Jasmine Star 00:00:00  Welcome back to the Jasmine Star Show. I could not be more excited. Can you hear at my throat? Like, I kind of feel like there's this, like, nervous, excited edge because the person sitting across from me is not just a brilliant entrepreneur. He is not just a successful author. He is not just a kind, brilliant, creative human being. He is here today, here to guide us, to talk about, more than anything, our inability and lack thereof of playing it safe. He believes that we should never play it safe. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the show.

Chase Jarvis 00:00:36  I could not be happier to be here. Jay's okay. Sorry, I just blew the audio, guys. I know they're like. But that's real. They can't hide.

Jasmine Star 00:00:43  That. So what people really know about my recent entrepreneurial journey sure looks a certain way, but you and I go back, and so what I want to do is I want to frame this podcast in three sections, okay? Because I do believe that sometimes it's easy for speakers, for authors, for thought leaders to come in and present an idea, and people are like, okay, cool.

Jasmine Star 00:01:06  But what I want to do, because I have a very unique vantage point, is you see it all. I've seen it all, man. Like I've seen it all from the back.

Chase Jarvis 00:01:13  And likewise, I see you. I've seen your.

Jasmine Star 00:01:15  Journey. And so I want this conversation to be super real. I want it to get ugly. I want it to be beautiful. I want it to be messy because that's what building our businesses has been. And so breaking this podcast into three sections, it's like when we first met, when I started learning your philosophy of not playing it safe in life, then I want to move into business iteration. You and I started building different businesses around the same time and like strengthening the muscle of not playing it safe. And then we're going to get into a conversation about what that looks like for you right now. Like, why are you so passionate about sharing this message at this point in time? I love it. Okay, so let's go back.

Chase Jarvis 00:01:49  Everybody loves a good framework, you know? I mean.

Jasmine Star 00:01:52  You know, your girl. I only think in frameworks, brother. Like this is how it just it is. And it's like you're super creative.

Chase Jarvis 00:01:57  And I got a little artsy brains. They go all over the place. But if we can have a couple of, like, nice little sandboxes to play. Thank you. Yeah, they love you. Little structure, a little structure, a little structure.

Jasmine Star 00:02:05  So let's go back. And the year is 2010 okay 2000 okay. And so I get a phone call I'm younger then.

Chase Jarvis 00:02:15  Yeah. Better looking aren't we all.

Jasmine Star 00:02:17  No no. You age like fine wine, brother. You age like fine wine glasses.

Chase Jarvis 00:02:21  Sleep.

Jasmine Star 00:02:22  Hey, I know we're recording in Austin. He flew in from Seattle. His flight was delayed. Didn't get to his hotel. It's like 2 to 30 in the morning. And at the time of this recording, it's about eight in the morning. So he is looking just fresh and clean. Let's go, let's go see, we're not playing it safe.

Jasmine Star 00:02:37  That's what we're not doing today. We're not playing it safe. I love so.

Chase Jarvis 00:02:40  I love your framework I think it's a great yeah.

Jasmine Star 00:02:42  Great setup and that's what I want to do. I want to just have a real conversation. I want people to get a front row seat to like the, the IC and, and and the climb of a good journey. So it's 2010.

Chase Jarvis 00:02:52  2010 more.

Jasmine Star 00:02:53  Or less. And I get an email from somebody and they said, Chase Jarvis would like to set up a phone call with you, and a quick Google search reveals like who you are. And I'm like, whoa, this guy is legit. Legit. What is he doing calling me? And can we explain the story on both sides around that phone conversation? Sure. So my phone first. Okay, okay.

Chase Jarvis 00:03:15  Me first. Oh, actually, you know what? I'm going first.

Jasmine Star 00:03:17  Okay, good. Please.

Chase Jarvis 00:03:18  I'm going first. It was 2010, and we had just started what was essentially an experiment in online learning.

Chase Jarvis 00:03:25  It's very difficult to go back this far. 15 years ago now, 14.5 years ago, and think that literally online learning was not a thing. Yes, I had a podcast at the time. I just started it in 2009, which was the first essentially one of the first, yeah, ten interview podcasts on the internet, which was very strange to even be saying that now, because now there's, you know, 100 million or something like.

Jasmine Star 00:03:46  That back in my day. Kids.

Chase Jarvis 00:03:48  Totally. It sounds hilarious. This is this is the story for today. But the year was 2010 and we had just started essentially an experiment that I had been building a large community in the photography space, and myself and a partner had this idea that the future was going to be about being able to learn from people that you admire and respect from anywhere in the world. And the internet was going to do that.

Jasmine Star 00:04:12  Really pause, though, like for the gravity of this, because like you said, it's really hard for people to understand, like 14 years ago when we just pick up a phone today, we forget that like that didn't exist.

Jasmine Star 00:04:22  Like online education did not exist, did not exist specifically, it did not exist in a video or a streaming capacity. And so it's like, you guys, 14 years is nothing. And it's so everything.

Chase Jarvis 00:04:34  It's a thousand years.

Jasmine Star 00:04:34  And so when you say it's an experiment, I want to take people back to that. It didn't exist.

Chase Jarvis 00:04:38  We had to create our own payment system, our own video system, our own audio recording, our own streaming files. Like we literally had to do everything. We essentially there was one system out there that was built for military to talk to their spouses Overseas. So we basically hijacked that and morphed it into something that we could. The way we tested this thing was I had a photo shoot and we just put cameras up and broadcast to my community. Hey, I'm doing an album cover photo shoot. If anyone wants to watch, you can just see how I operate. 25,000 people watch that photo shoot live. And we were like, oh, this is actually a thing.

Chase Jarvis 00:05:17  So what if we could build a platform where this was the norm? Okay, let's pause.

Jasmine Star 00:05:22  Because I just don't think that, okay. The storyteller in me, I look at this and the podcast hosted me has done you a disservice because what you said is. So I did a shoot for a band and so let's pause for a second. Chase was and is one of the highest regarded photographers and cover of Newsweek build of apps, writer of books, photographer amongst stars and athletes and major campaigns. And so I didn't say that thing until we talk about building community. There was like, and this is what I want people to know and believe is like, there's parts of our story, and when you bring people into that, you build people who are like, I care about the thing you care about and what you are really good at and very early to see is any time that you could share information with people, they in turn became devoted not to you, but devoted to this bigger idea, that community that we can learn together.

Jasmine Star 00:06:12  And so at the time, like you guys like, let's go back. At the time, there were photographers, there were creators, there were authors. There's all these big name people who lived in silos behind these magic Willy Wonka castles. And what you did is you said, I'm going to turn the castle inside out, and I'm going to share all of this information to all of y'all. And so what you did as an experiment, it cost you money. It cost you team. Sounds like I'm crying. I'm so moved. I'm so moved by the spirit of creativity. Okay. And so that's right. So you already say amen. That's right. And so then when you say, let's have this experiment, I'm going to broadcast me shooting. And it's just we're going to try this, we're going to do something that's never been done. And 25,000 people watch. And then you're like.

Jasmine Star 00:06:52  Doing.

Jasmine Star 00:06:52  Some things here. And so I really just wanted to parse it out before we like really put the gas in the story.

Chase Jarvis 00:06:57  It's very hard to articulate. And again, I don't want to I think we don't want to reference back to that too much. But that was everything that you said was true. That didn't exist, right. There was no such thing. I mean, hat tip to Garyvee, but I had a full time video person following me around starting in 2005 with the goal of telling stories about my journey of becoming a photographer, because when I went to learn, there were no resources, right? There's a bit in the book where I actually went to the library and flip through card catalogs and checked out books about photography, because there was nowhere else. And when I would try and, you know, introduce myself to other working photographers, that was very secretive. So it sounds like a foreign language when we're saying it now. But that was the norm. And to me, there was an opportunity, to help other people learn. And to me, that's actually I think I can say my photography is world class.

Chase Jarvis 00:07:48  I've done, you know, literally hundreds of campaigns for Apple, Nike, Samsung. Just massive global campaigns, hundreds of them. And yet I feel like what set me apart as one of the early people in photography and a pioneer was specifically sharing. Yeah, sharing my journey. Not just the good stuff either. Sharing my journey on the internet. And so with that as the backdrop.

Jasmine Star 00:08:11  Yes. Thank you. Yeah.

Chase Jarvis 00:08:12  With that as the backdrop, that's what we sort of leaned into with this experiment. The year before, I had launched a photo app. It was the app of the year on the Apple iTunes platform. This was late 2009, and it was the first app that used photographs as the basis for a social network. And that went to number one, and it was essentially Instagram is a lift and stamp copy of what was called best camera. And there's great footage somewhere on the internet and the Wayback Machine you can find find the Instagram CEO at the time talking about that, and I learned a lot about creating a business in that moment.

Chase Jarvis 00:08:51  Because when you go from nothing to, you know, the number one in the App Store, there's all kinds of challenges. And that's also well chronicled on the internet. But I felt like I could leverage the experiences from that into this new experiment. And my mantra was to move fast was to experiment and and bring the community along for the ride, move.

Jasmine Star 00:09:11  Fast, experiment, bring the community. So on the back of your success career, on the back of knowing that sharing information on the back of broadcasting something as an idea, on the back of building an app, on the back of growth and on the back of the peaks and valleys, you're then like, hey, I have this idea. And when it came to finding who you wanted to bring in initially, how did I come in the mix?

Chase Jarvis 00:09:36  Well, our first class was a commercial photography class and it had 50,000 people. And it was I mean, that absolutely blew our expectations out of the water. And a certain percentage of those people, the business model was very simple at the time.

Chase Jarvis 00:09:50  It has since morphed and this is a long, long journey. The company was actually acquired by a big public company, etc. but essentially anyone in the world could watch for free. And if you wanted to be able to watch it again, then you had to pay for it. And it was roughly like 150 bucks or 200 bucks or something, which was totally transformational because you used to have to fly across the country, spend $5,000 for a long weekend with your hero, mentor, etc. our first class had 50,000. Our second class had 100,000, and both those were oriented around more of the commercial photography that I was doing at the time. And I knew that wedding photography was massive and that there were people in that area of the industry who were shining stars. And one in particular, whose name is Jasmine Star, was really interesting to me and my partner at the time because you were doing it differently and you were bold, fearless. And I think you and I both know that while both of us were bold and fearless out, you know, on camera, we were terrified and, you know.

Jasmine Star 00:10:49  Stupid and curious.

Chase Jarvis 00:10:50  And terrified and, you know, worried and all those things. But it occurred to us that the wedding universe was a big universe. And what could make this interesting? And we had this basic, you know, framework of if we could take someone that we truly felt was dynamic and at the, you know, leading edge of their craft and put them in an actual wedding that that would entertain and inspire the internet, the photographers around the world who wanted to learn a little bit more about that. So the market was big, the talent was raw and real, and the opportunity had nothing like this had ever been done in the history of the world. So we essentially put those in a blender and, you know, we had a very short list of people, and actually I knew numbers two, three and four on our list and didn't know you. And so I had I don't remember how I actually reached out to you, but I do.

Jasmine Star 00:11:45  Can I take us back? Please?

Chase Jarvis 00:11:46  Do Okay.

Jasmine Star 00:11:47  So I get the email and it's so many of the team and they explain who you are. They asked if we would be able to have a conversation and I said yes. And they said we would like to have a conversation as soon as possible. And it was a weekend. And I said, yeah, we'll have this conversation. And so you call and I hear a lot of ambient noise in the background, and it sounds like you're outside and you're like, please forgive me. I'm at a barbecue, you're at a barbecue, or you're at a party or something like that. I remember and we have this conversation. It's maybe 10 or 15 minutes, and you don't even go into the size of the production of stuff that you've done. You don't go into the background story. You just say, hey, I have this crazy idea, and I want you to be a part of a crazy idea. What if we had a live wedding and you shot it on the internet and, like, my whole frame of reality just right there broke.

Jasmine Star 00:12:39  I remember sitting, we had this. It was like our first condo ever. I'm sitting. We have, like, very little furniture in our house, and I'm just like I couldn't even my mind. I was like, and then on the internet, like I had no frame of reference whatsoever. And then I was like, let's do it. I think I gave it like maybe 30s. And I was just like, I don't know who this guy is. He's freaking crazy and he's my kind of crazy and all in like, I didn't think about anything else other than like, let's do it. And you're like, great, I'm gonna have the team. We're gonna draft up some contracts, we'll explain more things, and they're like, great, cool, blah, blah, blah. And that was it, dude. Yeah, we went all in, like we literally went on. It was like this arranged marriage. And so what was I, class number three. Yes, I was class number three.

Jasmine Star 00:13:19  Yeah.

Chase Jarvis 00:13:19  So and I will say that 150,000 people watched that live wedding, 150,000 people.

Jasmine Star 00:13:26  And the crazy thing is, it's hard when we like, like, let's go back to 2010. Like, this is like even before Facebook was available to people that were not in college. So the main social platform at the time was Twitter. And when we shot this live wedding in 150,000 people were watching. We were trending on Twitter.

Chase Jarvis 00:13:44  I have great screencaps.

Jasmine Star 00:13:46  I mean.

Chase Jarvis 00:13:47  Jasmine star wedding, Barack Obama is right behind you, and Lindsay Lohan, Lindsay Lohan.

Jasmine Star 00:13:54  You know, it's like, you know, you're in good company. It's like me. Moroccan Lindsay back in 2010. And so like, that whole thing was so, so, so transformative. And we're not going to get into the details of that. Sure. But what I do want to highlight the format. It was a five day course. Yeah. Which is a lot. There's a lot. That was a lot. I mean, here we are.

Jasmine Star 00:14:11  We're still like learning the process. And so what happens is on day one and two I spend time educating what my process is, how I market, how I build my business. Day three we shot a live wedding. It's a Wednesday. We're shooting a wedding on a Wednesday. There's 150 people. It's in Seattle. Of course it's raining. Of course, there was like this refurbished chocolate factory. And then like, the creative live team came in and like, redid the whole thing. And so it was a real bride, a real groom, everybody. And this was such a rare thing to be broadcast on the internet. So I shoot the wedding. It is probably a 14 hour day. I'm talking to the camera. As I'm shooting, we go back. These little tiny like we called it. Like it was supposed to be like a studio, but it was really just a pipe and drip. It was probably like four feet by four feet. Janey and I are sitting there and we're trying to eat, trying to edit, trying to teach.

Jasmine Star 00:14:55  And then the next day, what I did, stupidly, is I showed every all hundred thousands of people who are watching this, every camera, every photo that I took on that day. So thousands of photos unedited and I'm going through and I'm selecting my photos and the pain, the vitriol, the comments of this is, you're terrible. Like, what in the world? Like, how did they hire you? Like, you've overshot, underexposed, you're out of focus. And as I'm sitting there and I'm teaching this that night, we go back to the hotel and J.D. had to take me off that bathroom floor. I remember because I told you I was like, I don't think I can go back. I can't go back. Like, I think I ruined my career by showing the behind the scenes of my business. And then people are like, how can you how can you have this name? How can you charge what you're charging? This is so ridiculous. And I didn't want to go back on the last day and I was terrified.

Jasmine Star 00:15:55  I remember, and you told me that I have to go out and I have to show them what makes me me. Oh, I get it a little like a little girl choked up thinking about that conversation because you said, go back and show them what makes you you. And on day five, what I showed was everybody saw all of the ugly. But what the client sees is a very small percentage of that. And then what we did was we curated all of the marketing assets, and then people were completely blown away.

Chase Jarvis 00:16:21  Blown away. Right. And this is the process. Thank you.

Jasmine Star 00:16:24  Let's talk about the process.

Chase Jarvis 00:16:24  This is the dirt. Like this is what. And it's not you know I orient around the the creative process. Right. This is the process. The first draft is ugly and brutal and and yet it's the most important draft because it goes from 0 to 1, from nothing to something and then we refine it. And whether you're writing a screenplay or, you know, taking a set of photos, directing a video, any of it, it all follows this format.

Chase Jarvis 00:16:49  Essentially, you put something out in the world, then you refine it and it gets better. The same is true for a life, right? We first start out in a relationship we asked someone we were crazy about on a date and it's awkward and you know, and then it gets better that that is the way the world works, right? We iterate and refine and and the creative process just happens to turn that inside out. And it's very easy to look at it on a life scale. It's kind of difficult. And what we saw with your photographs was exactly what we wanted the world to see. And, you know, to me, there's all sorts of metaphors in here because you thought that your career was trashed. Yeah. And then 24 hours later, you were a hero where your name was trending above Barack Obama and Lindsay Lohan, and it was the largest class in the history of the world. And so what's embedded in that message is that all of the best stuff in our lives is on the other side of that moment where you're lying on the floor of the bathroom.

Chase Jarvis 00:17:45  That's where the title of the book comes from. Never play it safe. And again, we say that.

Jasmine Star 00:17:49  Can we pause there because that like that hit deep all of the best things in our life, or on the other side of laying on the bathroom floor.

Chase Jarvis 00:17:57  They're on the other side of our comfort zone. Other side of fear, right?

Jasmine Star 00:18:00  It was my bathroom floor. Please, not everybody needs to be on the floor. Please. We don't want you.

Chase Jarvis 00:18:05  Don't need to go to Jasmine's house in.

Jasmine Star 00:18:06  Order to get. I was like, I'm gonna start charging. People lay on my bathroom floor. It's freaking magical. That's where you want to be.

Chase Jarvis 00:18:11  But I think it's important to to establish that this is, you know, all of my personal experiences of, you know, winning and losing. This is the process that you have to go through. I have had a, you know, one of the longest running interview shows on the internet and talked to thousands of the world's best entrepreneurs, creators.

Chase Jarvis 00:18:30  And this is the pattern. This is not, you know, all the research that I put into the book, there aren't examples of that not happening.

Jasmine Star 00:18:38  Yeah. So give us an equation like so somebody is listening around two.

Chase Jarvis 00:18:41  Parts horse pukki three parts effort, one part smiles and rainbows equals success. Well, one.

Jasmine Star 00:18:50  Part eat force Pukki.

Chase Jarvis 00:18:51  That's exactly. It's not just horse buggies you have to ingest.

Jasmine Star 00:18:54  Really. People are listening and I'm like, I wanted so people know on the show that I do not. I do not bring people on the show that I do not know personally or have not read the book. And I'm fortunate enough to have done both of those things with you. But I want to hone in the main thing. Sure. And the main thing is it sucks. Yeah. And you feel exposed and you eat horse pukki, but it's on the other side of that. And so, so many people stop at the heart. Based on your research, based on everything you've seen, based on like you've iterated many times in your career and you facilitated a lot of people.

Jasmine Star 00:19:33  What is it?

Chase Jarvis 00:19:34  It's it truly. Is that all the best stuff in our lives is on the other side of fear and the ability to go. There is a muscle that's trainable, and the irony is that the irony is that gets trained out of us just it's very easy to see how creativity gets trained out of our kids. And, you know, I personally experience that. Go back to second grade, Miss Kelly. I made a film the summer between first and second grade. I came in to second grade on a high. I was rolling, I had a profitable film. We screened it in David Olsen's basement, made more money than we spent eight millimeter film, edit it all in, camera, sold out the basement, sold candy, sold all the so profitable film, rolled into second grade. I had a comic book. I had a stand up comedy routine, I have magic, I had a magic routine. And at some point early in the first half of the year, Miss Kelly shut it all down.

Chase Jarvis 00:20:24  And she said, well, first of all, this isn't appropriate for school. This is a business. You can't sell your comic strip, which I would, I would, my mom would, I would write it up, my mom would make copies of it, and I would distribute it for the exact price of a milk six $0.06. So you could choose to have my comic strip instead of your milk. Fast forward. Miss Kelly said, you know, who do you think you are to be doing all this stuff? I think you should stick to sports. You're a better athlete than you are an artist, and none of this is appropriate for school. So just essentially shut me down. And this is what we do to our kids right in, in the most common environment. And we start being trained just like the creativity is trained out of us, so is our ability or our willingness to push beyond the fear. We start being told what normal is and how we should fit in. And and in that moment, I snapped into it.

Chase Jarvis 00:21:17  Fast forward, I mean, I became that person. I was the homecoming royalty, the captain of the football team. I dated a cheerleader. Like I just gravitated toward the most benign, typical script that anyone could. And it worked. And on the last day of my senior year, I got the typical senior award, which is terrifying to me. Like that is like you're literally that is the equivalent of saying you are a cliche. And I knew it wasn't good. And I realized in that moment that I had to make some changes, but in the same way that all of those things are trained out of us, so is our innate, you know, desire and willingness to go beyond the fear part that that shows up in us. And that's true. Like biologically, we are wired, we're social animals. So we're designed to try and fit in because early on we were part of tribes. And if you, you know, you can't stand out and fit in at the same time. So the goal is to fit in.

Chase Jarvis 00:22:16  And the message on the other side of all that is that in order to have the remarkable human experience that we seek, we have to go beyond that. And to me, this is a muscle. You know, this is the book that I wrote, talks about. There are seven and eight tools inside of us that we can leverage to get beyond there. These are things just like creativity, as an example. But my punchline is that the world will have you be one way, and it's your responsibility to be unapologetically, authentically you. And that is a difficult job. I feel like I have, through my own experiences and the experiences of my close friends and, you know, more than a thousand podcast interviews around this topic. I feel like I have cracked the code in a way that I can lay it out and help give people essentially a roadmap for how to do this on their own.

Jasmine Star 00:23:08  How to be authentically them. And as a result of that, how not to play it safe. Yes.

Jasmine Star 00:23:13  And so two things I want to move to the second section, the middle section of the framework that you so lovingly jabbed at, which I freaking love, love a framework, but two things a lot of people don't necessarily identify as being a creative. And so for the context of this section, I want us to identify how you classify creativity. And it's not just with a camera or paint or penning a poem. And then secondly, I want to talk about how you applied your version of creativity as you've built multiple businesses. And that's really where I want to spend a lot of this conversation is, let's go into the business building, let's go into the creative aspect and then intertwine if possible, because I'm very needy. Podcast host I'll.

Chase Jarvis 00:23:51  Take it all.

Jasmine Star 00:23:51  Bring it on. How were you authentically you? In each iteration, all of the businesses looked so different.

Chase Jarvis 00:23:57  Yeah, okay. I do want to put a bow on the Creative Life chapter, because my hope is that what you experienced when you went from, you know, again, showing the process, being authentically you.

Chase Jarvis 00:24:11  These are the pictures that I took. The world sort of jumped on your back, not dissimilar to the second grade me, Miss Kelly, jumped on my back. And the internet.

Jasmine Star 00:24:20  Is full of Miss Kelly's.

Chase Jarvis 00:24:22  Totally Miss Kelly. And and yet it was the process of playing through that when you showed your final images that the world was completely blown away and you broke the internet because everyone had. Also, the people who stayed around to watch the next day were like, wait a minute, I saw all these photographs that were trash. And then you showed up essentially with the butterfly. And to me that is a very important moment, the playing through of that. And is it reasonable to say that that was bad, neutral or good for your career? You tell me.

Jasmine Star 00:25:01  It was frickin fantastic. Yeah. It was one of the best things that happened in my career.

Chase Jarvis 00:25:05  You know, you've gone on to have an amazing career in all sorts of different, you know, venues since then. And yet I remember just distinctly saying, cool, this, this is working.

Chase Jarvis 00:25:16  And that was an early proof point about exactly the topic that we're talking about. So to me, we put a bow on there that it was that was the transformation. And the world watched that and they were like, oh, this we're watching in real time a person. Yeah. You know, go beyond their fears And, you know, fast forward to, you know, my experience with with that I just shared with you and with Miss Kelley and now this next chapter of, you know, building businesses and whatever it is that you want to talk about. So it's important to put a bow on there. Thank you. Tell me, of the 3 or 4 different.

Jasmine Star 00:25:46  Frame working my framework.

Chase Jarvis 00:25:47  I'm framework.

Jasmine Star 00:25:48  Here. Framework okay okay. We didn't come to play okay okay. so let's use that as a linchpin though, because what we did was you created a platform for thought leaders and creators and wide variety of people to come in, use this creative live platform to show the ugly and then show the transformation.

Jasmine Star 00:26:08  And so many people became so invested in that community in that learning process. Now, that is so often how a business looks on the outside, like the business I'm building, the multiple businesses you have built. Sure, somebody is watching and listening right now and they're building that beautiful version of the outside. Sure. But let's go back on the inside. Oh yeah, building this thing that completely exploded on the internet. What was the build like crazy time?

Chase Jarvis 00:26:34  I mean, again, this just take, for example, your class, the largest class in the history of the world. The New York Times came out and said, oh, Stanford put a class online or something, and it was 130,000 people, and this is the largest. And they were actually corrected. But no, no, creative life is actually, you know, three years before you had done something much larger and it was Jasmine Starr's class. So there was a correction of the record. And that's like when you're when you are blazing sort of that trail that's both fun.

Chase Jarvis 00:27:04  But the, the what goes into creating that on the other side that most people don't see was a lot of confusion, a lot of fear, a lot of experimentation, a lot of things not working. We had a list the first time we went live. We had a list on the whiteboard the night before, at maybe midnight or 1 a.m. before, you know, an 8 a.m., you know, go live. And it was all of the that will break tomorrow. Yeah. And it was a very long list on this whiteboard And that is the thing that I think I'm most proud of is the team who assembled. And we just honestly, it was a couple of employees, some volunteers, like everybody we yeah, everybody. We knew who was who believed in this idea of making education free and accessible. Learning from your the world's best entrepreneurs. You know what it was like for an affordable price. So it was a each individual course, and we went from doing one every other month or one a month, essentially to at our peak we were doing 70 classes in a month at the same time of that same like multi-day.

Chase Jarvis 00:28:05  And so we would have Richard Branson in the studio down the hall from Tim Ferriss and Brené Brown over here, and Jasmine Star over here. And, you know, it was just it was totally nuts. And the journey from, you know, one class a month and figuring it out to, you know, to we ended up raising about $60 million in venture capital, having, you know, tens of millions of users and making hundreds of millions in revenue. The journey in. There was everything that you could imagine. It was essentially a life smashed into a decade.

Jasmine Star 00:28:35  Can you talk about one of the lowest points as you build?

Chase Jarvis 00:28:38  Oh, man. Yeah.

Jasmine Star 00:28:40  Because what happens and the reason why I do that is not because to put anybody on blast. But I think that what happens is we see like I read about the funding of 60 million JD and I when you opened so Creative Life had a studio in Seattle. They then opened a second, larger, beautiful, stunning studio in San Francisco, which was the former offices of Twitter.

Jasmine Star 00:28:59  And so when you had the the party in San Francisco, JD and I flew up from LA to San Francisco, and I remember being so proud of my friend. And I remember walking through the halls, and I remember thinking, you were an expander in my life. You were showing me that there was like a different world of playing that game. And I think that is what a lot of people saw. And so we see the glamour. We see the New York Times corrections, we see this build out, we see the sale. But what was the low point that you actually had to rise up? Again, there was a.

Chase Jarvis 00:29:29  Low point every I'd say 12 to 18 months. They got really hard. The first one was the battle. What a lot of people don't know is we were offered never work again money to acquire the company before we even took funding. So I don't even think I've told you this. And the, you know, someone's dangling a cheque in front of you. That would, I mean, not quite private jet money, but pretty close.

Chase Jarvis 00:29:54  And the business is 18 months old and it's not pretty. You know, I actually myself and my partner, I would say we are, you know, more the artist, the visionary, like, here's a great idea. So we had to bring somebody in to essentially put it on rails. And I said, if we can get this thing on rails, I think we've got something. And sure enough, in six months John brought it in and put it on rails, and we had a tiger by the tail. And then it was an immediate low point of what do we do with this thing that we've got? And each of us had something, you know, had a different desire, you know, from. Why don't we just, you know, sell this thing and have never work again? Money after 18 months of work. Another was, let's build this thing. If someone's willing to pay us stupid money 18 months in, imagine what it could be if we ran and built this thing for a number of years despite the risks.

Chase Jarvis 00:30:47  Okay, there's risks involved when you continue operating. And someone else just, like, cool. Let's just have our thing, like, this is a cool thing. It's spinning off stupid cash, crazy profitable, crazy margins because you're selling, as you know, a no incremental cost digital good, which at the time like the the concept of subscription services, zero cost digital goods, these were brand new topics. And my favorite thing about it, in that part where we were super indecisive and very scared, was that when you have someone who is looking at the thing that you're looking at and the best venture capital firms in the whole world, top three are fighting over being able to invest in you. That is the thing that's a glimmer in the hope. So in the middle of the day when you're all fighting about what to do. And there is something like there is a both a validation and people in the internet saying this is not going to work. It's stupid. And where we I feel like one is we ultimately turned inside and we realized this is an inside game, not an outside game.

Chase Jarvis 00:31:51  So what is it that we want? And our goal was impact. And we were realizing that if we could have 100,000 people watch every class, imagine if we did 100 classes. So you start to think about your goals in terms of impact. So we took an initial series A, and we started growing very quickly. And as soon as you're on the other side of that, you realize that there's all these trappings. When you have you bring in venture capital. They're not there to give money away. They're there to grow your business as fast as they can. And the heartbreak that is entwined here, which I don't do. I talked a little bit about in, in the book. Is that the goal, the sole purpose? There are investors and then there are venture capital. Venture capital is a specific kind of investment. And the goal of that kind of investment is to take you need to get to $1 billion valuation or you're a loser. So if you have a business and I recount this heartbreaking moment in the book where we were doing 36 million RR, which is basically an annual recurring revenue, and on that run rate, we are growing 40% year over year.

Chase Jarvis 00:33:00  And I'm thinking, cool, we're going to go in and raise another pile of dough. We had already been valued at north of 150 million and create. We're going to go raise another pile of dough and we're going to just, you know, go to the moon. And the investor looked me in the eyes across the table just after a great board meeting and said, it's just not that interesting. And to have put all of your time and energy and all of your heart and soul, and to be building something that you felt like was transforming the world. And, you know, we're at the TechCrunch startup of the year awards, you know, in the New York Times, I'm literally going all over the country being on new segments in Silicon Valley and in New York and CNN, and then to have an investor who was, you know, on the Midas List of the top investors of all time to say, yeah, you know, 36 million run rate going 40% year over year is just not that interesting.

Chase Jarvis 00:33:49  It was just a mind blowing to have that be a failure because remember, a venture capital, their goal is $1 billion or zero. And they would rather drive you into the ground by trying to get there than have you toil in just being valued at a couple hundred million dollars. And that was a huge wake up call for me. And that was when I realized, okay, we have to reestablish what our goals are. You know, respect to the investors. You have to chart a new course. So, you know, there again, every few years, whether it was deciding to sell the company or raise money and grow. When you raise money, all of the pitfalls that come into growing. I always said I was going to be the person who knew every person in the company. I never wanted to be distance. And then when you, you know, go from ten employees to 100 employees in a year, you literally can't meet everyone fast enough. So I became the person. And that was a horrifying experience to me to have, you know, the values of the company getting morphed because the person who was hired two weeks ago just hired another person, and how can they possibly, you know.

Chase Jarvis 00:34:54  Yeah. How can you embed the culture and the values of the company and the the founders and the ethos when you're growing that fast? So it was a series of ups and downs, that last moment with the investor that I shared. And then, of course, when you go into the decision that it's time to for the company to be acquired, and this was during the pandemic, all sorts of heartache there because, you know, you want your investors to do better than everyone's doing, and it looks great on the outside. And there's always ugly things on the inside and decide to take a deal that is really good for the investors or good for the people who are building the company, and those are sometimes at odds. Investors have different points of view one investors, that's one certain arc in their fund and the other is at a different one. And it's all great when everybody's getting along until they're at different, you know. Yeah, different different desires and their arc. So I think the the bottom dollar here is that growing anything looks that looks great from the outside.

Chase Jarvis 00:35:48  And even the the media headlines are great. The inside action is super, super hard. And as much as I want to tell those stories, just like we told yours from day four, your day three to day five, that's right. I wanted to do that on the internet with Creative Life. And it's very, very difficult when you have the, you know, the best investors in the world. And we're essentially ahead of the curve on telling stories like this. And not everyone has, you know, believes in that as a benefit. It seems like a drawback. My personal role in the company changed. I went from being able to be the the basically founder chairman to having to come back and actually take over the CEO role. So I'm I'm an artist operating as a venture capital CEO, which is not my natural state. So all of those things were super, super hard. And yet it was in the times where I was willing to do exactly what you did is get off the bathroom floor that I found essentially growth and connection and salvation and the beautiful aspects of any journey.

Jasmine Star 00:36:52  I saw you change so much in the years where you stepped in as CEO.

Chase Jarvis 00:36:57  Yeah, it was a lot.

Jasmine Star 00:36:58  What what are like maybe two main takeaways because so you started it as a visionary co-founder and you built it. And then then the machine completely took off and you aptly, correctly beautifully brought in a CEO to keep you in your place of power, of visionary and creative. Then you come back as the CEO and you've completely changed. What are a couple of things that people can take away? Like they're listening and they're probably in a spot that they're doing something that doesn't necessarily feel so natural for them, but they're like, I'm in it to win, and this is what I have to do, what I'm asking for myself. Thank you so much.

Chase Jarvis 00:37:35  What would you do for Luna? What would.

Jasmine Star 00:37:37  I do? Anything. Exactly. That's right. Sun. That's right, and that's right.

Chase Jarvis 00:37:42  And so that's, you know, when, for better or worse, a large part of my identity was wrapped up into helping other people get beyond their fears and, you know, learn new skills that they weren't able to learn anywhere on the internet just a couple years earlier.

Chase Jarvis 00:37:58  And so you ask, like, what would you be willing to do to help keep that dream alive?

Jasmine Star 00:38:03  Anything.

Chase Jarvis 00:38:04  Yeah. And and so that was hard. It was really hard. And that, that required a bunch of unnatural behaviors. And in the book I think it's really important that, you know, never play it safe as this realization that all the best stuff in life is on the other side of our comfort zone. And I want to be clear that lots of times I have been unwilling to do that or I've gone kicking and screaming. And so this isn't about not making mistakes. It's about actually living boldly, being willing to make mistakes, and trusting yourself enough to realize that you will right the ship. It's not about avoiding mistakes, it's about recovering as quickly as possible. And and so there were lots of times where I betrayed myself and I would I cite that in the book as one of them, where I actually decided to become the CEO because we had gone, you know, two years down the road with a different CEO that did an okay job.

Chase Jarvis 00:39:00  But to his credit, he volunteered and said, look, this is I didn't know what I was getting into and this is a different animal than I thought. And so our goal when you know, you've blown through at that point, maybe 25 million in venture capital And you need to re-up. You're like, okay, I can go try and hire someone else. Explain the vision to them, help them, you know, learn from them and help them see where we're going and run the risk of doing the same thing again and being further behind and having to, you know, raise more money or whatnot, or, you know, I can step in. And there was enough of a lag time in there. I was just like, all right, you know, put me in, coach. And that was a very unnatural thing. And I talked about in that in the book about that actually being a betrayal of myself. And it's this is the contradiction that we're faced with so often because you just asked me what would I do? And I said I'd do anything.

Chase Jarvis 00:39:51  And then I'm also simultaneously revealing that that was a betrayal of who I really was, because it was I a venture backed, you know, CEO. It's like, no, that I have the ability and the willingness, the drive to learn those skills and to become good at it. Yes. And I also felt like that was something that I needed to realize on the post. You know, the back side of the acquisition. It was like, how would I do that again? And the answer is no, because it was ultimately a slight betrayal of who I was and who I wanted to be. And I thought that, you know, that's the fixer part of me that wants to make everything as good as possible comes from a great place. But ultimately it was a tiny betrayal. And yet, you know, the outcome is one where we can look back and I can say comfortably now that that is a mistake that I made, that I have recovered from, however gracefully or gracefully is up to someone else to judge.

Chase Jarvis 00:40:44  But you know, it doesn't doesn't matter to me. The point is that we've played through it and we're on the other side of it, and we're stronger because of it. This is this is my day five of the Jasmine Star wedding. Yeah, I'm showing my pictures and like, wow. Yeah. You built something that again made hundreds of millions in revenue and served tens of millions of people from 170 countries.

Jasmine Star 00:41:03  You know, more than anything before we move into the third part is, I think that by you sharing so generously of your story There are people watching and listening, but there's also just me sitting across the chair from you saying, I feel like probably I'm at the precipice or the brink of a lot of different opportunities where I could come in and be like, okay, okay. Just plainly speaking, it's a great lucrative money opportunity. And then I know the cost of that. And I think that I can do this for now, because I think that I can move this here, move that there, save this up.

Jasmine Star 00:41:35  And like I, I felt myself doing that. In fact, talking with JD here in Austin driving and I was just like, listen, I know they're going to come back. And I didn't put a price tag that I wanted to go. I wanted to say, it's this or it's nothing, because that's how we genuinely feel about it. And he's like, in any business negotiation, nobody's going to take it at face value because they came at you as one thing and you came back. He's like, this is how it is. I said, well, what if that's not the game I want to play? What if it's like, this is it? And he's like, well, that's not necessarily the way that most companies, especially companies of this size, want to play with you. Yeah. And I think that hearing your story right now has so solidified. I am not doing it there. You go. Because and I have a whole litany of reasons, but I'm not doing it if not on these circumstances and in this way.

Jasmine Star 00:42:17  And I think that putting up those barriers and saying this is who I am, and I'm going to protect that, I just want to say thank you. Look at this. Like, here we are like 14.5 years later and you're still teaching me how not to play it safe. And so I think that let's talk about the book. And I don't know how open you are about the journey, but like we hugged, we danced. I think maybe JD caught us on video dancing a little when we saw each other. That's right. I'll show you my moves. I'll give you a little like the Puerto Rican rhythm. That's right. I'll take it. Hip hip shake. no. But can we talk about the process? Of course. Yeah. How open are you at that? I'm.

Chase Jarvis 00:42:48  I'm wide open. I wrote about it in the acknowledgments, which it's not often that you direct people to the acknowledgements at the last, the last page of the book after you've just read this. But you know, the the title of the book transparently.

Chase Jarvis 00:43:00  I had been working on the book for about 18 months, 13 months of hardcore writing, you know, six months, five, six months of research and tinkering and, you know, bless my agent And publisher. They are just both amazing and supported me. And you know, I had a basically a plan and a team helping me execute this plan. Okay. Let's pause. Sure.

Jasmine Star 00:43:18  I just want to note here you had a team and you had a plan, and you had an idea and you were doing the work. Yep. I just want to I just want to lay out the fact. Okay, great. These are the facts.

Chase Jarvis 00:43:29  And 13 months into really active writing and about eight weeks just shy of eight weeks prior to the first version of the manuscript being due contractually due, I threw it all in the trash and started over.

Jasmine Star 00:43:42  And so eight weeks before it's due. Yeah. What about.

Chase Jarvis 00:43:48  You? There was 55,000 words in the book, ended up being about 65,000 words, and I kept about 5000 of the original words.

Jasmine Star 00:43:54  So then okay, but what about it? Like, how do we home this skill of looking at something? And even if because you're you're deeply creative and you're very soulful looking at a piece of work. Yeah. Is it a knowing you look at something?

Chase Jarvis 00:44:04  To me, this is actually the blueprint of the book. This is the reason that the book came out as it is, is the book guides you through seven levers that we all have inside us, seven tools that are gifts at birth that we need to hone. Just like creativity is trained out of us, we have these these seven tools within us, and it is the honing of these seven tools, these reorienting these going back to who we really are that allow us to make these sorts of decisions. And, you know, there's a handful of one is the ability to direct your attention. So it sounds very you know, this is what at the core of meditation or mindfulness or awareness practice or prayer or any of these things are the ability to direct your attention, what you pay attention.

Chase Jarvis 00:44:48  One it is what you pay attention to expands. And by contrast, you know, to to avoid distractions. Whether it's our phone or the news or anything else like the ability to pay attention, you know, we're trained in this life to get attention. And we look at a baby. If a baby doesn't get held when it's born, it dies. You know, there are so many things that that the world trains us to seek attention. Just think about the characterization of the internet right now and being an influencer and whatever. All the things it's about getting attention. And the irony, the twist is that it's not about getting attention, it's about paying it. And what you pay attention to really, really matters.

Jasmine Star 00:45:26  Okay, I want to pause.

Chase Jarvis 00:45:27  Sure.

Jasmine Star 00:45:27  There was two main things. What we pay attention to expands. Yes. What we pay attention to expands. What we pay attention to expands when we focus. And when we pay attention to abundance, it expands. And when we pay attention to lack, want and desire, that also expands.

Jasmine Star 00:45:47  And in the economy, in the social economy of what it is, it is to get attention and in a way that still builds true as you are, you know, building here. That's right. Here we are. What are we doing? We're getting attention. But prior to us getting attention, we had to pay attention. Yes. And the greater you pay attention to something, the easier it becomes to get attention because it feels so authentic to who you are.

Chase Jarvis 00:46:08  That's exactly right. And it's through. It's through directing attention that we get it. Because if you are building something, doing something extraordinary, standing out instead of fitting in, others can more easily direct their attention to you because you stand out. And so the goal is, again, we're social animals. So the goal is to stay connected and be ourselves at the same time, which is a very that's the balance. But attention being a key tool that I used in this process of, you know, returning to myself time and time again after all these sometimes small, sometimes massive betrayals, like I thought I was going to be a professional soccer player and went all the way down that path, only realized that I didn't want to.

Chase Jarvis 00:46:54  I did the same thing with medical school. $100,000 in student debt only did that because the world was telling me that it would be good if you were a doctor. And I knew from the very first day I started in that direction that that wasn't for me. And yet I did it anyway. So there's all these tiny betrayals and how we direct our attention matters. People can sense and feel that there are other levels, like the ability to pay attention to your intuition. Intuition is the strongest, the most powerful force in the human, you know, experience that we know the least about. But we know it matters that our intuition is it takes into account our rational mind. But there's something more. The memories in the cells. There's science, there's metaphysics, there's quantum physics. There's a lot of a lot of evidence that illustrates that intuition is insanely powerful. So there are, you know, to your point of how do we do this? There are a handful of these levers, like the two I just mentioned that we can master.

Chase Jarvis 00:47:51  And it's in mastering these, you know, these tools that are native inside us that we become stronger at doing this stuff. So.

Jasmine Star 00:48:01  So you and I often talk about the muscle, the muscle that you built. And since I've known you, you've built literal muscle. I see you on your stories. I see those weights. I see you all stacking them. I was like, dang, he's having a glow up. but also at the same time, it is building the muscle of resilience, and it's like it's building the muscle of getting off the bathroom floor. And so somebody is listening right now and they're on the bathroom floor. What are you telling them?

Chase Jarvis 00:48:28  First of all, keep going. And I like to prescribe action over intellect.

Jasmine Star 00:48:34  The action over intellect that deserves a repeat.

Chase Jarvis 00:48:36  The belief is that we can solve our problems from the couch or from the bathroom floor or from our head. Yeah, yeah. No. And you know, the metaphorical couch or the metaphorical bathroom floor or just being in our brain.

Chase Jarvis 00:48:49  And the reality is that it's through taking action that we learn and and also learn how to adapt. So that's a really, really important one. And, you know, habits are practices Those define us. If you know, what are you if you're not your day to day actions, and we think that there's a gap, you know, between our our intention and what we believe in our mind, and yet the world can't experience that without any action. So to me, that is the number one message is that you can't solve it from the couch or the bathroom floor or the back corner of your mind. It requires action and doing the thing you know if you want to be the noun. Ironically, all you have to do is do the verb. Like, if you want to be a writer, then.

Jasmine Star 00:49:35  Oh my gosh, is that a Pinterest code? Or is that really something you just wrote in your book? Because that's good.

Chase Jarvis 00:49:38  That's in the book. Yeah.

Jasmine Star 00:49:39  Dang, man. We need to be like hashtags.

Jasmine Star 00:49:42  We need quotes. We need Pinterest graphics of this stuff. That was good. But in order to be the noun, you gotta.

Chase Jarvis 00:49:49  Do the verb.

Jasmine Star 00:49:49  Do the verb.

Chase Jarvis 00:49:51  Yeah. You want to be a leader lead. You want to be a painter? Paint. You want to. This is required. You don't get to be the thing without doing the thing. And you know, there's just so much simple wisdom in their eye. Ryan Holiday as a friend, I think maybe mutual friend you met him maybe via Creative Live at some point. He's here in Austin as well. I just saw something he shared recently that was about it's like this is one of the cornerstones of stoicism. One of the things that I read about in this book is that you cannot control how the world responds, but you can control the only thing you can control, in fact, is how you respond, what your actions are. And Andy Warhol talks about this with making art. When you're making art, don't stop to judge your art.

Chase Jarvis 00:50:34  Let the world judge your art. You just keep making. And so this process of getting up over and over and over again and doing the thing that we were meant to do, and being able to understand and ferret out all the world's desires for you and to discover your own, that's the most important thing. That's the that's the reason we're here. So to me, these are the if I was asked to prescribe something, first of all, I'd be, you know, I put my entire Life's body of knowledge into the book. And again, the wisdom of more than a thousand guests on the show. And many of these are my very, very close personal friends that have had incredible outcomes. Some of these people are people you would know in a household names and others and people you've never heard of. so one, check out the book to realize that you have to take action and you can't solve these problems from the back corner of your head or the bathroom floor. I'm gonna use the bathroom floor.

Chase Jarvis 00:51:27  From this point out in the book. It's going to be there. Yeah, that the answers are not out there. This is an inside game, and a lot of us were conditioned to look, you know, outside of ourselves for all of the solutions to our problems. And that's the beautiful thing about being a human being is that we're designed to figure this stuff out every once in a while we lose our way. But the goal is not to not get lost The goal is to get good at getting lost and feel comfortable in that moment, and know that you can return time and time again to ourselves. Just 1%, you know, kinder, 1% stronger, 1% more brave. That's to me where the best stuff is.

Jasmine Star 00:52:14  Make me a little Syria. I see you in front of me, and I see a friend, and I see somebody who's just flexed that muscle again. Again? Thank you for teaching me that muscle. But thank you for writing this book. I'm happy. Thank you.

Jasmine Star 00:52:25  I'm so happy that the world gets to have a piece of you. The way that I've had a piece of you over the years. You and your beautiful, amazing wife partner. I mean, like, I can't even say that. I can't say that.

Chase Jarvis 00:52:35  She's got a lot of roles. She's. She edited the book.

Jasmine Star 00:52:37  Also, Kate is just, like, pure magic. And the fact that the world gets to have a piece of you by, by proxy a piece of her to thank you.

Chase Jarvis 00:52:45  Of course. Thank you so much. It's been such a treat for you all out there listening and Jasmine Star land to watch this woman just do incredible things. Reinvent yourself time and time again. Thank you for to be in service of others from day one. And I think it's not at all a stretch to say that you have lived the mantra of the book. Even just with this moment, this decisive moment, just, you know, 100 and 20s ago, we were talking about, you know, I think I just got some clarity there.

Chase Jarvis 00:53:14  Yeah. Thank you. You have done that over and over again. And so you're an inspiration to so many. Congrats on the show and everything you've been building. It's really, really fun.

Jasmine Star 00:53:24  Truly. I love and adore you. If you would like more information, Chase, where do people go to connect with you?

Chase Jarvis 00:53:30  I'm just at Chase Jarvis. Com and the book is that never play it safe. Com or Chase Jarvis comic book. Beautiful.

Jasmine Star 00:53:36  and if you want to support small booksellers, we are in huge believers and endorsers. But if it's easier for you to find it on any digital retailer, target, Barnes and Noble, Amazon, all the good and.

Chase Jarvis 00:53:47  Any and all of them, they're out there. And pre-orders really, really help. If you can buy the book, let's get it.

Jasmine Star 00:53:51  Let's go. Thank you for watching and listening to The Jasmine Star Show.