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Travis Makes Money
SOLO | Make Money by Ignoring the Odds - Lessons from my Jack Carr interview
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Podcast Host (Travis)
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.
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Just go to gohighlevel.com travis what's going on, everybody? Welcome back to another episode of the show. On this episode, it's just me, you and the mic and we are continuing along this series of going through some of my past episodes and giving some of my lessons and key takeaways. I've actually been really fun for me. I've never done this before where I've gone back to my own catalog of content because there's so many interviews and conversations that I've forgotten about at this point. I've been doing it for so long and I've talked to so many people that now I get to go back through and be like, oh, that was a really helpful and valuable conversation. I'm glad, I'm glad I was able to have that. And so this one is actually one of one of the more recent ones that I've done and one of the ones that's more top of mind. But today I'm breaking down some of my takeaways from my conversation with Jack Carr. If you don't know who Jack Carr is, he's a former Navy SEAL and he is also the author of the Terminalist series, which is a sort of spy thriller novel series. I think he has eight books in that series and he just came out with a book called the Fourth Option, which is now based on a new protagonist in a completely brand new series. He's also written a couple nonfiction books about some things that took place in his industry. And then the Terminal List also got turned into a TV show starring Chris Pratt. Chris Pratt actually optioned the rights for Terminal List, shopped around and they got a deal with Amazon prime and they've made two seasons of that show. I think the third season's actually coming out in October 2026. So depending on when you're listening to this, you might actually be able to go watch that third season of Terminal list. It's actually technically season two, because the second season that they did was a backstory on one of the characters from season one of Terminalist, and that's called Terminalist Dark Wolf, I believe. And it's a. It's about one of the characters. But anyway, I've been wanting to talk with Jack for quite some time, so I was able to go out to Utah and set up a little studio in his office. And he was very gracious, very, very nice guy, very easy to talk to, very kind. Gave me and my producer Eric a bunch of books, signed them all. For us, it's just an overall great experience, but there's a few. Few lessons, few takeaways from my conversation with Jack. So here we go. Number one. Consuming great work obsessively is itself a form of training. Jack spent decades reading every thriller master that he could get his hands on. Tom Clancy, David Morrell, Vince Flynn, AJ Cornell, Louis l' Amour before he wrote a single word of his own. So he started reading incessantly when he was a kid and then all the way through the SEAL teams. So before he ever wrote a single word, he had consumed so much content that it was a form of training. Essentially, it was a way for him to be able to figure out exactly how he wanted to write his books and what style he wanted to write in. I think sometimes we can get so caught up with, like, oh, give me the frameworks and the tools and the practices. And it's like, well, you know, when I started my podcast, the reason I wanted a podcast was because I was an epic consumer of podcasts. I just listened to a bunch of podcasts, so I loved them. I loved the format. And being a consumer of podcasts helped me be able to figure out how I was going to start my own podcast. So he didn't just study storytelling.
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Let's go.
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Podcast Host (Travis)
Terms apply academically. By the time he sat down to write the terminal list, he'd already internalized the structure, the pacing, the character development, the history of the genre, because he loved it. And that love stacked up into a craft that he didn't even fully recognize that he had built until he needed it. So the education wasn't separate from the enjoyment. It was the enjoyment. I think there's a lot of clues there for people who are listening. If you're wondering, like, what's my purpose? What am I supposed to be doing? I don't feel fulfilled in my work. It's like, well, what is something that you really love doing? What's something that you really enjoy? What's something that you would do even if you didn't get paid? And the beautiful thing about the world that we live in now is that there's actually paths to get paid, doing the things that you really love to do without having to go through a bunch of gatekeepers and stuff. So I thought that was a really interesting lesson here. Number two, when you make a life change, make a physical and psychological break. So completely change your environment. So when Jack got out of the SEAL teams, he didn't stay in Coronado because he moved to. He moved to Utah. And he did it deliberately, like they were looking for a bunch of different places to move. Utah is where they ended up in Park City. But he deliberately chose that because he'd watched just too many guys get out of the seals and then stay stuck because the whole town still operated around the teams, the culture, the community, the identity. So he wanted a clean start in every dimension of his life all at once. So it's not even necessarily just about geography. It's about understanding that you can't build a new chapter in your life while you're still living inside the set design of the old one. So make a break, change the environment. This is why I'm such a big fan of especially young people moving away from home for the first time. And I know I'm going to regret this because at some point, my son's going to show me this video, my daughter's going to show me this video and go, see dad. I'm supposed to move away from you. It's not necessarily about getting away from the people in your life. It's just about crafting an environment that's built to change you and help you grow into the person that you're meant to become. And every time we have made a big move, I've seen a big jump in my career every time. So I think there's something very psychological about this, like, physical break that you can make when you. When you want to make a big life change. Number three, never miss an opportunity to make someone's day. This is one of Jack's principles that he lives by and with zero expectation of anything in return. If you have the ability to help somebody out, just help the person out. So the Chris Pratt story is one of the best karma loops that I've ever heard on the show. Because Jack mentored a guy named Jared Shaw in the SEAL teams, helped him find some work when he was getting out, connected it to some people, followed up, and then totally forgot about it. And then years later, Jared called him and said, hey, I heard you have this book coming out, the terminal list. Do you mind if I give it to a buddy of mine? And Jack was like, oh, sure, let me get you another galley copy. The galley copies are what they have before the book actually gets published. So this was his first ever book and the first thing that Jack wrote when he started the book. So he said he wrote the first few lines of the book, and then he was getting excited about where the book was going already in his mind, and the first name that he thought of for a big screen adaptation, which at the time, I think he was thinking more about film rather than tv. But either way, the protagonist, that is James Reese in the books, which is the character that he bases all the books on. He's, you know, he's the Jack Ryan of Jack Carr's world, essentially James Reese. He was like, I would love this person to be Chris Pratt. And this was pre Chris Pratt action star days. This was like, right after Parks and Rec, or during Parks and Rec, maybe even. And he had just done. He had just played a Navy SEAL in Zero Dark Thirty, the movie about Osama bin Laden's assassination. So he saw him, like, pictured in that role coming from Parks and Rec, and was like this. I would love to get Chris Pratt to do this. And than when he was writing the. So when he was writing this first page, he's like, I'd love to get Chris Pratt to do this. So fast forward, get back into the story. This guy Jared calls him and says, heard you got this book coming out. Mind if I get an additional copy? I want to give it to my friend. And Jack was like, okay, cool. Who's your friend? And he goes, oh, it's Chris Pratt. So he gives an advanced copy of the terminal list to Chris Pratt, and Chris Pratt options it right then and there. So before the book's even published, gets optioned and the TV show happens out of this. And frankly, I loved it as a TV show. I think it might have been a really difficult lift to try to put up everything that happens in the show in a movie. So there's sort of like limited series based on each book. And so the television show came out of this introduction from a friend who he had helped in the SEAL teams years ago and had completely forgotten that he had even helped this guy. And all of it traces back to that one act of just genuine generosity that Jack never counted on coming back around. And that part is really the part that matters most. He said he never expected anything from it, and that's probably why it ended up working. So it's that idea of just being a giver, man. Give as much as you can, because you never know what life is going to have for you. And what I always like to say is, it's never a bad thing to have a bunch of people in the world conspiring for your success. Never a bad thing. So never miss an opportunity to make someone's day. Number four, put 100% of your bandwidth into the main effort and nothing else. This one's about focus. So Jack didn't write a word of his books, even though he knew this is exactly what he wanted to do. So he's in the SEAL teams for like two decades. And he didn't write a single word of a book while he was still taking guys downrange, in his words. So when he was still responsible for other seals and their literal lives, he never wrote a word of the book. The SEAL teams had every bit of him and his focus and his attention, and he felt he owed that to those people, and clearly he did. And so he made that decision. But then after he got out and he committed to writing, he was all in on that. All of his focus was in on writing. He didn't split his attention. He didn't try this other thing or get this other job or maintain a side business, didn't hedge. He just focused and wrote the best book that he possibly could. And that kind of singular focus is what allowed the skill to actually develop. And it's what his readers feel when they open his books. Made a pact with his audience. Whatever time you spend with my work, I'll have given you my absolute best effort. You can tell, obviously, which is why the book's a number one New York Times bestseller, why it got optioned into a television franchise starring somebody like Chris Pratt. A hundred percent of your bandwidth into the main effort, whatever the main effort is. Number five, never pay attention to the odds. Never pay attention to the odds. Which is another one of Jack's mantras. And I give him a little bit of a hard time because I was like, it sounds like what Han Solo said. I don't think this came from you, Jack. But he was like. He was like, yes. Because Han Solo says, never tell me the odds. And so Jack kind of reframe on it is never pay attention to the odds. You can tell me the odds if you want to, but just don't pay attention to the odds. Because he knew from the time that he was 7 years old that he wanted to be a SEAL. He knew before he finished the first chapter of his book that he wanted Chris Pratt to play the lead and he wanted Antoine Fuqua to direct. And both of those things ended up happening, most people would call that delusional, but he calls it just not wasting bandwidth on the probability of failure. It's like, obviously, when there's no shortage of people who sit down to write a book who go, I want this to be a number one New York Times bestseller. I want Chris Pratt to be the lead in a big screen adaptation of this film, and I want Antoine Fuqua to direct it. There's a bunch of people who have those types of goals and dreams and aspirations that the odds of that happening are so, so infinitesimally low. But what his point was is to say, don't pay attention to it. If that's what you want, go for it. And go for it with this delusional sense of optimism that it's going to work out. Because the part people miss is that when those exact two men came through, he was ready. When Chris Pratt, Antoine Fuqua were ready to go, he was ready. The manuscript was done, the book was the best he could make it. Opportunity found, the preparation. So you can dream as big as you want, but you still have to have done the work. So never pay attention to the odds if you want to do something. And it's statistically improbable, right? So, like, people ask me my advice on starting a business, and they're like, well, what business would you not start? Because on Travis makes money. We have stock. A lot about side businesses, side hustles, and what's the best type of business to get into and things like that. And I'm always telling people, like, well, don't start a restaurant. Like, I'll never start a restaurant. Don't start a restaurant. Odds are super low of success restaurants. The number, the highest failure rate out of all of them. But every single year, there's somebody who starts a restaurant that does extremely well. The dude who owns Panda Express is clearing like 2 billion cash a year or something like that. Dave's Hot chicken popped up in the last couple of years. You have raising canes that started from this guy building out his own chicken finger restaurant that's now a multibillion dollar brand. They're ev. Like, so while it is still my advice to say, like, if you are looking to do something and you don't know what you should be doing, probably stay away from restaurants because the odds of success are super low. But if you in your mind are like, man, it's my dream. I want to have a restaurant chain, or I just want to have a single restaurant. And like, that's. I would love to do this. And I'm super passionate about this. And it's like, well, don't. Don't pay attention to the odds. Then there's still a bunch of stories of people who figured out how to make it work so you can figure out how to make it work. Don't pay attention to the odds and just go for what you want to go for as long as you actually want it. So overall, fantastic conversation. Jack Carr is one of those people who just makes you want to get your act together. You know what I mean? Not an intimidate anyway, just more in a clarifying way. Because when you pull back and look at the through line of his life, it's almost unreasonably clean. He's seven years old. I want to be a seal. And decides that's the path, and then spends two decades becoming one of the best. Then he gets out and writes a book that he always knew he wanted to write and it becomes the first book that he writes, becomes a number one New York Times bestseller, and gets a hit Amazon show with Chris Pratt as the star and Antoine Fuqua as the director. Exactly who he'd envisioned when he was a sentence into the manuscript. So people hear that and call it luck. But Jack would tell you that it was just preparation, meeting, opportunity at the exact right moment and that the only way to be ready is to stop hedging. So what hit me the hardest in this conversation was his mantra about never missing an opportunity to make someone's day. Because this is exactly what we talk about on Travis makes friends all the time. Because you trace that back and it's the entire reason the show exists. Looking for the perfect rental? Discover top rated stays loved by guests. 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