We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Joshua Loyd Fox. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Joshua Loyd below.
Alright, so we’re so thrilled to have Joshua Loyd with us today – welcome and maybe we can jump right into it with a question about one of your qualities that we most admire. How did you develop your work ethic? Where do you think you get it from?
When I was twelve years old, and after losing both of my parents, I was sent to a boy’s home in West Texas called Cal Farley’s Boys Ranch. It was a real working ranch, raising cattle, butchering our own meat, growing our own food, and moving irrigation and hay bales in the summer.
As a disillusioned boy from northern California, it was a world that I was woefully unfamiliar with. But I took to the cowboy way instantly. Here was the foundation and solid ground I had always yearned for, but it needed to be worked for. I needed to learn to ride horses, rope cattle, participate in bull riding events in the annual rodeo, and work until I dropped into an unemotional, and peaceful sleep every night. I didn’t know it then, but I was creating my own foundation. The gift I have now, that no matter what happens in life, I can always work, and make it better.
I received the work ethic that makes me so successful today, from Cal Farley’s. A quote I love goes something like this: “All a man needs in life is love. If you can’t give him that, give him hope. And if you can’t give him hope and love, at least give him something to do.”
And that’s where I got my work ethic. From a place where I was just one boy lost in a crowd, I was given work to do, work I could be proud of, and it’s stayed with me ever since.
I would add to that quote myself by reversing it. “If you give a man some good work, he will find hope in it. And that hope, will lead to him loving it.” –Joshua Loyd Fox
Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?
My name is Joshua L. Daughrity. I write under the pen name Joshua Loyd Fox. I am a bestselling author, motivator, publisher, business owner, decorated veteran, father of seven, and husband to a bestselling author and world class editor in her own right. I have a master class started called “Mastering the Journey with Joshua Loyd Fox,” and I give interviews and make video blogs concerning all of the wisdom and experiences I have earned through the trials, fires, and bottomless holes I have found myself in through 44 years of life.
I now own a business called Watertower Hill Publishing. Under that imprint, I have written six novels to date, most of which are a series called “The ArchAngel Missions.” My first book was my autobiography titled “I Won’t Be Shaken; a Story of Overcoming the Odds.”
When I was eight years old, I lost both of my parents and the only family I had known. I then grew up in the group home system, having been placed in several home environments, some more abusive than others. I ended up at Cal Farley’s Boys Ranch, the place I still call home, and which changed my life for the better. I graduated near the top of my class, and went on to join the military, and worked for the Dept. of Defense for most of the next 25 years.
But at the age of 40, having not processed and exercised my demons, they came back in a near-fatal crisis, where I found myself homeless, family-less, penny-less, and sleeping in my car in a Walmart parking lot, in the hot Florida summer. I decided if anything, my children needed to know my story, and why I was going to take my own life.
So, I set about writing down what I had gone through, and the bad decisions I had made, for 40 years. At the end of four weeks and having written “The End” on the easiest story I could write, my entire world changed. I found self-respect, self-love, and self-esteem in finally finishing something that I felt was up to my potential. I have been chasing the high of that day, ever since. Bishop TD Jakes said, “Until you have the taste of finishing…. you will not respect yourself.”
After that, the writing bug grabbed ahold of me. And four and a half years later, I am married to another author with a story of her own. We own a publishing company and are making other writer’s dreams come true, and I’m surrounded by love, purpose, hope, and a passion I am proud of daily. It’s still not perfect, and I have a very long ways to go in fixing all of the brokenness I left behind me before that fateful day at forty years of age.
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
I feel that the understanding that growth and wisdom only comes from pain and suffering is crucial to the actual growth in life. I always say, life is a fight, and if you can accept that the punches are coming, you can tuck your chin, take the hit, and keep on swinging back.
That’s a very masculine way of saying that we only grow in the struggle, not the comfort, of life. There’s a wisdom in being able to take the punches, be in the dark holes, find yourself in places you never wanted to be in, but also knowing that it won’t last forever, and with every valley bottom, there is always a mountain top.
The second piece of advice I would give works hand in hand with the above. It’s the “Don’t Give Up Ever” advice. And I have heard it my entire life. But what does that mean? It means what Denzel Washington said. “If you hang around the barber shop long enough, you’re eventually going to get a haircut.” So, you have to keep going in your chosen endeavors, because your lucky break can happen any day. Miracles happen every day. But it’s in the not giving up that you EARN your real rewards. Perseverance. Character. Strength. Endurance. And finally, getting to the miracle or breakthrough you’ve dreamed of. Overnight success takes ten to fifteen years of building in the dark. Never has someone fallen into a windfall breakthrough without preparation for it, and if they do, they always lose it because they haven’t earned the character traits to keep it.
And finally, figure out what your PURPOSE is. Steve Harvey said, “your purpose is tied to your gift. And your gift is the thing you do the best with the least amount of effort.” It’s usually never what you are PASSIONATE about. I’m passionate about baseball. But it’s not my purpose to play in the MLB. But what I am best at is writing and running a team. I do both in my day to day now. And in that, I have found my purpose. And one last thing about purpose. Doing what you were born to do every day, I believe, is the only real way to have joy in this life. Happiness and joy are two very different things. One is fleeting. The other is permanent. Once you have joy in your life from working your purpose, you’ll never lose it, and you can go to it, when happiness isn’t around.
Who has been most helpful in helping you overcome challenges or build and develop the essential skills, qualities or knowledge you needed to be successful?
One hundred precent my wife, the acclaimed author Heather Daughrity.
Heather and I met in January of 2022 on a Facebook Author page. She was growing her brand and name in the Horror book communities, and I was doing what I was doing. We only chatted a few times, but her books and her professional book review style stuck out to me, so she was at least on my radar.
I had a Barnes and Noble book signing in Tulsa, OK summer of 2022, and since I knew she lived nearby, I invited her to the signing, and also a promise that I would talk to the scheduler at B&N to see if we could get Heather a signing there as well for her newest book.
She showed up, we chatted, I gave her a book to review for me, and we set her signing up for the fall of that year. After that, we fell off a bit, as my workload and schedule became overwhelming, and she had personal issues come up in her marriage and family.
A year and a half after we had met, we re-acquainted. We struck our friendship back up, and since she and I were both divorced, our conversations turned romantic in a very short time. We were married only a couple of months later. During those conversations from halfway across the country, I found my other half with absolutely zero hesitation or confusion. When you’ve been praying everyday for a miracle, and then it’s given, you know it intuitively and to the depths of your very soul.
And then life got really, really good. We combined our two companies into one, released new editions of all of our books under the new imprint, and even signed six new authors for next year. But above and beyond that, our personal lives expanded to include a new grandbaby, new developments in our own children’s and our relationships, and day after day worked closely together on both our day jobs and our book publishing goals. To say that I only prayed for a life and relationship like this would be understating it.
My wife is a world class editor and author. I am an author and book formatter. And together, we have successfully created books that are now world renowned and award worthy. It took this partnership to not only grow our work and our lives, but to actually grow it in a “compounding” nature. So, instead of one plus one equaling two, because of our unique natures, gifts, relationship, and goals, our one plus one equals ten. Or one hundred. Either way, we are ten times as good together as we are apart.
And it’s Heather Daughrity that has helped me achieve the goals I set, and me, hers. As Chris Rock says, “two people can move a couch real easy.” It’s so very true for a real partnership like the one God has given us both.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.joshualoydfox.com
- Instagram: @realjoshualoydfox
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/joshualoydfoxauthor
- Youtube: @j.l.foxbooks4454
- Other: linktr.ee/jlfox
Image Credits
I own all image copyrights.
