John "Gucci" Foley: Flying High With No Regrets | On The Homefront With Jeff Dudan #96

Welcome to on the Home Front. I'm Jeff Duden. Today we are joined by one of the original pilots for the movie Top Gun. He was the lead solo pilot for the US Navy's Blue Angels. A former Naval Academy football player and an accomplished entrepreneur. Welcome to the home front. John Gucci Foley.

Hey, Jeff, I'm glad to be here. And those four words are going to mean something much deeper here by the end of this interview.

Well, fantastic. My first question, because it's a story that resonated with me. We have a passion and a heart for children here and really understand the impact that's made in young people's lives by people like that. Just take a minute. When was the first time that you realized that you wanted to be a pilot?

Oh, man, I love that question. My dad was my hero, right? And my dad was an army officer and an engineer. So when I was growing up, I wanted to be just like him, thinking, hey, I'll be an army officer and I'll be an engineer. And then one day, I'll never forget this day. I'm 11 years old, we're in Newport, Rhode island, and he took me to an air show and I never forget that moment. You know, if you've ever been in Air show or anybody who's listening, it's visceral, right? This is not just. You're just not looking at the jets. You feel it. You feel the energy in the crowd, the smoke, oil, the thunder, the noise. And it's kind of like being at the super bowl and I'm looking up in the sky and. And there's these six magnificent blue jets flying that day. And something hit me in my heart, not just my head, Jeff, big difference, right? And I turned to my dad, I said, dad, I'm going to do that 11 year old kid, right? And it took me 18 years from that moment when something hit me in my heart with lots of obstacles, lots of career path changing. Then 18 years later, I'm strapping in that jet.

You had some challenges getting into the service. Can you talk us through your path as you grew up and eventually getting into the Navy, what you had to go through and some of the stops you made along the way?

Yeah, absolutely. I think more important, it's for all of us, right? I mean, once you have that goal and that vision, you know, the path seems to change. There's never a direct line in my life. Right. So I'll share a little bit of my story. So from that moment, you know, I mean, I think I'm in Junior high, I realized, okay, you know, I got to join the Navy or, you know, at that time. And I said, well, but I got to be an officer because I need to fly jets. So I got to either go to the academies or, you know, go to ROC or something. So I knew. Then I said, well, what's that require? And, you know, basically, you know, do the best you can. Get some good grades, athletics matter, you know, and community service. So those three things. So I said, okay, need to do some of that stuff. Everything's going well, doing well in school. I'm captain of the wrestling team. Apply for the academies, and I get rejected. But I get rejected not because of that stuff. Medically, they tell me I'm not medically qualified. Now, this surprised the crap out of me, Jeff, because, number one, I'm a healthy young kid. Wrestling, playing football. I mean, I'm as healthy as I think I can be. And here was the answer. They said I had too much protein in my urine. What the hell's that, Right? First off, I mean, as a kid, I'm like, first off, what is that? And what am I supposed to do about it, right? So you ever feel like you can't control the world, right? Well, we know you can't, but what you can control is yourself, right? And so with me, I'm disappointed because I'm moping around thinking my dream has just got cut down. And it took about three days. And my dad's like, what are you doing? He said, well, I said, what do you mean? He goes, why are you moping around? And I said, well, you know, I just got rejected. You know, my dream's gone. He goes, no, you know, come up with plan B. And I was like, oh, that's a novel idea. And my plan B was very simply. He says, well, reapply. So I did, and I got rejected again because I was outside of the parameters of this stupid medical thing in the. In the military. But again, instead of giving up, I said, you know, I'm going to go through a waiver process, and that takes a year. So went to Colorado, actually. Played football for the Buffs. Walked on. Um, and then. But I never lost my dream of going to the academies. And I go through the process. Sure enough, I find out there's nothing wrong with me. It's just. It's probably from cutting weight on the wrestling, you know? But the bottom line is, I get accepted, and boom, off to the academy. Now, I gotta be honest with you, Jeff. I didn't graduate number one in my class. Okay. Academically, I graduated in the half that allows the other half to be called the top, by the way. Okay. But I got above the line. It's something I talk a lot about in the book and other things. It's this red line, you know, it's always there in life, either above it or below it. And guess what? You know, every person listening to this knows, are they above or below that line in their life? Right? And I was barely above it, but I got the slot as a pilot. And now, you know, in the Navy, you start all over again. Doesn't matter what your grades are. You start from zero and they grade you every single flight. You go to Pensacola, ground school, then initial training, go into jets. And it's just a career path, right? And things seem to be going pretty well. I get. I get lots of rejection on types of airplanes, but I end up flying A4s, A7s, F14s. In the movie Top Top Gun, I didn't fly at 14. I was flying a seven of the days we were off the Enterprise. And then I get selected for the Blue Angels and my life changed, Jeff. Absolutely changed. Eighteen years, though, of up, ups and downs to get there.

Incredible. I want to double click on your time at Colorado. Walking on to a Division 1 school. I mean, some people say it's a bigger jump between high school and college, especially Division 1, like that, than it is from college to pro. So you go, you walk on your DB, you're looking to a DB. So right off the bat, you know, you're not 6, you know, 6, 5 2, 65. You're running around on this field and you're playing the scout team. I had the exact same experience. I walked on to the University of Northern Iowa. I had only played two years of football. I'd never tackled anybody in my life. I had never been in the three point stance. And all of a sudden, and they expect you to have these skills, they expect you to have been playing your entire life. So what was that like for you at Colorado? Are there any stories that you got there that are memorable? And then how did that ultimately prepare you for the Blue Angels?

Hey, man, I love it. First off, you did look like a ball player. I'm sitting there going, this guy played ball, man. And you know, you, you just nailed it, right? It's not the physical, it's the mental. It's the mindset that either breaks you or makes you making those leaps. And, you know, in hindsight, I had a belief I could make the team. Right now I'm a small under, you know, I'm five, nine, about 165 pounds. I mean, I ran like a four, I don't know, six. But it wasn't your four. Four, right. And. And so I didn't have the physical skills to walk on a Division 1 team, but I had the mindset that, you know, I can play at that level. Why I thought that. I have no. No clue, Jeff. No. No clue. Right. And I remember, you know, walking on and I don't know what it was like in your experience, but mine at Colorado is they take all these walk ons and all those scholarship athletes, all the all Americans, they've been there for a couple of weeks. You know, they're, they're, they're, they. And, and they just run the hell out of you. Three days, right? Three days of trying to make you quit. Kind of like SEAL training. It's very, very same thing. Let's just see how bad you want it, right?

That's right.

And I do fine on that. Right. But I'm walking off the field last day and I know that they're going to make a recommendation to the head coach on who to even, you know, who to take and who not. And I walked up to this coach and I looked him in the eye and I don't know why I said this. I hadn't premeditated. I just looked at the coach and I said, coach, give me the pads. I said, just give me the pads because the first three days are in shorts and T shirts and you know, I'm small and doesn't matter, right. But I like, you'll find out. And guess what? They gave me the pads and, and that's all I needed. That's all I wanted was a shot and someone. Just yesterday I'm at an event here, I'm speaking up in Coeurlane, Idaho. And they, they said this to me. They said, you know, you got a heart of a lion. And I thought, where the hell that come from? And I realized that that's what it was. It was the heart under, undersized, should never been on the field. But the passion and the heart said, just give me a chance. And I think that's. So many people in life, we give up without even taking a chance.

The glad to be here mindset is something that is a through line in your speaking and inside of your book. It's number five of the five dynamics.

Yeah.

When did you first y read it? No, I just didn't. John. I didn't just say I read it like I, I got into it and it was, it was really, really good. I always appreciate when people put things together in a concise and, and actionable way. And, you know, and generally people that have, have done something like you've done, the level of excellence in the Blue Angels, that's required, the level of focus that's required, the risk that's inherent with that. You know, you have a, you have a view of what excellence looks like and you did an excellent job of laying that out for all of us. So. But the glad to be here mindset, right, you know, that's, that's not a buzzword that you typically hear. When did you first come up with that and what does it mean?

Yeah, well, it, to me, it means the combination of excellence and appreciation and gratitude. It's. It's when you combine your passion with your purpose and presence. All right, so this isn't just fluffy. Glad to be here is not just know fluffy. I mean, where did I come up with it? Well, number one, first time, my mom was always talking about positivity and stuff, but it really came up on the Blue Angels. The, well, the Blue Angels, when you apply for the blues, you're never allowed to sit in on a debrief. That's the sacred realm of the Blue Angels app. That's where we, after we fly, it's think, think post game with the team, right? Going through the films and stuff. But you know, as an applicant, and when I say an applicant, you have to have like 1500 hours, tactical jets, flown jets off aircra carriers, be an instructor pilot that I was, all that stuff. So I'd flown F8. No, F18. Yeah, it's flying F18s, structor pilot, you know, like 400 carrier landings. So, you know, if you, if you get to that level, you've got some skill. Right? But that's not what we're picking on. You know, those five dynamics kick in. And what you pick on is first off, does someone, you know, passionate about what they're doing, are they doing it for a purpose and a purpose higher than self? If you're doing it just to fly upside down 100ft off the ground at 500 miles per hour through buildings, which, by the way, is cool as hell if you're doing that. All right? That's not why we're picking you, because what you're picking you for is to be on that crowd line, to be an inspiration for a kid, right? And it's about the youth, right? I always used to sign autographs. You Know, reach for your hopes and dreams because that's what I did and I happened to, you know, be fortunate to make it. So anyhow, the, the, the idea of the first time, once I got selected, I sit in on the debrief. This is now after the blues have flown. And I'm, I'm, I'm just a newbie. We call them newbies like a rookie, right? And, and all of a sudden it starts with the boss of the Blue Angels, starts the comments. And he's, he's, you know, he talked about how he felt, he talked about safeties, things that he had done wrong and was laying it out to the team, but he had acknowledged others. And then his last statement was glad to be here. And I thought, wow, that's kind of cool. Then the next person does the exact same thing. They look inward first though, they say, hey, I felt good about this event, or I didn't. Here's things that I was off on pointing themselves out, not somebody else. And then they said, glad to be here. All of a sudden it goes around the table. Everybody's ending their comments, we're glad to be here. And I'm sitting there going, holy crap. You know, these are, these are my icons. These are the best of the best. They're self reflective, they're, they're looking at, they're laying it on the table. That's one of the five dynamics. Being open and honest. They're humble, check your ego at the door. There's respect, there's accountability. And they end with glad to be here. And I went, something's magical there. Now I will tell you this, that on the Blue Angels, glad to be here, initially, man, I'm just glad to be selected for this team. I'm glad to be sitting in the room. I'm glad to have this opportunity. But as my time on the Blues, and more importantly, after the Blue Angels, glad to be here has taken on a much richer and deeper meaning. Sometimes it was just, I'm glad to be alive. I mean, I had three of those days where you're flying and you, you, you, you land and you go, oh my God, I almost died. You know, and, and life is, life is better. I mean, we ever had those experiences. I'll tell you what, number one, the grass is greener, the sky's bluer, ice cream tastes better, people are friendlier. I mean, your whole perspective on life changes quickly. Then over time, you get sucked back into every day, right? But glad to be here to me now means much more than even that. It's a lifestyle, it's a mindset, it's an ethos to live every day in its fullness and to give it to others. Well.

And it's connected to the concept of gratitude, which, you know, gratitude is scientifically proven to make us healthier, to make us happier, to make us more mentally fit. Appreciation for what we have. I mean, you can look around the world, and I've had several military people on who have traveled the world and, you know, and, you know, we'll catch comments because they'll say, I've been around the world and I've lived a lot of places and I've seen a lot of things, and America is still the greatest country in the world. And so tying that to this concept of gratitude, being thankful for where we are, what we've got going on. And then to touch on the fact that you said being on the line after the show and talking to the kids, you've probably influenced people to join the military. Patriotism's down in this country. Significantly down. Our volunteer forces are under where they need to be. It's at home. Front Brands, which is my company. Retired Brigadier General Tony Tata is on our board. And, yeah, I don't know if you know Tony or not, but we're. Or of Tony, but. And then we are, you know, we're partnered with Operation Front, so we're very interested in, you know, helping veterans transition and what we do here. So now you talked about leadership, and you've got. You've got six pilots that make it. You've got a diamond formation, you've got two solos. And what probably goes lost on a lot of people is the size of the support crew.

Right.

You have. And the excellence. So when you talk about, you know, your speaking to organizations and the work that you do creating excellence in organizations, the Blue Angels is a big team. It's not just. It's just not the quarterback out there. Right, Exactly. It's everybody on the organization. What's the interaction like between the pilots and the crew?

Well, there's extreme trust. Okay. And extreme respect. And it starts with respecting every single person for who they are and what they do. So just like you said, you know, football is a great analogy. It's not the pilots, it's not the quarterback. Right. There's a full team. Right. You need the lineman man, you need the scout team, you need everybody. Right? And same thing on the Blue Angels. So, number one, you know that teamwork is not a buzzword. It's not like something, you know, you. You just talk about it's real, okay? It's real because you trust them with your life. So if you ever want to really test what, you know, level of trust you have, make it life or death. Now, very few things in our life are like this, right? But when life and death comes up, it actually makes things easier. It gets, things get very clear, right?

It's pretty black and white.

Yeah. And here's the thing. I never worried about dying, right? Because I never worried about that. What I didn't want to do, what I, what I worried about was hurting someone else. I didn't want my mistake or my lack of attention to be the effect for somebody else. And that's what everyone on the team. I mean, my plane cap. All right, who doesn't fly in the jet, but he or she owns the airplane. I told he or she that. I said look it, you know, even though my name's on the, on the airplane. It looks fancy, right? Tenant Commander John C. Foley. No, I, they own the jet. I borrowed it for an hour. Okay. And, but see, they believe that it wasn't just a term they would get out there. Well, before I ever showed up, they, they made sure the jet was ready to go. Make sure my left gloves over my right glove, 126 switches in that correct position. When I walk up to the airplane, I don't have to pre flight it. I trust them with their, my life. And they salute me. And I salute them back. And all they say is this, sir, the jet's ready to go. Now that statement was I got up four hours. They didn't say I got four hours earlier. I did all this stuff, you know, I started the engine, I made sure everything's ready to go. Actually wax the airplane. I mean they do everything. No, they just said, sir, the jet's ready to go. And you trust them, they trust you back. See, it's communication. And that's when I got on the airplane. I realized you have to appreciate people. The glad to be here means we're a team. There's 140 support troops for the six pilots, right. And, and, and they're the real heart and soul of the team.

And how many air shows a year for. And the, the, the tenure of the pilots is one year or two.

No, it's two years as a pilot. One pilot gets a three year tour, which I was fortunate to do that. But your first year, you're the narrator, right? Years in flying the jets. If your support personnel is three years. So it's like a football team, you know, New people coming in and coming out all the time. We rotate people through. So the, the idea of what position you fly, all that gets sorted out afterwards, right? But you're there for your first year, even though you're highly skilled, you know, instructor, you're in a learning mode, okay? You get assigned a mentor. If you're number six, it's number five. If it's number three, or it's number four and the boss and two have a special relationship. But you, and you're mentored. You're truly brought to a level. I got to tell you, we increase. We fly at 18 inches. Now picture this, Jeff. 18 inches. That's closer than you are to your monitor right now. And me too, people who are watching this or listening closer to your phone. 18 inches. A 22 ton jet at 500 miles per hour. You better know trust, right? It's not a word. It's a lifestyle. And you got to trust yourself. You got to know what you're capable of. You got to know what you're. Where you're weak, by the way. That's even harder. You got to trust your teammate like we're talking about. And at the end of the day, you got to perform. I mean, you just. There's no. You got to show up with your A game every single day. It's fun.

Does the crew turn over or is the crew consistent or they turn over with the pilots.

Yeah, well, everyone's on their own rotation, so the crew is there for three years. So we have a third of the team is rotating out and they're usually your best and most senior people. And a third of the new people are coming in and it's a pecking order. You know, you have to earn the right to get the chance to do this, and then you have to earn the trust and respect of your own peers. And that's, that's how it works. Yeah.

Any close calls or events that you're at liberty to share?

Oh, sure, sure, sure. Now, you know, the blues. We, we work really hard on alleviating these, right? And that's why we have a tremendous amount of preparation and focus called the brief. We, we debrief. That's where we learn and grow. We, we try to pick up near misses before you. You actually have an accident. I mean, I don't know if you knew this, but when I joined the team, there was a 10% mortality rate. We had 26 pilots have been killed and there'd been less than, there's less Blue Angels than Popes, by the way. You know what? Pope number Ron, by the way?

I do not.

I think it's 266. But so, you know, I mean, here's the thing. It's an extreme honor, but would you do a job where, when you walked in, they said, hey, congratulations, you know, you got two years here, and there's a 10% chance that you're not going to walk away and you're going to die, but not like from a car accident. You're going to die on the job. Right? And it's like, holy shit. But that's not how we think, okay? I throw those numbers and you, you know. No, what you really think is, you know, not only am I going to make it, we're all going to make it, okay? We're going to do something special. We're here not for ourselves. We're here to inspire, be an ambassador of goodwill to another human being. I do want to point that you gotta excel. When you push the limits, the limits push back. Okay, I'll say that again. When you push the limits, limits push back. So you gotta be smart, okay? It's easy to do something stupid, but to fly at that edge, you have to be smart and you have to have constraints in there. We have lots of safety protocols. And since I joined the team, the balloons, not because of me, because of this process, we've decreased that rate tremendously. Right. So the idea there is be good at what you do be and constantly learn. We're in a constant learning. I want to grow. And then the most important part, and you talked about giving back to the vets is you got to give back. You got to give. Right? Yeah, That's. That's where the magic comes in.

Yeah. These rituals that were so important in keeping everybody safe and getting people back on the ground so that they could be glad to be there. How have you translated these rituals that you've learned into your venture capital life, into your business consulting, into helping people that maybe haven't had the benefit of service to be able to be better leaders, more disciplined leaders, and more successful?

Well, I love that question. Because rituals matter, right? So there's two things I want to talk about here. One is the rituals that I now talk about in the business world or your professional life. Right. And I work with the best companies in the world to a lot of, by the way, you know Janny King. I was just with them two days ago. I don't know.

Okay, great.

Know them? Yeah, yeah. A lot of. Lot of franchisees, which I know you're strong at. Right. So, number one, there's the business side, but it's not the most important side, but the professional side. And that is you got to connect the line and commit. Okay? Three things. Every high performance team does this, you know, this. First, you got to connect as human beings. People come first. Second is got align. Well, line. What line? The vision and the strategy. Align all the moving parts. Communication. We spend a lot of time, business, doing that. But the third one is the commitment level. And this is only an ask. You can't force this on anybody. But, you know, I mean, I ask and military, it's pretty clear. It was definitely clear in the Blue Angels is that you're willing to give your life for your teammate. That's a pretty high commitment level, all right? And here's the thing is you. You. You know it, all right? And you also know when someone's struggling with that, right? And it's actually. It's easy at that level. It's easy. You. You will do whatever it takes for your teammate, right? And so. So I always ask a couple things, and I would ask, who's ever listening to this? Number one, what are you willing to die for? It's an interesting question. I mean, reflect on that right now. Here's a better question, though, and that is, what are you willing to live for? And that's what we're doing, right? Why are you able to share, to make a difference in someone else's life, to enjoy this life, right? So on the business side, it is. I call it a cadence of execution. I unpack what worked, not just in the military, but specifically on the Blue Angels. The magic is in the cadence. It's this, you know, habits, brief, get prepared, execute with high trust debrief. That's the most critical one. Most people don't do it at the level I'm talking about. It's an internal debrief, right? Team debrief that will accelerate you up. But it starts from the book. I call it the Diamond Performance Framework or Fearless Success. You got to have beliefs first, though. So it's not about the vision. It's about connecting the vision to beliefs, getting people to believe in you and the organization and executing that I trust. Now, having said all that, okay, that's in the book. That's a business case. I'm writing my new book called the glad to be here mindset. And, Jeff, this is the difference. This is a differentiator, okay? It's the habit of every morning, how do you wake up? Okay, how do you start your day? So I Start my day with what I call my glad to be here wake up. All right? Did it this morning. And do it every morning. The minute I wake up, I just. First off, I check. It's called awareness, right? Mindfulness. Check the first conscious thought that hits your head. Do this tomorrow, okay? For you, right? See what that is, right? See if it's a thought, like, holy crap, what am I late to? What's the next problem I gotta solve? Or if it's like, wow, today's kind of magical, you know, this is a beautiful life, okay? I'm with my daughter. You know, you're going to be spending time, right? Just watch your own mind. Now, here's the beautiful thing. If it's a negative thought or thought that's causing you angst, just be aware of it and go, okay, that's fine. But what am I grateful for? What am I grateful for in the present moment? You talked about the science behind gratitude, right? So I do that every morning. Here's a technique. What I've learned, though, is it's not enough just to say, what am I grateful for in the present moment. My personal technique, the Gucci technique, is go back 24 hours. You can go back as far as you want in your life, but I do this every day. So I go back 24 hours and I just say, what happened yesterday? Did I have something great for. But I remember it in my heart, not my head. This is the technique. It's really easy to stay in your head, all right? But what I try to do is remember, like, this interaction. So I'm hopefully going to remember you tomorrow, okay? And I'll remember your smile right now. And I'll think about how do I feel in my heart about doing that interview, you know, And. And I'll just remember the magical part. Or maybe it's, I'm leaving the hotel, right? So. So I always like to leave tips for the mates, right? And. And I give them a little smiley face, something. But I imagine when she walks in, and by the way, I clean the room for them. I always make my bed, you know, make your bed kind of crap, but I do that, right? But I think in my mind, I just want them to walk in and feel relief. Instead of a room that's just been blown up, it's like, did anybody even sleep here? That's what I want them to feel, right? So I'm thinking of them, right? And that's the idea as a leader. Go forward. The third step is go forward in your day and think of someone else. And what can you do to make their day better? That's what I call my glad to be awake up. It's my ritual every morning. And I got a bunch more. We can talk later if you want. But that's just one technique.

I love it. That's fantastic. I made notes of it. I will try it tomorrow morning.

Nice.

I did notice something interesting in the book though. You listed people process and purpose. Usually people list purpose first. You listed it last. And I think what connected with me as I'm listening to you talk here is when you are in an elite performance environment, it's always people first. If you listen to Nick Saban talk about it, it's about the players. If you listen to Belichick talk, it's about the players, you know, so people. When you listen to you talk about, like, hey, it's about the people first. You got to have a purpose to do it. But if people fail in a high, high risk, high gain environment, like, it's not going to be good. So you really. People first. Is that intentional? Was that intentional or is that just the way it fell out onto the page and then your editor switched it around?

Oh, no. Hell no. No editors. That's. That's the way I think. But it's by intentional is. It's not the way I always thought. Right. It's usually more experience. You learn this way. Right. It's funny you talk about Nick. So Nick Saban calls me up a few years ago now and he says, hey, Gucci, can you come talk to the team? I've been so. Yeah, I'd be honored. Of course. Right. And. And so we. I got some saving stories sitting in his office beforehand. And he's dipping because we. He dips, you know, and we're talking about. He didn't want to talk about football. He want to talk about flying jets and stuff. And we did. And I spent three days with the team. It was, it was precious. Right. But. But Nick Saban is, is exactly that. All right? And then you get. It's the people. Then you get into the. Get with the program. It's a process, okay? My dad used to say that get with the program. There's a program, okay? And that's the process. And then the purpose will come out. Now, it's funny you mentioned Bill Belichick. So I just. Bill and I were just on the phone here last week. Okay. We met at an event and actually I didn't. It's a Blue angel thing. This guy's coming, walking towards me, and I'm thinking it's one of my old buddies. And so I. From a distance, I wave and I go walking up, and I get about, you know, close as you and I are in the. In the. With the cell phone here, and I look and I go, belichick. He goes, yeah. And he looks at me, he's like, who are you, asshole? Right? I mean, that's so much. But. But I look, I go, hey, John Gucci Foley. I said, your dad was my coach and that. And then all of a sudden, the, you know, the. Everything drops, right? He goes, really? And he said, yeah, because I played football at Navy after Colorado, and Bill's dad was the scout team coach, right? And anyhow, we. We had a wonderful, incredible experience, and now we've became friends. I'm not kidding you. And we're on each other's cell phones, and we chat every now and then. But, you know, he's. He's got it down, too, right? And. And so the idea of people come first, there's so many companies that say that, but they don't do it right. And I think you're absolutely right that, you know, on the Blue Angels and things I talk about, it's, you got to hire the right people, you got to bring the right eight players in on any team, right? But that's not enough. But that comes first. And then. Then you got to train them, you got to mentor them, you got to bring them up to the standards of the organization. And guess what? When I jumped, when I got selected for the blues, I thought I was operating at a pretty high level. I walk in that room, I went, holy crap. They're operating a whole new level. And, you know, this. You part of an organization, a culture that. And I have to my game. I mean, I was scared. I'm like, how am I going to do this? Not as a human being also, but as a, you know, as. As a. As a professional. And so people do come first. And then you better have the processes to scale this, all right? And at the end of the day, you connect it back to that. That purpose. And now you got the magic. That's the glad to be here magic.

Everybody wants to be parting of part of a winning team. People want to be up to something and going somewhere. I'm always looking for people that are, you know, doing something interesting, pushing themselves, going somewhere new or exciting because that's. That's where the action happens, man. That's, you know, out in the. All the great things happen out on the edge, in the rarefied air. Where the air is thin and the, and the, and the opportunity, you know, the, the margin for error gets smaller. The, the fulfillment, the victory gets sweeter.

Yeah.

So. Yeah, and it's, it's great. And, but, you know, like, for a lot of people, man, like, we get you. You kind of. You like that frog in the, in the water that's boiling. You know, you get out into the, you get into the company and there's rules and this and that and the other thing. And maybe everybody's not wanted to put their oars and pull so hard in the same direction. And it's, It's a challenge to get people in every environment to really want to win in that way. You know, I came across something.

So how do you, how do you change that? I know, I don't mean to throw you off, but we're having a great conversation. So how do you change that to where you get people. What's your technique, Rowan? In the same direction?

Look, Claire, there's a great book by Lencioni called the Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary CEO. And three of them have the word clarity on it.

It.

Right. So. So, so, like what. In our business. And I just, I just coached a new training class of franchisees this morning. Oh, yeah, yeah. You know, so it's like, okay, one of your key roles is to remove latency from your business. So from the time that you determine that there's an action that needs to be taken to the time that that action is taken, that's latency between that time. So how. What causes latency? Number one, a lack of clarity. When people aren't clear about what to do, they're going to hesitate, they're going to do. They're going to make something up or they're going to do nothing at all. Okay, latency in your business. Number two, people are conflict averse. People are too polite. And so three little. I say, I say, look, there's three little words that ultimately got my wife to marry me. The first, you know, and they're like, is it I love? I said, no, it's lower your. Lower your standards now. So. But no, it's. These three words are rush to conflict. Like if you can. If you can show up, right? Because I do this thing where I tap out a song on the table and I say, what song is it? Nobody knows because they can't hear what I think. So the moment that you realize that something needs to, or there's a conflict or something going wrong, don't say, well, I'll send them an email and I'll set up a meeting two days from now and then I'll report back next week as to what it was. Pick up the phone. But you've got to be able to show up without the blow up. There's a great quote that says the person who can most accurately describe reality without laying blame shall emerge as the leader. So to be able to rush to conflict, to pick up the call, to get an organization that understands that picking up the phone, rushing to conflict, that everybody's responsible to the moment they find out something is not going the way it's supposed to, to go is to bring it to the attention or to rush to that conflict and then be able to not lay blame and just to get the situation resolved. It's a conditioning of a team that needs to happen because it's not typical in business. So those are the types of things that, you know that, that I really work on instilling in our organization. Making sure there's clarity, making sure that we're, we're comfortable and having healthy conflict inside of it and then making sure that, look, everybody understands that you know what the goal is, you know, the, the overarching goal. This is, this is who we are. This is why it matters. I mean for us, since you asked, we're partners with Carson scholars foundation. By 2037 we're going to give a million books away to children. We're going to raise a certain amount of money for Operation Homefront. We care greatly about financial security for families on Main street usa. That's why we help people get into to business. Businesses are a high class asset. And then it's my job to show up every day and make sure that I'm over communicating because you know, some people get paid by the hour, other people get paid commission or by the job. But, but true leaders get paid by the conversation. It's the engagements that we have, it's the words that we say, it's the clarity that we create, it's the inspiration that we give to people. And like that's, that's what, that's what people want to be a part of. And so, so, and if it's, it's anybody who's in a leadership position, you know, it's their responsibility to kind of further that agenda and then look, and then we all just get to work after it. No, it's not going to be perfect. You know, we don't by the way, when we make a mistake, like it's not like when the angels make a mistake, like nobody Dies generally, you know, here. So, you know, we have a greater margin of error than certainly you did.

Wow, Love your answer. I can see why you're helping so many companies and so many people. Yeah, I love the clarity answer. I got the four Cs of trust I'm gonna add to your pile there. You might, might want to think about this, but I really like what you talked about when you know why you're doing this. A million books to kids, man, I love that. Right? Making a difference in other people's lives. And we started, my wife and I started the Glad to be your foundation. And so we give 10% of all our fees to charity. But here's the cool part. And try this, Jeff, if you're not already doing it. Every client that hires me, they don't know this, but I tell them, hey, we're gonna, we're gonna give 10% to charity. And here's what I find. Differences. I let them pick. I let them pick what charity they want to give it to. And you know, I mean, I think we've donated them now. 460 charities. We sponsor 57 kids around the world. There's so many different things that we're able to do, but it's not because of the money. You realize by putting awareness to that, how important that is, how many people out there are doing good things like yourself, right? Making a difference in the world is huge. Love the idea of rush to conflict. You know, as you were talking and all that, I'm thinking I can apply, apply everything you just said to my personal life, my deep relationships, right? And that's not always easy, you know, it's not always easy to rush in to the cave or the other conflict. So I'm still working at it. I haven't mastered it, but, but I'm working at it. And the other thought I'll just leave you with on that is I like, people ask me these kinds of questions. I say, you know, be Gandhi. And they're like, huh? And I'm like, yeah, be Gandhi. Just be the change you want to see in the world. So the world's coming from us, not at us. So if I want, you know, clarity, I better be clear. If I want to be, you know, like you say, you know, like latency, then I'm the one that needs to show that I don't believe. And then of course, it becomes a cultural thing.

Look, we teach people how to treat us. I get these first time business, these business owners, and I'm like, look what you put into the universe is a, exactly in measure what it, what it's going to give back to you. So you know, and by the way, you know it's a lot of coaching these guys need because like they're, you know you're going to get into dust ups in business and you know, and you know, we have a set of values. The values break the ties and sometimes having a great reputation is going to cost you a little bit of money in the short term. So like how do you, like when you're faced with a tough decision, like how do you make those decisions in the marketplace and these, it's just, it's such a, it's such a, an opportunity to be able to work with so many of these first time business owners and just really give them a foundation and how to think, you know, things that took me millions of dollars of losses and years and years of scat, you know, of road rash to be able to learn and then you know, go forth and we, we go as a unit, you know, we got hundreds of franchise owners out there. We, we move as a unit, we move as a group, we move in unison and, and we execute on our business plan and you know, easier said than done. I know we're going to come up against time here. There's something, I have a bunch of stuff, but there's one thing that I would like you to speak to if you don't mind, because I do a lot of work on. The first thing that I have to do with these franchise owners is I've got to talk to them about their limiting beliefs.

Yeah.

And you know, like, you know, I just, I hit them right between the eyes with like, look, this is his inflection point. You just wrote a check for a business that takes great courage. You stepped across the line. Now you can't recontract. Why in the world would you try to make this business 50% better than the life that you already had? Why don't you make it five times better or ten times better, you know, and then once you put your business plan, why don't you challenge yourself to say if I had to do twice as much in half the time, gun to my head, how could I, what, what could I do it? You know, so really pushing people into these solution sets. But it's really about like everybody, we all are right where we are in life based on arguing with ourselves about our limiting beliefs. And you know, I can't do this, I can't do that. I'm not good enough for this. I don't have the resources for that. I don't deserve it, whatever it is. And, you know, people like Elon Musk, I mean, he has certain, you know, conditions that don't allow him to have limiting beliefs. So he just sees like, we have to get to Mars. So then he does a regression analysis and he works backwards from it. Next thing you know, he can launch a rocket ship every hour on the hour and land it. Land it on its rear. So it's, you know, but that's just a function of not having any limiting beliefs. So why, why can't you, I or anybody else subscribe to that? But you said something that you, you made a distinction between limited beliefs and liber. Liberating beliefs.

Yeah.

And that's the long, longest question of the history of the show.

No, I love it. I love it because you're on it. You're on it. It. See, I think it starts with beliefs, right? And that's the idea. So when you get into it, you go, well, what's limiting me? What's causing me stuckness? What's holding me back? And more importantly, what's liberating me? Okay, where can I do that 5x that 10x that you talked about? I think that it comes from a concept I heard once in cognitive psychology that goes like this. It says, human beings, you and I, we don't perform at our full potential. What we actually perform at is a belief level. Now, there's liberation in that because what that means is if. If you can raise your own belief, your own performance will follow. Okay, that's great for a franchisee owner, but the challenge in franchisee is all the other people. Right? So it's more important, how do you raise someone else's beliefs so that they will follow? And then the whole tide raises and that's the challenge, Right? We as owners or leaders, how can we scale this to everybody? But it starts with yourself. I like to use that cadence of execution I talked about. The magic is in the debrief. We didn't get a chance to do too much of that. But you're probably going to want to have me back on. I know both of us got to run, but at some point, I'm honored to come back and talk more.

I love let's do a whole thing on focus. Let's do a whole show on dynamic focus. And. And that. Because that's some of the real money that was in your book, and I really got a lot out of that. But, yeah, so we, we can keep going on this. I'll Miss my flight. I don't care, John. I. I fly commercial. I don't fly the jets.

But.

All right, so last question for you before we have to pop off here and. Well, first of all, can you want to give a shout out to your new project, something you want to promote real quick?

Oh, sure. Well, first off, I just want to be grateful for you and your audience. Right. Anything I can do to support them. Couple things. You know, if you go to my website, john foleyinc.com and you click on, I have a takeaway called Mindset and Methods. So it kind of recapsulates some of the things we've been talking about. Couple pages as a franchisee owner, or who's ever listening, it gives you a boost. Right. Right away, actionable. So that. That's fine. I'm gonna put out that new book called the Glad to Be youe Mindset. In fact, that was the call I was on right before you, and that's gonna be pretty powerful. So just want to be of service to others. Right. There's lots of information there. But no, you know, what do you got? How do you want to send people up?

Last question. If you had one sentence to make an impact in somebody else's life, what would that be?

Well, you know, the idea of who are you? Right. And so here's my sentence. When you ask, you know, who is John Foley or who am I? Is a better question. I like to say I'm an angel. And I said, why do you pick that? It's because I was doing some reading on wisdom, and it says, an angel has five qualities. An angel is a messenger. An angel gives guidance. An angel protects. An angel's a warrior. And above all else, an angel serves others. Well, you know, Jeff, I don't know if that's really the five or not, but when I read that I'm in, I just said, I'm in. So I would say find the answer to that question, who am I? And I'm an angel. And I'm here to inspire a billion people to live and give life in all its fullness.

That's the sentence perfectly said. Great place to end. John Gucci Foley, thank you so much for your service to this country. Thank you so much for the inspiration that you. You provide to all of us. And this has been John Foley, and I am Jeff Duden, and we have been on the home front. Thank you for listening, Jeff.

Glad to be here.

Thank you, sir.