The Chase Jarvis LIVE Show

Hey friends, Chase here There is a particular kind of silence that can change the direction of a life. Not the peaceful kind. Not the silence you seek out when you need space to think. I mean the silence that lands in the room right after you say something true. The silence after you tell people what you really want. The silence after you say, out loud, that you are thinking about leaving the safe path and choosing the one that actually feels like yours. I remember that silence very clearly. I remember the day I told my family I was going to leave the path everyone expected for me and become a photographer. This was not me announcing a hobby. It was not a side project. It was not some casual thing I thought might be fun to explore. I was saying, in effect, this is what I feel compelled to do. This is the direction I have to chase. And the room got quiet. My parents were not against it, and I want to be clear about that. But I could feel the worry. I could feel the polite smiles and the nods that were probably covering up a very natural concern. I was worried too. I knew it was scary. I knew I might embarrass myself. I knew I might blow up my financial security, fail publicly, and end up crawling back to a "real job." That fear was real. But that moment stuck with me because it mattered. It still matters. Because so much of what keeps us from the life we want is not the actual failure. It is the fear of being seen before we know how the story ends. It is that quiet pause after we name the dream. That is what this episode is about. Betting on yourself, not because there is no fear, but because fear cannot be the thing that gets to design your life. The Moment After You Say the Thing There are obvious forms of resistance in life. Someone tells you no. A door closes. A plan falls apart. A check does not clear. Those things are hard, but at least they are clear. What I am talking about here is more subtle. It is the tiny moment after you reveal what you want and the people around you do not immediately understand. That moment can feel like a verdict, even when it is not. Somebody pauses, and suddenly you start filling in the blanks. Maybe they think I am crazy. Maybe they are disappointed. Maybe this dream is irresponsible. Maybe I should have kept it to myself. And before anything has actually happened, the fear begins doing its work. I have come to believe that this is one of the places where a lot of people stop. Not because someone actively shut them down, but because the silence felt too uncomfortable. If everyone cheered immediately, maybe they would keep going. If everyone criticized them loudly, maybe they would have something to push against. But the silence is different. It creates space for doubt, and doubt can be incredibly persuasive when the dream is still fragile. So if you are somewhere in your life right now wondering whether it is too late, whether you missed the window, whether you are allowed to want something different, I want you to pay attention to that. Especially if you cannot honestly say that you are 100% going after your dreams. This one is for you. Playing It Safe Is Usually Fear in Disguise Most of us do not say, "I am afraid, so I am not going to do the thing." We use better language than that. We say we are being practical. We say we are being responsible. We say we are waiting for the right time, the right plan, the right amount of money, the right amount of certainty. And sometimes those are legitimate considerations. I am not here to tell you to be reckless. But I am here to say that playing it safe is often fear wearing a very respectable outfit. Fear has a job. It is optimized for survival. That is useful when you are in actual danger. But fear is not optimized for creativity. It is not optimized for happiness, joy, connection, harmony, fulfillment, or the gifts you have to give and receive in this life. Fear wants to keep you alive. It does not care if you feel fully expressed. That matters because if you let fear make all your decisions, you may end up safe, but you will also end up smaller than you were meant to be. You will build a life around avoiding discomfort rather than moving toward aliveness. And the best stuff in life is usually just on the other side of the comfort zone you are coddling. By the way, craving comfort is natural. Of course it is. We all want security. We all want belonging. We all want the people we love to understand our choices. But comfort cannot be the only thing we optimize for. At some point, the question becomes: am I protecting my life, or am I hiding from it? The World Will Keep Throwing Curveballs If you are going for it, the world is going to throw you curveballs. That is part of the deal. Not because the world is against you, but because challenge is how you grow. The world cannot really give you anything. It can only challenge you until you become stronger. And when you get stronger, the hard things do not magically become easy. They become easier. That distinction matters. I am not promising a frictionless life. I am not saying the fear disappears or that the path suddenly becomes smooth. I am saying that you become more capable. You become more practiced. You learn how to meet the pitch that used to scare you. What I do not want is for you to quit. I do not want you to take your bat and go home. I do not want the first or fifth or fiftieth curveball to become the reason you stop playing the game you actually came here to play. Whether you meet those challenges as punishment or as part of a playful game of discovery is up to you. But either way, the challenges are coming. The invitation is to stay in the game long enough to find out who you become when you stop retreating every time it gets uncomfortable. Your Weaknesses Might Be Invitations There is something I wish more people said plainly: your weaknesses can be blessings. Not because weakness feels good. Not because fear is fun. Not because we need to romanticize struggle or pretend that everything difficult is automatically noble. But because the places where you feel weak are often the places where you are being invited to grow. That fear you feel right now does not necessarily mean you are doing the wrong thing. It may mean you are standing at the edge of something important. Courage is not the absence of fear. Courage is having fear and doing it anyway. This is easy to forget after years of teaching ourselves to avoid friction. Years of performing the version of ourselves that other people understand. Years of telling ourselves stories about what is realistic, acceptable, responsible, or too late. Over time, you can lose track of what you actually want. You can get so good at managing other people's expectations that you forget to ask whether the life you are maintaining is the life you want to be living. But the desire does not disappear just because you ignore it. It waits. It keeps tapping. It shows up in restlessness, envy, curiosity, frustration, and that persistent feeling that there is something more honest available to you. The Opposite of Playing It Safe Is Freedom The opposite of playing it safe is not reckless risk. That is not the message. This is not about blowing up your life just to prove you are brave. It is not about risk without measure. The opposite of playing it safe is freedom. Freedom is creating the ultimate game of life and then deciding that you are actually going to play. It is betting on yourself with your eyes open. It is taking calculated risks in the direction of what is true for you. It is refusing to let fear be the only voice in the room. That is why I keep showing up. Every week I write an email, create posts, record this show, and share work online because, in a very real way, I am betting on you. I am betting that you will see this work for what it is: a belief that you can activate. You can take calculated risks. You can get to work on your truest dreams. And more than anything, I want you to join me in that bet. What You'll Hear in This Episode This is a short episode, but the message is direct. If you have been waiting for permission, certainty, or universal understanding before you move toward the life you want, this is your reminder that fear does not get the final vote. Why the silence after you share your dream can feel so powerful, and why it keeps many people from taking action The story of telling my family I was leaving the expected path to pursue photography as a career Why playing it safe is often about fear, even when we call it responsibility Why fear is optimized for survival, not creativity, joy, connection, or fulfillment Why the comfort zone is natural to crave, but dangerous to build your whole life around How the world challenges you until you become stronger Why your weaknesses can become opportunities to grow and be brave Why courage means having fear and acting anyway Why the opposite of playing it safe is not recklessness, but freedom Why betting on yourself is a practice, not a one-time declaration Timecodes So You Can Jump to What You Need If you're not listening straight through, here are a few landmarks to help you find the part that speaks to where you are right now: 00:00 – A note about my weekly email and where I put my attention every week 01:50 – Welcome to the micro show and the short message behind today's episode 02:07 – The memory of telling my family I was leaving the expected path to become a photographer 02:44 – The quiet room, the polite smiles, and the worry underneath the silence 03:08 – The fear of public failure, financial insecurity, and having to crawl back to a "real job" 03:32 – Why the fear of saying what you want can keep you from taking action 04:11 – Why the silence after you announce your dream can be more powerful than encouragement or criticism 04:37 – The question: are you 100% going after your dreams? 05:04 – Playing it safe, fear, and why fear is optimized for survival 05:33 – The best stuff in life is on the other side of the comfort zone you are craving 05:54 – The world will throw curveballs as long as you are still playing 06:16 – Why challenges become easier as you get stronger 06:43 – Your weaknesses as blessings and invitations to grow 07:11 – Courage is having fear and doing it anyway 07:33 – The opposite of playing it safe is freedom 07:56 – Why I'm betting that you can activate, take calculated risks, and get to work on your truest dreams 08:19 – The invitation to join me in the bet 08:42 – A quick thank you for listening, sharing, and growing together Read This If You Feel Like It Might Be Too Late If you feel like it might be too late to go after your dreams, start by telling the truth. Are you 100% going after what is true for you? Not what looks good from the outside. Not what keeps everyone comfortable. Not what you chose five or ten or twenty years ago because it made sense at the time. What is true now? For most people, that question is uncomfortable because it removes the hiding places. It asks us to admit where we have settled. It asks us to look at the gap between the life we say we want and the choices we are actually making. That can sting. But it can also wake us up. "Too late" is often fear disguised as wisdom. It sounds mature. It sounds practical. It sounds final. But sometimes it is simply the story we tell ourselves so we do not have to risk being seen trying. Trying is vulnerable. Trying means you might fail. Trying means people might watch you change direction. Trying means you might have to admit that the safe path is not the satisfying one. But not trying has a cost too. The cost is your aliveness. Your creativity. Your sense of possibility. Your relationship with the part of you that still knows there is more. Stop Treating Fear Like a Stop Sign Fear is information. It is not an instruction. It can tell you that something matters. It can tell you that you are stepping outside familiar territory. It can tell you that identity, security, belonging, and ambition are all tangled together in this next move. That is useful information. But it is not the same as a command to stop. Sometimes fear means prepare. Sometimes fear means slow down and get clear. Sometimes fear means make the risk more calculated. Sometimes fear means ask for help. But fear does not automatically mean abandon the dream. If you wait until fear disappears before you act, you may wait forever. The practice is learning to move with fear. To take the next honest step while your hands are still shaking. To understand that courage is not a feeling you wait for, but a behavior you choose. A Simple Practice for Betting on Yourself Here is a simple way to make this real. Start by naming the thing you have been afraid to say out loud. Write it down plainly. No polishing. No over-explaining. Just the truth. Then ask yourself whose silence you are afraid of. Who are you imagining in the room? Whose pause, judgment, worry, or disappointment has more power over your choices than it should? Once you have that, separate fear from fact. Write down what is actually true, and then write down what fear is predicting. Those are not always the same thing. Fear loves to present a prediction as a certainty. Your job is to notice the difference. Then choose one calculated risk. Not a reckless leap. Not the whole mountain. One honest action that moves you toward what you want. Send the email. Make the call. publish the work. Have the conversation. Block the time. Start the project. Admit the dream to someone you trust. The goal is not to eliminate fear. The goal is to build evidence that you can move with it. Don't Take Your Bat and Go Home As long as you are still playing, you are going to get curveballs. That does not mean you are doing it wrong. It means you are in the game. The temptation, when things get hard, is to turn challenge into evidence that you should quit. To decide the safe path was safer for a reason. To take your bat and go home. But growth comes from staying in the game long enough to get stronger. The things that feel impossible today may not become easy tomorrow, but they can become easier. You can become more capable. You can become more resilient. You can learn how to meet the pitch. That is why betting on yourself matters. It is not blind optimism. It is a commitment to keep participating in your own life. Questions to Ask Yourself What dream have I been afraid to say out loud? Whose silence am I afraid of? Where am I mistaking discomfort for danger? What am I calling "practical" that might actually be fear? What comfort zone am I currently protecting? What curveball has the world thrown at me, and what is it asking me to learn? Where could one of my weaknesses become an invitation to grow? What would courage look like today, even if the fear does not go away? What calculated risk would move me closer to my truest dreams? What would it mean to bet on myself this week? The Core Idea Bet on yourself. Not because success is guaranteed. Not because fear will disappear. Not because everyone will understand immediately. Bet on yourself because the alternative is letting fear quietly design your life. The silence after you say what you want is not proof that you are wrong. The discomfort is not proof that you should stop. The fear is not the enemy. Fear is optimized for survival, but you are not here merely to survive. You are here to create, connect, grow, and give what is yours to give. The opposite of playing it safe is not reckless risk. The opposite is freedom. It is creating the ultimate game of life and then deciding that you are actually going to play. So today, I'm betting on you. I'm betting that you can activate. I'm betting that you can take calculated risks. I'm betting that you can get to work on your truest dreams. And more than anything else, I want you to join me in that bet. Until next time: stop treating fear like a stop sign, stay in the game, and bet on yourself.

Hey friends, Chase here Austin Kleon is back on the show, and this conversation is exactly the kind of reminder every creative person needs. You probably know Austin from Steal Like an Artist, Show Your Work!, and Keep Going, the books that have helped millions of people rethink creativity, sharing, influence, originality, and what it actually means to make things in public. But Austin's new book, Don't Call It Art: 10 Ways to Create Like a Kid Again, goes somewhere even more fundamental. It asks a question that feels especially urgent for creators, entrepreneurs, artists, writers, photographers, parents, and anyone trying to make meaningful work in a world that wants to turn everything into content: What if the way back to your best creative work is not becoming more serious, but becoming more playful? That question matters because most of us have made creativity too heavy. We have wrapped it in identity, pressure, productivity, platforms, metrics, perfectionism, and the fear of being judged. We get stuck asking whether we are real artists, serious writers, successful creators, or legitimate professionals. We worry about the noun before we do the verb. Austin's message is simpler, deeper, and more freeing: "Don't call it art. Don't worry about being an artist. Forget the nouns. Do the verbs. Just make stuff." That idea is the center of this episode. We talk about what kids can teach us about creativity, why play is not frivolous, how to build the conditions for your best work, why attention is your most valuable resource, and why some of the most important ideas in your life might come from goofing off. This conversation is about loosening the grip. It is about getting back to the part of you that makes before it judges, explores before it explains, and follows the energy before it knows exactly where the work is going. Why This Conversation Matters Right Now We are living in a strange moment for creative people. On one hand, there has never been more opportunity. An individual with a laptop, a camera, a newsletter, a sketchbook, a phone, a point of view, or a weird little idea can reach people directly. That is extraordinary. But it also comes with a cost. The pressure to turn every interest into a brand, every hobby into content, every project into a product, and every creative impulse into a strategy has never been stronger. We are constantly being asked to define ourselves: What do you do? What is your niche? What is your platform? What are you building? How are you monetizing it? What is the plan? Those questions can be useful at the right time. But when they show up too early, they can suffocate the very thing they are trying to organize. Austin's work reminds us that creativity begins before identity. Before "artist." Before "writer." Before "photographer." Before "entrepreneur." Before "content creator." Before the nouns, there are verbs. Drawing. Writing. Walking. Noticing. Building. Playing. Collecting. Tinkering. Making. Sharing. Kids understand this instinctively. They do not sit down and ask whether what they are making fits the market. They do not wonder whether they are allowed to call themselves artists. They do not freeze because the thing in front of them might not be good enough. They simply begin. And in that beginning, there is a kind of wisdom most adults have forgotten. What We Explore in This Episode Why kids can be some of the best creativity teachers because they make before they judge, label, or perform. How to reconnect with the feeling you wanted as a kid, not necessarily the exact childhood you had. Why play is not the opposite of serious work, but a form of creative research and development. How to create the conditions for creativity through time, space, materials, and permission. Why tools should feel more like toys if you want to stay curious and experimental. How phones fracture attention and why protecting the edges of your day can change the texture of your life. Why hobbies matter and how bikes, music, golf, drawing, and other forms of play can return us to ourselves. Why "don't call it art" can be liberating for anyone who feels trapped by labels or legitimacy. How to use jealousy, disgust, and frustration as creative information instead of letting them turn into bitterness. Why people pay attention when someone truly believes in what they are doing. The Core Idea: Forget the Nouns. Do the Verbs. The fastest way to get unstuck is often to stop asking what you are and start paying attention to what you do. That sounds simple, but it is one of the biggest traps in creative work. We get obsessed with identity. Am I an artist? Am I a real writer? Am I a serious photographer? Am I a professional? Am I successful enough to call myself this thing? Am I allowed? That kind of thinking can freeze you before you even start. Kids do not have that problem. They are not trying to become "artists." They are drawing. They are building. They are making noise. They are inventing stories. They are throwing materials around and seeing what happens. Austin's point is not that craft does not matter. It is not that ambition does not matter. It is not that we should abandon discipline. It is that the living center of creativity is action. The verb comes first. Make the thing. Move the pencil. Open the notebook. Pick up the guitar. Ride the bike. Take the walk. Make the zine. Shoot the photo. Write the sentence. Start the weird little project that begins with, "Wouldn't it be funny if…" That is where the energy is. Play Is Creative R&D One of the big tensions in this conversation is the voice many of us carry around that says play is not practical. That voice says: You have responsibilities. You need to make money. You need to be serious. You need to have a plan. You need to stop messing around. Austin's response is that play is not the opposite of serious work. Play is often what makes serious work possible. He talks about play as research and development. Any healthy company needs R&D. It needs space to explore, test, wander, fail, and discover things that cannot be found through pure efficiency. The same is true for a creative life. A lot of us start in explore mode. We are curious. We are trying things. We are learning. We are following our taste. We are discovering our voice. Then, if something works, we shift into exploit mode. We repeat the thing. We build a career around it. We systematize it. We professionalize it. We optimize it. That can be useful. But if you stay there forever, you eventually run out of juice. You need space to explore again. That is what play gives you. It returns you to the part of the process where you are not just producing, but discovering. And in creative work, discovery is everything. Create the Conditions, Then Get Out of the Way One of my favorite parts of this conversation is Austin's simple equation: Play = time + space + materials. That may sound almost too simple, but it is profound. When I look back at the most creative seasons of my life, the pattern is obvious. I had uninterrupted time. I had a place to go. I had the right materials around me. I had enough structure to begin and enough freedom to be surprised. That is what we often give kids when we want them to create. We give them a table, some paper, some markers, a chunk of time, and permission to make a mess. Then we grow up and deny ourselves the same basic conditions. We say we are blocked, stuck, confused, or uninspired, but often we have not created an environment where anything could actually emerge. No time. No space. No materials. No quiet. No room to tinker. The lesson is not complicated, but it is easy to forget: Set the conditions. Allow the work to happen. Get out of the way. That is not laziness. That is not indulgence. That is how the good stuff gets a chance to show up. The Best Ideas Often Come From Goofing Off I have said this before, and I mean it: so many of the best ideas in my life have come from goofing off. Not from trying to optimize. Not from grinding. Not from forcing. Not from staring at a blank screen and demanding genius. They came when I was tinkering. Playing. Walking. Talking with friends. Making something that had no obvious point. Trying something because it felt fun, strange, or impossible to explain. Austin and I talk about this because it is one of the hardest things for ambitious people to accept. We want the path to be linear. We want effort to equal outcome. We want the best ideas to come from the most serious hours. But creativity often does not work that way. The mind needs room. The body needs movement. The soul needs a little nonsense. Goofing off is not always avoidance. Sometimes it is how the deeper intelligence gets a chance to speak. Tools Should Be Toys Austin says something in this episode that every creator should sit with: Tools should be toys. That does not mean your tools are unimportant. It means the best tools invite you into a state of play. They make you want to touch them, try them, misuse them, combine them, push them, and see what happens. A sketchbook can be a toy. A camera can be a toy. A guitar pedal can be a toy. A bicycle can be a toy. A cheap notebook, a box of crayons, a microphone, a drum machine, a kitchen table, a phone in airplane mode, a pile of index cards — all of it can become part of the creative playground. The danger is when tools become only professional instruments. When every object in your creative life carries the pressure of output, performance, monetization, or proof, it becomes harder to begin. A toy invites curiosity. And curiosity is one of the most reliable doors back into making. Attention Is the Beginning of Everything Another major theme in this episode is attention. Austin shares a simple practice: start and end the day without your phone. Not as a moral performance. Not as some extreme digital detox. Just as a way to protect the edges of the day from people and companies that do not care about you, but desperately want your attention. That hit me hard. Because attention is not just another resource. In many ways, it is the resource. What you give your attention to shapes your thoughts, your desires, your mood, your relationships, your sense of possibility, and your work. If the first thing you do every morning is hand your mind to the internet, you are letting someone else set the tone for your day. Austin's practice is simple. Coffee. Breakfast. Journal. Kids. Life. Then the phone. At night, the phone charges in the kitchen. Small boundary. Huge impact. Creativity requires attention. And attention has to be protected. Return to Who You Were Before All This There is a beautiful thread in this conversation about returning to the things that made you feel alive before life got complicated. For Austin, that includes riding a bike and playing in a band. For me, golf has become one of those things. Not because it is productive in the traditional sense, but because it gets me outside, off my phone, walking with friends, and fully present for hours. That matters. A lot of people feel lost because they are trying to think their way back into aliveness. But sometimes the way back is physical. Pick up the instrument. Ride the bike. Throw the baseball. Walk the dog. Draw badly. Make noise. Get outside. Do the thing you used to love before you thought it had to mean something. Austin brings up the question: Who were you before all this? Before the career. Before the metrics. Before the audience. Before the obligations. Before the identity got heavy. There may be clues there. Not because you need to go backward, but because some part of you may have been waiting to be invited forward again. Don't Call It Art The title of Austin's book is not a dismissal of art. It is a liberation from the weight we put on the word. For a lot of people, "art" has become intimidating. Sacred. Serious. Something that belongs to museums, geniuses, experts, critics, galleries, and people who have permission. But making is older and deeper than all of that. Kids understand this. They do not call it art. They just do things. And when we stop obsessing over whether something is art, we create more room to actually make. We get less precious. Less frozen. Less performative. Less worried about the label and more connected to the act. That is the invitation: Don't call it art. Don't worry about being an artist. Forget the nouns. Do the verbs. Just make stuff. It sounds almost too simple. That is why it works. Use What Bothers You Austin also offers a surprising creative tactic: pay attention to what you hate. Not publicly. Not performatively. Not as a way to become bitter or cynical. But privately, as information. Disgust can point toward values. Frustration can reveal desire. Jealousy can show you something you want. The things that bother you can become clues, if you are willing to ask what the opposite would look like. Instead of turning your irritation into a rant, turn it into a project. What would you rather see in the world? What is the opposite of the thing you cannot stand? What would it look like to make that? That shift is powerful because it transforms complaint into creation. It turns "I hate this" into "What if we made something different?" People Pay Attention to Belief Near the end of the conversation, Austin shares a line from Kim Gordon that I love: "People will pay to watch other people believe in themselves." That is true in art. It is true in music. It is true in entrepreneurship. It is true in leadership. It is true in life. We are drawn to people who are alive in what they are doing. Not perfect. Not polished beyond recognition. Not optimized into sameness. Alive. When someone believes in what they are making, that belief travels. This does not mean you will always feel confident. It does not mean you will never doubt yourself. It does not mean every idea will work. It means you keep returning to the work. You keep paying attention to what matters to you. You keep making the thing only you can make in the way only you can make it. That is where the signal comes from. About Austin Kleon Austin Kleon is the New York Times bestselling author of a series of illustrated books about creativity in the digital age: Steal Like An Artist, Show Your Work!, Keep Going, and Don't Call It Art. He is also the author of Newspaper Blackout, a collection of poems made by redacting the newspaper with a permanent marker. His books have sold over two million copies and have been translated into more than 30 languages. Austin's work has been featured on NPR's Morning Edition, PBS Newshour, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal. New York Magazine called his work "brilliant," The Atlantic called him "positively one of the most interesting people on the Internet," and The New Yorker said his poems "resurrect the newspaper when everybody else is declaring it dead." He has spoken for organizations including Pixar, Google, Netflix, SXSW, TEDx, Dropbox, Adobe, and The Economist. In previous lives, he worked as a librarian, a web designer, and an advertising copywriter. He lives in Austin, Texas, with his wife and sons. Follow Austin Kleon Website Don't Call It Art Newsletter Instagram X YouTube Timecodes 04:24 – Austin returns to the show and talks about the new book 06:17 – How Austin's kids became his best creativity teachers 07:04 – What it means to take care of a creative person 10:43 – The childhood question that reveals what makes time disappear 18:34 – Why play is creative research and development 21:43 – Finding what you were not looking for 23:06 – How a fixed vision can blind you to what is actually in front of you 28:13 – Chase reflects on creating the right conditions for creative work 31:37 – Austin's equation: play equals time plus space plus materials 32:48 – Why tools should feel more like toys 35:25 – Reconnecting with the activities that made you feel alive as a kid 38:53 – Who were you before all this? 43:08 – Protecting attention from companies that want to take it 44:17 – Starting and ending the day without your phone 47:08 – Why friendship, hobbies, and shared activities matter 57:17 – Where the title Don't Call It Art came from 58:32 – Forget the nouns, do the verbs, just make stuff 01:00:01 – Why "wouldn't it be funny if…" is a clue worth following 01:03:15 – Finding your creative family tree 01:06:36 – How to use frustration and disgust as creative information 01:08:31 – Why people pay attention when you believe in what you are doing 01:09:44 – Austin's newsletter, book tour, and where to find his work Questions to Ask Yourself If you want to turn this episode into action, take a few minutes with these questions: What did I do as a kid that made hours pass like minutes? Where am I making creativity heavier than it needs to be? What noun am I clinging to that might be keeping me from doing the verb? What conditions do I need in order to make more freely? Do I have time, space, and materials available on a regular basis? What tool in my life could become more like a toy? Where is my attention being stolen before I have a chance to choose? What hobby, activity, or form of play would help me return to myself? What bothers me enough that it might contain a creative clue? What would I make this week if I stopped worrying whether it counted as art? A Simple Practice for Making Like a Kid Again Here's something practical you can do this week. Set aside one uninterrupted hour. No phone. No audience. No outcome. No need to make something good. Choose a space. Put a few materials in front of you. Paper and markers. A camera. A guitar. A notebook. Clay. Index cards. A laptop with the internet off. Whatever feels inviting. Then begin with this prompt: Wouldn't it be funny if… Follow whatever comes next. Do not evaluate it too early. Do not ask what it is for. Do not decide whether it is art. Do not turn it into a brand, a strategy, or a pitch deck. Just make stuff. Then notice how you feel. Notice what surprised you. Notice whether something small wants to keep going. That is enough. Final Thought The longer I do this work, the more I believe that creativity is not something we need to earn. It is something we need to return to. It was there before the labels. Before the pressure. Before the metrics. Before the platforms. Before the fear of being judged. Before we learned to ask whether we were allowed. Austin's invitation in this conversation is simple, generous, and quietly radical: Stop making creativity so precious that you cannot touch it. Give yourself time. Give yourself space. Give yourself materials. Protect your attention. Find your friends. Pick up the toy. Follow the weird little idea. Let yourself begin before you know what it means. Until next time: forget the nouns, do the verbs, and just make stuff.

Hey friends, Chase here Let's talk about golf. And before you check out because you're not a golfer, hang with me for a minute — because this episode isn't really about golf. It's about life. It's about what happens when things don't go according to plan. When the ball lands somewhere ugly. When you're stuck behind a tree, buried in the sand, sitting in a divot, or staring down a shot you didn't want and didn't ask for. In golf, there's a phrase: play it as it lies. You don't get to move the ball just because the situation is inconvenient. You don't get to pretend the shot is easier than it is. You don't get to rewrite reality so it matches the version you had in your head. You look at what's in front of you. You accept the lie. And then you play the next shot. That idea has become one of the most useful metaphors in my life. Because life, like golf, rarely unfolds exactly the way we imagined. Even our best-laid plans run into rough patches. The course changes. The weather shifts. The terrain surprises us. Sometimes the thing we thought would be straightforward turns into the hardest shot of the day. And the question becomes: Can you stop fighting reality long enough to respond to it? That's what this episode is about. Not golf tips. Not swing mechanics. Not how to lower your handicap. It's about resilience. Presence. Ego. Preparation. Adaptability. Learning from mistakes. And remembering that the little things — the short putts, the quiet choices, the small daily actions — often matter just as much as the big dramatic swings. Here's the thing golf teaches you fast: You can do almost everything "right" and still end up in a bad spot. You can prepare. Practice. Visualize. Get coaching. Set goals. Build routines. Show up with the best intentions. And still, eventually, you're going to hit one sideways. That's not failure. That's the game. And more importantly, that's life. The people who keep growing aren't the ones who never hit bad shots. They're the ones who learn how to recover. They're the ones who don't let one ugly moment become the story of the whole round. They're the ones who can take a breath, look at what's real, and ask: What's the best next move from here? The Core Idea You don't get to choose every lie. But you do get to choose how you play it. That's the heart of this episode. In golf, the course is full of imperfections. A root here. A bunker there. A weird patch of grass. A branch that grew out at exactly the wrong angle. A divot you didn't create but now have to deal with. You don't get to pretend those things aren't there. You have to confront the reality of the shot. Life works the same way. Sometimes you get the clean fairway lie. Sometimes you're in the rough. Sometimes you're blocked. Sometimes the conditions change overnight. Sometimes you did everything you could and still landed somewhere difficult. The mistake most of us make is wasting energy wishing the lie were different. But the power move is acceptance. Not passive acceptance. Not resignation. Not pretending you like the situation. Acceptance as in: This is what's true. Now what? That mindset builds resilience because it pulls you out of fantasy and back into agency. It reminds you that while you may not control the terrain, you still control your next swing. What You'll Hear in This Episode This episode is built around a set of lessons golf has taught me — lessons that reach far beyond the course. Why "play it as it lies" is one of the best life philosophies for dealing with reality, setbacks, and uncertainty How to stay present after a bad shot instead of letting one mistake define everything that follows Why your best shot might come right after your worst one — and what Tiger Woods can teach us about staying neutral The hidden value of playing with someone new and staying open to unfamiliar people, personalities, and situations How ego quietly ruins the game — in golf, creativity, business, relationships, and life Why mistakes are feedback when you're willing to study them without shame What it means to play against the course instead of obsessing over comparison Why preparation matters even when you can't control the outcome How the little things add up — the one-inch putts, the daily habits, the small choices that shape the final score Play It Like It Is The first lesson is simple: play it like it is. In golf, the traditional phrase is "play it as it lies." Wherever the ball lands, that's where you play from. You don't get to deny the circumstances. You don't get to pretend you have a perfect lie when you don't. You don't get to spend the whole round frustrated because the course has imperfections. You adapt. That's such a powerful life lesson because so much of our suffering comes from arguing with what's already true. We think, This shouldn't be happening. Maybe it shouldn't. But it is. And the faster we can stop resisting reality, the faster we can begin responding to it. This doesn't mean you don't have emotions. It doesn't mean you don't get frustrated. It doesn't mean you don't acknowledge that something is hard or unfair or disappointing. It means you don't stay stuck there. You look at the lie. You study the conditions. You adjust. You play the next shot. That's resilience. That's adaptability. That's life. Your Best Shot Can Follow Your Worst One One of the most iconic moments in golf came from Tiger Woods at the Masters. The shot itself was extraordinary — the ball rolling slowly, almost impossibly, toward the hole, pausing for a split second, then taking one final turn and dropping in. But what makes that moment even more powerful is what came before it. That incredible shot followed one of his most disappointing shots of the tournament. That's the lesson. Your best shot can come right after your worst one. But only if you stay present enough to take it. Most of us do the opposite. We make one mistake and immediately leave the moment. We replay what went wrong. We narrate the failure. We spiral. We decide the round is ruined, the project is doomed, the day is shot, the dream is over. But the next shot doesn't care about the last one. It only asks whether you're here. That's the discipline: staying neutral. Staying composed. Staying available to the possibility that something beautiful can happen next. Not because you're pretending the bad shot didn't happen. Because you're refusing to let it own the rest of the round. Play With Somebody New Golf has this funny thing built into it: sometimes you show up and get paired with people you don't know. That can feel awkward. It can feel inconvenient. It can feel like a curveball. But if you stay open, it can also be a gift. You might play with someone who's been at it for nine months or nineteen years. You might learn something from a beginner. You might learn something from a veteran. You might meet someone you never would have crossed paths with otherwise. You also might get paired with someone who doesn't exactly light you up. And that's part of the lesson too. The point isn't that every stranger becomes a lifelong friend. The point is that there's value in staying open. There's value in learning how to share the course. There's value in practicing patience, kindness, curiosity, and connection over a few hours. Life works this way all the time. We get paired with coworkers, collaborators, clients, neighbors, strangers, and people whose rhythms are different from ours. Sometimes it's magic. Sometimes it's friction. But either way, there's something to learn if we're not closed off before the first shot. Disconnect From the Ego Golf will expose your ego fast. It's hard to hit a tiny white ball with a club toward a hole hundreds of yards away. It's hard to do it consistently. It's hard to make the body, mind, mechanics, course, weather, and emotions all cooperate at the same time. And because it's hard, the ego wants to jump in. It wants to explain every bad shot. It wants to justify every mistake. It wants to narrate every swing so nobody thinks less of you. I used to do this all the time. Good shot, bad shot — I had a comment. An explanation. A little story about what happened or why it happened. Eventually, I realized: it doesn't matter. That was all ego. The shot is the shot. The score is the score. The work is the work. When you can detach from constantly judging yourself — good or bad — you free up so much energy. You can laugh. Learn. Keep going. Try again. You can be in the experience instead of performing an identity around the experience. That's true in golf. It's true in creativity. It's true in leadership. It's true in life. The ego wants protection. The game requires presence. Learn From the Mistakes Golf is endlessly humbling because no two rounds are exactly alike. The course changes. The grass changes. The greens change. The wind changes. The pin placement changes. The conditions you played yesterday may not be the conditions you face today. That means mistakes are inevitable. But mistakes are also information. When a shot doesn't go as planned, you have a chance to study what happened. Was it your setup? Your focus? The wind? The club selection? The lie? The speed of the green? Your emotional state? The point isn't to shame yourself. The point is to learn. This is one of the biggest differences between people who keep improving and people who stay stuck. Stuck people turn mistakes into identity. Growing people turn mistakes into feedback. Nobody plays a flawless round. Nobody lives a flawless life. The goal isn't to avoid every mistake. The goal is to build the capacity for error recovery. To adapt. Improve. Persist. Keep moving. That's where growth happens. You're Playing Against the Course Yes, golf can be competitive. You can play against other people. You can compare scores. You can enter tournaments. You can measure yourself against the field. But at its core, you're playing the course. You can't hit someone else's ball. You can't control their swing. You can't determine how they handle pressure, luck, weather, mistakes, or momentum. You show up and play your round. That's such a useful way to think about life. We spend so much energy comparing ourselves to other people. Their success. Their timing. Their resources. Their audience. Their path. Their scorecard. But comparison pulls us out of our own game. Your job is to play the course in front of you as well as you can. That doesn't mean you don't care about excellence. It doesn't mean you don't compete. It means you understand where your power actually lives. Your preparation. Your choices. Your attitude. Your recovery. Your next shot. When you focus there, the results have a way of speaking for themselves. Preparation Is Key Preparation matters in golf just like it matters in life. Not everyone can swing like a pro. Not everyone has the same athletic ability, experience, or natural feel for the game. But everyone can prepare. Everyone can stand over the ball with intention. Everyone can build a routine. Everyone can line up carefully. Everyone can take the setup seriously. That's a powerful distinction. You may not control the outcome, but you can control the setup. In life, that might look like how you start your day. How you enter a conversation. How you prepare for a meeting. How you train your body. How you manage your attention. How you create the conditions for better work. No Olympic hurdler goes from the couch to the starting line without warming up. And yet so many of us expect ourselves to perform at a high level without creating the conditions that make performance possible. Preparation isn't glamorous. But it compounds. And when the pressure comes, you'll be grateful you built the habit before you needed it. The Little Things Matter One of the funniest things about golf is that a 390-yard drive and a one-inch tap-in both count as one stroke. The big swing and the tiny putt have the same weight on the scorecard. That's humbling. It's also a perfect metaphor. In life, we tend to overvalue the big moments. The launch. The deal. The breakthrough. The dramatic decision. The visible win. But the small things matter just as much, often more. How you start your day. How you speak to people. How you recover from frustration. How you express gratitude. How you care for your relationships. How you practice when nobody's watching. How you handle the little putts. A successful life isn't only built on big swings. It's built on the accumulation of small, deliberate actions repeated over time. The details count. The short shots count. The quiet moments count. Every stroke matters. Timecodes (So You Can Jump to What You Need) If you're not listening straight through, here are a few landmarks to help you find the part that speaks to where you are right now: 01:46 – Why golf became an unexpected obsession again 03:13 – The lessons from the course that go way beyond golf 03:41 – Lesson 1: Play it as it lies 05:58 – Lesson 2: Stay present after a bad shot 07:42 – Lesson 3: Play with somebody new 09:30 – Lesson 4: Disconnect from the ego 11:13 – Lesson 5: Learn from mistakes 14:13 – Lesson 6: You're playing against the course 15:58 – Lesson 7: Preparation is key 17:32 – Why the little things matter as much as the big swings 19:00 – Bringing the lessons together: presence, ego, mistakes, preparation, and playing the lie you're given Read This If Life Has You in the Rough If you're in a season where things aren't going according to plan, I want you to hold onto this: You don't have to like the lie to play it well. You can be frustrated and still be powerful. You can be disappointed and still be capable. You can wish things were different and still take responsibility for the next move. That's the work. So much of life is learning how to stop waiting for perfect conditions. We tell ourselves we'll begin when the timing is better, when the resources are better, when the path is clearer, when the lie is cleaner. But the course rarely offers perfect conditions. And if we wait for them, we miss the game. The question is not, Is this the shot I wanted? The question is, What does this shot require? That shift changes everything. It moves you from complaint to creativity. From resistance to agency. From ego to presence. From helplessness to the next right action. Questions to Ask Yourself If you want to turn this episode into action, take a few minutes and sit with these: Where in my life am I refusing to accept the lie in front of me? What reality am I arguing with that I could be responding to instead? What was my last "bad shot," and what can it teach me? Am I letting ego narrate my mistakes instead of simply learning from them? Where am I comparing my round to someone else's instead of playing my own course? What small habit, detail, or "one-inch putt" deserves more of my attention? How can I better prepare for the challenges I already know are coming? What would it look like to stay present for the next shot? A Simple Practice for Playing It As It Lies Here's something practical you can do this week. Pick one area of your life where the conditions are not ideal. Maybe it's work. A relationship. A creative project. Your health. Your schedule. Your finances. A goal that feels harder than expected. Then write down three things: The lie: What is actually true right now? The resistance: What do I keep wishing were different? The next shot: What is one useful action I can take from here? Keep it simple. Don't solve your whole life. Don't redesign the entire course. Don't wait for clarity to arrive in perfect form. Just play the next shot. Because momentum doesn't come from perfect conditions. It comes from honest action. Final Thought Golf has reminded me that life is not just the big swings. It's the small strokes. The recovery shots. The bad lies. The quiet adjustments. The willingness to laugh, learn, reset, and keep moving. It's playing with new people. It's staying present after disappointment. It's disconnecting from ego. It's preparing well. It's learning from mistakes. It's remembering that you're not really playing against everyone else. You're playing the course in front of you. And some days, the ball is going to land in a divot. Some days, it's going to end up in the bunker. Some days, you're going to look down and think, Really? This is what I have to work with? Yes. That's the lie. Now play it. Until next time: stay present, let go of the ego, prepare well, and remember — play it as it lies.

Hey friends, Chase here Let's talk about one of the most important questions every creator eventually asks: How do I find my creative voice? Or maybe you've heard it framed another way: How do I develop a personal style? How do I make work that actually feels like mine? How do I stop copying what everyone else is doing and start creating from a place that is uniquely my own? This question comes up all the time because it sits at the center of the creative life. Whether you're a photographer, designer, writer, filmmaker, musician, entrepreneur, or someone who simply feels called to make things, there comes a point where technical ability is not enough. You can know how to use the tools. You can understand the software. You can study the masters. You can follow the trends. You can learn the settings, the systems, the formulas, the workflows. But eventually, you hit a deeper question: What makes this mine? That is what this episode is about. And I want to be clear from the start: finding your creative voice is not about inventing some perfect brand identity overnight. It's not about locking yourself into one narrow lane forever. It's not about deciding, intellectually, "This is my style now," and then forcing every piece of work to fit inside that box. Your creative voice is much more organic than that. It is your fingerprint. Your point of view. Your taste. Your history. Your instincts. Your lived experience. Your way of seeing the world, translated through the things you make. And the only way to find it is to make. Not once. Not occasionally. Not only when you feel inspired. Again and again and again. The Big Question: What Is Personal Style? Personal style can sound like one of those vague creative phrases that floats around in the universe without ever becoming useful. People say things like, "You need to find your style," or "You need to develop your voice," but what does that actually mean? At its simplest, personal style is the thing that makes your work recognizable. It's the equivalent of your handwriting. You don't have to think about your handwriting every time you write your name. It's not something you consciously construct letter by letter. It just comes out of you because it has been shaped by repetition, history, muscle memory, and identity. Your creative style works the same way. It is the unique aesthetic fingerprint that you unconsciously put on everything you make. Think about music. You can hear a Prince song for just a few measures and know it's Prince before his voice even enters. There's a signature there. A rhythm. A tone. A sensibility. A way the work announces itself. Think about photography. You can look at an Ansel Adams landscape and recognize the scale, the drama, the tonality, the reverence for nature. It has a point of view. That's personal style. It's not just what you make. It's how you see. It's what you notice. It's what you repeat without realizing you're repeating it. It's the pattern behind the work. And that matters because without some kind of recognizable point of view, you're just bouncing around. You might be technically capable. You might be able to make a good photograph, a good song, a good design, a good film, a good essay. But if there's nothing distinctive about the way you make it, people have a harder time connecting that work back to you. Personal style is what helps the work become yours. Why Your Creative Voice Matters There are two big reasons personal style matters. The first is personal. If you spend your life chasing everyone else's style, you're going to end up miserable. Now, let's be honest: early in the creative journey, imitation is part of the process. That's normal. That's healthy. That's how we learn. You see someone whose work you admire and you try to understand how they did it. You copy a lighting setup. You study a sentence structure. You recreate a beat. You reverse-engineer a design. You try to make something that looks or sounds or feels like the thing that inspired you. There's nothing wrong with that. In the beginning, imitation helps you learn how to move the tools around. It helps you close the gap between what you see in your mind and what you're actually capable of making. But imitation is not the destination. If all you ever do is copy what's trendy, or borrow someone else's point of view, or chase whatever style is getting attention right now, you are not expressing yourself. You are expressing the culture around you. And that is a direct path to burnout. Because the reason we make things, at the deepest level, is expression. We make because something inside wants to come out. We make because it feels good to turn an internal experience into something real in the world. We make because creativity is one of the ways we become more fully ourselves. If your work is always a response to someone else's style, you lose that connection. You become a mirror instead of a source. The second reason personal style matters is practical. If you want to do creative work professionally, you do not want to be paid merely for your time. There is nothing wrong with getting paid for your time. That can be part of the path. But the ultimate goal is not to be treated like a pair of hands. The ultimate goal is to be paid for your vision. You don't want someone to hire you because you own a camera. You want them to hire you because only you see the assignment that way. You don't want someone to hire you because you can operate software. You want them to hire you because your taste, your judgment, and your perspective create value. You don't want to be interchangeable. The most recognized creatives in the world are not valuable because they can execute a task. They are valuable because they bring a specific point of view to the table. That's what separates craft from commodity. When people can recognize your fingerprints on the work, when they can say, "That feels like you," you begin to move into a different category. You're no longer just competing on speed, price, or availability. You're competing on vision. And that is where the upside is. The Creative Gap One of the most important parts of this conversation is what Ira Glass famously called the creative gap. The creative gap is the distance between what you can see in your mind and what you're actually capable of making right now. Every creator knows this feeling. You have a vision. You can feel what you want the work to be. You can almost see it, hear it, taste it. But when you sit down to make the thing, the result falls short. The photograph doesn't look the way it looked in your head. The song doesn't hit the way you imagined. The essay feels clumsy. The design feels flat. The film doesn't carry the emotion you hoped it would. That gap is frustrating. But it is also the path. Craft is how you close the gap. You make, you study, you adjust, you learn, you make again. Over time, your ability catches up to your taste. You get better at translating the thing in your mind into the thing in the world. But here's the trap: If you spend that entire process only copying other people, you might improve technically without ever developing a voice of your own. You might become skilled at imitation. But mastery is not just being able to reproduce what already exists. Mastery is being able to make what only you can make. Personal Style Is Your Point of View Your creative voice is not just an aesthetic. It's not just black and white photography, clean typography, heavy brushstrokes, fast sketches, cinematic lighting, sparse production, or bold color. Those things can be part of a style, but they are not the whole thing. Your style is the point of view underneath those choices. It is the reason you reach for certain tools. The reason you frame things a certain way. The reason you simplify here and exaggerate there. The reason you are drawn to certain subjects, moods, colors, rhythms, textures, or stories. The episode uses a great example from the world of design: imagine trying to design a tennis shoe inspired by a glass bottle of gin. Suddenly, the bottle becomes a filter. You might notice the transparency, the edges, the shape, the weight, the way light moves through it. Those qualities start informing the shoe. That is a useful way to think about style. Your personal style is the filter your work passes through. It's not limited to one medium. If you are a photographer, designer, musician, writer, or multidisciplinary creator, your style should still carry across what you make. The medium may change, but the point of view travels. That's when people can look at a piece and say: That feels like you. Not because you repeated yourself mechanically, but because your way of seeing is present. How Do You Find Your Creative Voice? Here's the part people don't always want to hear: It takes time. There is no shortcut that replaces making the work. You can think about your style. You can journal about it. You can moodboard it. You can study other artists. You can talk about your influences. You can define your values. All of that can be useful. But none of it replaces the act of making. The best way to find your personal style is to make as much as you can, at a regular cadence, ideally as quickly and consistently as possible. Because your style is not something you force into existence. It is something you discover through repetition. You make one thing. Then ten things. Then a hundred things. At first, it may feel random. You may feel like you're all over the place. You may try on other people's approaches. You may borrow. You may experiment. You may make things that don't feel like you at all. That's okay. The making is the sorting mechanism. Over time, patterns start to appear. You notice what you keep returning to. You notice what feels alive. You notice what feels false. You notice the choices you make when nobody is telling you what to do. And eventually, if you put twenty of your pieces on a wall mixed in with other people's work, someone should be able to walk in and pick yours out. That is the litmus test. Not because every piece looks identical, but because there is a through-line. There is a signal. There is a voice. Your Style Might Not Be What You Expected One of the most important reminders in this episode is that your personal style may not be what you thought it would be. You might think you want to be known for clean, minimal design, only to realize that your real energy comes through in fast, expressive, messy sketches. You might think you want to make quiet, polished work, only to discover that your strength is intensity, humor, or chaos. You might think you want to be one kind of artist, but the work keeps revealing that you are someone else. That can be uncomfortable. But it can also be liberating. Your creative voice is not always the version of yourself you imagined. Sometimes it is the version of yourself that keeps showing up when you stop performing. This is why making is so important. You cannot discover your true style by sitting around and thinking about who you wish you were. You discover it by creating enough evidence that you can finally see who you actually are. What You'll Hear in This Episode This episode breaks the question of creative voice into three practical parts: what personal style is, why it matters, and how to actually find it. Here are the ideas worth listening for: Why personal style is like your creative handwriting — the unconscious fingerprint you put on everything you make Why imitation is useful early on, but dangerous if you never move beyond it How the creative gap works — and why craft is what helps you close it Why you don't want to be paid only for your time, but for your point of view How recognizable style builds value, trust, and creative opportunity Why you can't force your personal style — you have to uncover it through making Why making 100 things teaches you more than endlessly thinking about the perfect direction How specialization can actually create more freedom, not less Why trying to be everything to everyone will dilute your work and drain your energy Timecodes So You Can Jump to What You Need If you're not listening straight through, here are a few landmarks to help you find the part that speaks to where you are right now: 01:45 – Welcome and the big question: how do you develop a personal style? 02:04 – The three-part framework: what personal style is, why it matters, and how to find it 02:50 – What personal style actually means for photographers, designers, writers, musicians, and creators 03:18 – Personal style as your creative handwriting or aesthetic fingerprint 04:34 – Why developing a personal style matters 05:25 – Why chasing everyone else's style leads to misery and burnout 06:08 – Ira Glass, the creative gap, and the path toward mastery 07:10 – Why you want to be paid for your point of view, not just your time 09:46 – Edward de Bono, Stefan Sagmeister, and using outside references to understand style 11:31 – The tactical answer: how to actually find your personal style 11:46 – Why there are no shortcuts — and why making is the path 12:32 – Why your unique life experience is the source of your point of view 13:41 – Make one thing, then ten things, then one hundred things 14:00 – The litmus test: can someone identify your work in a crowd? 16:06 – Why you cannot be all things to all people 16:55 – How mastery in one area can help you learn and master many things 18:01 – Why specialization unlocks opportunity instead of limiting it Read This If You Feel Like You Haven't Found Your Voice Yet If you feel like you haven't found your creative voice yet, I want you to hear this: You are not behind. You are in the process. It is easy to look at someone whose style seems fully formed and assume they were born with it. But what you are seeing is usually the result of years of making, failing, repeating, refining, borrowing, rejecting, and returning to the work. Style is not a lightning bolt. It is sediment. It builds layer by layer through practice. Every project teaches you something. Every experiment leaves a trace. Every failed attempt helps you understand what is not yours. Every finished piece gives you more information. So if you feel unclear, the answer is not to wait until you feel certain. The answer is to make. Make the thing. Then make another. Then make another. Then look back and listen for the pattern. Your voice is not hiding from you. It is waiting for enough evidence to reveal itself. The Danger of Chasing Trends There is a difference between research and copying. Looking broadly at culture, studying what's happening, noticing what inspires you, and learning from other artists is part of being creatively alive. But copying one person's style over and over again is not research. It's imitation. And if you spend too much time chasing trends, you train yourself to look outward for permission instead of inward for direction. Trends can teach you what's happening now. They cannot tell you who you are. That doesn't mean you need to ignore the world. It means you need to metabolize what you see. Take in inspiration. Study widely. Notice what moves you. But then ask: What do I have to say about this? What is my relationship to this idea? What part of this connects to my lived experience? How does this become mine? Your work does not become original because it appears out of nowhere. Nothing does. Your work becomes original when your influences pass through your point of view. Don't Overthink It. Make It. There is a line in this episode that matters: Don't overthink it. Just make it. That does not mean thinking has no place in the creative process. Reflection matters. Strategy matters. Taste matters. Intention matters. But thinking cannot replace making. A lot of creators get stuck because they want to understand their style before they create enough work to reveal it. That's backwards. You don't find your voice and then make the work. You make the work and find your voice through it. This is why personal projects are so valuable. They give you a place to create without needing permission. They give you a space to follow curiosity. They let you experiment without the pressure of a client, an audience, or a perfect outcome. Personal projects are where your style gets room to breathe. Not everything has to be monetized. Not everything has to be optimized. Not everything has to be posted. Not everything has to become part of your portfolio. Sometimes the point is simply to learn what happens when you follow the impulse. Questions to Ask Yourself If you want to turn this episode into action, take a few minutes and sit with these questions: What kind of work do I keep returning to, even when nobody asks me to? Whose style am I currently copying, and what am I learning from that imitation? Where have I mistaken trend-chasing for creative growth? What choices show up again and again in my work? What subjects, themes, colors, sounds, rhythms, or ideas keep pulling me back? What would I make if I stopped trying to be impressive? What would I make if I stopped trying to be for everyone? Can someone recognize my work without seeing my name attached to it? What do I need to make 10 more of before I judge whether I have a style? A Simple Practice for Finding Your Creative Voice Here's a simple exercise: Choose one format. A photo series, a set of sketches, a short essay series, a beat tape, a design study, a daily video, whatever fits your craft. Make 10 versions. Not one perfect version. Ten honest attempts. Do them quickly enough that you can't over-polish the life out of them. Put them side by side. Look for what repeats. Ask someone you trust what feels most like you. Then make 10 more. The goal is not to force consistency. The goal is to gather evidence. What do you keep doing naturally? What feels alive? What feels borrowed? What feels like performance? What feels like truth? Your style is hidden in those patterns. Specialization Is Not a Trap A lot of creators resist personal style because they worry it will limit them. They think, "If I become known for one thing, I'll lose my range." But specialization does not have to mean becoming narrow. It means becoming recognizable. You can have range and still have a voice. In fact, range might be part of your style. But if nobody can identify the through-line, if your work feels like a different person made it every time, it becomes harder for people to understand what you stand for creatively. That does not mean you have to lock yourself into black and white portraits forever. It means you have to make enough work that your point of view becomes visible across the range. The goal is not sameness. The goal is coherence. You Cannot Be All Things to All People This is one of the hardest lessons in creative work. You cannot be all things to all people. If you try, your work will suffer. Your energy will suffer. Your sense of self will suffer. When you chase 58 different styles because you want everyone to like you, you dilute the very thing that makes your work valuable. The goal is not to please everyone. The goal is to express something true enough that the right people recognize it. That takes courage because it means letting go of some possibilities. It means not being for every client, every audience, every trend, every platform, every room. But that is also where freedom begins. When you stop trying to be everything, you can finally become something specific. And specific is powerful. The Path Is Create, Share, Sustain The loop is simple, but not easy: Create. Share. Sustain. Get feedback. Make again. That's how you grow. Not by waiting for clarity. Not by endlessly planning. Not by collecting inspiration forever. Not by thinking your way into a fully formed identity. You create. You put work into the world. You pay attention. You learn. You keep going. Over time, that loop builds both style and mastery. And here's the advanced part: once you learn how to master one thing, you start to understand how learning itself works. You begin to recognize the patterns of growth. You understand what deliberate practice feels like. You know how to move through frustration. You know how to close the creative gap. Mastery in one area can become a doorway into mastery in others. But first, you have to do the work in front of you. The Core Idea Your creative voice is not something you find by waiting. It is something you uncover by making. Your personal style is your point of view made visible. It is the creative fingerprint that appears when you have made enough work to stop performing and start revealing. Yes, study the people you admire. Yes, learn the tools. Yes, imitate in the beginning. Yes, experiment broadly. But then return to the work. Make one thing. Then ten. Then a hundred. Look for the patterns. Trust what keeps showing up. Let your lived experience inform the choices. Stop trying to be all things to all people. The world does not need a perfect copy of someone else. It needs the thing only you can make. Until next time: focus on the making, trust your point of view, and remember — your creative voice is already in there. The work is how you bring it out.

Hey friends, Chase here This episode is short and direct — and it centers on a truth most of us spend years trying to outgrow: playing it safe has a cost. Not just a financial cost. Not just an "I didn't take the leap" cost. I'm talking about the hidden cost — the slow trade of your originality for approval, your curiosity for compliance, your honest voice for whatever feels least risky. A lot of us were trained early to optimize for fitting in. To sit still. To follow directions. To avoid disrupting the room. And to be clear: the people who guided us usually meant well. But the system most of us came through wasn't designed to help you uncover what you're here to make — it was designed to produce consistency. Efficiency. Predictable outcomes. Over time, that training can dull the very thing that makes your work matter: your vitality. Your weirdness. Your edge. The parts of you that feel a little too honest, too quirky, too intense, too much. Here's the core idea: The price of playing it safe is your creative aliveness. Because safety doesn't just keep you from failing — it keeps you from telling the truth. It keeps you from risking rejection. It keeps you from letting the messy, human parts of you show up in your work. And ironically, those are the parts that make your work unmistakably yours. This episode is about noticing what you avoid — not to judge yourself, but to learn from it. What are you most reluctant to share? What do you hide because it feels weird or embarrassing or "not polished enough"? Those uncomfortable pockets of truth are often where your most compelling work is waiting. In today's episode I cover: Why "playing it safe" quietly drains originality and momentum How early conditioning teaches us to trade creativity for approval How to use what you avoid as fuel for your most honest work If you've been feeling stuck, uninspired, or like your work isn't quite you, this episode is an invitation to look in the direction you usually look away from — not to blow up your life, but to reclaim the parts of yourself you've been filtering out. Until next time, be brave enough to be seen — and don't forget: the safest path often costs the most.

Hey friends, Chase here This episode is short and direct — and it centers on an idea that runs counter to how most of us try to solve creative problems. When we feel stuck, uncertain, or restless, our instinct is usually to think harder. To analyze. To wait for clarity. But here's the truth I've learned the hard way: you can't think your way forward. Clarity doesn't come from sitting on the couch running mental simulations. It comes from action. From making. From trying things in the real world and paying attention to what happens next. Early in my career, I hit a real creative rut. I questioned whether photography was truly my thing, or whether some other medium might be a better fit. And I could have stayed stuck in that loop for months — thinking, debating, second-guessing. Instead, I ran experiments. I tried painting. I learned from it. And just as importantly, I learned what wasn't my path. Here's the core idea: action beats intellect. Thinking has its place, but it's a terrible primary strategy for getting unstuck. You don't reason your way into momentum — you move your way into it. Volume creates insight. Making creates feedback. And feedback is what quiets doubt. This episode is about why experimentation isn't a distraction from commitment — it's how commitment is formed. It's about turning down the noise in your head by turning up the work. In today's episode I cover: Why you can't think your way out of a creative rut How action creates clarity faster than analysis Why making more work often leads to better work If you've been waiting to feel "ready" before you move, this episode is a reminder that readiness follows action — not the other way around. Until next time, default to action — and remember: you can't think your way forward.

Hey friends, Chase here This episode is short and direct — and it centers on an idea that quietly changes everything once you really see it: most people aren't stuck because they're lazy or unmotivated. They're stuck because they confuse urgency with importance. We've been trained to react. To answer what's loud, immediate, and demanding. Emails. Notifications. Small fires that feel productive simply because they need attention right now. But being busy isn't the same thing as making progress — and activity is not the same as effectiveness. What I've learned over time is that the best work of your life rarely feels urgent in the moment. It's the work you could put off. The work that doesn't break anything if you ignore it today — but quietly shapes everything if you commit to it consistently. Here's the core idea: Real progress lives in the important, not the urgent. When you prioritize what actually matters — even if it doesn't scream for your attention — chaos starts to fall away. You still work hard. You still show up. But you stop letting urgency dictate your life and start choosing your direction instead. This episode is about stepping off the hamster wheel, building systems that protect your time and energy, and learning how to focus on the work that moves your life forward — not just fills your days. In today's episode I cover: Why being busy is often a distraction from what matters most How to think about urgent vs. important work Where your biggest creative and life gains actually come from If you've been working hard but feeling like you're spinning your wheels, this episode is an invitation to slow down just enough to aim better — and to make space for the work that truly counts. Until next time, choose what's important — not just what's urgent.