The Chase Jarvis LIVE Show

Hey friends, Chase here
Jeff Boyd is on the show today, and this conversation is about building the kind of life and business that does not always look like the predominant story on the internet.
Jeff is the founder and chairman of MTE, More Than Energy, which he describes in this episode as "an energy that loves you back." Before that, he spent 15 years as the President and co-owner of Luggage Free, where he expanded global operations to more than 100 countries before selling the company in 2019.
What I loved about this conversation is that it is not the usual story about chasing the next app, raising venture capital, or building something because the internet told you that is what entrepreneurship is supposed to look like.
This is a conversation about physical products, unsexy businesses, competition, fatherhood, leadership, and what it means to keep choosing hard things on purpose.
Jeff says it plainly right at the top:
"That's why I tell my team all the time. They just look at me and I'm like, if it were easy, everybody be doing it. We got to do what nobody else is willing to do, and then you're going to be happy we did it. And I tell them that I'm like, oh yeah, this is hard. And I'm excited about it. Because now that's an opportunity for us because we'll outwork anybody."
That idea is at the center of this episode. We talk about the grind of building something real, why curiosity matters more than credentials, what sports teach us about business, why leadership is not about personality type, and how the best things in life often come down to loving the process instead of obsessing over the outcome.
Why This Conversation Matters Right Now
Most of the entrepreneurs and creators we see online are building in public, building digitally, or building something that looks like the current version of what the internet rewards. There is nothing wrong with that, but it is not the only path.
In this episode, I say:
"A lot of folks I know in the audience feel a pressure to make their businesses walk and talk and look like the creators and the entrepreneurs that see out there in the world, which is one of the reasons I want to start celebrating some people who are building really successful lives, careers."
That is why I wanted to have Jeff on the show. He built and sold a shipping business. Now he is building a physical product in the health and wellness space. He is not chasing the obvious thing. He is not trying to make his work look like everyone else's.
Jeff's path is a reminder that there is a whole world of entrepreneurship outside the digital-first story. There are products, services, local businesses, physical goods, retail shelves, manufacturing problems, customer conversations, teams, families, and real-life constraints.
And sometimes, that is where the opportunity is.
What We Explore in This Episode
Jeff's early business story and how he became employee one at a shipping company before helping grow it around the world.
The "answer is yes" mindset that helped Luggage Free expand into all 50 states and more than 100 countries.
Why physical products are different and what changes when you are building with atoms instead of bits.
The origin of MTE and why Jeff wanted to build "an energy that loves you back."
What it means to enjoy the grind when the work is hard, relentless, and full of problems you do not know how to solve yet.
Fatherhood, presence, and time and why Jeff says he is "so all in now" with his family.
Competition, sport, and business and why Jeff still trains and competes as a long jumper.
Leadership and authenticity and why Jeff says people do what you do, not what you say you do.
Second and third career arcs and what Jeff has learned about zooming out, building teams, and letting people play the right roles.
The Core Idea: If It Were Easy, Everybody Would Be Doing It
One of the strongest threads in this conversation is Jeff's relationship with hard things. He is not pretending the grind is glamorous. He says straight up that building physical products, selling through retail, and getting people to care is hard.
But he also sees that difficulty as part of the opportunity.
"You know I some of this stuff I think the harder it is, the better for me. For sure. You want, you want to bear. People are going to be like, oh, I don't have the guts to do this. That's right. Yeah. And then the ones that do, that's a that's another level, right? That's another fence they cleared. But then it's like, okay, well now you did that. But are you ready to grind now because it's a grind."
That is the mindset that shows up again and again in the episode. The point is not that everything should be hard for the sake of being hard. The point is that difficulty can reveal where other people quit.
That is true in sport. It is true in business. It is true in building a family, a product, a brand, a company, or a body of work.
The Answer Is Yes
Jeff's first major business story starts with Luggage Free. At the beginning, the company was taking orders by hand and trying to get the phone to ring. Then the first real call came in.
"Anyway, so we're trying to get the phone to ring so we can handwrite our orders. And the first call, the guy, you know, we're all. It was kind of like a movie. We're all like, you know, hushed around him, waiting, you know, hearing him, he's like, oh, I'm sorry, we don't serve. North Carolina hangs up. And we were like, oh, dude, Gary, of course you serve anybody."
That moment became a kind of operating philosophy:
"And I was like, from now on, the answer is yes. Like whatever anybody says answered yes. And with that really that charge? Yeah. We were quickly in all 50 states and we grew to 109 countries throughout the world. And it was always in response to a call."
There is something powerful in that. Not because saying yes is always the right answer, but because early in a business, the market often tells you where to go before your strategy deck does.
Someone calls. Someone asks. Someone has a need. Someone gives you a clue.
The question is whether you are willing to follow it.
Building Something You Can Hold
After selling Luggage Free in 2019, Jeff had time and space. He was not rushing into the next thing. He was riding his bike, playing tennis, spending time with his family, and looking for what might call him next.
What called him was not another service business. It was a physical product.
"And so in 19 sold it 2019, 2019 were operating all over the world, offices all over and sold it and was kind of free to at that point, I was like, all right, I want to like what I loved about it was the challenge and the fun and the competition. Right. You're building, you're competing."
He continues:
"But I what I yearn for was a product and something that was tangible I could actually hold right and do a different scent or a different flavor or different size or different color, whatever."
That desire eventually became MTE. Jeff had been trying to solve his own energy problem, stacking supplements, chasing better mood, better energy, and better performance, until he realized the pieces were not working together.
"And I realized I was like, Frankenstein. I mean, like, we were talking about it last night, like piling all these supplements together to try and make yourself feel better, even even like ten supplements, which doesn't sound that bad. Shit. Crazy. Yeah. We'll be like a suitcase full when you're traveling, you know?"
MTE came from that search.
"So we built it's an energy that loves you back. Right. Like an energy drink that loves you back. Yeah. Right. So you get prebiotics and caffeine free blend. That's better than caffeine. Yeah. So now you're getting energy that feels great that you can trust. Sure. And no jitters, no crash, no impact on sleep."
Curiosity, Thrill, and Figuring It Out
One of my favorite parts of this conversation is when Jeff talks about starting something in a category where he did not have obvious experience. He had not built beverage brands before. He was not a chemist. He was stepping into a new world.
His answer was not fear. It was curiosity.
"Yeah. Like, I like hair on fire. Like, let's go figure this out."
Then he gets to the larger point:
"I like it's curiosity and thrill. And that's what it boils down to. Right. Like, I think you you like that's what entrepreneurship is. It's solving problems and and finding solutions to things. Even if you've done it 20 times, they're going to be solutions that need to be had in the evolving world and landscape in which we operate."
That is entrepreneurship in a sentence. You do not get to know everything before you begin. You do not get a guarantee that the answer is obvious. You get a problem, a question, a changing landscape, and the chance to learn fast enough to keep moving.
Jeff says:
"But that's why I love it. I think if, if we boil it down, I love the curiosity that that is necessary to just because you're like, I don't know the answer to that. Instead of that overwhelming me or said of panicking, I'm going to go learn because I'm sure there's more than one answer. We'll figure out. Maybe we'll triangulate, figure it out. Yeah, get to a solution. And and then we'll know for next time. And then we'll be able to iterate and make it better. And on it go. Like I love that process."
You Have to Love the Process
The conversation moves from business into fatherhood, sport, and the shape of a life. Again and again, we come back to process.
Jeff says it directly:
"Yeah. You have to love the process, right? And I think that's true of anything, particularly in stuff like that where it's easy to focus on the outcome. I'm lose 20 pounds, I'm going to whatever it is, I'm going to get this promotion, you know. And then I think what happens is then the outcome just naturally happens because you love the process."
This applies to entrepreneurship, training, parenting, leadership, and creative work. If you are only trying to reach the finish line, you miss the life that happens while you are getting there.
Jeff connects that idea to family:
"Like the time is fleeting, right? For whatever it is. And you really have to enjoy the journey because, you know, like, I look at things like, if it's a line that's made up of just millions and millions of dots, and those dots would represent any given period in time."
He continues:
"Right. College graduation, high school graduation. They get married like whenever it is. You've decided that they've you've set them free. The that point will just be one of hundreds of millions of points that made up the line. Yeah. So, you know, looking and it's kind of the same with like a business, right. Like if you're just all you want to do is sell the business, you're just focused on that. You're going to miss all these hundreds of millions of, of experiences or anything else, right?"
Competition Brings Out the Best in People
Jeff is still a competitive long jumper. He talks about master's track, world records, regional meets, and the way competition gives him purpose.
That competitive lens shows up in business too.
"I love it, I love it, I think I think I love to compete. Like I was just telling my buddy the other day, like, I don't like when he's fine, but I hate losing, which is weird, right?"
Then he goes deeper:
"So I just love the competition, and I love the process that goes into it. And having, you know, so being able to have a purpose and go in and compete and I love competing. Sure. I just think it brings out the best in people."
For Jeff, sport is one vehicle for competition, but not the only one. Business is another.
"Sports is just a vehicle to compete. Right. So is it the competition like because it brings the best out in you or why do you like it. Yeah, I think I think just that it's the vehicle for sports. Sure. So I like it as an umbrella. I love it in the business."
He talks about the shipping company in that same frame:
"Like even the shipping company I had towards the end, I was I didn't have a lot of passion for it, but I had, you know, a very competitive space and there were upstarts in the industry and you're like, all right, well, these guys are trying to take my lunch money, you know, like, right. Not on my watch."
Leadership Means Leading From the Front
When I ask Jeff what is required of leadership, his answer is simple:
"Got to lead from the front, I think. Right. I mean, yeah, it's people do what you do, not what you say you do."
He adds:
"I think you need to be genuine too. Yeah. Right. Like, if you're, if you're genuine and authentic, I think people are more prone to get in line and buy in and say, I'm, I'm, I'm subscribing to what? You're where you're leading me again."
That is an important distinction. Leadership is not just having followers. It is not having the loudest voice in the room. It is not projecting certainty at all times.
It is what people see you do.
It is the consistency between your words and your behavior. It is whether the people around you believe that the thing you are asking from them is something you are willing to model yourself.
Nobody Does It Alone
Later in the conversation, Jeff talks about what he has learned in this newer chapter of his life and career. One lesson is the importance of zooming out. Another is the myth of the lone genius.
"And then the other thing I've learned is you like, nobody does it alone. Right? I mean, that's like total myth. Yeah. The myth of the lone wolf. The lone genius. Yeah. It's, you know, you need a you need a whole group of people that are going to bring ideas that you would have never thought of. They're going to execute your ideas that you do have."
He continues:
"Right? They're going to they're just they're going to champion for you in ways that you never even knew needed to be championed. You know, I mean, all the things you need a you need a great team and you need to find."
That is a hard-earned lesson for builders. The bigger the thing you are trying to create, the less likely it is that you can muscle your way through alone.
You need ideas you would not have had. You need people who can execute. You need people who can challenge you, support you, and help you see what you are missing.
Role Players Matter
One of the most useful leadership ideas in this episode is Jeff's realization that not everyone on a team has to be an all-star.
"And the other thing I talk about all the time is it's you have to resist the urge to demand that everybody in your team is an all star, right? Like even the greatest sports teams have role players, and they have guys that sit on the bench to get the starters ready for the playoffs."
He explains what he learned:
"But they don't, you know, they're they're effectively benchwarmers. But they have a role in the team. And you have a trainer and you have a coach and assistant coaches and all. You know, it's it's the whole organization."
That perspective changed the way he thought about people and teams:
"That was difficult for me earlier on. I, I just felt like everybody had to be an all star. If you're not at all star, you're you're like, I'm failing you or you're failing me. And either way, you got to go. You know, we're going to get somebody else in here."
The lesson is not to lower standards. It is to understand roles. Great teams are not built by pretending everyone is supposed to contribute in the same way.
About Jeff Boyd
Jeff Boyd is the founder and chairman of MTE (More Than Energy), colloquially known as 'energy that loves you back'. MTE has prebiotics and a caffeine-free blend that functions better than caffeine, giving users feel good energy they can trust, with no spike, no crash, and no impact on sleep.
Prior to founding MTE, Jeff spent 15 years as the President and co-owner of Luggage Free where he expanded global operations to over 100 countries before selling the company in 2019.
In his free time, Jeff is a notorious oenophile, cyclist and long jumper. If he's not on the bike, on the track, or in the cellar, he enjoys traveling the world with his wife and two children.
www.getmte.com
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YouTube
Timecodes
00:00 – Jeff on why hard things create opportunity
02:06 – Chase welcomes Jeff to the show in Seattle
02:21 – Why this episode is different from the usual digital-first entrepreneurship conversation
05:21 – Jeff begins the story of becoming employee one at a shipping company
07:35 – "From now on, the answer is yes"
09:21 – Selling the company in 2019 and wanting to build a product
10:31 – Jeff starts getting the itch to build something new
15:40 – Why building a physical product is not a get-rich-quick scheme
17:57 – Jeff explains MTE: "an energy that loves you back"
22:35 – Starting in a category where you do not have all the experience
23:59 – Curiosity, thrill, and solving problems as entrepreneurship
28:01 – Fatherhood and being "born to be a dad"
31:12 – Why Jeff is "so all in now" with his family
33:16 – Time, family, business, and "millions and millions of dots"
36:18 – Why you have to love the process
38:15 – Attitude, winning, and sports psychology
39:23 – Jeff on still competing in long jump
42:00 – Why Jeff loves competition
46:33 – Leadership, authenticity, and leading from the front
50:45 – Zooming out and finding your North Star
51:47 – Why nobody does it alone
52:05 – Building teams with role players, not only all-stars
58:37 – "When people show you who they are, believe them"
01:03:14 – MTE cans, flavor work, and mango pineapple
01:05:08 – The Reggie Watts collaboration
01:09:20 – Why the harder path can be better
01:12:15 – Retail as the next frontier
01:17:03 – Jeff's three-pillar vision for MTE
01:17:45 – Ingredients, paraxanthine, prebiotics, and clean energy
Questions to Ask Yourself
If you want to turn this episode into action, take a few minutes with these questions:
Where am I making my business or creative life look like someone else's version of success?
What is the "non sexy" opportunity I might be overlooking because it does not look cool online?
Where could "the answer is yes" help me learn faster?
What hard thing am I avoiding that might actually be the opportunity?
What problem do I not know how to solve yet, and who could help me triangulate an answer?
Where am I too focused on the outcome and missing the process?
What part of my life is made up of "millions and millions of dots" that I need to appreciate now?
Am I leading from the front, or only telling people what I value?
Where am I expecting everyone to be an all-star instead of building a real team?
What would it look like to zoom out and find the North Star again?
A Simple Practice for Builders
Here's something practical you can do this week.
Pick one hard thing in your work or life that you have been treating as a sign to stop. It might be a distribution problem, a hiring problem, a creative problem, a sales problem, a health problem, or a relationship problem.
Then sit with Jeff's line:
"Oh yeah, this is hard. And I'm excited about it."
Do not use that line to pretend the hard thing is easy. Use it to reframe what the hard thing might be showing you. It may be pointing to the part where other people quit. It may be pointing to the skill you need to build next. It may be pointing to the person you need to ask, the rep you need to take, or the process you need to fall in love with again.
The work is not always to find an easier road.
Sometimes the work is to become the kind of person who can walk the hard one with more purpose.
Final Thought
This episode is a reminder that business is not only about scale, speed, funding, or hype. It is also about curiosity, grit, family, physical products, role players, clean energy, long jumps, retail shelves, hard conversations, and the willingness to keep learning when you do not already know the answer.
Jeff's story is not about avoiding the grind. It is about choosing the right grind.
It is about building something thoughtfully, leading from the front, and staying close enough to the process that the outcome has room to take care of itself.
Until next time: do what nobody else is willing to do, and love the process enough to keep going.

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
Eric Zimmer is on the show today, and this conversation is exactly the kind of reminder we all need when we are trying to change something real.
You probably know Eric from The One You Feed, his award-winning podcast about wisdom, behavior change, mental health, spirituality, and what it means to live well.
But Eric's new book, How a Little Becomes a Lot: The Art of Small Changes for a More Meaningful Life, goes somewhere even more fundamental.
It asks a question that feels especially urgent for creators, entrepreneurs, leaders, parents, and anyone trying to build a meaningful life in a world that constantly tells us to optimize everything:
What if lasting change is not about becoming more disciplined, but about learning how to stop fighting yourself?
That question matters because most of us have made change too heavy. We wrap it in shame, pressure, perfectionism, identity, ambition, self-criticism, and the fantasy of the big breakthrough. We get stuck waiting for the epiphany, the watershed moment, the dramatic turn where everything finally becomes clear.
Eric's message is simpler, deeper, and more freeing:
"There are moments that stand out because we pull them out and we pluck them out and we make them important, but they don't make sense without the moments before and after. There's all these little, deeply uninteresting moments where I made a small choice to move towards my recovery and away from my addiction again and again. And that's the way change really works."
That idea is the center of this episode. We talk about Eric's journey from homelessness and heroin addiction to recovery, coaching, teaching, and writing; why your mind has a mind of its own; how to work with competing desires instead of pretending they are not there; and why small choices compound into a completely different life.
This conversation is about loosening the grip. It is about getting back to the part of you that knows what matters, even when another part of you wants comfort, distraction, escape, or relief right now.
Why This Conversation Matters Right Now
We are living in a strange moment for anyone who wants to grow. On one hand, there has never been more access to tools, ideas, books, podcasts, teachers, frameworks, research, and practices that can help us change.
That is extraordinary.
But it also comes with a cost. The pressure to optimize every corner of our lives has never been stronger. Every scroll seems to bring another routine, another system, another habit, another rule, another version of the person we are supposed to become.
We are constantly being asked to improve ourselves:
What is your morning routine?
What habit are you tracking?
What are you optimizing?
What are you building?
What are you eliminating?
What is the plan?
Those questions can be useful at the right time. But when they show up too early, or too often, they can turn growth into another way of beating ourselves up.
Eric's work reminds us that change begins with honesty. Before the perfect habit. Before the flawless system. Before the heroic reinvention. Before the new identity. Before the transformation story, there is a person being pulled in different directions.
Wanting to change. Wanting to stay comfortable. Wanting what matters most. Wanting what feels good right now. Wanting freedom. Wanting safety. Wanting growth. Wanting acceptance.
That does not mean something is wrong with you.
It means you are human.
And in that understanding, there is a kind of wisdom most self-improvement advice forgets.
What We Explore in This Episode
Eric's low point at 24 and how homelessness, heroin addiction, illness, and the threat of prison became the beginning of his recovery journey.
Why the big turning point is not the whole story and why change actually happens in the small choices that come after.
How to understand the "off-camera moments" of transformation that never make the montage but make all the difference.
Why your mind has a mind of its own and what it means to be a motivationally complex person.
How to work with what you want now and what you want most without shaming yourself for having competing desires.
Why "playing the tape all the way through" can help you see past the first scene your mind wants to show you.
How structure and story both shape change, and why systems alone are not always enough.
How to hold change and acceptance at the same time when life refuses to fit into simple categories.
Why trying smaller can create momentum when trying harder is not working.
The Core Idea: Little by Little, a Little Becomes a Lot
The fastest way to get unstuck is often to stop waiting for the big transformation and start paying attention to the next small choice.
We get obsessed with the dramatic moment. The rock bottom. The epiphany. The vow. The clean break. The day everything changed. We want the music to swell. We want the story to make sense.
Eric's story has one of those moments. At 24, he was homeless, addicted to heroin, physically depleted, and facing the possibility of decades in prison. Going into long-term treatment mattered.
But Eric is careful not to confuse the turning point with the transformation.
The transformation was not one decision.
It was thousands.
The decision to move toward recovery again. The decision to not use again. The decision to show up again. The decision to do the next small thing again. The decision to choose what mattered most over what felt urgent right now.
The on-camera moment gets the attention. The off-camera moments create the life.
Eric's point is not that ambition does not matter. It is not that insight does not matter. It is not that we should abandon goals, systems, or discipline.
It is that the living center of change is choice.
The small one comes first.
Your Mind Has a Mind of Its Own
One of the big tensions in this conversation is the voice many of us carry around that says, "If I really wanted to change, this would be easier."
That voice says:
You should have more discipline.
You should be more consistent.
You should know better by now.
You should not still struggle with this.
You should be able to just decide.
Eric's response is that we are not simple creatures. We are motivationally complex.
We do not want one thing. We want lots of things.
We want what we value most, and we want what feels good right now. We want to grow, and we want to be comfortable. We want to change, and we want to be accepted exactly as we are.
That is why the phrase "your mind has a mind of its own" is so useful.
It gives language to something we all experience.
You decide you are going to do one thing, and then you watch yourself do another. You know what would help, and still you avoid it. You care deeply about the future, and still the present moment feels more real.
The work is not to shame that complexity out of yourself.
The work is to understand it.
Play the Tape All the Way Through
One of my favorite parts of this conversation is Eric's explanation of a recovery practice called "playing the tape all the way through."
When we want something in the moment, our mind often shows us only the first scene.
The first scene is relief.
The first scene is escape.
The first scene is pleasure, comfort, avoidance, or release.
In Eric's addiction, that first scene was all the reasons getting high would feel amazing. But recovery taught him not to stop there. He had to keep the tape running.
Then what?
The shame comes back. The fear comes back. The despair comes back. The consequences come back. The craving comes back, often stronger than before.
This is such a powerful tool because it makes the future less abstract.
Before you avoid the work, play the tape through.
Before you send the angry email, play the tape through.
Before you break the promise to yourself, play the tape through.
Not to punish yourself.
To see clearly.
Structure Matters, But It Is Not the Whole Story
Eric makes an important distinction in this episode between the external architecture of change and the internal moments of choice.
A lot of personal growth advice focuses on structure.
Set the goal. Build the system. Make the habit obvious. Make the habit easy. Design the environment. Remove friction. Put the right reminders in place.
That matters.
But structure is not the whole story.
Because even when you know exactly what to do, and even when you have made it as easy as possible, the moment still comes.
You and the choice.
Do you write?
Do you walk?
Do you call?
Do you tell the truth?
Do you choose what you want most over what you want now?
When we do not make the choice we wanted to make, Eric says there is usually something happening inside us. A feeling. A thought pattern. A story. A fear. A form of self-doubt we have not learned how to work with yet.
That is why real change needs both.
The structure and the story.
Try It Smaller
Eric says something in this episode that every ambitious person should sit with:
Try it smaller.
That does not mean the goal does not matter. It means the path has to be walkable.
When a change plan is not working, many of us assume we need more discipline. More pressure. More intensity. More accountability.
But often, the better move is to make the action smaller.
If you cannot write for two hours, write for ten minutes.
If you cannot meditate for 30 minutes, sit for three breaths.
If you cannot change your whole health routine, put on your shoes and walk around the block.
If you cannot face the entire project, open the document.
Small does not mean meaningless.
Small means repeatable.
And repeatable is where momentum comes from.
Change and Acceptance Are Not Opposites
Another major theme in this episode is the tension between growth and acceptance.
One of the best parts of us wants to change. We want to grow, improve, heal, create, recover, repair, and build better lives.
And yet, so many wisdom traditions point us toward acceptance. Presence. Contentment. Allowing things to be as they are.
So which is it?
Do we change, or do we accept?
Eric's answer is that very often we have to do both about the exact same thing.
He talks about depression in his own life. Is that something he has changed, or something he has accepted?
Both.
There are things he does that make depression less likely. There are practices, supports, behaviors, and choices that help. And sometimes the cycle comes around anyway, and the most skillful thing he can do is say, "Oh, this is what's here."
That is not resignation.
That is honesty.
Wise Habits Create Momentum With Compassion
The title of Eric's book is not just a catchy phrase. It is a worldview.
A little becomes a lot.
Not because one tiny action changes everything overnight, but because small choices compound. They build identity. They build trust. They build momentum. They begin to align our daily actions with our deeper values.
Eric calls these Wise Habits.
They are not just outer behaviors designed to make us more efficient. They also include inner attitudes that bring more peace, clarity, and self-compassion to everyday life.
That matters because self-criticism is often mistaken for seriousness.
We think if we are hard enough on ourselves, we will finally change.
But harshness usually creates more resistance. More shame. More hiding. More all-or-nothing thinking.
A Wise Habit does something different.
It helps us move forward without declaring war on ourselves.
Ask What Problem You Are Solving
Near the end of the conversation, Eric offers a simple question that I love:
What problem are you solving?
That question is a filter.
Because we are surrounded by advice. Every day, someone is telling us to start a new routine, stop eating at a certain time, wake up earlier, track something, optimize something, remove something, add something, become something.
Some of those ideas might be useful.
But not every good idea is your idea.
Not every habit belongs in your life.
Before you collect another self-improvement assignment, ask what problem you are actually trying to solve.
That question brings you back to values.
It brings you back to clarity.
It brings you back to the life you are actually living.
About Eric Zimmer
Eric Zimmer is an author, teacher, speaker, behavior coach, and the creator of The One You Feed, an award-winning podcast about wisdom, behavior change, mental health, spirituality, and what it means to live well.
At 24, Eric was homeless, addicted to heroin, and facing the possibility of decades in prison. His recovery sparked a lifelong exploration of human transformation, resilience, meaning, and the small daily choices that shape a life.
His new book, How a Little Becomes a Lot: The Art of Small Changes for a More Meaningful Life, brings together behavioral science, Zen Buddhism, modern psychology, and timeless wisdom to show how lasting transformation happens through small, repeatable choices.
Timecodes
00:00 – Eric on why change happens in the small off-camera moments
02:11 – Chase introduces Eric Zimmer and How a Little Becomes a Lot
05:25 – Eric shares the low point that became the beginning of his recovery journey
06:17 – Why Eric's extreme story contains something universal
09:34 – How treatment, recovery, and the question "why do we change?" shaped Eric's work
11:19 – The tension between wanting to grow and learning to accept where we are
13:48 – Why the big turning point only matters because of the choices that follow
15:12 – The difference between external architecture and internal moments of choice
18:29 – What it means that your mind has a mind of its own
19:07 – Why we are motivationally complex creatures
20:20 – The dilemma between what we want now and what we want most
22:00 – Why small changes require trust in the process
23:19 – Playing the tape all the way through
24:52 – The rider and the elephant as a model for change
26:30 – Why "you are the average of the five people around you" is incomplete
28:29 – Emergence, friendship, and why relationships are more than instruments for success
30:44 – How to seek growth while allowing life to be as it is
33:04 – Eric reflects on grief, Alzheimer's, and the practice of allowing
35:08 – Why some things must be both changed and accepted
38:31 – Two types of change: change that happens to us and change we cause to happen
39:01 – Getting clear on why you want to change
39:25 – Asking "what problem are you solving?" before chasing another tactic
40:42 – The SPA method and why specificity matters
41:53 – Planning for what will go wrong
42:14 – Deconstructing the choice point when you do not follow through
43:01 – Working with self-doubt skillfully enough to begin
43:50 – Why trying smaller can help you build consistency
44:21 – Chase reflects on the hope, kindness, and practicality of Eric's work
45:37 – Where to find Eric's book, podcast, and work
Questions to Ask Yourself
If you want to turn this episode into action, take a few minutes with these questions:
What change am I trying to make right now, and why does it actually matter to me?
Where am I waiting for a dramatic breakthrough instead of making the next small choice?
What am I trying to force that I might need to understand first?
What do I want now, and what do I want most?
What first scene is my mind showing me, and what happens if I play the tape all the way through?
What would it look like to try smaller instead of trying harder?
Where is self-criticism pretending to be discipline?
What part of my life needs more structure?
What part of my life needs more compassion?
What am I trying to change that I may also need to accept?
A Simple Practice for Making Real Change
Here's something practical you can do this week.
Choose one change you care about. Not ten. Not your whole life. One.
Ask yourself:
What problem am I solving?
Then make the next action smaller than your ambition wants it to be.
Open the document. Walk for five minutes. Sit for three breaths. Send the text. Put the shoes by the door. Write one paragraph. Make the call. Tell the truth in one sentence.
Do not evaluate it too early. Do not turn it into a full identity. Do not decide that it only counts if it is dramatic. Do not use one missed day as proof that you cannot change.
Just make the next small choice.
Then notice what happens. Notice what gets in the way. Notice what story shows up. Notice whether something in you begins to trust that change does not have to arrive all at once.
That is enough.
Final Thought
The longer I do this work, the more I believe that transformation is not something we can force. It is something we practice.
It happens after the decision. After the insight. After the moment we wish would change everything. It happens in the quiet, ordinary, off-camera choices that do not look like much at first.
Eric's invitation in this conversation is simple, generous, and quietly radical:
Stop making change so dramatic that you cannot touch it.
Get clear on what matters. Understand the parts of you that are pulling in different directions. Build the structure. Work with the story. Play the tape all the way through. Try it smaller. Return when you stumble.
Little by little, a little becomes a lot.
Until next time: make the next small choice, and keep feeding what matters most.

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.
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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
Eric Ries is back on the show, and this conversation goes far beyond startups, venture capital, or the mechanics of building a company.
You probably know Eric as the author of The Lean Startup, the book that changed how founders, creators, entrepreneurs, and teams think about building something new. His work helped popularize ideas like continuous innovation, validated learning, experimentation, and staying close to the customer instead of getting lost in theory, ego, or endless planning.
But this episode is not just about how to start something. It's about how to protect the thing you've built once it starts working.
Eric's new book, Incorruptible: Why Good Companies Go Bad…and How Great Companies Stay Great, asks a question that feels especially urgent for creators, entrepreneurs, founders, and leaders right now:
How do you build something that can grow without being captured, corrupted, or hollowed out?
That question matters whether you're running a company, building a personal brand, growing a creative practice, launching a product, choosing clients, working with sponsors, or trying to do work that actually reflects your values. Because success is not neutral. Success brings attention, opportunity, money, investors, partners, platforms, algorithms, expectations, incentives, shortcuts, and people who may not share the reason you started in the first place.
One of Eric's most powerful lines in this conversation is this:
"Success is not a source of strength. It is a liability, because success attracts predators."
That idea is the center of this episode. If you've ever built something that started to work, you know exactly what he means. The thing that made your work powerful can become the thing other people want to capture. The trust you built can become something others want to monetize. The values that made your community believe in you can suddenly feel inconvenient when there's more money on the table.
This conversation is about how to stay awake in the middle of that pressure. We talk about defining what you stand for, making decisions before the pressure arrives, treating trust as an asset, saying no to misaligned opportunities, and building something that can grow without losing its soul.
Why This Conversation Matters Right Now
We are living in a strange moment for creators and entrepreneurs. On one hand, there has never been more opportunity. An individual with a laptop, a camera, a newsletter, a product, an idea, or a point of view can reach people directly. You can build an audience, launch a business, compete with massive companies, and create a brand around your name, your work, your taste, your values, and your trust.
That is extraordinary, but it also comes with a real cost. The forces shaping our work have never been more intense. Platforms reward outrage. Algorithms reward simplification. Investors reward speed. Markets reward extraction. The pressure to be louder, faster, more polarizing, more optimized, and more "growth-minded" is everywhere.
Eric describes this pressure as a kind of gravity. It is the gravity of platforms, incentives, success, and other people's definitions of winning. If we are not conscious of those forces, they shape us without our permission.
That is one of the biggest themes in this episode: you are always being shaped by the systems you participate in. The question is whether you are awake enough to notice, honest enough to name it, and disciplined enough to choose a different path when the incentives start pulling you away from who you actually want to be.
What We Explore in This Episode
Why success can become a liability when it attracts people, money, platforms, and incentives that want to capture what you've built.
How creators get shaped by platforms and why the algorithm can quietly tune your voice, values, and identity toward whatever gets the most engagement.
Why trust may be the most valuable asset in business and why it is so easy to destroy with one short-term decision.
How to define an ethos before outside pressure, money, growth, or status starts making decisions for you.
Why "harder is easier" when your principles are clear enough to remove debate from the moments that matter.
How companies, creators, and brands slowly trade away their soul through small compromises that seem harmless in the moment.
Why alignment matters more than scale when choosing clients, customers, sponsors, platforms, partners, and investors.
How to build something durable without losing the trust, purpose, and values that made it worth building in the first place.
The Core Idea: Growth Without Betrayal
The real test of success is whether you can grow without betraying what made you worth trusting.
It is easy to talk about values when nothing is on the line. It is easy to say you care about quality, access, creativity, service, truth, community, or long-term thinking when the stakes are low. But values only become real when they cost you something.
That might happen when there is a big check on the table from a misaligned sponsor. It might happen when an investor wants a different path than the one you set out to build. It might happen when the algorithm rewards a version of you that is more inflammatory, less nuanced, and less honest. It might happen when you can quietly take the shortcut, ship something you don't believe in, or make a decision that no one will notice in the short term.
Those are the moments that reveal the truth. Not the words on the wall, not the mission statement, not the brand deck, and not the beautifully written values page. The decision is the proof.
Eric's argument is that if you want to build something incorruptible, you have to know what you stand for before those moments arrive. Once the pressure is here, it becomes much harder to think clearly.
Success Attracts Predators
One of the most powerful parts of this conversation is Eric's warning about success. Most of us are trained to think of success as pure upside: more customers, more revenue, more attention, more leverage, more opportunity, and more proof that the thing is working.
Eric flips that idea on its head. Success is not only a source of strength. It is also a liability, because the more valuable your work becomes, the more attractive it becomes to people and systems that want to use it for their own ends.
That can look like:
Investors who want growth at any cost.
Platforms that reward you for becoming a more extreme version of yourself.
Partners who want access to your audience but do not share your values.
A company acquiring a beloved brand and slowly stripping away what people trusted about it.
Your own internal pressure to keep the numbers moving up and to the right, even when the work starts to feel misaligned.
This is where corruption often begins. Not with one giant evil decision, but with tiny tradeoffs. A small compromise here, a slightly misaligned deal there, a decision that seems harmless because "no one will notice," or a shortcut taken because the quarter is tight.
Over time, the thing that made you trusted starts to erode. The work still looks successful from the outside, but inside the machine, something essential has been traded away.
The Gravity of Platforms
Eric and I also talk about the pressure creators face from platforms. This part is especially relevant if you make anything for the internet.
The promise of platforms is access. You can reach people, publish instantly, build a community, and grow a business without asking for permission from traditional gatekeepers. That is powerful, and I don't want to minimize how much opportunity that has created.
But platforms also have values. Not values in the human sense, but values in the incentive sense. They reward certain behaviors and punish others. They reward what keeps people clicking, watching, reacting, arguing, and coming back.
Over time, creators start to adapt. You post something thoughtful and nuanced, and almost nobody sees it. You post something sharper, more polarizing, more emotionally charged, and suddenly the platform lights up.
That teaches you something, whether you want it to or not.
The danger is that you start to confuse what the algorithm rewards with what people actually need. You begin making tiny adjustments: a stronger hook, a more controversial angle, less complexity, more certainty, more outrage, less truth. Eventually, you may not even notice that your voice has changed.
That is the gravity Eric is talking about. It is not a force that announces itself. It is a force that quietly pulls until one day you realize you have been shaped by something you never consciously chose.
Trust Is a Bank Account
One of my favorite ideas from Eric's book is what he calls the culture bank. The idea is simple: trust is an asset.
Every time you make a sacrifice for the sake of a principle, you make a deposit. Every time you betray a principle for short-term gain, you make a withdrawal.
Eric's rule is almost painfully simple:
Only make deposits. Never make withdrawals.
Of course, we are human. We make mistakes. Sometimes we think we are doing the right thing and we get it wrong. Sometimes something breaks, a customer gets disappointed, or a decision does not land the way we intended. That is not the point.
The point is not perfection. The point is to avoid intentional withdrawals.
Don't knowingly trade trust for a quick hit. Don't knowingly betray the values that made people believe in you. Don't knowingly cash out your reputation for something that will not matter a year from now.
Because trust takes a long time to build and almost no time to destroy. When you are a creator, founder, or entrepreneur, trust is not a soft idea. It is the business, the brand, the relationship, and the reason people come back.
Harder Is Easier
Another principle Eric shares is this: harder is easier. At first, that sounds backwards, but the more you sit with it, the more it makes sense.
When your principles are unclear, every decision becomes a debate:
Should we take this client?
Should we work with this sponsor?
Should we ship something that is not good enough?
Should we raise prices in a way that violates what we promised?
Should we optimize for short-term revenue even if it damages long-term trust?
If you don't know what you stand for, every one of those moments requires a new meeting, a new justification, a new argument, and a new rationalization.
When your principles are clear, many decisions become simpler. Not always easier in the short term, but simpler. You already know what the answer is. You may still have to do the hard work, find another way, absorb some pain, or get more creative, but you don't have to wonder who you are.
For a creator, this might mean knowing the kind of clients you will not take. For a founder, it might mean knowing the kind of investors you will not accept. For a leader, it might mean knowing the kind of culture you will not tolerate. For a brand, it might mean knowing which promises are sacred.
Values Are Not Decoration
We also talk about the difference between values as corporate decoration and values as operating instructions. Most of us have seen the empty version: company values on a wall, mission statements nobody remembers, and nice words that disappear the second the business is under pressure.
Real values are different because real values shape decisions. They influence who you hire, who you fire, who you serve, what you build, what you refuse, how you respond when something goes wrong, and what you do when nobody is watching.
At CreativeLive, one of our core values was access. That value shaped the business model. It shaped the decision to make live classes available for free while we were creating them. It shaped the way people encountered the brand and the way the community experienced the work.
Yes, there were plenty of moments where people looked at that and asked why we were giving so much away. But that was the point. Access wasn't a slogan. It was a decision, and the decision is what made the value real.
Alignment Beats Anyone With a Dollar
Toward the end of the conversation, we talk about one of the most important lessons for creators: not every customer is your customer.
Early on, this can be hard to hear. When you're trying to make a living with your camera, your writing, your design work, your product, your ideas, or your creative practice, the temptation is to say yes to anyone with a dollar and a heartbeat. I get it. I've been there.
Over time, though, the goal is not to work with everyone. The goal is to find the right people.
The right clients.
The right customers.
The right sponsors.
The right collaborators.
The right platforms.
The right partners.
The right community.
When I was making millions of dollars a year as a photographer, I didn't need millions of customers. I needed a small number of deeply aligned clients. That is true for a lot of creative businesses. Scale is seductive, but alignment is durable.
When you know your values, it becomes easier to choose who you want to work with and just as importantly, who you don't.
About Eric Ries
Eric Ries is an entrepreneur, author, and long-term thinker whose ideas have shaped how companies are built and managed over the last two decades.
He is the creator of the Lean Startup method and the author of the New York Times bestseller The Lean Startup, as well as The Leader's Guide and The Startup Way.
As a founder, Eric has put his ideas into practice through The Long-Term Stock Exchange, Answer.AI, the Lean Startup Co, Virgil, and IMVU, where the ideas that became the Lean Startup method were forged.
His new book, Incorruptible: Why Good Companies Go Bad…and How Great Companies Stay Great, explores why organizations lose their way and how leaders can build companies that endure without losing their soul.
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Timecodes
04:20 – Why this is an unusually powerful time to be a creator
06:31 – Why Eric says all of his books come from pain
07:29 – How platforms shape creators through algorithmic gravity
10:58 – Eric describes the war for the soul of the economy
13:40 – Chase shares what happened after raising venture capital for CreativeLive
17:17 – Why corruption often looks more like corrosion than scandal
19:52 – Why success attracts predators
21:35 – What Steve Jobs understood about defending principles
23:09 – Why companies need integrity and the ability to keep a promise
25:44 – How real values shape hiring, decisions, and culture
31:35 – Eric explains the "culture bank" and why trust is an asset
33:55 – Why the rule is simple: only make deposits, never withdrawals
36:05 – Chase shares the CreativeLive value of access
38:19 – How to recover when you make a mistake
44:16 – Why creators should choose alignment over anyone with a dollar
46:15 – Why the right audience matters more than the biggest audience
48:41 – Eric's new book, Incorruptible
Questions to Ask Yourself
If you want to turn this episode into action, take a few minutes with these questions:
What do I actually stand for in my work?
Where am I letting outside incentives shape my decisions without realizing it?
What kind of success would I not want if it required betraying my values?
Where have I confused growth with alignment?
Which clients, customers, platforms, sponsors, or partners are pulling me away from the work I want to be known for?
What is one trust deposit I could make this week?
What is one trust withdrawal I need to stop making?
What promise do I want my work to make and keep?
A Simple Practice for Staying Incorruptible
Here's something practical you can do this week. Write down three lists and be brutally honest with yourself:
What I stand for: the values that should guide your work, offers, partnerships, clients, platforms, and decisions.
What I will not trade: the principles you are unwilling to sacrifice for money, growth, attention, status, convenience, or approval.
What I need to change: the places where your current behavior is not aligned with what you say you believe.
This is not a branding exercise, and it is not about coming up with impressive words. It is about making decisions easier before the pressure arrives.
Because when the opportunity shows up, when the money is on the table, when the algorithm rewards the wrong thing, when the shortcut looks harmless, you want to already know who you are.
Final Thought
The longer I build things, the more I believe that trust is everything. Trust is what makes people come back. Trust is what makes a brand durable. Trust is what makes a creative career sustainable. Trust is what allows a company, a community, a body of work, or a reputation to compound over time.
But trust is also fragile. It can be spent, traded, and quietly eroded by decisions that seem small in the moment. That is why this conversation with Eric matters.
The goal is not just to build something successful. The goal is to build something worthy of the success it earns: something aligned, durable, and trustworthy enough that people can believe in it over the long term.
Until next time: know what you stand for, protect the trust you've built, and build something that can grow without being captured.