Chase Jarvis - Raw & Uncut

Full transcript: Chase Jarvis on London Real

7:32 This is London Real. I am Brian Rose. My guest today is Chase Jarvis, who is a photographer and videographer known for a hyperkinetic style with an emphasis on sports and portraits, working for names like Red Bull, Nike, Apple, Lady Gaga, and more. You are the CEO and co-founder of CreativeLive, the online learning platform that broadcasts live classes to an international audience of over 2 million people in 200 countries. You are also the host and creator of Chase Jarvis Live, a long-form Q&A interview show broadcast live in front of a Seattle audience that I’ve been watching for over four years and poaching your guests slowly but surely.

8:21 You release iPhone camera apps, you curate art exhibits, you create books, you have a new video series, Chase Jarvis Raw. You’re constantly creating. Chase, welcome to London Real. Thank you so much. I’m going to record that and play that back to my wife.

8:34 Hey, honey. No, that’s a very, very gracious intro. Thank you. You’re welcome. London, I’m curious from an artist’s eye, a photographer’s eye.

8:43 When you roll in here, what are some of the things you see and you’re like, okay, that’s different. I’d like to get that or get that. Or what do you feel as far as the city? Well, London has had, not to blow smoke straight off the bat here, but London has had a huge impact on me, I’ll say, as an artist, but just as a human, actually. I grew up in a very middle-class family.

9:06 I’m very proud of growing up the way I did. I didn’t want for much, but I definitely, I mean, I’ve said this before in other interviews, I had Adidas with four stripes. I had the Nikes with the upside-down swoosh, except for soccer shoes, the thing that I was actually talented at. My parents made sure I had the right stuff, but came up from a very middle-class background. And yet, every year, my parents, and I’m an only child also, every year, my parents packed up our family and came here for two or three weeks in the summer.

9:42 And I remember in the early 80s, listening to the London punk sound and mohawks at Piccadilly Circus and torn-up leather jackets and the Clash and the Sex Pistols and all of that. Again, I was living in the suburbs of Seattle at the time, and my parents brought me here, knowing all those things, as an opportunity to expose me to that. And it had a profound impact on my A, desire to create stuff for a living. And I haven’t talked at length about this, but I feel like I was a closet creative for a long time.

10:20 And I say closet creative just because it was, again, I took, like, water takes the path of least resistance when I’m looking at the world, and at least in my place where I grew up, when I did, it was very, to be creative, was sort of, oh, with a creative kid, like, the weird one. So I was like, okay, I don’t know if I want that. I’m going to be the captain of the football team, the captain of the soccer team, like, skateboard guy, and just manage my way through the world without having to sort of confront these creative parts of me.

10:57 London was the part that actually sort of inspired it all, and then, ironically, you know, years later in life, it was the thing that helped set me free that in the surf, sort of, skate punk scene in Southern California where, wait a minute, these people, like, these skaters, surfers, they are incredibly athletic, but there’s art, there’s design, there’s music, there’s sort of an attitude, a rebellious little sort of punk rock. I can do anything DIY spirit. London was the first place where I actually sampled that, and it ended up fusing with a lot of, like I said, the Southern California stuff, which is where I went to school on a soccer scholarship, but that is so, so much a part of why I’m sitting in this chair right here.

11:39 I would have never known. Yeah. I don’t think I’ve ever said that in an interview, actually. Yeah. How old were you when you first came here?

11:46 Oh, probably sixth, sixth or seventh grade. Sixth, what is it, 10, 11, what are you, six, 12 by 12. Okay. And do you ever think that that international travel when you were that young had… And to be clear, we had no money.

12:00 Okay. Not no money, but just the heat was at, like, 61 degrees in our house. It was like, boom, like, you’re cold, put on a sweatshirt. And yet we took these trips, and not just, like, went here, saw all the highlights and went home. We have friends here.

12:17 We stayed with families in the city and sort of lived it. And it made a huge impact on me, huge. And was that to expose you? Do you think so? I don’t know. I should ask my parents.

12:31 I think it was, I know it was an element of luxury for them, and it was cultural. Now, my dad’s a cop, or was a cop. My mom worked in administration at a biotech company, both totally respectable positions, also very, like, working class. And so I think when you say you’re going to Europe, you know, this is a long time ago, too, you’re like, oh, we’re going to Europe for a couple of weeks. It was a way to not have to keep up with the Joneses and to add real value, real cultural value.

13:03 Talk to me about creativity. I was a science kid at school, so I was doing the science fair projects, and later I went and studied mechanical engineering, you know, at MIT. And for me, when I chose, it was, like, liberal arts or science. And, like, you couldn’t be a creative science guy. Like, you couldn’t really be an athlete creative either.

13:23 And I think I told myself, through a self-dialogue, that I wasn’t an artist. And yet you said that art is a subset of creativity, and I guess it’s obvious to everyone we’re all creative, but it still is. But it’s not obvious, though. It’s not obvious, right? That’s, I don’t know, reveal, but I just walked 10 minutes from giving this exact speech at the Virgin Disrupt conference just down the street here just a few minutes ago.

13:49 And it’s not obvious. We still haven’t broken that stereotype. People still use the idea of right, brain, left, right. Which is, you might have an inclination towards something, but that’s also this, like, you might have an inclination towards classical music instead of punk rock. Everybody is creative.

14:07 I mean, the wheel is mechanical engineering plus creativity. Electricity, that’s electrical engineering plus creativity. That’s why we can turn, like, why these lights exist. The chairs that we’re sitting, everything was a picture in someone’s mind before it was a drawing, before it was made. And it was made, that’s the act of creating.

14:29 And so, like, it’s literally everywhere around us, maybe so much so that it becomes, it fades into the background. But that’s literally one of the reasons that CreativeLive exists. That’s one of the reasons that I’ve made it a personal mission to talk about this stuff. Because imagine the things that we are missing in the world because people don’t associate themselves or what they do with creativity, or I can’t do that, or that’s not like me, or I wish I could, or I’d love to change that.

15:01 And that’s, again, part of the reason for CreativeLive, part of the reason for my life journey. So, it doesn’t surprise me that you thought you were science. I thought I was science, too, because I happened to be good at math, didn’t mean I wasn’t creative. I was an only child, so had no, it was play out in the backyard solo or with one friend or whatever and then sit at the adult table. And yet, I got good grades and did fine in math and science because I was told, oh, you have aptitude, you should really do more of that.

15:38 And that took me so far, I can’t say off track because everything happens for a reason, I believe that, but it took me $50,000, $100,000 in student debt. It took me years off the plan of what I had in mind for myself, trying to live everybody else’s dreams of what I should be. I dropped out of medical school, quit a PhD in philosophy. I mean, how many things do you want me to quit? Before, I actually turned to photography, which is the thing that was always back here, but it was hard to make here turn into here, turn into action.

16:11 What was it that made you decide it was okay to go with the creative piece? Was it the first paycheck as a photographer or when you first got the thrill and you were like, wait, I’m good at this? That’s a good question. It’s sort of a 10-year process and that’s one of the, like, just hearing me say, hearing my own self say 10 years, it’s like a dagger in my own heart that I had, that I was literally, and I’m a super confident person, reasonably overt, can say and do what I want to say and do, and if I’m having problems, like, and I had basically, I’ve talked about, you know, growing up in middle class, but I didn’t want for anything.

16:50 Like, my upbringing was safe and healthy and my parents were awesome and I have a great relationship with them, and if it’s hard for me and under all those sort of perfect conditions, to say that I want, to say and do, that I want to live these dreams for myself, even though they might be different than what the world wants for me, how hard is it if you have challenge, if you come from a single family or single-parent home, if you, you know, grew up in poverty, if you, the list of things that could create extra challenge to that is just long as shit, it could go on forever, and if I struggled, that’s one of the reasons that I’m trying to take, hey, anyone who’s listening, like, the reason I’m sitting in this chair is to tell you that you can live your dreams and that everybody has dreams and the only thing that you could do wrong is to not follow them, and even if your dream is to get out from behind your desk and have an active job for a living or even if your dream is to go the other way around and you’ve been outside working with your hands all your life and you want to come in and you want to program or write code, or like, it doesn’t matter, I’m not judging what the thing is, but I am having done other shit for 10 years of my life that was for everybody else, and even when I say it, I like to say it again and it’s just like a dagger, so that doesn’t surprise me, and I’m totally like railing on this right now,

18:11 Maybe disproportionately so, but the fact that you liked science and that was where you were steered doesn’t surprise me in the fact that because you were scientific meant you weren’t something else, those are stories that I’m trying to put to bed for, I managed to put them to bed for myself, they never go away, the gremlins are always there, but I’m trying to put them away for as many people as I can. I want to talk about CreativeLive, but when I look back at your work and your career, it seems like the seeds, it’s pretty obvious that the seeds for CreativeLive were sown way back then, and you were always known as a guy that was transparent, you were filming the behind the scenes of your photography shoots like pre-YouTube, and you were… There was no such word that didn’t exist.

18:55 People forget that. I’m telling you, if you searched it on the Internet, nothing came back. And yet you’re still making video that is perfect for consuming on an online video site that doesn’t exist, so you’re out there, you’re also exposing tons of IP that the photography and film world are probably like, what are you doing, Chase? These are our secrets. You’re throwing it all out there, you’re letting people know what’s going on, and if you see that, you’re kind of just saying, everyone should have access to this, everyone should learn, and now, in retrospect, when CreativeLive comes up, you’re like, oh yeah, that’s just Chase kind of evolving, but was that a conscious decision you made back then that I’m going to educate the world about what I’m doing, or were you just a camera whore like me, and you’re like, I love to express myself too, was it conscious or somewhat unconscious?

19:42 I think all of the things that you just articulated, A, are all true, B, there’s a very simple narrative of uncovering one thing at a time and following my gut. Remember, we’re coming off the back of 10 years of not arguably more 20 years, but 10 legitimate years where I was at school pursuing other things or pursuing a career in professional soccer. I was on Olympic development soccer team, and that wasn’t, it wasn’t not my wish, but it was like, oh man, oh yeah, if you can play pro soccer, that’s what you do, of course, and I loved soccer, of course, but after 10 years of not doing that and deciding to listen to in here as opposed to out here, all of these things, they started to feel natural.

20:32 I think it’s called instinct, like you’d go with your gut, and as soon as I started listening to my gut, it was like I felt just, I felt relieved, I felt relief, and it was like a thread. You know, you grab onto it and you’re like, oh, and then when you pull on that thing, of course you can now see this logical progression, but there wasn’t a master plan. It was a, you know, uncover one rock at a time and start just looking at the, you know, looking at the tea leaves and saying, all right, yeah, this is the right thing, and listening to in here, right, and if anyone’s listening to this instead of watching it, I’m pointing at my chest when I was saying that.

21:10 And yet, by documenting all the behind-the-stuff stuff, that changed your life, right? That’s the strange thing. When you document it, it changes where you go. For sure, and like it was a narrative that in a really weird way, the self-reflexive sort of cycle when I was, because when you, you know, I didn’t set out to make these videos to watch them myself, but when you’re uploading them to the pre-YouTube Google video world, you’re like, okay, it’s uploaded, and then you watch it to make sure that, you know, it uploaded correctly, and just the act of watching them, it felt like two things.

21:41 One, I was setting apart, like I was taking risk, because as you cited just a moment ago, when I started giving away these trade secrets, and I started doing it A, because they weren’t there when I decided I wanted to be a photographer more than anything. There were no resources. I was like, this is effed. That was frustrating for you. Yeah, I was like literally going to the library checking out books and reading, and it was film, so I was taking a picture, writing down my exposure, taking a picture, writing down my exposure, and then developing the film, looking at the list of, I mean, it was just painful.

22:10 I was like, there’s got to be a better way. Where’s the mentors? And I was like, oh yeah, you can have an internship and sweep the floor of the, just wasn’t into it. So that there were no other resources, and that there wasn’t someone who was sharing that information. I mean, you do see the Seed Planet for CreativeLive there as well.

22:26 Yeah. But that there wasn’t any information, and that I could basically real-time, sort of not real-time, real-time, vlog, blog, story tell my process of becoming a photographer was, it actually helped me, again, that self-reflexive loop of, when I’m watching the story about me, it’s reinforcing that A, what I’m doing is good, and B, meaningful, or meaningful to me, and that it’s a thing that I’m putting out there in the world, because there’s risk associated with it. And I was totally vilified at first, for sure.

23:03 Which, ironically, those folks ended up coming back and asking for a job. But that was the photography and videography, were like, okay, too much info. Yeah, and yet, two years later, they were like, it was all the rage, the term behind the scenes video took off, and commonplace now, right? It wasn’t all that long ago. We’re talking in the 2000s, like 2004 or 2005, 2004, it didn’t exist.

23:30 Blogger had just come out. You talk about increasing the stakes, and you said, once you’re good at your craft, then it’s time to increase the stakes. That resonates a lot with me, because you’re like, I took risks on this video, I went and did this. A lot of people in your, if I look at the CV, I’m like, okay, San Diego State, played some soccer football, now got some great clients as a photographer. A lot of people would sit on that lifestyle business and ride it to the cows come home, and you wouldn’t be here talking to me.

23:59 What causes you to up the stakes all the time? And then again in a live show, and then again in a big venture like CreativeLive, where you’re doing now hundreds of employees and VC and all that stuff. Why? That’s a good question. I wonder if it’s genetics.

24:19 I don’t know, maybe. I think it’s a fair question. I’m actually wrestling with something right now, doing some personal work and reflecting on, I have sat in hundreds of interviews on television stations all over the world, and Brene Brown is actually one of the people, I don’t know if you know Brene’s work, she’s the only guest I’ve ever had on twice, because she’s made a real impact for me, which is a hard charging type A male to connect with that has been really powerful.

24:52 Yeah, but looking back and saying, why do I have that sort of level of drive? Tim and I have talked about this a lot, especially up around Transcendental Meditation, which you just let me know that you practice as well. Did you get here because you were agro, hard charging, and if you meditate, are you going to give up your edge? Or why am I so driven to accomplish? And I think those are separate items, but let’s go back to your original question, it’s like, what’s the drive?

25:23 Why do you do that? I actually feel like if I’m as honest as I possibly can, again, never said this on an interview, just literally processing this, like this week, this month, this year, it was the way that I could make sure that nobody, that I just, if you win, then it’s really hard to criticize. And if you’re just dabbling, and you’re effing around, then it’s easier for someone to take shots at you. And again, this is totally in hindsight, I’m looking back and like, why are you so driven?

26:02 And I think it’s because if you’re in first place, it’s really hard to talk shit. And I think that is perhaps one of the things that made me innovate, and I have a phrase that I’ve used a lot, which you don’t have to be better, you have to be different. It helps to be better, that’s one axis that’d be good to be better at your craft than someone else. But it’s not a zero-sum game. And if you can be different, there’s room for a lot of different voices in a choir or a lot of different instruments in an orchestra.

26:34 And so it’s a way that you can win, doesn’t have to mean someone else loses, but by winning, it’s really hard to talk shit. And again, is that a safety mechanism? Is that a, I’m still, this is a real time. The only child thing? Yeah, I don’t wanna unpack this whole thing in here, but it’s interesting.

26:57 I realize that that’s one of the things that drives me. And Tim and I have talked a lot about this, actually. Yeah, I have 10 states of that, and I get really self-reliant. I think it’s like when I was a kid, it was just like, I felt like I was on my own. So it was just like, chh, chh, chh.

27:12 And so I’m so hard on myself. I think before, other people can have a chance to be hard on me. But I’m always like, that’s not good enough, that’s not good enough. And then if I stay on top of myself so hard, no one can ever be as bad as me. Yeah.

27:25 All those things are true, and I think there’s some messed up psychology in there that, I don’t know, maybe it’s preservation, maybe it’s healthy and it’s drive, I don’t know. But it’s indistinguishable for me. I, at moments, have remembered thinking like, the one way to be able to do the thing that I wanted to do is just to be relentlessly good. And not dissimilar to Gary Vee, it’s very much around like outworking people too. Like, the world is full of super talented people who do nothing.

27:56 And everything, like how many episodes of the show you got? Yeah, 320. 320. Yeah. Like, it’s really hard to mess or talk shit around someone doing 320, if anything.

28:08 Push-ups, shots of bulletproof coffee, shows, like, anything. Shots. Like, you know, you do 320 of anything and it’s substantial. And I think it quiets any sort of controversy or haters. And again, that’s, I don’t, emotionally that’s not the place, that’s not the message that I have in my head when I’m doing it.

28:31 But I think there’s something underlying about drive of just, I’ll outwork you. And I’m only willing to risk it because, I think I’ve got the right amount of talent and drive in this particular area. And oh, like, playing chess or jump rope, like, I don’t got either one of those, so I’m not going to pick it up. Right. Which is, yeah, but which is a sad way of being in the world too.

28:57 So, I got my plate, my plate’s very full right now. I’m not going to pick up chess or jump rope anytime soon. But I think there’s something there for us, you know, type A folks to think about. Yeah. Are you as driven now as you were, say, 10 years ago?

29:10 Yes, in a very different way. And a lot of this is to the, you know, I’ve got to give a shout out to Transcendental Meditation.

29:20 There’s a part of me that questioned, wait a minute, if you’re so mellow or you’re so like calm, isn’t your sort of aggro hard charging self and that’s the thing that got you where you are and aren’t you self-sabotaging by quieting this workhorse? And the reality that I’ve learned for me, I can’t say this about everybody, but I can say it about myself, is that when your mind is quiet, you know the right things to do and you get the same results with half the pain and a lot less frustration and the people around you don’t feel your wrath in the negative way. It’s a little drive and success in a positive, nurturing way.

30:03 Yeah. Yeah, and I thought the same thing would happen with me. I was just telling you beforehand that, you know, I started TM in retrospect five minutes, five months before I left like a 10-year job in banking. And I thought the same thing as well. And in my job, I had to like beat down people’s throats in like real time to protect my territory and I’m going to get this deal.

30:24 And I was like, okay, is this going to change everything up? But I actually have found that sometimes I’m actually more clear and sometimes I would actually call people out on things that I wouldn’t before. For sure. And you can do it much more gracefully. Yeah.

30:37 And it’s sort of an empathetic like real, this is, I’m stepping on you right now, but like yes, and for sure, I totally get it. And for me, it’s a slow motion thing. Michael Jordan talks about, like he sees the game in slow motion. Right. And for me, my life happens in slow motion when I’m really into my meditation practice and the things that would normally or would otherwise get under my skin are now like, oh, I can observe that and now here’s how I’ll respond.

31:06 Or isn’t life funny? There’s certainly something there where I should be paying attention to that more often or instead of like smashing your coffee cup or whatever. Yeah, we’ve had an MMA fighter on here named Dan Hardy who fights in the UFC or used to. And he also talks about like ayahuasca or psychedelic experience. He says it doesn’t change a person.

31:25 It just allows you to understand yourself better. And so I find long periods of meditation can sometimes give me the same after effects as that. And I’m just like, okay, this is resistance today. I’m not going to get angry. And this is how, of course, there will be a problem.

31:38 Almost like, oh, this is you, Brian. Is it bad to be dominant? No, you know where you’re going. Allow yourself, forgive yourself. It’s okay to get things done.

31:47 Sure. And it’s okay, but it’s also not okay to do them in a bad way. Meditation, that’s powerful medicine. And you did that three years ago. Yeah, I think it might be either three or four.

31:58 And have you taken a break from a couple weeks? And if you noticed, wait a second. I’m on the same time. Oh, yeah. It’s days for me.

32:04 And I never intentionally take a break like, okay, I’m going to take a break from meditation now. It’s when life happens. And you and I were talking earlier about just being on the road. And there were years that I was traveling north of 150,000 miles a year. And I still do about 150, but when this life happens and I now have a routine that I’m pretty like, I kind of don’t leave the house.

32:29 It’s like brushing your teeth. Like, I’ll phone ahead and say I’m going to be late to make sure I get that morning meditation in. So I never intentionally miss it or take a break. But if life gets in the way, I occasionally will stumble or fall away from a couple of meditations. But I never miss more than…

32:48 I mean, I track. It’s one of the things I track. I track my meditations every day. Right. Talk to me about being different, not just being better when it comes to art.

32:55 I know you’ve studied, like, artists in the 50s and 60s and the 70s and New York artists that took graffiti into the gallery. You study a lot of European artists. I’m guessing you probably know who Banksy is and some of the things that he does. I don’t know if you’ve seen his movie, except the gift shop. That movie still is running a head game on me.

33:13 And Warhol and all that. But what did you learn from those artists? Because a lot of people think artists just get expressed and it’s not a craft, but it seems like you take it, is it? Yeah, certainly the craft is critical. Like, you can’t, I think, skill in anything.

33:28 There’s merit to that. And so an artist should be able to draw, or a painter should be able to draw, or a paint, for example, a photographer you need to get the exposure right. I mean, trust that these cameras are focused properly. Like, that is… I call that the sort of the get in the door.

33:46 And you hammer on about this. You must be good in your craft. Otherwise nothing else I say applies. For sure, for sure. But assume that we’re good at our craft and then that’s really where the game…

33:59 Game is sort of a weird word to use there, but that’s where the game starts. And what are you going to do that is… Because it’s a noisy world. And again, I tend to step away from… Zero-sum games are not interesting to me.

34:15 I’d rather make the pie much larger. We can talk about that later. But being different, especially in the world of art as a professional is the name of the game. And the thing that I have tried to emphasize in the past without being pedantic is it’s like, what can you do that no one else in the world could do? And I’m not talking about technically executed.

34:40 I’m talking about technical execution plus a point of view. So what point of view do you have that would make someone stop and just stand in front of whatever you’ve made? And what I’m saying… I’m using art, but it could also be a Tesla because that’s a beautiful thing. It can be an iPhone.

34:59 What is it that when people see it, they stop and go, wow, that’s powerful? And without a doubt, a key ingredient is that only you could make this thing because that perspective is just different enough or in the particular lies the universal. There’s your particular experience growing up as a kid in this thing and when this thing happened and that’s what you’re painting or creating a song about or whatever, it might not be the exact thing that 10,000 or 100,000 or a million people experienced, but it’s close enough that they say, wow, that’s impactful because my life was close.

35:36 There’s a thing where we’re connected and the phrases in the particular lies the universal. And if you tell your particular point of view really, really well, and again, that’s not out here. This is like, who could take a picture of the Grand Canyon? Well, everybody could take a picture of the Grand Canyon. So I’m not saying don’t take a picture of the Grand Canyon, but is there a thing that only you can do given your skill set where you are in life that access to technology that you have, the connection to the earth if you’re a First Nations people and your family came from that region, do you have special insights that time of day or plant life or like there’s like, what is different?

36:17 What can you bring to the table? And I think that’s a huge difference here is take a picture that no one else in the world could take. And if it’s of the Grand Canyon, then you have to put your personal filter on it because there’s lots of people have taken pictures of all of the stuff that you see around here. But there’s really only one person who’s lived the life that you’ve lived and looked at the world through the lens that you look at it that had your childhood experience, your growing up with Star Wars or Boba Fett or I don’t even know.

36:50 So how can you incorporate Boba Fett into the photograph of the Grand Canyon? Now it’s getting weird, man. What makes a great picture? I think two things. I think raw stopping power has to be a component because otherwise no one’s going to look.

37:14 So there needs to be some component that makes you, if you’re flipping through a page in a magazine or looking at art on a gallery wall, something has to attract you to that. And that’s, in many ways, it can be technical things, but it can be just, if not more powerful, that personal element that when you go across the room and you see that thing and it makes you want to walk across the room to look at it. That’s thing one. And thing two is when you get there, the narrative is just interesting.

37:46 And it’s not the full loop, there’s a little gap in the loop, and that’s that. I’m going to tell most of the story and then you’re going to fill in the details. That’s how we connect with one another through art. Again, in the particular lies the universe. I’m going to take a picture of a person, and the picture is not necessarily just about that person, it may or may not be, but in that person’s eyes are the eyes of a million people who have been there or done that or felt that way or felt close to that way.

38:16 But you are putting your particular lens on that particular person. Stopping power plus a narrative that you can connect with. Right. But don’t complete the narrative. Let them go that last mile.

38:26 I like that. To me, that’s next level shit. Go ahead and complete the narrative. It’s like, oh yeah, I can see this person’s going from here, they’re riding a bike from the grocery store to the yoga studio. It’s more interesting if you’re riding the bike from the grocery store to the, why is she riding down the dock?

38:46 What’s at the end of the dock? There’s just that little, that part of our brain that desires to complete narratives. That’s an actual, that’s a thing. We learn in stories. We remember in stories.

38:59 And if there’s a part of the story that’s missing, your mind seeks to fill in that gap. You’re looking at me like I’m tripping you out right now. No, I love it. I love it. I love it.

39:10 I was just thinking when you said we all have our own perspective that we can bring to a photograph, I’m wondering if you were originally drawn to video because when you get in front of the camera, we feel Chase and Chase is this guy that used to be this guy and now he’s this guy and he’s obsessive about his craft, but he’s also pretty cool and he’s also searching for a journey and in a video, we can get that personality in like 10 seconds. And that could take a photograph or a series and a whole written narrative and we still might not get it. But is that what drew you sometimes to some of the videos or even Chase Jarvis Live where you were like, okay, I can really take you somewhere that’s different?

39:45 For, oh, that’s an interesting question. Honest answer, heartfelt right here. Like I can’t say, like the framework that you just put on that is very, it’s not solipsistic, but it looks back at me like why am I doing this? And there is an element of desire to share that is to tell a story. As a professional storyteller, as storytellers, it’s one thing to tell a story to yourself about yourself, pretty limited audience.

40:29 It’s another thing to tell a story for an audience the greater good or whatever audience you’re trying to connect with. And so for me, a lot of this is about telling a story that I hope can resonate with someone else, not dissimilar to a photograph. Video happens to be quite efficient for telling a lot of the stories that I want to tell. And yeah, I think that to me that is a, it’s as much about, again, I’m looking inside at the things that I want to say and then I’m trying to share those things out through a really effective medium and video.

41:19 I’m interested in using the right medium for the right message and the video happens to be a powerful one that I use for a lot of stuff. Okay, okay. You said once you get your craft sorted, that vision is everything. Everything. You don’t want to be a monkey with a finger.

41:37 That’s a commodity. That’s a, you know, I remember when I really paid attention to forums. Not that I don’t now, but I really, I try not to because I’m not interested in looking left and right at what everyone else is. I’m sort of interested in, there are a handful of people who I respect and want to, you know, collaborate with or work with or admire. But generally speaking, I’m trying to accomplish something, make a point, say a thing, share a thing.

42:10 And it’s, give me the question one more time. Yeah, because once you have the craft, you said vision is everything. Yeah, so the last thing that I, I’m going to say it in the positive instead of the negative, that’s where I was going to go to the negative. The positive is I want to tell my story. And I don’t want to not, I don’t want to shy away from my particular point of view.

42:45 In fact, if you are just taking a picture that other people can take, you would be a commodity. If anyone can come and conduct this interview, then this interview suddenly becomes much less interesting. I’m banking that your audience, and the people who are watching and listening to this right now, are doing it because they’ve grown accustomed to you, your style, the guests, the type of guests, the questions you ask. And you have a point of view, you have a lens, a point of view that you bring to the party.

43:13 That’s the interesting thing. And if it’s just a commodity or you commoditize or commodify a thing, whether it’s a photograph or a video interview series, there’s nothing unique about it, then the value in my mind goes way, way, way down. It becomes utility as opposed to something more. And how do you teach people to get vision? That’s the hardest question.

43:43 Literally, I’ve had that a thousand times, and I believe that it’s actually a meritorious question. I believe in the question, and the answer is just a shitty answer. It’s a really hard answer, which is you have to actually just do a ton of work. Look inside, do work. Look inside, do work.

44:02 Evaluate. Does this feel authentic? Because that’s what you’re really trying to do. You know, the term be real is over-colloquialized or overused. Excuse me.

44:11 But that’s sort of that combination of you have to do it enough to realize that you have a voice in the first place. And people say, oh, gosh, I don’t know. Hey, the first ten times you’re going to do something, you’re ripping off all the other people in the world. You’re like, oh, this is how he did it or she did it. I mean, you already referenced Chase Jarvis Live.

44:32 It’s like, oh, this dude sits down and he has 90-minute interviews. You understand I started that five years ago. You know how many people were doing 90-minute interviews on the internet? Exactly zero. I know.

44:42 It’s just because it was like, dude, the internet’s met for a two-minute or 10-second snack. And again, that’s a zig versus a zag. And how I got there is like, I’m genuinely interested. And I can’t get what I want out of this person, out of a Macklemore or an Adrian Grenier or a Tim Ferriss or a Tina Roth Eisenberg in two minutes. I need two hours or two.

45:04 I mean, I could talk to these people like I’m talking to you for a long time. So it’s the part like you’re looking inside and then the product that the world sees is a product of what you see, what you need, or how you want it. Like the part of you that needs to, the itch that you have that needs scratching and then the lens that you put on it. Right. So the vision comes inside from your like…

45:26 For sure. And that’s why it’s individualized and that if something is a commodity, not only can you not charge for it, but it’s a race to the bottom. You can charge, but that price is definitely going down. By definition, I think that’s part of what a commodity is. You may be in banking and trading and you probably got something on that for me.

45:45 But versus, let’s just flip the switch here, flip the script, versus if you’re paying for vision, I can literally charge any price. Any price. And I have charged some absurd prices because I know maybe there was some complanting circumstances. It was going to be hard for me to do this and this and this. But I also know if I’m the only…

46:08 I want to tell this, but I only want to tell it one way and it’s going to be expensive because I’m going to need this and this and this and this. And if I can’t do that, no problem. No hard feelings. I’ll recommend 10 other people for the job. But this is the way I think it should be done.

46:19 And that’s why being able to articulate your perspective and that’s why my, for example, background in philosophy that we talked about me quitting earlier, it wasn’t for nothing. The ability to intellectually articulate a point of view and to back it up with logic and clarity is a powerful tool. And helping you now. Yeah. So you didn’t finish the degree, but you’re very philosophical.

46:46 Yeah, I didn’t finish the PhD. But those tools are totally critical. And I was also studying the philosophy of art. So specifically the ability to talk about very abstract things, get them in a very well organized fashion. That’s what people are buying.

47:03 They’re buying experience because there are a lot of people who could shoot this particular campaign or who could get a commission to make this big installation in someone’s personal collection. But they chose me or one chooses another because A, you have done something that allows people to believe that you can do it again or do better and that you’re not going to fail. And two, they love the way you approach problems. So track record experience plus the way you look at the world, that’s what people are hiring.

47:41 And whether it’s a commercial thing or a fine art thing or whether you’re building a product or the reason I’m literally sitting here is because you’ve done 300 of these things with people that I give a shit about. And I know I’m not going to be wasting my time and that we’re going to take away something that’s… I’m going to put something into this and I’m going to take more than nothing out of it. It’s going to be a positive experience for me too. Right. Tell me about Chase Jarvis Live.

48:05 Sure. Do you remember the time when you finally pitched it and said, you know what, I’ve been thinking about this because you hadn’t really done short form interviews or anything. You went all in from what I understand. And I remember sitting at this desk right here watching… You’ve done your homework.

48:19 Watching your episodes. I think it was 2012 and I finally got hip to it. I know you’d been doing it before that. And I was like, check this guy out. I’m sure we contacted you.

48:26 I contacted everybody. And I was like, he’s doing this. He’s got the black and white vibe. He’s obviously doing what he’s doing with the cameras. He’s got a live audience.

48:32 He didn’t have to do that. So he put himself out there more. Jack the Stakes up. He’s talking to the internet off Twitter. Big sponsors.

48:39 Attitude. He chose black and white. And I was just like, okay. Really put yourself out there for that. For sure.

48:46 And I remember when you actually pitched that to yourself, to other people. And then when you were like, okay, we’re going to go all in here. Because that’s a big change. Sure. A lot of questions in there.

48:55 I do that a lot. No, that’s good. I’ll take it. Because it makes for a narrative as opposed to a one-liner. Again, what I’m trying to do when I’m answering your question is…

49:08 I want to answer the question, but I also want to make it relevant. So again, in the particular lies the universal, right? Yeah. If I think of your questions, not necessarily in the order that you ask them in, but in the order that it happened for me, which is I’m interested in finding new ways of storytelling. I’m interested in adding value to other people’s lives.

49:32 Ideally the kinds of value and values that I have learned from my life because they have given me so much. And what if I could help teach people to be more creative, to surround themselves with people that they admire instead of the people that just happened to be around? And how can I create something that solved for as many of those check boxes as possible? And that’s basically what I thought about in order to create this thing. What have I learned?

50:07 In what way can I… Again, the different part of this is I’m going to ask a different set of questions because of my life experience, and I’m going to have access to a different set of guests because when you get to the top of a craft or a discipline, you know, top is obviously a really ambiguous term, but you have peers and how can we transcend? Because again, I didn’t take my inspiration from photography. I took it from all the other things. So how can I boil, bake all that stuff into one show?

50:35 And if you deconstruct that show, it has all of those components. And the first time that I said that to myself was, well, you’re shooting commercial jobs all over the world, like literally the top 50 of the top 100 brands are in your portfolio. Money is not a thing you want for. Adventure, I got plenty of that. And what is the next thing for you?

51:04 And for me, it was this human part. Like I’m insatiably curious, and most of the world’s knowledge is still packed in people’s heads. So what can, again, what can I do? There’s personal gain in there as well, but how can I help tell the story such that not just, like how does the scale, such that hundreds of thousands of people can get the benefit as well? And I remember, it actually, it dovetails really seamlessly in a very natural way with CreativeLive, in that I had been working on the concept with my friend Craig, who owned a Mac tech, like a network tech support thing, and they supported all the creative industry in Seattle, I think Seattle and Portland and whatnot, ad agencies and whatnot, like supporting the computer side.

51:55 And we had been talking, he was interested in leaving his sort of hourly gig, and he had a bunch of hourly employees that were, it was a consulting thing, and he’s been working with creatives his whole life. I am one, I had accidentally built an audience of a million people without doing so, by just putting out content. Right, blogs, pictures, video. Yeah, sharing stuff and asking nothing in return, and turn around like, oh my God, there’s a million people.

52:18 This is like the term, the concept of an audience was even, it was very, it wasn’t a concept that was in my forefront. It’s 2009? Yeah, something like that. And we decided to, you know, Craig was interested in training because he saw the need in all these creative shops that he was servicing, and he was doing so through webinars, and webinars are just like, it was the thing, webinar software, which is basically a screen capture, and I was interested in, I had grown my audience, and I was talking to them through video, and I learned that they all want to know stuff.

53:01 And why I never was a guy like, okay, here’s what your camera set on, I wanted to just be like, hey, bring a video camera and follow along with me, and take people on awesome adventures, and in the meantime they’re going to learn a bunch of stuff that they couldn’t learn out of a textbook. So we looked at how we could put those two things together, and we literally whiteboarded, we spent a number of Sundays like, wow, I would want it to be free, okay, cool, and that’s where he came up with the business model, which is free to watch, and anyone in the world can watch for free, and only pay for it if you want to own it, because it was like, I need this thing to be free, because I’ve been giving away content for years, and I don’t want to go away from that.

53:34 And he’s like, yeah, freemium’s a really powerful business model, so we whiteboarded for a number of months, I would say, about how to put the thing that he was doing, online training through tutorials, and my audience in dynamic learning, traveling all over the world with HD cameras, and the top people, the top brands, like, let’s put that together. Well, then live internet happened in January of 2010, I think that’s about when Ustream came out, and I had a photo shoot with an alt-punk band called Brent Amaker and The Rodeo, and I just decided like, oh, there’s this new Ustream thing, I’m going to point a camera at this photo shoot, and 25,000 people watched it. I was like, that’s like television.

54:20 Like, to be clear, that’s… Were they playing while you did the photo shoot, or was it just a photo shoot? I did have them play at the end, but it was the photo shoot, and I wasn’t performing at all, I was kind of like, go back to the camera, like, well, that didn’t work. Let’s move the furniture like this, some of the lights like this, and it was really sort of fly-in-the-wall-y, but I saw the engagement, and that helped really sort of click, a much upgraded version of online learning would be if it was like multi-camera HD video where you could be there, and the same sort of level of interactivity.

54:56 Again, Craig was doing this in parallel with his online training. What if we put those people together, or put those concepts together, and that was the birth of The Creative Live. To get to your real question, is I called that Chase Jarvis Live, because I had a series of videos called Chase Jarvis Tech, Chase Jarvis Raw, Chase Jarvis Frames, basically those were just a naming convention for each one of these series of videos that I had, I put out hundreds of videos by that point, non-live, they were just like, you know, three to five to ten minute videos.

55:26 I just said, we’ll just call this Chase Jarvis Live, because it’s live, and it was matching the rest of the other naming conventions, and afterwards we looked at the data and said, holy shit, this is like a tiger by the tail, let’s do another one, and what are we going to do? Well, my friend’s in town, so let’s have, you know, Vince LaFoure comes in. What’s your IP, right? What do you have, right? What do you do?

55:50 What do I have? Not necessarily what I have, but what do people want? And if I was revealing what’s in the black box of photography, what’s the next level? Because other people, it’s painful and hard to make videos, and if other people want to make videos, how can I help other people not have to make videos and sort of create like a forum or a place to sort of speak the truth, so to speak, and it was born, and just basically started doing them, not this summer until you started doing your show.

56:19 It was just really early, and the black and white choice, like, yes, it’s an aesthetic choice because I think it’s reductive. I was in the process of doing a book at the time, which is a black and white photography book on Seattle about the people who are driving culture in Seattle. Black and white is very reductive. It just strips all the extraneous away, and you’re just like, there’s a statement about the importance of the subjects if all of the frill, and so it’s sort of like, it connotes taking away the frills, and man, man, it also does a couple other things, which makes the lighting really easy.

56:57 You don’t have to have all the lights the same temperature, and so there’s an efficiency and an ease, like, oh, man, we don’t need to buy it. We got these hot lights, we got these LEDs, and shit, I’m not gonna get the full video thing, so again, it started off, the choice was intentional around what we were trying to say, and then it also, and when you see it work for all these other things, you’re like, yeah, that’s awesome, and again, being different, not just better. I wasn’t trying to compete with Maury Povich.

57:27 Or Charlie Rose. Yeah, Charlie Rose. I intentionally came up with the worst comparison I could, so Charlie Rose, but certainly this is different, like, whoa, and some people are like, oh, how pretentious, like, sorry, man, I’m like, it’s solving these problems for me. One, it’s reductive, and it makes you focus on the conversation. Two, it’s easier.

57:47 Three, no one else in the world’s doing it. Like, I literally hadn’t seen a black and white video interview talk show ever since the 50s, so all these things make for a great thing, let’s do that. And it had to be live, because you kind of had that Ustream experience, you’re like, it’s gonna be live, like TV, because you didn’t have to do that. For sure. And, you know, even you could argue for the creative live business model on the whiteboards, the live element, you know, you could easily have missed that, too.

58:13 For sure. And that would have changed the whole trajectory of the company. And then the live audience, putting more pressure on you, or maybe that rounds it off. Do you remember that first one, how it fell to there? The first one was not a live audience.

58:23 Actually, I had several that didn’t have a live audience. Okay. The live audience really came about from… Because Ferris wasn’t a live audience, right? Correct, Tim wasn’t.

58:30 Yeah, I was looking back today, and that wasn’t, right? Yeah, but I have a history of trying to make things interesting by making them more complex and adding layers. You talked about it. I can tell your life is that. Even with the set.

58:41 But even with the set, though, like, you know, you used to have a set that looked different, and then more interviews, like, okay, cool, we’re gonna get a new light, and we’re upgrading, you know. You just finished telling me that before we turned the cameras on. The same is true for me in career, in life, in the things that challenge me. How can you consistently up the game? And I derive, I’m an extrovert, so I derive…

59:04 Although I have a really strong introvert side that I’m learning about now. I don’t know if it’s age or wisdom or pain or… I don’t know what it is, but I’m generally extroverted. And so I derive pleasure from being around people. And so there’s a certain energy that a live audience…

59:22 Yeah, it’s one thing to read. Oh, my God, there’s a thousand tweets have come in over the past 10 minutes. That’s amazing. But when you’re looking at eyeballs, and they’re clapping, and they’re leaning forward, and their minds are being blown, you can ask a question, and some world-class awesome person answers it for them. Like, you gave these people an experience they could never possibly have.

59:43 I was actually walking down the street in Seattle about three weeks ago, and a girl said, Chase, Chase, I just want to say thank you. You don’t remember me, but I was at the Macklemore show when Macklemore performed on your… And I didn’t even know who he was. And that show changed my life. A, he was so heartfelt and so earnest in his music, and his messaging came across.

1:00:06 And then to think that he’s whatever, 15x platinum, 4 grammies, his first album, it was just he obviously exploded. And to have seen him in your studio, didn’t know what I was getting, and to have the curatorial aspect like, wow, blow my mind, that’s a thing that I like that. That gives me a buzz. Again, creating an experience for someone that they could never have had on their own. Were there any early things you learned, problems with that live audience, live stream?

1:00:34 It changes the interview with an audience, doesn’t it? Yeah, for sure. I like how it changes it. I think that, again, when there are humans sitting around you, the energy, it’s more palpable than when there’s not. I mean, when there’s more people, like if you’re sitting in a stadium versus sitting there with your two friends, those are different sort of energetic experiences for the guest and for the interviewer.

1:01:00 But again, this is like just adding layers of complexity, the way you added a new light, the way you got a new camera. Like, how can we up our game? What’s sort of the next level? And having a live in-studio audience. And then we started throwing parties for those things.

1:01:13 So you’d come in early, there’s champagne, so people would have an amazing experience. And they would go, I have no idea what just happened. I know that I want to, when I hear that there’s a call for audience, I’m going to be the first person. And we were getting hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people who wanted to come to these things. We’d only, all right, we got like 60 slots.

1:01:30 Traveling. I remember someone standing up and being like, I traveled from here to come here. Like Switzerland, like Africa, just New York. People get on, I won the seat to be on the show. It’s a week from now, I just bought a ticket and I’m flying from New York to come to the show.

1:01:46 It was super cool. And you would blow their mind with a big experience on top of the show. For sure. And, you know, have food and champagne and stuff. But again, those are layers that I would build in.

1:01:57 And I find the same thing is true for my work as a photographer. It was originally taking pictures. I’ve talked before about, I think, where all of us are hyphens now. I used to just take pictures. And then I took pictures and I made behind the scenes videos.

1:02:12 And then that started going pretty well for me because no one knew what the hell was happening. And then I started taking pictures, doing behind the scenes videos and sharing them with my audience. And then I started, in addition to those things, then I started directing the television commercial component of the campaign as well. And then I started starring in the commercial and directing the commercial and shooting the still campaign and telling, like, became very complex.

1:02:40 But it was a way for me to make my job interesting. And at some point, though, it gets too complicated. Too many hyphens. Should we be all trying to add hyphens all the time to our… No, no.

1:02:54 But I think not all trying to add hyphens all the time. If you take a couple of the… What are those called? Things like all and never superlatives? Whatever.

1:03:07 Anyway, I think it’s an amazing thing to embrace those. And I have… Some of my biggest failures have been not… Again, thinking of what other people thought. And here I am, super confident person who’s been driven and like, I don’t give a shit.

1:03:26 This is where I’m going. And you’re either with me or not. I don’t care. But there’s a voice inside me that’s like… That tried to…

1:03:32 Has, on a number of occasions, tried to sort of remedy or reconcile, wow, now that I have these people watching, what would they think if I do this? Instead of that. And that can be a little bit painful. But adding hyphens generally, I think, is something that you do when you have hit a certain level and you need a new thing to sort of occupy or to challenge you. All right, let’s talk about your latest hyphen, which is CEO.

1:04:03 Seriously. There’s a pattern here, folks. A lot of people would be content with the photography business, the international clientele, the top 50 brands, and the videography, the live show. We didn’t even talk about the iPhone app. We’ll get to that.

1:04:19 But now, a year ago, you’re back as CEO of CreativeLive. Yes. Seriously, after this, we’ve got to talk about it. I don’t know how you managed the time to be creative. That’s what these big, dark circles are.

1:04:29 Yeah, yeah. And then also, Chase Jarvis-Raw. I’ve been watching the last few episodes, Chase Jarvis-Raw, and I’m like, wait a second. He gets better the more he does. I’m starting to figure that out about you.

1:04:41 And that keeps you fresh on all fronts, it must be. For sure. Activity, it’s like sort of exercise keeps you fit. And fitness is something that I desire. And the fitter you are, the more fit you want to be.

1:04:53 And fitness could be extrapolated to any number of things. But yeah, the CEO thing was great. And it’s, again, for people that don’t know about CreativeLive, and you’re going to tell us all about it, you’re a CEO of a company that’s raised 6 or 7 million Series A, 20 plus million Series B. These are big numbers. This is a big deal.

1:05:18 This isn’t like a livestock business. It’s not 20 employees. It’s like 200. Yeah, 120. 120.

1:05:24 This is big stuff. Yeah, Graylock is our, they let our Series A social capital partnership. Graylock did Facebook, a little company called Facebook, Pandora, LinkedIn. And social capital, Chamath, who’s the main partner there and Ted, his partner on our board, Chamath led growth at Facebook from 80 million to 800 million users. So the guys, he’s done it with the, he’s done it big.

1:05:50 Yeah, big, smart. Yeah, and to be, to have those folks on our board and to have, to work with those, that caliber of people, that’s one of the reasons that I’m here. One of the reasons that I came back to sort of lead as a CEO as well, because I’m interested in lifelong learning. There’s a clear pattern here. I’m interested in lots of things that have, I’ve never technically been diagnosed with ADD, but there’s a general, outside of my wife and family who, my wife is the best thing that ever happened to me, Kate.

1:06:30 But outside of that, it’s I care about sort of, creativity is a huge, huge core. I care about inspiration because without inspiration, it’s hard if not impossible to take the first step in anything and then lifelong learning, like the hunger to just experience the world and what if we could experience it without being a jaded dick? What if you could walk into everything with wonder and awe and so the ability to teach yourself how to learn and then be able to learn lots of things so you can have a lot of awesome experiences, like literally filled with awe.

1:07:10 And that explains my life right there, that I’m interested in those three things and you can just trace them back to all the projects you’ve listed. And CEO is, it’s a very, you know, I’m also attacking the concept that you’re either an artist or you’re a business person and I don’t believe that. And so this is a demonstration that’s categorically false and I have, you know, folks have said of me on the internet, like, oh, he’s just, he’s great at business.

1:07:44 I’m like, none of that is learned. I have zero, I’ve literally never had a business class. All learned, none known. And the parts that I have learned have been essential for survival. I didn’t care, like I wasn’t trying to decide the level of pretense behind being an advertising photographer or an editorial photographer or is this commercial art or fine art.

1:08:09 I’m like, you’re gonna let me take pictures of me and my friends skateboarding and I’m gonna get paid? Killer, where do I sign up? You know, like that’s a, there’s just an essentialism, a necessary thing and, you know, you pair that with art to be able to create a life and you find out it can be, it can provide really well for your family and more than anything, take that money to put into other adventures like the one I’m on right now with CreativeLive, entirely bootstrapped actually, that we didn’t raise venture until we were wildly profitable.

1:08:43 But you look at that pattern of creativity, inspiration and lifelong learning and you can see why I wanna step in and challenge myself in a way that is typically, you know, those are opposite ends of the spectrum and not only do I intend to do my best at that, but I think my experience already has told me that in the future, artist as CEO is gonna be the common place and, you know, it’s not gonna be the anomaly. I mean, you see, there are lots of experience, lots of expressions of this already out there, you know, you see, what’s, well-known example, you see Dre with Beats, for example, or at a sort of an internet level, you see, you know, Gary Vee with the wine thing and going to now do books and all the other stuff that Gary does and Chase Neistat with, you know, being a filmmaker and then launching Beam, like, it’s probably in its infancy, but I believe deeply that, you know, all CEOs will be artists at some point.

1:09:51 Did you think about not being CEO and bringing someone else in? Oh, yeah, we had someone else run the company, you know, again, and myself and Craig found in the company in 2010 and then creating it and, you know, basically growing it very quickly and like, oh, man, we got a tiger by the tail here, but we had to pick up the phone. I called my friend John, like, dude, we got a tiger by the tail, you know, I’ve totally fished out of water here. Come help me out.

1:10:17 If it works, you’ll get this, this, this, and this, and if it doesn’t piece out, it was a good run. It was really fun, but I think this is interesting. Right. Numbers are big. People are tuning in.

1:10:26 Yeah. Yeah, 50,000 people or something. That’s the first class we did. And yeah, it was crazy. And so we just replicated that a few times and then we realized that, okay, this is the real deal.

1:10:37 So we can either continue to grow this or we can accelerate that and bring in venture. And we brought in venture. I wanted to bring in someone as sort of co-founder and chairman. I wanted to bring in someone who had operating experience of a company that wanted to grow this fast and then had raised money and that, you know, had just had that skill set because I didn’t. And I wanted to go back to lifelong learning.

1:11:00 I wanted to have someone to sit next to and watch and learn what it is, what it means to raise 30, $49 million, what it means to, you know, run a company. My photography business was like 12, 15 people. Right. And you know, yeah, on sets, you’re managing 100 people. That’s very temporary.

1:11:18 It’s over the course of a week or a month or something like that. But to like have all these people and be responsible for them and their families and like the responsibility that comes with shepherding people through career growth and like all that was totally, I had zero experience. So brought someone in and his name was Mika Salmi, super talented guy. He was the president of Viacom. Before that, all 35 television brands rolled into him.

1:11:44 VH1, MTV, Comedy Central, like that all, you know, he was running a billion dollar business with 1,600 employees and he left that to run CreativeLive. And so you talk about learning under someone who, you know, and again, I mentioned the board earlier, James at Greylock and Ted at Social Capital. These guys are just world class. You know, James is on the Midas list that everything he touches in Silicon Valley turns to gold. You know, I’ve got these people that I have on speed dial.

1:12:08 I’m like, I’m pinching myself. Oh, my God. Like there literally is no better people to learn from in a crazier environment, in an environment like education where it’s the largest industry that the world has yet seen, which is yet to be disrupted. Right, yeah. Hundreds of billions of dollars annual market opportunity.

1:12:27 And not that we’re chasing the dollars because if I was chasing the dollars, as Macklemore said, I’d have been a fucking lawyer or a banker. But point being, it has been an amazing ride and I believe like the rise of the polymath of being good at many things and learning how to do things. And you’re not going to be good at everything. What are you not going to be good at and what are you going to be good at? And I’m starting to want to do these things for the actual, the experience.

1:12:56 What does it feel like to be in this position? Like you see other people in the world and I’ll never know what say Mark Zuckerberg felt like or feels like, but now that I’m in this world, I have heard stories and it’s not always pretty. It’s not always the cool guy with the hoodie. It’s freaking hard. Right, and it’s hard what you do.

1:13:19 You have to make hard decisions. Oh, I literally, there’s not a decision to make as a CEO that everybody likes. It’s the paradox of the CEO and if you make a decision that your board doesn’t want you to make and you make it anyway and it’s the right decision, they go, oh yeah, good, nice job. And then they’re on to the next thing like no one gives a shit. No one’s sitting around like, Duke, great decision.

1:13:39 We should have a party about when everybody else wanted you to do this and you did that instead. Oh my God, could you imagine? We would have driven off the cliff. Those conversations never happened. And if they’re telling you to do something and you don’t pay attention and they’re right, then you’re the asshole.

1:13:55 There are too many of those and you’re out of there. Yeah, exactly, a couple of those. I feel like it’s an experience that I am loving and I’m humbled literally every day of like, oh my gosh, I’ll never do that again. Oh my gosh, I can’t believe that I didn’t know that even two weeks ago. I have so much to learn.

1:14:18 Is it the steepest learning curve you’ve ever been on? I think so because of the stakes. Yeah, okay, right. When I think of CreativeLive, I think super high quality, super deep educational videos. And I just always think, and I didn’t even rehearse this, it’s like somebody gave a shit when they did this.

1:14:39 It’s like the lighting and everything’s so perfect to where I can enjoy the experience of learning so much that it’s almost like, it’s funny that if I don’t know what it is, the guy could be showing me an audio software. And I’m like, people would probably like that. They’re like, oh, this is great to watch. They literally tune in every day at 9 o’clock. It doesn’t matter what’s on.

1:14:59 Right, right. And that’s actually kind of cool, like learning for the sake of learning instead of watching mindless TV. But I appreciate those kind words. Yeah, that’s why I think immediately, and like you said, the educational space, it’s funny because very few people have got it right. And so many people have tried to get it, and yet it hasn’t gone anywhere where people thought it was going to go.

1:15:20 People are like, this is a no-brainer. We’re going to put all these classes up from all these top universities. Everyone’s going to watch them. They’re like, no, they’re not. Why?

1:15:28 Because it’s not the same. So it’s not the same experience. Why? And I’m sure you know that sort of thing. Yeah, I just came from like four blocks from here, standing on the stage talking about the future of education.

1:15:39 So it’s something I enjoy deeply. And I got to go straight to this, which is the top line for me, and to be able to get to go to work as I do with the people, the talent, the passion, it’s an amazing team. Just like before we say anything more about CreativeLive, I’m humbled and blown away every day that the people that come to work every day choose to work there as opposed to somewhere else. Okay, okay. And people leave huge opportunities to come here because it’s a cool thing.

1:16:15 The student stories, the transformation of people coming in and changing careers, and actually sort of empowering people to live their dreams, be it career, hobby, or just life. And you see these lives transform. And when you start to hit scale, you know we mentioned earlier, we’ve had more than two billion minutes now consumed. Two billion minutes. Yeah.

1:16:36 Those are like McDonald’s and Google numbers. And we’re just getting started to be clear. What is the next five years looking like for CreativeLive? Giving you a CEO headache. Yeah, no, no.

1:16:49 It’s my job to… One of the things that I’m interested, one of the reasons I’m sitting here with you is because I’m interested in telling a story, not just the story of me learning, but the story of CreativeLive. Like if I didn’t believe deeply in the thing, and not just the company, but the concept of access to the world’s top thinkers and top doers in a way that you can environment, you can connect with that for free. If you have an internet connection, I want to acknowledge that not everybody has an internet connection.

1:17:23 We should work harder on that because that’s the universal equalizer. It’s never going to be there, but it’s going to be there at some point, but it should be a priority for the people who do stuff like that. Please keep working on it. Yeah, because we need to tap into the creativity of every soul on the planet. For sure, for sure.

1:17:39 Because we’re all up to it. We’re still a subset of… I lost my thought here. I’m trying to connect to it. So yeah, you want to give access to everyone to this knowledge for free.

1:17:51 Yeah, that’s a really important thing for me. That is a… It’s one of our core values, for example. And when you run a mission-driven organization, you make decisions based on creativity, access, community. These are the things that we lead with.

1:18:11 And so to be able to provide that for millions of people is something that fires me up. And it recruits for us because people want to be a part of the thing. They want to be a part of a movement. And not just education, and not just creative education, but a groundswell. And it is the future, right?

1:18:35 It’s not going to usurp or replace online or in-person learning. That’s a great way to learn, whether you’re learning how to tune skis next to somebody or learning from a professor at Harvard. I think the tuning skis one will always stay there. The Harvard thing is going to continue to erode the names that are at the top of the platform right now are not going to be the ones that are at the top of the next iteration of education. But to be able to go to work and create those things, I’m proud of it.

1:19:12 And I think that creativity, inspiration, and lifelong learning are keys to global happiness. I look at what it’s given me. We were talking about this earlier. God, if I could leave anything, it would be that because it’s given me so much. And everyone has dreams.

1:19:33 There’s so many people. I’d say there’s more people who are sitting in a job that they don’t like, in a life they don’t want, not tapping into a hobby that they wish they could. And just the simple act of unlocking that. And if we do it for one person, we do it for ten, that is worth getting up in the morning. Because if it gives them anything like the life and the opportunities that I’ve had, God, that’s something worth getting up for every day.

1:19:58 Your business model in retrospect seems so eloquent. When it’s live, it’s free, and after that you have to pay for it. It seems so obvious, but I’m sure at the time it wasn’t. Again, that’s a huge contribution that Craig made. I was advocating that it needed to be free because I had this history of doing it online for free.

1:20:18 And it’s just a beautiful, beautiful thing. And there’s always content, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, playing on something on every channel all the time now. And you can consume those for free. And sometimes live events come in, sometimes we’re playing content that we’ve had in the catalog, but now there’s more than 10,000 hours of content, and there’s literally thousands and thousands of classes. And there’s something on live every hour of the day.

1:20:46 And I’m not always live because sometimes we don’t make content between the hours of 8 p.m. and 6 a.m., but there’s something on there for everyone to consume. And actually, I totally not rehearsed, and I haven’t talked about this, but I think we might be able to do something for your audience and the people that pay attention to your show. Let’s try On the Fly here. Let’s do it.

1:21:16 Let’s do creativelive.com slash, I don’t know, you want to be London Real? London Real, yeah. Okay. And I’ll try and get this. It’s not London Real slash Chase Jarvis, but go London Real.

1:21:31 And I’ll curate some classes for, you know, I know what you’ve talked about on the show and the kind of guests that you’ve attracted, and I’ll curate a list of classes, and maybe we’ll give a discount code or something like that. Perfect. What should the discount, how would it be? Chase or? Chase or is the name of my email newsletter, if you want to sign up for that.

1:21:51 Okay, Chase, all right. So we’ll put the discount code. Yeah, and we’ll try that. And I don’t know what the discount will be because I’m going to get on. As soon as I get out of here, I’m going to be like, hey, everybody, why don’t you, like, hold on to release this thing?

1:22:00 Just give me a couple, give me a day or something like that. I don’t know how fast you turned these things. We’ve got time. Good. A few quick questions here.

1:22:07 Sure. What’s your success? When it comes to you measuring your own, what’s your metrics over the next 12 months? What are you looking at? Wow.

1:22:15 Honestly. These success secrets are only available on the London Real Academy. Become a member and get access to live shows, exclusive courses, my webinars, bonus content, meetups, live events, an amazing community, and much, much more. Now back to the rest of the show. I always finish my shows by asking, pretty much the same question, I’m going to hit you.

1:22:44 If you could make a phone call to the 20-year-old Chase Jarvis, give that young man a bit of advice. I’m trying to think, I guess he was in SDSU at that time. Yeah, he was in Blind Soccer at SDSU. Blind Soccer at SDSU. I’m from San Diego.

1:22:56 What would you tell him? I’m going to tell him two things if I can. I’m going to hijack your question. The first thing would be counterintuitive, but it would be to meditate. Everything is better when you have the ability to be present.

1:23:20 I don’t want to pretend that I’ve got any of this mastered, but I know that that cultivates a feeling of presence unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. To be able to have been more present for the things that have been meaningful to me, I feel like that creates a richness to life that is absent when that’s absent. It would be meditate. The second thing would probably, let’s take this full circle back to earlier in the interview when we were talking about my starting to reconcile with why do I charge so hard?

1:24:03 Is that just a great thing to be motivated and want to work hard? Is that a positive characteristic? Are you masking something that you’re willing to work so hard to make yourself look good or to not be vulnerable? I don’t feel like I need to know the answer, but my second piece of advice to myself is, it’s all going to be okay, man. I hear that one a lot.

1:24:30 The second part of that is best advice you’ve ever received, business, personal, artistic. Wow. I thought I just answered that one. Best advice. I usually say meditate when I’m asked that question, but since I’ve used up that card, Bob…

1:24:50 Did anyone ever give you a piece of business advice or it sounds like you learned a lot of stuff the hard way. I’ve learned it all the hard way. I have no formal training. My background is in philosophy. Remember that.

1:25:05 I think it would be something along the lines of scratch your own itch. Put your own oxygen mask on before assisting other passengers. Because if you don’t have that, you have nothing. Whether it’s personal health, that’s something I’m coming into now. It’s like, wow, personal health really matters.

1:25:31 Shoulders need to work. I’m on a two year journey to get back into surfing because I’ve completely blown up my shoulders from football and soccer and then weight training and just years and years of abuse and I’m rebuilding that now and it’s working. But it’d be take care of yourself. Put your own oxygen mask on and by scratch your own itch, there’s a thing of sort of… I can be…

1:26:02 It’s directly related to being in the service of others. I know that I want to be in the service of others. That’s what CreativeLive is, right? We’re all going to work for free. We’re getting paid but we’re putting out a free product to try and make the world better.

1:26:19 I know the feeling. Yeah, you’ve done 300 of these. You’ve done 300 of… You’re lifting every morning or once a week as we talked about. But the scratch your own itch part is if you need to be doing something, like if this was banking, if we were banking right now, would you do 300 of these things?

1:26:38 No. Yeah, no way. And need to do it. Yes, you’ve heard…

1:26:47 Do what you must do, not what you should do. Oh, I’m spacing on the designer’s name. She’s a friend of mine. Why am I spacing right now? She’ll forgive you.

1:26:58 Ella Luna. Should versus must. Do what you must do. And scratch your own itch because you’re going to be a better self. And if you’re a better self, that actually allows you to be the best to the world.

1:27:14 Last part of that is to the 20-year-old that’s watching us, listening to us around the world, that wants to grow up like Chase. You probably get tons of emails and people that are like, I want to do this, I want to do that. What’s the one thing you always tell them? All the shit I just said. Okay.

1:27:33 Yeah, and just most of the answers are in here. It’s not out there. I find it hard to give advice. I try and, like, the tactical stuff, because I know that when I did this, this happened, but it might not be the same for you, but I just hate over-qualifying everything. Right.

1:27:50 And so you don’t have to over-qualify and just say, like, you actually know the answer to the question. You know the answer is in here, and it’s the matter of being honest with yourself and listening to that voice. Not the gremlins, not the 3M voice, that’s actually a biological thing that’s not helpful. That’s tearing you down, that’s that voice. Yeah, listen to your truest sense of self, because all of the answers are in there, and if there are answers that aren’t in there, we’ll tell you where to go find them.

1:28:20 Right, and execute as well. Sure, you have to actually, like, I hope that that’s a thing that, you know, when you list off a lot of the work that I’ve done, that, and when you say artist, that it’s not like, I’m just pontificating or hand-waving here, like, doing stuff matters. Like, that’s the, if you told me you just had an idea for a show, I wouldn’t be here. You’ve done 300 of them with some people that I like and respect. I think you do a great job.

1:28:51 That’s what you’ve built, that’s why I’m here, because you’ve done something. Nothing done, and then people always ask, well, how do you get started? You build something as if there are a bunch of people watching, and you build it for yourself, and you look at it, and you say, do I like this? And if I don’t like it, then I change it, and I build another, and I build a couple, and then I start to tell some people about it. And you said, who do you get to, who was your first, who was your first interview?

1:29:16 Let me turn the tables on you. My first interview, I think we interviewed ourselves. There you go. And who we were. Mm-hmm.

1:29:22 And then who was the next person that you interviewed besides yourselves? I was a cool friend of ours that we thought had something to say. Yep. And then the next person? Another one of those.

1:29:30 Yep. And then how many of those did you do before you got someone who was outside your friend’s circle? 25. There you go. The same is true with everything.

1:29:39 If I need experience to get the gig chase, how do I get started? Well, you start like you have experience, and then you look at that relative to the world, relative to the things that you want to accomplish personally. And then you make it again, and you make it again. And then you start telling people about it. And I think it’s a lot like planting a seed and watering it.

1:30:00 Yeah. Like, you water it a lot before you ever see anything. Right? Yeah. That’s some Zen shit right there.

1:30:08 Yeah, it is. It’s like your own creative seed. Chase, thanks so much for coming. You’ve inspired me, I think, in so many subconscious ways I don’t know about. You know, I remember watching that YouTube video three and a half years ago, and just being like, wow, what’s this guy?

1:30:21 I didn’t hear about him before. He’s doing this whole big show, you know, big name sponsors. That’s, I think, got all planted seeds in my head. And, you know, I had those tough days, and I used to walk out of the house, and I’d be like, what the hell are you doing, Brian? This isn’t a business.

1:30:36 This is nothing. You’re just talking to people. And, like, it’s nice to have those people that just kind of led the way. Like you said, I mean, I guess great artists steal from all the artists. For sure.

1:30:47 And so you were definitely one of those. Thank you. Just seeing what you did. It’s an honor. And remember, if you only stole from me, then it’s stealing.

1:30:53 But if you steal from all of us, everyone on the Internet, that’s called research, man. Right. I love that concept. Yes, I don’t feel bad at all. You should shout out to Austin Kleon for his book, Steal Like an Artist.

1:31:04 Steal Like an Artist, yeah, I’m going to read that because you’ve been talking about it. And that’s what I did. I took every little bits, and then it ended up putting so much of myself in it in my own narrative. And I think I just listened to people, because I never thought my narrative was interesting. But now, once I tell it, people are like, oh, it’s really interesting.

1:31:17 And so I kind of bring that into show, and I’m still learning every day. So it’s been great to watch you. Really inspirational. I know lots of people that have done creative live shows that have been here, like Kelly Starrett and Dave Asprey and all those people. And I’ve watched your interviews with Tim Ferriss, and it’s great.

1:31:31 I think part of you came here today because we are an independent media organization that does our own stuff. And I’m sure you’re like, I got to see what these guys are about. Yeah, and I try and reward people who are doing cool shit and working hard doing it. And it’s equally inspirational that you’ve done 300. I haven’t done 300 Chase Jarvis lives.

1:31:52 That’s impressive, is how I know how much work goes into it. So you are the average of the five people to spend the most time with. And I try and put myself around as many awesome people as I can. And again, I’m grateful that you’ve put something out there long enough to cultivate an audience where you’ve given this material and haven’t asked for anything in return. To me, that’s a beautiful thing, and that the world worked like that more often and to be a better place.

1:32:23 And we only, you know, be the change you want to see in the world. So you’re walking your talk, and that counts a lot in my book, man. Cool, man. Thank you very much. Thank you.

1:32:33 Thank you, London. I absolutely love London. I could talk to you all day, man. Yeah, we’re going to get you out of here. As we say in London Real, it’s about the journey.

1:32:41 I wish you well on yours. Thanks, Chase. It’s been a real honor. Thanks, brother. Appreciate it.

1:33:37 Because you cunts all want everybody to love you. I don’t want anybody to love me. I don’t want anybody to even fucking like me. The bad news is today is that this isn’t going to be a lot of fun. This is a time to get uncomfortable.

1:33:54 Just fucking do it. The more you hear it, the more it resonates. And so that’s so much input and so much value I can get. That’s priceless.

1:34:15 Thank you.