How This Ex-Navy SEAL Turned A Book Into A $1M+ Empire - Jack Carr

**Sam Parr** (0:00)
All right, everyone, so I did this podcast for me, and I'm gonna explain why. Today's guest is this guy named Jack Carr. If you don't know who Jack Carr is, you guys should look him up. But basically, he has this series of books called The Terminalist. Terminalist is now a, it's definitely a best-selling book. They've sold millions and millions of copy. It's a novel about a Navy SEAL who's wronged, and then there's like eight books of him getting revenge. And it's an Amazon Prime show with Chris Pratt. It's awesome. However, I had Jack Carr on the podcast because I read his book when I was going through a little bit of a period where I had just had a daughter and I wanted to do something where I would become a little bit more of a man than before. I wanted to learn something about high integrity, about things I should be doing as a man. And it just kind of honestly changed my life. And it doesn't matter if you're a man or a woman, I think you're gonna enjoy this episode. We talk a lot about his writing process, but we mostly talk about the process of masculinity and what it means to be a stand-up person. We talked about the business of writing books and how he makes money. I think you're gonna enjoy this one. It's a little bit out of left field, but try it out.
I love this guy, so check it out.
So I'm happy you're here, man. This is a business show. And so we don't do authors and stuff like that all the time, but I published a podcast where I was talking about how I loved your books. And I'm halfway through the third one. And the reason I found you guys or I found you is because I tweeted out, I want to read a book that's the ultimate man novel, something that is action, adventure, page turning, high integrity, like teaches you values because I just had a kid and I was like, I want to be inspired a little bit.
And all these people were tagging you and saying Jack Carr. And I was like, I've never heard of Jack Carr. I don't know. I don't know anything about this. What is this all about? And I started reading The Terminalist and I read the first book and I was hooked.
And I'm so hooked.
I'm halfway through number three and I'm going to make it through all through seven. And I think you actually are like a lot more business savvy than most authors, if I had to guess.

**Jack Carr** (2:14)
It's more entrepreneurial than I think there's a difference between being entrepreneurial and being business minded, which is why at some point, you grow like startups eventually sell or bring in a business person to run it and professionalize it and scale it and that sort of a thing.
But I didn't really think of myself that way until about, I'd say a month before the first book came out. So I'm all into the novel, leaving the SEAL teams and just writing because I love it. My mom is a librarian, so I grew up surrounded by books and a love of reading. As you can tell from the background here, I have quite the collection, always been a reader, and it's really the foundation from which everything else has grown. And so it's all about the book. And then about a month, maybe two before the first book publication in March of 2018, I was like, oh, okay, I'm going to look at this the way I looked at the battlefield in Iraq and Afghanistan, meaning you are looking for gaps in the enemy's defenses. You're looking how to adapt, how to capitalize on momentum.
And I just looked at the space in general, and I was like, oh, wow, publishing really hasn't kept up. It's a very, it's a very legacy type of a business.
And they do so well because they've been around for so long. So they're very entrenched in what they do and they make some money, but they're safe as far as business goes. Very slow to adapt to things, even like audiobooks or ebooks, that sort of that thing. So I looked at it and I was like, okay, why when I get my iPhone, it doesn't just come in a manila envelope, it comes in a packaging and as much thought went into that packaging, as went into the actual product itself. And when I was getting books from other authors for blurbs or that sort of a thing, they were just coming in these manila envelopes.