"We're both the heroes and the villains in our own stories" | Chase Jarvis, Photographer + Entrepreneur + Author
Why is candor essential for a good story? How brutally honest should you actually be in sharing a story with the world?
The great Chase Jarvis brings us into his story of self-discovery, with the many twists and turns his professional career has taken, as he works through how to best tell that story ahead of his next book tour.
Starting in second grade when his entrepreneurial spirit was snuffed by his teacher, Chase works to find acceptance by pursuing the “best” path forward, before realizing that maybe it’s not the best path for him. It’s a story that’s brutally honest, surprising, and carefully crafted so that listeners get an intimate look at the real Chase Jarvis and the themes of his book.
Chase is an award-winning photographer, entrepreneur, and the author of “Never Play It Safe," and he's widely considered to be one of the leading voices advocating for the importance of creativity in work, life, and society today.
Together, Jay and Chase extract the various blocks that create the flow of Chase's story, exploring what makes certain segments most compelling and how to best drive the story forward. They discuss how great stories are built, rather than experienced, and the importance of allegory versus illustration.
Whether you’re an aspiring author, artist or entrepreneur, this episode will compel you to slow down, reflect, and connect to your own unique path forward and all the stories that have shaped you and your work.
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Episode Resources:
⚫ Learn more about Chase at his web, or listen to his podcast, The Chase Jarvis LIVE Show
⚫ Follow Chase on X and Instagram
⚫ Buy Chase’s book, Never Play It Safe
🔵 Subscribe to Jay Acunzo's fortnightly newsletter at jayacunzo.com
🔵 Join Jay's membership program for business storytellers and service providers, the Creator Kitchen
🔵 Follow Jay on LinkedIn, Instagram, or Threads
🟢 Produced by Ilana Nevins
🟢 Cover art designed by Blake Ink
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ABOUT JAY:
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Jay Acunzo is an author, speaker, and differentiation-and-thought leadership consultant on a mission to help you make what matters to your career, company, and community. He's an advisor to experts, execs, and entrepreneurs who want to resonate deeper with others, not just reach them. To do so, he helps you turn your expertise into IP and your IP into differentiated messaging, exceptional speeches, and celebrated creative projects, equipping you with the communication techniques and power of today’s top thought leaders—because he believes in standing out through substance and stories, not hollow hype.
A leading voice in B2B content marketing for many years thanks to his roles at brands like Google and HubSpot, companies like Mailchimp, Salesforce, Wistia, and GoDaddy have turned to Jay to strengthen their storytelling, while dozens of individual authors, speakers, consultants, and service providers hire Jay as their dedicated thought partner and exec. producer to help develop their premise, IP, speaking, and shows.
Jay lives in the Boston area with his family as a proud Yankees and Knicks fan. In the 60 seconds per week he's not creating stuff for work or making his kids laugh, he likes to shoot hoops, sip nice bourbons, cook with his wife, and daydream about telling stories like that of his storytelling hero, Anthony Bourdain.
Full Transcript:
(This was created using Ai and may contain some errors.)
Jay Acunzo: This is how stories happen where experts and creatives dissect a signature story piece by piece. We hear how they found it and developed it, how it might improve, and how they're using it to grow a business and serve their audience. The thing is, you don't really experience stories. You experience your life.
Then you craft that into stories. There's a process, a practice, and a posture that's. The craft, and on this show, we're putting the active crafting on display so you can stop learning story and become a storyteller. I'm your host, Jay Acunzo.
Chase Jarvis: The ability to think critically and tell stories and use stories as a way to find, you know, meaning, oh, it turns out that actually really powerful when you make yourself out to be the hero. You leave out 50% of the story. 'cause we're all, both the heroes and the villains in our own stories. She said first of all, like this is not a school is not a place to run a business.
Um, nor is it a place to exercise your creativity. The award that I got on the last day of the senior, my senior class was the typical senior award, which I don't know what that is, but I know it's not good. So as I started to extract myself from that, I noticed a feeling. I instantly felt wickedly alive.
Jay Acunzo: Today we hear one of the most prolific storytellers, creative and thought leaders in the world. Put in some reps. It's Chase Jarvis. Chase is an entrepreneur, a bestselling author, and a proud Seattle native, and he's one of the most notable voices today advocating for creativity. In our work and in our lives.
How do you design your career and life intentionally using your creativity? Chase is a legendary photographer working with individuals like Serena Williams and brands like Apple, and you can listen to him on his podcast every week where he interviews Pulitzer winners, Oscar winners, Grammy winners, New York Times bestsellers, and some of the best entrepreneurs and creatives working today.
His new book is Never Play It Safe. A practical guide to freedom, creativity, and a life you love and you can pick up your copy of Never Play It Safe, write. Now, if you're the kind of person who loves books that are full of examples, anecdotes, and memorable quotes, you won't be able to shake about risk and creativity and fulfillment that all stick in your brain.
This is the book for you. It is encyclopedic in that way, and in our episode together we hear Chase. Dust off the old personal story as he gets ready to set out on his book tour. And we try to find the underlying structure and 10 pole moments of his own backstory to help him make it better and better.
'cause I mean, if you write a book called Never Play It Safe, you gotta get outside your comfort zone with your own story too.
When you aren't in book writing mode, where maybe that takes over your life, what is the daily or weekly creative practice that underpins everything you do, whether it's public or private, or a bit of both?
Chase Jarvis: The practice that I employ on a daily basis reflects the values that I live by and when those things are out of whack.
It presents itself very clearly. Either my creativity is off my or my, I would just call it life force is off. So I get very clear feedback and to me that's the best part about realizing that all of these things are practice. Yeah. The last chapter I have book, ostensibly is called Practice because all of this is a practice and so now I've gotten.
After a lot of years and a lot of practice, uh, that's what these dark circles under my eyes are from, is that when I am living in accordance with who I am, who I want to be, it's very, very clear to me. And also when I'm not, where I have landed is, um, learning to direct, to direct my attention towards, you know, who I want to be, how I wanna show up in the world, and, and I've got alarm bells when it's not working.
Jay Acunzo: Yeah. Are you, uh, the type of person who does the morning pages approach?
Chase Jarvis: Yes, I do. Uh, journal to nobody every day. There are other things that are flexible. Uh, the non-negotiable is some sort of quiet time. And the other thing I would say that is a non-negotiable is a intention. The irony is that this used to be a 30 minute process and I was really proud about getting it down to 30 minutes and it always included a nice bath and always, and the reality is I sometimes can do this in eight minutes and I honestly, I'm actually slightly better when I do it.
More quickly, which to me is, is uh, is interesting despite liking to have time in my morning to let things, you know, to let my body wake up and my brain and my soul. Um, but the reality is that it's sort of like, uh, deciding what you're gonna do for your workout before you get there. You end up having a better workout.
And so to me, when I have the, the, the very tidy, you know, subset of things that I want to do, it just puts me in a great start.
Jay Acunzo: I was on another podcast and something came out that I was like, oh, this, this directly ties to a lot of the, especially early chapters of your new book. Uh, we were talking on that show about what most holds back people from really staying true to their creativity.
Writing their own script to use a phrase that I know you like to use. And I said, you know, I thought for a little while and I was like, you know, it's really easy to blame a thing like writer's block or perfectionism or imposter syndrome, but what I said, which I, which I thought was unique until I read your book Chase.
And I was like, oh, damn it, chase is on this too. I was like, you know what actually holds most people back And it like damages more creativity and confidence in that creativity than anything we've experienced. The saber tooth. Tiger. Tiger. And I'm just curious like what your thought thoughts are when I say something that seems that insane.
You're nodding along. Why?
Chase Jarvis: Because I know. I know exactly what you mean. And by the saber tooth tiger folks who are listening, what Jay means is that we are wired for a negativity bias. We are wired to find things that are wrong in our world. On the horizon, we are wired for movement both. We get alerted if we see it.
It could be a mate or it could be someone trying to kill us. And also if we don't see it, it can be a problem, it can be alarming because we are, we are wired for all these things. So, you know, biologically the fact that we're wired, wired for survival and not necessarily happiness means that we can't believe.
Our own thoughts. It flummoxes a lot of people because, wait a minute, I thought I am. My thoughts. Well, just the simple act of meditation that you can watch a thought when you're in a calm, meditative, relaxed state, that you can watch a thought arise, move across your consciousness, and you can decide to not pay attention to it, address it.
Maybe it's the itch that's on your ear or whatever, or any number of other thoughts. The fact that you can do that process. Is in itself a reminder that you aren't your thoughts. There's something deeper. That is the you that can observe your thoughts. So if you start to realize that your brain, that thing between our ears is a multimillion year old organ that's not there to keep you happy or fulfilled or thrive, it's there to just keep you alive.
And that that's not the highest manifestation as the human being and going as the human being that we can be. Right? And so this is why in my new book never play it Safe, it's speaking very. Truthfully that all of the best stuff in life is on the other side of this hard wiring. And an an easy question to ask is, well, why is that?
I got no freaking idea. But them them's just the facts and it's sort of like maybe that's the, the rarity of them or maybe that you did have to struggle because that's the way we build muscles. That's the way we build neurons in our brain, and maybe that's the way we build a life, is that, that it, the struggle is required in order to find and to feel and to connect with value.
It's right there, but it requires that we actually put in some work.
Jay Acunzo: You say in the book something very relevant to that. This book is not about avoiding mistakes or making your life perfect. It's about learning to trust yourself. And here was the key part for me. Chase and return to your true nature over and over again with kindness each time more quickly and wiser than before.
That last part hit me like a ton of bricks. Not only the grace with which you're advocating us do that, but the fact that you're not saying rewire yourself to be something you're not. You're saying return to your true nature over and over again.
Chase Jarvis: I was able to, at some point, again, look back, connect the dots and say, wow, you know, here I was thinking that I wasn't betraying myself, that we, that that is our natural state, and only to realize that, oh, oh, oh, actually I have a lifetime of betraying myself, and that that is not, actually, it's not possible to not.
And so therefore, you know, what ought we be doing? Well, in the same way that meditation is not staying in perfection. It's not if your mind will wander, it's that your mind wanders and that it's not your job to not have your mind wander. It's just that when you realize it has your job is to just bring it back to the thing that you're focusing on, whether it's your mount, you know, the mantra, the breath, whatever, analogously.
It's not that we will not wander from our true nature or authentic self, it's that when we do, we realize it more quickly than the time before, and we come back with, you know, compassion, care, and connection to who we really are, and that that [00:10:00] itself is a muscle. You know, meditation is the act of bringing it back.
It's not the act of staying there. And so the act of living is not an act of not like losing who you are and getting sucked into this trend or into this career when your true nature is, is this thing I. That's actually the process. The process is the leaving and coming back. And once we realize that, to me it's sort of like stopped all of the, the self-loathing or the beating up that we, we do when we realize that we've made some catastrophic mistakes and you're like, oh, okay, so what do I do now?
Oh, I just start over.
Jay Acunzo: When we were going back and forth about which story you could tell, there were two quick things that really jumped out to me. Um, one, I actually am making an assumption. I want to gut check it with you, and the other is just a bit of context for folks listening. The assumption is that this ties directly into what I thought was an amazing and very beautiful dedication at the front of the book to your wife, Kate.
You say for Kate, for your love and all your help in finding my way back to myself over and over again, and it was not at all what I expected when I saw for Kate. 'cause I was like, oh, I know Kate is Chase's wife and you've mentioned her publicly before. You know, I thought it would be, oh, thanks for supporting my journey and my ambition and all these things.
That is a different tact to that. Opening little line, finding my way back to myself over and over again. And so that helped me reframe when you said you wanted to share the story of this like tenure piece of your arc and, and your overall story, I was like, okay, this is the theme. This is the framing of the story.
It's, it's not, chase did an amazing thing and you can too. It's Chase went on this arc that involved having to find his way back. So that's an assumption I was making trying to connect those dots. Just wanted to gut check that I was on the right path there.
Chase Jarvis: Absolutely laser beam.
Jay Acunzo: The context here that I want everyone to know is I, I look at the sort of generation of public voices that you came up in, and what I see is among some, anyway, an evolution of pointing to myself as the example I.
Using that as an illustration or source of illustration to then pointing to myself as almost like an allegory where there's all kinds of hidden lessons in lessons in there. Um, whereas an illustration is like a case study. It's like, I did it exactly this way, so you should too follow my blueprint. I happen to be the protagonist of the story illustrating the blueprint.
That's very different than trying to say, well, I went through something that represents. Something the audience is going through in their own way, they are gonna fill in their own details. Like a simple example I've mentioned before on the show is I like to tell a quick little story of my fear of making espresso in my kitchen and I goof off when I tell that story 'cause I'm Italian, so it's kind of silly.
It's a random thing. It's not tied to the themes of what I speak about when I give speeches. But I've had people come up to me and go, and this shocked me in and of itself. Jay, when you started talking about espresso, I started to tune out 'cause I hate coffee. But then all of a sudden something went off in my brain where I was filling in details of what I'm going through with my car or with my relationship or with my business partner.
And I'm like, yes, that's the goal. I'm not saying I made espresso this way. And you can too. I'm trying to share an allegory, which is like a journey to an insight. And the journey there comes in the form of a story. That's what I see coming out time and. Time again on this show is there are certain people of a certain stature where everybody thinks that the stories they're telling about their own bios and backstories are like proof and a blueprint where I always see them as allegories.
Chase Jarvis: Yeah. Well, I, I know the concept of an allegory because there are a lot of allegories in, I studied philosophy as a young person, and you know, people ask me all the time, oh, how, how useless was that? Right, and I was like, actually the ability to think critically and tell stories and use stories as a way to find, you know, meaning, oh, it turns out that actually really powerful.
And there's a reason that, you know, philosophers and storytellers for ages have been our sages and allegory with. My own experience as not a blueprint. 'cause we all each have our own sort of disjointed, imperfect way of moving through the world, but specifically almost as a point of connection and reaching out.
Like, Hey, I think you think my life might look like X, but it really looks like Y and holy smokes, doesn't it? Doesn't it turn out that. That is a, a really important piece of human connection that on the inside, despite what it might seem, we're all pretty similar, and so let's find these points of connection.
And honestly, like that has, that was a big growth arc for me to realize that, that this signposting about who we, you know, aspire to be or our highlight reel of our, you know, social media feeds or even our ability to tell a great story. When you make yourself out to be the hero, uh, you leave out 50% of the story.
'cause we're all, both the heroes and the villains in our own stories. And so my hope is that that, you know, in sharing this arc, that whether yours is a 10 year arc or a 10 minute arc, or whether yours is around career or around family, to me that's almost, it doesn't matter. Again, the point is that. I lived a thing, uh, and an arc.
And across that thing, many things happened, but each of them were somehow interrelated. And only now have I looked back and been able to see that thread and find out, oh man, this is sort of the meaning at the core of this thing.
Jay Acunzo: Alright, well the floor's yours to tell a version of your backstory about finding your way back to yourself.
I know it's a story you take with you and, and are about to embark on the book tour and take with you everywhere. Where does this story begin?
Chase Jarvis: Uh, it begins in second grade in Ms. Kelly's class. And Ms. Kelly, I thought she was cool enough. I had just come off the summer between first and second grade feeling pretty high on myself because I made my first film, and that film was a, a, a profitable film.
We hired a cameraman, a friend of mine's brother for a dollar. We got this money from raising money, uh, washing cars around the neighborhood, and then hired Derek Rolson. Uh, we borrowed a camera, we drew up the script, we filmed it in a day, and it was all edited in camera. So you just stopped filming and went from one scene to the next linearly.
We hosted this film, uh, in David and Derek's parents' basement, sold to a sold out audience. And I remember the big money maker was actually the concessions. We bought candy for 25% cents and sold it for 50. So I rolled into second grade feeling like a boss, and I immediately was like, man, this creativity inside me.
I didn't really, you know, I was in second grade, didn't have a big, you know, much of vocabulary for this, but it led to me. Investigating magic. So I had magic shows. I had a standup comedy routine, uh, and I was selling a comic strip that I was publishing weekly. I would make one version. My mom, I, I would go to her office and make photocopies of this comic strip and then sell them for the exact same price as the milk at lunch.
So kids could choose to spend their money on my comic strip instead of their milk and still, still be able to eat. But the where, why the story starts here is not about the milk or, or whatnot, but it was about Ms. Kelly discovering all these things about me, my standup comedy routine and, and the, the comic strip and essentially shutting all of them down.
And she said, first of all, like this is not a school is not a place to run a business. Um, nor is it a place to exercise your creativity. This is a place where we come and we do work, and moreover. This creativity stuff, like you're a much better jock than you are an artist, so you should, you know, focus there.
And she told this to my parents and my, and me and my, and our student teacher conferences and, and you just think, oh, poor chase, he must have been crushed, actually wasn't crushed at all. Just realized I need to do something different. And if I'm going to be rewarded as a young person and to impress the adults in my life.
We're seeking love, we're seeking connection. We're seeking approval, and that started a very long journey that sought to please people and sought, you know, validation and fulfillment through achievement. I. Ironically, it was very effective. You know, I became the captain of the football team and, uh, and the soccer team and went to college on a soccer scholarship and dated cheerleaders.
And, you know, I, I share a story in, in the book about the award that I got on the last day of the senior. My senior class was the typical senior award, which. I don't know what that is, but I know it's not good. It is like typical is a terrifying word to me. What this was is, is the beginning of playing by the rules of other people, playing by cultures rules rather than my own.
And this, it turns out, this runs really, really deeply and I managed to escape it. Thankfully. Thank, uh, I would attribute this success to my wife, who you've already acknowledged. I was gonna go to medical school. I dropped out of becoming a professional soccer player, which I could have done because I believed that, well, you know, if I get, you know, blow up my knee or whatever, then that's over anyway.
So let's just start being, you can see the practicality sort of creeping in, and I noticed that when I told people that I was gonna be a doctor, there was always a lot to talk about. You must be smart and educated and all these other things have, you know, good, good habits. And yet what I was doing in that moment.
Was getting off track, and for me, this manifested as hundreds of thousands of dollars in student loans and years of my life spent pursuing. You know, this other thing. So I did all the pre-med stuff. Yeah. And without going, you know, too far down that road, you can [00:20:00] see how that wasn't me and my wife just prior to me sort of going all in in that direction, she helped me realize that that's not who I was.
And so as I started to extract myself from that, I noticed a feeling I instantly felt. Wickedly alive, terrified the hair on my arms stood up the back of my neck when I realized that I'm telling my parents and essentially everyone in my life that no, no, it wasn't actually that, that wasn't what I want to do with my life.
And it was the fact that my grandfather dropped dead of a heart attack and was lying on the, the floor of the garage. And when, you know, we went to to his house, the first thing my grandma did is gave me his cameras. He was an avid photographer. I had expressed interest in this combination, this strange timing of realizing that, that I didn't want to pursue the goals that everybody else had for me, and realizing that what I really wanted to do was experiment.
That sent me off on a journey. That was the first time I essentially had returned to myself, and it was returning to that 8-year-old version of myself, and I was, it was like coming home. The irony is that you'd think I would learn something that was so expensive and took so long, but not only did I not learn, but it just got worse and more manifested in a bunch of other ways in relationships and friendships and and career stuff.
Now, to be fair, I did pursue. My, you know, one precious dream of being an artist and I became one of the top, you know, commercial photographers in the world. And yet even within that little journey, I would find myself getting sucked into celebrity culture or getting sucked into all of the other things that one might imagine that you could get sucked into.
And what I found, especially, you know, 10 years on the other side of that, being able to put all these things together was that each time. I felt 10% more alive when I did the things that I was supposed to be doing, that I knew in my heart, and that when I got off track, I, I started to know where home was and it occurred to me.
Especially after starting a, a, an online learning platform after a long successful career as, as one of the top commercial photographers working for Nike and Apple and all the big, big, you know, films and making television shows and whatnot, that I started a learning platform. It was a venture backed company.
We raised $60 million, had tens of millions of users on the outside. That looks like wicked success, and it was, I was very happy. With the impact that we were able to have, and yet there's some piece of me that knew that that actually wasn't my lot in life, wasn't to run to be the CEOA venture backed CEO, and yet that was the next logical step.
So we have just a series of thinking. I've got my stuff figured out, and only realizing that I just keep demonstrating through these big, painful moves that I don't. The twist here is that. That company was ultimately acquired by a big public company and I had to be an executive inside that acquiring public company for some, for a, a short time.
And it was a very reflective time. And it was then that I started working on a book I. And the book that I started working on was gonna be my second. I had written one during the middle of that process we talked about, um, previously it was called Creative Calling. It was a bestseller. And I started writing a new book.
And this new book was going to be essentially the culmination of the business wisdom. And in many ways it was the thing that we represent online about ourselves, the sort of the tidy little version. And just six weeks before this book was due, a book that I'd been working in deep earnest. I'm around for 13 months, as in like writing every day.
I threw it all in the trash can and started from scratch with six weeks to go.
Jay Acunzo: Why?
Chase Jarvis: Because it wasn't me. And I had actually discovered that, oh my God, I'm literally doing it again. And so this is the part where if we're in a movie, there is an aspect of redemption. Because it is in this recognizing and despite promising myself over and over again that, uh, that I would just keep coming back.
And that I am creating a life and that the, that creating a life that we love above and beyond any artwork, any podcast, any book, anything that we're actually creating a life that we love, that there are ups and downs in that life. And all we have to do is to, if we can quiet down enough and if we can learn to direct our attention and if we can trust ourselves that the answer is in there, we don't have to go outside.
And so in six weeks I essentially locked myself in a room and my, my wife delivered food and, and I wrote the book that this has become, and it's a book called Never Play It Safe. And that title emerged from the realization that at each of these turns, what I was doing was playing by the rules of others and.
When I realized that that was what I was doing, I simultaneously realized that all of the best stuff in my life that I'd ever done was in the face of the people who were, who loved me and who cared for me, and were really concerned that all of the best stuff was on the other side of that, despite all of the cultural trappings.
Jay Acunzo: First of all, thank you for sharing, as I know you often do from a place of vulnerability to reciprocate a, a place of vulnerability, which is gonna lead to what I was realizing about your story, chase. I. I had gotten into the business world in marketing, trying to create meaningful things as we all do or many of us do, or try to in this emerging field known as content marketing.
I'd wanted to be a sports journalist. I loved human interest pieces. You know, these saccharine stories of Olympic athletes coming out of obscurity, all those things like that's, that was the goal. Not to be a beat writer, although I love the sport, but to tell human stories and because sport is such a good microcosm of humanity, you could hold it up like a show, a snow globe and examine it.
Business is the same thing. Work is the same thing. And I think way more people are affected by it and care about it than than sports. As much as I do love sports. So I was like, okay, great. Uh, what did Robert Donny Jr say when he was announced back into the MCU New Mask? Same task, right? It was like I was in a new domain.
I. But I was still gonna do that storytelling work, and I was surrounded by a lot of folks that they just treated content, like it was on some kind of conveyor belt, a cheap container to be published on the internet to get in front of people. Whether or not those people cared about what was inside.
Different story. But that's what I thrive, that's what what I care about. That's the work. So I sort of left the corporate world. And was writing as I do to make sense of things that I was struggling with. And I remember I was launching a podcast at the time, uh, which you were eventually on Chase, and I didn't know how to structure it.
I just knew what I wanted to, to feel like, and I thought to myself, who makes me feel like I want this show to make people in the business world feel like? And I looked to Bourdain the master, right? I, I went to Anthony Bourdain's, CNN Show, got a notebook and just wrote Beat For Beat, what I thought he was doing to me throughout a given episode.
I don't know if there's a production technique for that. I call it an extraction. I just ripped out what I thought was the underlying structure. It was definitely not what they planned proactively, but it was what was being delivered to me. But it was what, how I made sense of it, and I kind of used that.
The reason I bring that up is before you presented that story, you told me like you're sort of still feeling out how to tell this story. So I thought, okay, while you're talking, let me try to extract what you're doing to me. 'cause I do find that that story was quite effective. So here's the extraction I came out with, and maybe we can wrestle with it a little bit.
Chase Jarvis: Oh, I love this.
Jay Acunzo: So the first and most important thing is just like the framing that emerged, and then let's talk about the. The blocks that came out. Cool. I think this is a story back to your dedication to Kate, back to many things you've said so far today. It's a story about you bringing it back time and time again where the pull of the typical or maybe the tyranny of the typical was starting to draw your attention and your work and then you had to bring it back.
And I think what you did knowingly or not is the first beat mirrors what a lot of us go through. Where the first sort of block I extracted was. You entrenched the typical, that was the first, like you did this thing that was so pure and natural for any child to do, albeit you did it in a way that I think a lot of people would go, wow, I didn't do that in second grade, but like still, we were all on that path.
And the typical then took root. The moment you said that Ms. Kelly's words didn't actually crush you, I stepped back and I was like, whoa. That part of the story. Did a lot of service to your message. I felt. Because I was like, that's not the Hollywood script. That's not the gold-plated version of this. In that version, Ms.
Kelly becomes the enemy, the Michael Jordan JV coach, and you go off and create a million things. But I was the same way. I was like, what do I do to get the A? What do I do to fit in? What do I do to be accepted? So I think that was the first block that I noticed was. You go down this
Chase Jarvis: twist Yeah. Twist
Jay Acunzo: ending.
Yeah. And it was hugely important 'cause the, the typical took root. So that, that was the first thing I noticed.
The second thing I noticed was the typical started to bloom. And so you went to med school, you incurred all the things that went along with that, you know, and then maybe there was an inciting incident with your grandfather's passing where you were handed his cameras, but you started to basically reap what you sowed doing it the certain way and, and obviously like to me, the most visible version of the typical blooming was the typical senior award.
Chase Jarvis: Catastrophic. That's horrible, right? It's so bad.
Jay Acunzo: It's amazing. It's like a gift. [00:30:00] I mean, to me, I talk about this with friends all the time. It's like. Oh yeah, you should try that. 'cause the absolute worst case scenario is you get a story out of it and you know what to do with a story. Right? It's almost like there is no wasted experience when you're a storyteller.
Chase Jarvis: For sure. I, I, I say that in the book overtly, no effort is ever wasted. Right? I.
Jay Acunzo: So that was the second sort of beat in this extracted framework that I got or block. 'cause there was a lot of little beats inside of it was the typical took root, then the typical started to blossom. You were reaping what you sowed.
And then, and this is another powerful way you told this story, was there was this shift where it looked like you planted something new, right? It looked like, 'cause you had a lot of success as a photographer. But there were all these, always these moments of like. I was kind of getting absorbed into celebrity culture.
I was kind of getting jealous of my venture backed startup founder friends. I was kind of this kind of that while succeeding. So what that told me was it looked like you'd planted new roots, but really you hadn't really ripped out the typical at the root. You had planted something new, but there were some weeds still growing up around it.
Then I think you realize that the typical runs real deep, like these roots run deeper than we know. You know, the saber tooth tiger evolutionary history of it all kind of thing. The way we're groomed in school, the way that the corporate world sort of beats this into us. All of these things of like, oh, actually I started to dig for the roots and I found that these roots ran a lot deeper than I really knew.
And while I was doing that, I launched this company that looked like on face, this is it. This is the big swing, this is the everything. And there was still this voice in my head. And so where I was left at the end was. We have to examine how to rip this out at the root, and that's why I wrote this book and that's why I'm launching X, Y, or Z next thing that you do, right?
So to me, if I were extracting your BOR Bourdain structure for why that story can delight people, that's what I came away with. I.
Chase Jarvis: It's lovely, lovely work. And to be able to do that in real time, it shows the mastery of storytelling that you have as a lifelong professional storyteller, I don't even realize that I'm doing those things right.
And I think that's part of what's both beautiful and what reminds us how much, you know, better we all can become at this craft. You know, I think the punchline I would throw on there is there's redemption. But you know that I'm not done
Jay Acunzo: right. You're always gonna prune that garden. Right. The same with if you, if you want to use the analogy like it's not like I've ripped out these weeds at the root and now I'm done weeding.
Chase Jarvis: There's a lot of seeds blowing around in the wind. Totally. Yeah.
Jay Acunzo: In the air today, there's a lot of stuff getting into your garden that like, that's gonna come back. You gotta be aware. It's also, you know, there's a big degree of you gotta eat some humble pie to take in your message. You're not saying just do this and forever it's good.
Chase Jarvis: Yeah, I have to, you know, hat tip to my publisher and agent and Kate for trusting that this was doable. To recover from that, you know, the catastrophic error of, you know, almost turning in a book that didn't have anything to do with my true soul.
Jay Acunzo: Were you salvaging stuff? Like were you ripping out some from the old manuscript for the new?
Yeah,
Chase Jarvis: there was some. There was some. I mean, but it was. Um, of the 65,000 words, it was 60,000 new words probably. They were just, you know, chunks, paragraphs, individual little sections that were, you know, portable, if you will. But, uh, you know, the, that's the, the meta nature of creativity. Writing about creativity, the ultimate creative process of creating a life you love.
And doing it in a creative medium is like, the meta nature's not lost on me. So I kept saying like, oh my God, I'm doing it again. And, uh, to be alone with one's thoughts for, for, uh, you know, all of that realization and awakening. And then, you know, putting yourself back into the work. Um. But I'm happy with what came out.
The, the sweet, sweet truth is that, you know, everything makes a little bit more sense after you learn anything, right? You can Oh, oh, again, you, you look backwards and connect the dots. And I have realized throughout, I, you know, I have my own podcast. It's been going since 2009, you know, more than a thousand episodes.
And it's like, man, all of my friends who I've, you know, recorded shows with or. You know the stories that I, it's like, ah, I start to see both where the connections are and the little neurons forms that are taking shape and the betrayals in all of the stories. You, once you see it, you sort of can't unsee it, which to me is sort of, that's the.
The defining beauty of a life is like if we can see that this is the beauty of the creative thing that we're creating, and it's not sort of a staid, linear, unchanging narrative, man, I can just feel so much better that this is a season or this is a chapter or this is a paragraph, and that you're always able to, to keep, keep writing if you choose
Jay Acunzo: one of I, I think the most enduring truths about.
Telling stories both professionally and just in your life. Uh. You know, the world's most inspiring and most effective storytellers, they start from a place of being more honest with themselves than others are willing to get. Like I joke, when I work with a client to develop their messaging or a member of our membership group, I.
To develop a piece. I always joke that, hey, we're gonna start by really trying to drill down to your thinking. So if you can humor me, give me the two drink minimum version of this, right? Or of you. I, I want you at the end of a long day confiding in your closest friend. I want you after a couple where you're just gonna pop off.
I don't want you positioning this to sound a certain way or do a certain thing for you or your work like. Give me the total brutal, brutal. 'cause if you can get that on the page or you can get that out in spoken and or recorded word, the rest is a lot easier. Like you're starting in a pure, more honest, foundational place.
You can wordsmith from there. That part's the easy part. I.
Chase Jarvis: Yeah, man, there's so many of those. I'd say some of the most pivotal pieces of the book. Speaking of honest, that's one of the things about morning pages. One of the reasons I like journaling is if you do that first thing in the morning, you essentially, your rational mind hasn't sort of got any momentum yet, and so you're sort of tackling it when it doesn't have, you know, those trappings and the defense mechanisms that are, is the armor that we put on are maturing.
We have to weather all kinds of difficult stuff, so we, we put on armor. The best, the pivotal moments of this of never played safe in my book. They all came at three in the morning getting up, walking across, you know, fumbling across the room to grab a notebook or walking into the bathroom to type something in my phone.
Just the pieces that were so raw and so unfiltered, and it's like, I hate this piece, but it feels so freaking true right now. Let's try this on in the morning. And then in the morning you're like, man. I have to put that in the book. Uh, I want to look so good. And that confidence wears away with the morning sun.
It burns away Totally. Yep. And then the courage to do it again. You know, the namesake again, to never, to never play it safe. To choose that. And to be clear, like I'm not talking and I'm very clear upfront. I'm not talking about seat belts and sunscreen. This is not about emotional safety or physical safety.
Those are all, you know, important. What's what I'm talking about is where all of the best stuff in life is when we don't, you know, we can play through all of the noise to find the signal and how rich that feels when we're sort of aligned with who we truly are and it's available to us. We just, there's a lot of noise.
Jay Acunzo: I've watched you tell a version of your own story in different ways, and I've seen it evolve both with more experience and more reflection and insight on yourself in the world. And then also like, oh, okay, this is what I call like a super story. It's, I could tell this story to arrive at any insight I needed to arrive to.
By massaging the tension, by changing the details I include or omit the, the David Sedaris line when asked, is your story true? He goes, yeah, true enough for you. It is an allegory. It is not a literal capturing of the world as a transcript and then sending it to you. Great stories are built. They're not experienced.
Um, maybe the material for the story is experienced. You experience the life, but then you put your butt in the seat and you do the work to craft that into story. If there is any overriding idea behind this show and all of my work, it is that, and so I've seen that evolve in you. I'm wondering as you bring this new idea out to market, 'cause we're talking early in that process, as you do that, like you're the walking, talking avatar for the book, what feels different this time around compared to your last book?
Chase Jarvis: I was gonna say honesty, but the irony of that is that at the time, the last book felt very honest. So I, I feel like this is this process that we, when you, you go deeper into something is, as is, you know, artists will know this about their work. Like you're, you're always sort of like looking back at your old stuff.
You realize it was critical to get to where you are now, but it just, you can never step in the same river twice. So I'm stepping into different river with this book and the, I feel like the universality. Is reached through the particular,
Jay Acunzo: in the, in the specific we find the universal.
Chase Jarvis: I felt like the, the, the creative calling was a book about creativity.
I would say creativity with a small C and you know how to have a creative practice and the richness that a creative practice and views upon your life and how valuable it is and that it's, we're creative machines by nature. This book is creativity with a capital C, that the most important, you know, that creating a life we love.
That is, it is and can be of our choosing, and that it is a creative act and that it is [00:40:00] a process and just like creating any art, it's an imperfect process. It's non-linear, and yet that that's actually what makes the journey worth going on.
Jay Acunzo: That's Chase Jarvis. His new book Never Play It Safe is available now and you can listen to him every week on his podcast, The Chase Jarvis live show
How Stories Happen was created by me, and it's produced by Ilana Nevins, cover art by Blake, Inc. You can work with me one-on-one as your dedicated thought partner, executive producer, and storytelling consultant. I help experts and entrepreneurs differentiate their message, craft signature speeches, and show up everywhere through their content and messaging, a stronger storyteller and a more beloved and trusted voice.
I also write a newsletter about those same things, storytelling, differentiation. And how to resonate deeper, and you can learn more about all of it@jayacunzo.com. If you like the show, leave a rating and review on Apple Podcast on Spotify. Write it on the sky if you have to tell your friends because this is how stories happen like the the show, but also this is how it actually happens.
This is how incredible communicators and storytellers. Create their stories. They put their butt in the chair and craft moments, memories, observations, conversations into incredible stories, and we have so many incredible storytellers coming up on the show. We have Anne Hanley for her second time around, we're gonna work out a brand new draft.
Together. It's a look at her work like you've never heard before. We have Seth Godin right around the corner. Tamson Webster, Justin Moore, Mike Ganino, Brad Montague, and we've already talked to so many exceptional storytellers like Andrew Davis, Michelle Warner, Danielle Bayard Jackson, Ryan Hawk, Nat Eliason, Laura Gassner Otting.
I'm so grateful for the early support of this show. And thank you for continuing to support it. As always, keep making things that matter because when your work matters more, you need to hustle for attention less. See you.