Fearless Success — John Gucci Foley

Are you thinking about how to grow your business with near and offshore staffing, but you're also wanting to make sure that it's reliable, cost effective and really well done. I think docsa talent is the way to go. Here's why. They don't just fill your jobs. They bring integrity, top talent and a people first approach that's hard to find. I've known the people at Doxa talent for over 20 years now and I say that you can count on them. I have talent to Doxa Talent and you won't be disappointed. Go to doxatant.com Bill G. Again, that's doxatant.com Bill g. One more time. Docsatant.com Bill G. Check it out today. There we are, live, of course, right on time because we got a Blue Angels with us today, Everybody. I'm Bill Gallagher and we're talking today to John Gucci Foley. We're going to talk about, I don't know, being awesome.

Let me just say I'm glad to be here, man. Super appreciate this opportunity and I'm glad.

To be here with you. Yeah, it's going to be a great show, great conversation. It's good to have your own theme song. That's what I say. It's good to have your own theme song. It's not highway to the Danger Zone, but hey. So I'm Bill Gallagher, Scaling Coach, host of this Scaling up podcast. Our show comes to you every week and we've got everything to do with scaling your company and almost 500 episodes. We should check about where we are right now, but about that milestone coming right up right now. And we're super excited after take everything that we learned in the pandemic, everything we've learned for the last 10 years of coaching companies around the world and running an accelerator program and put all those things together into the biggest, baddest coaching program ever. We call it Growth Navigator and this is the program to get you from 2 to above 20 million to help you grow and blow it out. And it's got weekly touches, it's got lessons, it's got accountability, it's got coaching, it's got quarterly planning, annual strategy sessions, all kinds of stuff and more guest speakers. ScalingCoach.com is where you'll find out about it. Send us an email. We've got cohorts forming right now. So when you hear this and if you think it's for you or for someone, you know, you should get in touch right now because there's a cohort forming right as this show drops. So. All right. So, hey, I'm joined now by John Gucci Foley. Gucci, call sign Gucci. Right. He was a lead pilot for Blue Angels and Top Gun, and he actually flew in the movie Top Gun. And he's got so many stories and things to share with us. And I heard John speak at Harvard a few weeks ago. We at. We have now an annual program at Harvard for CEOs that we produce with them and at the tech school there. And you were fantastic, and I love connecting. And so, anyway, glad to have you here, Bill.

Glad to be here. Glad to be with your audience. This is. It's special for me. And that was lead solo pilot with the Blue Angels. And we can go into those differences, but this is special. Glad to be here.

Yeah. So we're going to talk through all that. Let's start with a few stories. I always like to focus on the stories first, and I think the ideas and principles fall out of that. But. So when I was a kid, when I was five years old, my dad woke me up early to watch the moon landing. And I was like, I want to be a pilot and an astronaut. Right. And that now I was far less focused than you. My path wandered. But you had something similar at an early age, and it led you to the Blue Angels. Tell us your story.

Well, first off, it's funny you mentioned Neil Armstrong walking on the moon. I remember that as a kid, too. I was at my grandmother's and grandfather's house in New York. And I remember it was at least an east coast time. It was late for a kid because I got to. I got to stand up or stay up. And, you know, I remember how just amazing that was, you know, the first.

On the black and white tv.

What's that?

On the black and white tv?

Yeah, yeah, you remember that and how long it took him to get down the ladder. But then that one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind. That. That insp. And be honest with you, I wanted to be an astronaut when I saw that. Right. And then here's where. Yeah, here's where it switched, though. My dad took me to an air show. I was 12 years old, if I remember it. And I'll never forget that moment. And hopefully all of us have had some type of moment like this where something hits you in the heart, not just your head. And anyone who's been in air show, I don't care what age you are, it's visceral, it's real. You know, you're just not looking at airplanes in the sky, you feel, you know, there's noise, there's smoke, foil in the air, there's energy, the crowd. It's like, you know, being at the Super Bowl. Right? And you can feel it. Right. And I remember that day. I remember that. And I distinctly turned to my dad and I said, dad, I'm gonna do that. And I thought that was a magical moment. Now, like anything in. In all our lives, and especially people who are watching this, who are entrepreneurs and trying to scale a business, there's a whole difference between having a vision and then executing on that, or in my case, having a dream. Because there's a lot of unrealized dreams out there. There's a lot of unrealized visions. And so maybe we can dive into. Well, how do you actually make it happen?

Yeah, yeah. I think, like, that's a really important. We've all had thoughts about wanting to do something at one point and then keeping that dream alive and formulating a plan and acting consistent with that plan over time is a completely different thing than just being a dreamer with a thought about something. Yeah, yeah.

And, you know, for most of us, I know for my story, it comes with a whole boatload of obstacles. You know, it never turns out to be the way you think it was, at least for me. You know, you got to adapt. You got to. You got to mold. And at the end of the day, resiliency does matter. Right. But I think not only reaching your dream, I find this to even be more important. That. And that is how do you get others to buy into the vision? Right. Because the angels aren't about one person. Right. It's a team. Same thing in business. And so I think that's one of the hardest things to do is in any leadership role, is not to create the vision. It's to get people to be committed and bought into it.

Yeah, yeah. Because you can't do anything significant on your own. Right. You gotta need a team. So tell us, why don't you. I know whatever parts of that journey from 12 to actually being lead solo pilot. Talk to us a little bit about that journey.

Yeah, yeah. For the people who don't know naval aviation well, even before you get to naval aviation, you gotta become a Navy pilot. So become a Navy pilot, you go a couple of routes. You know, you gotta go to college, rotc, or you can go to Naval academy. So I'm sitting there going, man, I want to go to the Naval Academy. And I remember applying when I was in high school and. And I got Rejected.

Okay?

I got rejected because they said I was not physically qualified. Now, that surprised that crap out of me because I'm playing football, I'm wrestling, I'm as healthy as I think I can be. And this wasn't what it said. They came back and they said, you have abnormal amounts of protein in your urine. Well, first off, what's that? And second off, what am I supposed to do about it? Right? So I don't know if anybody feels like the world's coming at them and we don't have any choices. Well, as it turns out, we do. All right. And so I was disappointed, though, and I was disappointed for about a week, and my dad saw me moping around, and he said, well, you know, get off your butt and do something. I said, well, dad, you know, I just got rejected. He says. So he said, it happens all the time. What's plan B? And I was like, oh, okay, I hadn't thought of that. He said. I said, well, you got any ideas? He goes, yeah, reapply. And I did, and they rejected me again. So now I got to get into a much larger process called medical waiver process. Bottom line is, it took a year. Instead of moping around, I said, let's make this. I actually walked on, played football at Colorado, by the way, Deion Sanders, they're doing great. Now, those of you, this timing of this podcast, I walked onto that team, made the team, but never gave up on my dream of becoming a pilot, which would not have been the path through Colorado I could have, but it wouldn't have been the best path. So I got selected, and I go to Annapolis. Now, here's. Here's the next journey line. I don't finish number one in my class. I mean, it's hard. I'm playing football. Mechanical engineer. I finished in the half. That allows the other half to be called the top, by the way, Bill. Okay. But I realized that, you know, I just needed to get my next opportunity. I think that's so important in life and opportunities. You know, just give me. I just tell the coach, give me the pads. Right? Just give me the pads or give me the opportunity. I'll prove it to you. Even though I may not look like I'm the best athlete or whatever. Best pilot. And anyhow, bottom line, Navy's got a pretty cool policy. Takes you about two years, go through Navy flight training. And I did that, and I finished number one in my class. I found what I call my uvp, my unique proposition. It wasn't just dream. I actually had Some skill there, right? Some of it is natural, like rapid eye motion, situational awareness, these things that you can work on. But it's nice to have some natural ability, too. And then the journey line goes on that they didn't give me the airplane I wanted. I wanted a big F18. They said, you're too young, you're too inexperienced. I had to pay my dues. Like, probably everybody who's listening to this, you know, you pay your dues and a sevens in that case, did fly in the movie Top Gun, the original one. Now, that's. That's not because I was some great pilot. I was just in the right place at the right time. We happen to be off on the carrier Enterprise when they're doing the filming. That was back in 1986, by the way, and then ended up becoming an instructor pilot with the Marines. I had a ton of mistakes along the way. One day I shot a missile by mistake. That's not small.

Okay, so wait, pause. Tell the story of the missile and how you fired off a missile by mistake. And then I have a question for you about that story.

But yeah, yeah. So, I mean, you know, in all our journeys, right, you're working hard and. And I'm working my way up and division, league, strike lead, all these kind of stuff. And things are going pretty well till one day we're doing some practice sorties out. This is in the Persian Gulf. This is back when Iran was the problem, not Iraq. And we're escorting tankers through Kuwait and Kuwaiti tankers through the Straits of Hormuz. And. And I'm out there leading the practice sortie, right? And we go drop some ordinance and go. We're gonna go dog fight. Just like right in the movies. That's just what we did. You know, that's what's kind of cool about the movie Top Gun. Both of them is. It's actually real life. I mean, that's what we do, right? And the flying scenes are kind of cool. So anyhow, I get out there and I'm leading in. I drop the ordinance, and I'm already switching to air to air mode, you know, which is now I'm gonna go dog fight. And my wingman, Giant, joins up on me and he goes, hey, Gucci, you got a hung bomb. And I look over there and you can actually see the bombs on the airplane. I look over and I go, oh, crap. You know, one of the bombs is stuck on my airplane, right? And that's not a good thing. You definitely. They don't want you to lay them back on the carrier and have the bomb go bouncing along the flight deck, right? So, so you gotta, you gotta jettison it. Now that's not a normal thing, okay? It's called an emergency jettison. And I'm looking around middle Indian Ocean and I'm like, you know, I'll just puke this bomb off. And so instead of breaking out my checklist, instead of taking the time to do what I'm supposed to do, I kind of go through it in my head and I reg, I raised the red guarded switch and there's a reason why they're red and the reason why they're guarded. And when I hit that button, this missile comes flying off the rail. Have you ever had an oh shit moment? I mean a real oh, I had.

Many oh shit moments.

Yeah, me too, but this is a big one.

I mean, I had a much more minor one last week, but yeah.

Okay, what was it? You want to share?

I didn't follow my checklist. I didn't do my stuff. And I was taking out a hydrofoil surfboard and electric hydrofoil surfboard out on the lake here. And I, and I was in a hurry because we had to go somewhere. I'm going to get in a few turns and then get back in. Get a little playtime in the afternoon before we go out to dinner. And I set it up quickly because I've just sold the thing and, And I neglected to secure the mast, right? So then I get down there, my wife comes out, she's got the camera, and I'm like, all right, honey, launch this. And so I get on the thing and I'm going to just like zip off and look like a badass. And I, I hit the trigger on it and nothing. And I hit the trigger again. And then I keep sorting out and I'm like, okay, this is like, I don't know what's the matter. So I'm like, I pull up the, I pull up the battery and I hand that up to her. And then I go to flip the board up and bring it up and there's no mass, there's no hydrofoil, there's no nothing underneath. And then the sinking thing starts to hit me. I never put the screws in when I set the mast. And as soon as I threw it in the water, it just sailed away. It glided right away. And I'm like, oh my God, that's a two thousand dollar part. And so my wife's like, well, go, just dive down there. You know, you're right at the dock. And I look down in the water, I'm like, it's green muck down there. It's probably 25ft. Turns out it's exactly 25ft. I can't see anything. And I just like that sinking feeling, right? And not following a procedure. Like, I know how to put the thing together. I've done it a hundred times. But. And not checking myself and not like, you know, but that's the kind of thing that can happen. There you are in the pattern, and somebody calls out an emergency, and then you get distracted, you neglect your own checklist or whatever, right?

That's it. Man, I'm glad. You know, it's funny. I've told that story a few times. No one's had an oh, shit moment the week before. That's as good as yours. That's good.

By the way, the happy ending is. I realized as I put that down that I have a friend who's a scuba diver right in the area, John Pelton, and who's also a coach. And I called John up immediately. He's like, you need me there tonight, don't you? So he didn't come over that night, but the next morning, he came over this dry suit he dropped in the lake. He found the thing and brought it back up, and I'm good to go again.

But it's good to have resources and friends, right? So what you learned from that experience.

Well, right. To slow down and take time, to recheck everything. Right. To pause and breathe and say, am I actually ready to go with this before you kick in, before you launch off or whatever. Right? Because there are moments, you know, when you're in a car, something goes bad, you pull off to the side of the road when you're, you know, when you're committed to something in your business, or when you're flying or you're doing something, you're out at sea, things are different, right? There are moments that have bigger consequences.

Yeah, that's true. Well, you know, what I learned from my experience was not only that, because that was something I could have learned. I actually learned the lesson of complacency. See, I had gotten too comfortable carrying live ordinance. And let me tell you, first time you carry that little hair stand up on the back of your neck. And. And that was my lesson. It took me three days to figure that one out, Bill, because the initial learn lesson learned was why I didn't do my checklist, you know, and slow down and do exactly what you said. Which is. Which is true, by the way.

What is it that led me and you to not use our checklist at that point?

Exactly. That's the root cause. And I think that's what's even more powerful for all business leaders and anyone out there. Can we get to the root cause, not just what happened? Right. And that's why in the Blue Angels we use this process I call the Glad to be here debrief at a higher scale than any other organization in the world. And, you know, I've worked with 2,000 companies. Now I know that they're not doing it at the level that I'm doing it here. Top Gun does it not the same. Navy seals do it not the same. What the Blue Angels do is fairly unique. The concept does work. I mean, you know, we all know the concept of after action reviews. We all know the concept of lessons learned. That's partly there, but there are some unique differences too.

You know, let's take a very practical thing. Here's something that happens all the time. Somebody comes running into a meeting late, and they've had an impact now on the team, and they're thoughtful enough to say, I'm so sorry I'm late. It won't happen again. Right. That's such a common thing. We've all heard and we've probably all said that at some point. Except what do we both know, at least unconsciously in that moment, is it will happen again. And you're making absolutely no difference in the future of it because all you did was sort of apologize and say, it won't happen again. But there's no looking, there's no reflection, there's no thinking about why is it that I'm late? What happened that I showed up late? What did I allow to intrude? Where did it go off? There's none of that. And at most we feel bad and embarrassed and we want to be a better human, but it never makes any difference. Right. And you're talking about that like. Okay, so it's obvious I didn't use the checklist. But what displays that.

Right, Exactly. Exactly. Well, that example you talked about is, I think, a good example of why we have what we call the. The. The five dynamics of a debrief. And that is, you can't get away with just apologizing. No, that's not enough. Okay. If you made a mistake, you do have to be self aware. You have, you know, that's an obvious one. You're late. Right. So great. But we're talking about things that maybe aren't so obvious. Right? Right. And so self awareness needs. Needs to be there. You got to build the trust and rapport with the team. So in your example, you know, you're. We don't trust that person. They may say that, but you're obviously not trusting them for some reason. Maybe they've done it before, right? And on the blues. That's not what we do, man. If we've made a mistake and we do identify it and we do lay it on the table and we talk about it, but then the next words out of your mouth are not, I'm sorry, it's I'll fix it. And that's what you say to your team, and that's what you say. And you hear yourself when you say, hey, I was late. I'll fix it. Glad to be here. That has a much different connotation, right? And now, guess what? The next time you. If you screw up again, you got it. You got to call yourself out again and say, I'll fix it. And you need to fix it. And if you don't, we'll. We'll help you. Okay? And that could mean, you know, different things depending on the situation.

Well, sometimes you need help fixing it. Like, sometimes I'm like, how did I do that? Why did I do that? In my case, I was a little complacent also. Like, I'd done this a hundred times. This last time, I just want to get one in quick, you know, like. So here's a question for you before you move on the rest of your journey. So that missile went off, but was it a bomb that was hanging?

Yeah, yeah. So they. They both. Well, here's the situation. They have these cartridges that when you jettison something, it'll blow the thing off the airplane. And. But I had got. Not only did I, by not doing a checklist, I had actually got my switchology mixed up. I had one of the weapon stations in the wrong order, and it's over. It's. This gets really technical, but the air to air will override the air to ground priority. Even though my outboard station, which was Station 4, which I wanted to jettison, was in front of Station 5 because we had different ordinance in there, the missile went instead of the bomb. So the answer your question is not only did I fortunately not shoot down my own boss, which I came close, okay? But then I had to jettison the real bomb, and I did. And then you got to go back and land on the carrier, which, by the way, carrier land is the hardest thing you could do anyhow, let alone when you've screwed up. You know, there's that little embarrassment. So you're about to get your ass chewed and you're going to get grounded and all that kind of stuff which happened. And. And then you got it. But you still got to do your job, you know, land the jet, go down there. And I walked into my commanding officer and I said, sir, I blew it. And I told him exactly what happened. You know, I didn't do my checklist. Here's what happened. He goes, okay, thanks for telling me you're grounded. And they did ground me, and they should have. And it took me a little while to dig myself out of that hole. Tried two years and eventually did dig myself out of it and became an instructor pilot, became a Blue angel, just like that. There's a few stories in between.

So let's talk about that experience. Right. So when you try out for the Blue Angels and then when you actually are trained up to fly with the Blue Angels, there's a little bit of learning curve there, right?

Yeah.

Talk to us about that experience. You've shared that before. I think that's an interesting thing to think about leveling up, because we as leaders need to do it. Our teams need to do it on the regular.

Yeah, it really. I think of a quote I heard once, that is, we don't perform at our full potential. We perform at a belief level. And when I heard that, I went, you know, that's really interesting. Let's unpack that a little bit more. And what I realized over time, whether this is in sports and business or in life, is my performance is either enhanced or hurt by my belief level. Okay. I'm either limited by fear, then guess what? You're gonna, you're gonna. You're gonna be limiting your beliefs. Or I'm actually liberated with this idea of. Of. Of potential. Right. And it's an. It's a very interesting psychological game that we play with ourselves. Right. And once you learn that the belief levels matter than how your think matters. Okay. I mean, how you wake up matters, how you approach your day matters, and then performance follows. So, you know, just a little side tip. How close do you think? Let's go back to. I don't know. I know I didn't have my slides when I presented at Harvard, but usually when I do this for organizations, I've got the real privilege now do it over 2000 times is that I show video and I show images. So if you're in the fleet, a Top Gun squadron, and you're flying formation, and we do how Close is the closest you think we get in the fleet?

In the fleet?

Yeah.

15Ft?

Yeah, it's really close. Somewhere between 10 and 20. That's a good thing because it does vary. Yeah, it does vary. How close do you think we fly on the first day of The Blue Angels?

18. Well, on the first day, I don't know, about 18 inches, 3ft or something.

Yeah, it gets the three. We started 10, and we get the three. Okay. And, but, but the key here, this is what's critical, all right, is how long do you think it takes a Navy pilot to get to the level of being, let's say, a top Gun fleet aviator, flying jets on and off aircraft carriers? This, this, this, this thing I've been talking about. How many years?

Three years.

Yeah. Three is a minimum to just get in the seat. It takes two years to go through pilot training, basic pilot training. Then you get another year in your tactical jet. Like if you're flying it up 14.

Yeah, yeah.

But now you're just. We call, we call it. You're, you're just dangerous, right? Because, yeah, you may have your wings and you may be out there, but you don't know. Okay? I mean, and you don't have the reps under your, your seat. So when we bring pilots aboard on the squadrons, they have about three years of training. They're the newbies. Okay? And you, you need a wingman. There's the whole idea of a wingman. It's true, man. You, you need a lead. You need someone to take you under your wing. You need a coach. It's why coaching is so important, because I don't know everything. I may have gone through the training, but I don't have the experience. And I definitely don't know how to adapt when, when change hits, which is constant, that we always have a saying. You brief the flight, but the minute you get airborne, things change. So you have to be ready for that. Right? So my point is that in that analogy that I was using, it's anywhere from five to 20 years. The, the people that are out there on the, on the carriers, flying, think about any company. You know, it could be your director, your vp, maybe a CEO, whatever, right? So my point is it's about that long. And, and, and, and you get to a certain level and we'll say it gets you to 10ft. Okay, let's say 10ft. And that's the best you can do. That's the best you've done in your entire life. You show up on the blues and it's not only. I mean, our first orientation ride is we put you in the back seat once you're selected. And I'll never forget that first ride because I'm a. You know, I'm a instructor pilot, F18. I sit in the back seat of this jet, and. And the. And it's in front of a hundred thousand people. You're taxing out on the Runway, and all of a sudden, the little hairs are standing out in the back of my neck. We pull up onto the Runway, and the wings are overlapped. Okay, you know how many jets are on the Runway when you take off at a BWI or pick any airport?

Zero. Oh, one. One. One's on the Runway.

Yeah, Right.

Nobody on you.

Four jets on the Runway. Wings overlap. The bosses off. Brakes now. Burners ready. Now slamming in a full afterburner, 32,000 pounds per airplane. Of force. More horsepower than the whole starting lineup of Indy, which, by the way, I've worked with Team Penske. We won. We took first, second, and fourth, by the way. I mean, you get leaped off the Runway. Pilot does this violent left wing. Down we go, slicing underneath the wingtip, number two jet. The next thing I know, we're tucked in underneath the afterburners of the boss. The flames are coming out. Airplane shaking. Metal all around me. And these guys go straight up. My eyes got this big bill. And, you know the thought that hit my head, how am I going to do this?

Yeah. Yeah. And here's the beautiful, overwhelming. Yeah.

Oh, well. Yeah. It's like, you got to be kidding me. You know, and what the Blue Angels were saying that day was very simply. They were saying, gucci, you want to play in this game, you really want it. You want to play in this game, then you need to increase your. Increase your performance 300%, and we're only going to give you 90 days to do it in. Now, I'll say that again. All right, for every CEO who's kind of listening to this, what would your numbers look like?

Right? Level up. 300. You got 90 days.

You have 90 days. Now, here's. Here's the. Yeah, but. But see, there's the difference. We don't say go. We say follow. Come along. We've got. We got the system. We got the. And you get mentored and coached, and you go through an incredible, very disciplined process that 300 days or 90 days later, you're 300% better. And we do this every year with three people, three new people, and it's. It's a phenomenal. It's phenomenal.

Experience, you know, that's an interesting thing. Back to the leadership paradigm as well, because, you know, I was working with a company and we were working on getting to successfully hiring 500 people a month. Right? And that's a big number. Right. And actually the bigger problem was the fact that they were losing a lot of those people within three months. And so the reason we had to hire that many. So, but, but forget that for a second. You are not going to hire 500 or 400 people a month. It's a whole bunch of people that are going to hire like 10 each, you know, so that's the difference is you're going to lead through people who are leading. You're going to do it alongside other vendors and partners and teammates. Like it's a whole bunch of folks on anything. So you're coming into that and they're like, we've helped other people level up 300% before. We've done it again. You may or may not make it, but we've got a system that if you've got the stuff, you do the work, you could probably get there, yeah, 100%.

I love where you're going. The one little analogy is what, what, what my team says is it's not you may or may not make it. You will make it. We will get you there.

We will get you there.

And, and that's the beautiful part because it's no longer like you're sitting on an island. It's, you know what, I've been there, I know how hard it is. I failed. And I'm going to share that with you. And we're gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna get through this together. And once you're selected, it rarely, rarely is anybody not able to make it. And it's usually never skill based, it's always personal based or some other situation. So, so yeah, we've got that process nailed down. We've got that system. Now what's interesting, and it does scale in the business, by the way. Some of it does, some doesn't. You gotta know the difference. But my team, when I'm selected, to your point, is half the leadership team is new every year. Now I'm not saying you want to normally do that, but let's say you're a CEO and you realize you don't have the right people in the right seats. Okay? Anybody have that problem going on? You know, and, and so what we, we, what we have found out is that every year we actually transition half of the pilots. Okay? And that's that's pretty fast. You don't want to do that. Think high growth. Okay. But it's not pilots. My, my support staff, all the people who are really making it happen. I have a 33% rotation rate by plan. This is something that, you know, it's not. People are, are, are quitting. That's not it at all. It's you getting rotated into another squadron in the Navy. So what the challenge is, is I have to do whatever CEO has to do. I have to bring in new people. I got to figure out how to onboard them, I got to train them, I got to have a system on this. And we got to scale and yet also scale with excellence. We have to still maintain that same level of excellence under change. Right, because the conditions are changing. It's a beautiful business analogy.

You know, I think it's a great one. And I think too few businesses practice something there that I just want to call out and that I think a lot of businesses and organizations practice this sort of scarcity of leadership. Like, so there's this like, well, we can only trust a couple of people to be the leaders in this business. And once we've got them, we're going to hold on for your life instead of, let's keep developing more leaders and then let's distribute those leaders. Now an organization like the military, with millions of people is different than some of our smaller companies. But still, you know, the Blue Angels is, is essentially a recruiting squadron that is bringing, is. Is designed to create a beautiful like constant commercial and inspire 12 year olds to want to join the Navy and be pilots. Right. Or do whatever in the day. I mean, look there, there's a hundreds of people that have to support that. Not just the pilots, but the crews and, and all the support personnel and that kind of thing. And then there's the boats they fly off and all the roles in that. And you know, it's this fantastic thing. But within that, right. Those. I don't know exactly the thing, but those pilots then come in, they fly for a while, then they go out to other squadrons and they bring with them the story, the experience, the richness of that. And they like level up all the engagement and the esprit de cor are across the organization.

Well, it's it Bill, in, in the business world, you would call it a train, the trainer model. That's exactly what we're doing. Train your leadership. I'm really glad you mentioned the point that we're in a constant state of leadership development. It's not like you Put a certain group through and you're done. No, you're constantly.

Or he's the best pilot, so let's just have him until he dies, you know.

No, no.

Get him in there and then send him off somewhere else.

Well, here's the goosebumps I just got is we want to make you the best and then it's not enough to make you the best. This is what Top Gun does. And what the Blue Angels do is the minute that we've trained you up to that level of skill, of mastery, your job is to train someone else. Your job is to get somebody else to that level. And I mean that's coaching, that's real mentoring. Right where. And that happens on the blues in a 12 month period. We bring in new people, somebody's a mentor that's been there, done it right. That we bring the new person up and then the year later, here's what it is, it's an up and out promotion. You get promoted so you go to a new squadron, to the fleet where you can have a bigger impact and you or a new part of the company where you can have a bigger impact and that person that you've trained now takes your job, which is totally cool. I want that, that, you know, it's just such the opposite of this fear based, oh, if I, if I tell my secret sauce, you know, I'll lose my job. We're just the opposite. We're saying, yeah, you will move, but it's an up and out. You're going to get a better job and you're going to go, you know, a different place in the company where we can. Because the Navy is just a big company and it also is teams of teams. General McChrystal wrote a nice book about this.

You know, speaker past speaker for scaling up and yeah, yeah, oh yeah, he great leadership speaker also Navy guy. The last month or so, Sandy Winnefeld we've had on a couple times talking about leadership in his new book and.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Sandy's a legend in naval aviation. It's super cool. So that's why I'm glad you're learning from all these great leaders. Right. But the analogies and the Navy's a great analogy. The Blue Angels is very unique within the Navy, which we can unpack and. But the real, the real challenge is doing this in the civilian world. You know, doing this, scaling it over. Because there are some similarities, but there's some differences too. And I'll never forget with my dad, I was sitting around the dining room TABLE and you know, he actually was a colonel in the army initially was the district engineer of Los Angeles. He got out and went into the civilian world and within three years was the chairman of Metropolitan Water in Southern California. That's all the water in California. That's pretty important role. And I watched him, I watched him how he did it. And, and we, we would talk, you know, we would talk about what works and what, what doesn't. And basically, you know, I'll give you this analogy because he looked at me and I said, dad, what's the same and what's different? And he goes, well, when you're in the military, I don't care if it's Air Force, Army, Navy, Marines, doesn't matter. You show up to a certain unit and, and again, this could be any company, right? And people are going to fall within a band like this. And this is those of you who can't see us. It's a, it's a narrower band right between left and right of center. You're going to get some people like in Top Gun who are maverick. Some are like Iceman, doesn't matter. They're all those are, is just examples. They're usually more in the middle. He says, when I hit in the civilian world, and he put his arms out as far as he could, he says, it's out here. He says, you just don't know when you walk into that room, I don't know if I can, how much I can trust that person. And that's the key. We gotta establish trust. We gotta establish a culture where we know you're gonna do your job, I'm gonna do my job. But more importantly, we're doing it for a purpose higher than self. And when that happens, it's amazing what happens.

One of the nice things when you hire and work with veterans of any kind who had at all success or pride in their work is there's a certain rigor that you don't necessarily have some self discipline unless they were dishonorably discharged. That drummed out in some way. But.

Well, there's probably a good story behind that. I would dig into it. It may not always be their fault, but you're right, go for it.

Well, you know, it's funny, I served with a guy in the Air Force for a little while who had been a hotshot at the academy, wanted to fly and that kind of thing, and he, he did some things that he wasn't supposed to do and so they sent him down to serve, enlisted for like five years. And then he could come back and maybe go again, which he eventually did. And like, the story had a happy ending, but he, he paid some dues for his mistakes in school.

Yep. Yeah.

Yeah. Let's talk about just a funny side thing. Call sign Gucci.

Sure.

How do you get that? Talk about call signs. I think there's some parallel in business, but I'd love to hear your.

Yeah, yeah, there should be. It's about camaraderie, right. It's about teamwork. And so call signs are a way that fighter pilots are really. Most pilots really communicate with each other. Right. And so the bottom line is you don't get. You don't get to pick it. And if you like it, it doesn't stick, just to be honest with you. Right. So call signs are earned, and they're earned by doing something stupid. Okay. Or, or, or doing something that, you know, kind of tweaks you a little bit. So, you know, no fighter pilot wants Gucci. Okay. I mean, you want Hitman, Viper, Iceman, Maverick, Hangman. You know, pick the names that Hollywood does. Right?

Right.

But that's not how you get them. Right. The way you get something is, is do something, and it's usually not good. And. And your team will remind you. So one day I showed up, we're in the. We're. Fallon, Nevada. That's where top guns film now. And, and we're, we're, we're flying, we're doing some exercises and we said, hey, timeout, let's go to Reno. Saturday night, I show up in the lobby of the boq, that's kind of the hotel with pair of slacks, button down shirt. Didn't have my glad beer T shirt on like this right now. But here's what killed me, Bill. I had this thin black leather tie. Yeah. That wasn't even cool in the 80s. What years was it? Exactly. That's what my teammates did. They looked at me, they're laughing, they point at me and they go, what is that? You know, that's Gucci. And that was not accomplished compliment. Okay. That was not a compliment. And I, and I flinched. And that's the key.

Yeah.

They knew. They got. Yeah. You're like, yeah.

You were embarrassed. Yeah.

I was dead now. It didn't.

It was.

I gave him a lot of ammunition because at the time I was living on a sailboat and driving an Alfa Romeo.

So that's not all bad. Yeah, that's not all bad. My little brother had an Alfa Romeo for a long time. It's a fantastic car.

Yeah.

Great looking Car doesn't always stay running.

The engine sucked. Yeah, totally.

But it looks good while it's going. Yeah, yeah. That's an interesting thing. And I think there's not probably enough, like, friendly nicknaming and, you know, that kind of cross thing. We'd all like to be somewhere else, but kind of embracing yourself in an embarrassing moment is a powerful bond building thing. Well, it is.

And it's not just embarrassing. That's kind of the fun way of doing it. Right?

Yeah.

What we're really building is camaraderie. We're building teamwork. There's three things that I've noticed now with all the companies I worked with, and I don't care if it's working with Alabama. When Nick Saban called me up and said, gucci, can you come work with us? We won the national championship that year. You know, whether it's working with Microsoft, BMW, Mercedes, we took everyone through this leadership program. When you start to work with these kinds of companies, you see, and all the entrepreneurs I get brought in in VC firms for their CEOs. Right. And basically what you see is a thread, I call it the red thread, that works in any organization. But you also see, and I know you guys got this in scaling up, it's exactly what you're doing. But you see some nuances, and that's the key. Right. Because I found that it's not how you get to a level of excellence. How do you sustain excellence under change? How does the culture, you know, really grow? And part of the culture is call signs. It helps. Right? Because I noticed three things have to happen. You got to connect, you gotta align and you gotta commit. I mean, tell me, in your businesses you work with, the ones that are working, are people connecting?

Absolutely, yeah. When they're not connected, there's a problem. Right, Exactly.

So that's the first step, by the way. You know, we can't. You can't force alignment on people that aren't connected. But are they aligned? Does everybody know what the mission is? Are they. Are they headed the right direction?

Yeah. And the good ones.

Yep, exactly. And then the third one is, we really. You can't demand this. The first two we can work on, we can put in processing systems and all that kind of stuff. Right. The third one, you can only ask, and that's commitment. What level of commitment are you willing to bring every day? What level of commitment is your teammate willing to bring? And it's easy for an entrepreneur and a CEO to bring that level because, hey, you know, our butts on the line. But how do we get everybody to buy into a commitment level that allows us all to grow? And to me, that's the magic. And call signs help on that.

You know, it's funny, I have what I call the 3am test. And for me, I think about it both personally and for other people. So if you wake me up at 3am, can I deliver this? Can I do this thing? If I'm properly prepared, I could do this from, you know, dead sleep. I could wake up and be sharp and like, deliver it right? Because I've so trained it. And I think, like, that's kind of the ultimate, like, where it's. I don't have to think too much about it. And the other one is for people, though, could I call you at three in the morning and count on you to answer the phone to say, I'll be there? You can count on me. Like, are you that person? And I know in every company that I've worked with, there are people that I can call at 3 in the morning who will rise to the occasion. And then there are people who won't answer or who will make up an excuse and be like, oh, sorry, dude, I can't help you. You know, then there's a big difference between those people.

Yeah, I'm with you. 100. My first question to you was going to be if someone, you know, if you wake up at 3am, someone calls you, let's say your boss, are you pissed? Right? Or are you like, man, I'm here.

What do you need? You know?

Yeah. What's the tasking? What do you need? And vice versa, right? And vice versa. So I think you nailed it. That's a great, great analogy. And you know what it'll give you an insight into. Do you have the right people in the right seats? Okay. Because it's a combination of performance and trust. And that's the key. And how many times in business do we put up with someone who we don't really trust or who's really, I'll just say an. But they're delivering, okay? Their performance. They're hitting the KPIs, they're delivering. That's a problem. That's a cancer. That's what we don't have on the.

Blue angle, 100%, you know, and I've had that before where we had somebody who was really toxic but was delivering results. And we then tolerated that because we wanted the results. And what we found out later is the great cost that was hidden at the moment, like upset customers, upset team, Members, things like that, where they were just leaving messes in their wake. We're going to go to your glad to be here debrief and that to close on. But before we do that, I just want to remind folks that we have this unbelievable, unprecedented coaching program, the Growth Navigator. And it's got more things in it than we've ever put in a program before. Everything that you could ever think is available to you in that program, and it's only 1500 bucks a month. By putting it together in the way we have and learning everything that we did through the pandemic time, we've made something that we just never could before. Before we worked on the technology and our approaches. So Growth Navigator, 1500amonth full coaching and scaling up for companies between 2 and 20 million, 10 to 100 people. And if you think it's, we've got cohorts starting right now, like we're filling them these next couple weeks. So if you think it's for you or you have a friend you'd like to recommend for it, drop us a line info@scalingcoach.com or go to scalingcoach.com get in touch with us. You should talk about it right now because it's for the cohort's forming right now. So, so enough of my infomercial. Let's talk about the glad to be here debrief. And how does that go and what is that and like that?

Well, number one, Bill, I'm sure it's part of your program in some sort. Okay. Some fashion. Right. Yeah. This idea of how do we learn, grow, give. Right. And so what's your learning mechanism? What's the loop in, in all this that you're talking about? And by the way, the, the target market you're talking about, you know, the, the 20 to 2 to 20 million and to 100 people, 10. That's where you can affect change quickly. And the way we can do that and the way we do it on the Blue Angels is what I call a glad to be here debrief. Now, the concept of debrief is not new. Okay, military is really good, brief execute debrief. But, but the focus we put on the learning is much different, especially in the Top Gun and the Blue angel level. Okay, now that has where, yes, we are reviewing what went well, what we could done better. Where were the decision points, what are the action steps we're going to take? All of that is absolutely critical. It's not the same secret sauce. So the way I want to leave people with Is, yes, that's important. That's fundamentals. You got to have a cadence of execution. The absolute difference is what I call the glad to be here mindset that is in that structure. And the glad to be here mindset is. Is a mindset of appreciation, of gratitude. And that's what's unique on the blues. When I sat in on my first Blue angel debrief, it had the military flavor, but then it changed. And what changed was everybody started with what I call these are the five dynamics. And I have a suggestion. If any CEO or anybody who's listening to this can get these five dynamics into their organization, you watch what happens. One, and you mentioned earlier, you need a safe environment. By a safe environment, I don't mean just a physically safe environment. I mean a psychologically safe environment that happens with respect. Respect for every single person. Second is we got to check our egos at the door. You think, Bill, do you think fighter pilots have big egos?

Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah. Do you think business leaders have big egos? Oh, yeah. But you don't see it on the Blue Angels. What you actually see is humility.

Yeah.

You see strength and vulnerability. It blows you away. Like, when I present, I actually show a debrief. And you see, you get people to really see that they're really doing this, not just talking about it. Right. Third element is we lay it on the table. That's open and honest communication.

Okay?

No withholds. All right? We're going to lay number one, we're going to have the debrief. It's not. We don't debrief just when things go wrong. It's part of the DNA of who we are. But we're going to open an honest communication. And then the fourth one is the piece all CEOs want. Everybody wants is accountability. Hey, we all want accountability. But here's the slight nuance. What you're about to see on the blues and what we transfer is personal responsibility. And when you have personal responsibility, you get what I call an ownership mentality. Here's what we. The fourth dynamic is own the outcome, not just your role. Yeah, you got to do your job, but you got to own the outcome. Those still are all pretty. Pretty basic in my mind. It's hard to get there. But the fifth one is the glad to be here. And that is you got to bring gratitude into this process. Otherwise you're going to burn people up. You're going to burn the. The. The organization. And when you have this gratitude, like for me, I'm just glad to be alive most of the times. I'm glad to have the opportunity to build to be on this show. I'm glad to be able to share information with others who hopefully they can take the information and make a difference in their lives. See, that's what drives me. That's what fuels me. If you can get that into every part of your team, wow. Watch what happens.

Yeah, yeah. Well, let's put up the link and he does regular talks and workshops and work with companies and organizations of all size all over the world and is, you know, your energy, your presence is such a pleasure to be with. So I'm super grateful to finish our last show of the day with you here. Thanks again to Wanda Mitchell for getting our show ready every week. To my my friend and mentor Verne Harnish, the creator of the whole Scaling up and the Rockefeller habits that preceded it, without whom I wouldn't be here that I'm super grateful for and the folks at podfly Productions who get our show out every week. Thanks again to our viewers, our listeners without whom none of this would have been necessary. Thanks again everyone. We'll talk to you again next time. Keep Scaling Up. Foreign Are you ready to turn your goals into daily wins? You should check out our Scoreboard software. Powered by Align, it's the official software for Scaling up. With Scoreboard, you'll get an AI driven coach for priorities and KPIs and it'll help keep your team focused on what matters most. With Align, you can track your goals in real time and you'll even see results on the go. With their mobile app, you can rest easy knowing that Align has world class onboarding and support to set your team up for success. This is really more than just software, it's what I actually use to manage growth in our scaling up client teams. Unlock clarity and results with Scoreboard by Aligned. To try it now, go to aligntoday.com Bill G One more time. Aligntoday.com Bill G that's aligntoday.com Bill G Check it out and try it now.