195: Fearless Success: Beyond High Performance by John Foley

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Welcome to the Heroic Investing Show. My name is Gary Pinkerton and I co host this show with Jason Hartman. This is episode 195. Today's guest is retired Navy pilot John Foley. John runs an organization that teaches leadership to large organizations, improving their performance to make them elite companies. With a couple of his prior bosses, John teaches leadership. He does keynote speaking and talks to companies about how to improve, how to transform their DNA and pivot their business to compete in the new digital paradigm. The ability to develop transformational leadership and enable workforce evolution is a critically competitive advantage. John and I were so aligned on all of our concepts and our understanding of what makes companies organizations grow and it has to do with really effective leaders. But leaders that have to be able to transform as the world around them transforms, keeping their business lean and as he puts it, elite. John was a former combat fighter pilot and a member of the Blue Angels and has a great story about how they performed the only time in Blue Angels history in Moscow right after the wall came down. And he has the claim to fame of having flown a Russian MIG airplane. So amazing story. But his nuggets on leadership, on what it takes to succeed out there and in the transition from first responder and military to running your own business and sharing your talents that you've learned over these years with the rest of corporate America is fascinating. It's a really good podcast. I think you're going to enjoy it. Let's get to it. Here's Navy pilot John Foley. Well, heroic investors, welcome back again. I think I might say this on most episodes, I really mean it this time. I've got an amazing high energy individual that's going to add a lot of value. John, welcome to Heroic Investors and please give a little bit of your background.

Gary, thank you. And everybody out there, I'm deeply glad to be here. When I heard about what this podcast is and more importantly the people on it, I just got goosebumps and I wow. If there's anything I can share. Happy to do that. So my very quick background was my dad was army, I was born in Germany and grew up as an army brat. Loved my dad. Wanted to be just like him. He was an engineer and an army officer and that's what I thought I was going to be. We actually lived at West Point. He was an instructor there. And then one day he took me to air show and I saw these six magical blue jets flying up there in the sky. I think I was 12. And I turned to my dad that day and I said, dad, I'm going to do that. And it just started a journey like we all been on. But it eventually worked out. I actually went to Annapolis instead of West Point. And my mom was totally happy with that. Dad was too. Played football there, had a typical career. I went into naval aviation, flew jets off of carriers, flew A4s, A7s, F14s, got to fly in the movie Top Gun. Just happened to be in the right place at the right time. Off the carrier Enterprise and instructor pilot. And then became a Blue Angel. And that was in the early 90s. 90 through 92 great experiences there. Happy to share some insights. Then after that, you know, did the typical war college department head, all that stuff. And then I decided to reinvent myself. And so I went to Stanford Business School and ended up being a Sloan Fellow there. Got three master's degrees, couldn't get it right. That's why they kept sending me back. Went into venture capital right around 2000, 2001. And if you all remember back in Silicon Valley, that was an interesting time, right? The old bubble, the Internet bubble.

Yes, it was.

Yeah. So I was on the inner circle of a VC firm there. And then, I gotta be honest with you, you know, stuff was happening so fast, I didn't know what was going. When they even asked me to be part of the firm, I said, wait a minute, why me? I know nothing about venture capital. I know nothing about technology. And this was an early stage technology VC firm right down there on California Avenue, right in San Francisco. And they said, you know, you know how to win, we can teach you the rest. And what a great job opportunity that was, right, to see the inner circle. But anyhow, real quickly, had a couple years doing that, realized that I personally had this entrepreneurial bug in me, so. So I tried to start a venture which is well known now. Red Bull's doing it. It's called the Red Bull Air Races. But I started an adventure called Centerpoint Entertainment. It's going to be the NASCAR of aviation. Basically, I was rolling up air shows, performers, and you need TV and sponsorship and yeah, I was putting that deal together. I was in New York on a date we all know incredibly well. 9 11, 2001, I was closing an equity deal with ESPN on that day. And of course, that day had major significance for a lot of people, much more than me. But basically the business deal blew up that day and needed to reinvent myself. And so I did and started this company I have now, which we go around and my two old bosses work with me and we speak to organizations on leadership and teamwork and high performance, and been doing that now for 16 years. Spoken to over a thousand companies. Really joyful in being able to share information that we all know really well in a way that's beneficial to the outside world. So glad to be here.

That's fantastic. That's awesome. So there are two things that I want to make absolutely sure we talk about before we run out of podcasting time. So I'm going to just hit them both, if you don't mind. The first one is you shared with me before we started the show, and I said, let's just cover it in the show because you definitely want to, because it's very nostalgic for myself. I mean, you and I both went to Naval Academy. We were there in the, in the 80s, and I was the very tip of the 90s, but it was Cold War time still, and there was so much lore about Russia and going against the bear and all of that. You found yourself not only in Moscow, which is a place I've never been able to go with my Clarence, and still it's on my short term bucket list to get there now that I'm able to. But you not only found yourself in MOSCOW in the 80s, you flew one of their aircraft. So tell us about that.

Yeah, well, the background was, as you all know, the Berlin Wall came down 89. That's when I got selected for the team. The Blue Angels, that is. And in 1992, we got this amazing opportunity because the world was changing quickly, as you know, and we submitted an application to take the team to Europe, but not just Eastern Europe, or not just Western Europe, rather back to Eastern Europe and to go to Moscow. Well, you can imagine what that was like, trying to get it through the State Department. The DoD, of course, actually had to go through the White house. But in 92, we took the Blue Angels to Moscow. And it had been 27 years since we'd even been over the pond to NATO countries and never to countries like Bulgaria, Romania. But I remember, and I was the opso at the time, so I'm the apso of the Team. And you can imagine the coordination that's required to take the team over there. Flight clearances, all the State Department, all that kind of stuff. But I remember we landed in Sweden, then went to Finland, did an air show at both those places. But then we're flying over the border, checking into Russian airspace, and they came up on the radio, and we just do our normal check in. Actually, the boss was flying. He goes, this is Blue angel number one, flight level whatever, three, two, zero, checking in. And they go, blue angel number one, what type of airplane are you? And he comes up on the radio, he says, these are eight U.S. navy F18s. And there's dead silence. And we had already gotten all the clearances, but still there's some communication gap. Finally, about a minute later, they say, well, continue. And then all of a sudden, we get intercepted by SU27s, MIG 29s, which this was, of course, already planned, right? We fly into Moscow. There's some beautiful video on this. In fact, if your audience ever wants to check it out. Hollywood did a documentary called around the World at the Speed of Sound. And it's Rob Stone, the producer, great friend of mine, went with us and documented this. Bottom line is, we come flying into Kubinka Air Base, their master jet base, with these SU27s on our wings, MIG 29s, and we did, you know, air show, which had never before been done and had never been done since, which is interesting. But what I remember, besides getting a chance to exchange rides, you know, I flew in the SU27, got a chance to fly the hero of the Soviet Union in my back seat and can gladly say I knocked him out, which was fun, but he tried to knock me out. He couldn't. We had fun. But the best part about all that stuff was not the flying. The best part was to see how we were embraced by the Russian people. There's pictures of me holding little kids. And, you know, as you know, the Blue Angels mission is ambassadors of goodwill. And that's exactly what we were. And I got to tell you, after you got through the chest pumping of, you know, let's go do it, you know, they're just like us, right? Warriors. And it was a real, real beautiful time in my life.

That's amazing. Well, thanks for sharing that with the audience. I don't know how many times you get the chance to share that, but it's probably fun to relive.

It is. And, like, just talking about it, I got, you know, I'm picturing it in my eyes, and I really picture, besides the jets, and that was all fun, was the kids. That's what stuck with me.

That's awesome. Have you been back to Russia since?

Well, I haven't back to Moscow. I've been back to other areas all over Europe. In fact, I've been to, I think, 62 countries now, but not been back to Moscow. I want to do that sometime.

Cool.

Very cool.

All right. So the other thing, I want to pivot a little bit, and it's not that much of a pivot. It's a continuation. But it's a nice way to consolidate your lessons learned that I want you to pass in the next 10 minutes to the heroic investing audience. That is specifically a new book you have, which is rolling all of this up for us. It's called Fearless Success Beyond High Performance. Talk to us, please, about that.

Yeah, Gary. Well, thank you. First off, it took me 10 years to write the thing. I'm not really a writer, and I wasn't happy with the manuscript. I had written four of them, and the one that's out now, I'm pleased we got it out, because what it does is it just takes the reader through a journey, and it's a journey of. Of not just with the Blue Angels, but I heavily look in there and say, okay, what were the attributes? What were the qualities of that high performance team? And how can we transfer that into investing into personal life, into business? All these elements. So what I really focus on is something that I think we all know incredibly well, and that is you got to have a belief, right? It's about instilling this mindset. And I call it a mindset of glad to be here. And to me, that means about being grateful and appreciative for every little moment in our lives. You know, as veterans, as active duty military, as first responders, we have a lot to be grateful for. We hold a special bond that we all know. But this means this even goes beyond that. This is just being grateful for the little things in life. Like when I woke up this morning, I do it every morning. I just say, what am I grateful for? And first thought was you. I said, man, I can't wait to meet Gary and the people on this podcast. And then I go back in my day, and turns out if you go back, the human brain doesn't care if you're remembering something or you're actually experiencing it for the first time. Done a lot of research in the neuroscience. I get to work with those people. And so I start going back there, and I just remember what happened yesterday. And then I go forward in my day. Anyhow, the idea, I call it my Glad to Be youe Wake Up. But what it does is it changes the way your brain works. Right. So I try to combine what we know, which extremely well. Operational excellence, with this Glad to be here mindset. And what I found is if you're able to do both, because it's like two sides of the same coin, you actually get breakthrough performance. And then you can target it and focus it in area. Any area you want. You want to focus it on investing. Bam. And there's a methodology that I'm happy to share with you that works. And so that's kind of the essence of the book. But it's a lot of stories, right? Storytelling. It's got some Russian stories in there. And happy to go deeper into it if you want.

Yeah. Well, please. I think the application of it, because we have a varied audience out here, certainly those that are still actively pursuing their career of service. Also we have a high percentage, I know you know this as well as I do, of people who leave the military and leave first responder service that start their own businesses and go their own way in a leadership role, whatever you can share with respect to the ability to make impact, the technique.

Happy to. And it's impact. I love that word, by the way. I think that's the key. It's that purpose larger than self. Right. That we all have. And the ability to actually translate, that is into the civilian world is not always there as much. And so I think we have to create that.

Right?

And first responders, of course, and police and all that, but out there in the business world. So I think the key is, here's what I basically did. So I remember being in Silicon Valley and, you know, I had gone through all the schooling, but it's not about schooling. I think it's about, you know, firsthand experience, Right. I'm seeing all these companies and a lot of them early stage, you know, some went ipo, whatever. And I'm sitting here going, what's the threat? You know, and then I remember when the bubble hit, you know, and it burst, right? And I remember sitting around that room that day with some of the other partners and we're just talking about, like, what are we going to do? Right? And a thought hit my head, and the thought that hit my head was not, why did the bubble burst? That wasn't my question. My question was, how come some people outperform others and some don't? How come some teams consistently can outperform, some don't. How come some organizations consistently the best and in the military we know how they did extremely well and some aren't. Right. And then how do you do that under change? So how do you lead through change? Changing people, changing dynamic, changing markets. So that was the question that hit my head. That was back in 2001. And since then, you know, I've been on an 18 year journey of trying to figure that thing out. And the good news is I've got about 10 what I say about a thousand companies, high leaders that have been a resource to me. Right. Here's what I discovered real quick. We all know it's the vision plan execute feedback loops. Strategic management theory tells us that. Right. What's the vision? Come up with a plan, execute on plan, hopefully have a feedback loop. Military, by the way is really good about Those debriefs and AARs. Civilian world is not. Okay, great. Okay. I say, well that works for, we'll say the 1 percenters. All right. And we call that operational excellence. But what happens in the 0.01%? How are the best of the best different? And what I've realized over time is we think differently, we act differently and we actually speak differently. So when I get a chance to work closely with CEOs and whatnot, I talk about beliefs, not vision. Okay, vision is easy, that's a given. You need to have a vision. But what's hard is how do you get people committed and bought into the vision. So it's all about creating beliefs and changing limiting beliefs, which are usually fear based into liberating beliefs. You can see this in investing all the time, right? Then when I go is the second one is focus. So I talk a lot about the focus. How do you focus your mind? I gave you a little tidbit there about the glad to be here wake up is a way that I tend to focus my mind. But done a lot of studies on meditation, visualization. I do more visualization these days, days. And it's the ability to be able to block out distractions like we all know we need to do and then focus in when you need to, but then open up again. See, that's the critical element. You know this. Obviously as a warrior you got to have situational awareness. You focus down, but you better open up again or you're going to get shot by the unseen guy. Right. So it's going through that, that methodology. I like to talk about alignment, how to get teams aligned through a center point which I use my techniques from the Blue Angels where we come at each other a thousand miles per hour closure and miss within a wingspan. And remember for one second off, we're going to miss by two football field. So a little bit of high speed precision there. And I translate that through trust. And then the debrief and what I've added is this glad to be here component. Then what it does is it resets the cycle. So it's all in the book. But what I wanted to do was just at a high level say that I find this is a very simple methodology. It should be simple. And the cool part is it works, it works in financial services, it works in technology, it works in manufacturing. Just spoke to every leader in Mercedes Benz works in healthcare and it works in sports teams. Roger Penske and I just had lunch on Thursday and I helped them out when we won the Indy, when I helped them out four years ago. So we're trying to do it again. But anyhow, high level, that's what it is. Gary, what hits you?

That's awesome. One of the things I didn't expect you to talk about is mindset. I think that's fantastic. I've done very similar journey here the last couple of years after leaving the military, leaving uniform and running my own company and podcasting and the like is a lot of work on visualization meditation. I've gone through the Master Key system program twice. And one of the things that there's just some really simple lessons that hit you pretty hard. And one simple lesson I'm trying to teach my children that they just are not getting the gravity of it, which is cool. I mean, I'm 50, they're 15, so give them a little time. Is that your mind cannot hold in its grasp or respond to more than one thought at a time. So if you're having a bad day, simply choose to have a good day. Like we all make fun of Pollyanna, right? We say, that's very Pollyanna. It's just you're not even living in a reality. If you just, you know, if your world, you run into a brick wall, you get fired by your boss, your spouse leaves you, whatever, and you say, I'm choosing to have a great day. That's just. You're an idiot, right? But in fact, if you recognize that the human brain is just that simple, like I can't be having a bad day and forcing myself to think of the thought of this is going to be a great day. I'm going to make it be one, right? So it's just amazing that it's that simple.

Well, I love that you've done the research, you know, 65 chances a second. So the human brain can only take in 65 impulse through the eye a second. So we get 65 chances a second to choose what you just said. And that is, do I see that as a threat or something negative or do I choose to see it as a positive? And I agree with you. The key on this stuff though is you got to plant seeds, right? Because here's a question. Where do your thoughts come from? You ever think about that? Where do your actual thoughts come from?

Well, it comes from your responses to external sensory, I guess, and then it's how you interpret them. So, you know, the same thing happens to two people who are walking beside each other. It's just their past experience. Their subconscious is going to tell them how to interpret that.

Exactly. See, it's the same way how one person can see something as a threat and the other person see it as an opportunity. Right. Especially in investing. One person gonna say, well, that's ridiculous, that's a threat. Next person go, wow, this is a great opportunity. So the key is planning those care. And that's why gratitude works so well. If you go through life starting to really appreciate things, you watch, your day will naturally get happier. It's just. It has to happen.

Absolutely. And another, I think great piece of advice that I have learned and I think the audience could learn from clearly having a good restful, peaceful sleep is super important for rejuvenating the human body. Just the actual physical cells out there, right? I mean, you've got to have. I mean, and heck, aviation knows that very well, right? You guys have limited. I mean, you have required minimum amounts of sleep to be able to get in the cockpit. And so many people out there though, are not having restful sleep because they go to sleep having a lot of electronics around them. So they're not actually ready, emotionally ready to go to sleep. Or it's that they're thinking negative thoughts, right? They listen to the news of all the horrible stuff or, you know, some Hill Street Blues event or something, right? Some gun shoot them up thing right before going to sleep. And then that's in their head. And so doing the gratitude portion, that's right before bed sets you up for being able to be calm, have that adequate sleep to actually physically recover the body.

Oh, I love it. There's so many. Those are beautiful techniques and recommendations for people. I turn my cell phone off, definitely go to airplane mode at the very least. But it's about ritual Right. What is your ritual when you go to bed? What's your ritual when you get up? And these could be very simple ones, but it does set the day, and it does help you rest better. And of course, then there's the whole thing of working out and eating well, too. Those three things, man, you'll be a superstar.

Absolutely. So, one other thing I'm curious about your opinion on. I've kind of gone over the top again with my poor kids, but also just with other people I talk to that. But I've started to believe that if you just own everything in your world, of course there's an easy way to make a case that you can't control everything that happens in your life, and it's about how you respond to it. However, if you decide to own everything that happens in your life and then try to learn from it, it is my opinion that you're in so much better situation. People ask me, hey, you've lost 100% of your investment in this deal. How is it that you're not suing the person? And my answer is, because I decided to own it. That was my mistake. I'm going to learn something from it. I'm going to get my money back because I'm going to learn something from it. And so I tell my kids all the time, well, you get to choose how to respond to that. And you caused it. Like, how could I possibly have been the one that caused this? You brought it into your life. What do you think?

More than what I think. So it's funny you don't even know this, but I'm in Sedona, Arizona, right now doing this podcast, and I'm here because I'm always trying to grow myself. Right. And learn, just like you're saying. And there's this phenomenal teacher on Eastern wisdom that I spend time with, and what he talks about is exactly what you just said. Yeah. The question is, is the world coming at you or is the world coming from you?

Right.

Most people feel like the world's coming at them. And so that's when you're in the reactive mode. And that's when you say, well, that wasn't my fault. When you take ownership, like you just said, when you realize it's actually coming from you, then you control your destiny. And that gets really powerful, especially when you get to choose how you react to something. Right. Powerful.

Yeah. In the end, when you're able to blame somebody else and say, it wasn't my fault, then you're able to cop out of it. Right. You don't have to own it and roll up the shirt sleeves and get busy fixing it.

I remember once. I don't know where I heard this, but when you point your finger at somebody, three of them are pointing back at you.

Yeah. Those two things, very, very simple little things have made. The biggest difference for me in the last year is simply realizing that all I have to do to stop the stinking thinking, as Zig Ziglar said, is just put a positive thing in my mind, even if I don't necessarily believe it. Just keep saying it. Brainwash, then. The other is owning everything that happens in my life and just fixing it. It's pretty cool.

I love the fixing it. On the Blues, we had a saying, I'll fix it in the debriefs we did. Again, if you read the book, you'll see where it's there. I go through how we did that, and that's the ownership. Everybody took accountability, but they actually said, I'll fix it, and it elevated the responsibility. I love that idea of both positive thinking with a plan. Right. Because the positivity of how I choose to think. I believe, though, you also have to take ownership. You have to have a plan. Right. There you go.

Right, Right. Yeah. Yeah. It's hard to think positively if you don't feel like you can change it if you're going to have any control of what's coming next at you. Wow, this has been amazing. The time has flown by. I'm looking at my clock like we did something wrong because it's almost 30 minutes, but. But this has been amazing, John. I can't wait. We're certainly gonna stay connected. And I can't wait to get more involved with learning about your company, visiting some things, seeing how we can both help veterans, first responders, and just Americans.

Yes. I'm with you, Gary. It's been a joy. And I'm just thinking about the people listening and that's it. I want to give back. Right. I want to help people. And if there's any kind of insights from the past, great. But it's all about making that impact. And Gary, look forward to it. May we will get together on another one of these and definitely want to stay close.

Absolutely. So how do they find your company, what you're doing? I know. So the book again. Fearless Success Beyond High Performance on Amazon and I'm sure everywhere else. How do they find out more about your company?

It's John FoleyInc.com John FoleyInc.com pretty much put in John Foley on a search, and it should come up on there. You'll see, actually, if you go to the website, we got actual store there. We're bundling in some special stuff for the book. So not just the book, which of course you get the Amazon, it's in all the bookstores. It's in the airports, all that. But I got this other thing called breaking belief barriers. Really good for setting your beliefs. Right. But the company, yeah, there's a lot of information there. You know, we do a lot of keynotes and leadership, But I'm starting to branch off into the personal mastery space, and that's what excites me to talk more about what you and I are talking about. Right. Yeah. How's an individual, you know, really benefit?

Perfect. Awesome. John, thank you so much for joining us. We'll get you back on here real soon.

All right, Gary, thank you. Glad to be here.

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