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John "GUCCI" Foley      

Keynote Speaker to over 1500 Organizations Worldwide, Blue Angel Lead Solo Pilot, Stanford Fellow, Best-Selling Author & "Gratitude Guru"

Since 2015, John Foley has been recognized as one of the top 10 most in-demand speakers. Foley has spoken to some of the highest performing organizations in the world.

His experience as a Blue Angel allows him to provide invaluable insight into cultivating trust, leadership, and teamwork under challenging environments—something he has put to use by inspiring audiences to reach for their highest potential and sustain excellence through dynamic change.

Foley employs the intense realities of his aviation career as a metaphor to inspire—breathe life into—teams to reach for their highest potential and sustain excellence under dynamic change.

Foley's keynotes are set apart by: An energetic delivery that encourages high performance while embracing a grateful mindset; awe inspiring storytelling and electrifying video of the legendary Blue Angels in action; and The Glad To Be Here® Mindset, designed to empower others as they embrace gratitude, purpose, passion, and presence.

In 2011, Foley founded the Glad To Be Here® Foundation, which donates 10% of his speaking fees to charities around the world—impacting thousands globally, including sponsoring 47 children across 47 countries. It’s all part of his mission to cultivate a sense of purpose larger than self within organizations everywhere.

Speech Topics


The How of High Performance (Three-Quarter Day)

Foley will deliver The High Performance Climb keynote and the Living the High Performance Zone breakout with a third event (breakout) around having open, honest and powerful conversations about the nature of high performance and how the Blue Angels applied their model to recruiting, selection, training and mentoring.

Living the High Performance Zone (Half Day)

In addition to delivering The High Performance Climb keynote, Foley will lead your group in a focused breakout session that expands on the Diamond Performance Framework and applies it to the real situations your group is facing. Foley uses a proprietary Pre-Flight Briefing tool to research the issues your group is experiencing and then breaks down the issues using his high performance team approach.

Belief Levels — Soaring to New Heights

As human beings, we don’t perform at our full potential. We perform at a Belief Level. Understanding our Belief Levels is a key to turning any vision into a new reality. Listen as John describes how he elevated his Belief Levels so that he could join the top 1/10th of 1/10th of 1 percent of all pilots — the Blue Angels.

Employee Commitment

When people are deeply engaged in their work and feel valued, they are more productive and effective, leading to a positive impact on the bottom-line. John Foley shares how management can stimulate performance by creating a culture that values expression of gratitude and appreciationfor opportunities, co-workers, and clients. With his signature Glad to be Here mantra, Foley discusses the power behind gratitude as a way of thinking, working, and living. He shows how a culture of thankfulness engages employees on an intellectual and emotional level to create deeper commitment and raise levels of performance.

Team Oneness

The importance of teams being in sync is a concept that John Foley understands profoundly. The Blue Angels must be closely aligned in thought and action in order to accomplish their mission. Through their interdependence as a team, members are also challenged and stimulated to achieve higher levels of individual performance. In his dynamic presentations, Foley addresses the essential elements of exceptional team performance and makes them relevant, simple, and immediately actionable. He shares how to center a team around shared goals, strengthen relationships, and create unity that leads to consistent and effective results.

High Performance Climb

Every organization depends upon the performance of their people and their teams. There are few examples where this is more dramatically demonstrated than with the Blue Angels. John Foley draws upon his experience as Lead Solo of the Blue Angels to inspire audiences and show them how to achieve substantially higher levels of performance.

Foley demonstrates a simple, systematic, yet exciting approach for how to develop the clarity, focus, commitment, and trust that are necessary to achieve ever-higher levels of performance. He shows how to create buy-in and commitment for a teams vision and goals, leading to clarity that drives execution decisions. He demonstrates how learning to focus prepares individuals for action and increases successful outcomes. In this insightful program, he emphasizes the development of trust and respect among team members as essential to execution, and demonstrates proven ways for teams to achieve deep levels of trust. He also explains a process that he believes is the primary key to continuous improvement and exceptional growth.

He drives home his message with dynamic videos of his adrenaline-pumping performance with the Blue Angels. His charismatic and enthusiastic presentations stimulate audiences emotionally and intellectually with a whole new perspective on their ability to excel. They leave the event not only transformed, but also with a set of concrete tools to immediately begin a high performance climb.

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