Why ‘Playing It Safe’ Is Keeping You BROKE and STUCK | Chase Jarvis Interview

Alright everybody, welcome to another YouTube Hangout. Super excited to be here. I have a special, very special guest with me. He is a photographer, uh, some consider one of the best photographers in the world. He is an entrepreneur, launched an amazing company called CreativeLive. You can check it out, creativelive.com. We linked it up below. Uh, it started off just trying to help photographers learn how to set their business up and now has expanded to other creatives entrepreneurs and giving them the tools they need and the education they need to succeed. Uh, tons of free classes and also paid ones on there too. And he's the creator of, uh, one of the only business YouTube channels that I subscribe to. Uh, I made an accidental guest cameo appearance on it once too in the Seattle airport, kind of randomly. Uh, and this— he started a series of web series called the 30 Days of Genius, which if you guys haven't seen, it's much must watch. YouTube content for all you entrepreneurs who want to be entrepreneurs out there. I highly recommend checking it out. I warn you though, you're going to be sad when it's over. It's going to be a void in your heart that you have to go out and now find something new to get inspired by. Mr. Chase Jarvis, welcome aboard, man.

Thank you so much for having me, Evan. That was a really funny moment to bump into you at the Seattle airport. I just happened to be vlogging. For the folks at home, I was just— I was vlogging on my iPhone camera. The flight had been delayed and I travel a lot, so I knew the gate agent. She's like, "Oh, Chase, we're—" And I was joking around with her, and then you walked up and was like, "Hey, you're Chase!" And I was like, we had a nice little moment there. It was great. So you made it in the vlog, and it's fun to be on your channel now.

Thanks a lot. Yeah, that was a cool moment. I was just heading, I was doing a deal with Microsoft and just heading back to Toronto, and I guess you were on your way, like a gate over on your way to San Francisco. So it was a good little happy moment there. Indeed. So, you know, at that time I was watching your YouTube channel and I was a fan, and I'm not into photography, it's not really my thing, and so I watched most of your videos, the ones that were like heavy on the gear, you know, wasn't really my thing, but I loved all the business advice you were giving and the behind the scenes and the vlogs and all that, and that's why, like I said, hi, you know, fan of what you're doing. And then you like, then you dropped the bomb, the value bomb, the 30 Days of Genius, and it's like, now it's like must-watch, YouTube and I'm tuning in. I watched every episode, they're all amazing, and you can tell like your curiosity and the questions you asked. And I mean, it must have been a lot of fun for you doing that series too. I'm wondering what, like, what inspired that series for you to want to take that leap? There's a big change from what you're, you're doing already on your YouTube channel.

Sure, uh, I think in order to understand the 30 Days of Genius, there's a sort of deconstructing my world is important. Curiosity is at the core of what I think, you know, amazing— you know, where creativity comes from and actually where great entrepreneurship comes from as well. It's the desire to solve problems, ideally your problems, things that challenge you so that when stuff gets hard, and it always does building businesses or lives that you want, that you have energy and motivation to push through those hard times. And that's why you work on your problems and the problems of your close, you know, posse of friends as opposed to some other random market opportunity. And so in the process of becoming a photographer and director and building an audience and getting to work for many of the world's top brands in doing so, I really realized that people were so much the key that were unlocking things for me, people that I would randomly meet. And I had the good fortune of building up a great career in that space. And one of the things that I didn't know that I do now, and I'm trying to share, is that at the apex or at the top of a lot of different industries, people in industries are friends with other people in other industries at their sort of their same peer level. And when I started, you know, photographing celebrities and learning from other, you know, world-class entrepreneurs, just because they were— became to be in my friend circle, I was like, God, how can we start to share these secrets? And so back in 2011, I developed a web series called Chase Jarvis Live, where I'd sit down with people that were really inspirational to me and have— this is before podcasting was big, you know, and I'd record an hour and a half long show and it's beautifully shot, it's all black and white, all in HD, multiple cameras. We'd stream it live and we'd, you know, have really big audiences. Started putting those on YouTube. And so When my life got really busy and chaotic, probably about 2 years ago, it's always been a hustle and a grind, but I took a little bit of a break from that series thinking about how can I reinvent it but at the next level. And over the course of those 2 years, I had become friends with some folks that I was excited to have on the show, and I thought, what would be different? Maybe we could just package all these up in like a knowledge bomb. I spent 45 days interviewing 30 people who, again, Richard Branson, Mark Cuban, Arianna Huffington, Jared Leto, Katerina Fake, founder of Flickr, just an insane posse of people that I was running around with. I just wanted to put them in one place so you could press one button, and if you go to creativelive.com/genius, you push one button and you get all 30 of these interviews for free, and it was when I was flying around doing that web series is when I bumped into you. So the idea was always there, it was always a part of my ecosystem trying to share the secrets. And secrets is a little bit weird because I don't know if they're all secrets, but when you start to— when you listen to so many people who have built amazing lives and careers that they love, there's a lot of common threads, and I wanted to sort of surface those common threads for anyone who wanted to sort of tap into that for themselves.

I love it. Well, speaking on behalf of entrepreneurs, it was a great service to the community, as was the, the Drivers Live stuff. That, I mean, that was all amazing too. And the GaryVee, like, back in the day, and Chris Gilmore, like, all those old-school ones are fantastic to watch too. Thank you. I'm curious, and there are a lot of threads that come up, and a lot of out of your curiosity of people's routines and their mindset and their beliefs. I'm curious from you sitting down with these guys, what, what did you learn either like that cemented an intuition that you already had because you heard it so many times with people, or something new that was not really on your radar that now you start acting and thinking a little bit differently from going through all these interviews?

Gosh, it's a great question. I think if I'm just like 3 AM sitting in your bed all by yourself honest, it is that there's this very powerful thing inside all of us and particularly, you know, using as you suggested those 30 people as an example, there's this belief in your intuition. Like, I have the answers in here. Sure, I should look for other things out there in the world for market ideas and things like that, but things that I care about, that I'm willing to push through when stuff gets hard, problems that I want to solve, and the way that I think the world should be. When you start to think about what you know and trust what you have inside of you, I feel like that's a— you're going to hear so much negativity and so many nos, and there's always a reason not to do something, But each of the people in 30 Days of Genius, they had this very strong sense, and sometimes they didn't always have it, they had to work to develop it, sense of what they wanted the world to look like. And I know you're a Jobs fan, I can see him over your right shoulder right there on the wall behind you. Steve Jobs said that the things around us, these were invented by nobody, you know, this remote control, these records, this TV, they were all invented by someone no smarter than you are, and they're just people who decided that they were going to make the world in the shape that they wanted it to be in, rather than be a cork in the tide of the world that everyone creates around them. And that was a very common thread in 30 Days of Genius, is the willingness to sort of take chances and try and shape your world rather than be shaped. I love it.

I love that clip too. That Jobs clip was awesome, and it's actually in my music playlist that pops up every now and then just as a reminder. Um, what— so to that topic of intuition, we've had people in the chat talking about some of the things that they want to do, but they're afraid. I'm wondering for you, how did you— maybe like in the earliest days, because it's a muscle that you build and you start getting used to it, and as, as it works out, then it's easy to trust it again. But in those early days when you're not sure and you have pressures and bills and family may not support you and all, you know, all that stuff that photographers and artists and creators have to go to. How do you, for that first time, get the confidence to trust the intuition muscle?

Well, first of all, it's important to know that we all have those things. And even people that you look at and say, my God, there's no way that person has a fearful bone in their body. People are either so ego-driven or so, like, willing to do whatever it takes That is a learned behavior. That is not something that you just walk out of, you know, whatever, 6th grade with. It's something that you get comfortable with. And then, you know, so the follow-on is, well, then how do you get comfortable? And for me, and again, a pattern that I saw in, you know, friends like Tim Ferriss and Gary Vee and Swiss Miss and others. Was that they started small. There was— the risks were small, and you got comfortable with putting yourself out there. You know, for Gary Vee, was selling baseball cards. He'd sit there and he'd, you know, try and hustle someone for an extra $50 on this, you know, this— I don't know, a Ron Jaworski card from 1978 or something. And and then you learn about, you know, the dynamic between fear and being rejected and being accepted. And, uh, you do that enough times in a low-weight circumstance and you can get comfortable. For me, it was the same way. It started out with like putting out, sharing with photographs and saying, yep, first of all, when everyone else around me— I dropped out of medical school, bailed on a career in professional soccer, and, uh, dropped out of a PhD in philosophy to become a photographer. If you don't think my parents were just totally like freaked out by that, you're crazy. They were, and yet the first step was actually calling myself a photographer, saying that I wanted to do this. And that was a big, you know, overcoming a bunch of fear there. When you think about what's the real fear, well, I'm probably not going to get shunned for just saying I want to be a photographer. So I said it quietly at first, then a little bit louder, and then I started showing pictures, and then one picture and two pictures. And you can see without me explicating the whole the whole timeline, how you could literally develop the muscle as you referred to it as. So starting small, failing on the regular, achieving some degree of success even if it's only amongst your peer group, and then trying to expand that. And that's where the 10,000 hours comes from that you've all heard about. It's because you have to develop that muscle over so much time that that's where that it's, it's, that's 10,000 hours of not just mastering your craft, but being willing to put put it out there.

For the people who have gotten past that first step and have started to become a photographer or a painter or whatever creative— Sure, or build a business, right? Right, entrepreneur. For the people who've done that but then can't really get their foothold in, how do you go, so like moving to that next step of being a photographer and calling yourself a photographer and like maybe getting your first paid gigs and maybe getting enough just to pay the internet bills and, you know, mac and cheese and whatever, uh, to get to the point where you are being, you know, recognized worldwide and winning awards and being at the top of your field, what are the lessons that you think need to be applied? Is it just mastering your craft? Is it differentiating yourself? Is it just working harder? How does, how does somebody become the next Chase Jarvis of their field?

I think it— I love the question because I do look at those as different things. One, like stress, like finding that stress muscle and realizing that, you know, that's how muscles, like literally muscles grow is from stressing and sort of you've got to break them down to make them stronger. Um, so once you can get through that initial phase that we just discussed, the next phase, it, it very much is around— I think I can center it on one thing for me, and that's assuming you're great at your craft, that you flex your muscles enough to, to be recognized as you have mastery of a thing. That at that point it becomes how can you be different, not just better. And whether that's the way you see the world, whether that's the project that you're working on, whether it's what your aspirations— like let's talk about Travis from Uber. He's a friend and he came to me and he had some initial success in San Francisco and he said, I want to move this service to Seattle, can you help me introduce some people? And I was like, I I don't even know what you're working on, like talk to me about it, bud. And the capability, the capacity for thinking different and thinking big was so clear with Travis that there's sort of this desire to want to be a part of that movement. And in order to, you know, you've probably heard the saying also that it's hard to get where you're going if you don't know where you want to go. Right. If you just walk in the woods, you know, are you If you don't have a destination, it's probably, you know, you're not going to arrive at that destination. So it is a matter of how can I, you know, and also the Apple slogan, think different. Like it really is about different and standing out. Standing out is one way. Thinking big is another way. That's why I collapse it all into how do you be different, not just better, because at the very top, pro golfers or like musicianship, the difference between the best and the next best is like You can't even measure it. But who's doing their own thing, who has a vision that's radically different and they see the world through a lens that no one else sees, that is what people can notice and say, oh my gosh, I had a vision of— one of the things I did was create the first iPhone app that shared photos to social networks. It was called Best Camera, a year and a half before Instagram and Path and all that stuff. And it was radical for me as a professional photographer who had hundreds of thousands of dollars in gear and traveled all over the world for the the Apples and the Nikes to take pictures, to say, I believe in this device, this iPhone, to take pictures because it's the best camera is the one that's with you. And that was radical. So that was, that was a different thing. And I think the same thing applies to the folks at home. What is it that you really care about? And what's a lens that you have on the world that comes from in here that is different?

How would you articulate the Chase Jarvis difference? Because at the top of the field, like, there may be guys who are even better technically trained than, you know, than you do, than you are, but you stood out. You, you won where other guys didn't, or they just mold— they just meld into each other because they're all the same. I know it's hard because it's a creative thing, but how do you express that, the Chase Jarvis difference?

I think, well, maybe we can just look at a couple of the milestones and then extrapolate some things. I don't know, just as a road answer, I don't have it, but For example, with photography, for me, it wasn't just about bringing the craft of photography to life. It was doing it, and for me, my interest at that time was in action sports photography. I was, you know, skate, surf, snowboard, and so to take pictures and document that culture, myself and my peers doing some of the most radical things. Like, all my friends invented all the shit that we see on TV now. Wingsuit jumping, BASE jumping, you know, first ascents in Alaska, jumping out of helicopters. Those were things that were— that I was a part of that movement, and I know there weren't too many people who knew how to use a camera that could go and document that thing. So that was again a very personal experience that I was having, and I brought the craft of photography to it. So that allowed me to be different in photography. And then I started thinking about, you know, the phone and how that could be thought of as the fact that you always had this camera with you, and that was Totally radical. No one— I mean, this was when I started taking pictures with this thing, and before that it was my Palm Pilot, and before that was my Razr flip phone. Like, what? Wait a minute, you think this is interesting? And to me it was fascinating because you thought that as a photographer you'd be bringing, you know, what's the fanciest new camera. But the fact that you always have this with you, to me, was something that was totally different. Sure enough, I stood out, and that allowed me to tap into photography plus technology and community, because this is the way that I was able to scale community. Then the same thing is true as we move forward and think about CreativeLive. There were education platforms starting on the internet, but none of them were giving their stuff away for free. It was all behind a paywall. That's why we developed this revolutionary business model where anyone in the world could watch for free while we were making the content live. and you only had to buy the content if you wanted anytime access to it. And so we were having classes that had 150,000 people in them. Wow. Yeah, literally the world's largest classes because we had this open access freemium model. And all of those were a piece of my DNA plus some idea that was radically different from what the status quo was at the time. So if you look at those 3 things as a couple of milestones, I think it is— what I stand for is sort of disrupting the status quo in whatever the thing is that I'm interested in. In action sports, it was bringing a camera where the cameras hadn't been before. In technology, it was using a tool that hadn't been used to express oneself. With CreativeLive, it's providing access to the world's top experts basically for free. There's a little business model in there. Who does that? Who connects Jared Leto with millions of people all over the world because you think you should have access to the knowledge that's in Jared's head? I don't know. I think it's just this passion for flying in the face of whatever the status quo is, maybe.

I like it. Also not like boxing yourself in to say, "Hey, I'm a photographer." You know, like what kind of photographer goes out and creates this educational company?

Right. It's been, and it's a very, very interesting pathway for me personally, like on this journey. As soon as I figured something out, I think there's a couple of nuggets that I also saw in 30 Days of Genius. Um, and it's everybody who I admired recognized and understood that they were a hyphen. And so as you just said, I used to identify as a photographer, you know, then I started becoming a director and then I was a software developer and then I was an entrepreneur and now I'm, you know, a speaker and an advisor and an investor. And so we're all a bunch of hyphens. And I saw that as a common theme across the 30 Days of Genius people. And then when I deconstructed that, just, you know, alone in my 3:00 AM head, Like they all went really deep in one thing. That's where they spent their 10,000 hours becoming world-class. And then what they did is they deconstructed what it took. What were the common things in being great at this thing? And lo and behold, you can apply those sort of across the board to many other things. It's not on a tactical basis, but on a conceptual strategic basis. You know, they say it's all who you know, it's not what you know. Well, that's not the case because you have to know a lot, but knowing people who are doing amazing stuff in your industry is absolutely critical to becoming great in that industry. So if you're the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with, you better start spending your time with some quality people. Like, that was a really common theme. So I like— I think, you know, that's probably a fair way of looking at A, you know, what distinguished me from my peers, and B, how can the folks at home apply it to their own world. Get great at a thing, because you're never going to be able to move all the balls forward all the time. So focus a little bit, but then, God, we are all so many different things. You know, we are. And you don't have to any longer go to work for one company, get the gold watch 40 years later. It's not how it is. Right.

And I think you said this in maybe every episode of the show, of, what was it, our parents had one job for their lives and we have 5 jobs and the next generation has 5 jobs all at once. Something like that. Yes. 5 or 10 or something like that.

Yeah, you got it.

Yeah, you can tell I watched them all, man.

So— Yeah, that's beautiful.

And I think it's good to have a hard time explaining what you do. Like if somebody asks you, what do you do, and you can just, nail it, I think you're not really living enough. That should be a terrible question. It's true.

It's true. And I think, you know, having an answer that has some intrigue because you can't— not intrigue because like I'm a basket weaving snake charmer, but having an interest because there is like, it's real. You're not giving the sort of the rote answer To me, there's also value in there. There's integrity and honesty that are underpinning that. Yeah. And I think that's just an indication of where we're going for sure, not where we've been.

Right. So 30 days is over. You know, as I said, you left a huge crater now, void of content. Are you— like, is this going to come back? Is there something you want to drop to, you know, give us some hope that there's more content coming? You know, give us a little bit of fuel? What's next? What's coming? Sure, sure.

So that 30 Days of Genius series is part of the Chase Jarvis Live show that's been going on for years, and now that's all produced by CreativeLive. So basically, I'm going to keep doing these shows. It's a podcast now, so you can go to iTunes.com/chasejarvis. And subscribe and all of the videos that are at creativelive.com/genius are available via podcast. But you're going to see more of those, an increased frequency, and I think most importantly is a lot of the concepts that are like, that's like the wet your palate, like, oh my gosh, now I know how Branson did this, or Gary Vee did that, or Arianna Huffington did the other thing. And at CreativeLive, there's a platform of 10,000 hours of educational content by people like, by those people and other creators like them at that level who've actually done the work where you can go in and learn the skills that you'll be teased with in the Chase Jarvis Live interviews, these sort of long-form interviews with amazing amazing people.

Alright, I'm going to look out, I got my eyes peeled.

Actually, I should text, I was asking my team to set up a special discount for your viewers. Okay. Where they could tap into CreativeLive and I got them a 25% off if they go to creativelive.com, I think it's /Evan. Okay. creativelive.com/Evan, I'm going to check that out real quick here, maybe, I don't know if you're on a computer, if you can type it up.

Creativelive.com/Evan. We don't have that linked up, but I'll make sure to add it to the notes after for people to want to check it out. Or if it's some other link, then let me know too. We'll pop it in. That's it.

creativelive.com/Evan. Lowercase or uppercase E? Lowercase. I think it'll work with anything I try and make.

Oh, is it? Okay. Okay, okay, cool. Well, I appreciate that. I'm going to check it out too. Of course. So you've got a bunch of fans already. We got, you know, a live audience here and people know you and watch the show and you got some mega fans and some new fans, so I want to address some of their questions. Carl is writing in about CreativeLive. I would love to know what talent categories and types of content you're working and looking for right now.

Great. So, yeah, right now, if you go to CreativeLive today, we operate in, in 5 what we call channels: photo, video, art design, music and audio, craft and maker, and money and life. Now money and life is basically the ability to have a living and a life in any one of those things. So it's business and personal health development, things like public speaking, leadership, all that stuff. So we feel like we've got our hands tied and a lot of work cut out for us just focused on being the best in the world at each of those categories. The reality is there's so many subtleties in there. There's, you know, hundreds if not thousands of hours of content underneath each of those channels and, you know, more than 25,000 lessons. So the reality is we are focused on those things, and yet at the same time there's so many things like health and wellness and yoga and all that stuff that's embedded in that money and life category So when we think about talent and we think about where our focus is, it's in those channels, and I don't see it changing anytime in the near future because we have a lot of work to do still.

Right. Is there anything within those sub-channels that you feel like, I'd love to get this type of content addressed? Hmm.

We're doing a lot with video because video is, as we know, such a powerful an always emerging medium, a lot of social, like how to use video for building brands, and whether it's personal brands or business brands, and a lot of the softer skills like the emotional intelligence, like body language and stuff like that. Those are areas where we're gonna continue to invest. I think we're the best in the world, the best place in the world to get an education in photography, rapidly achieving that in design. We just had Debbie Millman We've had Stefan Sagmeister, we've got Michael Beirut in the next couple of weeks. These are just like the Michael Jordans, the best of the best in those categories. And yet I feel like we're just getting started in money and life. And that's where folks like Tim Ferriss and Ryan Holiday and Kelly Starrett, other folks who have big YouTube followings and whatnot, that's where their content is living. I think that is an area of growth for us for sure.

Cool. I like the YouTube stuff. I'm going to keep my eyes open there.

I'll drop one other nugget here, which is, I've just— well, basically Starbucks is underwriting a series of documentaries that I'm making. The series is called Uploaded, and if you go to YouTube.com/DoubleShot, Basically, I just launched the first one. Another one drops on Saturday, another one drops the following Saturday, and it looks like that series is likely going to continue. And these are with people who have millions of YouTube subscribers, and it's their story arc about everyone who told them no and how they couldn't do it. And, and so there's a lot in there in those little documentaries about personal brand, about overcoming obstacles, about the world is going to tell you that your dream isn't good enough. Or it's too big or not big enough. It's too square or not square enough. It's too racy or not racy enough. You're going to get all this feedback and you see that these through lines of just overcoming these obstacles, it's a powerful thing. So check that out too. It's worthy of a subscribe. I think, I know, if you're like me, you're very, um, you're very precious with subscribing because we want to keep that signal-to-noise ratio low. I believe this will add value to you guys' lives.

So where am I going for this one? What, it's off Starbucks channel?

Yeah, it's a YouTube channel that we just started for Starbucks called youtube.com/doubleshot. Doubleshot, okay.

Oh, that actually ties into our next question. Great. Let's follow up. So this is from J Rize. Evan has a photo of Howard Schultz on his wall. That's true. There he is. Mr. Starbucks right there. And Chase seems to have hooked up with Starbucks Double Shot for Uploaded. This, this is timed really well here. How did that Starbucks collab come to life?

Great, great question. So a friend of mine, Jason, owns an ad agency called Mekanism, Mekanism with a K. Incredible agency. They do They work with everybody from the White House to the biggest brands, they do Super Bowl commercials, and they have an influencer network called Epic Signal that another friend of mine, Brendan, started. It's sort of like an agency within an agency. One of my favorite things about this sort of new world order where we can all sort of pursue our passions and whatnot is when you do that and you achieve some level of recognition, people call you, the phone rings. And so the phone rings and you develop relationships, and this relationship I have with Epic and Mekanism, they're often getting pitched or pitching different brands on concepts. Starbucks came to them and said, we'd love to do something within the YouTube community and around storytelling. And so immediately Mekanism and Epic reached out and said, you know, you're a host. You know, I basically host things too, given that I've sat down and interviewed so many, you know, world-class people, I enjoy that very much. They said, "God, you have that, you have that, so would you be interested in hosting and directing this series?" So they put us together, and I will, you know, I really applaud brands that put, that invest money into creators to create things. That will add value to the community. Because we, you know, as a career-long photographer and director, people will pay me to create some advertising asset for them. You know, a photograph that shows someone sipping a nice cup of coffee, but this new world order, and I really got to give Starbucks, you know, a shout out for this. They're like, Chase, here's some money. Go tell stories that inspire other people to follow their dreams. And we're just going to underwrite it. And like, we're just going to like, you know, just support it. And of course we'll hope to get people that thinking that Starbucks is cool because that's where otherwise they wouldn't spend the money, but they're spending the money on inspiring and motivating people to live the dream. And to me, that's a— there are so few brands that have done that. And of course it's getting more popular, but I got to give them a shout out because it's not cheap to do these things. And it's, It's something where there's a lot of passion and they have to get out of the way, you know?

Kind of sounds like almost a mini 30 Days of Genius focused on YouTubers. Focused on YouTubers. It's—

there you go. You said it, not me, but it's very— you know, and again, that's like you put something out there, like I put 30 Days of Genius out there and people look at it like, wow, what would that be like if we thought about it through the lens of YouTube? And I'm sure that's one of the reasons that they contacted me. Interested me. So if there was ever a question if you should do work, yeah, you should do work that you love doing because that's what people are going to see. And if you want to get hired to do that work, you have to put it out there in the world in the first place. So you want to sell lemonade? Well, build a lemonade stand, sell some lemonade, and then maybe someone else will come along and say, hey, we'd like you to sell Arnold Palmers. We're going to combine lemonade and iced tea, you know, whatever. But yes, it is, you know, and I appreciate the question from— I forget who asked it, but J-Rise. Yeah, J-Rise. Like these things, they really come up really authentically, and it's cool when you get someone who's willing to spend the money to support creators, you know. Yeah, I feel fortunate to be selected for the job.

Have you enjoyed the transition to being in front of the camera now?

Oh, I have I have enjoyed— I think there is a part of my personality. If I take an Enneagram study, I don't know if you've heard of the Enneagrams, it's like personality traits. I often end up as Performer. I don't really think of myself as someone who wants to sing and dance, but although I like those things, but I enjoy, I enjoy I'm comfortable enough in front of people that I feel like I can help peel back some of the layers of the onion and to do it rather publicly, whether it's my own layers or layers that I see out in pop culture. Um, so I look at being in front of the camera not as an end, but as a means to helping. Like, that's where I get my juices, by helping people live their dreams, because it was very, very hard. I feel like I came from I mean, middle class, lower middle class, but relatively speaking, privileged, you know. I mean, despite the fact that my family didn't have a lot of money, there was all kinds of things I didn't have to overcome. Like, I was born into a race that has privilege, into a country where relative to many other countries we have privilege. And so even though I was sort of poor, I don't take that for granted for a second. I try and, you know, stay hungry and stay humble. But when I realized that holy smokes, if it was hard for me to pursue my passion because of all the social pressures, and you mentioned having kids and mortgages and what you need to be in life, how hard would it be if you had all of those things plus a bunch of other stuff? So God, I needed to get out there, and it's been so fulfilling to to track and hustle around the things that I wanted to be and do, that I would be great if I could give that same gift to others. And so if I can be in front of the camera to pursue that mission, happy to do it. I don't just aspire to get up there and sing and dance, but I'm willing to do the work because I think it leads to a good end.

Jim Collins did an awesome speech talking about leadership, and one of the things that he said had common traits was humbleness for the cause, and that you would do anything for the cause. You may not think of Steve Jobs as a humble guy, but he would humble himself for the cause. So like, I need this to happen, I will do whatever it takes for it to happen. And a part of that for you is like getting out there and being in front of the camera.

Um, for sure, you know, whatever anxiety or native It's more native for me to be back here, but I have decided to love being on the other side and entertaining, because if I can provide an entertaining lens on pursuing your dreams, God, it's given me so much, and I want you and you and you and you and you to tap into that too.

Well, whatever anxiety and nerves you have about doing that, I would encourage you to continue because it's having an impact, uh, and, and really, I mean, you see it on the comments, you see the comments in your videos, and, and you know, it's touching people. But, uh, people are waiting for your next move, man. And so you can count me in, whatever it is. I'm gonna check out the Double Shot. I'm gonna check that out. Anything else, um, you can always count on me to check it out. Um, thank you. I know we're kind of hitting up against the clock. Uh, the people watching here are kind of the same target audience. They're creatives, they're entrepreneurs, they're aspiring entrepreneurs. Is there a final message that you want to leave them with?

I would talk their ear off if I was in the same room as them. I would just keep going. But since our time is limited, I think that thing inside you that you want to do, that's the thing that you should do. And chances are there's a story that you're telling yourself about why you can't or why it's hard. And if you can step back just for a second, whether through meditation or self-awareness or actually just listening to the words and then walking away from this video and like think like, what really is keeping me from doing that? Oh, I've got a mortgage. Okay. Do I need to be in that big house? Can I downsize? Oh, it's my kids. Well, you're certainly not going to like, the kids aren't going to go live on the street. So can you sit down with the family and say, look, I really want to pursue this. How can we mitigate the risk? Are you proactively doing those things? Because at the end of the day, what I found across the board, having ultimately been a career counselor to millions of people, is that the distance between where you are right now and where you want to be, living whatever life that is, it's much shorter than you think it is. You wake up and we've got that 3 AM crocodile brain that's telling us how bad we're doing and how far away everything is and how hard everything is. But if you stepped away from that and just did an honest assessment and wrote down as few steps as you could, the distance is always shorter than you think it is. So, um, I don't know about you, Evan. It seems to me like you're living your passion and you've created a living and a life for yourself around this. Um, so I'd hope you'd join me in this, but I think it's fair to say that, that there are a lot of barriers between you and that thing. But as soon as you realize that those barriers are there to keep everybody else out, It will free you up to go after your dreams.

I love it. The barriers are there just to keep everyone else out. I like that. I like that. I'm going to use that and credit you back, Mr. Chase Jarvis. You got it. Cool. Well, thank you so much for the time. Thank you all you guys for watching. Go check out CreativeLive, I guess, slash Evan now if you want the discount. Check out the 30 Days of Genius. We'll link that up and the new Double Shot. I'll put that in the description too. Um, really appreciate your time, Chase. Guys watching, continue to believe, and we'll see you soon.

Thanks a lot, appreciate it, man.