Episode 8: Chase Jarvis, Master Photographer

Chase Jarvis is a master photographer and the CEO of CreativeLIVE.com. He is the youngest person ever to be named a Hasselblad Master, Nikon Master, and ASMP Master. Since opening his own studio, Chase has photographed for Nike, Apple, Columbia Sportswear, REI, Honda, Subaru, Polaroid, Lady Gaga, Red Bull, and many more. He is known for a hyper-kinetic style and an emphasis on sports, lifestyle, and portraiture. CreativeLIVE.com, of which he's CEO, is an online learning platform that broadcasts live, high-definition classes to more than 2M students in 200 countries. All classes are free to watch while live and can be purchased for repeated viewing. They are amazing. Teachers include Pulitzer Prize winners, business luminaries, and beyond. In this conversation, we explore his personal story, the most important choices he's made, common mistakes of "creative" professionals (or people in general), and how he reached the pinnacle of his industry. His lessons learned can be applied almost anywhere. For full show notes, please visit www.fourhourblog.com. Say hello to Chase on Twitter at @chasejarvis. Enjoy!

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Tim Ferriss?

  Hi, this is Tim Ferriss. This is the Tim Ferriss Show. This episode is brought to you by Hip Dial. Hip Dial is how I do conference calls. Anytime you need more than two people on the phone, you give out a phone number, no PIN required, and you will get a text message when people join. So you don't have to sit around staring at the ceiling, watching paint dry or otherwise. It's great, so go to hipdial.com/tim. That will get you a free month. You can play around with it. It is awesome. It is carefree. It removes some of the headache from your life. Give it a shot. This episode is with my friend Chase Jarvis. Chase is a professional photographer and the CEO of CreativeLive.com, which I'm also an advisor to.

• 0:42Tim Ferriss?

  He is the youngest person to ever be named Hustle Blood Master, Nikon Master, and ASMP Master. Since opening his own studio, Chase has photographed for Volvo, Nike, Apple, Microsoft, RIA, Honda, Subaru, Lady Gaga, Red Bull. The list goes on and on. He is very famous for a hyperkinetic style. He was one of the first people to use octocopters. And he emphasizes lifestyle, sports, and portraiture. It really made his name with a lot of very high stakes skiing, Alpine photography. CreativeLive, his company, is an online learning platform that broadcasts live classes to an international audience. They have more than 2 million students in 200 countries. If you can imagine PBS on steroids,

• 1:25Tim Ferriss?

  you have these live classes with masters of all sorts of disciplines, including photography. CreativeLive.com, you can check it out. I've done a class there as well. You can watch for free. It's high-def. They have many different cameras, dollies, etc. And then if you want access to the classes later, you have to pay. That's how it works. That's the business model. You could call it a freemium pricing model. And it's pretty rad. So check it out. The company has headquarters in Seattle and San Francisco. I've been on there, like I mentioned. Pulitzer Prize-winning photographers have been on there. Top entrepreneurs of all sorts, including people like Reid Hoffman from Greylock, who's considered the oracle of Silicon Valley. And that's it about CreativeLive. But the story of Chase, the story of the development of his art,

• 2:10Tim Ferriss?

  and not only that, but bridging the gap, crossing the chasm from artist to entrepreneur to very fast scaling, successful startup, is a fascinating one, and I hope you enjoy it.

• 2:24Tim Ferriss?

  At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start to shake.

• 2:28Speaker 01

  Can I ask you a personal question?

• 2:30Speaker 02

  No, we're seeing an appropriate time.

• 2:34Speaker 01

  I'm a cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal endoskeleton.

• 2:43Tim Ferriss?

  So, Mr. Jarvis?

• 2:44Speaker 02

  Yes, sir.

• 2:46Tim Ferriss?

  Tables have been turned.

• 2:47Speaker 02

  They have been. I'll cross my legs like you've crossed yours.

• 2:49Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I'm not sure what to do. This is a new scenario for you people who can't actually see what we're doing. This is an experiment with the Tim Ferriss Podcast, also brought to you in moving pictures.

• 2:59Speaker 02

  Yes, normally you don't videotape it, right?

• 3:01Tim Ferriss?

  I normally, meaning the first two episodes, did not videotape it. And so I'm trying to sit somewhat like the host from Masterpiece Theater. I feel like that's appropriate, given the professional setting. Why don't you tell us where we are?

• 3:14Speaker 02

  We are in a studio called CreativeLive, which is a startup based here in San Francisco and in Seattle. I'm the co-founder with my good friend Craig Swanson, who's not here. And it is an education platform that connects the world's top experts in creative fields with a global audience all over the world. That's what "global" means.

• 3:34Tim Ferriss?

  I was always wondering what that meant. So, we first met how? I actually was trying to think of it today, and I couldn't piece it together.

• 3:41Speaker 02

  I don't know.

• 3:42Tim Ferriss?

  Had to be a good number of years ago.

• 3:44Speaker 02

  Several.

• 3:44Tim Ferriss?

  But we've had a lot of adventures together.

• 3:47Speaker 02

  We have had good adventures.

• 3:48Tim Ferriss?

  Spent a lot of time, OTK, lots of travel, always bumping to each other in airports.

• 3:54Speaker 02

  Around the world.

• 3:55Tim Ferriss?

  But what I'd love you to perhaps do first is just give people the Chase overview. What's Chase? Who is Chase Jarvis? Just a little bit of background, because I can obviously pontificate, but I want to give people an intro.

• 4:09Speaker 02

  I'll give you an opportunity to pontificate later.

• 4:13Speaker 02

  No, I was born, and I'm just kidding. I have spent my whole life as an artist.

• 4:20Speaker 02

  The career as a photographer is really the only career I've ever had until cofounding CreativeLive with Craig about three years ago now, three years and change. In a little grimy warehouse in South Seattle, we launched, I think it was in April actually, and to rapid growth and success. And then about a year later, we nailed some venture funding and then we just closed our Series B. And now there's about 100 people that are employed here in CreativeLive. And so there's this transition from myself as photographer, artist, traveling all over the world, shooting for the top brands. I sort of scratched my own itch because when I bailed on medical school and dropped out of a PhD in philosophy to pursue my dream of becoming a photographer

• 5:06Speaker 02

  and there was nowhere to get any damn good education. I didn't want to go back to school school. And I didn't want to, it was a very closed world 10 years ago. There's not a lot of access to information. And I said, "Man, if I'm ever in a position to change this, this sucks, I want to change it." And so by collaborating with my friend Craig, some 10 years later, we did exactly that. And so it's working.

• 5:30Tim Ferriss?

  Shazam.

• 5:31Speaker 02

  Shazam.

• 5:32Tim Ferriss?

  So I'm glad you started with the artist bit because I want to delve into that. The first few guests we've had ranged from investors to chess competitors.

• 5:44Speaker 02

  Oh wow, people are going to be so disappointed with this third podcast.

• 5:47Tim Ferriss?

  So I was hoping we could really lower their expectations by having you on this time.

• 5:50Speaker 02

  Good, it was a homeless guy, he's not too real well.

• 5:52Tim Ferriss?

  The fact that you went from being an artist and getting to that point, I want to delve into a little bit because obviously getting to the point where you're doing shoots with huge brands and flying octocopters before that was a thing and so on and so forth, you don't just jump into that as your first gig, I have to assume.

• 6:07Speaker 02

  For sure.

• 6:09Tim Ferriss?

  But moving from that to...

• 6:12Tim Ferriss?

  Really ending up in more of a management position. I want to talk about kind of how that's felt.

• 6:16Speaker 02

  Did you just call me manager?

• 6:18Tim Ferriss?

  You're middle manager, really, is what it comes down to. You seem dober, right?

• 6:22Speaker 02

  Perfect, yes.

• 6:24Tim Ferriss?

  Pointy-haired bosses.

• 6:26Speaker 02

  I had that little part in Office Space, that was me.

• 6:30Tim Ferriss?

  But given how professional I want to keep this, I also want you to I want you to start sort of gestating on a question.

• 6:40Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 6:40Tim Ferriss?

  Which is related to a concept I'm going to borrow. It's from Aisha Tyler. And it's called self-inflicted wounds. So at the end of our talk, I want you to think of some ridiculous story. Could be laughable, catastrophic. Oftentimes, it could be involving alcohol. Something where you've just made a complete ass of yourself. And I know you have a pretty good

• 7:01Speaker 02

  I've got a long list.

• 7:02Tim Ferriss?

  Selection to go through.

• 7:03Speaker 02

  I got a whole memory bank full of that. My RAM is full.

• 7:07Tim Ferriss?

  So photography.

• 7:08Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 7:08Tim Ferriss?

  How did you first get into photography? And how did you get to your first? What was your first paying gig?

• 7:14Speaker 02

  My first paying gig was

• 7:17Tim Ferriss?

  Well, let's backtrack.

• 7:17Speaker 02

  Sure, okay. How did you get into photography? I'm going to try and sort of relate the artist mentality to whatever audience is watching. Because I feel like the artist mentality is actually, if we take one step back, it's a creative mentality. And I also believe that creativity is the new literacy. So that creativity, like a lot of the investments you do, highly creative, your approach to them, what the founders are making of those companies. So whether you're taking pictures, building a business, managing a hedge fund, there's a ton of creativity involved. And so art is sort of about a subset of creativity. And I think that is, that's a theme that's going to continue. I'm forecasting the future of our conversation today. That's a theme that I'm going to continue.

• 7:59Tim Ferriss?

  You're already time-traveling.

• 8:00Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 8:02Speaker 02

  I'm gonna, no, I'm gonna continue to bring us back to that, because I think that's a really important core. My personal experience growing up, I was a very creative kid. And yet, being an artist as a kid was always like, "Oh, that kid's really creative."

• 8:17Tim Ferriss?

  Where did you grow up?

• 8:18Speaker 02

  I grew up in Seattle.

• 8:19Tim Ferriss?

  Okay.

• 8:20Speaker 02

  And I'm an only child, because I was a little bastard.

• 8:23Tim Ferriss?

  Scared him off?

• 8:25Speaker 02

  I did.

• 8:25Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, come on.

• 8:26Speaker 02

  I don't know if I can say bastard.

• 8:27Tim Ferriss?

  I'm coming from Long Island, I was hoping to drop F-bombs, but I'm seeing I'm so self-conscious here with all these professional cameras.

• 8:32Speaker 02

  But my, my childhood was a very creative childhood. My parents give me a block of wood, I'd go play in the backyard for hours. I'd sat at the adult table, because there was no kids' table.

• 8:43Tim Ferriss?

  The solo kid table, go sit in the corner.

• 8:45Speaker 02

  Basically.

• 8:46Tim Ferriss?

  What did your parents do?

• 8:47Speaker 02

  My dad was a cop, and my mom was an executive assistant at a big biotech company called, actually, they did Cialis.

• 8:54Tim Ferriss?

  Oh.

• 8:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, they founded Cialis.

• 8:56Tim Ferriss?

  I explained so much.

• 8:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, so she did okay on that one.

• 9:00Speaker 02

  So I came from a very middle-class background, and there was a, you know, good work ethic. But the whole creative artist thing, I felt very creative, but I was also sort of in a jock's body, so I was good at sports. And I could never reconcile those two things as a kid. Soccer and football.

• 9:17Tim Ferriss?

  What were you better at?

• 9:19Speaker 02

  I had opportunities to play either in college.

• 9:21Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, Jackson and both?

• 9:22Speaker 02

  I ended up playing soccer at San Diego State, which is a top-10 D1 school. So it was a good way to go to college. But I had a hard time reconciling the artist and, artist and jock, they didn't go together, at least in my high school. You had to sort of be one or the other.

• 9:40Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 9:41Speaker 02

  And I sort of took the jock path, because it could lead to school, and at least at that time, it was safer.

• 9:50Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, sure.

• 9:51Speaker 02

  And it was really in that sort of the punk skate-surf punk scene in Southern California, where I moved to go to college, that I sort of was able to understand that those two things could coexist. And actually, that was a powerful combination.

• 10:01Tim Ferriss?

  That's interesting. I never really thought of that. I mean, the surf culture is so pervasive there.

• 10:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, and surf, skate, and there was sort of a DIY ethic, hacker mentality. I think that's part of a... that was something that I definitely took away from Southern California after going to school down there. And photography was something that I had grown up being on the other side of the camera. At my college, I was the guy who would get interviewed after the soccer games on television, whatnot, because I was reasonably well-associated with cameras.

• 10:30Tim Ferriss?

  You were gonna say handsome, weren't you?

• 10:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm dashing. Dashing. If you could only smell...

• 10:35Tim Ferriss?

  I know, I smell's really good.

• 10:36Speaker 02

  I just got on an airplane, I smell terrible.

• 10:38Tim Ferriss?

  Smell vision.

• 10:39Speaker 02

  I smell terrible. But photography was a really low-barrier way, and I had grown up around pictures. And I remember a particular picture, muddy soccer game, that made me want to... made me realize, go, "Oh, my God, that's like a moment. It's never gonna go away." And now that I have it sort of locked in a picture, maybe I can... I can do that over and over again. But then that reality voice kicked in, this sort of like, that voice... Part of the reason that Creative Life exists is because we have this... culturally, there's this bias against, "Oh, I don't want my kid to grow up being an artist because he's gonna be homeless, or a drug addict, or he's gonna play music..."

• 11:11Tim Ferriss?

  Well, starving artist, right?

• 11:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:13Tim Ferriss?

  I mean, those two go together.

• 11:14Speaker 02

  They do. They do, like...

• 11:15Tim Ferriss?

  And not saying in reality, but in mass perception, those two are together.

• 11:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, culturally. So, I, again, sort of recoiled from that thought.

• 11:23Tim Ferriss?

  So, the first... so that your first active photography was then in college?

• 11:27Speaker 02

  Immediately after college. My grandfather died on my college... like, two days before my college graduation, which was terrible, terrible thing. Dropped dead of a heart attack. The silver lining in that was I got his cameras. I was gifted his cameras. And it sort of was this... a permission to go explore the world. So, I threw him in a backpack and walked the earth for seven months with my then-girlfriend, now-wife, Kate, you know.

• 11:52Tim Ferriss?

  After graduating?

• 11:53Speaker 02

  Yeah. And we just, like, took... literally, my grandfather passed away. I got his cameras. He said, "Look, let's just go explore the world, and I wanna learn to take pictures because I wanna get in touch with this side that I've sort of been repressing."

• 12:04Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 12:05Speaker 02

  And taught myself how to use a camera, and came back with a ski bum in Steamboat, Colorado, started taking pictures there. It was where I first sold pictures, and... Yeah, taking pictures of what I was passionate about, which is hiking, climbing, fly fishing, basically extreme sports, skate, surf, that whole world that I'd grown up in. And I was very passionate about it, so it was easy to make connections in that community. And I had good pictures of fancy people that started being sold for lots of money.

• 12:31Tim Ferriss?

  So wait, what? Hold on. So, I mean, I find it, this is part of the fun for me and the reason I wanted to start the podcast is because we've spent years hanging out. But normally you hang out. I don't know this stuff and I want to dig into it because it's fun. But if I sit down, I'm like, let me ask you 70 questions for two hours. It's just weird and it's like a CIA interrogation. But this is a good.

• 12:54Speaker 02

  There was that one time.

• 12:55Tim Ferriss?

  There was that one time, sorry. About the sodium pentaphone. But the first, do you remember the first sale? Except for instance, I remember when I had my first sort of real business anything in college, teaching this accelerated learning seminar. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I felt like richer than I'd ever felt in my life because I was making $8 an hour in the college library, guest library. So tell me about like your first sale or few sales. How did those come about?

• 13:22Speaker 02

  The first sale came about because I was able, I grew up skiing and snowboarding, was very familiar with the subject. I got into some, with the good crowd, had photographs of people on next year's equipment because I knew the people, the manufacturers and the reps and all that stuff. And if you have the right pictures of the right people and the right equipment, then the manufacturers come knocking for next year's stuff. So a manufacturer saw my work, got in touch and said, hey, we like this picture, this picture and this picture. I ended up licensing, not selling outright, but licensing an image for $500 and a pair of skis.

• 13:55Tim Ferriss?

  Nice.

• 13:56Speaker 02

  That was my first.

• 13:57Tim Ferriss?

  That's a big first sale.

• 13:58Speaker 02

  And when you're, I would think I was probably literally making $10 an hour at that time. And like, wait a minute, I just sold that for 500 bucks, you know, from going skiing for a couple of days with my buddies. I'd like to replicate that. So what did I do? What worked, what didn't? And then I set out on a Tim Ferriss learning experiment, how can I replicate this? And just started doing that over and over and up the ante every time.

• 14:18Tim Ferriss?

  What were you doing for $10 an hour?

• 14:20Speaker 02

  I was tuning skis at the local ski stuff, right at the base of the mountain in Steamboat, Colorado. When Kate and I got back from Europe, we were totally broke. So we threw everything in a car, drove to Colorado and got, we didn't, we're just deferring education and life a little bit and ended up having the time of our lives, ironically. You know very, very well, better than most, about adventure and how that propels one's life.

• 14:46Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, you have some, I mean, if people want to get a taste of, what are your favorite videos? Obviously, the stuff with the octocopter did really well, which you can look at, you can look for on YouTube or anywhere else. But if people want to get a taste of the international man of mystery, who is Chase Jarvis?

• 15:04Speaker 02

  I have a pretty good YouTube channel, it's just YouTube slash Chase Jarvis. And I think there's a couple hundred videos, and several of them with more than a million views. But mostly they're adventures all over the world, on pretty much every continent, except for Antarctica. A lot of, you know...

• 15:24Tim Ferriss?

  You gotta do something with your life, man. When are you gonna make Antarctica happen?

• 15:27Speaker 02

  I know, my dad, he just stuck a stake in the ground and said, "I'm gonna beat you to Antarctica." So I gotta find a way to get there in the next 12 months. But there's a lot of adventure, and you can go to my YouTube channel or my website and see it.

• 15:39Tim Ferriss?

  So, I mean, I think that a lot of people listening or watching probably hear this and they go, "Oh my God, that's a dream scenario." Got to travel the world, probably had brands or clients pay for most or all of it.

• 15:51Speaker 02

  And, yeah, you get paid very well on top of all this.

• 15:53Tim Ferriss?

  And you get paid very well on top of this, so how did you...

• 15:54Speaker 02

  Helicopters and yachts, and it's really ridiculous, but it didn't start that way, I promise.

• 15:58Tim Ferriss?

  Well, of course not, so a lot of people sort of enter the creative funnel, right? "I would like to try to be a photographer," or "I want to be a photographer," or fill in the blank, right?

• 16:06Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 16:07Tim Ferriss?

  Painter, dancer, whatever, writer, and then you have all these different...

• 16:12Speaker 02

  You're blocking my shot there with your hand, this is...

• 16:14Tim Ferriss?

  Oh yeah, no, I'm doing that on purpose, because I don't want the awesomeness of your face to overwhelm people. And I know what I'm doing.

• 16:21Speaker 02

  I know, you're a professional, it's like...

• 16:23Tim Ferriss?

  See if I can get my big Danish head right in the way, so.

• 16:28Tim Ferriss?

  Where was I? I was gonna...

• 16:30Speaker 02

  You're saying that a lot of people...

• 16:31Tim Ferriss?

  Ask you a question, answer it myself, oh yes, so the, how did you end up, what do you think? What were the milestones or inflection points or chance encounters that led you to the point where you're flying around in helicopters with top athletes, paid by the top brands?

• 16:48Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 16:49Tim Ferriss?

  Because I can point to a handful of things, right? With the Four Hour Workweek, like 2007 South by Southwest.

• 16:53Speaker 02

  Yep. Big one. Blogger's Lounge, you told me about that.

• 16:56Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 16:57Speaker 02

  Robert Scoble.

• 16:58Tim Ferriss?

  Exactly. I can identify these points. So what were some of those points for you?

• 17:02Speaker 02

  A couple of the key ones, actually taking the camera that my grandfather passed to me when he died and actually teaching myself the art in a very unencumbered sort of way, where there was a lot of freedom, freedom to make mistakes, freedom to learn, and a reliance on yourself. So to me, that's a great way to learn and to learn from others. Not just similar to Creative Life, how the world's best. I would meet up with people all over the world and just connect with them around photography. So the learning phase, there was a lot of opportunity for exploration and making mistakes. And there wasn't a lot of stakes early on, but as soon as I decided that I wanted to do that, I threw myself into a lot of stakes.

• 17:45Speaker 02

  Like trying, I know I want to do this professionally. How can I do it? Move this team boat, meet the right people, and then there is instantly stakes. I know that's a big thing for you with increasing the stakes, so it can accelerate learning. So the camera and having a little freedom to explore and play, basically. Get familiar in a way that's not pressure. Then I put myself in a little bit of a pressure cooker by saying, and I didn't really declare it. I said, I declared to myself, but not overtly. I said, I'm gonna try and do this. Being in a community, like putting yourself at the heart of where that stuff is happening. If you want to do a startup, it's much easier in Silicon Valley than it is in Detroit, for example.

• 18:28Tim Ferriss?

  For sure.

• 18:29Speaker 02

  So I did the equivalent of move to, I wanted to shoot skiing and snowboarding, so I went to a hardcore ski town. That was a big catapult. And then another inflection point was when I was setting my prices, not necessarily for the very first sale or the second sale, but when I realized that, wait a minute. Once you are great at your craft, everything else is vision. And the ability to execute. So let's put execute and craft in the same bucket. And then everything else is vision. And I think whether we're talking about how to hack the system from inside a big company, or how to hack the system from an entrepreneurial standpoint or an artist standpoint,

• 19:10Speaker 02

  the way that I hacked the system was my first hired day rate or gig was at several thousand dollars a day. So I sort of, I pushed myself to a level that was incredibly uncomfortable. And required myself to deliver at the highest level. And I charged accordingly because I had done the work, done the research, and knew what the top guys, gals were getting. And I put myself in that caliber right away.

• 19:36Tim Ferriss?

  Did they accept it off the bat or did you have to negotiate for it? I mean, did you have some guy who was like, wait a second, kid? Like, I know that so and so, the Michael Jordan of, you know, ski photography is charging X, but all due respect, like, this is your first big gig, your second big gig. I mean, how did you? Or did you just ask and you were surprised they said yes?

• 19:53Speaker 02

  I had a body of work that I hadn't actually done a lot with commercially. So I felt like the quality. And I was doing, I was comparing my work to the work that I saw in the marketplace, honestly. And I was getting peer reviews and whatnot. And I knew that I had talent. But it really came to the boldness of where do I want to put myself in the marketplace? I'd rather have my first sale be here and not have anything down there. Because if you're the $400 dude.

• 20:16Tim Ferriss?

  Then you have to claw your way up to anything.

• 20:19Speaker 02

  And that whole idea that when, oh, wait, when we get some more budget, we'll call you if you just do it for 400 bucks. No, no, no, they don't call the $400 dude. They call the $4,000 dude when they have a $4,000 budget.

• 20:27Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 20:29Speaker 02

  So the first, you know, and I had to, I wasn't bluffing. I knew that I could do the work, but I said, you know, I think I said it was 2,500 bucks a day, 2,000, 2,500 bucks a day. And they said, okay, well, it's a six-day shoot. So like, in my head, I'm shitting myself. And doing the math. And it's more than I made last year. And I'm gonna make it last, you know, next week. And they said, okay, that sounds fine. We might need to add an extra day.

• 20:54Tim Ferriss?

  You're like, let me check my schedule.

• 20:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, and literally, you're like, so there's like, I'm gonna, like, okay, I'll get back to you on that. I'm gonna, I'm gonna go, you know, throw up in the bathroom.

• 21:06Speaker 02

  But again, there were some stakes there. There was, I knew that I could do the job.

• 21:11Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 21:12Speaker 02

  But I also, I feel like I had an understanding of the marketplace and where, it was an indicator of where I wanted to go as well. I knew I wanted to be at a top price point and I wanted to do less work but do high-end stuff. And again, I don't want to pretend that I didn't do a shitload. This is like a 10-year overnight success program here. Like I was working in the trenches, day in and day out, everything. I was eating, breathing, sleeping, photography. But when I was able to start to sort of monetize my craft, I did so at a very high price point. And little note, if someone ever says yes that quickly, you didn't ask for enough.

• 21:47Tim Ferriss?

  Of course.

• 21:47Speaker 02

  So what happens?

• 21:48Tim Ferriss?

  That's why the good negotiators, even if they want to say yes quickly, they'll push a little bit so that you feel better about the deal when it's done.

• 21:55Speaker 02

  And that's exactly, I did some iteration of that and I took a day to get back to him. And I knew that because she said yes so quickly, that the next time if I was dealing with someone who was at a commensurate level of experience across the table from me, that I, and if I could do a great job on this job, that I could ask for more.

• 22:16Tim Ferriss?

  You're talking about your wife for photography?

• 22:17Speaker 02

  You just leave Kate out of this. She will flip you like a cheese on a... I know, you're lifting. I can see, you've been working on the biceps. There are Tim Ferriss experiments got you...

• 22:25Tim Ferriss?

  Two ostriches a day. That's my quota, at least. You know I love Kate.

• 22:29Speaker 02

  I do, oh yeah. I just spoke with her.

• 22:31Tim Ferriss?

  Amazing woman, you're a very lucky guy.

• 22:33Speaker 02

  That, I think that there's a way to extrapolate that to every profession. Like negotiating, and we've talked to Ramit about this. Ramit is like the, he's the man for negotiating, right? And he actually came on my podcast, Chase Jarvis Live, and talked a lot about this, but that's sort of prizing yourself. And that is a learned thing.

• 22:59Tim Ferriss?

  It's totally learned. That's the thing. I think it's such a huge misconception because I always...

• 23:06Tim Ferriss?

  See so much resistance to negotiating, it's like, no, no, no, you memorize a couple of lines, try them out, and you're gonna wanna puke in the bathroom, like you said, and then you get through it and you're like, okay, I'm kinda smelly now, but that was pretty awesome. Didn't get an extra 50%, got an extra 20%, and it's just role-playing in rehearsal.

• 23:24Speaker 02

  It is, it is practicing and showing up and letting it, you know, be sweaty, but putting yourself... And I think, I don't have to tell you or your listeners that they are familiar with your work, like, put yourself in some low or not-too-serious stakes and negotiate against...

• 23:40Tim Ferriss?

  Go to the state fair or something.

• 23:41Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 23:42Tim Ferriss?

  You know, go to the Alameda Fair that they have every whatever, you know, a couple of weeks, and negotiate for stuff that you don't actually really want, all hell of a lot. Like, don't be a jerk about it, but it's like, you know, buy some low-stakes stuff.

• 23:53Speaker 02

  It also helps with, I think, some confidence. You repeat that thing, you get a little more confidence, and in a weird way, it also helped me understand the seriousness of the work, not in that the photography of skiers and snowboarders or skateboarders or surfers was serious, but in that the people that are on the other end of this transaction, they are betting their ass on me. If that doesn't turn out, they are fired.

• 24:21Tim Ferriss?

  They're done.

• 24:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, cuz, you know, and it started off small, but then as the budgets got to be, you know, 50,000, 100,000, half-million, some big productions, the people that are betting on...

• 24:32Tim Ferriss?

  If it goes sideways, they're done.

• 24:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, and you don't, you don't, in photo and video, you don't really get too many... You can't be a dick, because it gets around pretty quickly that you're not pleasant to work with, and you can't blow it, because people are making big bets.

• 24:44Tim Ferriss?

  Well, I would imagine at that, at that level, too, there are probably only a half-a-dozen to a dozen people they're considering. It's a small community.

• 24:51Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, super, super tight.

• 24:52Tim Ferriss?

  So, what are the most consistent mistakes that you see? We can stick with, I think, because you know the photography community so well, and you've interacted with so many photographers, this can, I'm sure, be extrapolated to creatives in general, which is pretty much everyone.

• 25:10Speaker 02

  Right.

• 25:11Tim Ferriss?

  Unless you're a cyborg, unless you're like Bishop from Aliens, you have to be creative in some fashion.

• 25:16Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 25:17Tim Ferriss?

  What are the most common mistakes that you see? Or just like the repetitive problems that you see?

• 25:23Speaker 02

  So, there's a handful, and I think it does apply, like you just prefaced, in, across every discipline.

• 25:32Speaker 02

  Being great at your craft is a requirement.

• 25:34Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 25:35Speaker 02

  And I'm not, I wouldn't suggest that you stop, that you don't try and get work or hustle or do all those other things while you're coming up. Because that's a part of the game and that's, you know, Gary Vee is a big advocate for hustling and so you gotta hustle your whole way, but being great at your craft actually matters.

• 25:50Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 25:51Speaker 02

  And, and having like, the camera is like an extension of my arm and you think about it, I have used the pro golf analogy, I don't know why, I'm not crazy about golf, but those guys have to, and women, have to stand up on the tee and hit the ball down the middle because that's what they're paid to do. It doesn't matter if it's raining, sunny, windy, if there's 10 people watching or 10 million, they're paid to hit the ball down the middle. And as an artist, you're paid to make and as an entrepreneur, you're paid to deliver the ROI to the shareholders and as a wrestler, you're paid to win. Or like, whatever your thing is, you have to be great at your craft in order to, I think, achieve. So there's this 10,000 hours hardcore, the folks that I think are great, whether they're

• 26:31Speaker 02

  hacking the system and doing it in 10 hours or 10,000, that is, I think, people want to skip that step.

• 26:38Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I get, I get, you know, for every email that I get about the craft of writing, I get a thousand about how to market books. And I'm just like, hold on, the ratio's all wrong. So, no, I would agree with that.

• 26:51Speaker 02

  And so that gets overlooked, like, I just want to be this awesome fashion photographer and hang out with like, awesome, you know, beautiful people in crazy locations and it's like, dude, you gotta be, like, you actually pick up a camera and get good at that shit first and then you might be able to do, you know, part.

• 27:08Tim Ferriss?

  All the glamorous.

• 27:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, the second part. So, I think that's a common mistake. The second one is that the, I think there's a belief that people who are successful, either they can sell themselves really well and they're natural at it. I was a natural hard worker, but not a gifted, like, positioner and seller and that was all learned. In the same way that some of the stuff we talked about earlier was learned, the art of negotiation, the art of positioning yourself in a marketplace, of telling your story. That is not, at least it wasn't innate for me.

• 27:43Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 27:44Speaker 02

  And I had to learn that. So there's another belief that, oh, if you have talent, then you just actually, you just are successful, which is total crock of horseshit.

• 27:52Tim Ferriss?

  Total bullshit.

• 27:53Speaker 02

  Ryan Holiday talks a lot about this. You have to like...

• 27:55Tim Ferriss?

  What is that? I mean, it's someone else's quote, but it's like, there's nothing more common than, what is it, the unsuccessful man with talent, or something like that.

• 28:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, they're tired, for sure, because there's so many of them. That idea of, once you make something, that if it's great, it will just be discovered, is totally fiction.

• 28:12Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 28:12Speaker 02

  The people that I know that are successful, as soon as it's done the making part, then it's about packaging. And frankly, the narrative, like being a good storyteller, is mission critical to having your idea, project, plan, work, vision, company, whatever, spread. So being able to tell a good story is another thing that people overlook. So being great at your craft, actually working hard to sell and position the art of storytelling as a mechanism to get your stuff out there, those are huge things, both of which either people want to skip, or where people think that, "I don't have that gift, therefore I can't do it."

• 28:51Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 28:51Speaker 02

  Or, "That guy's a jackass, because he's not a real talent. He's actually just as great at selling himself."

• 28:56Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 28:57Speaker 02

  But what actually matters is that that person over there is doing the shit that you're not doing.

• 29:02Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 29:03Speaker 02

  They are...

• 29:03Tim Ferriss?

  They're making it happen.

• 29:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, they're a New York Times bestselling author. So Tim got up, sat down at his computer, wrote every day, until he had an 8,000-page book, and then narrowed it down to 400 pages, and then sold a million copies.

• 29:16Tim Ferriss?

  They did stop that 8,000-page stuff.

• 29:18Speaker 02

  No.

• 29:19Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, my God. That's killer.

• 29:20Speaker 02

  You had a backpack full of like... I was like, are those actual pages that are in there?

• 29:25Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, my God.

• 29:25Speaker 02

  So the...

• 29:27Tim Ferriss?

  On those two points then, what, aside from, obviously, this tool that you've helped create, which is creative a lot, and you guys just, particularly in photography and a lot of those areas,

• 29:39Speaker 02

  Photo design.

• 29:41Tim Ferriss?

  You just dominate.

• 29:41Speaker 02

  Killing it in audio right now.

• 29:42Tim Ferriss?

  And it's been fun to watch, you know, as, obviously, an advisor and investor with the company, just from the nascent stages, to see this thing explode. It's been really fun. But aside from that tool, obviously, which exists now, what books, resources...

• 29:58Tim Ferriss?

  Helped you become better photography?

• 30:01Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 30:01Tim Ferriss?

  And then also helped you get better at positioning, storytelling?

• 30:05Speaker 02

  Sure, wow.

• 30:07Tim Ferriss?

  Don't have to be books, but just like tools that people might be able to use.

• 30:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, tools, a little bit of, this is gonna be a date, date myself idea here, but when

• 30:18Tim Ferriss?

  This is already a date.

• 30:19Speaker 02

  I know, it's a mandate, it's a two-hour mandate. Mandate not as in a thing that you have to do, but as in two men getting together. At first it was the library, literally it was books like How to Negotiate Photography. When I, even the idea of licensing an image, so you maintain the intellectual property instead of selling it. So there was some early stuff way back in the, god, 90s.

• 30:43Tim Ferriss?

  Yep.

• 30:45Speaker 02

  As soon as I realized that I was good at the craft, and that that was developed primarily through repetition and feedback loops that I cultivated and created on my own, it was learning about sort of the business side of it. And I think there's a weird, you have to know your industry for sure, that's very, very beneficial, but all the big hacks, the leaps, the sort of the leapfrog things that I did in my career came from outside my industry. So instead of learning from other photographers, well, I have a huge respect for the masters that have paved the way before me, but I took a lot of cues from Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel

• 31:25Speaker 02

  Basquiat and Robert Rauschenberg, the artists in New York in the 60s, 70s, 50s, 60s, 70s, because they were sort of, again, they were hackers, they were finding out how to hack the system, and they were making art about making art. And they were, you know, they were sort of reinventing the game while they were playing it. And I was always motivated to try and apply that to my work. And not so literally, instead of taking, in the way of taking a picture of a picture, like that would be too literal, the meta thing was, it was fine, but I'm talking about How do you differentiate yourself in the marketplace?

• 32:00Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 32:01Speaker 02

  If I look across and everyone else is doing this,

• 32:03Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 32:04Speaker 02

  how do you zig when everyone else is zagging?

• 32:06Tim Ferriss?

  Right, as opposed to trying to get better at zigging.

• 32:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, be different, not better.

• 32:11Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 32:11Speaker 02

  I mean, again, we've already agreed that the work has to be good. You have to be a good writer before you sell a million books. That's just fact.

• 32:18Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 32:18Speaker 02

  At least a decent writer.

• 32:19Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 32:20Speaker 02

  And so the same is true in the way that I approached it. And I learned that basically from those artists in the 50s, 60s, 70s in New York. So I've read all of their, a lot of artist biographies of people who have actually led amazing lives, done amazing things.

• 32:35Tim Ferriss?

  And Warhol, what were the names again?

• 32:37Speaker 02

  Jean-Michel Basquiat. He took sort of graffiti off the street and brought it into the gallery. Robert Rauschenberg, you know, large-scale guy, crazy, mixed media. They were just people that were hacking the art scene in that era in New York. And they applied non-traditional techniques to getting noticed, to making art. They were zigging when everyone else is zagging, basically. The way that I zigged when everyone else was zagging in photography was I chronicled my exploits of learning my craft.

• 33:11Tim Ferriss?

  Ah, smart.

• 33:12Speaker 02

  And it was right, it was 10 years before it was cool to be transparent and I was actually sort of vilified for sharing trade secrets. So I would go out and try something and it was before YouTube.

• 33:21Tim Ferriss?

  Trader to the guild.

• 33:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, literally. And I was like, well, I sort of saw the future, that information was going to be free and you couldn't keep secrets and the art industry in general, photography specific, was very closed.

• 33:34Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 33:34Speaker 02

  So the way I approached it was like, well, here's how I'm going to be different. I'm going to share everything.

• 33:39Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 33:40Speaker 02

  And in doing so, made a couple haters, but slowly there was a rather large audience that would show up to, not literally to the shoots, but to the behind the scenes. There was no such thing as behind the scenes videos. Like before YouTube, it was Google video and Yahoo video or just these terrible, terrible things. But... I had no idea what I was doing. I just knew that if more people were looking at my work, and if I could come across as someone that did good work and had a sort of a passion for life and what it is they're doing. That's a contagious, sort of infectious thing. And that was generally the life that I was living. So I figured, oh, they'll just point a camera at me.

• 34:22Speaker 02

  And ultimately, that was responsible for sort of an increased trajectory in my career. Because then you're like, have you heard this guy who's sharing all, you know, fancy Nike shoots and stupid little local shoots? The full gamut. And in doing so, you've already referenced a couple of videos on my YouTube channel.

• 34:43Speaker 02

  In doing so, created a large following. And it was, in large part, that following, which helped unlock so many other things for me. Because as, you know, we've seen even the last, let's call it five years. People are now, as artists, we're no longer required permission, we no longer require permission from anyone to share our work at scale. You know, we don't have to, there's no more gatekeepers. The gallerist and the magazine and, you know, my personal social following and the blog that I write at Chase Jarvis is larger than a lot of the media companies outlets that hire me. And so, when that sort of transformed, that became an added value and a key differentiator.

• 35:25Speaker 02

  So, again, what started off by sharing my experiences ultimately hacked the system. And then hacking the system gave me a lot of opportunity. Now, to go back to your question, like what books, what tools? It was literally just sort of analyzing pop culture. The business books, like For Our Work Week was really inspirational. It was a long time ago, because you're about 110 years old now, right? It was one of your first...

• 35:48Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I've been taking all the 275 pills a day. Keeps my skin very supple.

• 35:54Speaker 02

  Yes, you look great.

• 35:57Speaker 02

  But again, taking inspiration and ideas from other genres. So instead of reading like "How to be a Better Photographer", it was like, you know, digital new media books. It was business books from guys like Guy Kawasaki and Tim Ferriss. And like literally hacker books and avant-garde artist books. And talked about not getting attention for the sake of attention, but how to create transformative art. What do you do, like where do you go? What do you think about? What kind of permissions do you give yourself?

• 36:28Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I think that looking outside of the usual suspects and one's own industry is so undervalued and it's so easy. I mean, it's incredible how many things I've been able to personally pull from. Say, I read a biography or business history of Absolute, like the brand, everything. And I also read about Sky. And I don't really drink either, but I was so fascinated by how in a crowded market, these two mega successes had been produced. Similarly, you know, a single SKU company is really fascinating. You're like, well, they're more than one now. But like Red Bull, how do you license something from a company in Thailand and turn it into a multi-billion dollar company

• 37:12Tim Ferriss?

  that now is becoming a media production behemoth?

• 37:14Speaker 02

  So as an example, I was the first photographer within the USA to license images to Red Bull.

• 37:21Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, no kidding?

• 37:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:22Tim Ferriss?

  That's cool.

• 37:23Speaker 02

  There was a couple Austrians that had very thick accents.

• 37:26Tim Ferriss?

  How far back was this?

• 37:27Speaker 02

  This was 90s.

• 37:29Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, it's not that long ago, I mean, all things considered.

• 37:31Speaker 02

  To have a multi-billion dollar brand now. But it was the 90s and it was at Squaw Valley. And there was a guy who had this Red Bull jersey on. And I happened to have great photographs of him. It was like a qualifier for the early X-Games. And these guys approached me and said, "We see you taking pictures of this guy."

• 37:52Speaker 02

  My god, and you know, he ended up being

• 37:54Tim Ferriss?

  That was pretty good, that was very Arnie, yeah.

• 37:56Speaker 02

  My god.

• 37:57Tim Ferriss?

  California, yeah.

• 38:00Speaker 02

  He literally gave me his card and I had great pictures and started licensing stuff. And I was like, there's this brand. It wasn't available anywhere in the US. And so lo and behold, I ended up doing a lot of work for those guys through their cultural stuff with hip hop and I shot large swaths of the top, you know, break dancers in the world for them, some of the best graffiti artists.

• 38:23Tim Ferriss?

  I didn't know that. I became obsessed with their BC1 break dancing competition back in the day.

• 38:28Speaker 02

  Lords of the Floor was the first one they did. And that was a gathering of a group of break dancers that'll never be, weren't ever together before then and will never be together since. And I've got some pretty amazing photographs. But that's an example of no one was actually interested in licensing images to a company that no one had ever heard of. But going outside your industry, I'm not just looking for Outside Magazine and REI. I'm looking like, wow, here's this Austrian beverage company that has this crazy history. And then I start to see it in the US. And so grabbing sort of those coattails and grabbing at threads that no one else was sensing, that was helpful.

• 39:07Tim Ferriss?

  There were two books that I found.

• 39:08Speaker 02

  You know, we just leaned together and did that at the same time. Should we do it one more time?

• 39:10Tim Ferriss?

  I did. I thought we were gonna like Lady and the Tramp for a moment. That was very romantic. I got a little palpitation, but neither of us have shaved. It's too much. So the two books that really helped me, or continue to help me to think of being different, good and different, right?

• 39:29Speaker 02

  Sure, yeah.

• 39:30Tim Ferriss?

  It's necessary but not sufficient.

• 39:32Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 39:34Tim Ferriss?

  There are two that are on the older side and one that's relatively new. The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing.

• 39:40Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 39:41Tim Ferriss?

  Really short read.

• 39:42Speaker 02

  Super short. Books like that.

• 39:43Tim Ferriss?

  Super short and just gives fantastic examples of how, say, like Amstall Light becomes the only light imported beer. Boom, like defines a category, owns it. And the second, Blue Ocean Strategy.

• 39:55Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 39:56Tim Ferriss?

  Really interesting book. And then the third, which is a little tech centric, but I think there's still a lot to be gained from it, is Business Model Generation.

• 40:04Speaker 02

  I don't know that one.

• 40:05Tim Ferriss?

  It's a list of, it's a compilation of different business and revenue models. Just like a hundred different profiles of companies with different models.

• 40:14Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 40:15Tim Ferriss?

  Whether it's distribution, manufacturing, customer segmentation. And there are two or three pages in that book that are checklists that allow you to go through and identify opportunities that you might not have seen or even thought of up to that point. Because it's like you can take the same product and sell it higher market, right? You can take the same product, sell it lower market. You can take the same product and distribute it differently, right? Going direct versus through retail versus distributors, whatever. And those three, I've found really, really helpful for brainstorming.

• 40:51Tim Ferriss?

  What are the...

• 40:52Speaker 02

  Oh, gosh. So I want to talk more about books. I haven't really dropped any real books.

• 40:57Tim Ferriss?

  I know. It's like I'm bleeding a stone here.

• 41:01Speaker 02

  I'm having this weird... Let's talk a little bit more current rather than sort of like way historical. Like what 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing is like a classic.

• 41:10Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 41:10Speaker 02

  That's way back. I feel heavily influenced by, and we have a similar circle of friends, books that you have written, books that Gary Vee has written, Ryan Holiday with Trust Me, I'm Lying, How to Understand the Media.

• 41:22Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 41:23Speaker 02

  You know, Gary has been pounding his chest for a long time about all the stuff that he pounds his chest on besides the Jets. But again, I look at those things.

• 41:32Tim Ferriss?

  For those who don't know Gary Vee, that's Vaynerchuk.

• 41:35Speaker 02

  Vaynerchuk.

• 41:36Tim Ferriss?

  Yes. V A Y N E R C H U K.

• 41:38Speaker 02

  His most recent book, Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook. Guys like Austin Kleon wrote books called Steal Like an Artist. His most recent one that just came out, Share Your Work.

• 41:48Tim Ferriss?

  I haven't seen that one. Steal Like an Artist is a fast read, good book.

• 41:52Speaker 02

  Super small, fast read. And the premise on that book is basically if you steal from one person, that's stealing. If you take, I took your idea, the four-hour bike ride or whatever, it's not really that original, but...

• 42:06Tim Ferriss?

  Get in line, a hundred Facebook ads.

• 42:08Speaker 02

  I know. I've seen your Facebook.

• 42:10Tim Ferriss?

  The day of reckoning is coming, I assure you.

• 42:13Speaker 02

  But like drawing something from all of the people who you respect and appreciate and admire, that's called research. Yeah. And Picasso's, you know, "Good artists borrow, great artists steal." There's a million quotes out there. And that's just a book about inspiration. It gives you some courage to sort of hack the system, to remix and reuse. And everything that's out there has been done. And it's just how can we sort of undone or redo what's already out there? Chunk it up into new pieces. So those are some more contemporary ones that, again, very much outside photography. I feel like I've nailed my craft and reading books in photography. I do that for pleasure.

• 42:58Speaker 02

  I respect and admire Lievitz and Maplethorpe and like, there's a dozen greats. But my inspiration comes from outside. So a lot of artist biographies and whatnot too, so. What, uh... How about Charlie's new book? Can we talk about that for a second? Or yeah, I just hijacked that. You go back to your thing. We can. We'll come back to it. Okay. Uh, I'm curious to know what was, what was your favorite day last week and why? Favorite day last week? Uh, I was in Miami photographing Serena Williams for the upcoming Wilson campaign. I got to shoot Serena, Roger Federer, um... That's cool. Mika Asarenka, so several...

• 43:43Speaker 02

  Serena could kick my ass, right? I mean, she looks like she could totally decapitate me. You're just like, "Kicked ass." Yeah, no chance, yeah. Done. Um, you know, I don't have a bad thing to say about any of those. There's like five or 10 of the people I shot, of the top 20 tennis players. Not just now, but ever in the history of tennis. Yeah. Federer, just like legendary. The guy speaks five languages, just like, looks like a GQ model. He's like Thomas Crown, but good at tennis. Yeah, never been injured, never opted out of a match before due to injury. And he has... 300 matches more than anyone, like these super athletes, basically. And just get to spend legitimate, real time with these people on the court. And make great pictures of them that they've never had made before.

• 44:28Speaker 02

  So that was a great day last week.

• 44:30Tim Ferriss?

  Sounds like a good day.

• 44:31Speaker 02

  It was a good day. But I will say that I'm, like, to change it to Creative Life for a second. I am more enamored and more fired up on the power of creativity to change the world more than ever before. I'm spending a huge and complete inordinate amount of time learning from the, basically, the people that are in the startup world. I've learned a lot from you, doing some angel investing, but focused very, very specifically on the creative space. And it's just, it's a really interesting... Do you know Mark Echo?

• 45:08Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 45:08Speaker 02

  Echo Clothing, so Mark's a friend.

• 45:10Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, well, he did a guest post on my blog.

• 45:13Speaker 02

  Oh, that's right. He likes his book, right?

• 45:15Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, yeah, he's a good guy.

• 45:17Speaker 02

  When, what Mark thinks about startups is something that I have just, I just hop on his coattails. These companies aren't, they're called founders, but the companies aren't found. They're made, they're created, you know? And so this idea of creatives and artists discovering, or unlocking, or creating the next sort of product, whatever it is, whether it's the next Facebook, Instagram, we could list any number of companies. Like, that, to me, this vision of creator, artist, making things, and these things being businesses, nonprofits, that's a beautiful picture of the future, I think. And that's one of the reasons I'm out there advocating for creativity.

• 46:01Speaker 02

  So my shoot with Serena and Roger Federer and Asarenka is actually very related to having an authentic understanding of what it takes to make and be and do, build businesses and shoot ad campaigns. They're not all that dissimilar.

• 46:15Tim Ferriss?

  No, I don't. I don't think they are at all. And in a way, you know, I think it's really exciting to see the return of the polymath. So you used to, you know, back in the day, you had people like Benjamin Franklin, or fill in the blank, who'd be like amateur scientists and politicians and printers, and they would have these five or six different buckets of activities, and they could become world-class at each of them.

• 46:38Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 46:39Tim Ferriss?

  And then we moved into this period, which was pretty extended, of the hyper-specialist, right? And it's like, alright, no, you're not gonna make the radio, you're gonna screw this one screw.

• 46:48Speaker 02

  That's the factory mentality, which is sadly the same mechanism that our education system is based on.

• 46:54Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 46:55Speaker 02

  Which, what is a factory good at? It's making a bunch of things that are the same.

• 46:58Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 46:59Speaker 02

  You're good at one thing, you're good at screwing the screw in, and that's what you do, and out pops the radio at the end, and it started with a bunch of raw material, and then you got the radio. But schools shouldn't be like that, because people aren't like that. The goal is not to turn out a bunch of people that, people don't learn at the same rate, the same stuff, the soapbox.

• 47:16Tim Ferriss?

  No, it's true, and it's like, see-

• 47:17Speaker 02

  It's a bullshit system, to be honest.

• 47:19Tim Ferriss?

  And then you have, well, it's also just a societal norm, right? And I think they're intertwined. So you have, let's say, I think it's Isaac Asimov, the science fiction-

• 47:26Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 47:27Tim Ferriss?

  -who said specialization is for insects. And like, any man should be able to like, captain a ship, and gut a pig, and like, oh, there's a long list, it's pretty awesome. But it's great to see with Kickstarter, and Indiegogo, and YouTube, and blogs, much of which is free, right? You can certainly use WordPress.

• 47:46Speaker 02

  Right. I do. Thank you, Matt.

• 47:48Tim Ferriss?

  And I do too. Thank you, thank you, Automattic. Yeah, thanks over there. And it's incredible how you can, it is now permissible to become the equivalent of what Ben Franklin is.

• 48:02Speaker 02

  I was told, I was told my whole career, to specialize, specialize, specialize. And I specialized in pursuing the things that are interesting. I talked a lot about action sports, but then, you know, I also talked about fashion, and I talked about breakdancing, and I talked about all kinds of different cultural stuff. I've made TV shows, shot commercials, done ad campaigns, created startups, did the first iPhone app that shared images to social networks, and these are, I historically would have been called a dilettante.

• 48:30Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 48:31Speaker 02

  But to be able to touch all these things and find out that they ultimately inform one another, and they made, at least my contribution to CreativeLive-

• 48:40Speaker 02

  Like, possible.

• 48:41Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, well, I think the, perhaps the disconnect, it seems, is that back in the day, let's just call it...

• 48:48Speaker 02

  The 80s.

• 48:49Tim Ferriss?

  The 80s. Back in the day, back in the 80s. Back when we all had mullets and were happy about it. The, I was more of a rat-tailed man myself, but... I was handsome. It was a dashing look.

• 49:01Speaker 02

  Braided? Did you braided?

• 49:02Tim Ferriss?

  No, no, no. I didn't braided. I just went ruffian, roughneck. So, the, I was a townie, man. Towny on the...

• 49:09Speaker 02

  I know.

• 49:09Tim Ferriss?

  You gotta make it. You gotta work with what you got. So, the, what I was gonna say is, I think historically, people have thought of specialization as a necessary evil because if you spread yourself too thin and do six different things, each of those requires like four years of internship, however many years of schooling, because the information wasn't freely available. All of these were closed silos, like photography was not too long ago, right?

• 49:35Speaker 02

  Just a decade.

• 49:36Tim Ferriss?

  And you were able to become very well-known very quickly by being open with your knowledge. And I think what's underestimated is how quickly you can actually delve into a subject, and if you have some modicum of intelligence and diligence, you can become, if you have any predisposition towards it, if you choose your sources good, you can become pretty damn good very quickly, right? So, if you wanna learn how to run a nonprofit, if it were 30 years ago, where are you gonna go? How are you gonna figure it out? Now, it's like, oh, you can watch, you can do a live Facebook Q&A with the...

• 50:06Speaker 02

  Scott Harrison.

• 50:07Tim Ferriss?

  Scott Harrison, or the CEO of Donors Choose.

• 50:09Speaker 02

  Donors Choose.

• 50:09Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, exactly. And so, I think that it's possible that the dilettante or jack-of-all-trades is...

• 50:19Speaker 02

  Rise up!

• 50:20Tim Ferriss?

  In some ways, yeah, yeah. It's an outdated notion if people take advantage of the tools that are at their disposal.

• 50:26Speaker 02

  And you have been instrumental in unlocking that for a lot of people, I think. That is one of my gifts, or passions and gifts is to be able to learn quickly. Wasn't necessarily a gift that I was born with, but just threw myself into something and not afraid to make some mistakes. I think those three things help. But like that, you're doing a great job.

• 50:48Tim Ferriss?

  Thank you.

• 50:48Speaker 02

  Nice job, man.

• 50:48Tim Ferriss?

  Thank you.

• 50:49Speaker 02

  Like literally unlocking it.

• 50:51Tim Ferriss?

  I appreciate that.

• 50:51Speaker 02

  That's a, it is a sentiment that, again, I am continually sort of bombarded with people asking questions about how to... I ended up being more of a career counselor and I think you probably do too.

• 51:02Tim Ferriss?

  Happens a lot, yeah.

• 51:03Speaker 02

  And it's following your passions and you know, you can't always, Steve Jobs said it, you can't connect the dots looking forward. You can only connect them looking backwards. And now, again, knowing that my career as an artist and then developing the iPhone app, Best Camera, which allowed me to see scalable technology at millions of users really quickly and like, oh my god. Took me five years to build an audience of a million people and then I did it in five weeks.

• 51:25Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 51:25Speaker 02

  And then, you know, all of that feeds into creative life and those are very disparate things, so.

• 51:31Tim Ferriss?

  How did you navigate the transition from, for lack of a better term, like solo printer, right? You're a diehard, talented creator who's hustled, made it happen, figured out a niche, making pretty good money, to building out a company and delegating, not getting into all the micro bits yourself? Because I think it seems to me that one of the biggest challenges that people face, and I face quite frankly in a lot of ways, is working on the business, not in the business. And obviously you still have your time to do your creative work, which I think is very unique. Because a lot of people are like, ah, you know, I used to be in the trenches, it was fun to code, but now I'm a management guy. Ah, well, that's just the way it goes. But you've managed to actually do both.

• 52:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 52:16Tim Ferriss?

  So how did you navigate that? What decisions did you make? What like epiphanies did you have? I mean...

• 52:23Speaker 02

  Maybe you could just talk about that a bit. Sure, that, I think intention plays a really big role in all of the scenarios you just sort of carved out in ad hoc, you're like, did this and this and this. I was just waving my hands and fucking... Yeah, it was good. Brain vomiting on you, yeah. You made some good noises, you grunted a little bit, it was good, I inferred what you were saying. No, but intention, like, I, I feel like it's a, what kinda, like, it's a little bit of a fantasy life, what do you want to do, and it doesn't matter what you've heard, this is not possible, you can't be both of this and of this, or you can't, you can't work four hours and get to travel the world and live like the new rich. Yeah. In Tim Ferriss' Parlance.

• 53:06Speaker 02

  My version of that was, I want to be able to make my living making things. Yeah. And then I realized that artists, as individuals, were not that scalable. Yeah, yeah. Right? Dr. Dre made more from beats, selling his headphone company than he did from his music. Yeah, sure. In a year, just boom. And, so, when I was thinking about an artist and making, because I always want to continue to make things, but you start to look at making and creating as not just the thing of pushing the shutter, or saying action, or directing a commercial, or whatever, and making something that maybe is more scalable, or following your passion.

• 53:45Speaker 02

  So, being able to, to, and that was, again, something I was told was not possible. Yeah, yeah. And so it's really looking to inspiration, to aspiring to the work that other people have done before you, and thinking, oh my god, I thought it was not possible, now I see this is possible. Go back to Bo Jackson, playing football and baseball, no one had ever done that before, it's like, that's mind blowing, and why not? These are the best athletes in the world, of course they're probably good at a lot of things. Yeah. And you talk about the birth, or the rebirth of the polymath. Yeah. That was inspirational to me, and it helped me unlock a lot of that stuff, and I did so very intentionally. So what does a life look like, where I get to do this, and this, and this? If you just sort of walk in the woods...

• 54:30Speaker 02

  You're likely to just bump into some trees. If you sort of have a plan.

• 54:36Tim Ferriss?

  Well said.

• 54:36Speaker 02

  Yeah. Sort of sophisticated podcast you've got here today.

• 54:41Tim Ferriss?

  Best and brightest.

• 54:42Speaker 02

  All right. And this third and final guest, which is Chase Jarvis, and then the podcast is Pulp. Go Pigg. But the life that has some sort of intention.

• 54:53Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 54:54Speaker 02

  And without being a militant planner, because that's not my... I think I have a nice balance of... I know where I want to go and set some goals. And I'm plenty of failure built in there.

• 55:04Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 55:06Speaker 02

  But I think intention is a really overlooked thing. Like, you have to decide where you want to go if you want to get there.

• 55:11Tim Ferriss?

  Now, did you... What... How did that affect what you said no to? Like, the before and after. So you decide, this is what I want.

• 55:18Speaker 02

  Oh, wow.

• 55:19Tim Ferriss?

  What did you start saying no to? What did you start?

• 55:22Speaker 02

  Things that didn't ladder up to the things that I wanted to do. And there's not always a direct, like, if I want to...

• 55:30Speaker 02

  If I want to be a rock climbing photographer, then I should say no to climbing trees.

• 55:36Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 55:37Speaker 02

  Because there's still climbing involved, so that might help my climbing skills. That's a terrible analogy, but you get... Like, there's a connection there, right? And it's not always like, oh, I only take rock climbing gigs, or...

• 55:50Tim Ferriss?

  Do you remember any gigs or clients that you said no to or fired that were kind of milestones? I mean, not necessarily by name, but like...

• 55:59Speaker 02

  Sure. I won't name them, but two things I... Or maybe three takeaways, and I'll see if I can remember them. Sometimes when I say three things, I can only remember two.

• 56:07Tim Ferriss?

  That's all right.

• 56:08Speaker 02

  Later.

• 56:09Tim Ferriss?

  Can just sub it in later.

• 56:10Speaker 02

  Okay, cool.

• 56:13Speaker 02

  So, one is saying no has a strong effect on the person who's trying to buy something from you, hire something. And I absolutely frown on being a dick.

• 56:27Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 56:28Speaker 02

  There's no reason to be a dick.

• 56:29Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 56:30Speaker 02

  Almost ever in the world, there's no reason to be a dick. So, if I'm turning down works, like, thank you so much for thinking of me. It's just not in line with the work I'm doing right now, or the budgets aren't quite in line, or my schedule isn't... Like, whatever. Make a relationship, be cordial. But there's this beautiful thing of if you are able to say no, usually for a budgetary reason.

• 56:53Speaker 02

  When they get more money, if you've turned them down before, they remember that you were that prize that they couldn't get. And when they do have more money, they are more likely to call you back if they liked your work.

• 57:04Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 57:05Speaker 02

  So, being able to say no, mean it.

• 57:09Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 57:09Speaker 02

  It's a little bit of a luxury too, so this is not like day one of photography, start saying no to everybody. Like, you gotta hustle, but once you sort of are able to be choosy and think on principle, does this, is this gonna move my goals forward?

• 57:22Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 57:23Speaker 02

  Saying no will often make them come back. See, I already forgot, think two and think three.

• 57:27Tim Ferriss?

  Wow, we didn't even get to two! Oh my god!

• 57:30Speaker 02

  Let me try, let me try.

• 57:31Tim Ferriss?

  So, any particular clients you fired, maybe?

• 57:35Speaker 02

  Oh yeah, plenty of those. And again, trying to be cordial, and if the scope changes, if the...

• 57:43Tim Ferriss?

  Dear John.

• 57:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, there's a lot of...

• 57:45Tim Ferriss?

  Your role in my life has been made redundant.

• 57:47Speaker 02

  It is to steal Pareto's Law.

• 57:50Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 57:51Speaker 02

  You know, at the end of every year, and I think this can be said for a lot of customers or client relationships, that you make 80% of your money from 20% of your clients. So, start looking at what did that 20% look like? And how can you find more people, or more customers, or more X?

• 58:07Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 58:07Speaker 02

  Like that. And when someone is a pain in the ass, when they call and they're a pain in the ass, or the last job they were a pain in the ass?

• 58:14Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 58:15Speaker 02

  You basically fire them, not in the middle of that job, because you wouldn't wanna harm your reputation. You do a kick-ass job, you finish all the way through, and then the next time they call, you are miraculously busy forever.

• 58:26Tim Ferriss?

  Indefinitely.

• 58:26Speaker 02

  Indefinitely busy. And you can control it with the price, like, oh, it's just my prices have got out of hand, because there's a high demand. And they go, "Well, where are they?" And then you drop, and they're like, "Oh god." Then sometimes they'll say, "Okay, well, we can..." And then if you put a price tag out there that was totally absurd, then you might be willing to take a couple of gut punches to make that. But, so, understanding where your bread is buttered, and what clients are ones that you enjoy working for. Again, keeping in mind that all of these things should ladder up to the big goals that we were talking about earlier. What do you wanna be, do, where do you wanna go? Or do you wanna just walk in the woods? That's two or three.

• 59:05Tim Ferriss?

  I don't want to walk in the woods because as you said, I just walk in the trees.

• 59:08Speaker 02

  Bop in the trees.

• 59:09Tim Ferriss?

  So what are some of your goals currently?

• 59:12Speaker 02

  I have huge aspirations.

• 59:14Tim Ferriss?

  Personal or otherwise?

• 59:15Speaker 02

  I'll go straight to CreativeLive. I have huge aspirations to CreativeLive. And we've already educated millions of people in every country around the world. And the hope is that by creating free education, that we can make the world a more creative and better place. It just so happens that there's a great business model behind it, which is a freemium one that anyone in the world can watch for free while the content is being created live. And if you want to own a copy.

• 59:39Tim Ferriss?

  I'll be smirking just because I have to cut in. Because I remember, I was so curious at one point, and obviously I've been along for the ride for a while.

• 59:49Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 59:49Tim Ferriss?

  And there are a lot of...

• 59:50Speaker 02

  You launched The 4 Hour Chef on CreativeLive.

• 59:52Tim Ferriss?

  Did, did indeed. And you know, I think the quality, just the background that you have in production and the people you've hired bring a level of professionalism to the production that is broadcast quality with multiple cameras. I mean, you've got dollies, you've got stuff on lines. I mean, it's...

• 1:00:10Speaker 02

  You were going to record this with an iPhone.

• 1:00:11Tim Ferriss?

  There's always... I was going to record this with an 8-track and then I'm glad you vetoed me. But I think that there's always a market for quality. Like, I was just talking to some entrepreneurs today, I'm digressing for a second. I was talking to some entrepreneurs today and they're like, "All right, we're going to compete on price against Company X." And I'm like, "If Company X has a lot of money or simply doesn't know how to do math properly and they want to bleed you, they can compete on price and they can hurt you for a long time." But there's always a market for highest quality.

• 1:00:38Speaker 02

  Yeah. Huge, huge kudos to the team that produces this podcast for one, but all the work.

• 1:00:45Tim Ferriss?

  This episode.

• 1:00:46Speaker 02

  Yes. Yeah. Unless I'm going to get a call from the after, like, "You know, boy, that studio just worked out really good. I got another one next week. We want someone who's nice and smart and dashing now so you won't be asked back." That being said, there's a passion for quality here for sure and a passion for education. So, I have big goals there.

• 1:01:06Tim Ferriss?

  What I was smirking about, if I could just tell a funny story.

• 1:01:08Speaker 02

  Please keep smirking, keep telling a story.

• 1:01:10Tim Ferriss?

  No, no, no, because I remember when we were first, when you were telling me about CreativeLive. And then I heard you telling somebody else, and generally you'd be like, "Doesn't matter if you're a techie in San Francisco, or if you're that 12-year-old boy in Malaysia." And I heard that a couple of times, I'm like, "I want to meet this 12-year-old Malaysia. He is a go-getter. That man is on it."

• 1:01:30Speaker 02

  I've said a couple of times in a row recently, whether you're in Nebraska or Nairobi, and I don't know where that came from.

• 1:01:36Tim Ferriss?

  Ooh, I like the alliteration.

• 1:01:37Speaker 02

  How about it?

• 1:01:39Tim Ferriss?

  So, but it's true, right? And I think, well, just explain the model briefly, because a lot of people have an exposure to it.

• 1:01:45Speaker 02

  Sure, we bring world-class people in photography, filmmaking, design,

• 1:01:50Speaker 02

  any sort of the arts, audio engineering, music, the maker movement, crafting.

• 1:01:55Tim Ferriss?

  Business too.

• 1:01:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, entrepreneurship.

• 1:01:57Tim Ferriss?

  Startup week.

• 1:01:57Speaker 02

  Sure, Guy Kawasaki, Reid Hoffman, yourself, there's Lewis Howes, Ramit Sethi. There's all kinds of really great courses. And we bring those people on and film, like you said, in super-high-quality HD, usually between four and eight cameras, and broadcast live while we're making this workshop. Instead of a TED Talk that's like 15 or 18 minutes, this is one, two, or three days with that same quality person. So you go really deep on something. And if you tune in while it's live, it's completely free. Anyone can watch it. And if you do decide that you want to own the thing and watch it over and over obsessively, like people do with your Tim Ferriss show, then you have to buy it. And so, for the people that don't have the ability to, don't have money,

• 1:02:41Speaker 02

  they can get all of the same benefits. If you do have money and you prefer convenience, you just press buy. And so it's a beautiful business model that cultivates creativity, access, community, some of our sort of key values. It's working too.

• 1:02:57Tim Ferriss?

  It is working.

• 1:02:58Speaker 02

  It's working.

• 1:02:59Tim Ferriss?

  What is, so on the personal side?

• 1:03:01Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:03:03Tim Ferriss?

  What are some, what are some of your goals, priorities, resolutions?

• 1:03:08Speaker 02

  Charlie's book, let's get back to that.

• 1:03:09Tim Ferriss?

  Oh yeah.

• 1:03:10Speaker 02

  Play. Play, is it called Play It Away?

• 1:03:12Tim Ferriss?

  Play Your Anxiety.

• 1:03:13Speaker 02

  Play Your Anxiety Away or something. I don't necessarily suffer from anxiety.

• 1:03:16Tim Ferriss?

  Play It Away.

• 1:03:17Speaker 02

  Play It Away. Of the classic, like, I'm gonna seize up when I get on camera, but I keep a lot of balls in the air. I've got a brain that's whizzing at 3:00 in the morning and the idea of taking care of yourself and finding a way to play. Charlie's example is the Home Run Derby.

• 1:03:38Tim Ferriss?

  This is Charlie Hohn.

• 1:03:39Speaker 02

  Charlie Hohn.

• 1:03:39Tim Ferriss?

  H-O-E-H-N.

• 1:03:40Speaker 02

  Oh my, this is a refill? Do you get this on the Random Show?

• 1:03:44Tim Ferriss?

  You know, I'm gonna have to switch to Ginger and Jack. Looks pretty good.

• 1:03:48Speaker 02

  Good one, how about it, huh?

• 1:03:52Speaker 02

  So that's a big Ginger and Jack with no rocks.

• 1:03:57Speaker 02

  But the idea of introducing play, because we work very, very hard at CreativeLive and as a creative, professional, long hours, you know, a lot of stuff, a lot of balls in the air. And, you know, we've got investors, your ass is on the line, so to speak. And just taking 30 minutes or an hour to try and find some way to play, to be active in a day, is just incredibly, incredibly helpful for me. So, kudos to Charlie, wherever you are out there.

• 1:04:27Tim Ferriss?

  What have you been doing? So what have you built in?

• 1:04:31Speaker 02

  Horseshoes, there's a horseshoe park by my house in the Green Lake area of Seattle. Randomly, and it's lit, so you can like have a really intense work session and then after work or at midnight, you can go through horseshoes.

• 1:04:49Tim Ferriss?

  You go, like, do the meth heads come and congregate and they try to catch the horseshoes? Or what happened?

• 1:04:53Speaker 02

  No, no, horseshoe, but it's a totally random thing. Like, I'm not like a big horseshoe guy.

• 1:04:58Tim Ferriss?

  See, I was thinking, that guy looks like he throws a mean horseshoe.

• 1:05:01Speaker 02

  I'm seeing, you know Kelly Staret, good friend of yours, I'll say.

• 1:05:08Speaker 02

  He recommended Dave Werner, who is basically an athletic trainer, former Navy SEAL in Seattle, and I've got terrible shoulders. I had a couple of blowouts from football and soccer, and so I've had reconstructive surgery, and they've never really quite been the same. But Kelly, from his knowledge base, and Dave Werner up in Seattle, they have amazing approach to sort of physical therapy, and they're badasses, they're like mobility experts. And so I'm working from the ground up on rebuilding the small muscles in my shoulders instead of just doing the big stuff, so that I can surf again. Because surfing is a big passion of mine for a long time, and I can't really paddle out.

• 1:05:50Speaker 02

  You've got me the swimming video you sent to me.

• 1:05:54Tim Ferriss?

  The Total Immersion?

• 1:05:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, Total Immersion. But my shoulders have been so bad. So I'm being really physically active, going to see those guys, Dave, at least twice a week, sometimes three times a week, so that I can enable some of these passions of mine like surfing.

• 1:06:07Tim Ferriss?

  Cool, should get some Sisyphe's Quadrangularis for your shoulders.

• 1:06:10Speaker 02

  Yes?

• 1:06:11Tim Ferriss?

  Yes, we can talk about that.

• 1:06:12Speaker 02

  Please.

• 1:06:13Tim Ferriss?

  Really helpful for knees and shoulders.

• 1:06:14Speaker 02

  Isn't that guy who rolled the boulder up the hill?

• 1:06:17Tim Ferriss?

  That's Sisyphe's.

• 1:06:18Speaker 02

  I'm just kidding. It's all the time here on the Tim Ferriss Podcast.

• 1:06:26Tim Ferriss?

  I could have my line of supplements that are all named after like Greek tragedies. Wow, if people didn't think I was pompous already, that would really do it.

• 1:06:33Speaker 02

  That's that Princeton in you, my friend.

• 1:06:35Tim Ferriss?

  I know, comes out.

• 1:06:36Speaker 02

  You can take the kid out of Princeton, but you wait.

• 1:06:38Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, take the mullet off the Long Islander. I'm sorry, mixing up my metaphors. Cool, man. You know, I mean, at this point, obviously, you've done a lot. We've done a lot too.

• 1:06:52Speaker 02

  We have done a lot.

• 1:06:54Tim Ferriss?

  But I'm gonna, won't keep you too much longer.

• 1:06:57Speaker 02

  Dude, I'm happy, I just, I always take you there all night.

• 1:07:00Tim Ferriss?

  Speaking of happy.

• 1:07:01Speaker 02

  What's that?

• 1:07:02Tim Ferriss?

  I wanted to ask you.

• 1:07:03Speaker 02

  Speaking of happy.

• 1:07:04Tim Ferriss?

  What do you, what do you feel have become your top priorities in feeling happy or fulfilled? Like, what are the things, as you become wiser, that you've learned to prize more or prize less?

• 1:07:18Speaker 02

  Health.

• 1:07:20Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:22Speaker 02

  Having a Jim Morrison-type career where you explode at 28 in a fiery ball is not cool.

• 1:07:33Speaker 02

  The Kurt Cobain's, you know, the artists that have, well, we all know that magic is 28 or 29, whatever that evil year is, it's taken so many amazing artists from us. But that's not cool, health and longevity and being able to enjoy it is fundamental. And until it's taken away, you don't actually, until you have a couple of surgeries, you break yourself a little bit. And that's not to say I'm encouraging people to push themselves athletically, whatever. I'm not saying don't get hurt, but one's health and being active is incredibly valuable.

• 1:08:08Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:08Speaker 02

  And these are, I feel like an old person saying this next one, which is sleep. I have lived on four to six hours of sleep for the last 10 years.

• 1:08:16Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:17Speaker 02

  And I go really hard and then I will like nose dive for 18 hours.

• 1:08:21Tim Ferriss?

  This is why you can only remember one thing on your list of three.

• 1:08:24Speaker 02

  I know, there you go. And I've found a sort of a new passion for sleep. I can't ever, not never, but I rarely get the eight, nine, 10. But if I get seven, eight, it's a complete, I have a completely different experience.

• 1:08:39Tim Ferriss?

  So what have you shifted? Have you, has it been simply a matter of scheduling? Like, how are you making?

• 1:08:43Speaker 02

  It's an intention, like, should I go out and have one more cocktail with my buddies?

• 1:08:46Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:47Speaker 02

  Or I'm going to be more fresh if I go to sleep.

• 1:08:51Tim Ferriss?

  Eat some Yoplait, watch Golden Girls and call it a night.

• 1:08:53Speaker 02

  That's right, boom, high five, I'm out. No, but, so just prioritizing sleep.

• 1:08:58Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:59Speaker 02

  And.

• 1:09:00Tim Ferriss?

  Definitely.

• 1:09:00Speaker 02

  The third one is meditation.

• 1:09:02Tim Ferriss?

  Mmm.

• 1:09:03Speaker 02

  Meditation.

• 1:09:03Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, yes, we haven't talked about this in a while.

• 1:09:05Speaker 02

  Uh huh. You were on it for a good bit, you said you fell off the wagon.

• 1:09:09Tim Ferriss?

  I was, I fell off the wagon, but yeah, you're one of two people that I credit with finally kind of kicking me in the ass to take it seriously.

• 1:09:16Speaker 02

  It has, it has really been.

• 1:09:18Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, specifically TM, so Transatlantic Meditation, for those who don't know, or trademark.

• 1:09:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:09:24Tim Ferriss?

  But it's, you know, I have my issues with almost every form of meditation. There are pros and cons, we talked about them before, but tell me about, so tell me about your meditation practice.

• 1:09:34Speaker 02

  My meditation practice is not perfect and none, none are.

• 1:09:38Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:40Speaker 02

  I just sit down between 15 and 20 minutes twice a day. Sometimes I only get one time a day, sometimes those are a little compressed or they don't, you know, shit happens or you're on an airplane and the captain comes on and pulls you out of it or whatever, like, but I make a conscious effort to just observe my thoughts and practice TM. In the morning and the evening before dinner. And it has made, it's sort of the analogy that I can most simply put here on your show is, it's when you're in the zone, say, playing sports or playing music.

• 1:10:15Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 1:10:15Speaker 02

  And things just seem effortless.

• 1:10:18Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:18Speaker 02

  It's called the flow state. Stephen Kotler's new book, which is a good book, Rise of Superman. Check that out. A little plug for his book about creativity and flow states. But that sense of flow, it's when things sort of happen in slow motion. Now, you're not literally talking in slow motion, but you have the same clarity as if you're going through life and everything's happening in slow motion. Instead of that, I'm hyper caffeinated, my boss is...

• 1:10:42Tim Ferriss?

  I'm agitated and reactive, dodging bullets.

• 1:10:44Speaker 02

  Yeah. Instead, you're just like, I'm driving the bus here. And we're gonna go here, and then I'm gonna do this. And there's just certain clarity that, and it's like magic. It's really weird. And it's, there's another thing, I don't know if you felt this, Tim, but it sort of aggregates. So you get good benefit from one, two, three, four. Then when you're on a good, on a roll, there's this sort of exponential, there's a little overdrive that it's like, oh, my gosh, I feel like I'm just floating.

• 1:11:11Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I can't explain it either, but for me, and just for those people who might be thinking like I did for my entire life, like...

• 1:11:18Speaker 02

  Bullshit!

• 1:11:18Tim Ferriss?

  Bullshit! No, just like, I don't want people oming me and fricking, you know, all this, eh, yeah, yeah, chakra, whatever, like, I'm not into it.

• 1:11:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:11:26Tim Ferriss?

  Especially living in San Francisco, I've developed sort of an allergy to like sanctimonious, and I've been to Burning Man, but like sanctimonious burner types who like wanna lecture me about chakras, I'm just like, honestly, please, I can't handle another minute of this. So I've had this aversion to meditation, but when it's very sort of

• 1:11:44Tim Ferriss?

  non-dogmatic.

• 1:11:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:11:46Tim Ferriss?

  Where you're just like, look, you're not trying to control anything, you're not trying to think of a candle flame, like, just observe your thoughts and be okay with them.

• 1:11:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:11:53Tim Ferriss?

  And sit with good posture for this period of time. That's it. And even if you think it's a shitty job, and you're like running through your to-do list or thinking of the stock market, it's okay. Just make it part of your routine. And what I found was, and some people who, well-known people who do TM, I mean, it's like Paul McCartney, Ariana Huffington.

• 1:12:09Speaker 02

  David Lynch.

• 1:12:10Tim Ferriss?

  David Lynch, I'm blanking on his name for some reason, but Bridgewater Capital, largest hedge fund in, if not the world, the United States.

• 1:12:20Speaker 02

  Russell Simmons.

• 1:12:21Tim Ferriss?

  Hundred billion plus, Ray Dalio, that's it, Russell Simmons.

• 1:12:24Speaker 02

  The list is, I think, like Howard Stern, I mean, it's crazy.

• 1:12:28Tim Ferriss?

  The list is pretty amazing, yeah, Seinfeld. And the physiological or psychological effects are so fascinating, like you said, because you'll do it for a couple of days and you're like, man, like, yeah, okay, whatever, and then you hit this, like, you hit this sort of inflection point where suddenly you just drop from like 200 RPMs to 150, and you're like, whoa, okay, this is different, and then the whole week you're kind of zenned out. And then after, say, a four-week period, and I did my first retreat a few months ago before I volunteered for the masochism that is television production.

• 1:13:01Speaker 02

  I could just hit you with a stick for a couple of weeks.

• 1:13:04Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, if you could put a nail through it first, that'd be great. But really had this tremendous effect on me that oddly enough, and maybe this is getting too out there for some people, but very similar to my experiences post relatively high-dose hallucinogens.

• 1:13:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:13:25Tim Ferriss?

  This like extended period of calm.

• 1:13:28Speaker 02

  Grace.

• 1:13:29Tim Ferriss?

  And ease, ease in decision-making.

• 1:13:30Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:13:31Tim Ferriss?

  Like uncluttered, like you closed every browser on your computer and turned off the antivirus and rebooted the whole thing.

• 1:13:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:13:37Tim Ferriss?

  That type of feeling.

• 1:13:38Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:13:39Tim Ferriss?

  So I did fall off the train, a question for you, because I find the morning session I usually find pretty easy.

• 1:13:45Speaker 02

  Yep, afternoon is hard.

• 1:13:46Tim Ferriss?

  Afternoon.

• 1:13:47Speaker 02

  I'm right now thinking of, okay, I gotta go from here to the thing to the thing, and when am I gonna get my thing in, like, oh, shit.

• 1:13:52Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, sometimes I'll try to do it in a car.

• 1:13:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:13:55Tim Ferriss?

  Like Uber or whatever. But do you, when do you typically do it in the afternoon? I'm curious.

• 1:14:01Speaker 02

  I try and do it before dinner sometime.

• 1:14:04Tim Ferriss?

  Okay.

• 1:14:05Speaker 02

  Between work and dinner.

• 1:14:06Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:07Speaker 02

  We're entrepreneurs who work.

• 1:14:08Tim Ferriss?

  It's tough.

• 1:14:09Speaker 02

  Crazy long hours, so I'll take it whenever I can get it. And it's usually a little bit more, a little bit less gracious than my morning one. Like you said, it's sort of like morning, it's like it's your time, you cry about 20 minutes. So my afternoon was often a little bit more piecemeal. But again, it's the act. I try not to judge the practice. The practice is the practice.

• 1:14:30Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. Are you, when you meditate, are you sitting cross-legged? Are you sitting with your feet?

• 1:14:36Speaker 02

  I try and sit in a comfortable chair, flat on the floor, hands on my lap.

• 1:14:40Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:42Speaker 02

  And there's a mantra that if you, you know, learn sort of TM, you're given a mantra and say that word over and over, and if some thoughts come in, they're like, oh, there's those thoughts, bye. And they go away, and you just keep doing it over again. And then sometimes like, oh my God, that was 25 minutes. And sometimes it's like, oh my God, that was one minute. It felt like a week, like a week. And again, but just not, not judging that. And it's without, you know, continuing to talk about it, because now it's getting weird, because we're talking about it so much. But it's a powerful tool that is so simple.

• 1:15:14Tim Ferriss?

  I'm just mind melding while you're talking right now.

• 1:15:16Speaker 02

  It's great. You're meditating. You're staring up.

• 1:15:18Tim Ferriss?

  I haven't been listening to you for 20 minutes.

• 1:15:19Speaker 02

  For the listening people out there, Tim is staring into space right now. He's not paying attention to us.

• 1:15:25Tim Ferriss?

  Okay, so let's, that is, I think, a huge takeaway for people. It doesn't have to be TM. It could be Vipassana. It could be just anything. Building in a pause, which is like a warm bath for your brain, even if it's 10 minutes a day, so that you're not in a reactive mode. It's really a game changer. And physiologically, it had a lot of effects for me as well.

• 1:15:46Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:15:46Tim Ferriss?

  So like when my cortisol level dropped, I was able to lose body fat more easily in my abdomen, for instance. Really, I became very sensitive to alcohol and caffeine, so I dropped it. But they dropped them both significantly, not because I was getting judgmental about it, because I was oversensitized to it. I'd grown immune to the effects, so I could have like six cups of coffee a day, be like, eh. And then did TM for four or five weeks, and it was like I had one cup, and I'm like, wow.

• 1:16:11Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 1:16:12Tim Ferriss?

  I didn't realize what my baseline was.

• 1:16:13Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:16:15Tim Ferriss?

  So just maybe to wrap.

• 1:16:17Speaker 02

  Makes you a cheap date, too, by the way.

• 1:16:19Tim Ferriss?

  I've always been a cheap date.

• 1:16:22Tim Ferriss?

  For...

• 1:16:24Tim Ferriss?

  For those people who might be wondering, "Well, Chase, you started back in this period when YouTube wasn't even YouTube and you had this opportunity to be the first to be transparent." And I could never do that because now it's too crowded and now the world is different. If you were starting now, starting over, knowing what you know now, as a photographer, we'll just use that as an example.

• 1:16:44Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 1:16:45Tim Ferriss?

  How would you think about going about it? I mean, what would your process look like?

• 1:16:49Speaker 02

  I would go straight to, I think, again, assuming you get good at your craft. And you get good at your craft through imitation and practice and hacking the system, taking it from 10,000 hours down to four, or whatever the system is. But let's just take it for granted that you're good at your craft. In the process of developing skills at the craft, I feel like the answers are actually in here.

• 1:17:13Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:14Speaker 02

  And what it is that we're all trying to do as entrepreneurs and artists, I think, not all of us, I don't want to speak for everyone, but I think there's one of the differentiating characteristics, the zig instead of the zag, the how do you stand out in a loud, noisy world?

• 1:17:31Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:32Speaker 02

  The answers are in here and trying to take pictures that no one else in the world can take and trying to make things that no one else in the world can make because you're the product of this, of a unique sort of life and trajectory.

• 1:17:44Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:45Speaker 02

  I've said earlier in the podcast that everything is sort of a remix, but what is your version of the remix? And so, say, I have a relationship with a bunch of celebrities, so I might be able to get a photograph of them in a way that no one else could because they were on my couch playing Playstation or something in a way that you're not going to see that person. So that's a terrible example. We've got a lot of terrible examples in this here, but the point is, like, thinking about, like, what is, what is the unique mojo that I bring and how can I try and amplify that? Amplify your strengths rather than sort of fix your weaknesses. Outsource.

• 1:18:20Tim Ferriss?

  Or you could take, I mean, just something that came to mind is take If you're not perhaps the best person at capturing something visually, but you're a good storyteller, you have your visual art and then you have an incredible narrative to go with it.

• 1:18:33Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 1:18:33Tim Ferriss?

  And when I go into art galleries, and this is not my particular, I don't have the budget for it, but it's also, I'm more of a classical type guy, but if you walk into, say, the Gagosian galleries in New York, and you'll see stuff on the wall, $10 million, you can't figure out what it is, but you read the plaque and excerpt and you're like, "That's a damn good story."

• 1:18:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:18:50Tim Ferriss?

  Like, "I see how they are selling these things."

• 1:18:53Speaker 02

  The narrative plays in, and also that, well, that there is a narrative and that it's a compelling one. I think both those things are true for anything that you're sort of positioning or selling or creating. I want to know the backstory. I feel that is, that's sort of, it's an underappreciated art to be able to tell a good story. And that's another weird background thing on me, is I was in a PhD program in philosophy of art. So I learned how to talk really critically about art.

• 1:19:30Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:31Speaker 02

  And then you think of the learned skill of being able to talk about why I shot it like this, and people, that is a part of their experience when they have hired me as an artist in the past. So there's a value add there that being able to tell a story and talk about what it is that you're making is valuable. So rewind a little bit to go back. What would you do? I would focus on doing things that I know that I'm passionate about, that I can do differently or better or more uniquely based on what's in here, not necessarily what's out there.

• 1:20:03Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:03Speaker 02

  Got to learn from out here and imitate and hack and steal and all those things that we do, but then as soon as you can, start applying it to very personal sort of vulnerability.

• 1:20:13Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:14Speaker 02

  Brene Brown is going to be on my show on April 9th, Daring Greatly. We're dropping a lot of good books now.

• 1:20:21Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:22Speaker 02

  And I remembered Mark Echo's book is How to Sell You Without Selling Out, Sell Yourself Without Selling Out. These are other good titles. But sort of vulnerability, what is a place that you can come from that when you're vulnerable, you're actually showing strength?

• 1:20:36Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I think it was Neil Gaiman, one of my favorite writers, or maybe it's someone else, but it's like when you're writing and you start to feel really uncomfortable, that's when you know you're starting to get it right.

• 1:20:45Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:20:46Tim Ferriss?

  And I'd imagine that applies to photography, applies to everything.

• 1:20:48Speaker 02

  And I feel it with CreativeLive. When the stakes start getting high, you're like, wow, this is gonna be a big deal. That means you're sort of, now you're poking some hot spots, so.

• 1:20:58Tim Ferriss?

  Awesome.

• 1:20:58Speaker 02

  I think that's an important takeaway.

• 1:21:03Speaker 02

  I know there are probably others.

• 1:21:04Tim Ferriss?

  Solid, man. No, I'd say we'll have everything in the show notes for people to check out. Obviously, creativelive.com. And maybe we could just close on one of my favorite quotes. It's actually also commencement speech that everybody should check out by Neil Gaiman.

• 1:21:20Speaker 02

  Neil, I was gonna reference it earlier.

• 1:21:21Tim Ferriss?

  Make good art.

• 1:21:22Speaker 02

  Make good art.

• 1:21:23Tim Ferriss?

  Cat exploded, make good art. Got divorced, wife ran away with the pool boy, make good art. Make good art. That is the bedrock.

• 1:21:31Speaker 02

  That is. And you don't want to end the podcast quite yet because you said you were gonna come back to a horrifying story that I had experienced.

• 1:21:38Tim Ferriss?

  Oh my god, you're totally right. I'm glad you saved me from that embarrassing call-out.

• 1:21:42Speaker 02

  You asked me to save you in your text to me. I said, "What do I need to do for prep?" You said, "Nothing, just save me if I need saving."

• 1:21:48Tim Ferriss?

  I said, "Be your charming and unshaven self." And secondly, if I fuck up the conversation, you need to save it, so thank you.

• 1:21:53Speaker 02

  No problem.

• 1:21:54Tim Ferriss?

  Well done.

• 1:21:54Speaker 02

  Professional saver.

• 1:21:57Tim Ferriss?

  Catastrophic, self-inflicted injury, yeah, let's hear it. Doesn't have to be catastrophic. Self-inflicted injuries.

• 1:22:02Speaker 02

  So, I'm sort of young. I don't remember quite the exact age. I'm at a wedding.

• 1:22:06Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, okay.

• 1:22:08Speaker 02

  I'm just, I'm my, what is it called? I'm an only child, so I'm just kind of cruising, you know, looking for some other, maybe let's say I'm 10, looking for some other 10-year-old girl to dance with or something, just cruising the wedding in my little tuxedo. And there's this commotion over on the dance floor. I'm probably like miser-ing the cake or something. There's a commotion on the dance floor. I'm like, "What's going on over there?" And I see there's this group of brides. And then there's the, or sorry, a group of women.

• 1:22:36Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, or women, yeah.

• 1:22:37Speaker 02

  And then there's the bride at the front, and she has this flowers, and she's doing this thing, she's like, she's going like, "What?" Dude, it's a gigantic wedding. And I'm in the wings. See if you can follow me in here. And I'm like, "Oh, she's gonna throw that flower." And then I'm just, I come just faking around the corner on full-speed sprint. Sure enough, she throws the flowers. Flowers end over end, just see this in slow motion, just da-da-da-da-da-da-da. Full laid out swan dive. Grab the flowers in front of 50 outstretched arms. Pull it in, come sliding to a stop on the dance floor. Hand in the air with the bouquet. Ah!

• 1:23:21Speaker 02

  Fucking silence. 250 people like...

• 1:23:26Speaker 02

  And she had to do it again.

• 1:23:28Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, nice.

• 1:23:28Speaker 02

  It was so...

• 1:23:30Tim Ferriss?

  Retake. That is amazing.

• 1:23:31Speaker 02

  It was so terrible.

• 1:23:32Tim Ferriss?

  I think that's like the essence of Chase right there.

• 1:23:34Speaker 02

  Oh!

• 1:23:35Tim Ferriss?

  That's right.

• 1:23:37Speaker 02

  Record scratch. Oh! But there's so many... I got lots of embarrassing moments.

• 1:23:42Tim Ferriss?

  I like that.

• 1:23:42Speaker 02

  I like being 10. Maybe I was 8. I don't know if that's too old to know. I guess I should have known what was going on. Or I have no idea what age I was, but...

• 1:23:50Tim Ferriss?

  No, you were just overflowing with amazing Pele-like soccer ability. You didn't know what to do with that at a wedding, I think.

• 1:23:58Tim Ferriss?

  There you go. We'll have a round two, man. We'll have more stories.

• 1:24:01Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 1:24:02Tim Ferriss?

  And thank you for coming on the show.

• 1:24:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, pleasure.

• 1:24:04Tim Ferriss?

  Until next time.

• 1:24:05Speaker 02

  I will pimp it. I'll share it far and wide as much as I can. Ciao. Bye, everybody. Thanks for staying late. Arigatou gozaimasu.

• 1:24:13Tim Ferriss?

  Arigatou gozaimasu.