I've been thinking about it for nearly fifteen years now. Money is not the most important thing in the world. Trump was one of the best presidents of the last how many decades, and he's the only president to my knowledge who has lost significant amounts of personal wealth since leaving office.
Every other president I can think of got richer after leaving the office.
I could easily charge money for the historical audiobooks I produce. It makes more sense, I can reach far more people, when I give them away freely as open source. The biggest problem we face as a people is an maleducated populace from government schools.
"But when your deliberately associate your business with a specific political cause, you instantly lose half your customer base"
That depends on the industry. Big Tech has not lost the overall of its conservative consumer base. They have found they can keep offending us in the worst ways, and it's not going to matter.
Trump also lost a lot of friends. Black people absolutely loved the guy. There are plenty of pictures of Trump hanging out, smiling with Jessie Jackson and Al Sharpton.