe and this is how to do it. But the reality, it’s the most dangerous time to play it safe. There’s nothing easier and more natural and healthier than being 100% unapologetically who you are and for me, at that time in my life, that was a photographer. I wanted to travel the world, take pictures with my camera and tell stories about people and experiences that I was having along with my friends and culture wanted me to do a bunch of other stuff. What I think is these toxic feelings that create also resentment and ultimately, for people who are 50 or 60 right now listening to that and saying, you don’t have to be 50 or 60 but you’re like, "Wait a minute, I’ve been doing this," and you know, you may try and let yourself down easy and say, I did it for my family or my kids or I’ve got a mortgage and this just sounds impractical. At what cost? That’s the question that I’d ask you, what cost?

[0:14:53] CH: Gosh, that is, I mean, I love that you wrote this book Creative Calling because it is the practice of nurturing your soul. You’re talking about are you choosing your soul or are you choosing success that you did not decide what those terms were or you didn’t decide what that picture was and you heard a voice. I think that might be the clearest symptom is you are ignoring this inner voice and I think personally, I believe that voice is a deeper intelligence than anything your logical brain is coming up with. That’s almost the protest of God within you.

[0:15:34] Chase Jarvis: It is.

[0:15:35] CH: Telling you, "This is wrong, when are you going to listen to me?" Which brings me to the next question I have which is, the stakes are high if people ignore this. But, the fear is higher for a lot of them. How does somebody not only find the courage to listen to the protest but how do they find the courage to get started?

[0:16:00] Chase Jarvis: All right, I’m going to put an asterisk next to one thing you said which is the fear is greater. The fear is only greater until you reach a certain point and what you have to hope is that that point is not at the end of your life. Because you ask the number one regret of dying people is that they actually did not listen to that voice and they let the rest of the world write their script. That is the – not number two or five or 10. Number one on the list of people who are dying. You can either decide to overcome this fear now or at some distant point in your future where it’s going to be even more uncomfortable or on your death bed. I’m saying, this is – you know, I don’t go this crisp at this in the book but since you asked the question, I just ask you to reflect on what the real costs are, now that we’ve established that, I’m going to go back and say, "So, what are the practical ways to hear this and to listen," I talk about it being the call that we all have it. You said yourself that the rational mind, it turns out is slow, is full of bias and it’s full of – I call it the brain. It’s not your brain, it’s the brain. It is a million year old orient that is put on this planet, not to make you happy, it’s to make you safe and to make you alive. Our biology hasn’t actually married very well with modern times because their biology thinks that what someone says about you on Instagram or what your boss gave you on your review that it equates that with a sabertooth tiger and the reality is that there are no sabertooth tigers. Mostly, I guess they’re all extinct. But our biology is meant to keep us scared and afraid because it believes that that’s what’s going to keep us on this planet the longest. But the reality is, that we’re mistaken and it’s okay, this is the thing that I don’t want to make people feel bad. This book is not about some rosy recipe that I started out on day one and figured it out. This is laden with my biggest failures and pitfalls and you know, I talked about student debt earlier. I pursued what everybody else wanted me for the first 25 years of my life before I even had a clue. When we can start to listen to that voice and again, I feel like everybody has it. You can disconnect from your rational mind just for a second because it’s slow and imperfect and what’s more accurate and certainly much faster and I would argue the science is early but I think it’s going to show that that’s why they call it the gut feeling. Your intuition that we’ve also been taught to ignore it, right? It’s like that’s a whim and practical, show me the data and no, you have the data, your body is collecting data 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Billions and billions of data points, like right now, if I ask you, what does it feel like on the back off of your thigh where your jeans are hitting your leg. "I can actually feel that." Yet your body is tuning it out because it can only pay attention to a few things. The fact that it’s tuning it out does not mean it’s not gathering that information, so your body is constantly gathering this information and we have an intuition. It’s listening to that deep, deep cell level biology that’s not the brain. It’s the body and it’s full of all of your experiences. You start tuning into that and we all have it, we’ve all heard this call because you can go back to a moment in your life where everything felt natural where you’re doing something that you loved with people you cared about in an environment that felt empowering and inspiring and the reality is that you can actually choose that. That’s what we haven’t been told. We’ve been told that you have to do A, B and C and this is what’s approved and this is what’s not approved and again, it’s not malevolent, it’s trying to look out for you. I just think that it is A, from a different era and B, it’s not the full picture. I’m trying to get us to pay attention the full picture and I couch this in creativity and just creativity, I’m trying to couch in something that’s so fundamental. I’m putting creativity in the same realm as nutrition and exercise. It’s like so fundamental and when you can couch it in creativity and you start to realize that wait a minute, in small, daily ways, I can take action to change my circumstances, put myself doing the things that I love, it don’t have to be – This is not about dropping everything and moving to Paris, wearing a beret and abandoning your family. This is start to do small daily creative acts, establish a practice, not dissimilar to meditation r mindfulness or exercise and that in doing so, you realize that it’s the same exact muscle that you use to create the arc of your life. It’s just creativity in a different scale.

[0:20:28] CH: As you were saying that Chase, talking about establishing a ritual or a habit of just practicing creativity, it made me think of Hugh McLeod I believe is his last name. He just started one day while sitting at a bar, doodling on the back of his business cards while he was still struggling and I think he was actually living in a YMCA but he started posting those online along with some of the stuff that he was writing on his blog. Totally transformed his life, like he built a career out of doing that and which is not to say to people like hey, you should try and do this to see if it becomes something much bigger. It’s the act. Like you said, it’s the nurturing, it’s the watering your little plants of creativity and letting it bloom inside.

[0:21:22] Chase Jarvis: Yeah, two things, one, I want to make sure that people understand that what you’re watering is not some sort of adjacent, arm’s length piece of you that is a 'nice to have'. You're watering your soul. I’m not saying this is not about dropping out of life and becoming a violinist. This is just about tuning in to your intuition and your innate ability to create in small daily ways, so that you can create your life. And I want to tell you a story about my mom when she was about I think 65 or so. I had released an iPhone app that was called Best Camera and it went on to be the app of the year in the iTunes store in 2009.

[0:22:04] CH: Which by the way, it was the first app for taking – which is crazy. You’re underselling, oddly.

[0:22:12] Chase Jarvis: yeah, it was the first app that take pictures, add in effect called a filter.

[0:22:18] CH: It was Instagram before Instagram.

[0:22:20] Chase Jarvis: Yeah, a couple of years before Instagram. And you know, it was the first app that had a photo feed. Apple had no – they didn’t have a rule that you can't have a photo feed, work closer with them. Anyway, I developed this app and I bought my mom an iPhone and put this app on it. She’s crazy practical, she’s like, a producer mind, she has been an administrator at a biotech company for a really long time, she worked directly for the CEO and she was very good at her job. But was also told her whole life that she wasn’t really creative and she didn't miss that, and she was like yeah, this is just who I am, I’m X and I’m Y and when I put this iPhone in her hand, she started taking pictures every day on her walk. She just walked a couple of miles every day for health and wellness and she would post these photos and she went from being A, thinking that she wasn’t creative and B, her friends identifying as, “Joy, you are just super left brained and you get all the stuff done.” And she instantly was catapulted to the most creative person in her friends circle and I watched it on social and again, this is early Facebook and whatnot and I watched it in the rest of her life, which her cooking changed, her travel — she went from just wanting to do the same thing every day, go to this particular place where they would have vacation and then when they were done, come home, to crazy travel all over the world. Australia, China, Antarctica, all over Eastern Europe, it transformed her and it wasn’t days but it also wasn’t years. It was like weeks and months, just taking pictures every day and posting them and it transformed her identity and her life and she was 65 or 6 years old at the time. So this is powerful medicine and again, notice that she didn’t stopped doing her job and she didn’t change her friend circle and it was really identifying as, "Wait a minute, I am creative. I have agency over what I do on a daily basis." You know the book, Creative Calling, operates on a couple – three principle basically. These are key underlying principles. These aren’t overtly on the book but one is that there is creativity inside of every person. Two, that creativity is a habit, it is not necessarily a skill. It is a process not a product and it is ultimately, they’re like muscles and these muscles can be strengthened through daily active use. And if you believe thing one and you believe thing two then it’s really easy to see how that’s creating small daily ways, like my mom is actually the same set of muscles that we use to create our life. It is just creativity at a different scale. And my mom being 65 or 66 at the time is a great example that it is never too late. I watched her transform her life in a matter of weeks and she didn’t have to change anything other than her identifying as creative and just doing something super simple — this is not like she didn’t have to go out and buy a set of paints and put them in the loft and then buy a canvass. She was already walking every day, she just started taking pictures and thinking about it and composing them and sharing them with her friends.

[0:25:20] CH: You said another thing that really jumped out of me as, gosh, this is such an important thing to reiterate. Which is effectively like release the end product and just focus on the process, which is a hard thing when it comes to creativity because you are constantly judging yourself. You don’t even realize how harsh your inner critic can be on results and it is always looking for results. I mean it is how we are conditioned. And I think somebody said it as “Don’t be the noun, be the verb.” Like don’t be an artist just create art. So what do you say to somebody who is exceptionally harsh on themselves and they’re like, “Ah my stuff is not that good.” They start maybe their habit and they feel bad about themselves because that is an engrained condition response.

[0:26:11] Chase Jarvis: Yeah, it’s hard and I don’t want to pretend it’s easy but here is the best way that I know of combating that is action. Action over intellect. You are not going to think your way out of this. You are not going to be able to — you know there is a powerful story that we don’t actually know if it’s real but it goes like this: there is a ceramics teacher and they divide the class into two different sections. One, this part of the class is you have to make one project for the whole term and you are judged on that project. You can spend as much time as you want on it but at the end, you turn in one project and then there is another group that is you’re judged specifically on volume. If you make one or two pots a day then you are going to get an A and you realize that is going to be a huge volume of pots and at the end of the semester when they looked at the two different groups, not only had the group that was focused on volume, not only had they created orders of magnitude more work. But that work was also dramatically better, not just like, “Oh a little bit better.” But it was game changing better and so the lesson is and I think Andy Warhol said it really well, “Create art and while someone else is judging the work that you just did, go create some more.” And it is a part of us especially really critical people or those of us that have really active monkey mind and tough self-talk, if you can’t find a way to create in small lightweight ways rather than setting out to write your first novel, to me that is the secret, right? And just like my mom as a great example and I bet for every person that 95% of the people that are listening to this right now, you have taken a photo with that phone in your pocket in the last 24 hours, even if it was a receipt for your expense report or you had the phone out and you were composing something and what if you just did that with intention every day. This is a habit, a daily habit that I personally track and I have tracked for I think seven years now. I create something every day with intention and sometimes it is literally just a single photograph. Sometimes it is my morning pages. Sometimes it’s three minutes. I just write down how I am feeling and what I want to do with my day and sometimes at the end of the day if I haven’t done anything and I am starving and it is 9PM, I try and just add a wee little bit of twist to the meal that I am going to make. Sometimes I see them myself. My wife had dinner without me because I was home late and just a little bit of creativity with intention and that just again, no extra time. You are not going to the paint store and buying canvasses and starting a new hobby. This is just what’s within your reach right now, how can you start today.

[0:28:45] CH: I love that and everybody is using those tools already that you mentioned, the iPhone and every – it is not this grandiose effort. It is just a simple practice, like brushing your teeth.

[0:28:57] Chase Jarvis: Yep and you are setting yourself up for failure if you go from zero. It is exactly the same as the gym. On January first everybody says, okay I am now working out seven days a week for two hours a day and I am going to do an hour of cardio and then I am going to do – you know? What is it like it’s something like nine days in, 75% of people have quit because it is not required. If you just took actions on a regular basis that is the ticket. And it is the same here, I am not asking you to change your life dramatically. I am suggesting that we’re creative. If you take small creative steps every day that it is going to change your outlook, it is going to change your understanding of own agency.

[0:29:34] CH: And not just that, it is going to connect you with your soul and allow you to live a life that you won’t regret when you die.

[0:29:43] Chase Jarvis: Yeah, you said it so I didn’t have to. But there are some real consequences and I would actually frame it rather than as consequences. I would frame it as a benefit like we can through life just like doing your thing and you can tell yourself a set of stories about, “Oh yeah but I have a mortgage and I have three kids and I don't have any extra time.” And that is part of what I am trying to say. It is like let us look at barriers, what they are and they’re just stories and if you can take 45 seconds to intentionally frame a cute picture of your kid every day.

[0:30:10] CH: And more than that that story is an active creation in itself like you’re mind has spontaneously created a story about why you can’t be a creative person. So what if you intentionally rewrote that story?

[0:30:26] Chase Jarvis: Right and here is another thing, you’re like, “Wait a minute, I was doing it already and it is not adding this benefit that you are saying.” If you are doing it already why does it matter if you identify it as creativity in that moment and it's simple because it is a reminder that you are creating and you are not just creating the meal. It is a reminder that you’re creating your life and that reminder is powerful medicine right? So nothing –

[0:30:49] CH: Yes, totally now you have agency, yeah.

[0:30:52] Chase Jarvis: Yeah, recognizing this little creative moments is identifying as a creator and that ultimately is our vehicle for personal power.

[0:30:59] CH: And you know that is why your book, Creative Calling, which I encourage everyone to get on Amazon now if you haven’t already because we’re barely scratching the surface of the transformative content within. But I know so many people who do feel like life is tossing them around and that they don’t have control and just this simple act of doing it every day, it is one thing you have control over will ripple. It will transform other areas of your life just like you said with your mom. And I love that story but I’d really want to hear some other stories because you have done so many things that have rippled out into creative people’s lives. Obviously CreativeLive is the world’s largest live streaming creative education website, which is crazy. You have interviewed a lot of world’s best creators and entrepreneurs and innovators on your podcast, the Chase Jarvis Live Show and of course you’ve done tons of work with some of the world’s biggest companies. You created the first Instagram app, all of this stuff. So you probably have countless stories of people who have been impacted in their creative lives by you, your work, your legacy, what are the ones that jump out at you?

[0:32:20] Chase Jarvis: Oh man, well I think you hit the nail on the head about the scale and I think I have been very fortunate there. I think it is important to say that I didn’t start out day one trying to have an app that is used by millions of people or CreativeLive, for example. That was built in a teeny little dirty warehouse in South Seattle. It was about 350 square feet and so it’s not like I set out to have this scale and now we got more than 10 million people using the platform. These were small projects and that they have scaled was really a testament to having a love for what you are creating and a focus that helped reach all those people but the cool thing for me about having — well first of all have the guts to listen to the things that I was supposed to be doing in the world and sometimes having the guts comes in moments of trauma, right? So for me, I was caught in an avalanche in Alaska shooting a campaign for Nike and I should be dead by every measure. And that was very transformative, like what am I doing with my life. I need to be creating some of these things and the reality is that that can happen to anyone right? We all have these horrible moments. My grandfather also dropped dead of a heart attack completely unannounced and the silver lining there is that I was given his camera. So at these huge moments we sometimes look back at our life and they are very convenient for that even if they’re traumatic, for taking stock. I am advocating that why would you wait for those moments, you know? Again, this is like I am completely imperfect and the classic example of requiring those big moments to take stock of my life. But I don’t think the listener right now, you don’t have to wait. You can take this action today. So that I have taken some of those actions and that there are millions of people who are using the tools and the platforms that we have made. The cool thing is it’s just basically a stream of stories and you asked for one so I will just give you one. I was in New York yesterday. I met up with a guy by the name of Paul [inaudible] and I will tell you Paul’s story and this is the story that he recounted to me. Paul was living in Ghana and he was paying attention to CreativeLive because he had fallen on hard times and he had to get a job. He was trying to find a way to go to school and I’ll save the incident that pushed him into this direction. But he had to start making money and he wanted to make money in a way that wasn’t manual labor and it wasn’t something he didn’t love and so, he basically sold all of his possessions. His most valuable possession was his phone and he sold his phone and he bought a camera and in order to afford this camera, he started living with the Maasai Tribe basically for free so that he could start telling stories of the people of Africa and you are saying right now, “This is crazy, dude. You don’t have a job and you’re in a hard time, you should go get a dishwashing job somewhere or whatever." But he listened to that voice inside him that gave him this guidance and he was so talented that he really quickly not dissimilar to my mom, discovered this talent that he’d had. He got introduce to CreativeLive and was listening to my podcast, which is free. I didn’t have any money in CreativeLive broadcast all it’s education for free and this is him recounting the story to me. And he is figuring out what he’s supposed to be doing, he is telling stories of local Africans and down the street walks this other guy that he admires. His name is Brandon Stanton. Now Brandon created the site called The Humans of New York, which is Brandon is the most highly visible photographers working today has 30 some odd million fans and followers and also his story is recounted in the book. It is a beautiful story but he is walking down the street, taking pictures. If you don’t know Humans of New York, he takes a picture, get a little vignette and then publishes these stories and he bumps into Paul. Now Paul knows Brandon because he’s been on my podcast and on CreativeLive. He says, “Oh my god this is amazing.” Tells this beautiful story of his experience that I don’t want to go too deep recounting, but Brandon, he calls me. I am on the West Coast. I’m San Francisco, my phone rings at 4:30 in the morning and I’m like, “Dude what are you doing?” And I would normally roll over but I just looked at my phone and I am like, “Okay what is going on here. This must mean something.” Because he knows where in the world I am. I answered the phone. He’s like, “I am standing in Ghana with a guy named Paul who says you’ve transformed his life and what I am going to do is I am going to find a way to connect you guys.” And I was like, “Tell Paul I will do anything for him. Tell him he’s got CreativeLive a full subscription for life.” And he’s like, “This guy is also an amazing photographer.” So short story long, I started mentoring him from afar. Brandon did a post, we both wrote letters to the ICP and just got him a scholarship, got him out of Africa now he is attending the International Center for Photography in New York and a full scholarship. Brandon is actually supporting, through the Humans of New York Patreon, is supporting Paul and I met him yesterday. It was like there wasn’t a dry eye. It was so amazing to have Paul be at what was a low point in his life, to have him turn to his creativity, especially in a world where everyone else was steering towards something that was practical and safe and all of those other things that awe have all been told and not only did it unlock his own personal creativity in the agency but it completely transformed his life and now he is living in New York going to ICP, studying photo journalism with some of the best photo journalists in the world. And he is going to go on to tell the most amazing stories of Africa. That is what he wants to do from someone who lives there as opposed to these National Geographic photographers sort of parachuting in to tell the story. So whether it is my mom at 70 years old in suburban Seattle or Paul in the middle of Africa or even Brandon’s story is super powerful. He figured out Humans of New York, he was fired from his job as a bond trader in Chicago. He said, “I got one life, I need to spend my time how I want. I moved to New York, started taking pictures every day.” And now, every time he puts a book out it goes straight to number one. He has given I think that maybe it’s tens of millions, certainly millions and millions of dollars to charity and he has the life that he wants from a daily practice, taking photographs of strangers on the streets of New York. So whether you are 16 or 60, I do have this huge luxury of the medicine that I am dolling out, I think it is very powerful and it’s so available and we all need it, like human connection is more critical now than ever before in a time where we’re divided. Creativity has the power to connect us, right? The work and the process, they ground us into who we are and I can tell you a hundred stories because I get them all the time but I think even if you go to creativelive.com/stories there is a bunch of videos of people that we come in contact with and try to share their stories. So I will stop telling stories because I could go on all day. I think the meta point is that this isn’t about necessarily me or the book or my work, it is about the power of creativity to transform our lives in ways that we can’t expect by a simple daily practice.

[0:39:07] CH: It’s beautiful man. I could listen to you for a long, long time and your work has impacted me. I look up to you as one of the people on the interweb and of course, we’re friends but I follow you from afar and the way you live is a huge inspiration to me, personally. So I want to thank you so much for just being you and having the courage to pursue what you are doing and to share your creative abilities and tools and everything with everyone else.

[0:39:38] Chase Jarvis: Well thank you so much man. I want to make sure that people at home who are listening writing a book and writing this book, it took everything I had and sometimes we do go all out for our creative passions not required but at some point when you muscles are strong and it felt all the same fears that you feel about being judged and about putting your creativity out in the world. I am living those right now. It never goes away. It really doesn’t and I think that there is actually power in this idea. In the end the question is this, "Are you willing to choose creativity or are you going to betray yourself?" You know the should’s never go away you know maybe what is on that list of should it changes as you grow older but it never goes away and even though I am a lifelong creator, you know listed a bunch of the things that I’ve put out into the world, I still have to fight for that eight year old creator in me every day. And so this isn’t something that goes away. I just think that it is worth the fight, it is worth the effort.

[0:40:40] CH: Beautifully said. Two final quick questions for you Chase, the first is how can our listeners follow you, connect with you, maybe share a story of how your work has impacted them?

[0:40:51] Chase Jarvis: Ooh I would love to hear people’s stories that would be so amazing. If you get the book or you listen to the podcast or a screenshot and I love to share that stuff and I love to share anything that you want to share with me or if you don’t want me to share it, I am fine not. The way to do that is I am basically just Chase Jarvis, my full name on all the platforms on Insta, Twitter, YouTube, that is my handle, you can get the book at anywhere books are sold. Your favorite retailers, either physical or online. Pre-orders really matter, so I know that you are one of that handful of podcasts to get to drop this early. So I appreciate you all checking that out and of course, check out CreativeLive. They are just CreativeLive on all the social media handles and at the website there is more than 10,000 hours from people like Charlie and Tim Ferris and Brené Brown and Daymond John and a lot of the folks that we have talked about here or that I think are inspirators to all of us. You know there is a thousand people who teach on the platform and that’s all characters like that. So you can get a subscription or you can just learn for free there as well. So I think that is probably all the coordinates that I would give out.

[0:41:51] CH: Love it and the final question is to really hammer this home for listeners, give our listeners a challenge. What is the one thing that they can do from your book this week that will have a positive impact on their life?

[0:42:07] Chase Jarvis: Start now. Even if you identify as a creator, great. Then I find that some of us aren’t actually creating because I identify as a creator and I lose my creative streak lots of times. I would just say start. If you’re disconnected from your own creativity for even just a moment you’re creative curious maybe what we talked about today is resonant with you and it doesn’t require that you drop everything. It doesn’t require that you abandon your family or lifestyle. There is no such thing as the poor starving artist, that it is not real. I would say start creating in small lightweight ways. Tonight when you make dinner think about it and just import just a creative twist that you might not have otherwise do. If you are taking a picture, take more than one. Take three and four and frame them in a couple of different ways and I would encourage you to do that every day for a couple of days and then think about that moment every time you step into it how does it feel and do you realize that you have agency not just to create that photograph but to create your life.

[0:43:01] CH: The book is Creative Calling. You can get it on Amazon and in stores. Chase Jarvis, thank you so much for being on the show, my friend.

[0:43:09] Chase Jarvis: It’s a treat. I love the show. I am a huge fan of your work. I have told you before in person and very publicly on my podcast that Play It Away that changed my life and so keep doing what you are doing. It is an honor to be a part of your tribe. But thank you.

[0:43:22] CH: Thanks so much again to Chase Jarvis for being on the show. You can buy his book, Creative Calling, on amazon.com. Be sure to check out authorhour.co for show notes and a transcript of this episode and take a second to leave us a review on iTunes. It means a lot.