No Barriers Podcast Episode 136: 500 mph with former Blue Angels pilot John Foley

John Foley:
If I'm operating from fear, and there's sometimes, it's important to know, like it's easy to kill yourself. Climbing, flying jets, that's not hard. What's hard is to be aware of the situation. So, I like to put a nuance in there, Erik, and that's about being scared. I'm okay with being scared. I'm scared all the time. Scared to me means I'm aware, I'm present. I know there's difficulty and I'm aware of it. If I'm complacent, that's what I got to worry about.

Erik Weihenmayer:
It's easy to talk about the successes, but what doesn't get talked about enough is the struggle. My name is Erik Weihenmayer. I've gotten the chance to ascend Mount Everest, to climb the tallest mountain in every continent, to kayak the Grand Canyon, and I happen to be blind. It's been a struggle to live what I call a no barriers life, to define it, to push the parameters of what it means. Part of the equation is diving into the learning process and trying to illuminate the universal elements that exist along the way. In that unexplored terrain between those dark places we find ourselves in summit, exists a map. That map, that way forward is what we call no barriers.

Didrik Johnck:
Didrik Johnck here, producer of the No Barriers Podcast. Happy 2022 listeners. Our first conversation of this new year is with a former Navy jet pilot, an 18 year journey that began after a visit to an air show as a young boy, piqued when he was selected to join the Elite Blue Angels Squadron. How did he get there? What happened after that? What lessons did he learn along the way? And what discoveries does he continue to make today? Join Erik and Jeff for this high energy chat with John Foley.

Erik Weihenmayer:
Hey, everybody. Welcome to our No Barriers podcast. Hey Jeff, thanks for joining me as a co-host, and John, this is so exciting to have you. I'm just so excited because you and I got to meet up and Vail at a retreat, and we had some coffee, and you were so nice to talk to my dad who was a Marine. He did a couple tours in Vietnam. He flew A-4 Skyhawks. AI was so excited, and I know that's probably super annoying to have to talk to people's family members because you only have a little bit amount of time and you...

John Foley:
Actually, Erik, not to interrupt you that made my whole day. And not only being with you, but having a chance to connect with your dad at a heart level, that was very powerful. Thank you for that.

Erik Weihenmayer:
Sure. Yeah, me too. It was really awesome. It made my dad's year, not his day. Connecting at a heart level, that's like, maybe that's ... I wasn't even thinking about this, but I was kind of flirting with this idea of, being in the military, being a blue angel, I could imagine that your heart gets left behind because you have to be perfect. You have to be amazing. You're flying six inches apart from each other.

John Foley:
18.

Erik Weihenmayer:
I just imagine that the heart piece might almost get in the way.

John Foley:
No, actually, Erik, it's just the opposite. I'm thinking about climbing. It's not just physical, right? It's the mental side and the emotional side, probably is, you'll have to tell me, but in flying and with the blues, I like to say you needed to connect the heart and the head because it wasn't enough to be just in your head. Yes, there's process, there's procedures. I mean, when you're flying 18 inches from a 22 ton jet at 500 miles per hour, you got to be focused. I'm thinking about you hanging on to a lift, right? You have to be focused, but if your heart isn't in it, if you're not doing it for what I call a purpose larger than self, then it's not the same. I actually think most of my flying was emotional. Most of my flying was the joy of pushing yourself to absolute limits and connecting back to why you're doing that.

Jeff:
I'm just, I'm trying to get my head around that though, because in a way, I think maybe we frame things up to see its either clinical precision or its emotion love, and sort of heart. Maybe we as humans sort of divide those. I'm a emergency room PA. I've been doing trauma for a long time. I feel like when I'm in the middle of a code, I pull my heart away. Maybe I don't, I don't know, but I pull my heart away and just focus clinically as to what's going on. I'm interested in how you can combine those things in that split second. I'm not sure if most people can get their heads around what that looks like.

John Foley:
Oh, I like what you're saying, Jeff. I'm starting to get what you and Erik are talking about. I think I was looking at it as a bigger timeframe. Before we flew, we briefed, and after we flew, we debriefed, and that's a whole different emotional and intellectual episode than the actual physical. I'm in the jet, my opposing solo's coming at me at a thousand miles per hour closure. I know I need to execute on this command. Ready, hit it. Boom. Full stick deflection, roll, ready, hit it, roll. That part of the maneuver for that 18 seconds is absolutely what you just talked about. You're in the zone. You're reacting based on your training. You're you're in that focused state.

John Foley:
But what's interesting is that if you expand that time out, because in between each maneuver, we have communication. We're talking to each other. There's a bigger show. So, I was thinking of the bigger picture of the flying.

Jeff:
I see.

John Foley:
Yeah, that's the difference.

Jeff:
Yeah. So, it's that front end and maybe the backend, the pre and the post is where the heart really truly has to exist. Because you can't do the middle part without the pre and the post, right? Is that ...

John Foley:
I like that.

Jeff:
That's maybe what the difference is. Yeah, I got you. Okay. You do, in a way, you have to, I don't know, maybe you have to suspend the gushy parts because you've done all that hard work. It exists. Now you can go straight precision, straight clinical once you're in that moment. All right. Now I'm understanding. I got you.

Erik Weihenmayer:
Yeah. You're not having debriefs where you say like, "Okay, let's talk about our feelings and sing kumbaya."

John Foley:
Right. Well, both. I mean, Erik, on the debrief, we start on the Blue Angels with a feeling statement. We actually do what we call a general safe. Generally, how did I feel? But then it gets very specific. Now, what's interesting is, as I was just thinking about the evolution of a trigger, I remember climbing in the jet. In the briefing room, you're going through their procedures, very scripted. Even the, if you've ever seen a briefing of the Blue Angels, the boss's tone of his voice is exactly what we're going to experience together. Then you climb into the, we call it a water wagon, but you climb into the vehicle that's going to take you out to the jet.

John Foley:
You feel the crowd. There's, could be hundreds of thousands of people, you're waving to the kids. There's a lot of emotion in there. At some point, you've got to snap out of that and snap into pure focus. I used a trigger. By a trigger, I mean a positive trigger that told myself, okay, that's done. That's the crowd part. I'll get back there, if I'm still alive, I'll sign some autographs. If I'm dead, I'm dead. But the point is that I used the canopy coming down. When that canopy came down, I'd be curious to see what you guys use, and you felt the canopy lock.

John Foley:
It's actually really cool because the ECS, the environmental control system, it almost feels like a vacuum. It goes, woo. And you just go, okay, I'm in the zone. I'm not going to be distracted by the fight I got with my spouse earlier this morning or about the kids that are waiting there. That stuff completely leaves your mind and you're right into the task.

Jeff:
All right. Well, then I want to ask you a little bit more about that debrief because that's something that I'm ... You guys have a persona and it's tough. It's perhaps like you have to have this veneer that exists to keep you in that pocket. But what's surprising to me is you say the first thing on your debrief is you come at each other with something you feel. Not, you were off by one degree or 0.1 degree. It's how you feel. Have there been situations where either you were not as precise as you knew you should have been, or perhaps one of your teammates was, and did you ... When you call them out, because you did all that front load work of, I really care about you, you're my colleague and I love you, how do you do that effectively when you call someone you out and say, "You screwed up," but without doing it in a threatening way?

John Foley:
A couple of things. I don't think I ever said to my colleague, I love you, on the Blue Angels, but they knew it. Here's the difference. They knew it. Then the debrief, what you're specifically asking about, which I think is really critical, is we go through stages, right? So, the idea of calling somebody out is not the first stage. The Blue Angels, I'm going to talk to you about debrief, how we did it on the Blues, it's slightly different than how I did it on my fighter squadrons or how they do it in Top Gun. Those are much more take the who out of it, be very of what happened, where were the decision points? What are we going to do going forward? What's the pluses? What's the minuses?

John Foley:
In the Blue Angels, we did things a little bit differently. We started with this, what I call general safe. This is what it was, everybody, we ran around the table, and it started with the boss. Whoever's the leader got to speak first. They said, generally, here's what I thought about the evolution. To me, that's a feeling statement. I liked it. It went well today. Or, you know what? I hated it, it sucked. The point is, I want to know just your general feeling. That's just a one sentence. It's not a long diatribe, right? Then the other thing you got a chance to do, and this is very unique with the Blue Angels, is you got to admit your own mistakes first.

John Foley:
It wasn't about calling out somebody yet. The very first thing we did was we said, and I was off here, or I was out of parameters on the loop, break cross. You got a chance to let the whole, we call it, lay it on the table, let the whole team know that A, you're number one, aware that you have made a mistake. B, that it's out of parameters, so you get to decide as an organization what's in parameters and what's out. Because a lot of times you can be off but you're still within parameters. It builds confidence, and your teammates go, okay. Because they probably know it anyhow.

John Foley:
But you get a chance to voice that. Here's what's interesting. We go around the table and everybody first gets a chance to say that, the general safe. You don't want to take more than a minute. This goes quick. Then we actually allow the support officers, so my maintenance officer, my doc, they get to do the same thing. They get to talk about what they thought, and then anything that they need to do that's a safety, a safety's out of parameters, hopefully you don't have a lot of those. You don't want a whole bunch of safeties. Then after that, and I would say that's more the touchy feely part. Then we go into a very scripted, watch the tape, talk about little things. If someone missed something, then you point it out to them.

Jeff:
Okay. Yeah, because that would be, it's like, what if you go around and do the general feel, and a guy's like, God doesn't own it? Or maybe he didn't realize it. Maybe he didn't understand he was out of parameter, right?

John Foley:
See, that's a big difference. Because think about when you're teaching someone to climb. I want to know first off, are they even aware? See, that's more important to me because I want to know if they're aware. If they're aware, usually it's usually like, they're just not aware. That's the training part, as compared to trying to hide something. Yeah.

Jeff:
Yeah.

Erik Weihenmayer:
John, you guys were talking about these parameters, but how big of a can you make? I know that I've never achieved perfection in terms of, like I'll say I'm speaking in front of a group or something, I'll get off the stage and I'll be like, oh my God, I screwed up eight times. My manager, Skyler, was always like, "Dude, the audience would've never known. All that's inside your brain. Nobody would know that you screwed up."

Jeff:
Yeah, or kayaking, right? You kayaked the Grand Canyon, you needed perfection. You didn't get it for all you know.

Erik Weihenmayer:
I've had a few perfect runs, but a lot of them are just reacting and responding to chaos. But is it similar to that?

John Foley:
No, 100%. I'm so glad there's such a similarity here, and that's why I've been looking forward to talking with you is we've never flown a perfect air show. Never will because of the nuances in it. To answer your question, from the ground, we've had spectators, they go, "Looks like you guys aren't even moving." Then you get in the cockpit and you see we're moving like crazy. But we're only moving, hopefully between three and six inches, not feet. Right. The eye can't see that, but as you're learning, you're moving a lot.

John Foley:
Then, as you get better, we actually try to fly within a three inch circle on the airplane, because here's the really dynamic part is, it's a three dimensional air show. It's not straight and leveled. You're upside down, you're rolling. So, you're trying to keep your airplane within a three inch circle on the other airplane. I'm okay to move within that three inch circle. Maybe when you're learning, it's afoot. As long as I'm staying within those parameters, and then I'm in parameters, I'm moving around, but you just can't tell.

John Foley:
Now, if I get outside of those parameters, let's say I move three feet and I don't clear the formation, but when you move that far off, you have to get out of the way because you're not stable. I have to come up on the radio, and I got to say six is clear. Then you actually back out, you stabilize and you come back in. If I were to move that far and did not clear the formation, that's a safety. Not that I was out of parameters that I didn't clear. If I actually got out parameters and I recognized it, and I did the right procedure, not a safety.

Jeff:
Okay, so let's back up a little bit. You've ascended to this high level, the highest level. I think if you were to ask Erik and I, when we were 15 years old, do you want to ascend to the highest climbing level and climb Everest? It's like, oh, that would be cool, but geez, that's a pipe dream. And then the work goes in and you start to realize that yo won't know unless you go, you won't know unless you tried. If we back up to your adolescence and you started your training, and someone would've told you you're going to be a Blue Angel when you were like 20-years-old, you would've been obviously happy, but would that have been believable or were you just, in your mind, fast tracking and you knew exactly where you were going and how you were going to get there?

John Foley:
Well, I was the second one. Yeah, and let me tell you the story, is my dad was an army officer and he took me to an air show when I was 12-years-old. I still remember this to this day as we're talking, I can visualize it. It was in Newport, Rhode Island place called Kwanzaa Point. I remember being at that air show that day. There's a lot of crowds trying to get in there, the parking. You finally get to the air show, and you can feel it. If you've ever been at an air show, it's visceral, right? I mean, you got the energy of the crowd, the noise of the jets going overhead. You can actually smell the smoke oil in the air. I remember that.

John Foley:
I remember it was something just clicked. I think about you guys, when you decided, I want to climb, something clicked in my heart. Not just my head. Here's the big difference. It was an emotional click that said, I'm going to do that now. Here's what's interesting. I didn't say that day, I hope to do that. Oh, it would be kind of cool to do that. I remember thinking to myself, I'm going to do that.

Jeff:
Going to do that.

John Foley:
I'm going to do that. Yeah. I know it'll happen. Now, it's also, that's the power of being naive too, is that I had no idea what it was going to take. I sure didn't know that I was going to fail as many times as I did, and all the obstacles that were going to come in the way, but I truly had that belief in my heart that, at least it was possible. If I put the work in and the effort in, I could achieve that. It took me 18 years, and I did. But I do remember that distinct moment. It didn't mean I didn't question myself in between. It didn't mean I didn't get sidetracked into, hey, I want to play professional football or something like that. But it was a dream that I remember in my heart,

Erik Weihenmayer:
How do you elevate people's belief levels? Because I know that's a big part of your book, talking about how to elevate those belief levels for people doing all kinds of activities and pursuits.

John Foley:
No, it's great. I think the first thing, Erik, that I've learned over time is I like to say there's two beliefs. There's limiting beliefs and there's liberating beliefs. Now, you can do it however you want. To me, limiting beliefs are fear based. There's fear out there. Heck, there's a ton of fear out there in our lives all the time. First thing I want to acknowledge is, if I have a fear-based belief, what's that causing me, it's usually stuckness. Think about it in your own life. It causes stuckness.

John Foley:
To me, a liberating belief is where that opportunity. That's where you go, okay, what is it going to take to get to where I want to go? Just what you asked is, how do you actually elevate that belief level? First, is just being aware, is am I operating from fear? If I'm operating from fear, and there's sometimes ... It's important to know, it's easy to kill yourself. Climbing, flying jets, that's not hard. What's hard is to be aware of the situation.

John Foley:
I like to put a nuance in there, Erik, and that's about being scared. I'm okay with being scared. I'm scared all the time. Scared to me means I'm aware, I'm present. I know there's difficulty and I'm aware of it. If I'm complacent, that's what I got to worry about. Because that's where I'm going to make a mistake, right?

Erik Weihenmayer:
And what's an example of a fear-based belief that maybe you have had that you had to struggle with or work through?

John Foley:
Oh, well, tons of them. To me, the easiest ones or relationships, whether they're personal or not. It's like, oh my God, this person's mad at me. This isn't working. To me, that's operating from a fear based mentality, as compared to, wait a minute. There's a lot of opportunity here. There's a lot of good in that person, in this situation. Then the same thing in fear, let's use business as an example is, am I going to start my new digital course? By the way, I don't know if you guys have built any yet, but we're starting to build a digital course, so I'm glad to be here in gratitude.

John Foley:
But what hits me is, oh, okay, well, do I have the right personnel behind it? Do we have the right setup? And that kind of stuff. To me, those can be fear based, they can hold you back, as compared to just saying, I'm going to try this, I'm going to be smart about it, but I'm going to try it. That's kind of the ... I don't know. Did that answer your question?

Erik Weihenmayer:
Yeah, for sure. One of the things I do as a hobbyist is that I play a guitar. Stop. And I love it. I love it because I'm in front of groups all the time blah, blah, blah. I just want to do something that's personal. Anyway, got talked into doing recitals, and it is so funny because I get so freaking nervous in front of a group of 50 parents, and I'm surrounded by like sixth graders. We're all playing our guitar.

Jeff:
You got nervous, you and I have known each other for decades, you got nervous a few months ago playing in front of me.

Erik Weihenmayer:
My hands sweat, my hand shake.

Jeff:
You can't move your hands. Yeah.

Erik Weihenmayer:
I lose my sort of my micro coordination.

Jeff:
Yes.

Erik Weihenmayer:
Now, you can't do that when you're a Blue Angel. You have to be ... What's crazy is though I practiced and practiced and practiced and know these songs, it's just, when I get in front of the group, it's when everything sort of falls apart, I forget what I'm supposed to do. It doesn't ...

John Foley:
Erik, I got to a question for you.

Erik Weihenmayer:
Yeah, so what ... Analyze me here.

John Foley:
No, no. Well, I was going to ask, speaking, I mean, you and I are both out there, and Jeff too, at the highest levels. Do you get the same, is that the same for you in front of a big audience?

Erik Weihenmayer:
No, I get very excited. I get energy through my fingertips, but I don't get paralyzed by fear by speaking.

Jeff:
The difference though is 10,000 hours.

Erik Weihenmayer:
Yes.

Jeff:
You have been up on stage for countless hours and thousand, tens of thousands of people, but you're shit at guitar right now, but you're getting better. But you put in like 200 hours, not 10,000 hours. So, you know you're not ... Your brain and your hands aren't that dialed in yet. That's a fact.

Erik Weihenmayer:
How do you handle that, John? Because now that you're not flying, aren't there some activities you're like, I suck at this?

John Foley:
Oh yeah, 100%.

Jeff:
Like what? What does John Foley suck at?

John Foley:
Oh, music, just what we're talking about. Music. I had a team briefing this morning. We brief every Monday mornings on the week and stuff. We were talking about everyone else on my team is a musician in some way, shape, or form. I'm not. I actually suck at it. I initially tried to do drums, and I was just talking about this, and that is, I wonder why. Part of it is because I haven't put the work in. JB, you're exactly right. I just said, I bet you, I could be decent, but do I have the natural skills to be a musician? I don't know. Because I've never put the work in.

John Foley:
But yeah, so that's for sure. As I think about though, with the jets, and maybe this is a good metaphor with your climbing, is we don't start as a Blue Angel. You don't start flying 36 inches, 18 inches from another jet. You're a student pilot, man. You're just trying to survive the airplane. You're just trying to do the checklist. You're just to land the jet, and then, it's a definitely step by step approach and lots of hours go into it.

John Foley:
You learn first off, your emergency procedures, you practice on simulators. You finally get in the airplane and that's totally different. Guess what? You're flying small prop planes. Well, they go slow. So, they allow you more time, and then you just start, just like you, you just keep upping the game, where now you start flying jets, then you start flying faster jets. Then you start landing jets on aircraft carriers. Then you start dog fighting. All of a sudden, as the complexity goes up, so do your skills.

John Foley:
At some point, you become a Blue Angel, and we take our pilots from the instructor ranks. Then you start all over again because you've just raised the game. No kidding, 300%.

Jeff:
Let's back up just again. I keep wanting to back up just a little bit, but I've just got to understand this. When you were going through that process, John's like 12 years old and he's committed, I'm going to be a pilot, and all ... Now you're going to be the best pilot, you're going to be this best pilot. And then you're going to be the best of the best. There has to have been a time during that process that you got completely shit on, or you were like, oh, well ... Or somebody said, "Forget it, Foley. It's not happening. You're not doing this. I don't care how bad you want it. It's not happening. You're not good enough."

Erik Weihenmayer:
Or you get internal with yourself and you start making mistakes or something, like how pitchers in pro baseball get in a slump or something.

Jeff:
Yeah, or you say, I'm not good enough. Not that I'm telling you, you're not good enough. I'm not good enough. What was that like for you? There's a moment that crystallized for you like that?

John Foley:
Oh yeah. Oh, it's simple for me. So, landing jets on aircraft carrier is truly, probably the most challenging thing a pilot can do. I was going to say a normal pilot, and then I realized there's no such thing as normal carrier pilots. I mean, it's just not meant to be. I mean, you got this jet, it's coming in about 145 miles per hour. You're landing on a runway that happens to be a boat. This boat is moving up and down. It's moving away from you. It's at an angle. I mean, just take the complexity of what some people would think would be hard, which is landing an airplane, which I don't think so.

John Foley:
Once you learn how to do it, it's easy. But you add in bad weather on a ship. I'm telling you, it's probably like climbing whatever the roughest pitch you went up. The idea is you got to work way up to it. Anyhow, the bottom line is, to answer your question, JB, is I've been doing decent. I'm in my jet training, it's called A-7 Corsairs. I had done really well in all the other phases, and this is the last phase.

John Foley:
Once you finish this, you actually are going to deploy. I was supposed to deploy on the midway, which was a four deployed carrier. So, you have to do well in your landing grades. I remember my daytime went well. I'm coming down for the shoot for my first night landing, and it goes okay. Second night landing, I miss all the wires, it's called the bolter. Now I get scared. So, coming around, and I go down again a third time, bolter again. Now I'm getting more scared, and the brain's talking to you, right? Like, oh man, you got to get your act together. What's wrong? I come down, I get waved off. That's even worse. That means you're not in position. I land the jet after that and now you-

Jeff:
That's three times in a row, three misses on the same ...

John Foley:
Yeah. Three times in a row, I do not get the wires, which is ...

Jeff:
Oh, shoot.

John Foley:
Then the fourth time, I was ugly, but at least I caught the wire. They shut me down. I'll never forget the radio call. 301, taxi you over to the six pack, shut it down. That's not good. I climb out of the jet. I'm not qualified. I go down there. We have a debrief. The Navy's really good about debriefs, and the LSO, landing signal officer, walked in that day and he goes, it was very clear, he goes, Gucci, Gucci's my call sign. He says, "You know those orders to the midway? Gone. They're gone. You are not going in the midway." Then he looked at me very clearly and he said, "I'm going to give you one more chance. I'm going to send you out tomorrow night and you better show me something. Otherwise, it's over."

John Foley:
I mean, that's what saying. He was saying two and a half years of pilot training, all the stuff I've been through, if you can't land a jet on an aircraft carrier at night, you're no good to the Navy. Go join the Air Force. Okay?

Jeff:
Oh man.

John Foley:
Sorry for that little blurb, but that's-

Jeff:
My cousin wouldn't want to fight you for that one. You're probably right.

John Foley:
That's basically what he was saying. I remember, I had to think that night had to do some self-reflection and not get overwhelmed, and just realize, you know what? I have been training. I have the skills to do this. It's really about overcoming the mental side of the equation. It wasn't the physical side. Once I did that, I went out, I did okay. I didn't do great, but at least I finished. And then I just kept trying to improve on.

Erik Weihenmayer:
Over time, you talk about focus, right? You have this interesting mindset around focus and how it's really ... Is it hard to multitask, or we think we're multitasking but we're really not, we're really focused on one thing at a time? How do you increase that sense of focus?

John Foley:
Yeah. I'm with you a hundred percent. I've been told, I've heard this lots of times that the human brain cannot multitask. We actually can only focus on one thing at one time, but because it's like a movie, you have different frames, we're seeing things in frames. I was actually told this that we have 65 frames a second. When I snap my fingers, 65 frames hit your eyeballs. I had a better snap the first time, whatever. I thought on about that for a while, and I went, you know what? That is what's happening to me in the jet. I'm actually seeing things in frames. They just run by so quickly that I'm seeing a continuum. To answer your question, is I definitely believe we can't multitask. What we can do is focus.

John Foley:
I think the first part of focus is you got to block out the distractions. Block out your own mind. Even like right now, as we're talking, am I thinking about, well, when is this over? I got this meeting after this. I have all this. Or am I just present with you right now going, hey, this is the best, this is the best thing I can do is to be present. I've taught myself to block out distractions. I do that through meditation in the mornings. I get better at focusing my mind, knowing that I'm not perfect. I'll go off there to get very clear on how long I can hold my focus because I need a break. I'll give you an example. Let's make it real.

John Foley:
Thumper and I, two opposing solos. This is the highest level of the Blue Angels. Objective, come at each other at a thousand miles per hour closer. We're going to cross within a wingspan, right? We're doing a mile every nine seconds. Every nine seconds, so you know when it's fast, when telephone poles go by so quick, it's like you're in a car going a hundred miles an hour looking down at the white dotted line, you've ever done that? I know Erik, you don't always see this, okay. I get that. But for JB and I, the shit goes by quickly, right?

John Foley:
All of a sudden, telephone poles are going by quickly. So, you have to have the ability to slow it down, and I slow it down in my mind. And then I execute on that, Gucci's clear, Thumper's clear, and then guess what happens? 18 seconds, it takes nine seconds for the hit to happen, and then we have a clear for nine seconds. And then what happens? I take a break. I go Mo, what did you see? And now my mind, I'm out of that heightened state of awareness, and I actually drop down a state, check out the three dimensional world, and then I can pull myself back in.

Erik Weihenmayer:
I got my accelerated free fall license as a civilian to skydive. At first, you're like, I wouldn't say you black out, but everything goes by so fast. It's hard to even remember exactly what happened, but in kayaking over 10 or 12 years, now and then, I would feel time slow down, and I could actually focus on my heartbeat. I could sense the space between my heartbeats.

John Foley:
Wow.

Erik Weihenmayer:
I could sense my breath. And time actually did slow down. Is that part of the process of being focused? Like instead of things going by so quick and your awareness is pretty small, your awareness increases and time slows down so that you're aware of more capacity at one moment.

John Foley:
Yeah, you got it. I think what you're describing, because I felt that so many times too, is the result of the focus. I think that's when you know you're in the zone, but here's the other thing, the minute you start realizing that, you're now losing focus, right?

Erik Weihenmayer:
Yeah, you're losing.

Jeff:
Yeah.

Erik Weihenmayer:
You thunk yourself out of it.

John Foley:
It's a double edged sword. Absolutely. But you're exactly right, that's exactly the zone I'm in when I'm in a maneuver. What I think the key is, is can you call that up on demand? Can you tell yourself, okay, I've got something very challenging to do. Maybe it's a deliverable on work. It doesn't have to be this intense stuff that the three of us are doing. Can you actually call your own mind on demand to be in that state, and for how long can you hold it? But that's exactly right, Erik. That's what I was feeling. It comes with practice and it comes with the awareness.

Jeff:
Well, I guess the question I would have is, it's kind of twofold. I know you do and facilitate, you do personally, but also facilitate a lot of breathwork and meditation with clients, and you do it yourself. I'm going to guess ask, were you doing breathwork and meditation when you were with the Blue Angels or is this-

John Foley:
No.

Jeff:
You weren't. Okay.

John Foley:
Okay. See, that's why this is what's ... Great. Keep going JB. You're on to a really interesting point.

Jeff:
Yeah. I think Erik also, and I, have had many, many conversations because we practice as well, but I wish I would've had that skillset back when things were really, really hectic, whether it was climbing or life or anything else, but I didn't really know it. I think the hack now is that we're realizing you can get to that flow state through finding that practice and being centered. Don't you wish you would've had that back when you were doing all these crazy maneuvers. How has it impacted your life? And then, I guess maybe reflect on that flow focus that you had then and how now that perhaps has given you the ability to be able to get in that meditative pocket now.

John Foley:
Yeah. You've really tapped into it, and I think this is good news for everybody, right? Is that what I think the states that we got into, no one taught me how to visualize. No one has to teach you how to visualize. You know it, every kid does it better than us. They probably visualize dreams way better than we did, at least I remember as a little kid doing that. Then the environment, I think what's critical about flow states is the higher you challenge yourself, you increase the environment, and you guys have to tell me if this is true in climbing, but it isn't flying, is one of two things are going to happen. Either you step up to that challenge, okay? Or you're going to quit, or you're going to move on to something else. That's what's really interesting about, really the military as a whole, but definitely the Blue Angels, is we just keep raising the bar.

John Foley:
Sometimes that bar is raised by weather. It's not even in your control. So, you can decide if you're going to step up or not. The cool part is, what you were just talking about, JB, is I think by going through that discipline way of learning and then being successful at it and not being successful, learning from your failures and then going back in, it's all resiliency. We learned how to do this without anybody ever teaching it to us. That's the beautiful part is why we can give back now to so many people. Because I said the same thing. What if I knew this back when I was on the team? And can I share that knowledge now? The bottom line is I knew how it worked, I knew how to do it, but I didn't know why it worked now. I know why it works and that allows you to do the how.

Jeff:
Yeah. Well, so, how do you teach that though? I mean, there are people who can teach breathing and meditation effectively, that have been doing it for years and years. Do you sort of put a flavor of that pocket into your personal practice as well as the way you teach it? Or is it different? How do you sprinkle some Blue Angel pixie dust on top of the way that you present that pocket that we're all trying to find?

John Foley:
Yeah. I think that's so critical. For me, I do it with video. Fortunately, I have a lot of video of me in the briefing rooms and the debriefing rooms and actual flying. So, I can visually show people what we're talking about, and they get to see it. I think, even more important, is in the briefing room, if you have ever been to one of my presentations, you see, I take people into our preparation. We call it a brief room, but really, it's mental preparation before we go flying. So, you get to see us closing our eyes. You get to see us visualizing. You get to hear the boss going through the cadence of the maneuvers, where he'll say, up we go and, and you can hear why is that G, go? Because we've already each other on the G of go.

John Foley:
When I start to hear the G of the go, I'm starting to push back on my stick. I'm not waiting to see if the boss's airplane moves or not. That's called reactionary. I'm going to be proactive. I'm going to actually have a voice command and I'll actually move. Now, do I get it perfect? Usually not. Sometimes I'm a little bit ahead, sometimes a little bit behind, but I'm talking inches instead of feet. The bottom line is that you got ... I believe, in all our jobs, we got to paint the picture of what the extreme looks like first. What does it look like in this environment? And then reverse engineer, what are you thinking about? What is your preparation?

John Foley:
Then you reverse engineer why it worked, and then put it in a way that other people can access it. Because I'm not trying to teach people to be a Blue Angel pilot. What I am trying to teach is show you, is how to be a better team member, how to focus better, how to be prepared, how to be more open and honest in your debriefs, how to lay it on the table so that your teammates can grow and you can grow. Those are the skills that we can learn.

Jeff:
Okay. Yeah. Again, I feel like current, it's almost become in a way, mainstream life hacks when it comes to meditation and breathwork and cold therapy, sauna therapy, all these things that I feel like if Jeff and John and Erik would've had 20 years ago, we may even been able to be better, and be more, I guess, in tune with what ... I feel, like my kid's 16, and he's a pretty high level athlete now. I'm happy for him that he's got these opportunities to be able to sort of plum, just get in that pocket more than I think we would've had the opportunity to. Let's take that even to the next step for somebody who's perhaps not a climber or an aspiring pilot or an athlete, or in any way, but is someone who gets up, puts their pants on, brushes their teeth, and goes, and knuckles down at work for a 10 hour shift.

Jeff:
How would you, I guess, connect with that person on the benefits of finding that pocket and that flow and then how it could affect them or impact them greatly with their whole environment that they operate in?

John Foley:
Yeah. I think you know, key point here is you have to be able to ... I think you've had to have lived something at the nuance level to really be able to teach it at the highest levels. What we're talking about, I don't think you can learn from a book. You can't necessarily hack it from somebody else. That's a start. I get it. There's fundamentals that work like breathwork, like my morning routine, what do I do when I wake up in the morning? These fundamentals are incredibly important because that's what we all learn from, we got to have a process, but I think the difference when you're talking to somebody who's actually done it and done it at a high level. I can't teach climbing right now. I could read up on it. I could find out, okay, these are how I prepare and all this, but all it takes me is one minute listening to you, or Erik, and I realize, these guys have done it. They know the nuance.

John Foley:
I think that's important in anything we're learning. Whether it's meditation, whether it's learning to take your game to a whole new level. Learn from people who have done it, and there's a combination of process and mindset.

Jeff:
All right. Then the other thing that occurs to me is, as I've taken the deeper dive on the Gucci platform, is this other little side note that I wouldn't have guessed. You surprised me in so many different ways, but I wouldn't imagine that glad to be here, other than just the realization like, holy, man, I lived through some things. I mean, that would be the obvious sort of reach on that. Like, glad to be here. Yeah, I lived through some, and here I am, and now I'm really grateful to be present, but there's more to it than that. Right?

John Foley:
Yeah. Well, look at ... See the sleeve there, glad to be here. This is really the ethos of what we're talking about. I'll be honest with you, JB. I didn't realize what I realize now, how powerful that really was. I think, when I joined the team, and at the end of your comments, everybody said, "Glad to be here." It was some of those things that you talk about. Some days you're just glad to be alive, but rarely, it meant that. What it really meant at that moment was I'm really appreciative to be part of a team like this. I'm appreciative to have this opportunity in my life, to do things that most people don't get a chance to do, but more importantly, to benefit others. That's what it meant while I was a Blue Angel. It's taken on a whole new ethos since then.

John Foley:
What I realized with all science that's out there on gratitude and appreciation is just how powerful that mindset is for performance, how you can actually increase performance with this mindset. For me, the glad to be here has really been the essence of what I've been learning about and trying to teach for the rest of my life here. I break it down to four things, glad in this statement, first off means, that's to be grateful, to be appreciative. We all know the science behind appreciation and gratitude, how it changes the way your brain thinks, the neurons fire and all that.

John Foley:
To be, in my opinion, is the future state. It's what Shakespeare was talking about when he says, to be or not to be. We get a choice of how we want to perceive a situation. And here is in the present moment, right? To be present with you guys right now. What I've learned is, it's like two sides of the same coin, operational excellence, process, briefs, debriefs, preparation, focus, trust, and then you add in this glad to be here mindset. Now you have breakthrough performance. And we have a framework that we teach about that.

Erik Weihenmayer:
Does the glad to be here, the gratitude somehow abate or change the game on the pressure of high performing people? You know what I mean? Because there's a lot of pressure out there not to make a mistake. Does the gratitude negate that or overtake that in some way?

John Foley:
Yeah. Well, absolutely. But I would say first off, Erik, we were making tons of mistakes flying. They're just small. Right?

Erik Weihenmayer:
Yes.

John Foley:
And you learn from them. For me, that's why the power of the debrief is ... I want a learning loop. I constantly want to learn, and I don't want to beat myself up in the learning. I want to appreciate it. So, yes, I think that's the glad to be here. What it does is, let's take it as a personal situation. Let's say something challenges you, and it's a challenge. Maybe it's a financial challenge, maybe it's a personal challenge, an emotional challenge, and you can feel yourself get tight, right? You feel yourself start to constrict, and your mind starts to get into this flight or fight mode, which is what we're trained to do.

John Foley:
The human brain will do that naturally. Actually, the glad to be here is a proactive way to not only snap you out of that downward spiral. I have what I call my glad to be here wake up, and a glad to be here reboot. And there's three tools. The reboot is basically first awareness. Just stop in the present moment because your mind's taking you somewhere where you don't want to go. And just take a breath. Then I try to get outside, I look up and I say, can I get into my body? Because my mind is starting to take over my body. Can I get back into body? Then, what can I find that I can appreciate at that moment?

John Foley:
It makes a big difference. It snaps me out of that downward spiral. Then what I do in the morning, Erik, is I do what I call my glad to be here wake up. Every morning, I wake up, I've trained my brain to wake up happy. The way I do that is I just say, when my eyes open up, the first conscious thought that hits my head, I just go, what am I grateful for? Am I waking up this morning? I'm in Sun Valley. Are you there in Denver right now, by the way?

Erik Weihenmayer:
Yeah, in Golden.

John Foley:
In Golden?

Erik Weihenmayer:
Yeah.

Jeff:
You can say I'm grateful for coffee, and then you immediately go like start the coffee maker.

John Foley:
It's exactly that, but it's not just the coffee, right? I'm grateful to be healthy. I'm grateful to be in this moment. But then, here's what I've noticed, JB, try this for me, try this tomorrow morning, then go back 24 hours and think about something that happened yesterday, or in this case, that happened today, because you're doing this tomorrow. That you were appreciative of or that you enjoyed. Like me, I'm going to be thinking of you guys' faces, I'm going to be thinking about this conversation. And I'm going to say, wow, that was a really awesome conversation. I don't have those all the time.

John Foley:
I'm just going to reinforce that in my body. Then here's the last thing, and I'll do this for any leader is go, or anybody really, go forward in your day, and I use my calendar, but think about others, not just yourself, and think about, how can I show up in a way that helps somebody else. I do that every morning and only it takes a couple minutes. It absolutely changes the neurons, the neuroplasticity in your brain, and you'll start to have more happy thoughts and you'll perform better.

Erik Weihenmayer:
And does that lead sometimes to reaching out to a friend or something like that, somebody who you know is hurting or struggling or just needs you?

John Foley:
Absolutely. I think, at the end of the day, it's all about other people. We can only do so much with ourselves. If you acknowledge that empathy, that compassion, and then actually take the action to reach out to them, amen.

Erik Weihenmayer:
Yeah.

Jeff:
All right. Well, I got to go here because it's just a thought that's on my mind. Erik and I are like old aged salty mountain guys. I think about the aging process a lot now, because I'm all aging, but you don't think about that when you're in your 20s and 30s. As I contemplate the trajectory of, say my climbing career, my speaking career, the things that I do with my family and everything, I contemplated a whole lot more because all those marbles in the jar, there's just fewer of them. With your flying career, I'm just curious, where's ... There's twofold here, so I'm just ... You came off of a career that every day was filled with very precise, intense things.

Jeff:
Number one question would be, were you the one who said it's time to step away from the teams, or did they say, we need some new blood in here? That's the first part of the question. And the second question is, once you left the teams, how did you find that, just aargh, that thing that just made you ... You clinch up, that kind of stuff?

Erik Weihenmayer:
Jeff, Imma slap you on the back. That's a good question, because I was thinking about that in a similar way, but a little bit differently. Like, I was thinking about the folks that work for Apple or something, and they invent the iPhone, and Steve Jobs is hard as hell on this team. It's just so hard and so intense. They can't do it forever. They say like, "I put in six years, but it was the best six years of my life in certain ways." But it's unsustainable because a human being only has so much capacity to do that thing. You can't do it forever. You have to move on in some way at some point.

John Foley:
Yeah. I think what we're talking about is you have to reinvent yourself at some right point. I think the question JB asked is, do you choose that or does the market, or the job choose it for you? For my life, very quickly, is on the teams, on the Blue Angels, you go into that assignment knowing exactly how long you're going to be there. That's one of the rare professions that, that's true. I mean, athletes don't know that. They don't know when their last game's going to be. Business people, we don't necessarily know. In one way, it's kind of nice. When you get selected for the Blue Angels, you have either a two year tour or a three year tour, and then you know that you will be reassigned to another Navy squadron, and it just won't be the Blue Angels.

John Foley:
You'll be flying jets off aircraft carriers, but it is your time to go. I think that's what's unique about the Blue Angels and why it's such a great metaphor for a company and a high performance team is we do this every year with new people. Half the pilots are new every year. A third of my support crew is new every year. So, we have the rotation that's planned. So, we're constantly in a state of hiring. We're constantly in a state of training. We're constantly in a state of mentoring each other and we're in a constant state of basically up and out. You get better and you move on and you share that information with somebody else. Now, for me, personally, so when I left the team, it was not a big deal. I was expecting it.

John Foley:
I had done the best I could. I had trained my own replacement, Thumper, and he was better than I ever was. And that's great. I don't mind that. Then I actually went to another challenging field, which was flying jets off aircraft carriers in a leadership role again. I had that. My big change came from leaving the Navy. I'm not a pilot anymore. I mean, I do fly for fun, but it's no big deal. That's where I had to make the big leap. That was a big leap. I said, I don't need to be an airline pilot. I could do that. That's just something I don't want to do. I want to go into the entrepreneurial world. I want to do stuff that I've never done before, and I didn't know how to do it.

John Foley:
And it was scary. I fortunately went to Stanford business school and I learned some of the ... What does it need to grow and build a big business? But again, that was just academics. Then I went out and I tried it. I had an entrepreneurial company, and the first one blew up. I was doing the Red Bull thing, how Red Bull created air races. I was doing it before them. But my whole point is that I fell into what I do now, which is I went to a seminar on personal growth, and I'm always trying to improve myself. All of a sudden, the light bulb went off. High performance teams, how to turn them into business results.

John Foley:
I know how to do that. Guess what? That's exciting to me. I don't know the business side. I'm going to learn this. I've recreated my whole career two decades ago. Now, to answer that gut feeling JB that you asked about. So, I went heli-skiing yesterday. I'm constantly having fun. I'm constantly riding motorcycles. I'll do stuff that keeps the adrenaline going, but I'm doing it for fun. I'm not doing it as a career.

Jeff:
Yeah, but it's also more than just fun. It allows you to sort of get ... You're a flow guy, right? You're like that. You're a pocket flow guy. When you're riding your motorcycle or when you're dropping in on a steep cliff, that's the pocket. That's the way you find that flow. I think those of us who've been deep in that pocket before, it just becomes this thing that we kind of have to feel it. And it's different. It evolves over time, but we need that pocket. Even if it's the transcendent meditative place, but that's the pocket, right?

John Foley:
Yeah.

Erik Weihenmayer:
I've been thinking a lot about integration lately as well in that way. You know what I mean? Some people, I think, climb mountains, let's say this is something I know, like to almost escape, but for me, I think, okay, how do you come down from the mountain and move forward in your life and take certain things with you that help you with your happiness, with your growth, with your evolution as a human being? There must be a lot of things like that, that you've really tried to take with you from being a Blue Angel.

John Foley:
Yeah. You know what the biggest one, Erik? I think you just hit on it. And it's my new mantra. I've been doing this for about six months now, learn, grow, give. Then I realized I had the wrong order. It starts with giving. You give, then you learn, and you grow. With what you just said, what I generate the most fulfillment and happiness in my life is not that I physically climb the mountains anymore or fly the jets, it's that I can share that in a way that benefits others. Just what we're doing right here. That's why this podcast is so important. That gives me way more joy than the actual climbing or the flying.

John Foley:
Now, having said that, I still get out and do it. I just don't need to do it at the level I used to. I don't need that anymore.

Jeff:
See, that's the PhD level of what we're talking about right there. There's the transcendence of that. As we evolve as athletes and precision professionals doing heady shit, that we get to a point where we realize what is my ... That's the completion of the hero's journey. Then we give it away. We've acquired all these things, and now we want to give it to you, and to you, and to you to be a better version of yourself. I think that's it in a nutshell, right there.

John Foley:
Just brought tears to my eyes. Honestly, JB. I started to emotionally well up a little bit. I got goosebumps because yeah, it's no longer about me. It's about sharing it with others so that their dreams can come true.

Jeff:
Yeah. Well done.

Erik Weihenmayer:
John, backing up, one thing I kind of missed in my thought process talking to you was, you were on that track to be a Blue Angel, and you talked about your dad who was an officer. Mentors come into our lives when we're young, especially for me, it was obviously my dad, and then people I never met, like accidental mentors, like Terry Fox, who was an amputee who lost a leg to cancer and decided he was going to run all the way across Canada, thousands of miles, and he inspired a whole nation. I never met him, but he was a huge mentor. So, you must have those clear mentors, direct mentors, but also maybe some accidental mentors.

John Foley:
Erik, just like you, my dad was the biggest mentor in my life. I think it's a blessing to have parents, and my mom too, in a different way, but they taught me integrity, and just trying stuff, not to be afraid to fail. But since then, yeah, I had a lot of inadvertent mentors. One of them was my commanding officer on the carrier air group commander, called a carrier group commander, a CAG. We've become good friends. He's working with us now. I also ran into, in the speaking world, it was so funny, Erik, I went to an event and they were talking about this power of visualization.

John Foley:
JB, more from, I'd say, a psychiatrist standpoint or psychological standpoint. That person asked me if I would mind saying some words on stage. I've never given a public speech in that regard before. He called me up, and we were actually using some of the video I'm in. Instead of talking about the psychological stuff behind it, I said, here's what I was thinking, here's how we used it, and here's how we can turn it into success for you. And it was a light bulb moment, Erik.

John Foley:
I just said, holy cow, I can do this because it's a value to others. But I spent six months working for three for that individual learning the business. Learning, and I was helping him in any way, shape I could, but that exposure, I probably got 10 years of knowledge in six months based on having that.

Erik Weihenmayer:
That's part, back to the gratitude thing, because you were grateful to be there and growing with this person. That's, I feel for me, has been the most luckiest part of my life that I've been able to somehow connect with great people who have helped me on the fast track. Like, they take you under their wing and they say ... And you're expressing gratitude, and because of that, they want to work with you more, right?

Jeff:
That's sweet of you to talk about me like that, bro. And you're welcome.

Erik Weihenmayer:
Yeah. It's true.

Jeff:
You're welcome for all that work I've done with you.

Erik Weihenmayer:
Yeah. I appreciate you, my friend.

Jeff:
I know. John. Sorry. Sorry. Keep going.

John Foley:
No, I love it. I think we're getting to the essence again, of what we do and why we do it. For me, it's this purpose larger than self. I mean, of course, I want to continue to grow and continue to learn in areas that, like we said earlier, JB, if I can teach someone how to meditate, how to focus now, like I speak to of sports teams all the time. In fact, by the way, the College Football Championship's tonight. Nick Saban brought me in to speak to Alabama a few years ago, and we won the championship that year, so stand by. But the point is that-

Jeff:
Wait, are you rolling & talking tonight? You're not sick of them dogs?

John Foley:
Well, now here's the challenge I have. No, here's the challenge I have. So Nick Saban and Alabama brought me in a few years ago. Then just this year, Georgia brought me in. That was the basketball team, not the football team, but it's still the athletic department. And they've got a great program too. These are two of the best programs and that's why they're in the finals. Then the referee crew, I had spoken to the referee crew beforehand, and they got selected as the best individual. I've spoken to all three, both teams and the officials.

Jeff:
What's the Gucci over under tonight? Where is it?

John Foley:
Okay.

Jeff:
Because by the time this airs, everybody's going to know, so let's see what the forecaster is. Let's see what you got.

John Foley:
Yeah. So, here's the Gucci feel. Number one, Alabama, Nick Saban, that program is probably one of the strongest programs I've ever seen. They believe in process. They believe you become part of this team. It's like the Blue Angels. You bring the best athletes you can, but it's not about an individual. They continually have a process that wins. So, they've proven that. I think the challenge tonight is that Georgia got their asses handed to them by Alabama, right? In the SEC. Even if Alabama is a better, let's say team, proven by the earlier performance, the chances of repeating that are so hard at this level.

John Foley:
Because you got some off Georgia defensive lineman who got their butt handed to them. These are great athletes, right? They're going to be off. They have more to win. It's hard enough, as you know, to win a championship, it's even harder to repeat. I think that Georgia has the advantage. I really do. I think they're going to come out hungry as shit. They also, Kirby Smart, he worked under coach Saban, so I actually think George's favorite. I know they are by two points.

Jeff:
Well, they are. Yeah, they're two points favorites, but here, this is the cross section of everything we've really talked about, which is you can line up the best pilots in the world. They're not going to be the Blue Angel necessarily, right? The best climbers in the world, back when Erik and I climbed Everest, not necessarily could climb Everest. Now everybody and their dead grandma can. But the point is, is there's a lot more that is intangible, that sits within us, and that's exactly what you captured right there.

Jeff:
I think you're right. I think that's, what's going to happen with Georgia tonight, and I think you and I are going to be prognosticators, extraordinaire here in few weeks when this thing airs, because Georgia's going to suck them, get them dogs going. I'm excited about it. I'm from the south, so I'm torn, but all my buddies are all Auburn, so I can't stand Alabama as a result. So, I got to go straight Georgia.

Jeff:
John, man, I could ... I mean, clearly, you know what I want to do, I want to sit around a campfire with you and sip on just a little snifter of some good bourbon sometime. Because I'd love to swap some stories with you. You are an amazing human being with more importantly, a servant based heart. I think that's a rare combination. I'll just be very too transparent as I'm closing here. I've heard about you, I've seen some of your stuff, and you surprise me the entire time because of so many different facets of you and who you are.

Jeff:
And I guess, just like so many of us, you've evolved into the new Gucci, the different Gucci that I really think the world benefits from having you. Our audience, our community is going to be so impacted by everything you've said, and your life's work, as it's been encompassed in this conversation today. So, thank you very, very much for spending some of your time.

Erik Weihenmayer:
Yeah. Thank you, Gucci, man. What I love about this was you were so real, you were so honest and clear, and you gave people a lot of thoughts and process and mindsets to really bring them to new places of growth.

John Foley:
Well, guys, I want to say the honor's mine, and the thanks are for you. Both of you have been my heroes too. Erik, I've been following so many stages, and JB, I know both of us. Now I feel a lot closer to you. I'm so glad that we could share, and that you guys, your community, your audience is so powerful, and they've got stories that are way more powerful than ours when it comes to overcoming adversity and making a difference, and that's what I want to acknowledge, is that everybody has a great story. Let's bring it out. Let's continue to help others, serve others with that. So, let's do it.

Didrik Johnck:
The production team behind this podcast includes producer, Didrik Johnck, that's me, sound design, editing, and mixing by Tyler Cottman, marketing and graphic support from Stone Ward, and web support by Jamlo. Special thanks to The Dan Ryan Band for our intro song, Guidance. And thanks to all of you for listening. We know that you've got a lot of choices about how you can spend your time, and we appreciate you spending it with us. If you enjoy this podcast, we encourage you to subscribe to it, share it, and give us a review. Show notes can be found at nobarrierspodcast.com. That's nobarrierspodcast.com. There's also a link to shoot me an email with any suggestions for the show, or any ideas you've got at all. Thanks so much and have a great day. (singing)