Jack Carr on Writing, Becoming World Class, and Building Character

On this live edition of the podcast Ryan talks to author Jack Carr about his new book In The Blood (which you can buy at The Painted Porch), how his experiences as a Navy SEAL have impacted his writing career, how your character impacts your life and work, and more. Jack Carr spent 20 years as a Navy SEAL, where he served as a Team Leader, Platoon Commander, Troop Commander, Task Unit Commander and sniper. Now, he’s an author behind the New York Times bestselling Terminal List series. Inspired by the feelings and emotions of actual experiences serving in conflict areas around the globe, the novels follow James Reece, a Navy SEAL sniper who becomes embroiled in the world of conspiracies, international espionage, and revenge. Jack joined us for a live recording at my bookstore here in Bastrop, Texas for a live recording to dive deeper into his experience as a Navy SEAL, and the inspiration behind his newest book in the Terminal List series. NED Products will help you perform better, sharpen your mind and get consistent, quality sleep. Go to helloned.com/STOIC or enter code STOIC at checkout to get 15% off. The Jordan Harbinger Show is one of the most interesting podcasts on the web, with guests like Kobe Bryant, Mark Manson, Eric Schmidt, and more. Listen to one of Ryan's episodes right now (1, 2), and subscribe to the Jordan Harbinger Show today. Since 2007, MyBodyTutor's daily accountability and 1:1 coaching has been the most effective way to get healthy and stay fit. To save $50 all you have to do is go to MyBodyTutor.com, join, and mention Daily Stoic when they ask how you heard about them. Ten Thousand makes the highest quality, best-fitting, and most comfortable training shorts I have ever worn. Ten Thousand is offering our listeners 15% off your purchase. go to Tenthousand.cc/stoic to receive 15% off your purchase. Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemailCheck out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more. Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

• 0:05Speaker 00

  Welcome to the Weekend Edition of the Daily Stoic. Each weekday, we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, something to help you live up to those four Stoic virtues of courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom. And then here on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview Stoic philosophers. We explore at length how these Stoic ideas can be applied to our actual lives and the challenging issues of our time. Here on the weekend, when you have a little bit more space, when things have slowed down, be sure to take some time to think, to go for a walk, to sit with your journal,

• 0:48Speaker 00

  and most importantly, to prepare for what the week ahead may bring.

• 0:54Speaker 00

  As you know, the book I'm working on now is about discipline, one of the core Stoic virtues: courage, temperance, moderation, discipline, self-discipline, as Marcus really says, and then justice and wisdom. But I think this idea that we have to treat the body rigorously, as Seneca says, that we have to stay fit, that we have to stay fit and healthy, is a key Stoic tenet. And if that's something you're looking for some help on, today's sponsor might be the right fit for you. I'm talking about My Body Tutor. Since 2007, My Body Tutor's daily accountability and one-on-one coaching

• 1:37Speaker 00

  has been the most effective way to get healthy and stay fit. Adam Gilbert, My Body Tutor's founder, says that "in health and fitness, knowledge isn't the problem. We all know what to do," saying, "where people struggle is in sticking with the plan consistently. Consistency is the key to great results. You need daily personal coaching and accountability, and that's what you get with My Body Tutor." So if you're ready to make health and fitness a priority, Adam and his coaches at My Body Tutor are the best in the world at delivering daily accountability and one-on-one coaching. And Adam is giving Daily Stoke listeners 50 bucks off their first month to save 50 bucks. All you have to do is go to mybodytutor.com, join, mention Daily Stoke when they ask about

• 2:20Speaker 00

  how you heard about them. And if you have questions, Adam wants you to call or text, and you can find his personal cell phone number at the top of every page on mybodytutor.com.

• 2:32Speaker 00

  My friend Stephen Pressfield turned me on to today's guest, Jack Carr. He spent 20 years as a Navy SEAL, where he served as a team leader, platoon commander, troop commander, task unit commander, and a sniper. And if that wasn't enough, he decided to start a second career as a novelist, and his novels have blown up, sold hundreds of thousands of copies, hit number one in the New York Times seller list, being turned into a series starring Chris Pratt for Amazon. And I did Jack's podcast a few months ago, and he was very nice, very generous, very

• 3:14Speaker 00

  kind, and had read my stuff. And he said, hey, I'm going to be in Austin in May to record the Rogan podcast. It's the week my book's coming out. I know you have a bookstore. Would you want to do an event? And I said, I just haven't, we just haven't done any events for, at the pain porch, because, to be quite honest, I'm traumatized about them. I remember doing a book event once in Hawaii, early on in my career, and one person showed up. And then I've done other ones where I've flown across the country and like 10 people were there. And that's just heavy. It's heavy to ask an author to spend time away from their family, to travel,

• 3:57Speaker 00

  to go do a thing, to meet a relatively small amount of people. And I, I just take that, it's like, if I'm going to do an event, I want lots of people to come because I want it to be worth the author's time. And I just, we've never done one here at the pain of porch, COVID intervening. And I wasn't sure if we could do it. And he was so insistent. He said, trust me, it'll be great. And I'm glad I listened because it was. Was great. About 100 people showed up. He signed books for literally hours. It was an awesome experience. And what we did as part of it to make it worth everyone's time is we recorded a live podcast out on the back porch at the Painted Porch, the stoa, if you will. We have a mural that's inspired by the ancient stoa, stoa meaning

• 4:42Speaker 00

  porch in ancient Greek, where stoicism was founded, the stoa pokele. So I thought it was fitting. Jack and I had about an hour conversation and then we kicked around some questions from the audience. That's what today's episode is from. We were talking about his new book as part of the Terminal List series. The new book is called In the Blood. It's great. He signed a very nice copy for me. And that's what we talked about in today's episode. You can check out all of his books. He's one of the best there is doing this right now. His novels follow James Reece, a Navy SEAL sniper, who's constantly embroiled in a world of conspiracies, international espionage and revenge. And in today's episode,

• 5:26Speaker 00

  Jack and I are live here at the Painted Porch in Bastrop, Texas, talking about creativity, talking about writing, talking about the difference between ego and confidence, and what it means to be elite at what you do. And I'm excited to bring this interview to you. You can go to officialjackcar.com for his website. You can follow him on Twitter and Instagram, Jack Carr USA. Car has two Rs. And we still have a handful of signed copies left over from the signing of In the Blood, which you can pick up at thepaintedporch.com. So we're here at a bookstore, and I wanted to start with books. Your mom was a librarian, right? Yeah, that's right.

• 6:09Speaker 00

  I don't want to say that's the competition, but it is the competition bookstore. Yeah. Talk to me about your early introduction to books and reading. I imagine that was quite formative for you.

• 6:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, I can't, I can't remember a time when I wasn't engrossed in a book or surrounded by books or collecting books or adding to my library.

• 6:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 6:30Speaker 01

  It was just a natural part of growing up, just like sitting down at dinner with the family or anything else, just having books around and sitting down to read at night before bed or on vacations during the day and just having that time was just as natural as anything else that we did. So I can't even remember a time where I had to be forced to read or say, hey, kids, go over there and read. It was just always something I loved to do. And so I always knew that one day that would be my profession.

• 6:55Speaker 00

  It doesn't sound like, from what I read, that your parents babied you when you came to books. It sounded like you were reading like the kinds of books you're writing now at a very young age.

• 7:05Speaker 01

  Very early age, maybe a little too early in some, in some cases. Cause I don't, it wasn't like they, after I started reading the things that my parents were reading, which was about fifth grade, like fifth grade was the kind of transition from kind of the young adult type books and into the stuff my parents were reading. So there's probably like a year there where a lot of what I read, I didn't really comprehend. But then by sixth grade, for sure, for sure. In sixth grade, I'm reading the exact same things and I'm comprehending all of it. And so, yeah, Tom Clancy, Hunt for October came out in fifth grade. So I mean, I was engrossed in that, a little technical, you know, for a fifth grader.

• 7:41Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 7:42Speaker 01

  But then I'm finding David Morell and Nelson Demille and A.J. Quinnell and J.C. Pollock and Mark Olden and Louis Lamour and Stephen Hunter and all these guys in that timeframe, whose protagonists had backgrounds in Vietnam. So they were either Marine snipers or they were Army Special Forces or Navy SEALs or CIA paramilitary. So I was reading the books with protagonists that had backgrounds that I wanted in real life.

• 8:04Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 8:05Speaker 01

  One day. And back then, we couldn't get on the internet and just be like Navy SEAL training and look at it or anything. So you had to rely on the very few books out there that were nonfiction.

• 8:12Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 8:13Speaker 01

  But then the pages of these thrillers and you'd figure that, hey, David Morell probably did some research. You couldn't check on it, but you'd into whatever he's writing about. So I just, I loved being transported by those stories and knew that I Do it in real life.

• 8:25Speaker 00

  I remember reading the Clive Cussler books.

• 8:27Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 8:27Speaker 00

  Which were, you know, they're like this thick. And on the back, it was him.

• 8:31Speaker 01

  And a car.

• 8:31Speaker 00

  With his classic car.

• 8:32Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 8:33Speaker 00

  That he was writing about in the book. And you're like, oh, this is also a job.

• 8:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:37Speaker 00

  This is a potentially a lucrative job. I remember being, that was like my sort of first peek into publishing as a thing.

• 8:45Speaker 01

  Ah, yeah. So that was a good idea. So he has two museums.

• 8:49Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 8:49Speaker 01

  Um, one in Colorado and one in Arizona. And I guess that helps with tax purposes, but it's actually a museum that people can go.

• 8:56Speaker 00

  But they're just his classic cars.

• 8:57Speaker 01

  Just his collection. Yeah, it's fantastic. And he unfortunately, he passed away a couple of years ago, but actually just last night, I was talking to somebody and, uh, you know, who knows, the, the museum in, uh, Colorado, I think is still, it's in the trust and all that stuff. But there are a couple of cars out there in the Phoenix area that I was asking about if one might, uh, if one's up for sale for someone to let me know. And, uh, you know, I didn't preserve that piece of kind of, you know, literary history. Cause I saw those too. I saw the cars in the back of Clive Cussler. I saw the guns in the Mac Bolan novels. Anybody read Mac Bolan here back in the day? Yeah. All right. Give it up for Mac Bolan. Yeah, I like it. So he had all those guns in there. So I was always, of course, it was always something completely impractical, like the Desert Eagle 50 cal pistol that he's carrying concealed somehow.

• 9:39Speaker 01

  But, uh, still as a sixth grader, seventh grader, you know, that was so fantastic to read those things. I absolutely loved them.

• 9:44Speaker 00

  I think it gives you a big sense of what you're capable of too, in like fifth grade, that you're reading a book that's like 900 pages or whatever, right? Like I think there is something about fiction too, where if you grew up reading those books, then when you want to tackle some big nonfiction thing, you're like, oh yeah, I can read a thousand page book. I used to read those when I was 11 or whatever. Like, I think there is something about the genre fiction that makes you put away any sort of intimidation.

• 10:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:10Speaker 00

  By like a big book.

• 10:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was never intimidated by the size of any, any book.

• 10:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 10:14Speaker 01

  That's for sure. Um, and, uh, that comes, that comes in handy when you pick up like Winds of War, War and Remembrance by Herman Woke. Um, which are fantastic, by the way, historical fiction for, uh, for kids. I think it's a great introduction to actual historical fiction, like actual reading your nonfiction about an event that can sometimes be a little dry.

• 10:31Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 10:31Speaker 01

  Introduction through historical fiction like Killer Angel. Or Winds of War, War and Remembrance, those are just such great introductions and give us such a great history of like World War II in particular for those for

• 10:44Speaker 00

  Cause then when you go and you read the the real books, the names are familiar.

• 10:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, I remember this.

• 10:49Speaker 00

  Sense of what happens.

• 10:51Speaker 01

  I know Guadalcanal, I remember these things. So it's a, yeah, it's a great touch point with history for sure, because it's so approachable.

• 10:57Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 10:57Speaker 01

  Which is great. It's not super intimidating like it's the history of World War II or like Winston Churchill's memoirs or something like that. It's like, oh, boy. But uh, but when you approach it from historical fiction standpoint and you're reading about these events through the eyes of a family that's relatable. Uh, especially like Herman Woke does, where you have generate multi-generational and uh, and it's just something that makes it uh, you get to know those characters and therefore you get to know the history.

• 11:18Speaker 00

  There's a quote about Theodore Roosevelt I like. Um, one of the biographers says Theodore Roosevelt grows up reading about the great men of history and decides he wants to be just like them. And so is it the sense that you're sort of reading about all these characters and then you're like, oh, but you can actually not just I could write about it, but that I could actually do the stuff that they're doing in the books?

• 11:38Speaker 01

  I think it went the other way because I knew earlier that I was going to be in the military and that was just innate. It was uh, in my blood. Hey, in the blood. Uh, it was just something and uh, it was just something that was drawn towards and uh, I think a lot of that had to do with my, my grandfather. He was killed in World War II. But I grew up with pictures of him and his squadron. He was a Marine Corps aviator and flew the Corsair. So that's the plane that had the goal wings that folded up like that. Uh, he was killed off Okinawa in 1945, but I grew up with the silk maps they used to give aviators back then, because if you hit the water with a paper map, it would disintegrate. But a silk map would just get wet, still could use it. And I had his Marine Corps aviation wings, had all that stuff. And so I just knew that I was going to serve my country in the military. But uh, so that came first.

• 12:21Speaker 01

  And then I was researching as much as you can as a young kid, researching uh, anything, anything warfare related and then terrorism and insurgency and counter insurgency. And some of my earliest memories over the uh, 1979 Iranian hostage crisis and uh, the ensuing incident at Desert One that happened after that. Um, so all those things were just uh, a part of my childhood and are, I, I still think of them as very formative events. Uh, I can remember the Time Magazine and Newsweek and uh, the, the covers of the newspapers of uh, that event in particular. Um, but then as I got older, so then when I reached the ripe old bit of 10 and started reading thrillers, then I was like, okay, first military. And then I'm going to write thrillers exactly like the kind that I'm enjoying so much today.

• 13:03Speaker 00

  Yeah, when, uh, actually I interviewed Steven Pressfield here before this has become a book story. He was like the first person that saw it and he was wearing this World War II bomber jacket that a pilot gave him and it had the maps sewn inside. It was really

• 13:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Steven Pressfield's great. I mean, he, uh, obviously he has all these amazing books that he had Afghan campaign, uh, Gates of Fire, Legend of Bagger Vance, but he also has a series of books on creativity and the first one is The War of Art. And, uh, I got so much from all of his books, in particular, that one and then turning pro. They all say essentially, you're gonna have to sit down, be a professional and do the work. Essentially, that's what he's saying. Don't get distracted, really. But, uh, I remember him saying that you're a professional, you're a writer, sit down and write.

• 13:44Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 13:45Speaker 01

  You don't get writer's block because you don't have a trucker getting truckers block or a dentist getting dentist block. You sit down and you do the work.

• 13:51Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 13:51Speaker 01

  And so that was, uh, that was, to hear that from him was pretty cool. Uh, so I've never had to contend with writer's block. And then when I left the military and I was flying to, to, uh, to South Africa and then Mozambique for a, uh, little research trip, uh, it has, ask occupation on that entry form. And so I wrote down author.

• 14:09Speaker 00

  There you go.

• 14:09Speaker 01

  So didn't have anything published.

• 14:11Speaker 00

  That's when you turned pro and you're...

• 14:13Speaker 01

  In your head, you have to turn pro. And, uh, and so it's just, okay, for now I was a special operator for the last 20 years. Now I'm a writer. Now I'm an author. And I think that really helps put things in perspective and makes you sit down and do the work. It's not a hobby. It's not something you're hoping that will happen. You are all in.

• 14:29Speaker 00

  I was gonna ask you about that. So you, you have this 20 year career in the military and then you transitioned to writing. I want to talk about transitions. But I do think writing is easier when you've had a job before or a career before, because then you're able to be like, this is a job. This isn't, I think a lot of people think of creative professions as being this sort of ethereal, fun, the muses visit you, but it's a job and you have to, you have to be an operator in it, a professional in it, the way that you would train and practice and show up every day for any other kind of profession.

• 15:03Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. That's, uh, it's interesting because with, uh, with a family and for those of you that have kids at home and dogs and, you know, spouses and all the rest of it, uh, if you're not actually sitting there. Typing, kind of like, maybe if you're not painting, if you're not physically engaged in the act of sculpting something, people think that you're not actually working.

• 15:20Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 15:20Speaker 01

  That's not the case. Yeah, that's not the case. You have to think through these things. So for this latest book, I started renting Airbnb's around Park City. And I found this great little log cabin that had a stack of wood outside. So I chop wood out there. I throw it in the wood burning stove. There was a couch right there, a little table, a kitchen, bedroom, bathroom. But that was it. And it was all close right there. So I could go from one thing to the other. And as I was typing away, or I started to think, got all hungry, I'd go make a sandwich, but I'm still, even though I'm not physically typing, I'm still thinking through what's going on in that written page, thinking through some problems I need to solve on that written page. So it's still work, but it's interesting when, when people see you not physically writing, it's like, oh, you're not working right now. Boom, boom, boom, boom.

• 16:01Speaker 00

  Well, I think you have to let the subconscious work on the thing, right? So it's like, there's, there's kind of two phases of doing it. There's the, I'm intentionally thinking about this. I'm writing right now. And then there's also the, it's in there in the back of my mind. It's, it's working on the equation. The computer is chipping away at it. And then the sort of breakthrough happens when you kind of least expect it.

• 16:21Speaker 01

  Oh yeah. I mean, you have to be thinking, I mean, you're thinking about it all the time. But it's those interruptions that, that take you away from it, that make you focus on something else for a minute. For me, that's, I don't know how it is for everybody else, but for me, that's, that's the real killer. Like I need to be, it doesn't matter if I have just a blank, like a blank white wall in front of me. That's fine. It doesn't have to be a great, beautiful view of mountains or an ocean or anything like that. Blank wall is fine, as long as it's quiet and there's no interruptions. And for those who went to work during COVID at home, they might be able to relate to the fact that if you have a home office and you close that door, for whatever reason, it acts as a magnet for children, for dogs, for everybody. It's just like, I don't know what it is. Like they don't want to talk to you when the door is open, but it's closed. It's like,

• 17:03Speaker 01

  so that's just kind of, kind of how it goes. And everybody had to experience a little bit of that, especially in the early days of COVID, I think.

• 17:08Speaker 00

  Yeah. So, so talk to me about the transition, because when I talk to athletes and people who are in the armed forces, that's the big, the transitioning out to the new thing, which I actually think they have a sort of a unique set of experiences that can help people. Cause we're all transitioning from one thing to another new role. How did you think about, you know, sort of that, like Special Forces two? I can identify as a writer. Walk me through that transition for you.

• 17:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, I was very lucky in that I knew what I wanted to do. And a lot of people I don't think they really know. And if they think they know, they know maybe from a movie or from maybe a book that they read or something they heard from somebody else. And then they devote, let's just take law. So you're transitioning from something and you saw Law and Order on TV. Or you, you know, you read a John Grisham book or a Scott Tureau book. And you're like, I'm gonna do that. And then you spend this time in law school and then you get to your first firm or you go into your DA's office or whatever. And it's not quite what it was like when you watched the movie The Firm. And then you're like, well, I've invested all this time. It's not really what I thought, but I guess now I'm gonna pay back this loan or I'm gonna have a family and a child and all this stuff. And you're just off you go.

• 18:17Speaker 01

  You're kind of in this thing that wasn't really your calling or you thought it was.

• 18:20Speaker 00

  Well, it was your calling for a while, right? Like, sometimes we do things, there's a season or a phase of your life. And then that phase ends and you have to do the next thing.

• 18:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. So I was just very lucky that I knew that writing was my thing. It was already my passion. I'd already spent so many years essentially giving myself an early education in the art of storytelling by reading all these books growing up. My mom introduced me to Joseph Campbell and Hero with a Thousand Faces through this series of interviews that Bill Moyers did with Joseph Campbell called The Power of Myth in, I think, 1988. But I was enthralled because as a kid, he talked about how it inspired George Lucas for Star Wars and this mythology, the hero's journey and all this. So I took that on board very early. I didn't find that later in life and then say, ah, maybe I can work this into a story or something like that. Maybe I should give this writing thing a try. It was already, this foundation was already built.

• 19:12Speaker 01

  So that foundation was built with reading as a fan. Even though I was studying it, I didn't look at it as studying it. I just looked at it as coming at it from a fan's perspective. And then I had this study of warfare. So I'm studying all these warfare and terrorism insurgencies and counter insurgencies academically. And then I get into the SEAL teams and then September 11th happens. And I go to Iraq and I go to Afghanistan. And then I get to practically apply that warfare. And so now as I'm getting out, I have that foundation that's been built up over all these years. And now I can put All of that into my writing. So it becomes very personal, even though it's complete fiction. I get to go and think about if my character gets ambushed, let's say in Los Angeles, California. I can go think about Baghdad, two thousand and six and think about what it was like to get ambushed there.

• 19:54Speaker 01

  And I can take those feelings and emotions and then apply them to a completely fictional narrative. So it rings true. I don't have to go track down a sniper from Ramadi in two thousand and six. And then ask them questions and then have those answers get filtered through whatever biases or preconceived notions. Or maybe other books or movies I've read about sniping or about that, that about Ramadi in two thousand and six. I can just directly translate what it was like to drop over the wall of our compound and move into the city with a small sniper team. And I can just put that directly into the novel without any sort of filters. So, um, so I was lucky in that I knew what I wanted to do. My passion is writing. My mission is taking care of my family. That gives me my purpose, driving forward. And I think a lot of people, regardless of what they do, whether they're coming from special operations

• 20:36Speaker 01

  or they're coming from a professional sports team or they're an Olympic athlete and they didn't make the team for the first time. And they've been devoted to that for so long, or that maybe a death of a loved one, divorce, just a job transition. Any of those things, I think it's so important to identify that passion and that mission. So you can find that purpose and move forward.

• 20:54Speaker 00

  Yeah, no, I don't know if I would phrase that as lucky. To me, that's strategic, right? So I, I think it's like the worst time to, the worst way to find a new job is to first quit your old job, right? Because now you don't have the like, I think about it as like, you gotta figure out the next thing. So you can train, so you can think about it. So also the education can be subsidized. Like I, I tell this even to people that I work, that work for me is like, whatever you do next. Like there should be like a year period where you've decided to do that thing. And then what can you get out of that time? Like I, I spent a year at American Apparel. Very clearly I was going to leave to become a writer, but Robert Green was like, what are you going to do with this year?

• 21:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:31Speaker 00

  Right? How, how is that, that year going to subsidize and educate you and set in motion? The stuff that you're going to need like, so you're not starting on day one where like, I'm building this thing from scratch, right? You wanna, you wanna learn the thing, see the thing, save the money, et cetera. You gotta start the transition before you leave, right? Before you jump, I, I, I hate this. I don't want to do this. I'm leaving. Then I'm going to figure out that thing. I think you start the transition early.

• 21:59Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, and I was very fortunate in that in the military, once you tell them you're getting out. So I started as enlisted and then I went became an officer and as an officer, you drop your papers and tell them you're getting out and essentially you go in this other pile. And you go in that pile of now it's your time to get out and you're kind of off our radar and you go stand in line at medical, you go stand in line at dental, you go to these transition program things. You get read out of secret programs, you turn in gear. And before you do any of that thing, those things, because it's gigantic bureaucracy, you stand in line to make your appointment to come back and do those things.

• 22:28Speaker 00

  Sure, sure, sure.

• 22:28Speaker 01

  So I had a little time. Exactly. So I had this time, I was in this other pile where I'm not really on anyone's radar. And and then it gave me time to write. So I had exactly what you're talking about there this time. And I made use of that time to write that first book and make it as good as I possibly could.

• 22:43Speaker 00

  Yeah, Robert said it's going to be a live time or dead time. You get to decide, right? Is it a dead year where you're getting paid, you're not doing anything? Or is it a year where you're doing X, Y, and Z? I think also I thought about that during COVID, like, okay, these things are now off the table. What do you have to show for that time? And then people go, I can't wait to do this, but they're not actually starting the thing. Marcus really talks about this in meditations. He says like, you could be good today, but you choose tomorrow. Like, and and Pressville talks about this in The War of Art. It's like, nobody says like, I'm gonna do it, I'm just gonna, or I'm not gonna do it. They say, I'm gonna start later.

• 23:15Speaker 01

  Right.

• 23:15Speaker 00

  But you have to, you have to do the the warm up phase. You have to do the the prep while you, ideally, someone is picking up the tab.

• 23:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's very helpful if you're in that that kind of a position. But sometimes it's, there's so many authors out there that they get up so early and they work and then they go to their job and they come home. Or then they write so late and there's so many stories of people doing that until they get that first novel done. And then they start going to Thriller Fest or Boucher Con or these different events where you can sit down with agents and you do speed dating with agents and you talk to them for five minutes, you know, and you go to the next one and the next one. And I know so many people have found agents that way, rather than with the quarry letter that you send out. And who knows if it's actually going to get there. And it just allows you to kind of tailor, it's educating yourself on what you want to do next, rather than just hopping right in. But just educating yourself, taking your breath, looking at it, making some strategic plays, like putting aside that time to go to Thriller Fest, maybe twice, maybe three times, maybe four times.

• 24:07Speaker 01

  Get to know people who are then going to give you a blurb because you have that emotional connection to them and that relationship built very naturally. So it's, there's a lot of things that you can do strategically, rather than just say, oh, I don't know anyone in Hollywood. I don't know anyone in in publishing. I guess I better not even start because I don't even know if I had something, where to send it. And I think a lot of people just don't even start for that reason.

• 24:29Speaker 00

  One thing the Stoics all have in common is that they love to learn. They love to learn from people who had experiences, had insights, had interesting lives. That's one of the things I love about podcasts. It's like an hour, or two hours, or three hours sometimes, right into the brain of a person who thinks very differently, or has experienced things very different from what you've experienced. And that's something I always feel when I listen to my friend Jordan Harbinger's podcast, The Jordan Harbinger Show, which is the sponsor of today's episode. His show has interviewed basically everywhere. You can listen to his episode with Robert Greene on the laws of human nature, or both my episodes, where I talk about solving for what you want in life. Talk about my book,

• 25:13Speaker 00

  Conspiracy, or Stillness is Key. I mean, he's had literally everyone you can imagine on, professional art forgers, to billionaire entrepreneurs, to mafia hitmen, to models, to professional athletes. He did this episode about birth control, and how it alters the partners we pick, and how medicine can affect elements of our personalities. He talks about just everything you can imagine. It's just a great show. Recommend it. The podcast covers a lot, but I think the one thing that's constant is he always pulls useful bits of advice from his guests, and I can say that from experience. I always feel like the interviews I do on The Jordan Harbinger Show get something out of me that I didn't talk about the interview

• 25:56Speaker 00

  I did just a few days earlier. Like, when I, I would point you to those interviews if I would say, hey, someone's like, hey, what's a podcast you are on? I'd connect you, I might link you to one of my episodes of Jordan, because it would be different from all the other ones. And I think that's all you can really ask for from a podcast. I enjoy it. I recommend it. There's so much there. You can check out jordanharbinger.com/start for episode recommendations, or just look for The Jordan Harbinger Show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Thank you to Jordan for sponsoring this podcast, and I hope you give it a listen.

• 26:33Speaker 00

  Well, I'm curious, like, whenever someone does something that's sort of very far afield from what they've done before, like, how did they know they could do it? Right? And I saw a post you did a while ago where you're like, when I was thinking of the Terminal list, you're like, this is the actor who's gonna play it, this is who my publisher was gonna be, this, like, so there's, you could see that two ways. One, there's a kind of an ego in it, like, of course, all these people should work for me. There's also a kind of pre, like, a planning and a strategy to, so, like, when I see people who are thinking about doing some hard thing, like, I wanna start a company, or I wanna write a script, or I wanna do a book, or I wanna start my own business, that tension between, like, of course, I can do it, and of course, it's gonna go all the ways that

• 27:14Speaker 00

  I want it to go, and this sort of humility of, like, this is gonna be really hard, and I'm not sure if I can do it. How did you think about, like, you said you knew, but did you really know, like, were those dreams, or, like, and you were like, I'm gonna work really hard to make that real? Or was there some part of you that was, like, kinda, like, believed it was a destiny or something?

• 27:34Speaker 01

  I think it may be a little bit of naivete, perhaps, which can also play into your favor, because you don't overthink it. And when I wanted to do something for so long, for my earliest days, it was just in my head, is, of course, this will happen. So I never wasted bandwidth on worrying about it not happening.

• 27:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 27:50Speaker 01

  And people have done it before me. And so I see people, there's a lot of names on that New York Times list in the number one spot that we've seen there for 30, sometimes 40 years.

• 27:59Speaker 00

  Some of them are dead.

• 27:59Speaker 01

  Some of them are, yeah, exactly. Yeah, you've got Tom Clancy up there, you know, you have Robert Ludlum up there, you have these estates continuing these characters in many cases, Vince Flynn, so you have that as well. But I saw, hey, someone did this before, just like in SEAL training, someone made it through this.

• 28:14Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 28:15Speaker 01

  I'm gonna make it through also. So it's that's, it's as simple as that in my head, anyway. So I'm gonna be one of those people that makes it through, it's been done before, of course, I can do it.

• 28:23Speaker 00

  There's a Marcus quote I love, he says, "If it's humanly possible, know that you can do it also." Right? So it's like, a lot of, like, just, it feels arrogant, but it's actually true, it's like, look, these people aren't special. I think when you meet an author for the first time, you're like, oh, you're not this, like, genius who just sent, this is a job, you figured out how to do this thing, I think. You sort of realizing like it can be done and the proof is like lots of people have done it.

• 28:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, no, it's a it's it's it's one of those things where obviously you have to put put in the work, but you can also waste time studying how to do something.

• 28:55Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 28:55Speaker 01

  Almost too much, and it's gonna be different for everybody, but you can read tons of books on how to write. You can go online and read tons of blogs on how to do something and spend the rest of your life really just doing that. But what I did is I went to the back of some of the books that I really liked, so I went, I saw, why is Vince Flynn thanking Emily Bessler at Emily Bessler Books? An imprint of Simon & Schuster, and why is Brad Thor thanking this same Emily Bessler person? And I thought, she will be my editor editor and publisher. And she didn't know me yet, I had no connection to publishing, and then same thing with Chris Pratt in the show. I just thought, okay, who's that actor that needs to play my character? I'm not even published yet, I'm just typing away in first couple of chapters. And I thought, oh, Chris Pratt, yeah, he'll do it, that's the guy.

• 29:35Speaker 01

  He was in Parks and Rec, and then he was a role in Zero Dark Thirty as a SEAL, so I got to see that transformation that he took from Andy Dwyer to being the SEAL in Zero Dark Thirty, and I thought, well, he'll play Navy SEAL sniper James Reece, yep. And then I thought, well, it's only natural to pick my director, since I'm doing all this, I'm typing away. And I think, well, Antoine Fuqua, he's amazing, I love everything that he's ever done. I love what he did with Shooter, Point of Impact, even though it's different than the than the book, I still loved it. Obviously, Training Day, incredible, Replacement Killers, you know, and I thought, yeah, he'll be the director. That's and then I just kept writing, and that's all the thought that I gave to those things. And and then a friend on the publishing side of the house asked me one day, I was I was about a year away from getting out.

• 30:20Speaker 01

  And he said, hey, do you think Brad Thor, you'd like to talk to Brad Thor? And I said, nah. Would he talk to me? Well, first he asked me, do you know who Brad Thor is? And I said, yes. And he said, do you think you'd like to talk to him? And I said, that'd be amazing, would he talk to me? I never thought in a million years that this someone would talk to me. And he said, yeah, let me set it up. And I said, oh, jeez, they'd sat next to each other at a banquet, and my friend had one of these foundation banquets, and he'd helped Brad with the SEAL portions of a few of his books, and set up this call. And now I know how often that authors get asked about these sorts of things, but at the time, I just. Made sure that I was in the right place at the right time, ready for that call. I had, I was in Los Angeles and I was in this corner of a parking lot. And I remember I was in my Land Cruiser and there's no air conditioning and it's really loud if you have it on.

• 31:02Speaker 01

  So I wanted it to be quiet. So I'm just baking in this car, sweat dripping onto my legal pad. And we had this great conversation where it was essentially a job interview. And, um, and he asked me why I wanted to write and all those sorts of things. And I talked to him about my mom being a librarian and this love of reading and, and all of that. And he finally said, hey, stop talking. Um, I have, I have work to do. But he's like, hey, if you write this thing, your friend told me some of the things that you did in the SEAL Teams. And as a thank you for that, uh, if you write this thing, I'll let Emily Bessler at Simon and Schuster know that it's coming. And, uh, I said, that's all I need. And he said, when's it going to be done? And I said, a year from today. And he said, don't call me this year. I'm not going to give you any advice. I'm not going to give you any, any encouragement. Uh, but if you write it, let me know. And called him back a year to that day and, uh, said, hey, it's done.

• 31:46Speaker 01

  And he remembered me and, uh, he said, is it done or is it as good as it can possibly be? And I said, well, I could probably spend a few more months because I came like skidding into home plate type of a thing just to make that deadline. My first deadline. And, uh, he said, take your time, make it the best you can make it and then we'll send it in. And I said, Roger that. So I spent another four months editing and then called him back in, uh, November of 2016 and said, hey, it's as good as I can get it. And he said, okay, I'll let him know. So, uh, sent it in and Emily read it. And Brad thought that she'd read it and read the first sentence or two and say, uh, Brad, what do you want me to tell this guy? But instead she loved it and learned to publish it. And so next thing you know, I go to New York and

• 32:23Speaker 00

  It's worked out alright for her too.

• 32:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, it's great. You know, it's, it's been fantastic. And then on the series side of the house with Chris Pratt. Um, book's coming out. There's this, uh, it's not even published yet, but there's this galley copy, which is like a rough draft that comes out in ahead of publication. And, uh, I got a call from my friend Jared Shaw and, uh, he calls me out of the blue and, uh, and he asked me if I remember him, which of course I do. And then, uh, he said, you remember what you did for me in the SEAL Teams? And I did not. And he said, well, you sat me down in your office, talked about transitioning out of the military. You introduced me to people in the private sector and no one else did that. And I always wanted to thank you. And I said, no problem. How's it going? And, uh, and he said, it's going great, but I heard you have a book coming out.

• 33:04Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 33:05Speaker 01

  And I said, yeah, it's coming out in about five months. I have a rough draft I can send you. And he said, I'd like that, but I'd like to give it to a friend of mine. And I said, who's that? And he said, Chris Pratt. And I was like, oh, so I sent it to him. He read it just to make sure it wasn't horrible.

• 33:17Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 33:17Speaker 01

  And then he gave it to Chris in December of 2017 and Chris read it the end of December and called the next week and wanted to option it. So, and Antoine got it the same, essentially the same week. He got it through another friend, a SEAL, who they'd worked together in Hollywood, gave it to Antoine. Antoine wanted to do it as well. So he called Chris and said, let's do this thing together. And Chris said, yes. And now we're all executive producers on it. And Jared Shaw acts in it, is an advisor in it, is a producer in it. And he made it really what it is because he was on set every single day to make sure it was rooted in the dark, gritty, primal, authentic nature of the novel. So without him there every day and without Max Adams, who's a former Army Ranger and a writer there every day, and our other friend, Ray Mendoza, there every day, who does technical advising in

• 34:01Speaker 01

  Hollywood, those three guys were on set every day and they were so invested in it. It would be a completely different show without those three involved.

• 34:09Speaker 00

  One of the through lines I see through that story, and it was a piece of advice I got from Tim Ferriss, who's like, treat everyone like they can put you on the front page of the New York Times, because eventually you'll meet that person.

• 34:18Speaker 01

  Interesting.

• 34:19Speaker 00

  Right? And so I think about the favors that people were doing, you for your friend, Brad Thor for you, right? And you think about, you don't know at the time where this person's going to end up, what's going to happen, what opportunity they're going to come to you. But if, I think as a general rule, if you help people, it ends up helping you in the long run.

• 34:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, probably. And I don't think any of us ever thought about it in those terms. You know, it was just Jared was an amazing SEAL and just was going to help him, whether he stays in or gets out. My other friend that sat next to Brad Thor, like he knew me mostly by reputation. We knew each other, but he knew me really by reputation in the teams and was really willing to risk his political capital on me. So that's a part of it. So you can't expect these things to happen, or I guess a better way to put it is you have to be ready.

• 35:03Speaker 00

  Yeah, sure.

• 35:03Speaker 01

  So when someone cracks that door, you can kick it in. You have to have done that work that allows someone to want to risk their political capital on you to make that introduction or to crack that door. Because if you're just want, want, want and haven't done the work, no one's going to risk their capital on you to help you up. And, but you have to be ready. You gotta be ready to kick that door. You gotta be ready to breach it.

• 35:22Speaker 00

  Well, speaking of doing the work, there's a military maxim that I'm sure you know, which is that amateurs talk about strategies, pros talk about logistics. I think I see that with writing where amateurs talk a lot about tools, right? Like, what's the right notepad I should use? What's the right software? How do you? They want to know like sort of specifically how you do it. And it's like, really, the way you did it was you spent 20 years getting the experiences and then you sat down and you put your ass in the chair for a long time.

• 35:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:48Speaker 00

  So I think people often, they sort of mythologize like, oh, kind of typewriter did Hemingway use? Which really, in the end of the day, doesn't matter. What matters is the sort of sitting down and doing the work of it, whatever that thing is.

• 36:00Speaker 01

  So this is true. This is true. But I did do a little bit of that. And so when I talked to Brad Thor that first time, I was going through some elicitation. So for those who have been in the human side of the intelligence services, I somehow managed to work in, what kind of font does Emily Bestler like?

• 36:17Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 36:18Speaker 01

  What kind of, yeah, what kind of spacing? So when it arrived, does she like it bound? Does she like it electronic? So I sent it to her exactly the way she would have her assistant turn it into if she'd asked it for it. So it's the font, the spacings, the margins, not being bound, but just being stacked up right there. So I sent it to her exactly the way that she would want to have received it, in a professional way. So who knows if that helped or not, but.

• 36:44Speaker 00

  No, I think, I think that's a big part. A lot of people get so consumed with what they want to do and their thing that they don't stop and think about the other person in the transaction or in the fight or the argument or whatever the adversary, right? You don't think about like, what's going through their mind? How are they? And I often, it's like, think about, think about how many stacks of manuscripts this person has to go through. Think of the crap that gets thrown. Think about how much bad stuff they see, right? And really thinking about what the world looks like from the other person's perspective is more than just being empathetic and nice, is also like how you succeed. Cause you thought about priming it so it actually works.

• 37:23Speaker 01

  Yeah. And, and, yeah, no, it's, I mean, what a crazy, crazy journey, but with Emily Bestler at Simon and Schuster. I thought, hey, if Emily Bestler wants to put aliens from outer space coming down in this thing and turn this into Transformers, guess what I'm gonna do? There are gonna be Transformers in this thing.

• 37:40Speaker 00

  Yeah, sure.

• 37:41Speaker 01

  And, uh, but she didn't really, I mean, she didn't want to change anything. She asked me, hey, did this, would he really say this here? Would he do this here? And a third thing, I can't really remember right now. But those were her content edits for the entire first novel. And it's been the same for all of them. Very few content type edits. And I think that's because I stayed, uh, I stayed true to the theme. I put that from Steven Pressfield again. I, I misinterpreted something he said on Joe Rogan. Um, he was really talking about a playwright in New York, writing a couple of sentences down to keep him on track for a play. And I took that as, oh, Steven Pressfield uses a one word theme for all his novels that he puts on a yellow sticky and puts on his computer. And so that's what I did. So I put revenge right there. So everything stayed on track.

• 38:20Speaker 00

  It's like a mission statement.

• 38:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. But kept me, and everything had to tie back to that, whether it was directly or more importantly indirectly back to that theme. So I think that really helped, uh, help keep me on track. And also, I didn't know how things would be once it got to Simon and Schuster. I thought, maybe they might say, hey, can I get lay off some of the Second Amendment stuff? Or does he really have to have opinions on freedom? So never once have they ever even hinted that I changed anything. And I've had complete creative control. And that's been really cool with Amazon as well. I mean, they had some concerns about the violence. But, uh, when it came back down and we finally, we worked everything through, they came down on the right side of it every time. They took a big, big gamble on, uh, on not doing what they've done before. And the benefit now is that they're seeing it test, and don't tell

• 39:03Speaker 01

  anybody, I don't think I'm allowed to say this, but it's tested off the charts with test audiences. So they've done something that's been a little different. They were very nervous about it. And, uh, and it's paid off, at least with test audiences so far. Um, so that's, uh, that's pretty cool. That's pretty cool.

• 39:18Speaker 00

  I was thinking about this the other day. I don't want to get too political, but I was thinking about there's sort of this backlash against like what we call elites, right? People who've trained or studied or experts in a thing. And I get it, they're not perfectly messed stuff up. But I was thinking about the danger of the backlash against elites. Because like all the, all the people I really admire or like or have done work that's Influence my life are elite at what they do. I mean, it's called the special forces, not the regular Joe forces or whatever, right? Like it's the whole point is about being really good at what you do and what goes into being a lifelong student or expert of that thing. And so I was, and I've noticed this, like whether I'm speaking to a sports team or

• 40:02Speaker 00

  people in the military or I'm speaking to like a hedge fund or whatever, that how similar people who are elite performers at what they do, think about the world, the training, the craft of it, being the student of it. And how, and being now elite at more than one thing, your military experience and now being a great writer, how do you think about that? Like getting world class at a thing? And what advice might you have to someone who wants to be like best in class or best in the world or part of an elite group, make a team, you know, a division or whatever? How do you think about that?

• 40:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, I think it goes back to that foundational element of character. And there's a, there's a great book called Once an Eagle by Anton Meyer, which is historical fiction. Again, it follows two people from before World War Two, or before World War One up to Vietnam. And it's, it's really a case study in leadership. But once again, you're learning a lot about World War Two, you're learning about a lot about World War One, you're learning a lot about the interwar years. So you're getting this education there, but you're also getting an education in leadership. And one of those officers is a staff officer, and he's always just a little bit ahead of the guy who was enlisted in World War One, got a battlefield commission, is the soldier soldier, and they're working their way kind of up through these ranks over the years. But really, the lesson of the novel is to see to your reputation, or say your character, and your reputation will take

• 41:24Speaker 01

  care of itself. So you start from that foundation. And then for me, I mean, I don't know how it is for anyone else, but my goal is always to be the best operator I could be and the best leader I could be. So everything that I did in life had to propel me forward in one of those, in those areas right there. So everything that I'm reading, studying the enemy, staying, staying up to date on their tactics and their adaptation, staying in shape, getting on the range, getting out there with the guys, even when I worked my way up to a Point where I'm not, I don't really need to be out there on the range with them anymore. Still going out there and still being near the top.

• 41:57Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 41:57Speaker 01

  Might not be the fastest anymore, might not be the best shot anymore, but I'm certainly up there.

• 42:01Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 42:01Speaker 01

  And so I have most of everybody else going, oh, wow, when I get to that stage in my time in uniform.

• 42:05Speaker 00

  Still good.

• 42:06Speaker 01

  I want to be that, I want to be as good as he is type of a thing. So you're always out there, you're always pushing, always trying to make yourself better. And now my goal in writing is to move the genre forward, even if it's just by a degree.

• 42:15Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 42:16Speaker 01

  With each and every book, and then also to get better, obviously with each and every book, because people have trusted me with their time. And they're never going to get that back. So whether they're listening to it for 13 hours on audio read by Ray Porter, who's amazing, by the way.

• 42:27Speaker 00

  You don't read them?

• 42:27Speaker 01

  And, uh, no, if it was nonfiction, I would, but I want the best, uh, person, the best narrator out there to be, to be reading these things. And, uh, I'll oftentimes I don't even know how to pronounce some of the names because I've just read them.

• 42:37Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 42:38Speaker 01

  I've just, I've just put them together, but now I'm like.

• 42:40Speaker 00

  Oh, the names you created, you're not sure how to pronounce them.

• 42:42Speaker 01

  Yeah. So now that's Ray Porter's job, you know? I have no idea how to say like half the names in my book that are foreign names.

• 42:48Speaker 00

  No, they just exist as.

• 42:49Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 42:50Speaker 00

  Like literally like symbols, not a thing.

• 42:53Speaker 01

  Exactly. Kind of like the title of the first book, The Terminal List. I never said it out loud for like two years.

• 42:58Speaker 00

  Yeah, why would you?

• 42:58Speaker 01

  Cause I, yeah, I'm just looking at it. It's just on the paper and it looks great and it totally, it, uh, it encapsulates what the book's about, the themes, it works on a couple of different levels as well. And, uh, but then the first time I said it out loud, I was like, oh, those two L's, the terminal list. I'm like, oh, they kind of roll together if you say it too quickly. Um, so, so same thing with the names. Uh, so that's, yeah, that's kind of just how it, how it goes. But, um, uh, how did I get on that? I don't even know where I was going with that.

• 43:23Speaker 00

  No, there's a Greek expression, uh, character is fate. Right? So like the process, the, the, the, the rules, the standards you hold yourself to, the commitment. Ultimately gets you is destiny. It's deterministic, right?

• 43:40Speaker 01

  I mean, you can also trip and fall and you will at some point, you're going to get, and if you don't trip and fall, you're going to get hit. Um, and you're going to hit really hard. Um.

• 43:47Speaker 00

  But then character again, is that, do you have a resilient character or do you have a fragile character? Do you have a character that's willing to improve or a character that takes things personally or what, right? The character ultimately determines where you're going to, it's not saying you're going to be great tomorrow. But it is deterministic, uh, and predictive of what the output's going to be.

• 44:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I think it's really about that constant improvement, being a lifelong student of whatever you're doing, whether that's warfare, or whether that's writing for me now. I'm a lifelong student, so I'm never gonna get to that. I never use the term expert ever on anything, because I'm always striving to be better tomorrow than I was today. So, we have a saying in the SEAL teams, you're gonna earn your trident every day. And that's what you owe the people that came before you, the legacy that they passed on to you, and that's what you owe future generations of SEALs as well that are looking up to you, that are just coming up the ranks. So, it's earning that trident every day, and same thing, I'm earning that trust of the readership every day, whether it's an Instagram post, or a guest on my podcast, or a novel, as much thought goes into every single sentence in the book as goes into any Instagram post, or any question that I ask someone on my

• 44:53Speaker 01

  podcast, because, once again, people who trust me with their time, they're not getting it back.

• 44:57Speaker 00

  Well, it's true in writing too. Your last book will never write your next one. I have a little sign on my desk upstairs, and it's on the wall, and it says, "Are you being a good steward of Stoicism?" The idea that you, so you get the success or the platform, and then, yes, it's nice, and it's a reward for your work, but it's also a certain amount of responsibility and obligation, and you have to earn it every day, you have to live up to it, you have to uphold the ideas that got you there in the first place, and we know what happens when you don't, right? It might not be an immediate decline, it might not be some calamitous collapse, but it is eventually the end of the forward progress that you're talking about.

• 45:40Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, I gotta keep moving forward. I talk to the kids about that all the time. I try to say, you know, that as often as I can work it in naturally, to never miss an opportunity to make somebody's day, and keep improving, always just steady improvement. And, especially in the days now, social media with these kids, our kids coming up, when they're seeing that snapshot of somebody else's life that looks just perfect, and really, if that's a personal account, or if it's a company that's trying to sell you something, it's still an advertisement.

• 46:08Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 46:08Speaker 01

  Regardless. And so, at least recognizing that, but then you have to operate within that environment every day and still make slow and steady progress, when all you're seeing is somebody else, or comparing yourself to somebody else, and that one second of their day. That is tailored to give you that advertisement, whether it's personal or professional. So I try to try to talk to the kids about that as much as I possibly can because they have to contend with it essentially their whole lives. Or it came into our lives a lot later and we can kind of look at it and know what it's doing to us. They know what it exists for and realize, hey, this is a tool that we can use and I try to use it in a positive, a positive way. Obviously, most of it is, uh, is negative, I would say, if I had to, if I had to guess, if I had to say which way is, is it more positive or negative?

• 46:49Speaker 01

  I would say is probably more negative because you have to take active steps to remain positive on there and add value to people's lives with what you're doing in these engagements. When there is so much negativity coming out there, if you're any sort of a public figure, and oftentimes if you're not a public figure, like for high school kids. I mean, there is so much coming at them from peer groups and from tech companies and advertisers and everything else that wants to influence behavior and even thought. And that's something that we didn't have to contend with when we were 14, 15, 16, 17, 18 years old.

• 47:20Speaker 00

  I've told you about my routine a million times. Every morning I get up and I go for a walk or a run with the kids. Occasionally it's a bike ride, but every day it's active time in the morning with the kids. So I usually sleep in like running shorts, so I just pop up and go for the walk. And then sometimes I'm jumping straight into the pool in those same shorts with the kids in the summer. And my new Daily Wear, huge fan of the company, uh, so glad to have them as a sponsor and supporter of Daily Stoic, is 10,000. 10,000 makes the highest quality, best fitting, most comfortable training shorts I've ever worn. Their interval short is the most popular. I don't know if you can hear, I'm wearing them right now.

• 48:03Speaker 00

  They're just great. They're great for walking. They're great for running. They're great for biking. They're great for swimming. They're great for recording a podcast in. They're just really comfortable and awesome. They've got tons of features, silver ion for odor protection, no bounce pockets, breathable, soft shell, lightweight fabric, no bounce phone pocket, optional liner. The versatile shirt is great. I wear that all the time. You've probably seen me wearing the stuff in videos and social media posts. Cause I just wear it. I wore it at a, I wore the shorts at a dinner last night, a fancy dinner we went to. One of the perks of being an author is I wear what I want. But the motto of 10,000 is be better than yesterday. And to me, that's a great recipe slash definition for being a good stoic, too. All their stuff is tested by their team of over 200 athletes. They've gotten feedback from me. I love the stuff.

• 48:48Speaker 00

  I was introduced to him by Ritual, also an awesome athlete. Check it out. You can get free shipping and free returns and a lifetime guarantee on 10,000 products. And they're offering our listeners 15% off your purchase. Just go to 10,000.cc/stoic to receive 15% off your purchase. That's 10,000.cc/stoic.

• 49:09Speaker 00

  All right, one more question, then we'll go to the audience. How do you, I imagine, as I do it a little bit, sort of marvel at, when did The Terminal was come out? 2018?

• 49:17Speaker 01

  2018, yeah.

• 49:18Speaker 00

  So there's a lot of books in a short time. People might go like, how do you do it? I imagine it's by writing a lot, right? Like, it's not a magical solution, but it's, it's that, what, when we say character is fate, the sort of process is also fate. If you spend a lot of time writing, published books come out the other side of that, I imagine.

• 49:34Speaker 01

  Yep, oh, yeah. And I'm exhausted. I prioritize things and put sleeping, eating right and working out at the bottom. And that's just, that's just how it is. So hopefully, I'm gonna start changing that. I'm gonna need to start changing that, because you can only drink so much coffee and so much bourbon before it starts to, to, to impact.

• 49:53Speaker 00

  Also, if you think about it from a sustainability standpoint, you can only sprint for so long. You have to learn how to pace yourself.

• 49:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:59Speaker 00

  And take care of yourself.

• 50:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's good advice. I'm gonna write that down and see if I can work that in later. But so far, it's felt like a full-on sprint. But I feel so fortunate that the books are resonating with people and, and the series seems to be resonating with, with audiences. So I feel like this is the time to sprint. But, but it would be wiser to start the day with some exercise and maybe some journaling or maybe take a little, take a breath and meditate. But by that point, like, the kids are up and screaming and it's time for school and we're juggling the dogs barking and we're like, ah, it's chaos. And then I gotta work in the writing however I, however I can. But that's just life right now.

• 50:33Speaker 00

  Yeah, there's gotta be, I think, space like for an athlete to rest and recover. The number one contributor to injury is overtraining, right? Or overdoing it.

• 50:40Speaker 01

  Good advice. I'm gonna write down. But, uh, but yeah, thus far it's been, uh, the process has been, uh, to come up with a one-page executive summary, kind of like a book flap jacket. And then I ask myself the question, hey, am I willing, is this good enough for me to devote one year of my life to? And if the answer is yes, then I read it again and say, hey, is this good enough to have someone risk their time on? That they're never gonna get back. And if the answer to both of those is yes, then that's the project. That's the one. And I come up with a title right away because I don't want to have this bandwidth worried, oh, man, I gotta figure out this title, uh, as I'm writing. Uh, I have this, I have a theme right away. Now it's more than one word. It's turned into about a sentence, but I have that to guide me as well. And I turn that one-page executive summary into an outline. And then I take that outline and turn that into the novel.

• 51:26Speaker 01

  So that's been the process thus far to include the sixth one that I'm working on right now. Um, but, uh, but eventually I'm gonna have to, I think that process works well for me, but I'm gonna have to structure it into my day a little, a little better than I have in the past. Cause once again, it's a, yeah, as you said, it's a, you can only sprint for so long.

• 51:42Speaker 00

  Yes. If you want to do it for a long time. If you just want to sprint for a short time, you can't.

• 51:46Speaker 01

  Hence the sprint.

• 51:48Speaker 00

  All right, let's do questions. Uh, try to be loud and then, uh, we'll also repeat the questions and we'll go from there. Go for it.

• 51:55Speaker 02

  What's the sentence or words on the post-it note for the sixth novel?

• 51:59Speaker 01

  Oh, you know, I'm still working on that one. So I have it, I have the one-page executive summary and I have the, uh, theme. I have the title, which is classified and I'm turning that into the, the outline right now. I have beginning, middle, end, I have all, all that sort of a thing where there's, there's one theme that I need to work on. That's gonna take it all the way, all the way through. So I'm still working on that one sentence for this one, but it'll come quick. It'll come before I start, uh, start the writing process. So, yeah.

• 52:24Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 52:26Speaker 03

  What would you say this book's theme is?

• 52:28Speaker 01

  This is a sniper-centric novel of violent resolutions. But, and this was sniper-centric novel is really what I went with the whole time here. But, as I started writing, another theme emerged very quickly, and that was one of forgiveness. And it wouldn't necessarily be one that you'd associate with one of my novels. But, it works in very naturally into the beginning, into this chapter that I wrote, which is chapter three. And it's on the website. I released a PDF of the first three chapters and the prologue and the preface.

• 52:56Speaker 00

  This is where the mom comes in, right?

• 52:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's the mom coming down, the matriarch of the Hastings family. And it was probably the favorite chapter that I've ever, ever written. And it just, very naturally, this theme of forgiveness worked its way in, and then that worked its way through, really, the rest of the novel. But, don't worry, still, people get blown up and get stabbed in the eyeball and decapitated, so, don't, yeah. So, don't worry. It's still one of my novels.

• 53:20Speaker 00

  On the rant back there.

• 53:23Speaker 03

  The signature weapon that's on your logo and that James Reece uses for multiple of his kills, how did you decide on that axe to be kind of his signature weapon?

• 53:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, so the question is, how did I decide on, hey, right there, bam! The Winkler tomahawks, the R&D Hawks from Winkler, Daniel Winkler, out in North Carolina. And, so I got to know Daniel Winkler a long time ago, and he started making axes, tomahawks, for some of our more elite special operations units. And they were all a little bit different depending on the unit. But, they used to be given like ceremonial, some guys took them downrange, actually used them. But, I was always drawn to the tomahawk, well before I knew Daniel Winkler. And I had these tomahawks growing up as a kid, when Cold Steel came out with a, kind of like a new, modern version, like I had that right away, and then I had their ranger hatchet that they, that they had, that was kind of a throwback to Rogers Rangers and all that. So, I was always drawn to the tomahawk, for whatever reason.

• 54:17Speaker 01

  And then it started getting used in the War on Terror, and started being used downrange, and being given to guys as ceremonial type of a gift when they get to a unit, that's or prove themselves in that unit. Then I got to know Daniel Winkler, same way, and he did the knives and the hatchets for Last of the Mohicans. Just an amazing guy, been out to, spent time with him at his place in North Carolina. And just became a dear friend. And then when I retired from the military, I gave my my kids four things. I gave them a Bible with their with their name on it. I gave them a compass, an old nautical compass. I gave them a leather bound constitution, and then I gave him a Winkler tomahawk. And I said, here's the Bible and the compass to help guide you. Here's the constitution that holds our natural rights. And then I give him the tomahawk and said, here's the means to defend it.

• 55:00Speaker 01

  And so after that, I was writing the book and I made it to Simon and Schuster and had this publication date. And I was thinking, you know what? I need a I need a symbol. I'm like, huh. And I looked at those gifts and I took two of them and I put them on the ground and crossed them. And I took a picture of it and I sent it to my publisher Emily. And I'm like, hey, what do you think? What do you think about this? And she said, I love it. And then I sent it to Daniel Winkler and I said, hey, is it cool if I if I use this for my my logo? And and he said, absolutely. So that's how the the crossed tomahawks were born. And yeah, they have a starring role in the series with with Chris Pratt coming up. So. And my goal there was kind of to make it the kind of the Rambo knife of the 21st century. For those who grew up during the 80s. So so yeah, and and you know, not not really shockingly, I guess, but.

• 55:44Speaker 01

  Amazon was all was on board. So yeah, pretty cool. Pretty cool.

• 55:50Speaker 03

  So you started to touch on this with some of the last questions with Brian. Obviously, you're an author, but you do so many other things, the podcast, relationships, you have a brand.

• 56:00Speaker 03

  So you've kind of become a brand of your own between everything you do. How do you see the relationship between writing books and also podcasts? Brand relationships, social media, stuff like this.

• 56:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:16Speaker 03

  How do you see that relationship?

• 56:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, so the question was about being an author, but then also creating a brand essentially. And I recognized early on that if I wanted to keep writing, I needed people to buy my books. They had to be aware that I existed and that this was at the time I'm writing in late 2014, 2015, 2016. I'm finishing up and then editing and then sending it to to Simon and Schuster. And I didn't really, as I was writing, I wasn't spending time looking at other authors. Websites or looking at social, I had no social media. I wasn't coming from politics. I wasn't coming from sports. I wasn't coming in from anything that gave me any sort of background or recognition. I had zero recognition. But as I finished it up and then sent it to Simon and Schuster and then they accepted it and then wanted to publish it, obviously.

• 57:03Speaker 01

  But then I started thinking, oh, okay, maybe I need a website. And then, because I still thought at the time, one of the draws of being an author was you could go to a cabin in the mountains, write, send it to New York and then write your next book. No, that's, I mean, that might be, that's an outlier. If you're doing that, like you, you wrote Fifty Shades of Grey, or you're J.K. Rowling, or something along those lines. Those are the outliers. Like, we know all those names. Twilight, maybe you can get away with it. But for everybody else, you have to build that readership. And there are things that I could do today that you couldn't have done in 1995, 85, 75. So all those authors I read growing up, I would love to have known more about them. I would love to have known when their next book's coming out. But back in the 80s, you didn't know. Is it going to be a year? Is it going to be two years? It's going to be two and a half. You had

• 57:47Speaker 01

  no idea, because there were very few authors that were on this one book a year schedule. Clive Cussler did it early on. He was one of the first. Stephen King started doing it, even though it wasn't a series character, it was just different books. So those are kind of the two that started it. And then by the late 90s, that it turned into if you had a recurring character, that's what people wanted. So you have Daniel Silva with the Gabriel Alon series. You have Vince Flynn. Then you have Brad Thor. So you have these recurring characters that are series characters that are now coming out every year. But there are things that you could do in 2015, you couldn't have done in 2005, certainly not 1995, certainly 1985. So I thought, well, if I was an author in 1985, when could I thank people for buying my book? Well, at a book signing, maybe at a convention, but

• 58:31Speaker 01

  that's it. Now, when can I do it? I can do it every day on social media. When someone reaches out and says they bought the book, or they post it, guess what I can do? I can repost that. And then I can send them a thank you. I can send them a little thumbs up and an American flag. And I love doing that because I am so thankful and so grateful that they did that and then told a friend. And maybe their followers, maybe they have two. Maybe they have 35 million. Maybe they have everything. But that's something an author couldn't have done back in 1985. Same thing with the podcast. You couldn't have had a podcast, obviously, back in 1985. Well, what can I do today? I continue to build that readership with a podcast. I can engage with my audience with a podcast. I can add value, hopefully, to people's lives through that podcast, through my engagement on social media.

• 59:12Speaker 01

  So everything that I do supports the book, or supports the books in general. But it's just another way to engage with an audience, provide value to them. So that when, hey, when the book comes out, maybe they'll get it. That would be fantastic. But it's all about building that readership in ways that you couldn't have done 30 years ago.

• 59:33Speaker 04

  Can you see movie making becoming a third career? Or will you stay true to your writing and outsource that part of the?

• 59:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, so there have been many an author who have been lured in by Hollywood over the years. I'm well aware of that. So the books will always remain my focus. And I have a bunch of other projects now working in Hollywood that are in various early stages. And you never know if they're going to go anywhere. But for me, it's just fun to do. I'm learning something new. I'm learning about screenwriting. The showrunner for The Terminalist, David DeGioio, really took me under his wing right away. We wrote this pilot episode. He really wrote it, and I was just learning. And he was mentoring me along. And it was so fun to work together. We've talked every day since December of 2019, to include today. And so I learned so much about that. And then being on set, I got to add so much more to it than than a normal author would have. That's what I was told anyway.

• 1:00:26Speaker 01

  So then people start talking, just like they do in any, in any industry. And then calls start coming in. So I'm talking to a bunch of different people in Hollywood about different projects. And who knows if they'd go anywhere. If they do, great. If they don't, you know what? I can use those ideas and morph them into my next novel. Or I can create other standalones based on those ideas. So I have a lot of ideas, and I love working on them, and I'd love to do some more Hollywood projects. But right now, it's the books. And then I'm outlining season two of The Terminalist. If we, if we get that, get another season, then have this outline built out. But there's an issue with that one, for those who have read True Believer. Because that one's building towards a threatened Russian invasion of Ukraine.

• 1:01:04Speaker 01

  And now that's happened, so I can't stay too true to that, you know, the plot. You have to get a little creative in that sense, but I love all these creative endeavors. So I feel so fortunate.

• 1:01:15Speaker 03

  Yep. Speaking of Hollywood, if you're operating an acting role or a cameo.

• 1:01:21Speaker 01

  You have to keep your eyes peeled on July 1st.

• 1:01:25Speaker 03

  Is there anything that surprised you thus far in your transition and the reception to your work?

• 1:01:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, the question was, has anything that has surprised me? I guess there's a lot of surprises. That one was that I couldn't just lock myself in a cabin in the mountains and write and expect people to know who I was and buy the books. So that was one, but I adjusted quickly. And the other one was, I guess mostly from, I was surprised that Simon & Schuster or Hollywood didn't want to change anything really about the, I guess, some of the foundational elements of these novels. So I guess that was a surprise just because I didn't know, because I have no touch point, didn't have any touch points with both those industries going in. And then the other one on the Hollywood front was that anything gets made in Hollywood at all. That is now a shock. I didn't know to be shocked by that, but now that I've seen this whole process, I can

• 1:02:19Speaker 01

  see, ah, okay, now I'm surprised that anything gets made or that anything good gets made because there are so many opportunities for things to totally derail. There's so many people involved, you really have to put a great team together, just like anything else in life, and you all have to trust one another. So Chris and Antoine and our showrunner and Jared Shaw and Raymond Doza and Max Adams, like this core team of people that were so devoted to this project, kept it on the rails. And so I can see how if you had a couple of people as part of that team that had some other vision or whatever it is, I can see how things could derail very quickly. And then also how great everybody is in Hollywood at their jobs. I was, I guess I didn't really think about it ahead of time, but I walked on set and

• 1:03:04Speaker 01

  everyone is so good at their individual job and they're at the top of their profession. And I guess I didn't really think about it before, but now I understand why people We'll hear about Hollywood, hey, only the person that can plug this thing in can plug this thing in. And that's because this thing is a Lamborghini and it is flying around the track at over 200 miles an hour. And if one part of that engine is doing something different for a second because they get distracted, guess what? And that thing is going into the shop. So you have to be so devoted to your very specific task. And then the other thing is how similar Hollywood is to a military operation. You have, you have crap food services that needs to feed the troops. You have the explosives guy on set, like a breacher in your platoon, in the SEAL teams. You have your armorer right there that's checking weapons in and out, doing the serial numbers,

• 1:03:49Speaker 01

  doing the inventory. You have a mobility guy who has the vehicles set up for the right scenes and has them in the right places, just like you have a mobility person in your platoon. And we have Antoine Fuqua, he's the commanding officer. He's at the top, he's setting that tone strategically for everybody. And then you have Chris Pratt here setting the tone tactically for everyone. And, and so that, how similar it was to a military operation or a military unit, that was, I guess that was a surprise, but only because I hadn't thought of it before.

• 1:04:15Speaker 00

  Let's do three more and then Jack will sign all your books inside.

• 1:04:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, so question was about the Danger Close Podcast. They come out on Wednesdays and Fridays. And that's how I decide who to have, who to have on. And yeah, so I didn't really know going in, I just thought it was going to be another way to really talk about some more contentious issues that really social media doesn't lend itself to when you get asked a question about something that you really want to go into maybe detail or have a discussion about, rather than just giving a single sentence answer that leads itself to just more attacks and you know, you don't want to engage. But then it really, right off the bat, I mean, it hit right off the bat. And I was very lucky that I reached out to Ironclad, who produces it, because it's important, just like in anything, like with a sniper weapon system, to know your capabilities and your limitations. So my capability was, okay, I could order the podcast little thing and I could plug

• 1:05:02Speaker 01

  in the headsets and I could get the cards and I could set up, this was a stretch, set up the camera and press record and press record like there, but anything else, that was beyond my capability.

• 1:05:23Speaker 01

  How to how to get a password for some sort of a platform and put it up there, create a graphic, or spend the time reaching out to people and setting things up in a professional way. So Ironclad does all that, and that's something that I could could never possibly do. And now they also handle all the bookings for me. So if it's a friend that I want to come on, I just link them up and they get them in the get them in the schedule. And sometimes people reach out, like Bill Barr, he reached out or his his publicist reached out, I guess, and wanted to come on, so former Attorney General. And he came on last Monday, and that'll come out in a week or two. But when that one was really quick, that's when the Being Adaptable comes in. So I had to read that book, which is fairly thick, for those of you who've read it, it's fantastic. But then we got to sit down and talk, and I was a little nervous, you know, he's he's sharp.

• 1:06:05Speaker 01

  And I was coming off a trip, coming off SIG Freedom Days in Phoenix last weekend, and got home super late, and then put my questions together. And he was so great, he was he was so sharp and on it. But I think we could have talked forever. I thought that he was gonna just like, who's this guy, I was gonna just get through this thing. But he was fantastic, I think we could have talked for three or four hours. And I kind of went fast on it because I was just being very cognizant of his time because of who he is. But, you know, next thing I know, he's inviting me out to DC for a Scotch. So we'll definitely be doing that at some point this year. So, yeah, I just I just like to talk to people who are interesting. And then also, it's an opportunity to talk to friends, because I'm so busy all the time, that it's like, oh, I can turn my phone off for an hour, for two hours, not have my email popping up, and I can just talk and catch up with a buddy.

• 1:06:50Speaker 01

  Let's record that and put it up online and see if people like it. So it's it's fun for me to do that.

• 1:06:55Speaker 03

  Back there? Sir, so under the kind of personal tension or conflict between kind of your previous profession, which was primarily in the shadows, versus this, which is much more repulsive and public facing?

• 1:07:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, so the question was about any sort of conflict between my last profession in the military, and then what's now more, obviously, a lot more public. And, yeah, you have to kind of just get over it. So if I want to be an author, and I want to continue to be an author, which is what I love doing, guess what else comes along with that? These other things, these other responsibilities. So for me, it was just like, that's just how it goes. Didn't really put too much thought into it, other than conducting myself in a way that's that's real and authentic and thoughtful. And I try to do that no matter what I do, but that would have been true regardless of whether I'm public facing or not. And I think that authenticity piece really helps today also because back in 1985, 1989, 1993,

• 1:07:52Speaker 01

  you didn't really know who somebody was. You got their book and maybe you could take some things out because of even if it's fiction, just out of the pages ish. But there wasn't a way to really get to know them. You didn't really know their background. You didn't know if they were, they seemed like a nice person. I don't know. Maybe you saw one interview with them on a morning show or heard them on the radio once. And oh, they seem nice. Or oh, that guy did not seem very nice. He got off on the wrong side of the bed. Or oh, jeez, now I'm not gonna get his stuff. But I think that authenticity piece really helps today. Because you can't really be fake for, I mean, you can do it maybe for a little bit online on social media. But if you do it for too long, like one, the real you is gonna gonna show. And it must be just exhausting. So who has time for that? So the conflict, I didn't really have a conflict in in changing professions. I just knew that it was, this would be a part of it.

• 1:08:34Speaker 00

  All right, last question.

• 1:08:37Speaker 00

  You have one?

• 1:08:38Speaker 05

  So out of every kill in your book, which kill is your favorite and why?

• 1:08:43Speaker 01

  Oh, I've never been asked this question before. That's a great one. Which kill is my favorite? And why? Oh, that is such a great question. And sometimes people ask me like my favorite, which book is my favorite? And it's always the last one that I've been working on. And now it's number six that I'm working on right now. And I think that's just because of the the investment and being and actually loving doing it. And then loving creating the characters and then having them interact through dialogue. And so I just love every part of it. So I love the one I'm working on now more than the ones in the past, because those ones are already in the past. But favorite kill. Oh, man. Oh, Savage Sun in the Cabin is pretty good, just because it was pretty creative. And I'd never seen that anywhere before. If you haven't read it, I won't spoil

• 1:09:25Speaker 01

  it. The Capitation was pretty good, you know. Yeah, that was a good one. That was a good one. And I don't think I've ever told this story before. So where did I get that one? And so I did, I was talking to someone who had been involved in the Iran-Contra affair. And they had spent time in Central South America. And they mentioned this thing that happened with the Shining Path guerrilla movement. And that's something that they did. They did actually, they eviscerated people right here, tacked their intestines to a tree and had them walk around it as a message to others. And I was like, hmm, that sounds like a good, that seems like a great thing for James Reece to do. Yeah. So I did, I filed that away.

• 1:10:08Speaker 01

  And also, there's a couple of ran contra things, for those that are paying attention. I dropped little tidbits in there because of the Cold War and what I want to go back to on this floor with James Reece's dad and that sort of a thing. But that's where I got that idea, was somebody mentioned it and I was like, hmm, hmm, that sounds interesting. And that's the one that I get asked about most when people, when I mention the Amazon series. As soon as I mentioned the Amazon series was coming out, people either said, "Amazon will never let you do this," or, "I hope Amazon keeps that scene in." Those are the two. And every time that happens, screenshot, send to Amazon. Screenshot, send to Amazon. Screenshot, so they have like five, they're probably like, "Stop sending us these things." So you'll have to wait and see if it actually made it in though or not.

• 1:10:50Speaker 00

  All right. Thank you all for coming. Thank you for stopping by.

• 1:10:53Speaker 01

  Absolutely. Thank you guys, really appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you.

• 1:11:07Speaker 01

  Thanks so much for listening. If you could rate this podcast and leave a review on iTunes, that would mean so much to us and it would really help the show. We appreciate it and I'll see you next episode.