INTERVIEW | Make Money by Building Mental Toughness, Not Just Businesses with Mark Divine

Summary

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Podcast Summary: Travis Makes Money

Episode: Make Money by Building Mental Toughness, Not Just Businesses with Mark Divine

Date: May 14, 2026
Host: Travis Chappell
Guest: Mark Divine (Retired Navy SEAL Cmdr., Entrepreneur, Founder of SEAL Fit & Unbeatable Mind, Author, PhD in Global Leadership)

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Episode Overview

This episode centers on the interplay between mental toughness, entrepreneurship, and authentic success. Travis Chappell interviews Mark Divine, exploring his multifaceted journey from CPA and Navy SEAL commander to entrepreneur, trainer, and author. The conversation highlights building resilient businesses, the role of personal development, and how passion-driven work, not just profit, leads to lasting fulfillment—and, often, greater financial reward.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. From Corporate Desk to Navy SEAL (00:54 - 03:12)

• Mark’s Unconventional Path: Started as a CPA with an MBA before joining the SEALs.
  • Quote: “Most people are surprised to hear this, but I was actually a CPA and had my MBA from Stern School before I became a Navy SEAL.” (01:45, Mark Divine)
• Military Transition Challenges: Lacked guidance transitioning to civilian world; sees improvement today via nonprofits.
• Corporate World Realization: Experience in big business soured him—found it unfulfilling and hierarchical.
  • Quote: “My appetite for bullshit was right around zero.” (03:02, Mark Divine)
• SEALs as Entrepreneurs: Emphasized SEALs’ independent, creative, non-hierarchical style, aligning naturally with entrepreneurship.

2. Early Ventures & Lessons Learned (03:13 - 08:16)

• Launching a Brewery: Founded Coronado Brewing Co.; left after partner issues taught him the importance of choosing business partners wisely.
  • Quote: “The importance of picking the right partners...” (04:05, Mark Divine)
• E-Commerce Pivot & 2008 Crisis: Grew navyseal.com to $10M, lost 90% of revenue in 2008 crash due to Amazon/Walmart disruption.
  • Quote: “We lost 90% of our revenue in that 2008 market crash.” (05:36, Mark Divine)
• Embracing Passion Projects: Moved toward passion-driven work with SEAL Fit, focusing on training elite performance. The more genuine and passion-backed the work, the bigger and more positive the impact, even leading to unforeseen “influencer” success.
  • Quote: “If you really do what you love...and you want to be an influencer...You gotta build a platform.” (08:02, Mark Divine)

3. Building Platforms and Authenticity (11:11 - 13:13)

• Essence of a Platform: Authenticity and relationship-building at scale—a prerequisite for impact.
  • Quote: “You gotta have a platform. If you don’t have a platform, you don’t have anything.” (11:15, Mark Divine)
• Patience & Foundation: Warns against impatience in the digital age; importance of deeply rooted character and learning from failure.
  • Quote: “Don’t shortchange the foundational stage...You need to fail a few times...You gotta earn the stripes.” (12:26, Mark Divine)

4. Relatability & Vulnerability as Success Drivers (13:14 - 14:21)

• Relatable Storytelling: Audiences want to see their own struggles in others’ successes—the bridge to credibility and influence lies in vulnerability.
  • Quote: “If you’re constantly presenting a picture of yourself, that’s perfect...there’s no relatability there.” (13:19, Travis Chappell)

5. Passion, Delegation, and the Role of the Founder (14:09 - 17:36)

• Mark’s Personal Passions: Finds deep fulfillment in in-person training and coaching.
  • Quote: “I love training and coaching in person...the transformation is right there in front of you.” (14:21, Mark Divine)
• Delegation & Leadership Hurdles: Struggled to hire right-fit CEOs; stressed value of proper hiring protocols, growth through bringing in experts, and moving beyond “founder as operator.”
  • Quote: “If you want to make money with your business as a founder, you ultimately gotta get out of the way and you can’t be an island.” (15:52, Mark Divine)

6. Writing Books: Inspiration vs. Credibility (17:35 - 24:36)

• Organic Creation: Writes only when truly inspired, rejecting the idea of writing purely for credibility.
  • Quote: “If the book isn’t already in you screaming to come out...don’t put crap out there.” (18:26, Mark Divine)
• How His Books Emerged: First book came from others asking him to codify his system (e.g., Eight Weeks to SEAL Fit became a NYT bestseller).
  • Quote: “I wasn’t sitting around thinking I needed a book...I wrote a book called Eight Weeks to SEAL Fit.” (21:01, Mark Divine)
• Self-Publishing Success: Notes how self-publishing (Unbeatable Mind) was more financially rewarding than traditional publishing due to his platform.

7. Podcasting: Accidental Journey, Enduring Value (24:49 - 27:01)

• Becoming an “Accidental Podcaster”: Started via stepdaughter’s suggestion; views podcast and book journey as following genuine audience demand.
• Advice to Aspiring Podcasters: Warns podcasting is hard work and tough to monetize, but worth it for meaningful connections.
  • Quote: “It’s an enormous amount of work. It’s very hard to monetize unless you get big at it, but it can be really rewarding because you get to meet some incredible people.” (26:22, Mark Divine)

8. Building a Community: Focus on Engagement, Not Just Scale (27:01 - 28:41)

• Quality over Quantity: Begin by deeply engaging a small audience instead of chasing massive scale.
  • Quote: “If you start working on a platform and you can find anybody who...gives two shits about what you’re doing, even if it’s only three people, that is something to be grateful for.” (27:01, Travis Chappell)
• Serve More Than You Ask: Suggests a 90% value, 10% ask approach to create a strong, lasting business foundation.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments (with Timestamps)

• “My appetite for bullshit was right around zero.” (03:02, Mark Divine)
• “We lost 90% of our revenue in that 2008 market crash.” (05:36, Mark Divine)
• “If you want to follow, do a passion project...You gotta build a platform.” (08:02, Mark Divine)
• “You gotta have a platform. If you don’t have a platform, you don’t have anything.” (11:15, Mark Divine)
• “Don’t shortchange the foundational stage...You need to fail a few times.” (12:26, Mark Divine)
• “If the book isn’t already in you screaming to come out...don’t put crap out there.” (18:26, Mark Divine)
• “It’s an enormous amount of work. It’s very hard to monetize unless you get big at it, but it can be really rewarding because you get to meet some incredible people.” (26:22, Mark Divine)
• “All you have to really do is spend time with those people and listen...then you follow that breadcrumb trail.” (27:22, Travis Chappell)

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Important Timestamps

• 00:54 – Mark’s transition from corporate life to the Navy SEALs
• 03:13 – Entrepreneurship, launching a brewery, lessons from partner disputes
• 05:36 – Surviving the 2008 crash, pivoting business direction
• 11:13–13:13 – The importance of patience, authenticity, and failure
• 14:21 – Mark on the fulfillment of hands-on training
• 17:46 – The process, struggle, and rewards of writing authentic books
• 21:01 – How Eight Weeks to SEAL Fit came about
• 24:49 – Mark’s “accidental” entry into podcasting
• 27:01 – Focusing on community engagement vs. just scaling
• 28:10 – “90% value, 10% ask” business approach

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Resources, Contacts, & Next Steps

• Mark Divine Personal Site: markdivine.com
• Training & Courses: unbeatablemind.com (Mental toughness certification, Unbeatable Mind Foundation)
• Books & Podcast Info: Found via above sites

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Key Takeaways

• Mental toughness and mindset are crucial to success in both life and business.
• Startup journeys are nonlinear: pivots, failures, and lessons are common and essential.
• Building a genuine platform—a real relationship with your audience—is more crucial and sustainable than rapid, superficial growth.
• Authenticity and passion are better long-term strategies for making money and impact than chasing trends or pure profit.
• Don’t skip foundational work. Failures and patience are prerequisites for authentic, lasting success.

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This summary captures the core lessons, stories, and actionable insights from Travis and Mark’s engaging conversation—empowering anyone seeking to strengthen their mind, grow as an entrepreneur, and make a meaningful living.

Transcript

[A]

You're listening to the Travis Makes Money podcast presented by GoHighLevel.com for a free 30 day trial of the best all in one digital marketing software tool on the planet. Just go to gohighlevel.com travis.

[B]

Yo, what's going everybody? Welcome back to the Travis Makes Money podcast where it's a mission to help you make more money. Today on the show, I have a new friend of mine, Mark Devine. Mark is a retired U.S. navy SEAL commander, entrepreneur and founder of SEAL Fitness and Unbeatable mind. He spent 20 years leading elite special operations teams and now trains executives and organizations in mental toughness, resilience and high performance. He's a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestselling author and holds a PhD in global leadership and change. He's also worked with Fortune 100 leaders and top performers worldwide to build disciplined, purpose driven leadership. Mark, what's up? Welcome to the show.

[C]

Hey Travis. Thanks for having me, brother.

[B]

So the transition from, from the military to private civilian life, I think lot of people is some somewhat nebulous. There's not a lot of times a clear path for people forward, especially if you're more on the combat side of things. And, and clearly this is something that you were able to figure out. Was that a difficult transition period for you? Was there a time during that where you were considering multiple opportunities, multiple pathways? How did you get, how did this end up coming to fruition?

[C]

Yeah, you bring up a good point. But it's, it's definitely getting better. I mean, there are organizations, primarily nonprofit, that are helping military transition. I know in the spec war community, you know, military Navy Spec War Honor foundation is going to, so they are like a six month cohort and they parade you in front of a bunch of companies, help you freaking figure out what, you know, what your skills are, do all the battery of tests, you make great contacts. They never had any of that when I was transitioning, but most people are surprised to hear this, but I was actually a CPA and had my, got my MBA from Stern School before I became a Navy seal.

[B]

Oh, no way.

[C]

Yeah. Yeah. So my first career, I lasted four years down in New York, got my MBA there, became a certified public accountant, worked for Coopers and Lybrand, which is the predecessor to pricewaterhouse Coopers. Yeah, yeah. It wasn't a good fit for me, obviously, so I went in a different direction.

[B]

So like most people, you stopped being an accountant and became a Navy seal.

[C]

But what's germane about that though, Travis, is that so as I was rolling off active duty. This is like 90, 90, 96 or so. After my first kind of six and a half, seven year stint. Two things were kind of in, in me are kind of guiding my thinking. One is I already had that big corporate experience. I knew what I'd be getting into and I really had a strong distaste for, you know, the bureaucracy and the fucking ego and all that. Right now if you're going after big money and finance or and you feel like you're called to that route, there's a lot of money to be made but you know, stand by. There's just a lot of bullshit too. And so after being in the seals for, you know, seven or eight years, like my appetite for bullshit was right around zero.

[B]

Yeah, no kidding.

[C]

So there's no way I was going to go back into that big corporate world. And, and, and, and I had an MBA and a cpa, so I was like, okay, so I've got a little credibility. Navy seal, mba, cpa and seals are by their nature pretty entrepreneurial in, in the sense of not business, but like in the way we do our work. Right. Like seals are very different than any other military operator out there because we're very independent, we're taught to make decisions on the fly. We're extremely creative. We're not hierarchical, we're flat or matrix. Organization and leadership and teamwork are really emphasized as like the main thing. And so I thought, okay, with those skills, entrepreneurship sounds like the way to go. And because I've got an mba, cpa, Navy SEAL pedigree, maybe I could raise some money. And so I launched a brewing company. Right, a beer company. Yeah, Coronado Brewing Company and it's doing really well today. I got out of it after about five years because I also learned a couple valuable lessons, you know, in the first entrepreneurial melee. And that's the, the importance of picking the right partners. My partner, my partner was my brother in law and I didn't know him well at all because I'd recently married and the guy turned out to be a nightmare and he brought in his brother and so there was like, ended up with like this two, two against one battle. And we fought legally for several years after their horns came out. And anyways, it was a great experience. The company is crushing it today, so I'm very proud of it. But it did light the entrepreneurial bug in me. And so that's when I went on and I know your show is about money, but so, so I thought like being an entrepreneur was all about Making money at first. Right. And I've come full circle. Right. Cause I did try that. I had an E commerce platform called navysale.com and I was. I scaled that to like, you know, just less than 10 million. But I could, you know, I was going to parlay it into something else. And then the whole bottom fell out in 2008 with a financial market. Most people don't realize it, but E Commerce blew up as well because everybody started shopping at Amazon and walmart.com and everything that we sold suddenly was available for much cheaper on those platforms. We lost 90% of our revenue in that 2008 market crash.

[B]

90%?

[C]

Yeah, 90%. So. So I had to, like, pivot again, you know. Yeah. So again, all entrepreneurs have to learn how. I mean, if your business looks the same way it does two years from now, then you're probably not doing the right thing, you know, you. Especially at today's age of disruption or speed of disruption. So I pivoted into. Into training and, and because it was. It was my passion, right. So I said, I really love to train other individuals to, to help them, you know, tap into un. Unknown or hidden potential to find their, you know, peak performance. Right. To really tap. Use some skills that they didn't know they had. Right. And so, and things that I had learned in the seals and also had learned through many, many years of meditation and breath work and visualization, because I was kind of a pioneer and OG in in those areas. And now it's like, pretty common. But, you know, back in the early and mid 2000s, there wasn't much out there. So I launched a. I spun a company out of seal, maybe seal.com called seal fit, you mentioned in the intro. And at first I thought, you know, I was kind of like, still had a little bit of that, hey, we're going to grow this thing and, and, and exit it, you know, X multiple. And the more I got into it, the more I realized it truly was just a labor of love. It was my passion. And I was just. And we were just having a massively transformative effect on all the people that were. Who were coming to our events and our training. You know, the peop. The Navy SEALs that we trained, 90% of them make it through Navy SEAL training, which is exactly the opposite of the average. Not the average, but the typical Navy SEAL trainee goes in, and only 10% of them make it through. And we, we developed this model, this training model that was seeing a 90% success rate. And of course that led to civilians finding out about it and you know, entrepreneurs and executives and you know, weekend warriors and CrossFit type executives and suddenly, you know, this business kind of blew up and we have like a 20 minutes of fame, people from all over the world coming to us and that led, that led kind of, or pulled me into this whole kind of influencer arena where all of a sudden I've got New York Times best selling books and I've got a podcast because I had created something that was really unique and innovative and worked and and so probably the biggest lesson there is if you want to follow, do a passion project and you're not just like the kind of business person that's going to go make money in finance or consulting or who's going to like start a widget business or an AI business, right? That just does something. But if you really do what you love to do and you love to teach and you want to be an influencer, you want to have Chime is

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[C]

You gotta build a platform. Yeah, yeah.

[B]

You have to do something.

[C]

You gotta have a platform. If you don't have a platform, you don't have anything. Because everybody has content now. Anybody got free content. So you need to build a platform where people can relate to you authentic. Authentically. Right? Yeah.

[B]

And.

[C]

And you can build that kind of trust. And they know that, you know, that What? It's not just the content coming out of your mouth or, you know, out of your pen. It's the relationship, right?

[B]

Yeah, it's relationships at scale, essentially.

[C]

Yeah, exactly. Now that's not easy to do, right, is it? For me, it happened kind of over a long period. It's like that, that instant success after 16 years of. Yeah, exactly.

[B]

10 year overnight success, Right? Exactly, exactly. Yeah. Well, because you. But you basically take the first nine years to like build this incredible foundation and then once the steel goes up, the building's up in no time.

[C]

You Know what I mean?

[B]

It's like.

[C]

That's right. The foundation is everything. I think people get younger generation who, you know, grew up with the iPhone. How old are you right now, Travis?

[B]

33.

[C]

You're 33. You're younger. I turned 62 this year. Fortunately, physically, I feel 33.

[B]

But I was gonna say, yeah,

[C]

people expect things to happen a lot faster than they really will or should. Yeah. And so one of the best kind of pieces of advice is just, just be patient. Don't. Don't shortchange the foundational stage. Because like that, you said that building, you build on top of that, it'll fall down. Right. Because it's going to meet a lot of headwinds. There's a lot of things that are changing really quickly. You want to make sure the foundation is deep and broad. Yeah. That means that your depth of character, you need to fail a few times, especially when it comes to connecting with an audience. Right. They don't want someone who hasn't failed and who hasn't been through the fire, you know, and fought his demon battles. Right. They want someone who, like, has been there and done that. So you gotta earn the stripes.

[B]

They want to see a piece of themselves in somebody else.

[C]

Right.

[B]

And if you're constantly presenting a picture of yourself, that's perfect. There's no relatability there because you're taking away the bridge in people's minds from where they are to where they want to go. And in reality, that's essentially your job as a quote unquote, influencer, author, creator, podcast or YouTube or whatever it is. If you're helping, especially in, like, self help or self development education space, then that's exactly what your job is. It's to get people to say, hey, you're in this position now. You want to go to that place over there. Let's build the bridge together. In order to let you know that I know how to build that bridge, here's the story of how I wildly failed and fell flat on my face, like you're afraid to do right now. And then things turned out okay, you know, I mean, we ended up figuring this thing out.

[C]

What.

[B]

Of all the things that you're doing now, Mark, what do you really enjoy the most? Like, you're writing, you're podcasting, you're spe, you run your businesses, you got a lot of things going on. What. What's the thing that, like, really fires you up?

[C]

Well, I. I love training and coaching in person. Right. Like, I'm. I'm really good at it. And you have like instant feedback, you know what I mean? Yeah. Like the transformation is right there in front of you and, and that's powerful. And I'm getting a little tired of sitting and standing in front of a fricking camera. You know what I mean? I'm okay with this podcast. I do enjoy podcasts, but it's getting a little bit maddening to just always be staring at a camera these days. Like I feel like I'm in a virtual reality. So I'm trying to get out more and just do things right. Be with people, be with people, work with people, get my hands dirty. And in that vein, like I finally learned I'm a, I'm a very experiential learner, AKA slow learner. Sometimes I learn, I learn a lot. Right. And I've got a lot of experience and knowledge. But when it came to business, I thought I could be the operator, you know, like the guy who's running the business. And, and I still do run my business, but it's only because I, I wanted to. I finally figured out that that wasn't me. And, but what I didn't know well how to do or how to do well was to hire the right person to kind of take over that. Not, not me because you can never replace me. Right. The visionary founder, content creator, but someone to run full on the day to day business, you know, to where I trust them enough to just give me a report every week or we have one call, you know. Right. And I had two disastrous hires for CEO that almost, I mean, put a stake through the heart of my business, like cut my revenue by 75% and we've been rebuilding since then, but I have anyway, so I'm really looking forward to, to getting the company back to that place where I can kind of step out of the operating role. Yeah. And I finally learning like, okay, there are some really important things you have to have in place. You know, you have to have really good hiring protocols and checks and balances, ideally a board of directors or at least advisors to support you, you know, so I'm going more, more into that round where I'm going to bring in some capital and some expertise so that it's not just me flying, you know, alone like a lot of founder CEOs do. And so that's if you want to make money with your business as a founder, you ultimately got to get out of the way and you can't be an island. Right. You have to have support, you have to be willing to bring people in who Are experts smarter than you in a lot of areas and share the upside with them?

[B]

Yeah, it feels weird sometimes as a founder, because it's. You're, you're almost. At least when I was doing this, it felt like I was like hiring my own boss. I mean, it's like. But like, ultimately that's what I wanted. Like, I wanted somebody who just like, hey, you, come in. This is what we need for this stuff. And then tell me what you need me to do. Like to. In order to help us all fulfill the mission, tell me where to sit, where to stand, what to say, when to say it. And I will do that part and I will do it well, you know what I mean?

[C]

Totally. Yeah. There's. I have a certain nostalgia about that too, you know, just tell me where to stand and what to say.

[B]

Yeah, exactly.

[C]

I love it.

[B]

Exactly. Now, with your, with your books, Mark, where did, where did the idea for the books come from? Is that a process that you find enjoyable? Is it arduous? Is it difficult? Do you like doing it?

[C]

Yeah. Yeah. Just like the podcast. There's a. And I bet you every author says this. I have a love hate relationship with writing. It's extremely rewarding to like literally give birth to a book, but it's, it's painful, like giving birth. Right. It's. It's a lot of work. Again, who the hell knows where it's going with AI But I think people will like, you know, books generated by AI or where someone heavily uses AI I think will be easy to sniff out and people aren't going to engage with them. I wrote every one of my books and each one took between two and five years. Two to five years.

[B]

That's crazy.

[C]

Per book. Per book. Now I have six books and I'm working on a seventh. So it's not like I've been writing for like three times, six years. I put my first book out in 2012, but I. So what I've done, I wrote two books in the same year. That's how insane I am. Right? Yeah. And my publishers were not very happy about that, so I double tapped a couple of them and, and I've done that a couple times. So when I get inspired, that's the other thing. Like when, when it comes to writing, you've got to be like, it's got to come through you. It can't be mechanical. You can't be like scanning for different topics that you. That might land with your audience. Right. I know some people do that because they think they need a book for Credibility, sure. Don't waste your time. If the book isn't already in, you like screaming to come out because of your unique perspective on the world and your expertise. Don't put crap out there. You know what I mean? Yeah. So I go through periods where like, okay, I'm done. I don't want to do anything else for a while, and I'll just sit and wait until inspiration comes for the next thing.

[B]

And it's funny because, like, you can actually end up doing the opposite if you, you know what I mean? Like, you, you put out the book because you feel like you need to be more credible, but if you put out a crap book, then it just makes you less credible.

[C]

Anyway.

[B]

He just did a bunch of work for Dude. I remember one time I was at this. This is like when I was first getting into the space, I think I launched my podcast, like, two weeks before I was at this event. And I was trying to go do the thing and be out and meet people or whatever. And this. I've met this person and he. And gives me a copy of his book. And my very first thought. And again, I was brand new to the space. It's probably like eight, nine years ago. And my very first thought was like, oh, this is kind of flimsy. Like this cover, like, doesn't look super great. But I was like, whatever. I'll. I'll. I'll, you know, give them the benefit of the doubt.

[C]

Right?

[B]

I opened the. I opened the first page while I'm still at the event, and the very first line of the book, it said it was 3am in the morning. And I was like, it was 3am in the morning. That was the first, the first line of your book is a. Is like a crazy, obvious grammatical error. I was like, yep, I'm not. I can't. I can't do it. I got. I'm not going to be able to read this book clearly. Like, you didn't even, didn't ask, like, your high school English teacher to give it a once over. You know what I mean? Like, this is the opposite of what you wanted it to do. It is destroying your credibility.

[C]

Oh, man, that's a bunch of product.

[B]

That's terrible.

[C]

You know what I mean, Travis, you asked about how the books came about, so I didn't. I wasn't sitting around thinking I needed a book. I was training early days of SEAL fit. We had this incredible program I put together called the SEAL FIT Academy. And imagine like a Shaolin monastery on American soil for special operators. We had a 30 day. You would have loved it. We had a 30 day program where these athletes, warrior athletes, would come live on site with me in Encinitas, California. And we had this massive 5,000 square foot training center. We had the kind of like the functional fitness CrossFit gym ring with pull up bars and all the equipment. We had the yoga room for breath work, visualization, meditation, movement. We had the mat room for Jiu Jitsu. And we had. The whole grinder was just like, looked like a mini BUDS compound. You know, buds being basic underwater demolition seal. So we would have anywhere from like 8 to 10 to like 30 students living with us for 30 days at a time. Wow. And so I developed this incredibly intense curriculum for physical and mental toughness training and developed over a few years to where as I codified it, people were starting to use it in the military and law enforcement and it started to get popularized. They're called the SEAL Fit Operator workouts operator wads. And so all of a sudden I got a call from someone and they said, hey, it was someone from McMillan and they said, hey, we'd love for you to write a book about what you're doing there at SEAL fit. And I'm like, okay, yeah, okay, I could do that. So I, I wrote a book called eight Weeks to SEAL Fit. And it was like my, my training guide. I like to tell stories just like you. So I told, I, I told the training model or I presented the training model laced with all these cool different stories. Yeah, right. About, you know, mental toughness and resiliency and discipline and honor. Right. Really cool stuff. And, and it became a fricking New York Times bestseller as a training manual. Yeah.

[B]

That's awesome.

[C]

That's crazy. And so then, so that was the first one. And then I got another call from an agent who said, hey, I want you. I've been, I was referred to you by another SEAL that I approached. I wanted him to do. I, I asked him, I think we could do a book on Navy SEAL kind of leadership. And he said, well, he said, I'm not the guy, but Mark Devine is the guy. And he said, are you interested in doing that? And I thought about it and same thing. I'm like, why not? I'm teaching leadership. I've got something to say about it. Right? So I said, but it's, it can't be. It's probably not going to be what you're thinking because my, my style is much more coming from, influenced by my Zen and martial arts and kind of my eastern practices, which Served me so well at seal training and in the seals. Right. That, and that's what became my unbeatable mind, you know, the foundation for unbuttoned mind. So we, we titled it the Way of the Seal. You know, kind of like the dao of the seal. The Way of the Seal. And, and, and we just barely missed the New York Times bestseller, but we got, we became a Wall Street Journal bestseller and Amazon bestseller with that and that was published by Reader's Digestion. So anyways, this is kind of how it started rolling. And then I did a self published book called Unbeatale Mind, which I, I actually earned the most money by far from the self published book. Isn't that interesting because I have a platform. And then Macmillan came back and asked me to write three, four more books. So I've done I think five with macmillan or four with macmillan, one with Reader's Digest and then one self published so far.

[B]

Yeah. So basically every time, every time you weren't sure, somebody else came to you and said, hey, based on everything that you're doing, we'd actually love to see this from you.

[C]

Yeah. And that's back to that authenticity. Right. So I had a platform who's doing something unique and innovative. Find a niche. Right. And I had a niche and for a niche and people wanted to hear about it. Right. And so initially I wasn't compelled to be a writer, but you know, after the first one I found out I'm actually pretty good at it and a few more came out of me. Similar thing happened with my podcast. Like I consider myself an accidental podcaster because I started, this is our 10th year for the Mark Devine show, and it started with my stepdaughter who was working in marketing for me. I had a, like a, I put out a monthly interview style thing. I was doing it through a conference call, you know.

[B]

Oh really?

[C]

Way back in the day. And, and we'd record the conversation and put it, you know, out to my community. And my stepdaughter's like, you know, that's kind of like a podcast. And I'm like, yeah, what's a podcast?

[B]

What's a podcast?

[C]

Explain to me what a podcast was. I said, yeah, let's do that. Let's put it up on Apple, whatever. So we cleaned it up a bit and started doing, you know, zoom or whatever it was. I think Zen caster initially. Yeah. And sure enough I had a podcast. Yeah. And I've been doing it ever since. And I have a love hate relationship with a podcast. As you Know, it's a lot of work, right? So, listeners, if you're thinking about just slapping a podcast together, you know, think hard. It's an enormous amount of work. It's very hard to monetize unless you get big at it, but it can be really rewarding because you get to meet some incredible people.

[B]

Absolutely. That's always the thing I come back to, man, is like, even in the times where we weren't monetizing the podcast, it was still like, yeah, but what am I going to do? Like, pass on all of these amazing conversations that are being presented to me on a monthly basis? Like, I just can't. I can't avoid the curiosity that's in my mind to go talk to Mark Devine and this person, and that person, and this person's running this charity with over a billion in raised, and this person's running a hedge fund with a half a trillion under management. And this just, like, I just have so many questions for so many people that I can't. I can't prevent myself from continuing to do it. But I think the broad lesson there, though, man, I think, is, like, you.

[C]

You.

[B]

If you start working on a platform and you can find anybody who, Who. Who gives two shits about what you're doing, even if it's only three people, that is something to be grateful for. And all you have to really do is spend time with those people and listen to what they are wanting from you more. And then you follow what that, that breadcrumb trail that people are leaving behind them. Like, you're saying, like, the podcast came because people wanted to. Wanted to see it from you. The books came because people wanted to. To codify the. The things that you were talking about in your business that were revolutionary at the time. Like, people kept wanting more from you. So then you just go, okay, well, if this is what people want that are already following my stuff, then I may as well just create what they're asking for and give it back to them. Which is basically the easiest form of sales that I've ever come across in my life.

[C]

100%. Yeah. So if you're going down this path, think. Don't think about scaling initially. Just think about engaging. Yeah, right. Because you're engaging with even a small community of hundreds, if not, you know, a few thousand, you could have a pretty nice business from that.

[B]

Absolutely.

[C]

If you give them 90% value and only ask 10% in return. Right. They will, they will support you and they'll buy your books and they'll buy your whatever courses and then, you know, just build on that foundation through constantly giving, giving, giving, engaging, gauging, gauging. And then the scaling will happen by itself. Of course you're going to have to, you know, change some tech and bring some people in to help with that. But you as the founder creator, focus on quality engagement.

[B]

Mark, I appreciate the time that you've taken to share with us today. Where can people go to get more from you and everything that you're working on?

[C]

Travis has been a lot of fun. Markdivine.com is my personal website. You can learn about my books and podcasts and stuff there. But my training, we got an incredible training [e-mail] along the, you know, the, the among the nature we talked about today, mental toughness certification, Unbeatable mind foundation. Like how do you really, really like up level yourself big time.

[B]

So unbeatamind.com place unbeatablemind.com go check out some of the stuff that Mark's working on. Mark, I appreciate your time. I know you're a busy guy. I don't take that for granted. Everybody else tuning in, remember, money only solves your money problems. But it is easier to solve the rest of your problems when you got some money in the bank. So let's solve that one first here on the Travis Makes Money podcast. Thanks for tuning in. We'll catch you guys next time. Peace. Some follow the noise. Bloomberg follows the money. Whether it's the funds fueling AI or crypto's trillion dollar swings, there's a money side to every story. Get the money side of the story. Subscribe [e-mail].