Billionaire investor Paul Tudor Jones pays Tony Robbins over $1 million a year and emails him every day - here's what they talk about
- Tony Robbins has coached investor Paul Tudor Jones since 1993.
- Jones credits him with helping him regain success in the markets.
- They have daily correspondence over email and meet in person quarterly.
For billionaire investor Paul Tudor Jones, Tony Robbins is a unique combination of therapist, trainer, and adviser.
Robbins is best known for selling millions of his books and audio tapes and packing stadiums for seminars over more than 30 years, but also maintains a small batch of personal clients - Jones has been one since 1993. He emails Robbins daily (before email, they used the phone or fax to do the same) and checks in for a 1-2 hour intensive in-person session quarterly. He pays Robbins a $1 million annual fee, along with an undisclosed portion of profit he made that year.
"The amazing thing about Tony is how he can deconstruct what drives certain behaviors and help you develop a plan for action with carefully considered risk and reward propositions," Jones told Business Insider in an email.
We recently met Robbins at his Fiji resort Namale, where he was hosting the winners of the Shopify Build a Bigger Business competition, and discussed his coaching approach with Jones. You can listen to our interview in the episode of our podcast "Success! How I Did It" below.
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Pat Riley, one of the most successful coaches in NBA history, introduced Jones to Robbins, and Jones remembers Riley telling him that, "Tony would light a fire for me in a thoughtful and understanding way."
Jones gained notoriety in 1987 for correctly predicting the stock market crash that year, but struggled in the following years to maintain his success in the markets. A few months after meeting him, Jones decided he'd give Robbins a shot to see if he could help with his performance.
"I uncovered for Paul Tudor what he was doing at his best," Robbins told Business Insider last year. Robbins has coached everyone from professional athletes like Serena Williams to tech CEOs like Marc Benioff, and takes an approach where he helps them discover what works and doesn't for their performance, without needing to match their level of expertise.
"I got to interview all the people around him," Robbins continued. "I watched films. There were patterns that Paul Tudor was doing when he was at his very best, and he had dropped them out." A crucial habit that Jones had abandoned, Robbins discovered, was asking himself if he had a chance at a 5:1 return for every dollar invested (meaning he could be wrong four times and still not lose money).
Jones began making money again, and was convinced that Robbins had a big enough role in that turnaround that he kept Robbins on as his coach. He also introduced Robbins to high-profile investor friends like Ray Dalio to be interviewed for Robbins' 2014 personal finance book, "Money: Master the Game."
At Fiji, Robbins offered some insight into what Jones' daily email updates look like, saying, "he sends me a checklist of what we measure, everything from his NAV [net asset value] to his [portfolio] weights, what's happening in his body, to his focus, to ratios of risk-reward that we're measuring, and then he does a narrative for me."
It's about getting into Jones' mind for that day, and then comparing that mindset to a similar scenario during that history they've shared.
Robbins continued: "And so I see that and then I know the pattern. If we need to do something right away, I can make a phone call or send him an email or fly there in person when it's necessary. But at this point, it doesn't take that much because it's a refined machine."