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Episode 433: The Perils of Playing it Safe with Chase Jarvis
477 Plays7 days ago
Chase Jarvis is the author of Never Play it Safe: A Practical Guide to Freedom, Creativity, and a Life You Love (Harper Business).
Chase was writing a completely different book, was almost done with it, then scrapped it altogether to write what became Never Play it Safe in, oh, about two months. We talk about intuition, why volume/quantity matters, how success leaves clues, and the secret hero of the book.
Newsletter: Rage Against the Algorithm
Show notes: brendanomeara.com
Support: Patreon.com/cnfpod
Transcript
00:00:00
Speaker
Hey, we've got a repeat sponsor alert this from the word trepidation Tremulous alarm or agitation perturbation as in you've submitted your main manuscript for copy edits But have to completely rewrite your epilogue you're feeling trepidation to have you just read that to me or share that with me and me receive those words. I felt afraid. I felt like the hair on my arm stood up. i There was a little bit of like, oh shit, I actually did that.
00:00:39
Speaker
Oh, hey CNFers, this is the Creative Nonfiction Pod. That's the show where I speak to badass people about telling true stories be it narrative journalism, essays, memoir, documentary film, podcasts, sometimes a little self-help sprinkled in there. We do it all. I'm Brendan O'Mara. Welcome aboard the USS CNF Pod today.
00:00:57
Speaker
We welcome Chase Jarvis back to the show. He's the author of Creative Calling, Established Daily Practice, Infuse Your World With Meeting, and Succeed in Work and Life. Came out a few years ago, and you can listen to our previous podcast about that on episode 169. Good Lord. And now, five years later, he's back with Never Play It Safe, a practical guide to freedom, creativity, and a life you love. It's published by Harper Business.
00:01:26
Speaker
But before we get to Chase, I recently attended a Weezer concert, where they played the entire Blue Album, among other things. But of course, and of particular interest, is when they played Pork and Beans. Here's my bootleg recording again.
00:01:56
Speaker
Now, admittedly, it's a bit rough as we as we dip some of this audio, but this song is significant in that my wife of 14 years now, as of a few weeks ago, ah we danced to this song at our wedding in 2010.
00:02:11
Speaker
It's a song about not giving a fuck, not answering to anybody but yourself, self-acceptance, and following your own path. To what extent we've accomplished that in our lives and our time together is too depressing to mention, but the themes are, shall we say, apropos.
00:02:41
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a
00:03:06
Speaker
To this podcast with chase because we tackle the ideas of fear constraints attention how success leads clues and how bravely He pivoted from the book he wrote to the book that was written. That'll make more sense. I swear later Also, how to follow your intuition, how volume matters. And I don't mean loudness, I mean quantity. And that helps inform your intuition. Showing us to this episode more at brendanamerit.com. Hey, hey, there you can sign up for the up to 11 rage. You can see algorithm newsletter, book recommendations, cool links, first of the month, no spam. So far as I can tell, you can't beat it.
00:03:47
Speaker
Now, Chase was the founder of CreativeLive, a pioneering online learning platform that he sold a few years ago. He's a world-class photographer and the host of the Chase Jarvis Live podcast. He's at Chase Jarvis on all the socials. He's a force for good and a wildly inspiring person. I've been following him and his work for the better part of 15 years. He's a very prolific contributor to the creative community and if you visit chase Jarvis comm slash never play it safe purchase the book from wherever and Then you'll get a suite of bonuses from chase himself. Trust me. You'll want to take full advantage of those bonus Materials and at the end of the show parting shot on the responsibility of platform But for now, it's time to celebrate never play it safe with the one and only chase Jarvis
00:04:41
Speaker
who
00:04:52
Speaker
You know, you write of a sort of a quote unquote chance encounter you had with our mutual acquaintance Seth Godin um yeah after the acquisition of CreativeLive and that was a kind of a big watershed moment. He saw something amiss with you and i want I was hoping that you could take us to that moment because that that was pretty formative in the the timeline of the last few years.
00:05:14
Speaker
Yeah, first of all, Seth is a national treasure, a global treasure, we'll put it that way. And he has this uncanny sense to cut through noise, I think from his own experience of having had some of his companies that he had built acquired.
00:05:33
Speaker
He knows that there's this really interesting and and I would just say confusing set of competing feelings and beliefs about the experience that you've just gone through, what you just built is, you know, your identity. There's all sorts of confounding and and fascinating reflections that happen in the wake of having, you know, your company that served tens of millions of people, made hundreds of millions of revenue, whether you, for better or worse or good or bad, your identity was very wrapped in.
00:06:01
Speaker
your emotions were tied to, you know, outcomes and to the work. And when that's all of a sudden, you know, somebody else owns that and they can do whatever they want with it. There's a, it's, it's a set of conflicting feelings and Seth knows this and he picked up on it instantly in me and said, we need to set aside some time. And we were, you know, we were talking about something else and he's like, and now's not the time, but you know, do you have another day later this week, we, we can like carve out an hour, 30 minutes. And I was like, but yeah, yeah, of course. And I'm thinking, you know, more, more Seth time is better. Seth time for me. So I'm like, yeah, let's chat, you know, let's chat in a couple of days or whatever. I think it was the weekend. Maybe, uh, every counted pretty clearly in the book. And so we come back to this conversation and he's like, you know, something, something's off and I need to just tell you what I, what I have experienced and what I think might be going on and.
00:06:49
Speaker
You know, it's up to you to fill in the blanks, but you know here's what i I, here's some sort of medicine and and I need need you to pay attention. And it was, you know, life changing, life affirming. And of course, Seth is a laser beam for this stuff. And he's, he's wise beyond measure and I'm grateful to call him a friend. Then he helped me think more clearly about the next chapter and It was very easy for me to say after this company, after CreativeLive as the company we're talking about had been acquired to you know to celebrate some aspects of it and of course be sad about others. But it was time and i I wrote that in my letter to my community that it's like sometimes these things are bittersweet and this is just sweet.
00:07:32
Speaker
But it was all too fresh, you know, the bitter or the scared or the gosh, we sold too soon that we, you know, return didn't return enough for this investor or that, or, you know, all those questions creep in. It's very easy to be going backwards instead of forwards. And Seth really helped me go forward.
00:07:50
Speaker
Not that I've had an experience of that nature, but i can i knowing how what a key ingredient you were just to the platforming and the public-facing nature of CreativeLive. Without you there, it feels like an entirely different thing. So imagine
00:43:21
Speaker
Yeah.
00:50:45
Speaker
Oh my.
00:59:31
Speaker
so you'll excuse the hustle. And if you can do Interview, see ya!