Never Play It Safe: Chase Jarvis's Unfiltered Journey | Chase Jarvis DSH #791
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you know, the world doesn't see that. Those are the real steps that they took. And if you ask anyone who wants to be, you talked about popular, wants to be a successful entrepreneur, if your company is not, you know, worth a billion dollars in the first three years, these days, the belief is that I might as well just throw this company in the trash because it's never going to be, you know, the next Airbnb, whatever.

All right, guys. Got someone that's been in the game for a while now, Chase Jarvis. Thanks for coming on with the new book as well. That's right. Hustling, man. Thanks for having me. Absolutely. I was just chatting you up before. I don't know, man. Different era. You are a machine. I've been on guests on a lot of shows and hat tip. Christ.

crushing it. I had to do something different, man. Because there's guys that have been in the game for like you 10 years and I didn't want to compete with guys like you that had that audience for years. So I was like, let me go after the younger crowd on the social media platforms for the clips. For sure. And you're

again, you're just a spit and fire. The range of guests as someone who is in your seat a lot of the time to be able to be prepared for the guests that you have. Yeah. AI has helped with that. Of course. It was probably a lot harder to do guest research five, 10 years ago. For sure. But still mad respect because you got to put that stuff in your brain.

You too, man. What made you want to get in a podcast that long ago? It was selfish. I was a lifelong photographer and artist, and I felt like photography, this is again like 15 years ago, was really insular. Everyone was just sort of like a little circle jerk, and people were only referring to what the other person was doing and

And to me, that actually wasn't interesting. I was a very insular, like fat, old, white, rich people were into photography. That was what it is. And I was interested in, you know, learning in real time and sharing my secrets and, you

So I was like, man, how can I learn from a lot more interesting people? And I did at the time have a very large social footprint and a very popular blog back in the days when blogs were the shit. And so I felt like I had a platform that I could offer other people when they were promoting books or whatnot. So I started inviting people from all sorts of different disciplines, from usually creative disciplines, but photography, design, filmmaking, authors. And those are people that inspired me.

And so in a sense, it was selfish. And I was just sharing that process of me learning in real time. And I was one of the first interview podcasts back in like 2006. It wasn't even really a platform then. We were live streaming and building all the platforms online.

That was like YouTube days, right? Yeah, actually right on the cusp of YouTube being acquired by Google. It started out as Google Video where we were posting all our shit and then became YouTube. And obviously when these services became free –

uh, that was the explosion of it all. That's crazy. So you were before Rogan, man, way back. Damn. I said 10 years. It's more like almost 20. It was 2009 was the first year we were doing the show. Okay. Yeah. So, and we actually would live stream it as well. Uh, we'd have in studio audience. So guests would come from, you know, 500, 2000 miles away. It's getting the show, uh, you know, a couple hundred people in the live studio audience. We were, it was such a big production. We had, you know, six or seven cameras, cranes, all that stuff. And, uh,

It was just such a massive production. We'd have 40,000, 50,000 people watching live. Yeah, it was like television basically, but the internet really sort of empowered it. Yeah, you were way ahead of your time, I feel like, because now live streaming is really hot. Totally. Well, that's what these dark circles under my eyes are from, all that hard work.

You paved the way. Sometimes when you're the first one, it's not the best. Totally. You take the licks. And that's part of what this chapter in my life, having done a bunch of that stuff, did a lot of the early live streaming. I created the world's first live streaming learning platform called Creative Live back in 2010. Grew that up, had tens of millions of users, made hundreds of millions in revenue. That was acquired a couple years ago by Fiverr. Oh, nice. Congrats on that. That's huge. Publicly traded company.

But sort of those firsts, firsts in entrepreneurship, firsts in photography and design and basically sharing the concept behind the scenes video didn't exist that long ago.

that just paved the way for me to want to, in this chapter, share some of what I learned along the way. So that's what this book, Never Play It Safe, is about. And the short version there is that all the best shit in life, all the best things I've ever experienced, and having had a thousand guests on my show, and learned from many of the world's top experts across all sorts of disciplines, that

We seek comfort as a default, and yet if all the best stuff in life is on the other side of our comfort zone, on the other side of risk, on the other side of fear...

We don't really have a paradigm or a way to think about that in our culture. Right. And so, you know, that's what the new book is about. And I think it's valuable. It's like a blueprint essentially for doing the stuff that the people that we do. This episode is brought to you by United Airlines. When you want to make the most of your vacation, book with United.

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what they've done in order to make their lives successful, happy. Absolutely. 20 years of lessons in that book. That's right. I'm fascinated by how you blew up in the photography space because it was before social media because now you could just showcase your work. It's probably easier to blow up. But how did you pull that off before social media? A handful of ways. First of all, I really focused on building community in real life. And what that meant a long time ago was

like literally getting people together. A lot of people win, said there's nothing happening in their city or they're from a small town. If you're not from New York or LA, I'm, I'm, uh, I bring it to Seattle initially and, and I've had different footprints in different cities, New York and Paris, uh, since then. But early on, I was like, okay, well, what can I do in my hometown? So I would gather all the photographers that I knew and, and,

get together, brainstorm, share ideas on what was working, what was not working, and build community in real life. And then as you mentioned, when the internet was very early, things like what was Google Video and then became YouTube, I had a full-time video person following me around in 2005. Wow, so that was before Gary Vee started. I was just going to say, Gary Vee, and respect to my man, he gave me a nice blurb for the book. He's a dear friend. But

But yeah, he gets a lot of credit for that, but he really took it from me. He sat down in 2000 and I think nine or 10 on my podcast and sat in the middle and was like,

There are people that picked us up from the airport and followed us home, and he was like, ah. And you can tell Gary's secret's out, bro. But look at the trickle-down effect of that, because he inspired me. So low-key, it came from you. Okay, there you go. Well, this is from the grandfather of no. No, I think Gary's done an amazing job. And as you said, it's a completely different paradigm. And to me, learning back then that it was slow and awkward, there is something that there's a sort of a stick-to-it-ness that's required sometimes.

And that's not to say that it's any easier. Ironically, I feel like it was probably easier back then to stand out because there were so few people doing that. And I would say, you know, I'm one of the top commercial photographers in the world for 20 years. And yet I think my photographer, my photography was on par with a lot of my peers. But the difference that...

the way I stood out was because I was basically sharing everything that I was learning in real time and building community long before it was trendy to do so. So in a sense, that was actually the difference maker. And I would say the signal to noise ratio was a lot different back then and different in my favor because no one was doing this. And it was like, I was actually getting a ton of shit from people in my industry. Like, why are you giving away all trade secrets? And, and obviously we all know that information moves very quickly these days. And, and,

you know, what's a secret today is the whole world knows tomorrow. So I just saw that happening early and decided to turn my business and life and profession inside out by sharing that stuff. I love it. Yeah, it gave me a lot of, I guess, momentum and insight of where this whole universe was going. And you don't have to be perfectly correct, but if you can see around the corner a little bit, I feel like it gives you an advantage in...

I'd say in business, but also in life. Absolutely. Yeah. Instead of gatekeeping, you were collaborating. Yeah. Yeah. And that's something that I'm proud of looking back. And yet it's so common today. Like what is the next differentiator? Well, you know, hat tip to you again, you've figured that out. It's going to market with a lot of different stories about a lot of different people in different

super short timeline and with a really wide net that's allowed you to capture the hearts and minds and feeds of a lot of people. I'm able to go after trending industries. Totally. And now I'm learning from you. That's one of the, I mean, the reason that I am on this show today is because I was really interested in what you were doing and having been guests on a lot of the biggest shows in the world and had one of my own for a long time. I was like, Sean,

Podcasts are hot right now. So there's been six acquisitions this year in the space over $80 million.

Yeah, so you might have to bring your show back. Wow, my hustle. Okay. Okay, I'll take lessons from you, man. Yeah, well, 1,000 episodes, man. That's impressive. I just hit 1,000. Well, yeah, and how long did it take you? A year and a half. There you go. I haven't been doing it since 2009. But you were doing one a week, right? One a month at first. Oh, wow, you took it slow and steady. One a month at first. Well, when you're doing it live with a big in-studio audience and flying all cameras around and whatnot, it was a lot. And...

I do feel like, I think the punchline for me is looking backwards, I've learned a bunch of stuff, right? And the stuff that, yeah, I guess that's, again, the essence of the book is none of those things. And I would actually, you know, I'd put this question to you. When you think of the best things in your life, whether it's a relationship, it's show, you know, your entrepreneurial success,

did any of them come risk-free or fear-free or... - No, you had to be uncomfortable. - Yeah, the whole time. And yet so much of our culture is about making ourselves comfortable. - Right. - You know, with whether it's, you know, scrolling or with food or distraction or whatever.

When I look at what people want to do with their lives and I look at the sort of the lives that they're leading, there's this massive gap and people are frustrated and sad and upset and angry. Like, why can't I do the thing? Why can't I break out? How do I, you know, stand out in a sea of, of people doing the same thing I am? Well, I like to think of, if I look back at the successes and a lot of failures that I've had, there's a pattern and the same with, you know, so many people I mentioned, a thousand guests that I've had, uh,

there's a real pattern and it turns out i've isolated a half a dozen call it seven tools that are the common threads of people who have played through their fear played through discomfort taken not stupid risks but have taken the risks that have paid off and transformed their lives

That's what I put in the book. I love it. I'm a big guy on lists, so I'm definitely going to check that out. There you go. Being uncomfortable, man, I turned down public speaking for years. There you go. And I finally just started last week. Nice. I had like 10, 15 people come up to me after, and it just felt amazing, dude. So I'm going to start doing it more. I feel like there's an interesting universe when you build something in the digital space.

And you do start to, you know, do keynotes or travel. And to me, that's an interesting expansion of the, you know, the vibe that you get when you're doing it. Because clearly you're learning a shit ton. I'm watching you move around the studio. You got guests coming and going. It's interesting. And yet there's also something, a flip of that is when you're,

you know, backstage at a keynote and they're saying your name and there's 6,000 people. Yeah. It's a different, it's a different atmosphere. Totally. Totally. But growing up, I had trauma in public settings speaking. Oh, really? Yeah. Well, I just think in public school, when you present to the class or whatever, it's shit you don't care about. Yeah. So you're kind of freaking out. You're debating about, you know, some political bullshit. Yeah. You're in eighth grade or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. But now I love it, dude. I'm glad I started doing it. And I

And I'm sure you're the same, right? Absolutely. But let's go back to what is allowing you to be successful. It's this willingness to be uncomfortable. And there's no sort of evil overlord that's saying, we can't, you know, now we've got to make everybody numb and not uncomfortable. Well, you know, that's not what I'm saying at all. But the reality is that nothing great comes without risk. Nothing great comes without fear. I mean, that's what courage is, right? Courage is...

feeling fear and doing it anyway. And this is also to be clear, I'm not talking about seatbelts. And so when I say don't never play it safe, it's not about seatbelts and sunscreen and emotional safety, physical safety, those things are important, but basically all the other kinds of safety that we seek are

are essentially bullshit and they're leftover, you know, biology telling us to just be safe, safe enough to reproduce, not get eaten by the saber tooth tiger. And obviously there's not a lot of saber tooth tigers around. And yet we still have this desire to, you know, stay, stay home, stay in our parents' basement, stay comfortable. Uh, and, uh,

If you ask, you survey, when was the last time that you did something for the first time? When was the last time you were actually physically scared? Like those are mechanisms that you can actually practice. And the people who are the best in the world at freaking anything, race car drivers, podcasters, anything, they practice.

systematically put themselves in a position of being uncomfortable. And there is a way to do that. It's replicable. And when you basically get in touch with these native tools, like our intuition, our ability to direct our attention, um,

that's where the best shit in life is, is when you get to, you hone those tools. Absolutely. Yeah. When I find myself complacent and comfortable, I get itchy. I get that itch to, to get out there. That's the thing. When you start to crave it, when you see what it has provided for you, like this platform, it was uncomfortable and hard and weird at first. You're like, I don't know if this is the right gear. Is this the right space? Is this the right guest? And yet,

Once you've done that for a couple of years or a thousand episodes, I'm super comfortable here and I see the benefits that the risk that I took a couple of years ago have provided for me. Now I'm getting asked to speak all over the place. I got tens of millions of people that are paying attention to what I do. That attention affords me some nice luxuries. And what else could I do with this? That's when life becomes interesting. Yeah, absolutely. Where were your favorite places to film? I'm sure you've been all over the world. Oh, man. Yeah.

Uh, yeah, I think I've probably worked in about 80 countries. Uh, tops. Let's see. Um, New Zealand is right up there. I love New Zealand. Um, the, the geographic proximity of amazing shit. Like you can be in a glacier in the morning and a black sand beach in the afternoon. And with the aid of, if you have a high production value, you know, you can with helicopters, for example, you can do all that stuff an hour or two apart. Um, that's epic. Um,

The Lofoten Islands in Norway. I've heard of that. North of the Arctic Circle. It's essentially like Switzerland meets Hawaii. It's totally insane. I was just up there on a job about a month ago and sun never set.

What? The sun never sets. It's up all day? Up all day. That far north, there's like a two-week period in the summer, and the sun never sets. So imagine epic light for like six hours. The sun goes down right to the edge of the horizon and then just rides the horizon for like five or six hours. Whoa. And then comes back up. That's beautiful, man. It also makes for really long days if you're in my line of work.

line of work out outside you know we would start we start shooting uh call times we're at three in the afternoon and then we would wrap at 4 a.m damn 13 hours do that for five days in a row taking photos for that long jeez um yeah man so i think those are um and the area of photography that i specialize in is outside so action sports like uh ski skate snow surf

Um, and then I did that a lot with, um, in, with the endemic companies early on. And as action sports became very popular culturally, I rode that wave to doing that stuff instead of for the small endemic companies to the apples and the Nikes and the,

Samsung's and the visas and the whatever, because that's where the dough and the freedom, creative freedom. Yeah, you've worked for everyone. Did you learn a lot about yourself from traveling the world? For sure. I've lived abroad as well. I lived in France and I worked out of Paris for a number of years. And that's a thing that I feel like is simultaneously exciting and scary right now. The world politically is really interested and interesting and divided and

The globalization is both interesting because you have a global audience, for example. And man, so many of the best moments in my life, we're traveling, we're going to New Zealand and Norway and 78 other countries. And it's my hope that

Because the digital tools are so good that we don't actually erode our desire to actually go there. Because there's something very special about putting your feet in a black sand beach in New Zealand. I agree. I fear that with my kids if they're going to be in an Oculus or Metaverse and just not wanting to leave. Yeah. And if it's truly indistinguishable, that's one thing. But I feel like for...

you know, N number of years between now and when it is indistinguishable, the physical experience and the digital experience, which I think it's going to be a pretty reasonable, it's like a half a lifetime probably before those two things are, are one in the same. There's a lot of opportunity to actually, you know, go places, see things and touch things. And, and, you know, I think that's part of when you think about the desire to be safe, it sounds so much easier to sit in your basement and put on an Oculus, but,

the people that you look up to, respect, admire, and appreciate, very few of them have built their universes by doing that. In fact, it's just the opposite. They've put themselves in harm's way and they've taken chances. And my desire is to encourage the people who are watching, listening, to do the same. Love it. Pulled a couple of quotes from your website here. So healing isn't a destination, it's a journey. Yeah, and in part, that's what this book is. This is this...

The concept of playing it safe can be reduced to so many things. And I feel like that is, it really limits our potential as human beings. And whether you're talking about healing from, you talked about trauma, like presenting in front of, you know, large groups of people or even a classroom. When we're taught to play small, I got a super quick story. My,

I shot my first film in the summer routine, first and second grade. So going back like super little. Film was profitable, like raised money, bought concessions and screened it in my parents' friend's basement. Went into second grade on a high. I had my own comic strip. I had a stand-up comedy routine. I had a magic show. Damn, you were talented, man. Second grade shit. And then Miss Kelly.

She, I'll never forget, I walked in at the parent-teacher conference. They had the ice cream social at the same time, so your parents could come, like, meet with the teacher, and you could have ice cream. And I walked in the second-grade classroom where there were a couple other adults. I don't think they didn't think I was there. And I heard my second-grade teacher, Miss Kelly, tell my parents that, you know, Chase is so much better at sports than he is at art. And besides all this sort of entrepreneurship stuff, like...

selling a comic strip at lunchtime and stuff. We can't do that in school. So I need him to quit all those things. And he should get good grades, but he really is going to be an athlete. So essentially, I got shut down in second grade. And the goal with this is not to say, boo-hoo, poor young little Chase got shut down by Miss Kelly, but...

I think about like that's that is where I started formulating my idea of what was possible. And so just like Miss Kelly suggested, I went right. You know, I would say early on I was a quirky, weird, interesting, fun, creative, entrepreneurial kid. And then essentially Miss Kelly slaps me around and says, you know, get in line and do the same things that everybody else is doing. And I then changed.

So I picked up football. I was a captain of the football team. I dated a cheerleader. I was, you know, I just basically got stepped into the rut that Miss Kelly thought that I should be in. And the confusing thing as young people, or even as it's like, I'd even say all the way up to twenties and early thirties, like the world is telling you all these things that you should be. And the confusing part is that these are people generally who are your friends, your peers, they, you know, or your career counselor or your parents or your grandparents, your uncle, whatever, uh,

And the reality is that that's not the best place to get advice. You're taking advice from someone about something that you don't want to be or become. My, my, you know, uncle wanted me to be a lawyer. My grandma wanted me to be a doctor and they wanted the best for me. Of course they did, but,

I was just so eager to take instruction and to take direction from people that I respected, appreciated, admired, that it really made it hard for me to break out and do the things that I was called to do as a young, creative, interesting person. And to be clear, like I'm white, male, I'm born in America. I have basically every advantage and still sort of

Going against what everyone else had in mind for me was the most difficult thing I'd ever done. Wow. And when I think of how that pans out culturally, it's my hope that there's this feature in psychology called mimesis. A French philosopher, René Girard, said we basically, as human social animals, we just...

look at what other people are doing and that gives us the best indication of what we can do. And so if you're not exposed to a lot early on or the only things that you see are the things that you can dream of,

We're really making a narrow picture of what's possible, not just with your life, but with any life. And so here we are walking around in a circle, imitating what everybody else is doing. And it's, that's one of the reasons that we love rock stars, right? Because they're, you know, they're taking a huge chance and they're standing on the stage, belting their lungs out. Or in your case, you decided to, you know, eschew the fear of public speaking and what everyone else told you was possible, put together a show, started doing it, doing it differently. And yeah,

And look what that has delivered for you. So you are the exception. And to me, that's the message of my book, Never Play It Safe. And I guess the place that I am in my career right now is I want to help people understand that all of the shit that you see out there in the world, those people are likely no more talented, no more hardworking than you are. They just are willing to turn off a certain subset of the inputs that culture is giving them so that they can truly be themselves.

truly do the thing that would make them, you know, come alive. Agreed. Cause I used to really look up to these people and ask myself, wow, they're geniuses. And then now that I'm in the space and friends with some of them, they're just ordinary people, right? Yeah. I mean, we were talking about Robert Green earlier. Um, you know, he's the OG author, right? 48 laws of power, the 50th law, laws of human nature, so many amazing culturally relevant, um,

his books. And he was a gangster, right? He had to forge those paths on his own. No one was sitting there telling him. There wasn't a great example of what sorts of books to write that would help him stand out from his peers way back then. And so he had to take a chance. And it turns out he took a lot of chances. And the same is true with every entrepreneur that we respect and admire and every, I guess, artist in general, people who are creating things for

a living and a life. Like, how can we get more of that into our culture and less looking around at what our friends and our friends' friends are doing as the mesopotamians?

as the blueprint for life. And the school environment makes it very easy to have that mindset. I was pretending to be someone I wasn't the whole time. Totally. Like all 18 years. Yeah, tell me more. I just try to be popular and I feel like that's an issue with a lot of kids, man. You know, trying to fit in, be the cool kid, but that's not me at all. Like I'm a huge introvert nerd. Like I was putting on a show for sure. Well, that's, I mean, that's really what Never Play It Safe is. It's about you doing you. And then as soon as you started that, first of all, it was probably really hard.

right oh yeah yeah i was scared to start a podcast or even put myself on social media for years of course and you talked about wanting to fit in it's sort of like the irony is that you can't everyone wants to stand out but you can't stand out and fit in at the same time right so you know they're that paradox there that's when i deconstructed all the best in my life and the best stuff in the lives of my my peers and friends and a lot of the ogs that we're talking about

Like there was a pattern, you know, there was the ability to focus relentlessly on something, you know, the ability to direct our attention. There was the ability to trust who you are at your core, despite all these, you know, negative or different inputs. There's the ability to trust your intuition.

There's the ability to be patient. Everyone thinks, especially in this day and age when we can just pick up our phone and scroll, you can see the best in the world doing anything at any time. The belief is that person just did that instantaneously. And what you don't see is the 10 or 20 years that they've grinded in order to make it happen. Overnight success. Yeah, yeah. And so it completely distorts our relationship with time. The people I know are truly legendary. They were willing to...

basically sacrifice insane amounts of time at learning their craft and mastering it. And while it's,

The world doesn't see that. Those are the real steps that they took. And if you ask anyone who wants to be, you talked about popular, wants to be a successful entrepreneur, if your company is not worth a billion dollars in the first three years, these days, the belief is that I might as well just throw this company in the trash because it's never going to be the next Airbnb, whatever. And that's just...

That's just not how it works. Instant gratification people want. Yeah, exactly. And so, again, these are an example of the seven tools, the seven sort of things that are within all of us that have been conditioned out of us that are naturally within us. And we just have to start to pay attention to those things. And you clearly, I mean, when I was looking at what shows to be on to promote the book,

that was basically a qualifier is that does the, does the host, the person who started the runs a show, do they exemplify, you know, the idea of not playing it safe? Are they a risk taker and what have they done to stand out in their environment? And,

I can say without a doubt that you, you know, again, of these seven tools, we talked about the ability to direct attention, talked about the ability to trust your intuition, the ability to, you know, put in the long game. Like I'm watching all this stuff happening. I don't know if people are knowing how, how hard you work, how, you know, how much you prepare for every guest, how far the guests travel and that when you show up, you treat them like royalty and you get, you know, you help them tell a great story.

Like all that takes a lot of work and you're patient with that stuff. Also, there are constraints, right? You have time constraints, money constraints. So many people nowadays that I know think of constraints as the thing that's keeping them down. But I think you probably said, well, I need to start a podcast. Like I need something instead of nothing. I need a camera. It wasn't the most perfect camera. No, I used to film on iPhone, iPhone 10s, I think. There you go. And you didn't have any of this. Like the whole studio setup wasn't here. Yeah.

And yet that probably made what you were doing actually more interesting because you were willing to work within the constraints that you had rather than some delaying starting the show for some perfect environment that would never come. It'll never happen when you wait for perfection. Totally. Yeah. So, you know, and the same thing is true. You mentioned a kid and like kids are little failure machines, right? If you watched a kid and any able-bodied kid, watch him learn to walk.

I mean, they fall down the first like 3000 times they try. And there isn't a parent that I know, if you have an able-bodied child that like on, you know, stumble number 1,750, they just say, guess my kid's not a walker. Sorry, you're going to put them in the chair. He's not a walker. No one says that. And yet when people are thinking about that thing that they want to do be or become, they

And when they've hit their, you know, 50th roadblock or 100th stumble or whatever, we're all pretty quick to throw in the towel. Yeah. And, you know, so each of these are examples of the tools within the book, this playbook

of how to get good at going beyond your fear at taking smart risks and being uncomfortable because again that's where all the best stuff in life is that's where it is man yeah you can't be comfortable you just it's easy to want to be that way it is it is and it's easy to look out across the you know landscape and see other people that are more successful or seem to be happier more fulfilled or having you know better professional success and want to shortcut that

And the reality is that instead of trying to be a second-rate them, if you were focused on being a first-rate version of you and you got really serious about what is it that you care deeply about and you did that instead of the shit that your parents want you to do or your career counselor or what your friends are doing, you're like, no, what is it? What's that weird, quirky thing that you did as a kid that could make you great today? Absolutely. That's, you know, I think where all the best stuff in life is. For sure. I tried so hard to be popular. It almost ended my life, man. Yeah.

Crazy. Say more. So a couple times, actually. I almost had to get my stomach pumped once. I got arrested once. I was smoking weed, even though I had terrible anxiety and just having panic attacks all the time. And just, it was toxic, dude. Trying to fit in with those guys. And how did you finally, like, what was the realization? Because I think this is really important to hear. Yeah. I want to go into this just a little bit. Entrepreneurship helped me find myself a lot, dude. Because, yeah.

Yeah, I was just in friend groups where we would smoke weed, get high, drink, whatever, party. And that wasn't my interest at all. Like I was just doing that to fit in and I didn't have the same interest. I wanted to further my personal development. So as soon as you then redirected, so like, okay, there was a while there where you're trying to do both. And you're like, cool, well, I want to try and build a podcast. And in order to do that, I'm going to have to smoke less weed. At the time it was e-commerce, but yeah, I was trying to get into business and I knew those things were holding me back.

stopped partying, stopped doing all that stuff. Is it cold turkey? Cold turkey, yeah. So I had a seizure. And when I had the seizure, because I was coming off a Xanax withdrawal, and I was really high when I had the seizure, so I quit weed completely because now I can't even smoke it. And yeah, I don't even drink that much anymore. Once in a while. Wow. And...

See, so you're, if you just deconstruct that story, like the time that you were, the time and energy and how much energy it takes to try and be someone that you're not and fit into a group that you're not, you ought not to try and aspire to be a part of. There's so many lies. Yeah. Being exposed to say Gary V's message. He helped a lot. Yeah. He helped a lot. Right. And to me, that's,

again, that's the only reason I write books is because it's a really tidy. And if Gary was sitting here, he'd probably say the same thing. And we actually have the same publisher and we've had this conversation before. It's like, it's just a tidy package to help people realize that, man, like here's a, here's a handful of tools and a set of ideas that obviously, again, you were inspired by him. You took those ideas. You're like, I'm going to try and build in your case, there's an e-commerce platform that,

If that's something that truly interests you, how did you feel when you started doing like spending most of your time and energy doing that as opposed to trying to fit in and smoke weed and be cool? Night and day. Night and day. So like that is available to everyone, like to everyone. I'm looking at you right now like that is available to you right now. Quitting being the things that everybody else wants you to be.

getting real quiet and real honest with what would light you up and actually doing that thing. And even as you said, well, you didn't start recording a podcast and have all this fancy shit. You started recording a podcast with a phone, with an iPhone 10 and you, that was, you know, version one, but it was the starting that actually gave you the juice. The confidence too. Yeah. And then after you've done two or three of those, you're like, I could do more of these. And then you get your first sponsorship. So you bought a few cameras, like that's,

the best, that's the juice of life right there. Yeah, absolutely. So when you were captain of the team and dating a cheerleader, where were you at mentally? Were you suffering? I had a really good pretend game going on. Yeah, it was the same like we all are. When you're looking around and you're getting patted on the back for doing shit that everyone thinks you should be doing, it looks good on the outside, feels like shit on the inside. And it wasn't until my, I actually bailed on a career in professional soccer and

bailed on medical school and to become a photographer. So my poor parents, like, you know, I had it all and I threw it away. And it was actually my grandfather dying. He had a heart attack, dropped dead on his garage floor. I got two things. I got his watch and I got his camera. And it was in that moment shortly after, this is like the week of my college graduation. So shortly after graduating college,

I took that camera, the little bit of money that I had, and a plane ticket that I got off of miles from my parents' credit card and threw it all in a backpack and just went to travel the world and learned to take pictures. Wow. And it was that process of decoupling from the life that I had been leading and

And the journey out on my own with my then girlfriend, now wife, like exploring the world and being quiet enough to ask, what do I really want? That, you know, all this stuff started to present itself like, imagine a world where you could, you know, build companies and, you know, and write books and take pictures and travel the world. You know, back then it was really about traveling the world and ski and skate and surf with all my friends and you could get paid to do that.

That's not actually a pipe dream. There are people that do that for a living. I'm a living example. The people that you look up to and respect that you see on the internet that are really doing that, they've all had to do that. They've all had to, at some point, again, issue the things that everybody else wants for them, get really quiet. And whether it's because they had a seizure or

or because their grandfather died and gave them their camera or any number of other reasons, they started, they did something instead of nothing. Right. They decided to, you know, not go smoke weed with their, you know, their pseudo friends and hang out with their nerdy friends that were doing cool shit that they were inspired by. That's the first step. And if you lean into that, like to me, that's, that is the, um,

I guess that's the beginning of the best stuff in life. I agree. Yeah, if you can lean into that, all you really need is momentum. Yeah, because I feel like everyone has those traumatic moments, like life-changing moments, and then it's on you how you're going to react, right? Because I've seen it destroy people, too. Yeah, and the goal is to not have to have those huge traumas. A couple years later, shooting a commercial for Nike in Alaska, I was caught in an avalanche. Damn.

and I should be dead by every measure. It was like a one 10th of a 1% chance of escape just based on the size of the audience, the size of that. Yeah. I mean, 10 or 20 feet foot deep crown, like two or 300 feet across 2000 vertical feet. Holy. Yeah. Massive. And you don't live to, you know, you don't usually don't live and stuff like that. And, and,

I was actually I was a photographer I was a working photographer then and even then that Avalanche completely transformed how I thought about the next chapter of my life I sort of thought I was doing all of the stuff that I could and that made you know that basically sent me on a path to 10x the things that I was doing at that time wow not out of fear but out of like man

we get one shot. Why am I playing it safe? I had a nice little lane as a photographer and that, you know, almost dying in that avalanche is what made me start CreativeLive, which is again, that sort of online learning platform for creatives that, you know, went on to be acquired by a public company and start just a handful of different projects, do some television shows and whatnot. And it's obvious when those things happen from trauma, like, you know, if you almost die and you're like, okay, I got to get my shit together.

My hope is that if you're listening or watching right now, let's catch that before you have a seizure doing something that you don't really want to be doing. Do you think that's possible or do you think you need a moment like that? I don't think you need it. It's just a helpful nudge. And the universe is pretty good at giving us what we need. So if you are experiencing that tough time right now,

The reality is that that's a great time to take stock, to look inside and find out, are there things in my life that I want to change and what are they? Turns out that who you spend time with matters a lot. What you spend time doing matters a lot. And simultaneously, I don't want you to feel like you have to have it all figured out because this idea of a moment where everything changes, if you haven't had that moment yet,

you know, so many people are then just sitting around waiting for it. And this is my hope is the call to action today is that you don't wait, something will happen. And the universe, again, does a really good job of giving us what we need. Oh yeah. But you don't actually have to wait for the universe. You can actually, you know, go seek it. And that's again, the, the name of the book is never play it safe, a practical guide to freedom, creativity, and a life you love. Um,

That's because this is a roadmap on how to do that where you don't almost die in an avalanche or die from a seizure, a drug overdose, or coming off of a powerful narcotic. Yeah, universe will humble you, man. When I made my first money, I thought to myself, oh, I'll never be stressed again. Oh, it will humble you for sure. Right, and then you made a little bit more, and then you wanted a little bit more. It's not to say that this never ends because money does take some of those worries away.

But the goal is to become a better person in the process. And where I see people struggle is when there's that gap between who they really are and who they're pretending to be and who they want to be and who they are today. Like that gap creates a lot of tension. And there's a small gap and that tension is good and healthy. And when that gap is too big, it just creates a bunch of negative outcomes and bad behavior. And again, I'm not...

intending to make it sound like a saint. Like I've, that's part of what I share in the book is, you know, look, I've betrayed myself so many times. I talk about, Oh, I bailed on medical school, but I actually went all the way through the course of study, spent hundreds of thousands of dollars was, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars in, in student loan debt before I got real with myself that what I actually want to be as a photographer and, you know, and changing that changed everything for me. And then I've made, you know,

thousand times the debt because I started leaning in to what I want. So there's lots of betrayals along the way. And I don't want to pretend that, you know, you wake up one day and you're betraying yourself and you wake up the next day and everything's better. Right.

But the goal of this book is just to help those little betrayals, betrayals of ourselves, just get smaller and smaller and more and more insignificant so that we can become closer to who we want to be. Absolutely. Chase, where can people find the book and what else you're up to, man? Anywhere books are sold.

It really means a lot if you go check it out. I truly have put, you talked about 20 years of experience as a professional creator. That's everything I've got is in that book. And my belief is that it will help you, put you on a path as a blueprint to get you out of where you are right now to where you want to be.

So go to neverplayitsafe.com. And I'm just Chase Jarvis everywhere on the internet. C-H-A-S-E-J-A-R-V-I-S. Boom. Yeah, YouTube, Insta, all the stuff. Link below. Thanks for coming on. Appreciate it. Appreciate what you got here, man. Congrats. Thank you. Thanks for watching, guys, as always. See you next time.