Mastering Elite Performance: Mindset & Purpose w/ John Gucci Foley | Free Youth Empowerment Webinar

Wake up with the mindset of gratitude. You could do that any day, every day. It doesn't matter if it's a good day or a bad day. Just start there and don't believe. Just try it. It's going to take about 40 to 60 days before you start to see any effects, but just hang in. But a second tip is it's your passion, especially as an entrepreneur. We understand passion. If you're not an entrepreneur and you're not passionate, you're not going to make it. I guarantee. So we got to connect to our passion, but that's not enough. Here's the tip. Okay. It's got to be aligned with your purpose. You got to connect. Welcome to super entrepreneurs podcast. I'm your host Shahid Durrani. Today we have with us John Gucci Foley. John is inspiring organizations to high performance through mindset, operational excellence, and team improvements, keynotes, and consulting. He's a bestselling author, keynote speaker, podcast host, and a philanthropist. Thank you. And welcome to our show, John. Hey, glad to be here to everybody in the audience. And that, that saying glad to be here meant something very special to me when I was a blue angel pilot. And if you want to dive into that, you'll see, let's go. Yeah. It's the essence. When you're flying jets at first off, you've seen the blues fly. Have you personally blue angels? No. Okay. So do you know what they even are? No, I don't. So blue angels are flight demonstration teams. See behind me, those help football helmets with the jets on them. So we fly flight demonstrations around the world. Jets, smoke coming out. That's, that was what I used to do. And in the debriefs, because this is good for your entrepreneurs, we're constantly learning. We're constantly growing. We have this absolute passion to get better, to learn, grow, give. So after every flight, we do what we call a debrief and it's significant. Okay. We go into details. What went right? What could have been done better? There's some real techniques in taking personal responsibility. But at the end of your comments, we always end with glad to be here. And I got to tell you that it set the tone for the rest of my life. And I think it's key for an entrepreneur because it gives you that energy. Not only when things are going well, when you're struggling, right? It's a beautiful thing. Yeah. Glad to be here. But do you utilize that in all moments as a habitual thing? Or is it whenever you're about to do something that requires a boost? Yeah, that's good. It's both, right? So it's a ritual at the end of your comment in the debrief and everyone gets to comment, right? And you look inward first. You have a feeling statement. How do I feel about this event? So did I feel it went well? Great. Do I feel it didn't? Hey, lay it on the table. Let's talk about it. Right. But my point is that at the end of that, and you always look inward at yourself first. So instead of pointing fingers at your teammates, you go, Hey, here's something I could have done better. And then you say, though, glad to be here. Now, some days it's just wrote. You're just glad to be here. Other days it means everything, right? It's sometimes glad to be alive, but it's really about camaraderie and teamwork and chemistry. You're acknowledging that you're grateful for this opportunity. That's the cool part. And you can use it even with your family, or even if you're just doing something more casual, even if you're about to do something that you may not like. So I'm glad to be here. It just gives you that gratitude. That's exactly how you want to use. It's not a one, one time thing. And the more you use it and the more people like in my company, everybody knows what it means. Um, if you can see it in their eyes, but you can use it exactly what you just said. Awesome. I'm curious about a moment that truly tested your resolve as a leader upon a point where the path wasn't really clear. Can you share one of those instances and then a less obvious lesson that you learned from it? Yeah. Yeah. So there's tons of them, but I'll do it in the non-flying, in the flying world, there's all kinds of situations that come up and I've almost died three times, all kinds, wanted to eject and couldn't. So you learn from them. I've hit airplanes before, but that's not what I'm going to bring up. I want to bring up what's more true for everybody here. And that's the entrepreneur. So when I got out of the military, I went to Stanford business school, got three master's degrees. I'm working in venture capital right around 2000, 2001. Y'all remember what happened? Okay. There was a bubble and fricking burst, right? We called it the internet bubble. And I'm on a, an early stage VC firm sitting around the table with my partners and we have to make some tough decisions. And one of the questions that hit my mind was the how come question, but not how come the bubble burst? See, that was not my question. My question was, how come some people outperform others and some don't? How come some companies consistently can outperform no matter what the market conditions and some don't? How come some organizations are sustaining excellence with higher interest rates, with supply chain challenges and some don't, that's been my passion last 20 years, right? Diving into those. I had the rare privilege, worked with over 2000 organizations, everybody from Google, Microsoft, down to the startup companies. VC companies bring me in all the time to talk to their CEOs. And what I've seen is there's always a red thread. There's always a red thread that goes through high-performance organizations. There's the fundamentals and you just need to do that. You need to get those done, but that's not what differentiates. What differentiates somebody is those small things that certain people do consistently better than anybody else. And one of them is this idea of debriefing. Most companies don't do it. They only do it when things go wrong. They only do it when there's a problem. And that's the exact opposite because it puts a negative tone to the situation. What I'm debriefing every day is what's going right. What's the small tweaks I need to make. A positive pull. Yeah. And of course we're going to cover what's not going. Absolutely. Right. But it's more of a reinforcement of the positive and that's the game changer. Companies that are really good at that, you watch. Yeah. And John, when you program yourself or you actually work on this aspect of your mindset to look for good in everything, you start noticing more goodness happen in your life as well, not just in business, but just in general. Yeah, absolutely. But see that idea of your program in your own mind, you just made a big point. You're looking for good. That's not easy. The average human being has 80% negative thoughts. Average human being. So 80% of your thoughts are what's the problem? Where do we screw up? What's going on in the world that's negative? That's in our DNA. And then it turns out 95% of our thoughts are repetitive. So if you're having 80% negative thoughts and 95% of them are being repetitive, you got a problem, man. You got a downward spiral going on in your brain. So what we have to do is we got to counter that. We got to counter it by doing what you just said. You not only look for good things, you look for where you could get better or where the company could get better or where my teammates could get better, but you start with yourself. And then what that does is you reinforce the positives. Because every day, so I do my glad to be here wake up. Every morning I wake up, I just do three things. What am I grateful for? Present moment. Lay in a bed. Then I go back 24 hours. This is the debrief portion. And there's all kinds of science on gratitude. But then I go back 24 hours and I say, what happened yesterday that was positive? Did I have something to be grateful for? Just replay it in my tape, the tape in my brain. It could be like yesterday, I was on with this surgeon with Mayo. We're working, I'm doing some work with Mayo. And just getting the opportunity to talk to that person on a deep level was pretty cool. So I just replayed that in my brain. Then here's the last thing. As an entrepreneur, go forward in your day. Go forward in your day, think about others, not just yourself. Like I thought about this podcast. I said, how can I show up in a way that's meaningful for them? That's it. You do that and watch how your thoughts change. Very good point. And you mentioned that negativity is something that's in our DNA, but don't you feel that when you become self-aware, when you start being aware of your thoughts, emotions, and behaviors, you start catching those, shining the light on them. And then over time, you shift your paradigm that you wake up one day, and this is what happened to me. You wake up one day that your default state is just looking for positive things automatically. So that could occur as well. Absolutely. That's the science behind it. Nice job. Because what you're doing is there's always a gap between a stimulus and a response. That's just basic cause and effect. So the real question is, and I love the word self-awareness, is are you self-aware enough to see the gap? Most people are now. See, we're thrown right from- It has to be moment to moment. It has to be moment to moment. Yeah. And what you said to me is I believe the world's coming from us, not at us. What does that mean? We're planting seeds, okay? We're planting seeds. And the more positive seeds you plant, the more positive things are going to come back. Now, the problem is time. You just don't know when that's going to happen. But the more you do it, and I like what you said, one day, all of a sudden, you realized it. That's the key. See this self-awareness. And once you realize it, you'll never forget that. And then you can build on it. Can you share a transformation that occurred in your life in that sense? In flights, obviously, it's very stressful. It could be. So were you always this positive throughout your life? But was there some kind of occurrence that caused you to transform by default or by a need or something that you invested in to work on yourself? That's nice. For me, I think it's both. And I think everyone's going to have their own path, right? So I actually brought up in a great family where my mom talked about love and creativity, and she was safe. My dad was about inspiration and integrity and character. So I had a great upbringing. Now, not everybody does, right? But my great upbringing allowed me to have this idea that actually the world is opportunity. The world is safe. The world is cool. Go out there and do it. Now, it doesn't mean you're not going to bust your ass. You do something stupid, you're accountable. But at least there's opportunity, right? So it's the classic idea of an experience. Is it a threat or an opportunity? It's up to you. It's up to you. You can see it either way. But I think what you're getting at is more important, and that is it's a transformation that's over time. And it's just the more you do it, it's like working out on weights or running. The more you do it, it needs to become a habit. It needs to become something that you build endurance on or resiliency. I think what we're really talking about is you got to build your resiliency. So it's a constant state of looking at that thing. And you learn the most from your mistakes, right? You learn the most from those times when it's hard. But I'm constantly building on the good things, and I'm acknowledging the hard things, right? Those two things have to happen at the same time. Definitely. That's wonderful. Actually, going back to the self-awareness point you mentioned has to be ongoing. And it is quite difficult if you really think about it for someone that has been used to a certain way of looking at things and looking at the world, the perception. All of a sudden, they're shifting it towards themselves. And then having to do that on a consistent basis each moment, each present moment, it's not something that is quite as easy. It needs work, and you need to be committed. You need to use your willpower. But the beautiful part is that once you start becoming aware, all these things that we're talking about, they become so clear. And the actual transformation that you're trying to inject into your life, it becomes much easier over time when you get the hang of that present moment awareness. I love it. I love it. I think you nailed it on the present moment awareness. Awareness is a gift. It's a skill. We can build it up. Just like you, you've got to build it up. And being present is so challenging sometimes. I find, for me personally, the most challenging time is with the people closest to me, right? I could be present right now with you. That's not hard. I'm here. I'm geared up. I understand what we're doing. But in the repetitive parts of the day, can I really be present with my spouse? Or am I thinking about what's the next podcast I'm supposed to be on? Or what happened yesterday? So that's a skill, man. You're absolutely right. Building that awareness. That's why I do a visualization every morning. I really don't call it meditation. I do meditation, but it's more for me this visualization process that I learned in the military. And when you're flying jets 18 inches from another jet, you better visualize it. You better know what that's going to look like before you jump in there. And I think that's true about our day. Yeah, it's a powerful gift that we have to visualize to see what we are potentially capable of doing and going into that physical action. After visualization, you just have this sort of a power behind it in the action. You just feel so much more confident, especially in the air. I can imagine how that was such a crucial part of your actual flight. Yeah, absolutely. So before we went flying every day, we briefed. And part of the briefing was pretty much standard, like you would do in any situation. What's the safety things we've got to be aware of? What's the admin? What's the weather? Just some basic stuff. But then we got into this really high level of visualization. We'd actually get the tone. The boss would be calling out the maneuvers in the same tone and voice inflection that we're going to hear airborne. So I can drop in. I can drop into that feeling. And you're right about the confidence. See, it gives you confidence because you've already done it. And I've done it not just once. Before I give keynote speeches, I've given over 10,000. And before I give those, I've probably done it three or four times in my head, even though I've done 10,000. I'm still going through that so that when I hit the stage, I'm on. And here's the thing, when you're flying or when you're in a business meeting or on stage, if you walk in with the confidence, and confidence is not overconfident. It's not ego. It's just, okay, I'm prepared. I'm ready to go. Then you can adapt airborne. See, that's what it gives you. It gives you the ability to adapt because things are going to change. And I'm not worried about what was that slide I was supposed to present? No, you know that. So now it's just the opposite. You can adapt. Yeah. You go with the flow that way. John, when you work with how important it is on an individual level to create that emotional intelligence or create that mindset, or let's be more specific, create that self-image in each person in an organization to align with the overall aspiration of the company to the overall success of the company. Individual self-images coming together for one united goal for the company. How important is that? Oh, Seth, it's absolutely critical. I call it connect, align, commit. You got to do all three things. You just laid it out. We got to, human beings, we need to connect as one-on-one first. And so that connection is absolutely critical to connect to someone's heart, not just their head. Two though, then you got to bring enlightenment into it because we're a team. We're trying to get together. That's absolutely critical. That's where I get with the CEOs before I understand what their vision is, understand the decision makers, what's going on in the company, just getting a better sense. But what I'm really trying to do is find out what you just said is, what's the culture? And how can we get everybody to do that self-awareness, that ability to connect? Then you better align. That's communication and clarity and all that kind of stuff, vision. But the third thing I mentioned was commitment. And this is interesting because this thing you can't demand, you can't project, you can only ask. And that's the level of commitment that someone brings every single day. What's the level of commitment that you bring to your show every day? What's the level of commitment that people show up? That's a choice. And we all get a choice. And that's what I show is that you got to choose to show up at a high level of commitment for not only yourself, more importantly, for your teammates. And when you combine those three things, what you just said, that becomes the framework of which high growth and the growth mindset comes from. Can you provide a tip or a recommendation for someone that could start doing immediately that could get them more in line with their true potential and create that elite performance without even taking the step to meet with anyone? Something that they can do immediately after watching this or listening to this, that they can implement in their life, they could get a quick result from that will boost them enough to make further changes in their life. Yeah. How about three? Can I give you three instead of one? Please. Love that. Okay, good. So the first one we actually just talked about, I went early on about this, wake up with the mindset of gratitude. You could do that any day, every day. It doesn't matter if it's a good day or bad day, just start there. And don't believe, just try it. It's going to take about 40 to 60 days before you start to see any effects, but just hang in. But a second tip is it's your passion, especially as an entrepreneur. We understand passion. If you're not an entrepreneur and you're not passionate, you're not going to make it. I guarantee. But if you're passionate about what you're doing, so we got to connect to our passion, but that's not enough. Here's the tip. It's got to be aligned with your purpose. You got to connect the heart. So passion's not going to get it. You got to have it, but until you have a purpose, and here's the other third tip, that purpose has to be larger than self. And most entrepreneurs understand that. And when you connect those dots, being grateful, align with your passion, which will be different than mine. I don't want them to be the same, but you're going to be slightly different. That's cool. I call it your unique value proposition. What uniquely are you bringing to, but align that to a purpose, make sure that purpose is higher than self. Now, all the other business things start to kick in, the fundamentals. Then you can worry about that. Most people skip that phase. They go to the execution, the how, and without clarity on the other, good luck. The purpose needs to be an emotional one, not a logical one. Logic can play roles in the daily activities that we do to get closer to our goals, the actions that we take, but the purpose itself has to be something that is emotional. For example, your kids don't have to get a loan for education, whatever, something emotional that they can connect all this together that gives them that boost to perform the way they need to perform on a daily basis. Right? Yeah. I love it. I love you word, the word perform. First off, yeah, emotion. Absolutely. I'd like to think about feelings. I need to feel it, right? Okay. You need to feel your passion and here's the key. You mentioned it. You want to feel this in your heart, in your body, not your head. If all you're doing is feeling it intellectually, it's not going to sustain. So I'm with you on that. But then here's the word performance, which is interesting. If you do what we just said, what you just said, then the performance will follow. Okay. That becomes, and then you get to decide what level of greatness do you want to go to? Okay. Because it's a decision. It's a decision and it's going to take some effort. So yeah, I love that. The other three things is start with passion. Okay. Align that to your purpose. Make sure it's higher than self and then be present. And you talked about awareness in the beginning. I actually put it at the end of the sequence because most people say, I'll just be present. No, man, you got to be passionate and purposeful and then presence becomes your gift. Because a human being is a goal-seeking organism, like Dr. Maltz says in psychocybernetics, we have to have a target and then that target has to be connected to a purpose. You have to get emotional. I love the way what you said, feeling, feeling is the key because feeling is a language that the subconscious understands. So you create that feeling. Now you're just at a different level. And like you said, about the decision-making, it becomes so much easier and faster because now the decision is coming from a deeper place. They know exactly where they're going. So they know what is taking them to that direction, the quickest route. So they make a quick decision. Yes, no, yes, no kind of thing. And that is the key for a successful person, right? Making quick decisions. Yeah. And I love that you put it in your subconscious because that's the key. Can you get the most, and by the way, the human body does this naturally. It takes most decisions, automates them, right? Because I don't want to be thinking to myself that I remember to breathe today, that I remember to inhale. Hell no, but we can do that on the other stuff too. And this is just, I'm so grateful we had a chance to have this podcast together because I'm right in the middle of writing my new book and it's called the glad to be here mindset, but here's the key, how to live and give life in all its fullness. So we're talking about a full life here and it is exactly starts with what we just talked about. You got to understand your passion and if you don't know it, that's okay. Get out there, man. Get out there in the world. Just do this. Experiment. Yeah. And then, but align it with the purpose and make sure that purpose is higher than self. It doesn't have to be initially, but it has to go to there fairly quickly. This is a team sport and then, and then be present. And then you get fun stuff like this. These kinds of interviews just keep popping up and you put it in your bank and when to apply it. Yeah, no, I love it, John. It was an honor to have you on the show. I get really enthusiastic about interviews like this and this kind of discussion because I find it mindset is the foundation. I know a lot of people use that word, but yeah, I mean it in a way that it is everything because like you said, I don't want to force this body to do things. I spent most of my life forcing it. I got to do this. I got to do this. I want to make it automatic and I want to make it easy. I want to enjoy. I want to make life a game. I don't want to make life serious. I want to have fun. And you do that by making things automatic. And when you make things automatic, work doesn't feel like work anymore. Then you bring that passion and the love and the unity and everything just becomes one. You don't feel any problems. The ego decreases. So I don't know. It was great to have you on the show. Great to talk to you. If there's any final words you would like to share, please go ahead. I would say number one, that energy that I feel in you, we all need that energy, right? That's the energy you want. I love the idea of oneness, right? Process also is important. Let's not forget this is an automated, but it's the mindset that's the differentiator. When you add the process of mindset, that's when magic happens. Yeah. Just keep it alive. If anybody wants to connect with me, LinkedIn's good. John Gucci, Foley, remember my call signs, Gucci, the website. Let's do this together. That's the key is keep giving to others and then stuff will happen for you. So I'm just glad to be here. Thanks for the precious time together. It was my honor. Gucci, do you want to just quickly tell them the story behind the name? Yeah. So if anybody's curious. Yeah. Most people like, oh, Gucci, what's that? It's a call sign. So fighter pilots get call signs, but here's the key. You don't get to pick it. And if you like it, it doesn't stick. So one day I showed up, we were doing Top Gun. It was up in Falun, Nevada. You saw that movie, right? Top Gun. Yeah, of course. I love this. I did some of the flying in that movie. And so we're going out for the evening and I show up wearing a thin black leather top. Okay. That wasn't even cool in the eighties. Okay. And my teammates are looking at me and they go, what is that? That's Gucci. And I flinched. And once I, when I flinched, they knew they got, now it didn't help that I was living on a sailboat and driving down from right at the time too, but it stuck. And when I got it, it wasn't cool. But over time, Gucci's actually become hip out there, but not because of me. Oh, that's awesome. No, that's great. I appreciate all the good work you're doing, John, keep in touch. And if you're anything else that you wanted to announce in the future, just let us know. We'll bring you back on. Yeah. Hey, here's a real quick one. I don't We're going to do a free webinar for youth and how to reach your hopes and dreams. Okay. And it's going to be in December. I think the 20th, just go to LinkedIn and you'll find the invite or I'll send it to you and you can get it out to your people, but it's, it's good for entrepreneurs, but it's really good for youth. I'm targeting youth here. Good. Good job, John. Good job, John. Thank you for doing that. And also thank you for that offer audience. It'll be in the show notes. Like you mentioned, just go to Lincoln and you'll find that information for the webinar and just take a look. If you have anyone in your family or anyone, you know, that's a youth, this is a great opportunity. Appreciate you guys. And John, thank you. Glad to be here.