Chase Pipes grew up on a farm in East Tennessee. As a child, he found several arrowheads in his family’s fields stirring his curiosity & prompting him to become a member of the state’s Archaeological society. It was those discoveries & the society’s publication that inspired a lifelong passion for history. While attending Military school at the Historic Miller School of Albemarle, Chase became involved in preserving the schools’ archives, artifacts & buildings, as well as volunteering for Archaeological digs throughout the south ever deepening his passion for the past. Upon graduation, Chase attended Carson Newman College with a focus on becoming an American History professor while on the weekends traveling across the country to various Artifact, Fossil & Mineral shows setting up as a dealer in order to make some extra money for school. In 2006 Chase opened up the Smoky Mountain Relic Room inside of his family’s store in Sevierville Tn that started with just a handful full relics, antiques, and fossils. Chase’s passion for discovering history led him to the world of commercial paleontology, where private land could be leased from ranchers out west to hunt for fossils. During this time he surrounded himself with people like him who made a living discovering history, but unlike others who focused on one thing, Chase focused on everything, all of history fascinated him, and how to find it. From bottle hunters digging out houses, Metal Detectorist searching for meteorites, to dinosaur hunters in America’s west Chase tagged along, learning their trade & finding cool things to sell at his store back in Tennessee. Giving up the dream of teaching in a classroom Chase discovered that he could reach/ teach more people through his store. Over time the diversity of the history grew until the Smoky Mountain Relic Room became the largest diversity of history for sale in North America, with things for sale spanning the entirety of earth’s history. Along his journey & not wanting to give up the dream of being a teacher, Chase started a YouTube Channel and Podcast as a way to educate the public about the remarkable history of not only our planet but the history of life including our own species. The series acts as the educational platform for the business showing the public how history is discovered, why it is there, & how they can get involved.
What is your typical day, and how do you make it productive?
There are 3 different typical days, one type of day is out in the field hunting for history, dinosaurs, for example, involves dawn to darn walking heavily eroded hillsides looking for an exposed fossil, then carefully collecting that fossil for transport back to the store for preparation and stabilization so it could be sold to the public. Another typical day is one out in the field documenting the history we are exposed to, at a museum for example we arrive on site and tour the museum with our guide seeing the story that they are telling then using the camera and our editing to tell that story the best way we can. A third typical day is when I am at the store usually getting caught up on the details that go with running a business than processing the new items we have purchased or those we have found in the field ensuring that the research or preparation done on each is correct before it goes onto our showroom floor or online avenues for sale. This day will sometimes include making phone calls chasing down a collection or a new site to hunt but hopefully, it is filled with lots of research needing to be done on a particular artifact we have acquired. Once we obtain an artifact, for example, we do research in order to tell the complete history of that item. So when the customer gets that artifact, its entire story is with it. Research is my favorite part.
How do you bring ideas to life?
once an idea is created and deemed possible, I will reach out to those I need to be involved in the project to see it fulfilled (networking). A new meteorite frame, for example, I want to create an affordable meteorite display frame, for a specific type of meteorite. I then reach out to my friends in the meteorite hunting community to see how we could get access to the site where those meteorites are found. If access is difficult, I will put the word out in that community, that I am looking for meteorites from this specific fall, they need to be of a specific size in order to fit into the frame and that I will pay X$ a gram for as many pcs that I can get ahold of. Once the pcs are collected and paid for, they are tested to ensure that the chemical signature matches that of the know fall. Then they are made into frames for the public to purchase. This same process applies to each era of history, either dinosaur teeth or civil war bullets, there is a community of passionate people who make a living searching for that thing, & over the past 20 years I have worked with everyone in every genre, so whatever idea I create I know where to go find it, or whom to talk to who has hunted that thing for a living. Doesn’t matter if it is Dinosaur teeth or civil war bullets.
What’s one trend that excites you?
The public is waking up to the fact that they can collect history. This is a relatively new field I am a part of, people have only been collecting and selling history on the mass of the past 100 years, and some things like dinosaur fossils only for about 30 years. Think about it, where do you go to buy a dinosaur bone that you can afford? Or a civil war bullet? Or a meteorite? or a crystal? According to the public, you can’t, those things are so rare you can only see them in museums, and never for sale. The fact is that they are not rare, but what is rare is people out collecting them for commercial sale. As public interests grow so too does their desire to become collectors of history. Over the past 20 years and really more in the past 5 years, more and more stores like mine are opening up both brick-and-mortar and online. Collecting history is becoming a huge trend that won’t ever go away, there will always be a kid that wants a dinosaur tooth in his or her room.
What is one habit that helps you be productive?
Taking the time to do something I love once a week, getting out in the field to discover something old and ancient not for my store but just for the fun of it. My job is my passion, I love what I do for a living but if I am not careful it can overwhelm & consume me. This can happen to a lot of people who do what they love for a living, it’s really easy to get burnt out So once a week I make sure to go out and go fossil hunting or metal detecting, or bottle digging, I go look for something old and ancient not for work but just for be and just because I love doing it! It reminds me of why I do what I do for a living and keeps me from getting burnt out!
What advice would you give your younger self?
Hang in there & be careful whom you trust! You are rare because you are passionate about what you do & you are doing it for the right reasons, but there are people out there who don’t care or are just in it for themselves and will try and use you for their own personal gain. this is not going to be easy and there are terrible people in the world, but there are also really good people in the world as well who will see your passion and will want to help you because they love what you do and will want to help to see you succeed. You just have to hang in there & be careful whom you trust!
Tell us something you believe almost nobody agrees with you on?
History can change the world! Specifically, our studying and understanding of it. Look at it like this, when you were a kid you touched a hot stove and burnt the crap out of your hand, and for the rest of your life you knew that if you touched a hot stove you would get burnt because you have that history of experience of what not to do. Now scale that up, if we as individuals or governments, or a world population would just look at history we could change the world. What is history but a record of everyone screwing up or succeeding & by emulating the successes & steering clear of the mistakes we have the possibility of changing the world in a positive direction. Mathematically there will never be a situation you will personally go through that hasn’t already happened to someone else, that’s why you go to friends for advice because they have similar experiences. Imagine if that was all recorded somewhere, you went to an AI program and wrote out your problem and that program pulled up hundreds, thousands of examples of how people succeeded and failed. History really can change the world! We use institutions like Science, Medicine, government & education to change the world, imagine if we used history!
What is the one thing you repeatedly do and recommend everyone else do?
Help other people! Too often we forget that we are successful with the help of others, it is important to return that favor whenever possible. Besides when those you help become successful too that’s one more person that can help you achieve your goals. Plus, it is the right thing to do!
When you feel overwhelmed or unfocused, what do you do?
Spend some time with my family. Helps me slow down and reflect.
What is one strategy that has helped you grow your business or advance in your career?
Standing behind what we sell by offering a lifetime guarantee of the things we sell. We sell fossils, meteorites, artifacts, crystals & minerals, these are all things that the public is generally unaware of. For example, can you tell a real fossil or artifact from a fake? There is sadly no protection for the consumer out there from fraud because whether something is “Real” or “Authentic” or not is based on opinion, especially for artifacts. There is no machine that will tell you whether a Roman coin is authentic or not, you have to rely on the opinion of an expert. We offer a lifetime guarantee on everything we sell as a safety measure and protection for our customers. If we sell you something and years from now you take to an authenticator who is in the business of authenticating those types of items & they said that what we sold you was not as it was advertised, we will give you a full refund! This strategy that, we too make mistakes and will make it right if we are wrong, created a level of trust with our customers because we are the only one in our business who has in print that we offer that.
What is one failure in your career, how did you overcome it, and what lessons did you take away from it?
I devoted too much time to my business and not enough time to my family. When growing business we can get lost “I have to”, I have to go to work early, I have to work late, I have to have these meetings. When in reality, if it’s your business, you don’t have to do any of that. So you have to find a balance between growing your business and making time for what really matters in life and that is family, or whatever that is that matters to you in your life. I devoted myself to growing my business and neglected to build the family I wanted because I had to go to work and work hard. Part of growing a business is hiring and surrounding yourself with people who are capable of doing the jobs that need to get done, including your job, this gives you time to do more personal things but you have to trust those people and let them make mistakes so they can grow. I started trusting my people more letting them pick up more of the slack and saying, “I don’t have to do that right now” It’s all in finding the balance between your ambition to grow and develop your business and the time you spend doing the other things you want, In my case having a family. now that I am 40, I am taking the time to devote myself to building that family I always wanted. But it was realizing the failure in the first place that was important. The greatest single thing we have is time & no amount of money will ever buy you more, so really look at what you want to do with yours and make it happen.
What is one business idea you’re willing to give away to our readers?
Rite now there are about 30 people nationwide that collect dinosaur fossils for commercial sale. That’s it & we all know each other and get along, but that really limits the amount of fossil material for sale on the market because there are just a few people collecting and preparing it. Fossils are not rare, what is rare is the number of people out collecting them and the number of people out there who can professionally preserve and restore them. If someone were to create a company that has 100 or more full-time dinosaur hunters and preparators they could make a killing by supplying the public with American dinosaur fossils. The trouble if finding people who are skilled in collecting & preparing fossils. Currently, there are not very many, but that is something that could be taught and built over time and can be a hell of a lucrative business.
What is one piece of software that helps you be productive? How do you use it?
YouTube Studio. Because I sell fossils, minerals, artifacts, and meteorites it is hard for people to believe that everything I have for sale is real, even though we go find it ourselves it is still hard for people to believe. Where can you go to buy a Raptor Claw and know it is real? What YouTube did for us is become the proof the public needed in order to have confidence in their purchase. We took the camera with us when we went into the field and made documentaries on how this stuff is found. Video is an important medium and YouTube is a service to which everyone has access. People want to buy from whom they know and trust and throwing up what you do on YouTube it can create a connection through video between you and your customers making them feel more connected to you and want to buy your product. It’s an easy way to make things personal in a world of corporate nonsense & it’s really a good tool for small businesses to connect with their customers.
Do you have a favorite book or podcast you’ve gotten a ton of value from and why?
Nonviolent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg. NVC is a type of communication tool that ensures that everyone gets their needs and wants to be met, which is basically all we are doing as a human beings, trying to get what we need and want. The book explains some communication tools in order to see that through and to do it in a way that helps everyone understand each other better. Most people are not assholes but can come off as such because of how they communicate. This book explains ways of talking and thinking that can make the conversation more productive and ensure that everyone involved gets what they need and want in any given situation.
What’s a movie or series you recently enjoyed and why?
Dune 2
Key learnings
- Always Help other people as you grow in business but be careful whom you trust because not everyone has good intentions.
- Just because no one has done it before doesn’t mean it can’t be done or you shouldn’t try.
- Learn to balance work/home life. Don’t let your business consume you, no matter how much money you make you can never buy any more time so use it wisely by giving it to those who bring you joy in life.
- Stay true to yourself and never lose your core moral values, most people will want to do business with you because they like you, so just be yourself & never let growth change who you are.
- Be an effective communicator, if you are having trouble communicating with those around you see out other ways of communication & put them to practice.
- There is no such thing as failure, just a practical lesson of what not to do so you can do it right the next time.
- History is Awesome!