What Investors Can Learn From the Blue Angels

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In this podcast, Motley Fool host Ricky Mulvey caught up with John “Gucci” Foley, a former lead solo pilot for the Blue Angels and the author of Fearless Success.

They discussed:

• How to find your “centerpoint” — in airshows and investing.
• What it’s like to sit on a multimillion-dollar sell options.
• And the importance of being “glad to be here.”

To catch full episodes of all The Motley Fool’s free podcasts, check out our podcast center. To get started investing, check out our quick-start guide to investing in stocks. A full transcript follows the video.

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This video was recorded on Oct. 01, 2023.

John Foley: You know what? An F-18 two miles out looks like a dot. So I got this dot coming at me in a mile every 4.5 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 mast because we’re blowing over sailboats. 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.

Ricky Mulvey: 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.

John Foley: 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. Ready to go.

Ricky Mulvey: Let’s do it. 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?

John Foley: 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. 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.

Ricky Mulvey: Yeah, and one of the things I noticed from reading your book, it’s a source of humility. 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 do or pretty much any question asked to you.

John Foley: Yeah. Nice job, Ricky. You’ve done your research. When you’re a newbie, we call him a newbie, and it’s a long selection process to get to become a Blue Angel pilot or just be part of the Blues. You’re right. For six weeks, your only response is glad to be here, boss. Now after you then get assimilated into the team and you get your position, then of course we’re really looking for your feedback.

Ricky Mulvey: Yeah. One thing your book focuses on and I know, well, I guess you would focus on is this idea of center points and finding a center point. I want to talk about how it’s important to pilots, but I also think it’s important to businesses and also to 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. First, what is the importance especially for a pilot to know what a center point is?

John Foley: Yeah, let’s talk about the Blues first, and then it’ll be obvious what the connection is to investing. 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. So it’s decision-making tool. On an air show, if you’ve ever been to one, you’ll see we got jets come in 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. 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, “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 build some checkpoints. How do I know that I’m either heading toward or away from my goal? 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. 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. We’re not moving. It’s just the opposite. We’re making 1,000 little corrections all the time.

Ricky Mulvey: Yeah, I would say in an air show, could be a white trailer. This is our meet up point when we’re going to fly by each other, 3-6 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? 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? I think a center point is a helpful way to think about that as well.

John Foley: 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. 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 that launch date, what’s going to happen, and you back up to it. There’s lots of ways to use this concept. The bottom line is a decision-making tool.

Ricky Mulvey: 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 a dynamic focus? How do pilots use it?

John Foley: Yeah. I would think about a term situational awareness, too, and this is important in investing. It’s important in life. 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? For example, as a Blue Angel pilot, if I’m coming at Thumper, my opposing solo, at 1,000 miles per hour closure, we’re going a mile every 4.5 seconds of closure. 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 missing me. So there’s this high trust that’s built in the team. In order to execute at that, an F-18 two miles out looks like a dot. So I got this dot coming at me at a mile every 4.5 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 mast because we’re blowing over sailboats. 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. When you’re having a day, 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 or it could be a good investment. The idea there is know the market, know your world, but also get very focused on what you’re trying to do.

Ricky Mulvey: Do you have any advice or strategies to practice and get better at that? I’ve heard one technique and I think it’s for eyesight. Basically, if you go outside, you find a very small focal point and then deliberately try to open up your field of view. What practices? What are your advice?

John Foley: It depends what level we want to get to. 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 colours. 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 it exactly. Football athletes know this, you visualize exactly what you want. You also visualize contingencies. What if something goes wrong? How am I going to react? You’ve already thought this through. All great athletes have done that. They’ve played the game well before they’re playing the game. 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. It’s easy to get lost, to get caught up in your next email, to 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 know how to do that.

Ricky Mulvey: This is outside I would say the course of investing, but I find interesting in these like 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.

John Foley: Exactly.

Ricky Mulvey: I’m curious. 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?

John Foley: It’s huge. Number 1, it’s easy to kill yourself. It’s easy to be stupid. 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. When you’re young and you’re learning, you can’t feel it. It’s just this big, powerful machine, 32,000 pounds of thrust. You’re just hanging on, maybe what the market feels like. But as you get more involved and as you get more reps, you start to realize, wait a minute, there’s a process here, and I got to get into that process. But more important, is the mindset. 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. Be aware. That’s the key. It’s awareness. The mental side, the planning is done before the event. When you use the athletes, you’re absolutely right. No one says, “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. 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. When you’re executing, you’re in a flow state. Now, here’s the key. You can’t stay in a flow state. You go in and out all the time. So you got to be able to modulate that with investing.

Ricky Mulvey: 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 practised in life-or-death situations or moments where they feel close to that edge and it brings relaxation to decisions in the real world.

John Foley: That’s good. I hadn’t thought of that in a while. I’ve come close to killing myself probably nine times. I travel a lot, I speak all over the world, and I’m on aeroplanes a lot. Sometimes I reflect back and I go, “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, where time slows down. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard about time compression. It feels like time slowing down. Maybe you know you’re in a car accident and some people experienced this. But I’ve experienced it flying. Here’s what actually I think happens. Your mind speeds up. It’s not about time slowing down. Time is a constant. What happens is your mind speeds up. You get very acutely aware of everything around you because our mind is so much more powerful than we think. The ability to tap into that resource, how you start your day, that’s a technique I can share with people. How you start your day matters. Are you living in fear? Are you worried about all these negative things that could happen? 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. 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.

Ricky Mulvey: Well, I guess what I was trying to go to is it’s learning how to practice in high-consequence situations.

John Foley: Nice.

Ricky Mulvey: 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, and things that aren’t quite that people are able to take 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.

John Foley: Forty million.

Ricky Mulvey: Forty million, right range. That’s the trick in finance is you always give yourself a big enough range to be right constantly. Zero to one billion dollars. Gucci, what is the training process like? What did they tell you about using the ejection seat? Because sure, they don’t want you using it haphazardly.

John Foley: 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. That is, don’t delay the ejection. If no kidding, and this is a good investment decision, too, don’t delay. When it’s time, it’s time. People who get killed delay the ejection. I’m talking tenths of a second now. Most people die because they get out of the ejection 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. You better have a little time. You can’t be inverted up at 50 feet. Just ping off the concrete. You got to know what you’re doing. 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 in 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 onto 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.

Ricky Mulvey: Maybe it’s a little different because in investing, we often find there’s a behavioral bias where people panic sell. In this case, 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’m thinking about it. It’s a serious decision and I appreciate you talking about the process of it. In your book, you also talk about and it’s brief. You mentioned that you’ve been in dogfights before. What’s it like to be in a dogfight?

John Foley: Oh, man, it’s a blast. We have different types. My favorite one is we call it knife fight. 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’re pulling, the other person is pulling. You’re trying to get position, but you can see them. You can see the airplanes right there. Those are the fun ones. I love kind of that stuff, and you rarely get there, by the way. Because nowadays, with all the beyond-visual-range weapons and systems and radars, we’re lobbing missiles. You don’t even see the person. That’s a different technique. It is a different approach to how to fight that. You got to learn both. You got to learn how to do both. But I think the key to go back to the ejection seat just real quick is that thing is there to save your life when there’s no other choices. But rarely does that just happen. Airplanes just don’t blow up. There’s a sequence of events that occur. You as a pilot need to get good at understanding those sequence of events and taking action before the last choice of an ejection. I’ve wanted to eject three times. All three times I was inside the ejection envelope, so I couldn’t. So I basically rode it out. That’s an interesting place to be because I’m saying, hey, I’m out of ideas here, but it’s too late. I’ve lived. That’s rare, to be honest with you. What it does is it makes you reflect back and you got to learn how to debrief. 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. What I do is, if I live, I reflect and I go, holy crap, why did I get there? You start to figure out the decision points you could have made earlier. That’s the key. Do you have a debrief process? I do, every day. I’m absolutely debriefing my business. I’m debriefing my life. I’m learning. I call it a learn, grow, give mentality. That’s what keeps you from having to pull that handle. You don’t want ever want to pull the handle, that’s a last-ditch thing.

Ricky Mulvey: What’s the ejection envelope?

John Foley: What that means is the seats are pretty cool now. 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. Once you pull that, it sets off some gas charges which actually ignite the rocket motor, 1.2 seconds, and it blows you out of the airplane. Now, some of my airplanes, you go right through the canopy. You saw on the original movie Top Gun, which I did the flying in, some of it, me and my buddies, that was a true story where Goose gets killed because of the canopy. That’s a true story. There’s different things. Some airplanes you got to blow the canopy first, then you eject, whatever. But the point is that when you pull that handle, you’re going, you are departing the airplane and I don’t care. If you’re going Mach 1, that’s a problem because you’re going to hit a wind blast. It’s going to rip your arms off sometimes, whatever. The point is it’s a last ditch. The envelope says if you eject under this airspeed with this altitude under this condition, you will survive, you have a probability of surviving. Actually, this is funny. You know what they call a successful ejection? What defines a successful ejection?

Ricky Mulvey: I want to guess it’s that you didn’t die.

John Foley: No, that’s what you would think. They don’t care if you die. The stats don’t care if you die. If you ejected in the envelope and the seat worked because you died 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, 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.

Ricky Mulvey: Go to a different direction. You write about going beyond high performance. 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? What is the 0.01 doing differently than the 0.02?

John Foley: Great question. It’s a nuance at that stage. I’ll give you an example. Navy fighter pilots, first off, we’re all abnormal. I mean, you got to be a little abnormal to want to do that. But you better be smart. I don’t mean just intellectually smart. You got it, self-confidence matters, but self-confidence with humility. When we’re looking for that 0.01%, whatever, we’re looking not for the confidence. I got that, that’s easy. 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. We’re training our replacements. This is a team sport. You got to be all in. I got to know that when your back is against the wall, and believe me, when it happens, you know it, which decision are you going to make? Are you going to be about you or are you going to be about the team? People can fake that up to a certain point, and then you just know. I say there’s three things that’s absolutely important with every team member, and that is you got to connect, align, commit. Connection matters.

Human beings, we got to connect. On this podcast, either people are connecting to me or not, that’s up to them, but we got to connect as human being first. Then you got align. 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. What level of commitment are you bringing? This is good in life. I mean, are you all in? Are you 100% there? I will tell you that in my role, not just as a Blue Angel, but in combat, 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. That’s cool. You don’t even have to talk about it. It’s a thin margin between the best of the best. 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. This is vertical development. Then you become an instructor pilot. You may go to Top Gun, you may go to the RAG. Then eventually from that group, we pick the Blue Angels.

Ricky Mulvey: I think in your journey, something I appreciated is it was your willingness to give someone a call.

John Foley: Oh, yeah.

Ricky Mulvey: Which is a great way to get ahead, but it’s one of those simple but often forgotten methods.

John Foley: It’s beautiful. It’s ask and you shall receive. That’s in scripture. The point is you can’t be afraid to ask. Now when you ask, you got to be smart. You got to be humble. You got to be smart. Here’s what I’ve learned. If you need something or want something, first give it to someone else. This is what is ironic. 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. You may have to ask them, hey, can you take me under your wing? But really the best way to do that is start helping somebody else. We all have some knowledge. Can you help someone else in what they need? When you do that, you watch what happens. People will start helping you. You can’t be afraid to ask. I mean, I called the Pentagon when I had no business calling the Pentagon. I got a leader who was just that, who was willing to help. It’s mentorship. 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.

Ricky Mulvey: 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 where you got to plan air shows, where the show is pretty much the same, but the environment is going to be different. What do you think businesses can learn from the Blue Angels about maybe just running a better meeting?

John Foley: Oh, yeah, 100%. Well, first off, I hate the word meeting. I mean, you better have a reason why you’re doing something, it’s about connecting and aligning. That’s what we’re really talking about here. 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. 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. We get very detailed, but the point is you get people aligned. For businesses, they usually do a pretty good job at this. Where the weak part is, because I’ve now spoken over 2,000 organizations around the world, is they don’t do the most important piece. That is the debrief. But it’s not just a debrief, I mean, the concept I can get, the concept is, after the event, what did I learn? What went well? What we could do better? What are the decision points? 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. Anyone who’s listening to this, if you can get these five dynamics into your life, I guarantee you the results will increase. First is you need a safe environment. 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. Respect is key. Second is you got to check your ego at the door. This is really important for investing, but business. I mean, do you need to be confident? Of course, but I don’t want an ego. We are very clear that when we select people, it’s about the “we”, not the “I”. That’s called humility. I’m looking for humility because I know you’re good. That’s not hard. The third thing is what I call lay it on the table. This is real open and honest communication. 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 doesn’t. It’s just the opposite. On the 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. 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.

Ricky Mulvey: 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 and we’ll be back tomorrow.

Ricky Mulvey has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Apple. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

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