alright everyone so i did this podcast for me and i'm gonna explain why today's guest is this guy named jack carr if you don't know who jack carr is you guys should look them up but basically he has this series of books called the terminal list terminal list is now a it's definitely a best bestselling book they've sold millions of millions of copy it's a novel about a navy seal who's wrong and then there's like eight books of him getting revenge and it's an amazon prime show with chris pratt it's awesome however i had jack carr on the podcast because i read his book when i was going through a little bit of a period where i had just had a daughter and i wanted to do something where i would become a little bit more of a man than before i wanted to learn something about high integrity about things i should be doing as a man and it just kind of honestly changed my life and it doesn't matter if you're a man or a woman i think you're gonna enjoy this episode we talk a lot about his writing process but we mostly talk about the process of masculinity and what it means to be a stand up person we talked about the business of writing books and how he makes money i think you're gonna enjoy this one it's a little bit out of left feel but try it out i i love this guy so check it out i feel like i could rude to where i know i could be what i want to from at all in it like a days off on a rolling so i'm happier here man we this is a business show until like we don't do like authors and stuff like that all the time but i published a podcast where i was talking about how i loved your books and i i'm halfway through the third one and the reason i found you guys or i i found you is because i tweeted out i want to read a book that's the ultimate man novel something that is action adventure page churning high integrity like teaches you values because i just had a kid and i was like i i wanna be inspired a little bit and all these people were tagging you and saying jack carr and i was like i've never heard of jack carr i don't know i don't know i think about this what is this all about and i started reading the terminal and i read the first book and i was hooked and i'm so hooked i'm on i'm halfway through number three and i'm gonna make it through all through seven and you i i think you actually are like a lot more business savvy than most authors if i had to guess it's it's more entrepreneurial than i think there's a difference between being entrepreneurial and being business minded which is why at some point garage sky up potentially sell or bring in a business person to run it and professional it and scale it and that sort of a thing but i didn't really think of myself that way and tell about i'd say a month before the fuck first book came out so i'm all into the novel leaving the seal teams and just writing because i love it my mom is librarian brands so i grew up surrounded by books and i love of reading as you can tell from the the background here i have quite the quite the collection always been a reader and it's really the foundation from which everything else has grown and so it's all about the book and then about a month maybe two before first book publication in march of twenty eighteen i was like oh okay i'm gonna look at this the way i at the battlefield in iraq and afghanistan meaning you are looking for gaps and the enemy's defenses you're looking how to adapt how to capitalize on momentum and i just looked at the space in general and i was like oh wow publishing really hasn't kept up it's a very that's a very legacy type of a business and they do so well because they've been around for so long so they're very entrenched in what they do and they make some money but they're safe as far as business goes very slow to adapt to things me even like audiobooks or ebooks that sort of that thing so i looked at it and i was like okay why when i get my iphone it doesn't just come in a manila envelope it comes into packaging and as much thought went into that packaging as went into the actual product itself and when i was getting books from other authors for blurb or that sort of a thing they were just coming in these manila envelopes yeah you you send these like amazing gift boxes one of my one of my really close friends is richard ryan and i went to awesome i went to his house and i saw like the boxes that you send to people yeah i told i go i told richard and i go after this pod i'm gonna try and make jack like me so much that he sends me one of these boxes got your names your name's on in one of this let the next one so it's a gun case and it has the book it does it have anything else in it yep so it's you'll finish this thing up and it's kind of a a way to make people who want to help you like make it easy for that like i might said yeah chris brad maybe he has time to open it maybe he doesn't but if he does then this makes it easy for him to do a fifteen second something to help you know so sounds awesome bookmark that has the leather bookmark all super high quality stuff because everything has to be of that commensurate level as the novel itself so everything i do has to be like right here like talk to about you guys talked about your site merch on the site it's not just a glass where you go to some company and like pick key chain pick hat pick mug it's like those are handpicked picked by me and they're all the best you can possibly find or the best that i could possibly find i try to do made in america not always possible try to veer towards better known businesses but book is in there inside the book is personalized to the person and then they have stickers there's three stickers personalized all of them personalized all i'm many do those that you send out i send out about three hundred and fifty and most of can go to people as just thank you there so people with no social media presence at all just to thank you for whatever x y z someone helping me wait with research on a novel this one someone helped me with some aircraft stuff because i'm not a pilot so he'll get one some fans that were with me in the very beginning they get they get them and then people like chris pratt get them and and and he gets the same one as as everybody else but the coin it was in there in a coin different coin with every single talk and you can't buy these and i know you talked about on the that podcast where you talked about me and james patterson you you also talked about meme mo coins i don't sell these you should it should budge took felt words for if you were to make some money on it but for right and i don't saying never will because people asking me to sell them all the time but i have to give you one so that's kind of the thing with these is i have to a book signing law enforcement military firefighter or somebody they they coin you they have this in their hand and they shake your hand and then i have these in my back pocket and i coin them back i wanna talk about the economics and all this stuff but how do how do i introduce you to people so like i was thinking about this i was like well so jack writes these books that's so the the one line summary is basically a navy seal who's wrong and he goes and gets revenge involving family country and a bunch of adventure it's a seven or eight book series now it's a amazon prime show starring chris pratt but the cool thing about the book you do a bunch of thing interesting interesting but it's like a huge hit and when i was on amazon it has like a hundred thousand plus reviews across all the books something like that can you say how many copies have you sold so far you know i don't know because i don't keep track of those things and this is where the entrepreneurial side versus the business side comes in that we talked about at the beginning is i spend zero bandwidth worried about that so my my metric is is simon and sc happy and how happy are they and they're ecstatic so that is millions i would assume yeah it's up there yeah is it do you think it's north of ten million no so that's just a guess i don't know but i think they tell me if it was one of ten million it's up there i think we had i'm i'm friendly with james clear and mark manson and i think that they have some of the best selling books of the last like maybe decade i would imagine i i would have imagine that after a few more years you're gonna be up there because you you are navy seal which you've talked a bunch about but you started writing but the books are relatively new right yeah so twenty eighteen i started writing the first one i was still in as i was getting out of the military so i think december of twenty fourteen i wrote my first words to the first book so think paper but it came out twenty eighteen and then there's been one a year ever since and this is the first year with two books so i have my newest one the seventh book being the series red sky morning comes out in june and then i have my first non fiction that comes out in september so september twenty fourth and that's on the nineteen eighty three bay barracks bombing and you probably noticed that i we've a lot of history into the app as well that's why i i liked it so much she i'm i'm reading looming towers right now and i typically read american history that's what my audience knows me for and that's why i wanted to read yours and what's weird is a lot of i think without giving a away there's talk of a virus there's talk of ukraine before any of this stuff was even a thing yeah that was crazy so the look with ukraine came out in twenty nineteen so i was writing it before i was writing you actually before i sent the first novel the simon at sc i didn't have a publishing deal but i was knew i was gonna write two books because of the john christian story he wrote a time to kill first and he could not give that book away and then he writes the firm that takes off it's the movie with tom cruz and we've had john g legal thriller every year sets you you you you've got a good track record at the moment for like predicting a handful of things i hope this next one doesn't come us this next one's is pretty brutal so i hope this next one does not predict the future what did you i know that you're writing you're talking about like finding an agent and things like and you're like i even know you needed an agent i think you read like steven press redfield like learn a little bit about the publishing process but what did what would you have defined as a success like when you're first starting because i imagine now you're you've made millions of dollars you're famous your books are loved it's a movie i know that you originally before chris pratt was even a movie star he was just a parks and wreck guy you're like chris pratt the guy so like you've kinda manifest all this but what would you have defined a success like ten years ago you know it personal or professional different different sides but for me growing up i'm reading all these books they also say number one new york times best bestselling author on the cover so i'm reading tom clan i'm reading nelson mill i'm reading a jk jc poll mark old losing them more all these guys who are like my professors in the art of storytelling but at the top of each one of those paper backs and i think i a tie at the top last one somewhere here but it says number one year york ties best flying off so in my head from age well let's say eleven so sixth grade and when i start reading all the same types of books my parents are reading fifth grade it's kind of that transition time from young adult type fiction to the same types of books that i'm reading and writing today they all said that and so in my head at that age knowing that i wanted to write in the future just like i knew that wanted to be a navy seal from h seven onward that i i didn't think of it in terms of hey this is success once i do this but that was like a benchmark that's funny that was your goal because i think in the same podcast you said you listened to for m we talked about this guy i don't remember his name but basically he self published a book and he got really popular on good reads and i think on good reads collectively he also had hundreds of thousands of of reviews and from reading your books i wouldn't call you anti establishment but there's like some sub context there of like don't trust too many people and and whatever i would have not thought that you'd give a shit about new york times and more so just do lots of people love this and does this create like financial freedom and and like spiritual wholesome for you you know what i'm saying like if you could like make if you could feel good and and make money that would be the win not new york times yep well the new york times is like you know like when you see a book that says number one or just like usa today best seller what that tells me and what has always told me is that they didn't make the new york times list so new york times list is kind of a benchmark because you can be a number one something on amazon in pretty much anything so i knew that that that's not my i'm never gonna say that i think the the publisher for the first or second book they put something like that somewhere and i was like they cut down i don't want that in my calculus that's not that's not me for me like leaving the military the things that we're important i think it's important to articulate that no matter what it is guys we're all gonna go through transitions in life whether it's professional transition death of a loved one divorce whatever it might be but you're gonna move on and do something else changes has changed jobs and for me it was financial freedom and being able to control my schedule and i knew i wanted to write i've removed from a very early age that after my time in the military i would write thriller just like i'm writing today were you writing books from a early age so yeah always a writer so at any time we're having class in in high school that's what i gravitate towards we're the most dangerous game which is a short story that came out in nineteen twenty four heavily inspired your book three i assume exactly exactly that's my and so in sixth grade i said one day i'm gonna write a novel it's tribute to that short story and that savage son the one that you're on right now so it's so it's it's so i was writing but i wasn't writing throughout my time in the military i was reading so i'm always reading and i'm reading both non fiction and fiction so i'm always just guys there's never been a time when i haven't had a book in my hand or know what i'm gonna read next there's a bunch of jokes i'm friends with a bunch of seal guys and there's a joke that like many of them wanna write a book because you guys experience such like crazy lives but there are like some actually interesting people doing stuff in the creative space so obviously you and then we know jo and and people like that but then there's mister ball do you follow mister ball no i know who he is but i've never never met him and i haven't watched any of his stuff yet but i know who he is i so mister ball i listen to all of his stuff so mister ball started i think as a youtube page and he was basically like just telling scary ten and twenty minute stories of true crimes and i don't know how he managed to do this because but for i mean he's a great delivery he he delivers his stories wonderfully so i guess it's it's it's it's clear how he kinda figured it out but now it's like this massive thing i he's got millions of millions of subscribers in austin near where i live he's got a billboard now where he's got this deal with audible and it's like pretty amazing that this guy's pulled this off he doesn't pull too many details from his his military days but it is like interesting to see some of these like ex seal guys or seal guys like tell some of these like interesting stories and be creative because when i think of you guys i think of like a tough guy i don't think of like an artistic guy you know what i mean yeah well on the battlefield you had to be creative and i think that's something that really was made us successful in iraq and afghanistan and in other places around the world over the last other twenty years that we were at war engaged in those places is being able to be creative and be very we create very quickly and be aggressive problem solve so now i can be an aggressive problem solve but you know what if i make a mistake no one's coming home in a body bag and i can sleep on it and i can come back to something in a month which is why when i do the outlines for these books and i get to a place where like oh how's james reese gonna get out of this one i don't that stall me out i know that i have a year to figure this out because it's one book a year so it takes about it the whole process takes about a year but i don't get stuck there i know that i'm gonna figure it out we're on the battlefield can make split second decisions that are gonna impact people's lives forever if you make the wrong one there's this amazing book called may to stick i read me to stick in two thousand and eight or two thousand ten it's awesome it's by i think his name is i think it's the heath brothers out of stanford and it's a whole book about how to make ideas stick and there's like six or eight principles and one example they give is like if i told you movie theater popcorn had a hundred grams of fat that doesn't really mean anything but if i got a hundred grams of fat and i showed that butter and like you could grab it or if i showed you like a black smokers long then it's an easier way to understand and and remember an idea one thing that the book says is they talk about the demise of local newspapers and they tell a story about this guy in north carolina who's got a thriving local newspaper and they go hey will what's your what's your deal what's your secret with this newspaper and he goes names names and names it's simple if i could print the yellow pages i would all i wanna do is name as many local people and their friends as possible in their newspaper in my newspaper because people will buy it more to see their friends and family and themselves something you do in your book and this is what i talked about in the last podcast and what what i thought was savvy is you name so many products like it's to the point now where i'm i have a a notification on my bring a trailer profile to see a land cruiser because i wanna buy a i wanna buy a land cruiser i know all i'm not land cruisers i just bought someone just i talked about the on the podcast someone just sent me one of your or not one of yours but a a hatch i'm looking at like hill people like fanny packs you like name all of this stuff where i'm like i didn't even know i need this pair of sunglasses but because jam reese is using the sung like i want it or like black rifle coffee on friends of richard rin one of the founders you name black rifle coffee all the time you talk about a i think his name is a reef he has this leather type of boot that it's a little bit more sophisticated than james reese because he's a more of a a suave type of guy and i find myself googling this stuff and i noticed on your website you list many of the stuff so it's like james reese like daily wear in book one or or the guns planes cars and and supplies in book two do you monetize that well no yeah i've been a gear guy my entire life and i should monetize people like assume that you are like right from the get go but i don't know at the beginning i knew i knew some of those brands because i'm just friends with them from getting that gear go down range with and the seal teams and that sort of thing but not all of them it's just stuff that i use but i have no personal connection to the the company but it added a a personal not an authentic element so if you're a law somebody in law enforcement or a firefighter or intelligence agent or you know military and you're reading this thing and you can be reading a book and it can just say he picked up the shotgun he picked up the pistol but it doesn't tell me even about the character yeah when i see somebody and they walk in or they walk onto into a range i can see the pistol that they have on i can see the h they're using the belt their shoes their hat their watch that tells me a story about them the car they pull up in that all tells me something that's giving me information and so same thing in these books and i think if you if you spend let's say twenty years in the seal teams or special forces or whatever it is then you're reading a book and it says hey the main protagonist has a background similar to yours but he's can it shows what he's carrying and you're like oh man we would never carry something like that like this doesn't make any sense this person obviously doesn't know what they're writing about and so then that impacts their story in general so it's it's a way to to add authenticity and tell a story about that person because sometimes i'll use brands that that it says this person doesn't know what they're doing and that tells that reader who's in law enforcement or military it tells me something about this guy's character even before you describe before even opens his mouth and so i so i love using those brands that way i haven't monetized it the way people think that probably i have by looking at the website because i put together gear guides for each book and have a father's day gear guide and a holiday gear guide and that sort of thing and i link out and a few them have a affiliate links there's an amazon affiliate link i don't really think it makes i i have no idea if it makes any money or not actually but it's more for the fun of it and also to help a lot of those companies like better known businesses like this is a way for me to give back and offer a helping hand yeah and i get that for like a small business but there's many businesses that you mentioned are brands that aren't small and your website gets traffic and i'm like why wouldn't you monetize that you know like there's gear junkie dot com there's gear patrol there's steve nell company meat eater and they have turned these into like big businesses of merchandise or affiliates what is stop because i know your entrepreneurial what's stopping you turning this into like a legitimate media company beyond what most authors do i think the the first hesitation was that i wanted to throw me an authentic i didn't want anyone to ever be able to say i were to say it anyway but it i didn't want it to be true that hey all a sudden he had this one pistol in there all a sudden he switched how much are they paying to put that in there and the answer is zero dollars the answer is always zero dollars people have reached out and said how much how can i much do you need to put my product on your your gear guide and the answer is nothing what do you think an author like you if you wanted to do it which you don't but i bet it happens what would you have what would it a brand charge i don't even know and at some point maybe you might turning to to something like that where it's a little more more obvious and there's like the pie my podcast is something that that gets sponsored and has the ads on it but those are obvious sponsors totally guys and that's separate and there's never anything attached to that that says you're gonna do any of these posts on social media and you're gonna do this in gear guide and you're gonna put it in the book or you're gonna put in the show so none of that exists and i i wanna keep it pure like that but i i saw the podcast as a way to semi monetize a little bit of the some of those relationships because they wanna help anyway they wanna be associated have this podcast that is a way that authors couldn't reach an audience twenty thirty forty years ago so once again looking at that battle space i looked at it at will james patterson he's been around as you did your research since the seventies as stephen king seventy so there's a reason that those names on the new york times list that are at the top are the same names that our parents would have i've opened in the new york times best seller list and seen back in the eighties nineties so it's i i realized that hey what can i do today to create new readers because those authors that have been around for so long they have a reader base that they have built up over thirty forty years i have to i have not done that and there's more distractions today so back then let's say say seventies eighties you have a book that's competing with maybe television and possibly film so those are three things a newspaper a magazine that's that's about it so now when i'm stepping into this space now i'm competing with all those other distractions and all those other products and platforms streaming every single streaming service every single app every single social media internet everything out there plus the movies and tv shows is still so i realized that if you want to build an audience today with new readers well now it's podcast it's social presence it's that blog it's adding something of value to their lives throughout the year that they're not paying for but that helps create that connection yeah and nothing guy who does that well as a a friend of mine who i'm i i i'd imagine you're friendly with him too is ryan holiday so ryan does a really good job i don't know how his output is so high because he's always has a book that he's doing i think he has maybe two daily emails for sure one he has a business selling merchant coins and things like that and then he has a bookstore i don't know how his output so high he is a podcast and then you have a bunch of stuff you got the site you have the news newsletter or social media you got your podcast you're always on other people's podcast how beats your team it was me until this last fall and then i gotta chief a staff with no staff and she's she's amazing and then starting in february we started adding to the team so this is my first year of putting a team together and i was writing this last book i thought it was gonna be first i thought i was gonna be finished december first and then january first and then february first it ended up being the longest book here actually it's it ended up being the longest book today because you just don't know when you start like i thought i had a pretty good idea seventh look like i it'll be about a hundred and fifteen hundred and twenty thousand words ended up being like a hundred and fifty thousand words which is adds months to the writing process so i started hiring some people to help but i didn't really get to interact with him at all until about two weeks ago when i finally sent by final edits in for the good knowledge so it's so now the team is as of yesterday six but it's very new very new how are you bouncing being a writer or a creator and also a manager is that paint i mean it's i think it sucks yeah walter through this point span just me my wife like she was doing all the fulfillment and i our boxes all over our bedroom all over the the living like just chaos and i realized early on that i needed help but you're not yet to a place financially where it makes sense to do that so it's just been me essentially start up in the garage making a computer in nineteen seventy six nineteen seventy seven building all of the parts also letting people know it exists why they need it and doing every single be in the ceo the cfo the cmo the creator being every single piece now and as of yesterday i hired six person yesterday to handle the hollywood side of the house because there's multiple projects in hollywood now and i was doing all the calls all the writing all the creative everything oh shit you are doing that by yourself so no each one has a team and as each project a lot of some haven't been announced yet but you're putting together a team of a show runner director a lead production team all those things and you're essentially putting together this package then to take to to netflix usually through another production company that you have a relationship with so there's multiple of those going on right now so i'm jumping between either writing a script writing a writing a executive summary writing an outline doing a creative back and forth to see if someone is the right person to be a show runner for the show or be a lead writer or on a show for a new idea and i'm jumping back in because have a dead deadline on my novel and i'm doing that and then i have to jump over to the podcast but i how are you dealing with that context switching because that's that's a that's really hard yeah no well yesterday i had my i call with the person i brought on to run hollywood side of the house and i i told them i'm like i need to do prioritize and execute need to be focused on one thing at a time and then switch to the next one there'll be a little bit of overlap there as you're editing or i'm gonna up generating some new ideas but for the most part i need to be focused on one thing at a time and then switch gears and i know you do something cool so you you write i think i heard on your podcast you'd like to write a one pager and you write a one pager i think we're you didn't exactly explain what's on the one pager but i imagine it's like a a summary of the book but maybe there's more to it like my goal is that it sells us many copies or it makes a reader feel like this but you said i do this one pager because i know that this project i'm gonna spend eighteen minutes of my life and i wanna make sure that like i'm willing to do that and i think that's kinda cool because when you know running a business tends to actually probably go into three year five year cycles but i thought it was pretty cool that writing this one pager you know amazon does this thing where they go we're gonna create this product go ahead and write the press release now so we know like what do we want it to say in twenty four or twelve months when this product is live what how do we want it to be received what do we wanna tell people do it does and then let's work backwards to creating that and that's sort of like what you're doing and i thought that was pretty interesting and i try to do that with a bunch of projects in my life whether it it'd be like a fitness challenge that i have or a business or whatever like a new life event where it's like what's what's the outcome gonna be like this in in twelve or eighteen months and and do i really wanna go all in on that and i thought that was cool you do that yeah i didn't know that on amazon but it makes total sense so i do that alright it's it's like it's kind of like what you'd find on the back of a in a on the back of the paper back or in the front flap of a of a book you know something mean that describes it so it's about a one one pager and it's like a executive summary and then i read it to myself and i ask myself back question is this worth the next year year and a half of my life and the question is yes if i'm that excited about it then i read it again and i ask myself another question if someone's walking by hudson news in the airport they're pulling this off the shelf and they're to read this same thing or something similar is that so is this does this idea get them excited enough to wanna spend time that they're never gonna get back in these pages so as i'm writing i am thinking about that that's what i'm thinking about thinking about the story it's all about the story it's not about what's selling it's not about short chapters or longer chapters what's popular it's about none of those things is all about the story because you're never gonna gonna please everyone so if you honor the story and to all your bandwidth all your harp soul into every single word then you're respecting that reader or that listener today who is spending time with you that they're never gonna get back so that's how i approach it i don't approach it from a business side which maybe i should like what's selling like what's popular but no it all has to be about the story why not just be your own publisher at this point you know you have like a pretty nice direct audience you're you've been on joe rogan in a bunch of times and those get millions of views you get millions of impressions across all these other podcasts why not just do your own thing at this point well i i like being where am i like the team that they have at simon i like the production value of audiobooks i like ray porter who na who's absolutely amazing i like that they have regional representatives all across the country you get these books into target and walmart and although i like that machine it's doing that because that allows me to focus solely on writing and i don't have to worry about that other side of so it's i can see why someone would want to first build up a social media presence or something or audience and then have the book knowing that a certain percentage of that audience will take the action that you want but that's not that wasn't my my way and that's not how i grew up and that's not how i wanted wanted to adapt to the new space i wanted who adapt to it in a different way where i still have a publisher and there's still an art department for the cover and they're still all that so i have that machine working there and i can solely focus on writing and then also figure out the things that maybe a large publishing company isn't so great at so the social side of the house and the digital marketing side of the house and the podcast podcasts and all of that so i think it's a very good partnership as far as the business goes for from for me everybody's gonna have a different we had this guy on the pod and we've had him a few times his same scott gallo scott gallo is a successful entrepreneur but he also is a author and kind of a thought i don't know what you would would describe him as but he he's a wonderful speaker and his new crusade right now is on young men and how young men are are kinda getting forgotten a bit you know if you look at like suicide rates the pressure rates if you look at education like young men are are getting are getting left behind a bit and i felt that and i remember i was going through a period in my late twenties where i had a little bit of success but i was like i still like i i i now have a young family and i was like need i wanna learn a little bit more about what it means to be a man and so i went through this this like reading like i read all these like man books like teach teacher become a man i guess and so i i'd noticed that i would read your books and i felt like i was being inspired to be a more high integrity man's and which james reese what books have you read that sorta of like got you on that path of being in this sort of i don't know like teacher of young men because that's kinda like what you've become a little bit yeah and it's interesting now when i go to book signings like that first book came on twenty eighteen so now somebody read that book when they were fifteen sixteen seventeen eighteen now there are a few years into a their time in uniform in the military or law enforcement or whatever else now i have people coming up to me and saying i was inspired to join the military i was inspired to get into law enforcement i was inspired to do this because of your books and i knew that was a possibility but didn't really dwell on it but the last book tour i maybe were on before was the first time where that really started happening but you know it happened naturally for me so i didn't like get to a certain agent say what book should i read in order to which was is i was constantly reading as a student of warfare and and one book that stands out as my most gifted book it's called once an eagle by anton meyer has written in nineteen sixty eight and it's historical fiction and it follows two people from right before world war one up to vietnam they don't call a vietnam in the book they call it something else but that's what it is one of them is an officer and one of them gets a battlefield commission on the battlefield in world war one and then he have the inner war years yeah world war two and it goes like i said up to be up but the guy who is the he's a politician in uniform he's the he's the officer he's always just a little bit ahead of this guy sam damon who is who who's who's the he's like the leader of men that you would want to be as you read this book and so i a give this book to people who are starting their career in the profession of ours there's a reason it's called the profession of arms not the career of arms and i would write a letter and i would put it in the front cover and that's one that they could read before they started reading and we kind set the tone why i'm giving them this book and then i would say in that letter but there's another letter at the back and bag is sealed and you have to work your way through this book and it's pretty fixed you can use it as a blunt back weapon or as a door if you need to so it's dual use technology and at the end then that's my take on what you just read and i don't want them to read it beforehand because i don't wanna poll their reading some experience with my interpretation so it gives them incentive to get to the end to get to read that last letter and setting the tone with the first one so that's my most gifted book but it really is a is a book about leadership and and so that's why i would give it to these to these guys but through that context of historical fiction so it reads like a thrill but you're learning about history at the same time but it's really all about leadership well you have this i mean you had a career where you sorta you had a write a passage so you went to the military you experienced some crazy stuff and i imagine it's like i imagine there sometimes times where it's like i just grew up really fast and now i officially feel like a man women a little bit have you know they have a physical thing where it's like you're now a woman men don't typically have that at least not now in some cultures they do where they're like you know i like to read about the spartan and they're like alright now you go off the wilderness and you do this thing you come back you're a man you know right the jewish culture has a apartment mit and bop mit so there's a little bit of a euro man now but we don't really have that in america for like most men and the reason why and and i always felt that was lacking i'm like i i don't have this like i didn't i didn't there wasn't this like beginning middle of an end of a journey where it's like i've come out and i'm not an adult and so i think that's why i like reading your stuff because it's like i'm living vic cares through the through through james reese and i experienced this like heartache and this like evolution and it's like i now feel weirdly more manly i mean as as cringe as that sounds but it's like you know they say you're the average of the five people you spend with most i think i'm the average of like the last year's worth of reading i've done do you know what i'm saying so it's like i'm getting a little bit of a write a passage a little bit through like your work if that's if that makes sense well yes and that's why it's so important i think for our kids especially who they follow now in this world because you those five people you're spending the most time with how it can be virtual it's not that person on the playground whereas as you get older someone you're in a that that's a mentor type relationship or in an internship or or something like that a lot of these people are the people that they're following so that's why it's so important for you follow but yeah for most of you in history there was exactly that there was a rite of passage and it was there for a reason it was a reason the reason was that you could prove to the tribe to the community that you could add value because if you didn't then well you your tribes not gonna last for very much longer so with these trials there were these teachings mentorship and then you'd have this trial that you would go through to prove that you were a valued member of the tribe and then that's slowly started to go away but mostly in the the well nineteen twentieth century because they're still we're still around before that but today it is almost entirely lacking which is why think so many people feel lost because they it's not institutional into our society but it's in our dna because i think that there there's a reason that it was around from the beginning of time up until the time we got so comfortable where we didn't have to have it and that was so that we could survive as a species so your tribe could survive but that's why i think young men whether they know it or not are drawn towards typically in this country it's marine boot camp like that's the one that that most people think up but it's all you see these things where it's like rich guys spending like fifteen grand for a weekend and a little bit of if it's like dude that's fucking lame but on the other side i'm like i understand why you want that and you gotta get it how you can get it i guess yeah they missed it when they should have done it or when another culture the thousand years ago would have had it as part of this process to bring people into the tribe but we don't have it so people find it later and they're like oh jeez i missed that part and then they start reading these books and they're like oh that's what i was missing that's why i felt this draw a certain age agent i didn't listen to you like listen to that calling like the hero's journey you heed the call and so yeah reboot camp or army special forces q course maybe seals it's called buds training but something that allows you to go through this trial tribulation allows you to test yourself and then prove to the group that you're worthy of joining the ranks and i think if you don't do that in one way shape or form it doesn't after the military but if you don't do that then i think that's why people feel so lost these days general yeah look i get those things and maybe i'll do just don't post any pictures of me online doing it because that way i would yeah i would need another write a passage to get through the ridicule that i would receive or posting where obsessed i there's a in the comfort crisis i'm obsessed with this idea they had it was called musk have you and we talked about a bunch here on this spot have you heard of associates basically like this idea of it stems from this japanese guy who this japanese myth of like he goes to like i think he goes to like hell or something to find his wife who has been kidnapped and he goes to this massive journey where he gets dirty and grimy and he finally saves his wife he brings her back he washes himself off in this waterfall and he's now a new man because of the hardship that he went through and the it was i think his name was and so a lot of people now what they're doing is they're doing these like really hard things physical things so for example the guy who made it popular here he'd be like today we're gonna get our paddle board and we're gonna paddle to this island that's fifteen miles out and then we're gonna paddle back and the there's basically two rules which is one you have to only have a fifty percent chance of succeeding and number two don't die and so i'm training for my right now which is a fifty mile race but i got like obsessed with this idea of like a of like having this like really hard concept and i would like went to this whole like phase where i was reading you and and all about all this stuff have you ever heard of the the you know i feel like i should know because i read the comfort crisis but i read it a couple years ago now when it i first came out and had michael easter on the podcast but yeah i don't feel that anymore because i feel like i did that already i'm like god this looks exhausting i think i feel like i've done that most of my life so now it's really all about writing i each book better than the last that's always my goal which is why the last book i finished is always my favorite up to this point anyway i don't know it'll always be that way but that's how it is thus far because i do feel like i'm improving with each with each book improving as as as an author as a writer and that's what i owe owe the audience so so yeah but so i don't but i understand it i understand that to do something difficult to test yourself i certainly understand it you kinda have this even though you know you're i would stereotype you as like a tough guy you have this like weird not weird but you have this i don't know how how to describe it almost spiritual way about you where i remember you told the story about how before or maybe when you are writing the first book you were like chris pratt is the guy i need to get him to do this and lo behold after a handful of years he calls you and he was like hey your awesome i would love to turn this into a show and it maybe i'll star in it whatever do you believe in the these weird type of like spiritual manifestation type of things of like if you want it bad enough it it things come true because it seems like it's happened a few times in your life or it's kinda you've kind of called your shot when it seemed ridiculous at the time yeah i mean it seems like but it it's more than just calling and or manifesting it you know sitting down and visualizing it it's more that's let so it's more that's when you think about some thinking about how they're gonna make that a serve in tennis or extra kick point soccer or whatever like that's very tactical and your european watch videos and you can manifest it and think of it the strategic one and not obviously the tactical level requires work but the strategic level one also requires work but it's not that one thing like that one foot placement or that one that way you're gonna throw the ball whatever it might be so i think this but if there's a spiritual side to it which i think they're there's a spiritual side of everything that connects us but it's more the work and it's not gonna happen without putting in the work that's the thing it might not happen if you put in the work that's that's possible too but it's certainly not gonna happen if you don't so as i'm starting to write this thing as a child of the eighties it's very natural for me to think about who's gonna star in the fell who's gonna star on the tv show and at the time i was like i saw chris pratt transform from this guy who played andy wire on parts and rack funny ill overweight and then i saw his transformation in zero dark thirty two seal and so i said this is a guy who needs a role like this he needs it for his career and so i'm thinking this in december of twenty fourteen and so i'm like chris pratt will play the main character he'll play james reached he needs it for his career and then who i wanna direct antoine fu i love antoine fu training day and choose the sign and all these and he's the guy that's that's who i want to to drink this thing and then i just go about writing i no connection to hollywood no connection to publishing and you haven't even published the first one at this point no nope i haven't published the first one no idea i'm wanna get it to a publisher but i'm not thinking about any of those things no social media presence no facebook did you tell your friends that you wanted this to happen no in the seal teams you wanted to keep anything about writing close to a vest but like would you tell your wife or whatever like talk you're like hey would it be neat what day of chris pratt was james reese yeah i i told people like by my wife she's not i wanted to w be seo and right with no each since for eighteen years old so she's been on this journey for the entire time but but how it manifests i guess is a way that i never would have expected is that i call gonna i call them a friend i served with in the steel teams who calls me in november of twenty seventeen so six seven months before the book even comes out and he calls me and said says hey do you remember me because i didn't talked to him in about five years and he said i said yes of course i remember you he said you remember what you did for me in the seal teams and i was like no and he said well you're the only person when i said i was getting out leaving the teams you're the only person that sadly out of your office talked about transitioning out of the military introduced me to people in the private sector followed up with me said asked if you could do anything else and i've never forgotten it and i always wanted to thank you and i said no problem how's was it going and he said it's going great but i heard to the grapevine me you of a book coming out and i said yeah coming out a few months it's called the terminal list i can send you a copy if you wanna check it out and he said i'd like that but i'd like to give you a friend of mine also and i'm like who's who's that like it's my my best friend and is chris pratt i was like oh well that's very convenient for me because i pictured him playing this role all these years ago and so he gave it to chris chris red in december of twenty seventeen and then he called me the first week in twenty eighteen and i wanted adoption it at the same time another friend unbeknownst to me had given a copy to antoine fu football they've admitted a speaking event and he gave a copy to dance juan grant one what reddit and he wanted to option it and chris ant knew each other from magnificent seven so then they called and and works it out now we have the terminal list on name was on prime how does that feel to be not a nobody but just a guy just a guy making these ridiculous predictions and they're they come true yeah well i mean it wouldn't have happened of obviously if by hadn't so i was really care about people in the teams and my focus was always on on the guys and helping them whether they're staying in or getting out and i did notice that a lot of other people specialty officers didn't do that if you said you were getting out they only cared about you if you were in the things and that just wasn't wasn't me so if i hadn't helped share it out and at the time i didn't think would ever come back around that wasn't the reason i did it obviously but it did came came back around and now got i'm flying out to bud best in about a week to go film out there they're on set right now jared a writer and a producer and an actor and a technical adviser on set right now jared shaw gave chris the book and and this is the second season and then we have another one coming up here with the second book with with chris in it that should start filming in twenty twenty you never know adults actually all completed and ready and actually up there on the screens but so i try to manage those expectations but yeah so now we're off to the races and then there's other hollywood projects and multiple books and now the non fiction and i have a i have a strategic plan that's that i've written it now just by being a a student of all this my whole life but not with the intent of being a student more so just like i said from the fan perspective but have a strategic plan with all these things that i wanna build because essentially those goals that i that i wanted was serve my country form as a seal to do the best job i could be the best leader be the best operator i possibly could then write a novel have it be york best seller and get it up on the screen so those things are done and now was just by doing all those things better and continuing to grow in a way that's real and authentic and adds value to people's lives and allows me to do what i love to do and then also allows me to hit my my my mission so my mission is taken care of my family my passion is writing i wanted to combine those things for purpose going forward as i left the sales teams because i saw so many people not know what they wanted to do or think that they knew and then all of a sudden step into it and realized this wasn't really what they wanted after do you think you have you hit the you know i sold my company my first company when i was thirty one and that's where i hit that's where i hit the financial where it was like on paper i never need to work again because my income from my stock portfolio can pay for a really great life forever of course i still wanna work forever because i i enjoy it have you been able to cross that threshold to where financially you're like i can breathe because i you know as a working for the government you're you're not rolling in it but i imagine you are now like have you have you been able to like cross that threshold yeah not yet not yet but i'm i'm on the on the cusp but not not quite there yet and getting closer but a lot of this has been invested back in so i think a lot of people probably would have held on and not done boxes when you can't afford it put it all on your credit card early on like a boxes is that what you're doing those boxes were hats everything so it's everything's going back in like how do i how do i get this podcast going how do i do a video for this book that looks like a movie that's better than any author has ever made before to promote a book okay how do i do that well i invest because there's cost money to do that so i invested a lot back in to grow you can't get the publisher to pay for that no but i think people think that the publisher face for these things i would thought that yeah and i think some other people now because now i see other authors doing something similar and i i've like i got i definitely from me do the other day you talked about those and it came from the browser from from meteor eater he has a new has a new cookbook out and it came a couple of days ago and i'm gonna be on my father's take your guy just to you do my partner and be you know help him out a tiny bit but it came from it certainly came from the publisher so i think maybe other publishers also think my publisher pays for these things but it's really just me out of pocket business my hope for you in this probably doesn't align with your one so i don't know if it's gonna happen but what i want as a fan is i wanna see jack carr become the new meat eater i wanna see like a lifestyle media company all around your stick and i know i i told you about churn a churning company churn is a company that invest in me eater or things like it so you know brands that have a strong affinity with different lifestyles and then they eventually make more content and sell stuff and hopefully and they've done it a bunch they create really big businesses that are awesome for you as an owner because you make money but also awesome as me as a consumer because now i have more james terminal jack car stuff in my life that's my hope for you is that you that one day you take that path because i am being selfish but it would be cool for you as well maybe if it aligns at your values thank you yeah as long as there's the way to do it where it still remains authentic and and real to that that person who's trusting me with their time or there in in money ben ben yeah so i think it's it's things are going in that direction that's certainly a possibility last question which books that or resources that are a little bit less known that helped you that taught you most about the storytelling or creative process that i can go and read yeah so those those for sure the one on stephen and king on writing series of books by steven that really talk about same thing but going into different nuances as far as overcoming resistance doing the work putting in the time but becoming up professional so those one's another one's called the successful novel by david mu who created rambo with first blood back in nineteen seventy two yeah where's that one and then the heroes the hero's journey through hero with a thousand faces by joseph campbell and that one right there influenced star wars and once you read that book or watch a series of interviews that he did on pbs back in nineteen eighty eight with bill moore held the power of myth you realize how similar these stories are across cultures and why they resonated from the beginning of time because some of these stories these myths were really created to pass on lessons lessons of the hunt lessons of warfare so the next generation doesn't have to learn those same lessons in blood and that tribe of that community can grow and not just survive hopefully but thrive you're the man i i appreciate you doing this you your books have not only been fun but they've changed me a little bit as a kind of as a man as a husband as a father as a citizen of america you you you've done amazing stuff and i i wish nothing but amazing success for you and your family so thank you for all this this is awesome oh man i appreciate that and thank you for the podcast i'm so glad i discovered it because i'm gonna be taking taking notes going forward on how to to to scale things and i do things a little better because no matter what i'm doing in life i wanna do it a little better than next time i always wanna adapt to be more effective and efficient with what i'm doing so i thank you for you do well i appreciate you and that's the pod i feel like i could rule world i know i could be what i want to put at all in in like a day's off on a road less travel never looking back we're