0:00 Dan. All right, what's up, everybody? This is the Dan Barrett podcast, and I'm your host. Dan Barrett here to talk about building awesome businesses and living an awesome and fulfilling life, and we are going deep in the weeds on every single subject that I think is interesting and useful and effective for you, and I hope you are enjoying it. This week, we have a short interview, but a really, really fascinating one, with J, T Fox. Now, that is Fox with two x's. Fox x, if you don't know JT. He is a global entrepreneur and investor and coach. He has done business in 55 countries. He is probably the single richest person I have ever met, and will probably ever meet in person. The man is an absolute Dynamo. He owns more businesses than people. I know he's a fascinating character, but here is the real reason I wanted to have JT on first of all, yes, he is a world class business person like none other really I have met. He's incredibly fast, incredibly capable, incredibly smart, but he is also a coach, and he is a business person that is dedicated to the practice of coaching, partially because of the way that coaching impacted his life, which you'll hear about in the interview, but also because he always says coaching is what keeps his skills honed and sharp. And I was lucky enough to see JT coach people live and to be coached by him. And I gotta say, it is a wild experience. It truly is. He is incisive, he is incredibly fast, and he does not pull punches. I saw him tell people that the business, you know, the business that they'd been working on for years was a waste of time.
I saw him tell people that they were smarter than they thought they were. And I saw him tell people that they were not as smart as they thought they were. He is truly unique in his ability to cut to what matters in an interaction with another person. And if you are someone who is interested in what it takes or what it's like to operate at the very top of a field, right? And I think JT is at the very top of his field, which you could include, you know, entrepreneurship, investment coaching. I mean, he is doing numbers. And if you are interested in what it is like and what it takes to be at that level talking to someone like JT is the way you figure it out, and more than what he says. I mean, what he says is very insightful. The man is super smart, but you can watch how he is with people. What he does with people, right? Like he shows up to a room of a couple 100 people and coaches them into the ground, right? Like the endurance and the stamina and the sort of ability to stay focused is, to me, was really mind blowing, and was the number one reason I wanted to have him on the show. So JT is a very busy man. This is a shorter interview than I would typically do, but I just could not pass up on the opportunity to have him on the podcast. So without any further ado, let's get into this short but very dense and very insightful conversation with J T Fox. All right, so Mr. J T Fox, first of all, thank you for being here. Second of all, you are obviously a wildly successful business person. You're also an incredibly impactful coach. And the question that I have for you is because you typically coach people in these kind of pretty intense sessions. How do you think about having the biggest impact on people in the shortest amount of time possible? Well, I
4:30 think it's giving people the truth. I think a lot of people lie to people by telling them their ideas good, or they're enabling them telling one thing. And I think how I was coach who was just blood and truth, George Ross, who was Donald Trump's right hand man, 47 years, Celebrity Apprentice judge, worked with him, 47 years. We're not about to get political here. But, and he didn't get involved in politics either. Just for the record, funny, I have to say that every time I speak before you say Trump will start false thing. But you know, he just always gave it to me straight and. The truth sometimes hurts, but I think a lot of times we can waste a lot of time on the wrong idea, the wrong strategy, or the wrong people, and that's why, for the last 13 years, I've bounced off ideas, off of every one of my coaches. So when you get coached, so for example, one of the things I've always really admired about you is you're very open about your past being coached, right? Like you're not.
5:22 Every coaching session I've ever done, from broke to I am today, has been recorded, and people can listen to it by go to get self made.com, and you can just listen to it. And you could see, I mean, I've recorded 768, hours of coaching. So that's a lot. That's pretty awesome. When you get coached, do you find yourself getting defensive or emotional? Because I think for most people, the reason they don't tell people the truth is they're worried the other person's going to have some kind of emotional reaction. Do you ever find yourself reacting that way? Or is that just not anymore? I used to, obviously, my first three years, and then I remember my coach telling me, do you want to be right, or do you want to get it right? And so then it came up that concept. I was like, Why do I keep arguing with them? The job of the coach is not necessarily to you to get his love, his acceptance. It's just to say, you know, and I think what made a very big difference is that sometimes people will go to a coach and say, Okay, here's my problem, and here's what he did, here's what she did. And you're, you're putting it into a way that is making the coach agree with you because of how you're presenting the facts, as opposed saying, Okay, here's the issue, here's what I say, here's what like, for example, Dan says, Where am I wrong here? Well, you're right about this, but this one thing with Dan, see that's wrong. Okay, so I think that's the difference. Is that I think people, when they get coaches, want to hear someone tell them how great they are or how great their ideas, as opposed to the truth.
6:44 So what's the best way to be highly coachable? Like, if I'm if I want to get them, shut
up, shut up, listen and learn. I mean, they actually implement what the person tells you to do, of course. I mean, don't argue. You know, Do this, do this, do this. And I think there's too many people that argue with with certain things, and that's why they don't really get to where they want to get. Do you feel like being a coach has helped you in your business? Like, do you learn from Oh, absolutely, absolutely. I mean, I have this skill. I can look at people know if they're successful or not, what's right, what's wrong? You critically think my speed of thinking, coming up ideas, is 1000 think about coaching for me as practice for the real world of business, where I get to listen to everybody else's problems and then not repeat them in my business. But even I have to check with my coaches. And I've had nine coaches in my life, so I've definitely spent over $3 million I'm a product of the fundamentals. When you think about working with a coach, right? You're at this point in your life where you're obviously extremely there's not a lot of people you can find who are going to be more experienced or make more money or whatever the thing is, than you. How do you what do you look for in a coach? I
7:57 mean, at this point, I still have all my coaches that I've had you know, George dross, Hugh, Hilton, Mike Slade, who was best friends with gates and jobs and worked at Apple and Microsoft. But at this point, I kind of know all the answers and and it's more like confirmation, like 1% doubt can kill you. Hey, what do I think about this? Right? So I'm launching a new book called businesses war, and I'm trying to come up with a sub headline title. And of course, you give four options, it's 25% 25% 25% 25% and then it's funny how high net worth people like in the title is like, how to add one zero to your net worth, right? And every high net worth people hated that. And anyone who wasn't high net worth loved it. And so it was very interesting to see. And so now I have a coaching session tonight with my coach to go over, you know, to try to explain him, what is it my vision and which subtitle is going to work the best. But I'm also realizing marketing, if I have to explain it, I've already lost so I'm mindful of that as well. So it's like part of the relationship almost seems like it's, it's the it's the process of having to verbalize what you are thinking and kind of verbalize your argument to an objective party and get that reflected back to you. Is that, like, part of the value for you at this point? Yeah,
9:12 I mean, it's, to me, it's basically, it's kind of getting to the crust of the root cause, rather than solving the symptoms of our problems. What's the root cause of this? And you're going to realize overall that every problem you have has a first name and a last name, several people. Every issue have as you grow up the ladder is people issues. Right at the start. It's like your mindset, your work ethic, your persistence, your fears, but as you grow up the ladder, it's all people problems. Someone didn't do what they were supposed to do. Yeah, do you find that coaching, particularly like having that coach relationship, they're able to spot people problems in your life, or maybe like when you when you're working with people, they have a blind shirt for sure you like. That's my. Most people know what they know and they don't know what they don't know, and they're they're sort of stuck with a set of beliefs, and at the end of the day, your job is to get a breakthrough, which is an aha moment of the individual, but also a breakout, which is steps to be able to get them out of where they're at. Yeah, I've heard you say that, of everything in your business, you would probably cut your coaching the last, right, if you were going to cut everything.
10:27 Well, some of it not, not the, I mean, you know, this morning, I had a bunch of one on ones, and I find that, like, rather spending two hours on somebody else's business that could have spent it on mine, and I've just been back, but I was behind. So because I was gone on a world tour, you know, I actually prefer the group format a little bit better, because then you're just repeating the same issues on a one on one basis that you'd have in a small group, where people could learn. But there's very few people on the planet. I don't think anybody on planet who coaches as fast as I do, who gets at a high level, partly because I am very successful and I own a lot of businesses, and so now there's a lot of coaches that don't have businesses, which, by the way, was unacceptable when I first started, but now, I guess if you have results for other people, you can get away with it. So the game has changed. You know, it used to be experience mattered. Now it really doesn't. Relevancy is more important
11:15 than experience. Yeah, I have, like, I mean, I know what you're talking about. But I also think just to kind of get back to the thing that you could you kind of breezed over it. But I think it's really important for people who don't, haven't seen you work. You coach very rapidly many different people, and that format is really powerful. If you were going to start your coaching business over, let's say you just you didn't have a coaching background, you're going to start from one on one on one. What's going to get because one on one's going to give you the highest results, right? And so people think went to many, and they're like, Well, I don't want to trade time for money, but at first, you're building a brand off the results that you give to people, and no one's going to get better results than a one on one, gotcha. So you're going to get the testimonial, going to get the case study, that's what you're going to leverage in the future and have the biggest impact, correct? And you double down and as your brain so when you get coached Now, are there things that you still find that you've got so much business experience, do you still find yourself with, like blind spots and cognitive biases that you can't really see without someone else?
12:16 Not really. I mean, I'm very well aware of the things I do and the things that I should do or not do, and a lot of it for me is time as time, you know, obviously, you know, you made a great impression, but from a time perspective, it still makes sense for me to do a podcast. You know what? I mean, it's just not but you know, my next hour is filled up doing some podcasts to help people. And I know what I average per hour, but I also realized that, you know, there was someone who gave me a shot, and who said yes, right? So you have to pay it forward. You just can't say, Look, I'm successful. Now I don't have time for these little things, but, you know, someone gave you a shot in these little things. So, you know, as you become more successful, I think money really matters. You know what I mean, like, it's just the billion is not important. I'll probably get there, but it's not, it doesn't even move my needle financially, like, you know, like I said, I could drop a billion dollars overnight, and I still be on on this call. So I wouldn't change anything. I wouldn't change anything. So I think that's the important part. So
13:10 what does move your needle at this point is it just the challenge of you haven't done it's just the game, just the next thing, the next deal, the next opportunity, the next relationship, while maintaining the others too, as well. So what's next is always more motivating to me than what's now. If it's now, it's it's already done, set and moved on. Yeah. So you, you're not retiring, essentially, is what you're telling me. I have so many businesses. No, no, I might limit some things I do, but I'm not retired. So all right, I know you're short on time. I don't want to keep you super long, but I long, but I really do want to ask you this, which is you, I've seen you a person just a couple times now, at this point, every single time I've seen you, you are on your way to somewhere else, right? Like, you're like, second I walk out of this room, I'm getting on a plane, I'm going somewhere else. Like your schedule is really intense, and you also maintain a really high energy and focus level, like you are not showing up halfway, you are showing up all the way. What do you do when you're like, you know, so to speak off camera, to maintain that, because that's like, really Herculean at this point. I mean, I
14:19 don't know. I just think energy is something fire inside you, and I just let it burn. So my energy and my strength is stronger than my excuses. And it's easy to say I'm tired on this, but I think of how many mothers that you know have to deal with children and sick kids and all that stuff, and I have this whole appreciation. So whatever problems I have is nothing compared to what other people have in the world, or what people are having in the hurricane right now. So and the stress that happened too, I'm just blessed to have what it is, and you don't live once. You live every single day. You die once. So that's all I can say about that. That's true, yeah. So you just kind of make yourself show up. How many hours are you sleeping at night? Five, five, all right. So you're like, you are sort of making yourself show. Up. Do you ever, you ever worry about doing that longer term, or is that just a thing where you're like, look, I don't want to do what I won't do once I stop doing, I stopped doing. I mean, I'm not worried about that. I just, you know, I just play the game and and I'll never stop playing the game. So that's, that's why businesses or you win or you lose. I hate losing more than I love winning. Is that true? Yeah, of course. We care less about winning. It lasts for two seconds. Losing bothers me until they win.
15:27 Interesting. So you feel like, if this, if business still existed, but you weren't competing, you feel like it wouldn't be anywhere near as intriguing or interesting to you. That wouldn't be very fun. It wouldn't be fun. That's, that's the sort of thing there You do seem like you have a lot of fun despite everything that we've done, yes, but I'm running
away from my next meeting when that's not going to be fun, because my whole day is going to be completely down there as well. So, but I appreciate having you, my friend. Thank you so much for doing this. It means appreciate it now. Thank you so much. Great questions. I'm
15:54 going to hang out with you with her a little bit because I have some thoughts on this, and I'm curious what your thoughts were on this conversation. Now. JT, to put it crassly, I think I said this in the beginning of the episode, right? He's the richest person I've ever met. He's probably the richest person I've ever gonna meet, just based on who I hang out with. And I'm very interested in this kind of person, because JT, and I think you would say this about himself, is an uneven personality, and I don't mean like he's erratic, if anything, he's very disciplined, very regular, very clear on what he wants, right? But he has optimized his life and his surroundings to do a very particular thing. He has optimized his life to play and win the game of business to someone like Jay, well, I will just say JT. I won't say someone like JT. To JT money is not what it is to normal people, right? Like JT doesn't need any more money. Me really get the impression from hanging out with him, even briefly, that he barely uses the money he has, right? I mean, as he he told me, I think once he's He's rarely home. He's got a beautiful home, and he's almost never there. He's constantly traveling to do business or to coach, or whatever he is, optimized around a very particular outcome. That outcome is to produce points on a scoreboard. It just so happens that the scoreboard is, you know, money. The points are money in a bank account. It just so happens that that is the game he's playing. But JT is more like an athlete, a high level athlete, than really anyone I've ever met in the business world. He is not concerned with many of the things that you or I would be concerned with.
Like for me, time off is super critical. I need downtime. I need relaxation time. I need to kind of wind my way aimlessly through books and topics that have nothing to do with what I do right? I think I've talked in the past about becoming obsessed with psychoanalysis and reading my Freud and, you know, reading my Lacan, and I'm, in fact, I happen to be reading a book about Lacan right now, and it's got nothing to do with what I do, which is helping people build their businesses, build their agencies, helping people, you know, build a life that's awesome and fulfilling. I like to think that I'm good at that. It's got very little to do with that, but I'm interested in it, and so I'm willing to spend time on it. JT is not like that. I'm not saying that JT doesn't read. He's a very well read, well educated person, but JT is not optimizing his business schedule to allow for downtime, right? He is maximizing the use of every single minute in his calendar, because that's what he has to do to play the game at the level he wants to play it at. And this gets to something that I think is really profound and really important to keep in mind, because all kinds of people will judge someone like JT and they'll judge him either positively or negatively, right?
They will look at him and say, Wow, that's amazing. I wish I could do that. Everybody else is lazy. They don't want to hustle like he does. And there are other people who will look at him and say, well, that's, you know, he's too obsessed with money, and he's not putting enough time into the other parts of his life, and he's not living a true life, or, you know, whatever, people will have their their lenses through which they will judge what he does. But this gets to something that's really profound, I think, and actually comes very much from my reading of psychoanalysis, which was on a connection I'm. Meant to make. But there you go, and that's about desire. Your desire. You see, each of us have a desire. We have this thing that wells up, you know, in psychoanalysis, from the unconscious wells up from this part of ourselves that we don't understand, and in many ways, precedes the part of us that is conscious and thinking and rational, this sort of pre rational, well, from which our desire comes. And this desire is this drive, this force to move towards something, and Lacan would say, and I'm paraphrasing him poorly here, right that the great betrayal of so many people's lives is that they betray their own desire. Because it's very hard to know what we want. It's very hard, it's so hard to know what you want and to think about what you want without copying someone else, even unconsciously, we look around ourselves, you know, as other regarding creatures. And we say, well, accomplishment and success looks like x. Looks like my dad, it looks like my friend, it looks like my role model, right? We're getting into Rene Girard territory with mimesis and all that.
We're other regarding creatures. We look around at the people around us to understand what we should be doing and should be moving towards. But as an old friend used to say, there's no point in winning a race you never wanted to run in the first place. And the thing that really comes across to me about JT is JT knows his desire. The man knows what he wants, and he has optimized his life around that one thing. Now I'm not saying that you need to do that, or that you should do that. I don't really believe in shoulds right, but I think it's interesting to see it, to see it in practice, and it's a reminder not that we all need to be like JT Fox. I gotta say I would pay a lot of money not to live JT Fox's life, right? Some parts of it I want, and by the way, I have learned a lot from JT, and I will continue to learn a lot from him, but I wouldn't want his life. So it's not about that. It is about understanding the power that comes with focus on the object of your desire. There's a lot of power. There something to think about if you are interested in this conversation or more like it, or you want to see my blog posts every single week, they're over at better questions.co. Every week I'm writing about the absolute most interesting stuff that I am learning and studying every single week that is better questions.co. Subscribe and get the emails in your inbox. It's one email a week, and as always, I greatly appreciate you giving me your time here. I will see you next week. Hope you have a good cheers. You
