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Discover Work that Makes You Come Alive with Jonathan Fields

Hey, what's up? It's Chase. Welcome to another episode of the Chase Jarvis live show here on Creative Live. This is where I sit down with amazing humans and I do everything I can to unpack their brain with the goal of helping you live your dreams. My guest today is the one and only the inimitable Mr Jonathan Fields. Now, Jonathan, I've been friends for a long time and just just less than three years ago we got together in new york and he told me about a project he was working on that could identify the underlying characteristics of what fires people up. What helps them understand why this work pumps them up. This work drains them and I have since been along for the ride as he's developed this program uh it's called The spark A Type and it is also now a book. This if you have ever wanted to plug in and understand a little bit more about yourself to be able to think about the careers the past, the kind of work the underlying values that you have and where you might want to apply them thi...

s show. Today's episode is for you, yours truly And Jonathan Fields again, we're talking about how to discover with real depth what lights you up, how to identify action steps, this is an important part action steps, what are you gonna do to pursue those things once you've identified them And of course we talk about his new book sparked, discover your unique imprint for work that makes you come alive. I got to get out of the way so that you can enjoy this conversation again. Yours truly Jonathan Fields enjoy. Mhm. Mhm Yeah, we love you, Jonathan. Thank you so much for being on the show. Welcome. It's great to have you my man, it's so great to be here with you. It's been it's been a minute since we've been together in person or online. So true, excited to dive in. Its true, it has been a while and I miss it. I miss you. It's been too long. The last time we were together in new york. I think we spent some time at the Ace and then grabbed a meal after I miss it man. I know you too, you too. And one of the things that excites me most about the conversation we're about to have is that you planted a seed uh that was almost three years ago now, I think 2.5 years ago, maybe three years ago about what you were working on. I was of course talking to you about my book creative calling at that point and you are incredible show podcast which is always being mentioned in like the most inspiring shows. Um to, to be in that conversation about writing a book and to have you drop a seed that you were working on something that you may or may not turn into a book at that point. But it was fascinating to me and now here we are you've collected um I don't know what 30 million pieces of data and you've had a half a million people um go through your program and now you have a book that drops this week. So people, we've got to support Jonathan as a dear dear friend of the show, longtime co conspirator and like minded human, you've been working on the book is called sparked, but I'm hoping you can in your own words share with the audience what it is that you've been creating for the past several years and most importantly, why it is more well timed now than you could have ever imagined, even leading up to the pandemic. Yeah, I mean when we were, when we were hanging out in New York, I think was beginning in 2019. Right. And um so this whole body of work, I mean, the honest answer is it's actually two decades in the making, this is the culmination of everything that I have been doing for really on time. But we were talking Because I had spent the majority of the year before 2018 developing an assessment based on this set of archetypes that call sparky types which are all about meaningful work work that makes you come alive. And we've been building this assessment to try and help people tease out like, what is that sort of innate impulse for work that gets you up in the morning. Excite and energize you work. That gives you the feeling of meaning work that drops you into that transcendent state of flow that so many creators, you know what it is, but they don't necessarily know how to touch into it all the time. You know, let you feel fully expressed like you're not holding back, you're not stifling yourself and gives you a sense of purpose And I had developed our identified the set of 10 different archetypes or sparky types I call them and we spent the whole year building this assessment and you and I or jamming on the fact like is this even possible? Can you identify these things and could you build an assessment that would be a valid tool that would, you know, validate the ideas and also maybe help a lot of other people figure out what is this impulse in them and back then honestly, like I think we were both kind of like this sounds like an amazing idea, let's see what the data shows. You know, it was really early in the game and we had, we had been moving beta testers through the assessment and like any creative endeavor, you never know and you don't want to get too far ahead of yourself because you start to think you have a good idea, you start to think you're making something that will help a lot of people but you don't want to kind of curve fit it, you want to actually you want to let it prove itself so you know it's real, you know, and we were at that point where we had done all the foundational work and we had, we've identified these imprints and we built the tool and we were, we had beta testers and it was looking like we're getting really powerful results, but we were just on the verge of releasing it into the wild and, and I literally, I think was probably the week that we were talking, you know, we, we sort of sent the word out or like, hey, this thing is available for everybody and completely and utterly unprepared for what would happen next. If I had, if I had a hair on my head, it would have been blown back in a really big way. Um you know, in the intervening window, we've had well over half a million people complete this assessment. Now, we've got thousands more Um completing it every week, we've got, like you said over 25 million data points that have been generated from this thing and you know, on the one hand, really powerful validation of the original idea because when we went in a follow up study that we did 93% of the people told us that the results that they got were anywhere from very to extremely accurate, which is actually above the number that I thought, you know, we were aiming to hit, I was kind of like if we were in the eighties, that's a, it's going to be a really valuable tool for a lot of people. Um and then we started just again, let's talk about what the 80s is. four out of five times. It's right. So to if you're north of that, like that is that is insane. Yeah, and this is for, you know, a tool which is available for anyway and it's it's on the website is completely free. We wanted to make sure accessibility wasn't an issue for this particular tool. So on the one hand, it's really powerful from a research standpoint. You know, it's giving us a ton of data about these ideas. And on the other hand, we've got this tool that we put into the world that's helping people at scale spend a relatively small amount of time answering a series of questions and then immediately getting this, getting some insight back that says, okay, so this is the deeper impulse inside of you That wakes you up in the morning and gives you that feeling of of coming alive. Like I'm doing the thing that I'm here to do. We've actually since then um iterated once more. So we released a 2.0 version of the assessment earlier this year that expanded on the algorithm. Because the original assessment, what it did was it gave you give you two data points, what we call your primary sparkle type, which is think of it as your strongest impulse for work that makes you come alive and your shadow sparkle type, which is you could either say it's your runner up, it's like you're next strongest impulse but we've actually identified a much more nuanced relationship. Most people do the work of their shadow in order to be able to do the work of their primary better at a higher level. So we were sharing that and I'm happy. It's really like, oh yeah, what that we'll go deep. I just want you to get yeah. And then what we did is um in the 2.0 version of the assessment that we released earlier this year, um we added a new metric that I call the anti spark A type which is the exact opposite. Under the spectrum. It's the type of work that is most likely to be the heaviest lift for you to require the greatest external motivation to um take the most energy from you and require the greatest amount of recovery. And that doesn't mean you get to opt out of it for a lot of us. It's the work that is still part of what we have to do. Maybe it pays the bills or Yeah, exactly. You know, but at least it explains what's actually happening and why you're feeling this way. It's not that your slacker, it's not that you're bad and you may even get really good at doing this work because it will help it feel less onerous, but it's never going to give you the feeling that the work on the other side of the spectrum gives you. So, you know, we've been just constantly developing and building on the data and then the mountain of stories and use cases that we're getting back now as it goes out into the world and yeah, and that eventually um as a writer, you know, at some point everyone starts to tell you, you know, this has to be a book, Yeah. You know what a journey it was time, what a journey to go from sitting there on the couch at this hotel too. Now, I mean again, having done all that data collection and I want to define some terms here. So folks out there on the internet, whether you're listening or watching, when Jonathan says assessment talking, this is a beautifully uber streamlined uh set of questions. If you go to um the just google very easily here, way around the spark a type test, S P A R K E T Y P e sparkle type dot com. It's the test is right there and you can just start, I'll just give you an example of a question. So there's on the first page, the work that makes me feel most alive is when I'm turning ideas into things and there's a scale not me and totally me and there are seven uh you know, you can click the circle that you feel like most applies to you. So if it's really yes, this is totally a menu, click the circle on the far right and you do that for a number of questions and then it outputs an understanding of what makes you come alive. Your inner inner motivators around what I think you call it. The D. N. A. Is what was the phrase used? The D. N. A. Like A D. N. A. D. N. A. Level A DNA level impulse for what that makes you come alive. And it's a thing that exists underneath the jobs and the titles and the roles and the businesses and the industries. Is that like primal level thing that makes you just wake up in the morning and say like I will work so hard for no other reason than the feeling it gives me. So he's been collecting this data about everyone who's putting things into the and the outputs of what people you know are are basically meant to do with the things that are these inner drivers for years now. And so the book titled sparked is basically um a tool that helps you reclaim the things that are inside of you that the world has borrowed or abused or neglected and you can reclaim these things and refocus your life. And if I'm not mistaken, maybe for some orientation, part part of the reason you develop this is because didn't you have a little bit of a wait a minute, what am I doing moment in your life, Let's go way back. I know there was a yoga studio in there and before you were an author and before that take us back to why you even started this and what made you an expert on the topic? Yeah, I've had a series of inciting incidents and moments of reckoning um and reorientation like major, major pivots in my life, um you know, in a very past life, I I really, I was always a lemonade stand kid, uh you know, and I was very into health and well being as a kid. Um I left that all behind after college and and I ended up in law school and started into the career of law, you know, and I'm five years and um you were smarter than me, like, you started to go down that heavy academic path and then you made a left turn a lot faster. I sort of like stayed in it and then I went out into the career and and then, like, I don't know if the path of law at all, it's amazing for so many people, just the way that I was in it, it wasn't right for me, and I got about five years in and I found myself in a really tough situation working relentless hours um and barely ever going home insane amounts of stress with really, really high stakes and my immune system just collapsed and I ended up in the hospital, emergency surgery with a huge infection in the middle of my body and that was a wake up call for me, you know, and I realized that I was on my way out of the law and back into the world of entrepreneurship and health and well being and human potential, and that sent me um certainly gone on on this whole new journey um as I started into the world of fitness, um I built a company, I learned that industry, I sold it and then I was looking around for the next thing to do, I was living in Manhattan, married, had a new home, a three month old baby, and I was fascinated by the yoga world and I was like, I want to do something in this space because it seems like a really powerful modality. I really didn't know it very well, but I had a feeling I could do something because I'm always as an outsider, I always feel like for some odd reason, the fact that I don't have any experience or any knowledge in something gives me an advantage. It's like the beginner's mind, I'm not bound by whatever the rules are, I know you kind of feel that way too. I love it. Yeah, so, um, so I end up signing a six year lease for a florida building in hell's kitchen, new york excited to like open this new yoga center and hope that we do really good work for a lot of people, The date that I signed, that is September 10, 2001 You know, the day before 9-11 in New York City and I wake up the next morning, we all know what happened as we sit here having this conversation, We're just around the 20th anniversary of that date and um you know, when that day comes every year, no matter where I am, this will I believe be the first year that I'm actually not in New york city anymore and it's on the 20th anniversary, which feels very strange to me because that date was a big demarcation point in my life. You know, I had had the experience in the law realizing that sometimes you have to make really major changes and starting to seek out, how do people actually contribute to the world? How do they build livelihoods and work and life in a way that feels aligned with whatever the essence inside of them is so similar to a lot of the work you've done around calling, you know, and and I have been deepening into it and teasing out ideas in no small part in the world of well being, because there's a lot of feedback and I'm seeing a lot of people give up well being in the name of this thing they call work. And then I'm about to open a yoga center um when new york is in the darkest period and, and I have an experience on, on that same day where um somebody who we knew, who worked at the top of one of the towers never came home. And um and it was a realization that, you know, none of us are made any promises, you know, and that nobody plans to walk out the door on any given morning and never walk back in the door at night and we have one pass through, you know, and and to the extent that we can make the best use of that time and and really figure out what we're here to do, and that may look like 100 different things by the way, but we can figure out the undertone to that, the underlying impulse that and eat primal thing, you know, it may show up in 100 different ways, but what's the deeper thing then it would just enable us to make better choices, you know, and to step into that space so much more often, so much more readily and to stay there longer. So, those early moments for me were really powerful points of inflection first in my own life, in my own career. But then also when I started thinking about, well, what's really happening here on a scale in the context of the human condition, because there's so much suffering, there are so many people who walk into their lives and their working lives and spend the entire time there completely, you know, two ft to the left, or two ft to the right of anything that actually truly nourishes them and they kind of just figure, well that's what grownups do you keep on keeping on, you know? Um, and I completely get and understand it deeply held value of financial security, like I'm there, that matters to me. Um, but at the same time, feeling like you have to jettison any possibility of feelings of meaningfulness and purpose and flow and energy and joy in the name of it Is a false assumption. So I wanted to try and figure out and I've spent really two decades since then, it's literally the 20 year anniversary deepening into these questions, the big existential questions how do we find and do work? How do we invest ourselves in a way that gives us that feeling of being alive, We're on purpose were on fire. Um, and so every iteration of what I have done, whether it's building new companies, whether it was launching that yoga studio in building into this gorgeous global community, whether it's now moving on and writing books and building media and doing all these different things. When I look back at that red thread, you know, it's really, it's that question and the spark a type body of work, which really it developed into that, you know, when it started searching for a map, a bill set of imprint and impulses, it's the evolution of that work, you know, and stepping into that and much more focused And granular way in the last four or 5 years early. Well it is I remember the first time we talked about it like it was yesterday and then I took the test. That was a long time ago and it it helped me realize that I'm on track and this whether you feel like you know what you are supposed to be doing this sort of validated to me. But there was so much deeper, there was so much more depth than even personality type for me because personality type personality test anagrams, it doesn't always relate to uh the underpinnings of your D. N. A. As you think about how you want to spend your work time. You know and to me that helped me this was again a number of years ago when I first took it. Um and it was very validating and it I I think I had a follow up, we had a follow up conversation where I was asking you about oh God what was it? I think it was about my you know how I should package information if I have a message, you know what are the things that I'm most inclined to even though I'm a visual learner. And it seemingly it gave me what I feel like was courage to do things like write books and you and I are both podcasters and I've obviously been a video person for a long time. Just there was just this like a friendly reminder that it was okay to take risks that at my core, I am a risk taker. There was so many just moments of reconciliation or reminding or aligning um, and you've done it in such a thoughtful way. And again, one of the reasons that I find the book sparked um, and for those of you, again, it's his publication week, this week sparked, discover your unique imprint for work that makes you come alive. The, the stories, the case studies in there are super helpful because right now there are people who are sitting on a park bench or commuting or jogging on the jogging trail wherever we listen to watch podcasts and there's just there's a disconnect, there's a discontent and I find the timing of your work to be impeccable. No one could have foreseen a global pandemic, but we've just come through this period where we're all reevaluating everything. How do I spend my time? And we spent a year locked up wondering what was all that for pointing in the rear view mirror and where I want to go next. So was this just a happy accident or is this was this a big master plan? I mean, it's, it's unreal crazy to me. I'm hesitant to call it a happy accident. Our master plan, given the larger, constant true, it's true. That's well well stated. Thank you for saving me from myself that said um you know, you're so spot on. There are one of the things that this, that this moment has done um acknowledging the pain, acknowledging the suffering, acknowledging the disruption, acknowledging the vast um difference in privilege and equity and the way that people have been able to move through this in different ways. Um one of the things that has really brought to the fore is people on mass, like never before are really re examining their lives and especially their livelihoods and the work that they do in the world. They're asking these really big existential questions, you know, and what a lot of folks are coming to is a place where they're saying, look, you know, I made a bargain when I was younger and that bargain was have these values, these things matter to me and like the grown up, we're all just makes this is the way that you step into it and you have to give up, you have to sacrifice certain things and I've been doing that and I've been willing to do it and it's gotten me where I am, but I'm in a moment of reckoning right now where I'm starting to to now question what has this taken from me? Like I see what the bargain has given me, but knowing that life is tender and fleeting and short, what has this bargain removed from my existence over the last 5, 10, 15, 20 years? And the bigger question is, AM I willing to continue to make that bargain for the next 2030, 40 years of my working life because most of us are going to work pretty close up to our last day is the way that society is right now and spend most of our working hours are waking hours doing that. And a lot of people are looking at that and they're saying actually, no, you know, like what, what got me here, I don't want to get me there because the feeling that I've had, what I've endured, um I don't want to feel this way for the rest of my life, you know, there's something more that's kind of out there in the ether, I don't even know exactly what it is right now, but I know it's there and I don't know how to get it. I don't know what the first steps are, but I know that it's not where I've been. And I think one of the things that we're seeing happening now is that people used to ask those questions internally and they used to like have those conversations quietly and off to the side because there was a lot of um social anxiety around sharing this, this questioning people would look at you and say, oh you've got such a good life or you know, or you've got something that's stable or all of these sort of societal expectations that are placed on what you should be doing and you start to integrate them and think that that's actually your own personal value set and then you limit all the choices that you make and what's happening now is and you would only talk about that and very kind of shadowed and safe places maybe with a therapist, maybe you have like a call with a career coach, but you wouldn't actually tell anyone you were doing it. Um what's happened now is the level of disruption, the level of of society wide shaking that has happened, you know, has put everybody into this place of existential questioning. It's normalized it on the level where now everybody is talking about it and it's made it okay to not just ask these questions, to dive into the process of re examination, but to have conversations around it and not feel judged but feel supported just for thinking about it and exploring it. And the fact that you know, if I can in any way shape or form step into this moment and offer ideas or offer tools that might help you answer a piece of that puzzle that might help you say to yourself, okay, so I really want to feel differently. I want to do something different, but I don't even know where to start. You know, if I can give you something that says, okay, so a great starting point for you, you may be like discovering what that deeper impulses for work That would just wake you up in the morning knowing you may work 15 hours a day, but you're just like, you're itching to go and do that thing because it's the thing, you can't not do you know? And if I can give you a little bit of a foundation, if this bodywork helps you identify that impulse and then more broadly, Okay, so this is sort of like how it shows up in the world for other people, which is a lot of what I do in the book. It's the stories you are talking about and you start to learn from their stories and these are the common patterns, these are the common behaviors and these are the tendencies that we see that are wrapped around this impulse. So it starts to guide your ability to move into the world and say, okay, you're like, how can I make this show up in my current work? Could I reimagine it in some way so that it just felt a whole lot better or it gave me so much more or could I do something on the side that would start to fill in that feeling for me, even if I want to keep the main thing because it's paying the rent or am I at a place where I really feel like I just want to do something entirely new? You know, now, maybe I have a way to step into that decision making process, that exploration better equipped knowing myself better rather than just kind of blowing everything up, Taking another job that you think it's going to be awesome and fix everything and then finding yourself a year or two down the road, new job, new office, new paint on the malls, new boss, new team, new company and feeling the exact same way because you never understood what the deeper driver was that you needed satisfied to actually have that feeling of being alive. You said at two different points, I think if I'm not mistaken in that last little share that you mentioned the word, the Good Life and that referenced your podcast earlier one that I've been lucky enough to be a guest on. It's always up there in the top podcast charts and very inspirational. The Good Life project. Um what role did your conversations with um, innovators across a number of fields and top performers and I don't know how you would describe them but what role did having all of those conversations for such a long time on the Good Life project? How did that inform this work? Yeah, I mean it definitely is a big part of the underpinnings. You know, I think about even just our conversations that we've had, you know, I sit down with you and you know, you and I would just jam privately on, on a million different things to be able to sit down, There's a weird thing and I know you know this too because you do it like you can take an old friend and sit down in a conversation like this and ask all sorts of questions that you wouldn't normally ask. There's like permission granted to like ask the uncomfortable questions. Um so like I'll sit down with you, you know, and and I get your lens on creativity, on on building on a sense of calling um and not just in an academic way, but in an applied way, like this is like you show me this is the way I'm living my life, and then you give me examples with the way that you're living your life and the things that you've built and the teaching that you have done over the years. And then I'll sit down with a primary researcher in a, you know, an academic institution who has who has literally, you know, done the most seminal research on excellence and expertise on greatness, on positive psychology, on uh neuroscience, on all these different domains and ask them all of those detailed questions. Um and it all it all spins together because when you have such a vast data set, you know, you start to see patterns and very often so many people are working, they're the experts in their domain in the world, but they're also very siloed. You know, so, so when you have the opportunity to spend a decade sitting down with people across literally all of those different silos, you start to be able to connect the dots where one person's work actually has insight in another person's field and this person has a puzzle piece for this other thing here. So there's no doubt, you know, there's a lot of research that I've done in my own life, in building my own companies and working with so many different clients over the years and and and having so many tools developed and shared, but I have no doubt, you know, the ability, the access that Good Life Project has given me to extraordinary minds, extraordinary hearts. Um over a decade long window has has been just stunning. I mean, you must feel this way too with the work that you get to see it, like you're like, you see someone who is so fired up about what they're doing, that it's almost like there's a tractor being pulling them to be absolutely world class because if you're not doing something, you are put on this planet to do your chances of being world class are virtually zero. And then if you are lucky enough to find the thing that puts you in the arena, then you've got a chance and then you're talking to the people who were in that pool and then succeeded at some extraordinary level. And when you're around that juice, like the Good Life Project has created or this show for me or just like it's so infectious and all what I can see, you know, written all over the page and you know, at sparkle type is this is a methodology for helping, you know, people who might not be sitting across from, you know, Jonathan fields and the Good Life Project podcast, but give them acts just any, any person access to the same juice that you're sitting across from every day that you yourself have found like that to me is truly giving people the power to unlock, you know, not the next chapter of their life, but perhaps the rest of their lives doing things that are meaningful. That to me is that is a mind blower to me. And and and I mean I've watched you do this very thing like both with media, but then with like big educational companies, you know, like you're creating this thing where you almost, you extract the idea you build a body of work around it, you know, and then you allow that to move into the world, you almost sort of, there's this phrase, so the very, very first um so Good Life Project has been a podcast for 6.5 years now. But as you know, we started it as a video series, The very first um show we ever recorded wasn't the first show era, but it was the first one recorded um was with one of the founders of um this sort of like legendary vegan restaurant in new york city And he was when I talked to him, Bart was in his late 70s, just like a sweetheart of a guy in the very accomplished restaurants are and we were having this conversation about the fact that you know over the years because he had been in business a lot of years, he would have people come in in his place, everyone was family, everyone was family, they were treated as family, they were taken care of like they were family, but at some point, you know like they might have moved on, you know that it was just their time And and and they may have been with him for 10 years and then they would show up one day and say, Hey listen, I'm so sorry that I'm leaving. And I asked him how do you deal with that being getting so close and brings people so much into the fold. I just looked at me, I remember that, I remember the phrase he said, I just blessed them on, I just bless them on. And when I think about in a really interesting way when you do work where you have an idea, you know, and then you build it into something bigger, a body of work and you know that that body work there, it hits a point where it's no longer about you, it's no longer about sort of like the fundamental like your nuance and your lens, it interacts with the world and is forced to have its own life and I think as a creator as a maker, that moment is both at once melancholy and revelatory, you know and it's like you have these two feelings at least for me, I have these two feelings like okay it's time you know it's time this this now no longer really belongs to me and at the same time what an astonishing moment. Um you must have had, I have to imagine you've had a similar experience is yeah I enjoy it but I haven't made a factory out of it. Like you have in the best possible way where you're you are helping people find their calling. I mean you know we've talked about it even in this podcast, like I loved the concept of tuning into your calling and I'm you know writing books and blog posts and doing videos about it. But what you've done is you've actually put a structure around this that you know what people think when I think chase, I don't think they think structured thinker but the reality is I I am a very structured thinker. If you thought of if you look at my books or anything I put out there is a very strict hierarchical organizational structure to it all. And then I will observe you creating the spark a type world in this book sparked and like holy shit this is like this is going to be an unlock for all sorts of people and again there's been personality tests like I am A. T. L. D. R. Whatever, you know a bunch of acronyms, but this is, this helps you with the thing that most people who seek out, you know, the, or listen to the show for example, or watch videos that we put out. Like I want to, I want to tap into the juice that I see on the screen with Jonathan or chase or burn a brown or Daymond, john and Roxanne gay. Like I want some of that. And, but that's what you've done here, which again, when you told me about it 3.5 years ago, three years ago now and then to see it in book form, it's just astonishing and it's so cool. Um, I want to shift gears because I want you to talk, I want you to give a couple of examples of not, uh, stories because I think the book is so full of stories. I want to save some of those presumably you've got a couple to share. But um, why don't you just take an example, spark a type and um, maybe like just go around that maybe a little 3 lightweight, 3 60 to about, you know, how maybe you can do yourself, um, or whatever, you know, is there's a human in your life that, you know, well and has taken the test and you can, you know, some of the terms for these things may even makers scientists essential list. Um, but just walk us through one as an example for people to get attuned to what they might learn about their own. Yeah, so I mean, the easiest one is me because I can deconstruct that pretty readily. And because there are three pieces to my puzzle, like there's the primary the shadow and the anti spark it up. You learn three of the different ones. Um, so, so for me, my here's my profile, my primary is the maker. My my shadow is the scientists. As I mentioned in my anti spark A type is what I call the essential list. So here's how this shows up the fundamental impulse of the maker is to make ideas manifest. This can be in the physical realm, you can be working with your hands, working with physical objects and materials, it can be in the digital realm, you could be coding, it could be in the experiential realm, you could create moments. The fundamental driver. The impulse is about, it's about the process of creation. It's being fiercely generative in what you do. This impulse is kind of interesting and that it tends to show up or tends to be observable really, really early in life. That's not actually because it shows up any earlier for any people, it's because it is rewarded and primed really early in life by the outside world. Right? So if you had this fierce impulse to create, you know, when you're a little kid, how do parents keep you busy? They give you all sorts of stuff to make you know, you've got your crayons, you've got your blocks, you've got like your glue sticks, you got all this stuff when you go to school, you know, you have classes, you don't necessarily have classes in problem solving, You don't have classes and all, but every single class that you have and you're going to have the diorama to like talk about history, you're going to have the process of creation is rewarded from the earliest days and it's praised when you do it well. So when you have that impulse, you're given opportunities to reveal it to step into it. It's praised the more you do it and it becomes this self propagating sort of like cycle. Um so there's never any reason to hide from that impulse, you know, and it's it's constantly offered out there in the world, whereas certain other impulses are actually kind of shunned um or they're not rewarded in that way. Um or they're not rewarded or or um asked for earlier in life. So I'll give you an example of that. So one of the sparkle types is the Advisor, the Advisor is all about guiding an individual group of people through a process of growth and you create a container of safety and trust it's deeply relational and you bring a whole lot of insight and wisdom and frameworks and observation and truth, you, you're a master of observation, safety and prompts. Um now if you start to try and take on that role when you're six years old, let me advise you Yeah, people are going to be like, nah, you haven't earned the right, You know, that's not you, even when you're 15 years old, maybe when you're 20 years old people, even if you have that deep, deep, deep impulse to go there, you know, and maybe you actually don't have the chops yet to do it in a healthy, safe and well informed way. But you still got that impulse so very often earlier in life, that impulse is repressed and it's not until later in life when you and those around you feel that you've actually earned the right to be in that role, that you really start to own it and step into it. So for me, luckily I was a maker and that means that, you know, I was allowed to just do it from the earliest days I was making stuff, I was building stuff, I was hammering, chopping, gluing, painting, anything you can imagine from the earliest days and it's been a through line my whole life, you know, I got away from the physical act of creation as a grown up and it was literally like I could feel the hole in my soul and granted I'm building companies on building brands, I'm writing books, I'm creating media and it was amazing, but there's something in me that says the physical act of creation is important. So three years ago, probably the worst possible time because I was just had so much to do. There was no way that I could step away from business. I took a month away from my business and I drove out to this sort of being partially refurbished Roadhouse in rural pennsylvania, farm country, looking out over fields and farms and there was a luthier guitar builder who was living there, renovating the place and what used to be the bar downstairs, he turned into his workshop and I spent a month working side by side with him and a buddy of mine learning how to build an acoustic guitar from scratch, you know, no prefab pieces, you know, we would sit there and when it came time to actually make the neck of the guitar, we took a block of wood and we took, you know, like all sorts of chisels and rest and for eight straight hours were shaping this thing and I was dog tired at the end of that day. Um, and we were working 13 hour days with a single break for lunch And it was like, I would plink and 13 hours were gone. I was just completely lost in this experience. I was, my body was beat up. I had like every color sawdust in every nook and cranny of my body and I would like, you know, crawl my way back up into the bed above the road house at night and I was like, the happiest I have been in years. And it just, it brought me back to this understanding that yes, I can create in all these different ways and it gives me something. But for me, for some reason, the physical act of creating something that you can actually experience as an hold and touch with raw materials in the world is important. That's one of the ways it channels through me. So it shows up that way, you know, I think for a lot of people and I think a lot of people miss it without realizing they're missing it. I know you had this impulse in you. I'm wondering, I'm wondering if you feel that same connection to the physical process of creation, it's incredible that you asked because I absolutely do. And, you know, there was a time in college during the summers without swing, a hammer frame houses and you know, was a carpenter and I loved it. And my earliest, my earliest business model, even that predated photography was I basically shared a studio space with my brother in law and it was everything from, we had a photography darkroom, we had a paint like I was a painter before I was a photographer. And like, the physicality of painting was really valuable to me. I started I ended up moving to photography because physical paint wasn't fast enough, but we had a wood shop and I would make things furniture, you know, you talked about finishing and staining and like all of that stuff was in play for me very, very early on. And, and I would say in the last uh five years especially we've done a renovation on the house and I am not qualified. I don't have the skills of the, you know, the firms that we hired to do this stuff, but I am fascinated by it. I will carve some time out and I'm very hands on in the planning and we're doing the same with the, we have a separate beach house right now. And I owned uh re I guess upscaling of scaling the septic system. Let's talk about something really sexy. So I dug the thing out with my hands and the shell like, like I didn't hire a machine tobacco to come to it with a shovel which took me a day excavated this thing and then I brought in an expert to tell me what was wrong. And then I went and had steel and concrete fabricated and then installed that fabricated steel and concrete myself. And this was like nights and weekends working on a septic system. And I same exact thing. I felt so fulfilled, tired, super engaged was learning about things. I had no idea about zero idea and we're definitely these things are not sexy. It's not like we're talking about learning how to build a Ferrari or even as sexy as creating an acoustic guitar. I mean this is literally a shit box, you know, and and yet I was so tuned in and so like you I have that desire to interact with physical goods. And yet my so much of my life has been digital and you look back at film, you can see some of the through lines. I'm curious where you know, you you haven't prompted me yet. And I was hearing about your obviously you're a maker. There's a scientist shadow in there, which I can see now through all the data as an example. But I'm curious if we can go to the your your anti Yeah. So so the anti type I think I mentioned is that's the thing that's the heaviest lift empties you out the most takes the most recovery. So for me that is what I call the essential list. So the impulse or the work of the essential ist is creating order out of chaos. It's about systems, it's about process. It's about creating clarity and utility often from it could be anything from data to actual physical objects, whatever it may be. Um so for me and what's interesting about the Essential list is if that's actually your primary sparked type, it even goes a step further. And this is a much more nuanced understanding that I've just come to in the last six months or so after just really diving into it with so many people is that it goes beyond order utility and clarity because for the essential ist, when they can create that, whether it's a spreadsheet or anything physical, they actually very often experience it as elegance as beauty, you know, and they look at this massive thing and the way that is our all now somehow like you can, it creates ease, you know, there's almost a sense of awe and there's this like it lands with that same emotion as beauty and elegance lands with you. Um for them, not necessarily for for people without that type. So for me that's my anti spark a type, which means if I have to do the work of creating order out of chaos, of doing all that stuff, I just want to cry, you know, I've learned how to be pretty good at it because it's a multi time entrepreneur, you gotta, it's just, it's part of what comes with the job, especially in the early days before you can bring people into it and you know, it's just one of the things that have become skilled at, so I'm confident at it. But even no matter how skilled I am at it, no matter how good I am at it, it will never give me the feeling of the work on the, on the maker and the scientists side of the spectrum. So for me when I start to build something, if I'm like building a new company very often the first person that I will try and bring in when I have the ability to do it is somebody who has, you know, a deep desire to do that work and I won't necessarily higher for the spark types. In fact, I don't recommend using it as a hiring tool, but as we build that a team, I'll keep asking people like what is the impulse that makes you come alive so that you can find the space within our organization that really feels the best. Um you know, I believe that every job, every title can be done by a person of any sparked a type when they understand how to step into it in the way that really lights them up. So for me, the essential ist is the work that I really um I just to this day, no matter how accomplished I am at it. Um it I just want nothing to do with it. I love the fact that it's being done by somebody, you know, I love the fact that our our producer is an essential list and she creates these gorgeous editorial calendars and manages all these different things and you know, like my my launch manager for this thing is an essential list and a nurturer. So she's incredible at creating order and then taking care of me and the rest of the team along the way. Um but yeah, that work, it just kind of gives me Hives. Well, I think that there's something this um there's a threat. I want to pull on for a second here and that we all have to do, you know, some aspects of this, right? You mentioned it, this is your anti spark of type, but you still have to do it early on and process of building a company when there's nobody else to do the spreadsheets that make the lists and hold people to task, including yourself like that. I find that as I was reading the book, it it really hinges on identity. Do you identify? And I use the word creator as an identity and you know, that's part of what your primary spark er type. This idea of being a maker. And so you can still do the things like is being a nurture a good quality. You can still nurture people, but is that your primary quality or maybe even an identity? Like my wife kate probably identifies as a nurturer. And so for every person out there who was like, oh my gosh, is someone really would they align with being a performer or a warrior? The answer is yes. And that's part of what I find so fascinating about building a team or more importantly, understanding first who you really are, what lights you up and being honest about it, that it's this thing is like a permission slip to be honest about what lights you up and then you can attach work and friends and you know, whether it's a team environment, like you said, like you want your producer to be, you know, an essential ist nurturer because or the launch your launch Manager to be an essential is nurture organized and wants everyone to feel good about the process and take care of everybody, but just to know what you are and feel okay about it and realized that there are other people in the world, this validation I find it is so empowering, I'm trying to rant, but it's just so well done, man, it's so well done. Thank you. And I really appreciate that. And like you said, I think we're in a moment in time where we're all asking the big questions, it's all up for grabs and you know, like in my mind, you know, like yes, this is one body of work, this is one I set of ideas and tools, you know, like but like, the invitation for me now for anyone is embrace the spark types, check them out at a bare minimum. Take the assessment, it's free. Like you have almost nothing to lose their but don't stop there also, you know, go deep into yourself. This is a moment in time where going deep into a process of self discovery and self awareness is going to be so, so, so important and how you step into the next season of your life in a really intentional way. I'll restate that if you are at all questioning something, it's where to live given now that you can work from anywhere or what to do with your time on this planet, what job you have to do given that you sort of bought a false bill of goods that said you had to do something you didn't love because that was the only way to make money if you are at all interested or find yourself at an intersection in life where you might be able to go a different direction, I have to recommend. I actually, I think the sparkle type is interesting. It's a test, it's a great test to see if to walk through this. But the book is powerful um sparked again, the it's out right now, it's called sparked the sub is discover your unique imprint for work that makes you come alive. Yeah. Help me Because to me the thing, another thing at the book as well is identifying actual action. Steps to take to start to transform the ways that you work in the way that the ways that you live when you're aligned with this sort of this Rather, it's whether it's an admission and awareness, maybe that's the right word of what lights you up. Yeah. You know, Step one I think is first just discover what this imprint is for you. You know that right away is for for most people, the vast majority of people will be this immediate sense of recognition, like, like finally, right? It's like I feel seen and this is real. Like I don't have to pretend that this is just kind of some other things like this actually is real and it matters. So Step one, just find that out for yourself. and then step two is going to be a thing not to do, which is do not just blow up your life, flow up your job and walk away from everything. Um if you're, you know, in in the very early years of your life, the stakes are low. You've got really nothing on the line that's a lot easier for people to do. But you know, you get further into life that because it's complicated and the disruption can be really, really painful, not just to you, but to all those around you who look to things like to you to provide things like stability and financial security and a sense of peace and equanimity and ease that may eventually be the intelligent choice for you to make a bigger, more disruptive transition. But it is absolutely, it's not the first step out for the vast majority of people with one exception. If you are in a space where what you're doing, you're you're in an environment that is truly harmful or toxic. You know, remove yourself from that environment. You know, this is not, I'm not talking about that, but barring that, which is not, most people first discover this thing about yourself and then start to look at the work you're doing and see where that impulse lines up well, and then see where it doesn't line up well, ask yourself how much am I actually able to express the work of my sparky type in the work that I'm doing now and then say, okay, what if I looked at the activities, the tasks, the process is the tools and platforms, the topics that I sort of like, they're a part of my job and when I look at all those different things, are there ways for me to to bring this impulse that I now know is really important to that work? Or could I start doing new things or different things are following different chains or streams or work with different tools or explore different platforms or engage in different tasks, maybe things that aren't even squarely within my job description, but they're available to me to do and I'm going to do them simply because of the feeling that it gives me, because if I can slowly start to reimagine rework, reinvent the thing that I'm already doing in a way that it actually gives me so much more of what I need, then I actually have this amazing gift of being able to stay where I am, have all the things like not go through this massive disruption event and be so much more nourished by the work that I'm doing and what's interesting is when you start to show up that way, you show up differently on a very personal level, on energetic level that passion that you have talked about earlier, it just starts to choose from you and people respond to that. People respond to that differently and that will start to buy you the social currency to do more of these things, to try more things to do more experiments and maybe even create an entirely new position. You know that lets you really justify what you want to do. There's a story in the book about a woman named Sally who did just that. She she was this super accomplished media consultant in one of the biggest consulting firms for a lot of years. She got cancer. Um she took time off to get treatment and to recover and she hit a point where her cobra ran out and she just needed a job that was going to cover health insurance. So she takes a job in just sort of middle level management and a media company and she finds herself coaching um all of these people on her team and being the go between between sort of like their supervisor and these other people and she starts to realize this has nothing to do with her job. She's not being paid to do this to play the role of coach and advisor and mentor. She loves it. She absolutely loves it in a series of events unfold where she ends up actually over time being able to create her own role within the organization, in the in house positive psychology coach. And that then launches her eventually into her own consulting practice with that giant media company as her first uh consulting clients. So like this is and this all came from her ability to first understand what is the deeper impulse for her, It was the adviser and then reimagine the work that she was doing to just keep doing more of it, even when that had nothing to do with her job description. See it's very it's very hard for me to overstate that little nugget. I think you're leading to this story about sally but there's this flywheel that happens. That's very hard. If you have um experienced this for yourself when you truly do the thing, like, again, I'm just going to use myself just mostly. So I don't reveal anything private of other people who have shared their stories with me. But for me, you know, everybody in my family and my world in my life thought I was going to either be a professional soccer player or a doctor. One was like, that'd be the coolest and dr oh, that's pretty cool too. Yeah, respected, appreciated, and and I sort of emerged as a look at, I, more than anything in the world, want to be a photographer. It was like a head snap for everybody in my universe and it had such a profound effect on me to call myself a photographer. Actually made a business card That's a chase Jarvis photographer on it. And I never even showed it to anybody. I didn't have any clients. I didn't have, I didn't have shit, but I had a business card that gave me my first sort of way to believe in myself and when I leaned into that and started then calling myself one and identifying as one and doing the actions, doing the verb to become the noun. It was like a catapult. It was like a 10x. Or just the energy. The vitality that I walked into every conversation with was it's very hard to for me to explain until you have experienced doing the thing that you're supposed to be doing right now. So I'm talking to both the people who have done that. I want to make sure you're checked in with it and are doing that work and for the people who have not because it is like a force of nature. And again, I I don't mean to stick my nose in the wrong place here, but you've done such a good job of helping people unlock this with this work. And so I again, I want to say thank you. And and I'm sure I read stories that were similar to that and in the book, sally's was a good example, but this is something you see time and time again. This is a pattern that those people who have done that kind of stuff with their life can see you can see it when someone else has got it right, You're like, oh go you go do more of that. Just people sit up, they lean forward, their eyes get big, they get excited to talk and think and you can just, it's just very hard for me to overstate the power. Yeah, I'm right there with you. Um I I want more people to feel that that's what it comes down there. You know? It is. And I mean again, you've had half a million people or more take your assessment, what's what is an un what was an unplanned uh benefit something that you did not expect going into this work that that, you know, just sort of showed up that you couldn't ignore whether it's through data or empirical or experiential, what didn't you expect and how, you know, and you know, what was that thing and how did it manifest? Yeah. You know, and it's shown up over the last 18 months and it was nothing that I saw coming. Um we don't have hard data on this yet, but that's sort of a the next evolution of where I want to go. We're sort of like figuring out how to a scientist you. Yes. Um but here's the pattern that we started to see, which is really fascinating. And we saw um both from individuals. And then it starts to be shared with us who've done like a bunch of work with them with the spark of types and leadership teams now, and what we started to notice was that people were sharing that um in this moment in time when there's so much uncertainty, so much groundless nous, so much anxiety around that, so much persistent unease, that there's an interesting thing that people are telling us happens when they find themselves being able to spend a lot of time doing the work of their spark a type. They don't just feel like they're coming alive, they feel like they're coming home to themselves, they feel like they're actually able to Touchstone more easily. They feel a sense of calm and ease, like they're able to sort of breathe a little bit more easily um simply through doing this work. And this wasn't an intentional thing. Nobody ever came to me and said, oh I'm going to do this because I think it's going to make me feel this way. It's being reported back to us now. It's now been shared enough times that I'm seeing this as a really interesting pattern that we need to actually deepen into and tease out more. That there seems to be something where when you do this work, it seems to be such an an organic and intrinsic expression of the essence of who you are, that the experience of allowing that to take the lead has this countering effect to the the anxiety, the anxious spin of uncertainty um it kind of brings you down into a more peaceful place. Again, I don't have data on this, it's really early on, but enough people from both organizations and just individuals, you know, we get responses to the work from people all day every day. We've seen this pattern enough where I'm like, I never expected that I didn't see it coming the moment that we're in has certainly provided fertile ground where enough people are experiencing those feelings that you know, it's giving us the data, the typing is just crazy, it just blows me away. It was sort of like again, right, you had some impressions about, you know, this is, it was needed and I would say it was needed before the pandemic, but the pandemic has really revealed that I'll also add like this, you know, if let's just say someone is listening right now are watching and like, oh my God, the idea of changing careers, you know, I think you did a good job, but I want to underscore the point you made earlier about like this is not necessarily about getting a whole new set of friends or you know, Jonathan is not advising to quit your job and you know, change at all costs. It's about how can you get more of this thing in your life, if you are in a position to make a change then fantastic if you're not, how can you, it's sort of like that, the thing we talked earlier about physical, like I'm not my goal is not to go swing a hammer to make a living. I do not want to, you know, dig ditches and that's very hard work. But what I know is that now I can look for projects in my life where there's just enough of that and I can like it has a beginning, a middle and an end and I can go and get involved and it brings me that sense that you're talking about this connection. Like that was a good day at the end. You're tired, but you're tired for all the right reasons and thank that part is I found that out about myself re engaged with that side of myself and it's not going to dominate the future of my life. It's just a piece of me. And so whether or not you're identifying with a complete shift in mentality or job or finding your passion or it's an awareness that, You know, financial security is more important to me right now because my kids are eight and 10 and I'm just making this up people, most of the people? No, I don't have kids, but that that's not necessarily what you're preaching is not required there. Would you say it's just isn't an awareness that you're trying to cultivate for people. Yeah. And I want people to own their reality, you know, like I said, we all come from very different places have different realms of possibility available to us. So um I think what I'm trying to convey is the notion that no matter where you come from, um there is something that you can do once you understand what this deeper imprint is, Um whether it is a reimagining of the work that you're currently doing, whether it's bringing something in that you're doing that has nothing to do with it, you know, like 15 minutes a day or on the weekends or as a side project or some blend of of all of these different things or something entirely new if that's within your realm of possibility. Um the notion that the more we know about ourselves, um the more agency we have to then start to explore the process of reimagining. How do I let this thing that's inside of me out because when I do it will give me the feeling I so deeply yearn to have and I don't necessarily need um to make big disruptive changes or have tremendous resources to be able to start that process. Know thy self old Socrates in the Temple of Delfay, like if you like, there's just an awareness, I love the word awareness because it doesn't require that you do anything, you know, it's like but at least I know and to your point there's this certain ah certitude that this combination of personal experience plus data and then there's the emotional, the feeling like you said, coming home touching stone that you know, whether that's a triumvirate or just that ecosystem of experiences is so incredibly valuable. So the book comes out, what's the, is there a book tour? I mean our community is good at buying books, we are self learners and take responsibility for that and books are fantastic, amazing ways and obviously the work is very compelling, so we'll go by the book but you know what, what else? Yeah, um that's that's kind of what we're imagining also, you know, we have um we actually built uh some coursework to do that people can engage in that sort of takes you from the book if you want and start to walk you through a process of really understanding in a very granular detailed way. Like how do we how do we bridge the gap from knowing all this incredible stuff about us to seeing how it's shown up in our past in all different ways and then starting to create a useful dynamic inventory of things to start to look for and build into work moving forward. And we're just going to keep building tools and solutions as we understand what's going to be most useful to people moving forward. We're looking at how can we help individuals in their own process of exploration with organizations, How can we develop these tools to help um leaders become better leaders to help understand, how do we take people on teams and help them understand themselves? How do we help organizations invest in a process of personal development of everyone in the organization because it's my deep belief that companies who don't do that are going to get left behind. You know, there's an expectation now that, um, that, you know, an organization is not just where I get a paycheck, but I want them to acknowledge my humanity and invest in my ability to, to grow that humanity. Um, so building tools that help with that process to, um, I'm just really excited about the potential that's emerging from it. And I'm somebody who in the past, I spent a lot of time, you know, with the, if you build it, they will come philosophy. And, and I'm in the process of evolution where I'm kind of saying like we've built a whole bunch of things already, but before we go too far down the road, I want to, I want to hear from people, I want to know what's going to be most helpful to them and then we'll, we'll, you know, we'll just continue building more around that. I saw that if you buy, if you preorder you've got a cool some training stuff, you gotta live event here. I see. Yeah. I'm actually adding that to my calendar right now. Yeah. We have, um, yeah. I mean if you, if you pre order before the end of publication week, um, then you get access to of course, that literally in another week will be for sale for a significant amount of money. And then we're doing, uh, yeah, on sunday. Um, we're doing a full day training. That's going to walk you through all of this really cool stuff that will be live online for Anyone. I am, I am literally going to my calendar 26 September and Voila Sunday The 26th not required. But if you do have a chance to pick a book before then, man, thank you so much for sharing the work that you've been doing for the last three. I totally feel like I was in on the ground floor. Don't forget about those people when you were telling me this. I was like dude, that's part of what I was trying to do with this book. Is get people to listen to that part of themselves. That wants to do that thing that no one else is validating. And what you've done is you've just done such a nice job of packaging up. Um, it's sort of like as humans, you know, we all have individual fingerprints, right? But there's also people that you love that you want to connect with these are my people. And what you've done is a nice job if you didn't have to go down to the individual fingerprint level, that's the work of the individual. But you've done such a nice job of helping people find, um, the things that light them up. Congratulations on the work. It's incredibly powerful. Go check it out again, folks, spark a type as a great way to start. You can also get to the book from there. Um and congrats man, I'm a huge fan, um a supporter and ally, keep doing this meaningful work. And is there anywhere you want to steer us or any other asks you have in the community before we give you the rest of your evening back? Yeah, no, I mean that's fantastic. You know, like you said the assessment of available for free for anyone at sparky type dot com. The book is available at booksellers everywhere. Um and you can find me Jim and twice a week, as always on the Good Life Project podcast, It's so good. It's one of my favorite shows I've ever been on. Very, very thoughtful. You can hear in his voice, right, Jonathan's just got this amazing, amazing radio voice. Um and also I'm at the spark of type site under the book tab and you can uh, enter your, when you pre order, you can get the free the free goodies there. So don't forget to do that man, thanks so much for being on the show, anytime we've got something to share. We're always happy to hear from you to have you on the show. Um congrats on amazing work and go get them during public. Here we are on your side, awesome. Thanks so much man. I so appreciate the conversation and just you as a human being, the way you show up in the world. It's good to be a co conspirator in making awesome stuff and and just sharing this space with you. It's true. And I want to I want that guitar. Next time we're together, I expect I expect to see a tour of your guitar. It'll happen alright, signing off for everyone out there in the universe. Until next time I bid you adieu. Yeah. Yeah. Mm. Yeah.