Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing - In the Pilot’s Seat

Episode Date: October 1, 2023

The Blue Angels are an elite team of U.S. Naval pilots who maneuver $40 million planes at hundreds of miles per hour while flying mere inches from each other. What’s it like to be in the cockpit?  Ricky Mulvey caught up with John “GUCCI” Foley, a former lead solo pilot for the Blue Angels, a keynote speaker, and the author of “Fearless Success.” They discuss: How to find your centerpoint – in airshows and investing What it’s like to sit on a multi-million-dollar sell option And the importance of being “glad to be here” Host: Ricky Mulvey Guest: John Foley Producer: Mary Long Engineers: Rick Engdahl Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Because we have your number. You know, an F-18 two miles out looks like a dot. So I got this dot coming at me at a mile every four and a half seconds. I need to be focused down on that dot. But at the same time, I got to open up real quick and make sure I don't hit a sailboat mask because we're blowing over sailboats, right? And so it's this ability to focus down and open up, focus down and open up. The human brain can do that 65 times a second anyhow.

So we're wired to do this. What you have to learn, and it's a learned skill, is how to take control of your own mind. I'm Ricky Mulvey, and that's John Gucci Foley, a former lead solo pilot for the Blue Angels, a keynote speaker, and the author of Fearless Success. I caught up with him to talk about the fundamentals of decision-making and what investors can learn from the Blue Angels, who are flying at speeds of hundreds of miles an hour, just a few feet apart from each other. Gucci, good to see you.

I appreciate you hanging out with us fools today to talk about decision-making and some of your experiences as a Blue Angel. Yeah, Ricky, man, I'm glad to be here. And those four words actually meant something special to me when I was on the team. So let's dive in, man. Let's do it.

And considering for the folks just listening, they cannot see the shirt that says glad to be here. But I'm sure that's what you want to talk about. So tell me, what does it mean to be glad to be here? You know, it's a combination of operational excellence or just being excellent at something, investing, flying, it doesn't matter, with appreciation and gratitude, man, you got to have fun what you're doing, right? And so we actually use this on the team to not only get better every day, which I think

is important in investing, but actually to celebrate our victories. It's about joy in life, but holding each other accountable. Yeah, and one of the things I noticed from reading your book, it's also a source of humility, right? So if you're a new Blue Angel pilot and you're in a meeting for the first couple times, what is it? That's the only response you're allowed to say to how you're doing or pretty much any question asked to you. Yeah, nice job, Ricky. You've done your research. Yeah, when you're a newbie, we call them a newbie, and it's a long selection process to get to become a Blue Angel pilot or just be part of the Blues.

um you're you're right for for six weeks your only response is glad to be here boss uh now after uh you then get assimilated into the team and you get your position then of course we're really looking for your feedback yeah uh one thing your your book focuses on and i know well i guess you would focus on is this idea of of center points yeah and and finding a center point and i want to talk about how it's important to pilots, but I also think it's important to businesses and also investors, which is before maybe you invest in a business for a long period of time, you might want to know what the center point is. So first, what is the importance, especially for a pilot, to know what a center point is? Yeah, yeah. Let's talk about the blues first, and then it'll be obvious

what the connection is to investing. So at every air show, we had a center point. This is going to be the single point of focus of what you're going to make decisions off of. So it's decision-making tool, right? So on an air show, if you've ever been to one, you'll see we got jets coming all different directions. They're all flying at us, away from us. So we need to know where that point of intersection is going to be. And we actually map it out and we draw flight lines. It's usually on the airfield, okay? Unless you're over water, then we'll put a boat out there. You draw a flight line and you make tick marks, one mile, two mile, three mile, they're checkpoints. So anything in an investment process, the way I would tie that together is you would go, well, what am I trying

to do? You got to get very clear on what your investment strategy is, or in this case, even that one company you want to invest in. Then, you know, build some checkpoints. All right. How do I know that I'm either heading towards or away from my goal? And that's what we would do on the blues. we were making timely corrections. We got all kinds of feedback from people on the ground, observers. I know what I'm seeing, but that doesn't mean that I have the full picture. So I want to bring people around me who can help me like you guys can help an investor, you know, see different things. And at the end of the day, you're airborne, you're making the decisions, you got your hand on the stick and it looks like we're always solid.

You know, we're not moving. It's just the opposite. We're making a thousand little corrections all the time. Yeah. I would say in an air show, it could be a white trailer, right? This is our meetup point when we're going to fly by each other at three to six feet from each other for a business. It might be not just focusing on the customer, but what is the customer experience that this company is going to help them with? And I think when one narrows that down in investing, sometimes you want to look at a business and say, what's your fundamental unit of economics? What's the fundamental value that you provide to someone? And I think a center point is a helpful way to think about that as well. Yeah, it's beautiful. I would do this, Ricky. I would put center points

into two big buckets. What you just said is a strategic center point. So strategically, what is that company trying to do? Do I believe in them? These kinds of things. But tactically, it's really good too. Like an example, Apple just launched its new iPhone. So that's a tactical center point. You can say, okay, that launch date, what's going to happen? And you back up to it. So there's lots of ways to use this concept. The bottom line is decision-making tool. I think one of the decision-making techniques or abilities that Blue Angels have is what you've described as dynamic focus. What does it mean to have dynamic focus? How do pilots use it? Yeah, I would think about a term, situational awareness, too. And this is important in

investing. It's important in life, right? So can you focus down on what's important, block out distractions. At the same time, you got to open up and make sure you're seeing what's going on in the world. So example, as a Blue Angel pilot, if I'm coming at Thumper, my opposing solo at a thousand miles per hour closure, we're going a mile every four and a half seconds of closure, right? So things are happening fast. And I have a certain contract where I need to be on the flight line. Thumper's contract is simply miss me. So there's this high trust that's built in the team. Well, in order to execute at that, you know, an F-18 two miles out looks like a dot. So I got this dot coming at me at a mile every four and a half seconds. I need to be focused

down on that dot. But at the same time, I got to open up real quick and make sure I don't hit a sailboat mass because we're blowing over sailboats. Right. And so it's this ability to focus down and open up, focus down and open up. The human brain can do that 65 times a second anyhow. So we're wired to do this. What you have to learn, and it's a learned skill, is how to take control of your own mind. It's the mindset, right? So, you know, when you're having a day, you know, can you block out distractions, focus down, but at the same time, don't stay focused down too long. Otherwise, you'll miss something. It could kill you, you know, or it could be a good investment. So the idea there is, you know, know the market, know your world, but also get very focused on what

you're trying to do. Do you have any like advice or strategies to, to practice and get better at that? I've, I've heard one technique and I think it's for eyesight. What is basically, if you go outside, you find a very small focal point and then deliberately try to open up your, your field of view. Um, yeah. What, what, what practices, what are your advice? Okay. So there's, it depends what level we want to get to. Uh, some of that rapid eye motion, that's just natural to who you are. Some people are better at that. Ted Williams, he said he could see the laces on a baseball and he proved it because they made different colors. What I'm talking about here, though, is how every single person can increase their attention span. To me, I use a visualization process. I used it

on the Blue Angels. I visualize exactly football. Athletes know this. You visualize exactly what you want you also visualize contingencies so what is what if something goes wrong how am i going to react so you've already thought this through all great athletes have done that they've played the game well before they're playing the game right now having said that here's what's really cool too is awareness mindfulness meditation get outside become aware of your surroundings like i live in sun valley idaho i'm hiking every day and i'm outside and i'm you know it's easy to get lost to get caught up in your next email, get caught up in your next meeting. So I practice focusing down and being present in the present moment. See, that's the skill.

If you can be present in the present moment and you learn that skill, then I can direct that energy anywhere I want. I can direct it to my family. I can direct it to an investment. I can direct it to a business. I mean, I know how to do that. One of the things that, and this is outside, I would say, the course of investing, but I find interesting in these post-game interviews with athletes is they ask athletes, what were you thinking right before you made the catch or these in-the-moment thought processes during a game? The answer always tends to be, I wasn't thinking because I was in a flow state. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. I'm curious. So I know you were a fellow at the Stanford School of Business.

You've invested in real estate. How do you think your experience in the Blue Angels has affected your decision-making process in business and investing? Oh, it's huge. So number one, it's easy to kill yourself. It's easy to be stupid, right? I mean, it's easy to be a stupid investor. It's easy to go out there and fly a jet and kill yourself. What's hard is pushing the limits, knowing where those limits are. I call it nibbling on the envelope. If I'm flying a jet on the edge of the envelope, I got to be able to feel that. Well, when you're young and you're learning, you can't feel it. I mean, it's just this big, powerful machine, you know, 32,000 pounds of thrust. You're just hanging on maybe what the market feels like. Right. But as you

get more involved and as you get more reps, you start to realize, oh, wait a minute, there's a process here, you know, and, and I got to get into that process, but more importantly is, is the mindset. So, you know, what I like to think about and what flying has taught me at the highest levels is when you push the limits, the limits push back. I'll say that again. When you push the limits, the limits push back. So be aware. Okay. And, and, and, and that's the key. It's awareness. Um, the mental side, the planning is done before the event. So when you use the athletes, you're absolutely right. No one says, oh, I was thinking about this or I'm looking at the ball coming in. No, they are so involved in the situation that it's unconscious competence,

right? And that's what we got to get to. We got to get to where there's a preparation side and then there's the actual execution side. And when you're executing, you're in a flow state. Now, here's the key. You can't stay in a flow state. All right. You go in and out all the time. And so you've got to be able to modulate that with investing. Yeah, and I think there's something that I would say pilots and a lot of high-level martial artists have in common, which is they've been in these – they've practiced in life-or-death situations or moments where they feel close to that edge, and it brings a sort of relaxation to decisions in the real world. yeah yeah that's good i hadn't thought of that in a while yeah i've come close to killing myself uh probably nine times at once i you know i travel a lot i speak all over the world and and i'm on airplanes a lot and sometimes i i reflect back and i go huh you know yeah man i

almost died there well but what's interesting is what you're describing is there is this state and hopefully you don't get to these right um where time slows down i don't know if you ever heard about time compression. Um, it feels like time slowing down. Maybe, you know, you're in a car accident and some people experience this, but, um, I've, I've experienced it flying. And here's what actually I think happens. Your mind speeds up. It's not about time slowing down. Time's a constant. What happens is your mind speeds up. You get very acutely aware of everything around you, um, because our mind is so much more powerful than we think, right? So the ability to, um, tap into that resource. Like, you know, how you start your day. That's a technique I can share

with people. How you start your day matters. Okay. Are you living in fear? You know, are you worried about all these negative things that could happen? You know, the economy, the rates, all this kind of stuff, or do you have a very focused plan of opportunity? See, I think there's opportunity in everything. And so that's what I'm doing is I start my day in a way, but I've been trained in life or death and you really can't train life or death. I'll take that back. You're trained to perform. If you get into an environment where it's life and death, it just makes you focus more. That's all. But once you've learned how to do that, you can apply it to non-life and death situations. Well, I guess what I was trying to go to is it's learning how to practice in high

consequence situations, which brings us, I would say, a sense of relax. And I can't say I have much experience in that. But from what I've heard, it brings a sense of relaxation, better decision making in things that aren't quite that. People are able to take that with them. Something that I was thinking about before we started this interview is that fighter pilots constantly at their fingertips have a very important sell decision, which is the ejection seat. I'm going to get out of this plane. And in many cases, you got to do it to save your life. But there's also a cost to it, which is you're throwing away a jet worth tens of millions of dollars, right? 40 million. 40 million. Right range. That's the trick in finance is you always

give yourself a big enough range to be right constantly. Zero to $1 billion. Gucci, what is the training process like? What do they tell you about using the ejection seat? Because I'm sure they don't want you using it half haphazardly. No, they don't say that. Well, that's true. That's absolutely true. But they never say that because they say just the opposite. And that is don't delay the injection. If no kidding, and this is a good investment decision too, right? Don't delay. When it's time, it's time. People who get killed delay the injection. And I'm talking tenths of a second now, right? And most people die because they get out of the injection envelope. There's an envelope where if I pull that handle, it fires a gas charge. Guess

what? It's 1.2 seconds after I pull it. So you better have a little time, right? You can't be inverted up at 50 feet, just ping off the concrete. So you got to know what you're doing, right? But the, but the point is with the ejection seat training is you absolutely do not want to lose that airplane. But that's not the choice that they tell you. What they tell you, and this is good at investing is you got to get out when it's time to get out. What happens with people in investing? They wait too long. You hold on to your bad deals because you're hoping they're going to come back and you sell your good deals before you could hang on to those longer. There's no right or wrong answer here. It's just that when your gut tells you it's time,

it's time. Don't delay. Maybe it's a little different because in investing, we often find there's a behavioral bias where people panic sell. And in this case, it's probably holding on too long has significantly different consequences. Whereas if you're, let's say, a stock investor, your losers don't necessarily matter compared to your exponential winners. But I don't know. I'm thinking about it. It's a serious decision and I appreciate you talking about the process of it. I mean, in your book, you also talk about, and it's brief, you mentioned that you've been in dogfights before. Yeah. So what's it like to be in a dogfight? Oh man, it's a blast. I mean, we have different types, right? So my favorite one is we call a

knife fight. All right. And it's like a knife fight in a phone booth. Is that what we joke about? That's when you're one-on-one tied up with another jet and you're in a one circle fight and it's a fight to the death it's great you know you're pulling the other person's pulling you're trying to get position but you can see them you can see the airplanes right there you know um those are the fun ones i love that kind of stuff the ones that um and you rarely get there by the way because um nowadays with all the beyond visual range weapons and systems and radars we're lobbing missiles you don't even see the person right and uh and that's a different technique, right? And it is a different approach to how to fight that. So you got to learn both,

right? You got to learn how to do, do both. Um, but I think the key to go back to the ejection seat just real quick is, um, you know, that thing is there to, to save your life when there's no other choices. Okay. But rarely does that just happen? You know, airplanes just don't blow up. OK, there's a sequence of events that occur and you as a pilot need to get good at understanding those sequence of events and taking action before the last choice of an injection. Right. So, I mean, I've wanted to eject three times, all three times I was inside the injection envelope. So I couldn't. So I basically wrote it out. And that's an interesting place to be because, you know, I'm saying, hey, I'm out of ideas here, but it's too late. Right. Now I've lived. That's rare, to be honest with you. And what it does is it makes you reflect back and you go, you got to learn how to debrief. See, that's probably the biggest advice I can give anybody listening to this. You got to learn from your mistakes because there's always mistakes. Right.

And so what I do is, if I live, I reflect and I go, holy crap, why did I get there? And you start to figure out the decision points you could have made earlier, right? And that's the key. Do you have a debrief process? I do every day, okay? I'm absolutely debriefing my business. I'm debriefing my life. I'm learning. I call it learn, grow, give mentality. And that's what keeps you from having to pull that handle. you don't ever want to pull the handle that's that's that's a last ditch thing what's the what's the ejection envelope yeah what that means is um the seats are pretty cool now um what what an ejection seat is is it's a rocket motor you're sitting on it and you're in the cockpit and there's a handle between your legs or over your head it depends and once you pull that it sets off some gas charges which actually ignite the rocket motor 1.2 seconds all right and it blows you out of the airplane. Now, some of my airplanes, you go right through the canopy. You know, you saw in the original movie Top Gun, which I did the flying in, um, some of it, you know, me and my

buddies, you know, that was a true story where the goose gets killed because the canopy, um, that's a true story, right? So there's different things. Some airplanes, you got to blow the canopy first, then you eject, whatever. But, um, but the point is that, uh, when you pull that handle, you're going, okay, you are departing the airplane. And I don't care, you know, if you're going Mach 1, that's a problem because you're going to hit wind blast, right? It's going to rip your arms off sometimes. I mean, whatever, right? So the point is, it's a last ditch. But the envelope says, if you eject under this airspeed, with this altitude, under this condition, you will survive. You have a probability of surviving. And they actually, this is kind of

funny. You know what they call a successful ejection? What defines a successful ejection? it doesn't i'm gonna guess it's that you didn't die no that's what you would think they don't care if you die if you while i say that i mean the stats don't care if you die um if you ejected in the envelope and the seat worked because you died is is an oh by the way but if you eject outside the envelope meaning i'm too low to the ground i'm upside down um and when this thing blows me out it's going to blow me into the concrete well guess what you're out of the envelope. So they don't say that's a problem with the seat. I'm going to go to a different direction. You write about going beyond high performance. And only 0.01% of US military

pilots have worn the gold helmet in the Blue Angels. What do you think separates that from the 1% or even the 0.02%? Where is that envelope? And what is the 0.01 doing differently than the 0.02? Yeah. Great question. It's a nuance at that stage. Okay. And, um, I'll give you an example. So, you know, Navy fighter pilots, first off, we're all abnormal. I mean, you gotta be a little abnormal to want to do that. Um, uh, but you better be smart. And I don't mean just intellectually smart, right? You have to, um, you got it. Self-confidence matters, but self-confidence with humility. And so when we're looking for that 0.01%, whatever, um, we're looking not for the confidence. I got that. That's easy, right? I want someone who's humble. I want someone who's

thirsty to learn. I want somebody who wants to become a teacher, not a taker, right? We're training our replacements. This is a team sport, okay? So you got to be all in. I got to know that when your back's against the wall, and believe me, when it happens, you know it, okay? which decision are you going to make? Are you going to be about you? Are you going to be about the team? And, uh, you know, people can fake that up to a certain point. And then you just know, you know, I say there's three things is absolutely important with every team member. And that is, you got to connect the line, commit. Okay. Um, connection matters, human beings. All right. You know, we got to connect, you know, on this podcast, you know, either people are

connecting to me or not, that's up to them, but we got to connect as a human being first, right? Then you got to align. So, you know, what's your goal? We talked about center point. There's alignment tools. You got to build trust. But the third one is the most important. And that's commitment. Okay, what level of commitment are you bringing? And this is good in life, right? I mean, are you all in? Are you 100% there, right? And I will tell you that in my role, not just as a Blue Angel, but in combat, you know, I'm willing to give my life for my teammate. Now, we don't say that ahead of time. It's not cool, but you're willing to do it. And guess what? You know they are too. And that's kind of cool, right? And you don't even have to talk about it. So it's a thin margin between the best of the best. And bottom line is in naval aviation, just becoming a pilot is a challenge. Then you become a fighter pilot. That's more challenge. Then you fly jets off aircraft carriers. That's another level up, right?

So this is vertical development. Then you become an instructor pilot. You may go to Top Gun. You may go to the RAG. And then eventually from that group, we picked the Blue Angels. And I think in your journey, something I appreciated is it was just, it was your willingness to give someone a call. Oh, yeah.

few people are, which, which is a great way to get ahead, but it's, it's, it's one of those simple, but often forgotten methods. Yeah. It's beautiful. It's asking you shall receive, right? That's in scripture. All right. The point is, yeah, you, you can't be afraid to ask. Now, when you ask, you got to be smart, right? You got to be humble. You got to be smart. And, and, and, and here's what I've learned. If you want to, if you need something or want something first give it to someone else. Okay. This is what is ironic. Okay. But if I want to become a good investor, let's say the first thing I want to do then is I want to learn from somebody who already is right. So you may have to ask them, Hey, can you take me under your wing? But the, really the

best way to do that is start helping somebody else. We all have some knowledge, right? Can you help someone else in what they need? When you do that, you watch what happens. People will start helping you. You just, you can't be afraid to ask. I mean, I called the Pentagon when I had no business calling the Pentagon. And I got a leader who was just that, was willing to help. And it's mentorship, right? It's sharing your life experiences, not some textbook stuff. I'm sharing real experiences where decision-making, where judgment come in, because that's what investor is. So I'm going to go a little bit outside of investing, but staying focused on high performance organizations. One of the things you've written about in detail, and I think

businesses can learn from it, is how Blue Angels run effective meetings. You got to plan air shows where the show is pretty much the same, but the environment's going to be different. What do you think businesses can learn from the Blue Angels about maybe just running a better meeting? Oh yeah, 100%. Well, first off, I hate the word meeting. I mean, you better have a reason why you're doing something right. It's about connecting and aligning. That's what we're really talking about here. All right. And on the blues, really in the military, we do a really good job of what we call briefing. Briefing is you get together before an event and you plan it. Okay. Now, not by planning so much as this is my strategy. You're talking about the actual focus

of how you're going to execute that day or that mission, right? We get very detailed, but the point is you get people aligned. So for businesses, they usually do a pretty good job at this. Okay. Where the weak part is, because I've now spoken over 2000 organizations around the world is they don't do the most important piece and that is the debrief. Okay. But it's not just a debrief. I mean, the concept I can get, the concept is, okay, after the event, what did I learn? What went well? What we could do better? What are the decision points? Okay. Those are great. It's called after action review. What the Blue Angels do differently than any other team in the world and I'm out there teaching it is how to bring in this glad to be here. You see, you need

five dynamics. So if you can get, anyone who's listening to this, if you can get these five dynamics into your life, I guarantee you the results will increase. Okay. First is you need a safe environment. Okay. I'm talking not just physically safe environment. I'm talking psychologically safe environment. That means I have respect. I respect everybody. I don't care whose role it is. I don't care who the boss is. I don't care who the lead solo, I mean, I care enough where I'm aware of them, but I respect everyone, including my plane captain and everyone else. Okay. So respect is key. Second is you got to check your ego at the door. And this is really important for investing, but business, you know, I mean, do you need to be confident? Yeah, of course,

but I don't want an ego. Okay. And we are very clear that when we select people, it's about the we, not the I. So that's called humility. I'm looking for humility because I know you're good. That's not hard, right? The third thing is what I call laying on the table. This is real open and honest communication, okay? And we know that doesn't happen in business and life. What do you have? You have withholds. People are holding information back because they think it's a zero-sum game. They think of, oh, if I will get the promotion, then someone else does it. It's just the opposite. On Blue Angels, we're constantly training everybody. We're sharing our mistakes so someone else can learn from them. The fourth is accountability, but I find a better

word and that's personal responsibility. You got to have an ownership mentality. You got to own the outcome, not just your role. But the last one, and we started with this, is the glad to be here. You really got to bring in appreciation and gratitude into your life. Tell people why you're grateful. Acknowledge them. Don't be afraid to admit your same mistakes. Heck, I make a ton of mistakes. I still do, right? But I'm trying to learn from them. The glad to be here is the secret sauce. Bring that into your life and watch what happens. As always, people on the program may own stocks mentioned and The Motley Fool may have formal recommendations for or against, so don't buy or sell anything based solely on what you hear. I'm Ricky Mulvey. Thanks for listening.

We'll be back tomorrow.