Increase Risk Tolerance and Embrace Failure as Part of Success with Chase Jarvis
Transcript of an Earn Your Happy podcast episode (Lori Harder interviewing Chase Jarvis). Jarvis promotes his book Never Play It Safe and argues that growth requires embracing risk, practicing small experiments, learning from failure, and developing inner tools like attention and intuition. He shares personal stories (childhood classroom suppression, abandoning soccer/medical tracks, founding CreativeLive) to illustrate how betraying oneself and taking calculated risks lead to fulfillment.
Chapters
I think the most important thing is that we have to sign up for the journey. Like, that's the only place you get the stuff that you're looking for. We can't make these decisions. We can't tap into the feelings of the life that we want from the couch. It's about action over intellect and a willingness. There's a formula for how we can do this thoughtfully, meaningfully, to access again all of the best stuff in our lives. Foreign.
Welcome back to the earn your happy podcast.
I am so happy to be here to be with you again. I love it. I'm grateful. Everybody out there, how you doing? I hope you're well.
Well, this is your right audience because we are a bunch of entrepreneurs, want to be entrepreneurs, creatives. We struggle to integrate. We just want to create. We want to be bold.
These are my people.
Daring, but we're afraid to be a lot of times. So, you know, your last book, creative Calling, was so much fun to chat about.
Thank you.
And I honestly am even more excited for this next one because, man, well, it is the thing. Let's talk about it. You're so excited to be done writing.
Yes.
Tell me, tell me how. Tell me why, like, why this book.
After the last one, it was a. The sophomore experience. Right. I guess the. My first word book was creative calling. It did great. It had been, you know, brewing inside me for a long time. And this second book, the second word book, it's called Never play it safe. It's about how all the best things in life are on the other side of our comfort zone, on the other side of fear, on the other side of risk. And, you know, culturally, we are taught to play it safe rather than given a roadmap on how to get to all the best stuff. So that's what this book is about. And it. It is born of the school of hard knocks. And I, like you, have a podcast and have, you know, whatever, had a thousand guests and built a bunch of things and learned a bunch of lessons and straight up, like, I've, you know, betrayed who I truly am at my heart and soul lots of times. And I've learned a lot of lessons about that. And it turns out that there's actually a pattern in how to find your way back to yourself and to unlock all of the. The best stuff in life and the best parts of ourselves. And I've discovered that just enough to be dangerous to help other people experience, but mostly through historical research. And, you know, we have a lot of mutual friends who I think we can both Agree are absolutely world class in so many things and to be able to learn from them. This book is super well timed. I. I think just culturally, right. We are at a time where there's a lot of hollow inspiration out there and not a lot of substance. And so to me, there was a little. This little space where I could step in and help people understand how to get to all the best stuff that you see on the Internet. Because there is, There is a blueprint for doing that.
So good. I was just talking to someone who has teenagers and she was saying, she's like, it's. It's such a beautiful time to be alive for them and a tough time because they, they don't see like all of the hard work that goes into it and all of just like the relationship building and the time that it takes and all of the things behind it because it's just such an instant social media. We just think it happens like that. You know, one of the things that you said that I love because I resonate with it so much as you said, you know, you spent a lot of time, like, betraying yourself to figure it out.
Yeah.
Can you tell me about maybe a story that. That was one of the first things that you realize that you're like, oh, I feel this way because I'm actually like, denying a part of myself.
Well, I'm gonna give one short story and go all the way back to second grade.
I was where this stuff starts.
It is Ms. Kelly's class. I had the summer routine, first and second grade. I actually made a film. I screened it. I sold, you know, candy and concessions. It was a profitable film, if you can believe it. So I roll into second grade feeling pretty dang good about myself. And I had a magic show, I had a standup comedy routine, and I was. I had a weekly comic strip. And Ms. Kelly shut it all down, told me that I wasn't creative, told me that there was no place in school for, you know, businesses and that I should stick to sports. And so that's what I did. And you know, before you say boo hoo, poor Chase, ironically, it served me well. I went to college on a soccer scholarship. I was the captain of the football team. Dated the cheerleader. Essentially, in just that little moment, Ms. Kelly told me that I needed to be like everybody else and needed to do the thing that was expected of me. And it didn't feel like a betrayal at the time. It felt like Ms. Kelly was trying to help me. And. And yet that was sort of where it started. And Then again, I had a chance to play professional soccer, and I was very far down that path. I went to college on a soccer scholarship, as I mentioned, and. And was on the Olympic development team. And yet I was very clear with myself. I didn't. I wanted to do more than just play soccer, if that's all you've done your whole life. I wrestled with that for a long time, and then when I finally decided to not pursue that, it was really the way I got out of that one. It said, oh, I'm gonna go to medical school. And it was like, oh, well, okay, pro athlete sounds better, but at least you're gonna be a doctor. And I had no ambitions of being a doctor whatsoever. And so you see this pattern of, I'm just going to do whatever makes everybody else happy. And then fast forward $200,000 in student debt. And as the saying goes, if you're, you know, a degree off and you walk that path for 10 years, you're a thousand miles from home. So that was an early pattern in my life. And then, despite having every advantage, to be clear, I'm white, I'm male, I'm born in America. I came from, I mean, lower middle class, but, you know, I didn't want for food. I wasn't, you know, food insecure or shelter insecure. And. And still, this was the hardest thing I'd ever done, is tell the world who I actually was and what I actually wanted to do with this one precious life. And so here's the magic of this. This sounds like a horrible, horrible story, right? And yet here I am. And so it's simultaneously like, you know, the book and. And what I believe we need to hear is that, hey, look, there's no evil overlord, but this is just how these things work. We are social animals. There's so much input telling us who we should be and how we should show up, and we're gonna make some mistakes. And yet all that stuff, the good stuff, it's still in you. And it's never too late. It's never too late to show up as who you really are. And in fact, if we actually turn inside, made this an inside job rather than an outside job trying to be or become something we're really not, it's actually magically simple. It's not to say it's easy with no work, but the tools that we need to do this are at our fingertips. They all naturally reside within us. So, in a nutshell, you know, and I could give you a hundred other tiny betrayals and I. I trot a lot of them out in the book, so you won't feel alone in this process, but I do. It's important to know that wherever you are right now, it doesn't actually matter. That's where you are. Let's get you to where you want to be.
Let's talk about that. So do you feel like that is a requirement? Like the. The betraying yourself is actually a requirement, or the mistakes are a requirement to understand, and then what's the mindset that you've created around that so that you can see it that way?
Lori, laser beam question. It's absolutely required, in the same way that mistakes are required to learn anything. Right? And this is the challenging part. It's. When we're talking about our lives, we're so. It's. It's sort of like it's such a loaded topic. And there's a chapter in the book about failure, and this really hits home, and I'm glad that you shared it, because when it's about our lives, we really don't give ourselves much room to experiment, to play, to practice, to. To take chances. Right? We're supposed to know what we want to do when we're a kid. I mean, we start asking our kids that when they're five years old. And then you've got, you know, the obvious career track, and here's the school that you have to go to to get the. And you have to get these grades to do this job. And. And yet, if we just paid attention to that, which a lot of us do, we find ourselves doing things that are not suited for us, and the failures feel even worse because we're failing something we don't even want or we think we want based on just seeing it on Instagram or seeing someone else do it before us. So our view ends up being radically too narrow, and our ability to experiment and as I said, sort of betray yourself or these just. I call them tiny experiments, too. It's like, what if you could do a tiny experiment and realize that you didn't want to be a race car driver, even though it sounded fun? Who's out there telling you, you know what? You should go be a race car driver. And then a couple years in, you'll figure out this was really interesting or this wasn't interesting, but you've definitely learned something about yourself in the process, and not just that you do or do not want to be a race car driver. You've learned a lot about your character. And I just use that as an example, because so many of us, people who are listening right now, I hope you can relate. You've. You've been told you needed to do it a certain way, and it maybe felt incongruent in your heart and your soul. And conversely, when you have done things that lit you up, you feel different. When you're on your mission and you're on your path, boy, the world starts happening for you rather than to you. So, you know, that is the goal is to start to consider these things as tiny experiments and let failures teach you something quickly. The science on failure is really quick. It is about repetition, but it's repetition with learning something from the previous experience and then applying it to the future. It's not just blind, you know, blind grinding. And you, as an entrepreneur know this. We've talked about this kind of stuff, like, how do you, you know, help your product or your service breakthrough. It's not just you get on the bus and you drive straight to the destination, right? There's all kinds of challenges, and yet culturally, we don't allow for much of that.
I mean, the amount that I have had to let it be okay to fail and not consider myself a failure, like, that's the magic sauce, right?
It truly is. And, and you. This is the cool part, and this is why I'm so grateful to be on your show. You live this. You live this idea of not being. It's not playing it safe. And to be clear, I'm not talking about sunscreen or seatbelts, and I'm not talking about emotional or physical safety. All those things are important. We don't want a world with no seat belts. And yet pretty much everything else is on the other side of uncomfortable decisions, of things that feel awkward in the moment but are required to get there. I mean, again, I'll ask the listeners to. To go on a little journey. Like, is anything in your life, your. Your partner, your friends, that you had to take a risk to do, all of it, especially the stuff that was worthwhile. And I would say is this path that we get conditioned to, the safe path. Whether if, let's say, you want to be an entrepreneur and your parents are pushing you into the. The 9 to 5 world because they don't understand that there's It's a. It's a fantastic time to trying to, you know, to. To become an entrepreneur. The tough part is that they love you, they care very deeply, and you respect their opinion, and yet they are coaching you through really no fault of their own. It's just the world that we Live in. In, you know, toward a set of beliefs that aren't for you. So when we get pushed in that direction, we either cave and acquiesce to the people who, again, this is why it's confusing, because these people love us very much. Our teachers, our career counselors, our parents, even. Even our spouses and peers and friends. Right? And yet deep down inside, you have a knowing, just in the same way that you often can get a first read on somebody. This is another one of the chapters in the book is about intuition and training yourself to pay attention to that stuff. That was really hard for me. I did not know that I wanted more than anything to be a photographer, that I had always been curious about it, but it didn't even seem like an option to me. And I bet people who are listening can relate. There's probably something. Even if you're not doing it right now, that's okay, but you're probably curious about something. If I could snap my fingers, do this for a day, or if I knew I couldn't fail, those are kinds of questions that we ought to be asking. And in a world that's trying to get us to do the same thing that everybody else is, it's hard to cut through the noise.
Okay, let's talk about the illusion of safety. And I think that through my journey and through some different people that I've gotten to interview, you know, podcasts are just like the best way of learning. Oh, my gosh, front row seat, huh? It's the. It's the best. Like, we do it selfishly because I.
Started my podcast in 2009 and I'm like, I want to learn from people that are smarter than me.
You bring them straight to you. I was like, this is the best way to network. Especially. I was mildly introverted before, much less now, but it was just the best thing for that. Okay, the illusion of safety. I think for me on my journey, I became a lot more risk tolerant because I understood this earlier on just from, like, my husband, you know, losing his job and me us losing our home and our cars and money and being in debt. So that I understood, oh, that whole thing we thought was safe, that corporate job, you know, this safe, secure job over here, like, those are not safe at all. Like, the, the best bet is really on yourself. So I got, I got the gift of learning that early, which came packaged as a hellish experience. But to everyone else who doesn't get that experience or gift, how can we really understand the idea of, Of. Of safety? And that safety is truly an illusion.
Well, first of all, your story is, like, penultimate. This is. I love it so much. And, of course, you had that experience, which is why you're so, you know, smart and talented and resilient because you learn this really early. My hope is that, you know, of course we're all going to learn lessons in different ways, but in the same way that we don't actually have to touch the hot stove and get burned, you know, that's how we can learn from other people. That's sort of the. The goal here. Right? I. I'm never going to be able to, through the vehicle of a book, help, you know, people not make mistakes or fail or feel the sting when we, you know, make a misstep. And yet what you said is super true. Like, safety is an illusion. That's the first, you know, couple words of the book. Safety is an illusion. It does not exist in nature. So why do we seek it? Especially when it's something that can, you know, the pursuit of it is something that keeps us feeling, you know, trapped in a life that's not our own. So this idea that, that you're, you know, picking at here wisely is stuff's going to get hard on any path. There's going to be pitfalls, whether you're trying to become a lawyer, an entrepreneur, or you want to open your own coffee stand. It's all risky. It's all difficult. And so the question that we have to ask then is, would you choose a difficult path in service of something that you love, that you know, you want to be or become, or would you like to have it be hard and difficult? And all those same things that you experienced on the path of something that is essentially a script written by someone else for your one precious life. And that really is at its foundation. That's the fundamental question I'm asking, because it's all risky. As you said, you thought you had the safe job, did everything by the book, and lo and behold, it didn't quite turn out like everybody told you it would, or if you went to the right school and you got the right job, there's any number of things that can go south from there. And so why do we spend time and energy and most importantly, the question I'm asking is, culturally, why do we do this? I don't have to actually come up with the answer, but I think it's an interesting question because it makes us feel more free to chase who we really are and really want to be when we understand that, again, there's no evil overlord, but this is what let's call it late stage Western capitalism. Looks like we're social animals. We're peppered with all these things that we should be, and yet there's usually a gap between what we see and what we truly feel in our heart. And I'm trying to get us not just to go for that, but give a blueprint for how to do it.
Okay, so let's talk about that, because everything good has been a huge risk. And I'm, like, living. Just, like, living in it right now and all the things that come with it, which is very, very layered. And I will say, like, you're gonna experience all the things and a lot of the things that you, you know, not even a lot. Some of the things that you are afraid of will come true, but they don't happen all at once. It's almost like God is up there, like, hey, I'm gonna throw you some, some, you know, curveballs, but they're not okay. Some of them are all at once, but it's kind of like you're. You're able to handle them as they come. So let's talk about. I think there. There's just so much fear around risk. If they haven't seen it, what are some of the first things that we can start to do to start being, like, taking that first step into something new?
Well, let's be clear. The world's job is to actually throw you curveballs until you learn to hit them. Right? This is why a shift in mindset, to sort of address a question that you hinted at earlier. Shift in mindset is not just helpful. It's core to all of this. And that comes in lots of forms. And one of the forms that I'm a huge advocate for is learning to pay attention. Right? We believe in our culture, it's all about getting attention. Like, pay attention to me. You know, more followers, more likes, buy my service or product. And yet the very act of actually paying attention, of learning to direct this one precious resource, right? The quality of your attention equals the quality of your life. Like, there's no difference. What you pay attention to expands. And if you choose to see the world as a hard, you know, difficult, miserable place, just like Brene Brown says, you're going to find what you're looking for. By contrast, if you see this as a. A challenge, an opportunity to grow, a chance for learning, get a little taste of failure, build up some muscles where we need a little bit more skill and a little bit more resilience, then that's the way you see the world. The world starts happening for you rather than to you. So, you know, there are a handful of tools. The way I set this book up is that there's specifically seven tools that reside naturally within us. And it's easiest seen through the lens of, say, our creativity. You know, you ask any first grade class who wants to come to the front of the room and draw me a picture, every hand goes up. And then if you ask that same question, you know, as an 8th grader or a 12th grader, the number just dramatically increases because we see that culturally creativity is sort of, it's, it's, it's a, it's nice to say, but if you, to encourage people to really explore their creativity, it, it is less accepted than, than most. And I have a belief that the same is true with seven other tools that reside naturally within us. Attention is one of them. And learning to direct it is incredibly powerful. That's the mindset stuff that you were talking about, this resilience, for example, but also things like our intuition. Our intuition is arguably the most valuable, precious, important thing that we know the least about. We all know we have it. We've felt it before. Every single person who's listening or watching right now has had that gut feeling that this is going to be a good thing, or man, I might need to watch out, or this relationship could be suspect or whatever. And learning to hone and trust, that is not something we're taught, you know, and yet the science is increasingly clear that, that actually your gut feeling is every bit, if not more valuable than rational thought. Now you can say, hey, rational thought, help us build tools and get out of the cave. I get it. And yet what we know from science is that rational thought is sort of slow and it's prone to fumbling. And intuition is infinitely quicker. Right, that feeling then, and it's in the body. That's why they call it a gut feeling. So whether it's learning to direct our attention or listen to our intuition or there's another really important tool on failing, we already talked about that, like the ability to fail, to fail quickly and gracefully and not in the Internet, sort of fail like with a, with a small F. If you're not risking anything, it's not really, you know, that, that valuable. And so, you know, I think the most important part is again, go back to the top of the hour. This is an inside game. And learning to take risks and to access the stuff that's on the other side of fear is a noble learnable skill. And the way we do it is essentially, we go to the gym, there's a handful of basic exercises and an awareness that we can have. And just like you were talking about being in it right now and how much smarter and more resilient you were because of that experience you had early in life, you are a living example of it. And again, this is the benefit of a couple of podcast hosts here talking. We get to run around with people that do this. And I admit there's a certain amount of osmosis and a certain amount of courage that we get being in contact with folks like this. And this is why, you know, your circle of friends matters. My. My message is all this stuff is learnable and noble, and it actually, it exists naturally within you. So let's tap into that and get you more free, more creative, and onto your goals.
I love this because so many people always ask the question of, like, how do you get more confident? How do you do the thing? And I'm like, there's. I mean, there is a guide to follow. There are things that you do because it is very actionable. It is like taking action steps, listening.
It's literally called the data. A practical guide. Like, yes, that's. That's a real. That's a fact of the book. And it's. This is part of, you know, a lifetime of experience and not saying, I got it all figured out, but when you start to see the patterns that exist in the failures, the successes, and I would say, arguably the most important part, the people who feel fulfilled, you can't. You can't unsee those patterns after a while, right? They're there, hiding in plain sight. And my goal is to help people, not just access them, but take action against them.
Okay, so question. I get this one all the time, and it seems like it's all over the board, but I want to hear your thoughts on it. When you're taking risks and when you're doing something new, a lot of times the gut is just like, no. Like, you can't quite tell the difference between intuition and just, like, what you're innate, like, trying to stay safe and not be, you know, killed off because you're leaving your group of people totally. So for me, this one is still, you know, it's like, as much as I feel like I know my intuition, it's like I also am like, oh, that feels bad. Even though it could be the right thing. So it's right, ain't feeling good.
Classic, classic question. And my answer is, I would say similarly classic, but proven to be true scientifically, factually. The goal is to develop these senses, right? To further develop your intuition by taking lightweight risks. The goal is not to, you don't have to move to France, get a new set of friends, blow up your life. That's not what I'm asking. What I'm suggesting is that there are lightweight ways that you can get comfortable being uncomfortable, that you can decide overtly to listen to your intuition and see how it works or go against it. Doing this when your life is on the line is not a great place to start. And so like anything, right, if there's the example that I like to reference here, there's a lot of people in the listenership who probably have kids. And when your child stumbled for the 139th time, and if this child was able bodied, did you at that point say, guess my kid's not a walker? You know, I'm just, I think, I think we're done trying. No way. No way. Because that's, it's a natural, you know, that's a natural component of mobility for an able bodied human. And all these other things are just the same. It is our natural state to be able to direct our attention on things that matter to us. It is our natural state. We have intuition for a reason because we're supposed to listen to it. Now what is it and what is that fear, Monkey mind. The goal is to run some tiny experiments on both. Not in a moment of life or death. I lay out a few examples in the book, but this stuff is knowable. And just like, I mean, you and Chris are both, you know, exercise phenoms. You're in excellent shape and it's because you practice the act of moving your body and staying fit. The alternative is the people who would say, well, you know, I'll go work out when I'm fit. It just.
That is the same thing. I'll do it.
I'll take chances when everything around me will be safe. And that's actually the antithesis of the act of, of taking a risk. The goal is not to bet at all on black. And if you ask any, you know, entrepreneur, I know you, Tony is Tony Robbins, a friend of mine. And, and you've had him on your show, I've had him on mine. And you done stuff with Tony, walked on fire with him. And, and Richard Branson is another example. People look at those guys and they say, wow, you know, they've taken all these risks and well, Richard Branson is a business mentor, friend. He invested in My last company. And I'll tell you, he, and he, he, this is one of the way, one of the things that he shared with me, he said when I started Virgin, it's very true that the first airplane I bought was a Boeing 747, which to people on the outside who does that, who's, who just goes out and cold Turkey buys a 747 and starts flying it from New York to London. Like that's crazy. Like what people don't know is that I had pre negotiated with Boeing the price that they were going to buy it back if it didn't work or in fact when it didn't work because I wasn't all that sure it was going to work. And so I think the perception of entrepreneurs is that, you know, you have to go all in. And yet that is not actually the behavior of most. Now when you have your back on the wall and you have burned the boats, certainly there's some extra fuel there. But when you're trying to develop the muscle, which is what we're talking about here, like how do you get good at listening to your intuition and knowing that from fear it's protecting the downside, it's doing so in lightweight ways. Developing that muscle, learning to trust it and then repeating this and making this a practice in your life. Now this is, it's sort of a long answer, but I'm going to put a pin in one thing. This final thing here, which, you know, I've highlighted a couple of the, the tools that I talk about in the book. We talked about attention, intuition, for example, the tool of learning how to fail. There's another one which is really important and that is the art of practice. Go back to the gym thing, right? Can you get strong without a weight training practice simp? Like very simple to answer. No one thinks you can. No one thinks you go to the gym once, get strong and you're good. Can you stand on your head with your legs split in some crazy yoga pose? No. That's why they call it a yoga practice. You have to practice this stuff in order to get good. And you know, to the point that you made earlier. The world is very confusing to our reptilian brains right now because we can pick up our phone and in a millisecond scroll to anybody who's the best in the world doing their thing in near real time. 24, seven in any endeavor. Now let's go back 20, 30, some odd thousand years when we were living in tribes. The beautiful thing about that was you saw Somebody, let's say you saw Jane become a great hunter. You saw her start to, you know, go out hunting and come back empty handed, Go out, come back empty handed. Then she was able to kill a small animal, and then she was able to kill a bigger animal, and then pretty soon, Jane's the badass hunter of the tribe. But you saw that happen over the course of how much time it really happened. In today's world, we pick up a phone and we see the best in the world do it effortlessly, immediately. So it has messed with our awareness of what it takes to be great. And so again, this book is a permission slip to not be great right away and as a roadmap for how to actually become great and to maintain the mindset and a handful of these other really important attributes along the way.
Oh, my goodness, I love that. It's. It's so vital for people. It's vital for just being able to put yourself out there and in and like, let it be okay to be judged or all of the things. Like, it is sloppy in the beginning. It is like, I always tell people when they want to start a podcast, I'm like, go back to my first episode and you'll. You'll start your podcast that day. Like, it's so bad. Like, I'm like, you'll feel so, so good about it. Go find all the first. Like, go Google this video that I did in 19, whatever it was.
But truly so true, right? And it's true with everything. And that's the thing that we lose track of. And so I'm here to humbly remind you about that. And. And you know, on the other side of that same coin that. That has this profound effect of setting you free. You're like, bring it on. Okay, okay, I'm willing to do this. And again, with a little bit of structure, the goal is not to just dive in the deep end of the pool, but. But you'd be surprised how fast this stuff takes hold, because, again, it's not something you have to seek out there. It isn't a bigger bicep. Right. This is learning to trust your intuition. You can trust your intuition today, one time, just immediately. And then you can do it again and again and again, and you'll hone that muscle. It's not an outside game. It's an inside one, which makes it. So it's. It's like a. It's like a catapult. You start doing this. It's a very powerful medicine. I'll leave it at that.
Okay. My next Question is not fully formed, but I want to, I like it. Let see if I can work, let's see if I can work through it. Because I've actually felt both ways that I'm about to say, okay, so you had kind of said something about like protecting the downside or preparing for the downside. I now like, when I do something, I think about, okay, can I be okay with worst case scenario if this happens and I like actually prepare my, myself for it and allow myself to go through it and know what I'll do and know who I have a lot of that is like, who do I have? Who would still be on my team? Who would I go to? Who would I talk to to like pull me out of the depths of hell if I like lose all these people's money or whatever that looks like. But I will say when Chris and I had lost everything, I didn't actually do that. And I didn't let failure be an option. But if I would not have let failure be an option, like I, in order for me to let it be an option and go there and get back to a place where I could be creative in this new company, where I can even get ideas and not be paralyzed in fear, I had to do that. So help me out with like, can both be powerful? What do we need?
Not only can both be powerful, but they're both true, they're both real, they both happen, and they're essential to the process. So I think it's a really insightful question and here's a little bit a little deeper. So specifically, the process of understanding, of intellectual awareness of what's possible with failure, that's very constructive because it helps you actually prepare in the moment. For example, if I am learning to slackline and walk on this rope, I'm probably going to fall. So I can practice the first time at 35ft off the ground, or I can practice at 12 inches off the ground with the crash pad there. And you're realizing what failure could look like and then you're adjusting, especially early on in the game. And if you're aware of this, for example, I do not recommend that most people who have never had an entrepreneurial bone in their body didn't open a lemonade stand, didn't sell golf balls at the golf course, always had a 9 to 5 job or whatever. I do not suggest that you go from zero to raising $100 million and running a venture backed billion dollar company. I do not recommend it. And to say so, it sounds obvious and we can chuckle and yet that is a similar exploration of the question that you're talking about. Like, I know I do go to, like, what's the worst case scenario? Okay, well, the worst case scenario in that place is that everybody, you know, knows that you're. You have a certain disposition to failure. You'll swing big and you lost a hundred million dollars, which is not a great place to start. By contrast, if you're aware of. Okay, I'm. This is a hard thing. If it was easy, everyone would do it. What does it look like to start in small, lightweight ways? It's not. Bet every ounce of your life savings on the first thing. It's, let's build some muscles. And simultaneously, if you are in a position and wherever you are, there's maybe there's someone listening to this right now that actually is in that position where they have nothing else and failure is not an option. Good for you, because that's going to bring out the absolute, very best in you. I just wouldn't seek that as my first exposure. Just like mountain climbing, you don't go from, you know, walking up your neighborhood hill to Mount Everest. You, you know, and yet, if you found yourself on Everest, a little fight in you would be good. And so both of these things, this is the part about, and I think you know, anything, whether it's entrepreneurship or, you know, just charting a course of who you want to be and what you want to become, there's a lot of these dualisms where both things are true. And when you examine them, the both things are usually the extreme and on both ends of the spectrum. And yet those extremes are, are very rare and, and I would say few and far between. So let's be aware of them, bring them. I like to talk about putting everything you've got in your backpack and showing up. You want to have all of the experiences and tools, and yet you need to practice like anything, whether you're learning to walk, learning you're going to look goofy the first time you do a standup comedy routine, whatever your passion's going to be, you absolutely cannot get there without being a beginner, or you absolutely cannot get there without disappointing some people along the way, being misunderstood. These are things that you know as an entrepreneur that are so loaded culturally, and yet I'll never forget this. Brene Brown told this great story. This is a. She's been on my podcast many times. A great story that she told way back in, like maybe 2011, 10, 11. I said, you know, how do you decide what you're going to do and who matters and who doesn't. Hey, can you grab my purse over there? And one of the people who were on set brought the purse to her. It was a live studio audience and everything. And she took out of her purse, she took her wallet. Out of her wallet, she took a little piece of paper. She unfolded this piece of paper, and on this piece of paper, a 1 inch by 1 inch piece of paper. She held it up and she said, on this piece of paper are the names of everybody whose opinions of me actually truly, truly matter to me. Everyone else, I realize it would be nice to impress them, but this list is really what matters. And this is an homage to a quote, a Theodore Roosevelt quote from called the man in the arena quote, which essentially is, hey, if you're doing stuff that's hard and difficult, you really only want to pay attention to the other people who are actually doing hard, difficult stuff and have experience in the same arena that you're in. And by contrast, listen to people in the cheap seats like, you're going to go nuts if you spend too much time, you know, paying attention to that. So, you know, again, all of these lessons. My hope is that in. In answer to your question, lots of things can be true at the same time, and it doesn't change the formula for how you get there.
Can you tell me about a story for you that felt that way that was like, oh, my goodness, maybe it was someone just where you were either misunderstood or it was a really challenging experience for you. Maybe it was around your character or something like that. When you take risks.
Yeah. I'll tell you an example. And this is an entrepreneurial example for the. The. The. Because your audience is largely creative and entrepreneurial. So in 2010, I started a company called Creative Live, and it was the first live streaming learning platform out there, and it was focused specifically for creators and entrepreneurs. Had amazing people on the platform. You know, Damon John, Mark Cuban had been on the show, Richard Branson. Richard was an investor, had, you know, absolutely blue chip investors. We raised about 60 million bucks. And. But before we'd done any of this, we realized that, man, this. Let's. Let's actually start this company. It's interesting. Have the world's top experts teach live and let's see how it goes. Well, we caught a tiger by the tail, and it's hard to think about this, but it was 2010 and, you know, we had classes that had 150,000 people in. I mean, we had, you know, we were making money hand and fist from day one. The very first class we ever had made, you know, I think $150,000 in 36 hours. And it only went up from there. And so I was like, wow, cool. We got this thing, let's grow this. So I grew it a little bit and then when it started to get into a universe where I was not comfortable, I'm like, okay, cool. You know, we were already getting never work again, like money thrown at us 18 months into this journey of just, just building. And I was like, well, never working in money is really nice. But if we've only been doing this for a year and change, like let's, let's keep going. So at that point I had, I think the, I'll call it wisdom to reach out to some people. We brought in investors, that stuff that I mentioned earlier, and hired a CEO who had, you know, built multi hundred million dollar companies and, and exited and sold them and brought on the best venture capitalists in the world, the people that started Facebook and LinkedIn and absolute blue chip. And yet after a couple of years and a lot of investment, we found the company basically heading for a wall. And so I had a decision to make. Was I going to come back and lead the company again? Despite being having zero experience ever being a venture backed CEO, I was very well known in the commercial photography space, had a team of 10 or 15 people, traveled all the world, very well known for that. But this is, we're talking a team of hundreds, venture backed, you know, board of directors, all of this stuff that was very uncomfortable and yet it's sort of like what would you do? We don't have kids, my wife and I. So the business was if, if a business could take the form of a kid, like, well, what would you do? I would do everything to save it. So radical act of discomfort, I step into this role and after I don't want to what Brene calls, I don't want to gold plated grit this thing. But let's just fast forward after a few years, completely turned the company around. And I'm thinking this is what it, you know, this is the, it's hard. You work hard, you figure it out. Good things happen to good people. And after I remember distinctly like it was yesterday, we had an all hands meeting, we told the company about it and I had a board meeting the next day, board dinner that night and a board meeting the day after. And we were reviewing the results of essentially my turnaround. And I say mine only because I'm trying to own both the successes and the failures. But to be clear, it was, you know, hundreds of people worked really hard. We transitioned at a whole, fired a bunch of people. I mean it was, it's really difficult business. At that meeting with my lead investor, we were doing $36 million run rate. It had our first 3 million dollar month doing 36 million run rate and growing 40% year over year. I'm thinking this is a dunk. This is like, look at me now mom, check me out. And I'll never forget my investor looked at me and I shared the news and thinking about okay, so do we go raise another round? Tried to get up, you know, 500 million dollar valuation instead of, I don't remember what we're at, some, you know, definitely six figure valuation already and, or sorry, nine figure. And he said it's just not that interesting. I like the business, it's, you know, it's heading the right direction but it's just not very interesting. And in that moment, again this is, that this is the arc that we're all on. It went from this is a great business to oh my gosh, we don't have a leader, to I will reluctantly take this leader, this leadership role. I figured it out. It was very hard, it was work that I'm not naturally good at. And I figured it out and oh my goodness, we're winning. And the very next day I was losing and my elite investor was no longer interested in, you know, continuing to fund the growth of the company. So you know, I say this as there are a hundred lessons that I learned in there. Every time was a risk and on the other side of that risk were the absolute best lessons of my life. Like you said, it's when you're in the middle of it, it's hard to see how it feels good when you were losing all of that money early on in your career and you went broke, I think you call it what you had a really good phrase for it. It was a beautiful disaster or something. And yet it absolutely made what you're doing now to level not just of success but of growth and fulfillment. It made that possible. So whether you know, an entrepreneurial and for what it's worth, the company, we did go on to grow it and it was acquired by a big public company a few years later. But that told me I'm no longer aligned with the goals of this investor group and we need to find a way to make it profitable and find a great know place for the next chapter of this company inside some big public company. And we did that. So again that was a. Another radical learning experience to go through. Being acquired by a public company, and then me, goofy artist, creative, me being an executive at that company. So whether it's an entrepreneurial journey or a personal one, I think the most important thing is that we have to sign up for the journey. Like, that's the only place you get the stuff that you're looking for. We can't make these decisions. We can't tap into the feelings of the life that we want from the couch. It's about action over intellect and a willingness. Again, this is not a bed at all on black. There's a formula for how we can do this thoughtfully, meaningfully, to access, again, all of the best stuff in our lives.
Oh, my God, what a ride. What.
What a. Cool. And I'll tell you the rest of the details later, but zowie. Like, that's the short version. And, you know, and I share a lot of those stories. I do think it's important. I hate business books that say, do super smart thing A, super smart thing B, and. And then C, and then everything's going to be awesome. D. That's not how business works. I mean, just deconstruct your journey or, you know, any of the other friends that we've talked about in, you know, as podcast hosts, like, if it was easy, everybody do it. If it was only one direction, everybody do it. But the chance, you know, what we get to do? What we get to do is develop our tools to take us where we want to go.
Oh, my gosh. So good. So let's end on. Let's end on this question.
Okay.
Because I just feel like from everything that you've talked about and just, like, the experience of it and needing to practice and give it time and all of the different things that. All right, you guys, all. All of these tips and the way and the framework and everything is literally in the book. So you're not just like, whoa, go take a risk. It's like, here's how you are able to start living a more bold, risky. Which is what you have to do.
Creative life.
Yeah, but how are you. And I know you're going through a lot of personal things right now, but how. How are you compartmentalizing that ride that you just said? Because I know simultaneously to the ride that you just said and the ride that you're on right now.
Totally.
You know, you are still learning to find joy, and I know you have a lot going on, and yet you're still present here with us and the podcast listeners to be amazing and giving value and all of these things. Like. And that is the ride of life, right?
Like, absolutely.
Things are tough while things can still be good. How do you do that?
It's also sort of, to me, it's an awareness thing. It's knowing that this is actually part of what we're signing up for, to me, that makes it, for some reason that makes it easier to manage and also simultaneously helps us not feel alone for everyone who's listening. I was just sharing with Lori before we started recording that my mom's real sick right now, real sick. And, and, you know, it's coming. I'm sharing about my new book that I've been working on for years and it's out now. So it's sort of like the craziest eight weeks of the last, you know, several years and how difficult that is. And simultaneously it's made me, you know, super present. And this is another, you know, set of lessons that I've learned and have researched through historical examples. And honestly, ordinary people have done extraordinary things a lot like me. Sort of like the more you do, the better you get. And if you have practices that are moving you in the direction of getting better at stuff that's, that you want to be getting better at, that's valuable, or we've all had friends that have, you know, lost their way and they're getting better at things that you don't want to get better at. And so to me, this a. The awareness about this and that. Again, the seven tools that I put in this book that are naturally inside of every person, that's what this is about. It is an inside game. And there is a way to make this playful and joyful despite, you know, we're talking about some heavy stuff here with my mom and with, you know, you know, making companies that, that are go from the verge of bankruptcy to making hundreds of millions of dollars, like, that's. It's a. It's all a roller coaster ride. And if we can have a little perspective and if we can realize that this is actually what we signed up for, we think we want an easy path, but what sort of an experience would that create? It would create the dullest, like, not realistic life. And so this cultural programming that says that this is what we ought to seek, it's a myth. And don't get sucked into it. Realize that all of the best stuff in life is on the other side of your comfort zone, that the people you respect, admire and look up to, they have had to do this and more to get to the level to experience the experiences and do the things that they've done. And let's just decide not to make it different for you. Let's, let's welcome all of this stuff in the process.
I love that. And truly, when I think you're bringing me just back through my whole journey, which I know you're doing that for the listeners too, right now. It's all of the risks that have made it fun. It's like, it's not. What fun is it if you're not excited or hopeful or, oh, things could be different or it could go this way or it could go that way.
Nothing on the line. There's no, no stakes.
So boring, right?
So boring. And yet that's the sort of the life that we are taught to seek. And you try that for too long and you realize that, boy, and this is so, you know, another reason that we, we ought to get. I, I think it's natural that we would want to solve all our big challenges from the couch or from behind the screen, because if you don't have to put it all out there, but you can get all the stuff, why wouldn't you? Well, the answer is, first of all, you can't get all the stuff without putting it out there. And the, the rest of that answer is, and even if you could, you shouldn't want it. Let's go. Let's move you in the direction of your dreams. There's a way to do it. There's a way that the people who've come before you, the people you respect and admire, that they're doing it and it's available to you right now, so.
Good. Anything else you want to share before we go? About a million things, but.
Oh, about a million things. You know, I, I'm. I, a lifelong visual artist. I've created, you know, television shows, directed, you know, films, and, and a lifelong photographer, you know, shot campaigns all over the world for the. Many of the world's top brands. And, and so I'm very visual. So the act of writing, again, this is. I've done a couple word books. My last one, Creative Calling, as you mentioned, was a instant bestseller and I got just a taste of the good stuff. But I'm telling you, writing books is not my natural state. Getting to share about them and, you know, the research, painstaking research, and I will share that I was writing a different book at the beginning of my book contract with Harper, and it was a tidy business and creativity book would have sold well, I believe. And yet with just a couple months before my deadline, I couldn't not pursue this and I have the best agent in the business and thankful. Thankfully Steve had my back. And this is the book that I, I wished that I had had when I was going through some of my earlier adventures. And so I hope you find value and joy in reading it. There's a lot of folks that probably have been on your podcast that are featured in the book and a bunch of new, new people that, that, that they might not be familiar with in historical examples too. So I've had a great time getting to talk about it. Despite all the, the stuff that's going on in my life right now. I wouldn't trade any of it and just grateful to be with you. Congrats on you. Honestly, you've been doing so much fascinating stuff. I consider you and your hubby Chris a friend, each of you and to watch. You know, I, I, you're right next to each other in my scroll in my feed and I always get so much joy and wisdom in Yalls adventures and lessons and I'm just so excited about the stuff you're building. Thank you so much for having me on the show and getting to share with your community.
Oh my gosh, you're amazing. Thank you so much for that. And truly, I love, I love this book and that you took the time to write a word book. You only talk. It's only when you're talking to a creative that he calls it a word book because he's done so many.
There's a lot of words in that book. Yeah, exactly 65,000 of them.
But it's a life. Like, this book is amazing because it is a, it is a true life theme. Like, it's a life law. Like, risk is a part of life that you will have to like, learn to fall in love with. And that's, you know, I know that throughout the book, you talk a lot about, like, this theme of playfulness with it as well. And I think that, you know, if I look at you in your life, like keeping it light and keeping it fun, despite knowing that, you know, the more blessings you get and the bigger businesses you have, the heavier it can be. So I, I just like, you guys have to get this book. It should be required reading. So where can we, where can we.
Find ever books are sold? Wherever books are sold, of course. Amazon, your local bookstore, they've all got it. And I am right now, when this podcast drops, if you go to chasejarvis.com which is just my name, there's some pretty insane bonuses with just purchasing a single copy. There's a access to masterclass with me on creativity. There's a launch event that has some absolute iconic legends showing up to support the book and inspire and educate as well. Um, there's some creative performances that are happening, and there's just. I think it's like 700 worth of extra stuff just for buying a. I don't know what it costs. 30 bucks or something like that. So that's the only other place I'd steer you. And I'm just Chase Jarvis everywhere on the Internet, whether that's Insta or YouTube or X or Twitter, whatever the hell they call it anymore. Cool.
Amazing. You guys, we're gonna do a fun little 10 book giveaway for you guys. So we're gonna do to whomever tags you, Chase and myself, and says the biggest takeaway on Instagram. So just go screenshot this podcast right now that you're listening to, Go take Chase and myself and let him know what your biggest takeaway was from this podcast. And then the first 10 people who upload those stories, we will send a book to. So it's always so much fun. And the. You guys, the biggest thing you can do for an author, number one, go read their book, but share it. If there's a creative in your life, if you need to take more risks, Truly, this book is incredible because you. In order to do your dream that you're thinking of right now, there will be so many new things involved which will feel risky. So, Chase, thank you so much for coming back on the show and just for sharing the way that you do.
Your skills as a host are just stop.
Go on.
Awesome. Thank you, friends, so much for having me on the show. Love your community. And again, I'm just out. Chase Jarvis, feel free to hit me up and I will do everything in my power to respond to anybody who's out there.
You're amazing. Thank you so much. And you guys, until next time, earn your happy. Bye, everyone.
