This week’s conversation is with Chase Jarvis, an award-winning artist, entrepreneur, and one of the most influential photographers of the past 20 years.

His expansive work ranges from shooting advertising campaigns for companies like Apple, Nike, and Red Bull; to working with athletes like Serena Williams and Tony Hawk, to collaborating with renowned icons like Lady Gaga and Richard Branson.

In 2013 Chase contributed to the Pulitzer-Prize winning New York Times story, Snowfall, and in 2014, earned an Emmy nomination for his documentary, Portrait of a City.

He also created Best Camera – the first photo app to share images to social networks, and is the founder of CreativeLive, where more than 10 million students learn photography, video, design, music and business from the world’s top creators and entrepreneurs.

He also has a new book, Creative Calling, which debuted as an instant National Best Seller.

I think you can probably infer what this conversation is about – it’s about creativity and more specifically how you can unlock your creative potential.

“We’re taught that making mistakes is bad so we should avoid them. What we really should be taught is, it’s not about avoiding mistakes, it’s about error recovery. It’s about making mistakes and actually being able to recover quickly from them.”

In This Episode:

• Realizing his creative potential in early life… started with inheriting a camera from his grandpa
• Made a career for himself in photography, working with action-sports athletes and high performers
• Tested sharing what he was learning online and built a community around teaching photography for free to the masses
• How he learned to trust his intuition vs. accepting rational thought
• Why it’s important to focus on your “true north” rather than worry about following this straight line of how life should play out
• What fulfillment means to him
• His quest to make the word create less intimidating
• Mastery… can you master your self with without mastering a craft
• How labels can shape our identity and who we become for the wrong reasons
• What his self-discovery process looks like: a willingness to make mistakes but recover quickly
• His biggest mistake… what went wrong with his app, Best Camera, and what he learned from it