5 Components of a Performance Mindset - Fran Racioppi

[00:00:00] My name's Fran Racioppi, and I'm the creator and host of the Jedberg Podcast. And I'm the guest today on the Inspiring Influencers Show. Welcome to the Inspiring Influencers Show, Paul and Jennifer Hansel host interviews with inspiring thought leaders, storytellers, entrepreneurs. And legacy builders just like you.

[00:00:19] Learn from experts about finding your voice, mastering your mindset, and creating movements with your message. Enjoy uplifting stories and powerful strategies. Get ready to transcend to new levels of success, happiness and joy. I everyone. This is Paul Hansel, the Inspiring Influencer Show, and I am so excited to have Fran as our guest.

[00:00:44] Now Fran Rich Choppy is the host of the Jed Bird Podcast. As he mentioned, he is one of the most highly decorated, educated, and impressive individuals that I have had the pleasure of meeting. Fran served [00:01:00] for 13 years as a Green Beret where he planned and coordinated special forces, and advised and aided the commander of Special Forces in Africa just to name a few.

[00:01:12] Fran has earned numerous military decorations for his service. He has also recently led Genius Fund as both CEO and coo, and Fran also served as director of Global Security for Snap. Fran continues to give back to and help veterans and inspire others through his podcast. I could go on and on, but I want to dive into our interview.

[00:01:41] So thank you so much for joining us, Fran. Well, thanks for having me and thanks for such a, a nice open, I'll tell you that you need to go meet more people if . That's what I think. There are many more who've done some amazing things, so I have to, I owe, I owe a lot to the people that I served with and served [00:02:00] for, so thank you for that.

[00:02:01] One thing I have found and listening to you in other interviews you do, you are a very humble man, but I do wanna add just in the special forces part, the word special is there for a reason. And, uh, so take that and run with it. Um, all right. Well, I, I, I will, I can, Here's what I'll tell you. Okay. There's nothing, there's nothing special about being in the Special forces, and that is the most, if, if nobody hears anything else.

[00:02:36] I, I'll gonna say it again. There's absolutely nothing special about being in the Special Forces, and I'll tell you why. Because being in the Special Forces is about doing the foundations. It's about doing the basics better than everybody else. It's about developing habits that have no compromise and have a standard that others are unwilling or unable [00:03:00] to match, and then executing to that standard every single day and having the discipline for yourself, your team, your organization to number one, impose a standard.

[00:03:13] Adhere to that standard and three, never compromise that standard. So regardless of who you are, what you do, where you come from, what your industry is, you can be special, you can be better than everybody else. If you, I identify a standard and then you hold yourself in your organization to that standard day in and day out.

[00:03:35] That's what makes Special Forces special. It's taking all of that and excelling. Then and, and then wanting to excel, take that to another level is what is special. It's the people. It's the people and the attitude and the character. And so when we look at, at developing organizations, and so what my, [00:04:00] my, my, my primary job is I'm the chief people officer of a company called Analytics Solutions.

[00:04:05] And in my job as a chief people Officer, I'm responsible for talent development. That's the number one charge. How do we, how do we develop our talent internally and how do we create talent across our different organizations, which are very dynamic and all do different things in different parts of our company, and how do we improve the way that they envision themselves as leaders, how they conduct themselves as leaders?

[00:04:27] And then how does that trickle down to all their teams? And then how does how, when you have high functioning, high performing individuals who are now contributing to teams and teams that begin. To function at a high level, contribute to the organization. All boats rise with the. So everything goes up.

[00:04:44] Everybody starts improving, the whole organization starts improving. But where you start and taking it back to the point about special is you have to have special people. You have to have people who have a certain set of character and a certain [00:05:00] set of attributes and some foundational core values that define who they.

[00:05:06] That define who the organization is, and then everybody has to live to that. As leaders, our job is to identify what we want out of our people. Mm-hmm. , what we need them to demonstrate on a daily basis. What is the character they have to display? When do they need to have humility? Curiosity. When do they have to be resilient?

[00:05:26] When do they have to be adaptable? When do they have to demonstrate emotional control? When can they work with others? All of these things are different components of character that we assess, we analyze, we look at, and if we select people who display these character traits, when we put 'em in challenging situations, when we put 'em in unknown situations, when they come to work and everything's going great, they're gonna operate at a high level day in and day out.

[00:05:53] Wow, that's That's awesome. We originally met in Orlando at Pod [00:06:00] Fest back in May. I'm brief. We did. It's like yesterday, . Yeah, I know. It feels like it now. We met, We actually met, like we didn't know. We were both at the conference. We were both in a restaurant. We, me and my wife were highly impressed with how well behaved your kids were.

[00:06:19] I mentioned that to you and from there, You know, we got to talking. Uh, me and my wife, were both a guest on your podcast. And, uh, now I have the pleasure of interviewing you. So yeah, thank you so much for having well-behaved kids. And uh, I can take you in the, I can take the camera in the other room right now and show you the other side of what that looks like.

[00:06:44] Yeah, . Anyway, so that was, that was great. Now I, I really want to ask you, I first wanna say, Thank you so much for your service. I have so much respect for what you do, what you [00:07:00] continue to do. It means a lot. So thank you. Well, thank you. Thank you for that. I appreciate it. And, and I do for being there for, for those who have served.

[00:07:09] Now I, I wanna ask you your story of how you started in joining the military to Green Beret and what was that like? I was a journalism major, uh, in undergrad. I studied broadcast journalism. I wanted to be Tom Broka. He was my hero. I, I, you know, I saw him and Peter Jennings and Dan Rather, and the nightly News every night.

[00:07:31] And I said, Those are the people I wanna be like, I wanna go on the news. I'm gonna report. Those were the days of objective journalism. You didn't have these, you know, these factions on each side who were just getting up every day and pontificating nonsense, and.

[00:07:47] But, but you really had, you really had a source of truth in a lot of what you saw on television. And um, and then nine 11 happened, and nine 11 was my junior year in college. And you know, even then I was like, I'll be a [00:08:00] war correspondent and I'll see what ha and I'll get out there and, you know, report on, on these conflicts all over the world.

[00:08:05] And then, After a couple years of watching our response to the nine 11 vicious attacks on this country and the retribution that we rightly sought for that, and um, and then going into Iraq, uh, I said, you know, There's greater calling. There are these guys, they have beards, uh, they got long hair, they're riding horses and they're saving the world from tyranny.

[00:08:27] And, uh, and they're, they're conducting this mission called Dereo Le Bear. They're freeing the oppressed. And that's a mission for me. And that was a mission of the Green Berets. And I said, I think I'm gonna go in the Army and, and I'm gonna go become a Green Beret as quickly as I can. Uh, and after a couple years in the infantry, I, my window came up to go to selection for Special Forces, and I went and was thankfully selected and I spent the rest of my.

[00:08:49] In, uh, 10 Special Forces group. Wow. I, I can only imagine some of the things that you were a part of, but what, like, what was that, like 13 years and you, [00:09:00] you really excelled though, like you moved up in the ranks. It's, it's about perspective. I think you gain a tremendous amount of perspective when you, when you serve, um, in, in, in any, in anywhere in the military.

[00:09:13] But, uh, what it allows you to do is, number one, from day one, you know, the military is a great, it's, it's a great sample of what America is and you know, when you. A lot of the proportionality of, you know, American demographics across regional wines, racial wines, ethnic lines, uh, religious lines. You have a similar demographics that kind of come into the military, and so you.

[00:09:41] So you see this, uh, um, when you get in and, and for me, I was from, you know, outside of, I was from New England and born in Rhode Island, Grew up outside of Boston, and, and immediately you're thrust into basic training with people from Hawaii and Arkansas, Alabama, Texas, and you know, in [00:10:00] Missouri, all these places from all over the world.

[00:10:02] And so you immediately are starting to understand that there's this broader world out there. With, and people come from different backgrounds and they have different ideas on things, and they have different ways that they interpret information and they act and they're driven differently. So you're exposed to that at a ver you know, right from the beginning.

[00:10:21] And then as you a, as you move through your career and you serve in different places and you go overseas, and I spent time in Europe, I spent time in the Middle East. I spent time in Africa, uh, and in Asia. And you go to these places and, and all of a sudden, you know, you, that aperture is expanding even, even greater.

[00:10:41] And now you're there to solve complex problems. Yeah. And. Especially in special forces, you're, you're there to solve complex problems very often with somebody on the other side who may or may not believe that they, number one may have a problem, or number two, interpret the problem the same way or the solution the same way that you [00:11:00] do and your job now is to understand their perspective.

[00:11:04] Because what's different when you go into a foreign country, you go into another country, go to. Team, another leader of another team in your company who may or may not agree with you, you never get to walk in the room and say, Listen, this is the way it is. And you know, maybe, okay, people might be a ceo, they might own their own company.

[00:11:22] They might say, Well, that's how it works in my company. Well then I would challenge you to look in the mirror and ask if you're doing it the right way. Right? Because we cannot demand most of the time that people do things a certain way. Our job as leaders is to, is to inspire and influence. To meet the end state that we need them to to meet.

[00:11:41] And being in the military, being exposed to all the different cultures and perspectives that you see allows you to gain that different vantage point. Nice. Love it. Now, I also heard that you are an athlete in college. Where, [00:12:00] and I've always wanted to say this about someone. I've always wanted to meet someone who did this, where you rowed crew.

[00:12:08] I did . So that's pretty cool. Now, excelling at athletics, special forces and leading bus businesses takes a special mindset and dedication. Now you work with top leaders and you've interviewed top leaders of all kinds, discussing that very topic. So could you share now those main mindset tips that have helped you the most and can help others the most in life and business?

[00:12:41] Yeah, absolutely. And before I do that, I'll give a shout out to, to Boston University. Uh, so my, my undergrad was at Boston University. I was on the men's rowing team. I still work with the Men's Rowing team, uh, and I'm an advisor and performance development for the coaching staff and the athletes, uh, [00:13:00] to, to help shape our, our mindset of how we approach, you know, competition at the highest levels.

[00:13:05] And when you look at a sport like rowing, there's division one collegiate rowing is the, is the premier. Piece, you know, And yes, there are national teams, but there's no professional league. Uh, and so the national teams, you know, are very few and far between guys, Get up to that, get to that level, and compete on the international scale in the Olympics and the world champs.

[00:13:27] But by and large, the bulk of folks. It sits at the division one college level. And so there's a lot of work to do there to win championships. And what I focus on is the, is what I call the, the five components of a performance mindset. Nice. And it starts with character. And if you sit, if you look at a, a wheel and you have the hub of the wheel, and then the spokes character sits at the center, and I, I spoke about character a few minutes ago, but.

[00:13:53] You have to select people who have a high degree of character. There are a lot of traits we can [00:14:00] use. Special operations uses nine or so character traits, and I mentioned a few of 'em and when they, when they look and assess leaders, but you as a leader in your organization, have to decide what are the character traits that I'm looking for in a role, in a role in my team, in my organization.

[00:14:18] Is it two, is it five? Is it 10? Yeah, probably tens a. But you gotta think about the 3, 4, 5 things that you want someone and your organization to represent. When we think about the character that they bring to the table, we start there. That's the core, that's the foundation. From there, we have preparation, everything.

[00:14:39] If you go, everything starts with preparation. Why does the military train you to get up and make your bed? Why do you brush your teeth in the morning? Why do you, why do you do physical training? Every single day to prepare your body and your mind for what the day is gonna bring, or future challenges that are gonna stress those [00:15:00] things.

[00:15:01] You make your bed in the morning because it's about discipline. It's about achieving something. It's about doing something. And if I do the little things, if I make my bed, if I brush my teeth, if I pick up trash and I don't walk by it, okay? Or I put things away and I don't leave a pile of dishes in the sink because when after I use 'em, I clean 'em and I put 'em.

[00:15:22] I'm creating these micro habits that may not seem like a big deal, may seem like a nuisance a lot of the time, but I'm instilling in myself this sense of discipline so that when the big things come that way, Mitsy Purdue, um, is the, the, the, the, the wife of the late Frank Purdue of Purdue Chickens, and she says, You gotta eat the frog.

[00:15:43] You gotta eat the live frog every day. And what's the and and she told me this in one of our podcasts and I said, What do you mean? Like really eat the raw live frog? And she said, No. That's the biggest thing. That's the hardest thing you have to do with that day. How can you sit down when you come to work and you sit down at work in the morning and.[00:16:00]

[00:16:00] And diligently execute. The hardest thing you have to do in the day when you haven't developed micro habits to do the easy things. When you develop micro habits to prepare yourself to do little things, you can tackle hard things regardless of how complex or how hard they are. So it comes down to preparation.

[00:16:16] How do we prepare ourselves for the task at hand? But that requires vision. Do we know where we're. Then we can effectively prepare ourselves. The next one's choice. We have a choice. Kristen Holmes, a good friend of mine, she leads performance science at Whoop. And you know, she says performance is a choice.

[00:16:38] And I add onto that and I say, when we choose to perform, So what do I mean? Performance is a choice. Meaning that we wake up every day and the decisions that we make. In our lives, how much sleep we get, the activities we engage in, how much alcohol we consume, all of these things affect [00:17:00] our ability to perform the decisions that we make in our daily routine.

[00:17:05] How well do we eat? What do we eat? How often do we eat? All of that affects our ability to perform at a certain level. So then I say, Well, we choose to perform. So we actually then at that point, Have the conscious decision of do I wanna operate at the, at the highest level that I can? And what is that level?

[00:17:28] Is that elite performance? Is it peak performance? Is it optimal performance? And all those are different. Peak performance best that we can do. All conditions perfect, absolute best. So we can do Rich to. Vinny talks about this in the attributes optimal performance. That's the best I can do, right? based on how much sleep I've had, my physical conditioning right now.

[00:17:55] The other environment, environmental factors, other things on my mind. Maybe [00:18:00] I can't achieve peak performance because in a vacuum that's the best that I can possibly perform. But can I achieve optimal performance and do the best that I can right now? Maybe that's what we're looking. Depending on what we're engaged in, we have to now decide where do we need to be, which then circles back to the choices that we make in, in our preparation to get to the point of action, which is the third point of how do I action is a verb.

[00:18:28] Leadership is an action verb. We now have to take action. People talk about limiting beliefs. A guy named Colin Bevin talks about limiting beliefs, and he says that limiting beliefs prevent us from taking action. There's a lot of reasons why we don't take action. Fear is a big one that we talk about, okay?

[00:18:47] But fear often comes from the unknown. It comes from lack of preparation, oftentimes, okay? It comes from being concerned with results over not enjoying the journey. Do we truly enjoy the journey that we're on, [00:19:00] or are we too focused on the results? So we have to look at this action. Action comes down to a couple of things.

[00:19:07] It comes down to responsibility and, and accountability. How do we define responsibility? Do I know what I am supposed to do? Do I know my job? Do I know how to do it? And do I know my role? Where do I sit in the organization? And that accountability comes from acceptance of those things and understanding and accepting that I am fine.

[00:19:35] Good. I like it. Maybe I don't like it, but I accept it what I do every day. And I accept my role in the organization. So I'm not coming to work every day or into my organization, or into my, my boathouse or onto my team. As the center of my football team saying I wanna be the quarterback. Hmm. Maybe I do wanna be the quarterback, but I'm not focused on that.

[00:19:58] I'll focus on doing my job [00:20:00] to the best that I can every single day, and I understand my role in the organization, where I fit in the levels. I'm not coming in trying to take the job and do the job of those under me, and I'm not trying to take decisions and do the job of those above me. I'm sitting squarely where I need to be.

[00:20:14] When we have accountability and we have responsibility, then we can. We can take ownership of our actions. Ownership is what matters in building effective organizations because you have to have leaders who are willing to stand up and accept the results of their actions and their team's actions, right, wrong, or indifferent, regardless of the result.

[00:20:38] Every time in and time out, not pin blame, not look for excuses. Say, Yep, this is the way it went. These are the reasons why we accept them. We understand. And we're gonna make adjustments based on that. Critically important. And then the last piece is communication. How do we effectively communicate with o, with, with others, and with each other?

[00:20:58] We have to be able to communicate. There's [00:21:00] three components to communication. The message, the sender, and the receiver. The most important part of that, people always think. It's the message, right? Or they think, How do I feel when I sent it? The most important part of communication is the receiver. Often, it doesn't matter what we said, what as often.

[00:21:25] The case is how was it interpreted? And our job as leaders is to understand our people, understand our organizations and send messages, send information, communicate with others in a way that we know they're going to openly receive and accept in order to drive action to get them to do what it is we need them to.

[00:21:50] When we often communicate with each other, when we're focused on just how we feel, it's most often misinterpreted and misrepresented [00:22:00] by the receiver or not well packaged information. Cause we can't, cuz when we're emotional it becomes very difficult to communicate right. When we're focused on the person on the other side and we can internalize that.

[00:22:15] And understand how they're going to receive and take action from what I've communicated to them, then we can have effective communication. Nice. Those are the five incredible. I'm, I'm telling you, this is why I was looking forward so much to this interview. I appreciate you sharing that. Now, I, I wanna ask you, you have a very well respected podcast.

[00:22:38] The Jedberg podcast. Could you briefly explain the name Jedberg and the origin of that operation? Jedberg was an operation that was formulated in World War II in sometime in the mid, mid 1943. So the. Allies came together and the [00:23:00] war was in a very difficult place. Uh, Germany had occupied France. They had superior machine guns, they had superior tanks.

[00:23:07] They had the advantage of of having more, more ground entrench, entrenched defenses throughout France, and the allies said, The only way we're gonna win this thing really is we have to, we have to take a bit France back, and the only way onto France was through operation Over Lord, which was the, which was the invasion of the beaches in Normandy, uh, due to the superior weaponry and the, and the entrenchment of the Germans.

[00:23:32] The allies had to come up with what was called the transformative organization, and I call it visionaries, drivers of change, and those dedicated to winning no matter the challenge. And when your challenge is defeating the German army, uh, at all costs, that is a grave challenge. And they created Operation Jedberg and they recruited 100 people each from the American, the British, and the French militaries.

[00:23:55] They used these nine characteristics that are used by Special [00:24:00] Operations Command today that I talked about to assess their character and. And they sent a hundred each, so 300 total up to Jedberg, Scotland, and they trained them in three man teams, one American, one French, one British. And starting the night before D-Day, they parachuted them behind enemy lines into occupied France.

[00:24:16] They linked up with French resistance forces. They armed them. They equipped them. And they conducted sabotage and subversion operations against the German reinforcement, not allowing the full weight of the German army to ever get to the beaches of Normandy, which allowed for the beachhead to occur and us to the allies to continuously bring forces onto the beach over a period of weeks and months, uh, to gain a foothold in France.

[00:24:44] And then eventually pushed the German army back, so that organization after the war. The JEDBERG teams in the United States went on to form the operations directorate of the Central Intelligence Agency. And several [00:25:00] years after that, they were lifted out and went into the US Army when the US Army stood up US Army Special Operations Command and they became the Green Berets.

[00:25:08] So my lineage as a Green Beret dates back to the Jedberg teams of World War II and the work that they did. And today I speak with. Transformative leaders, visionaries, drivers of change, those dedicated to winning, no matter the challenge in every industry. Love it. I love it. And man, thank you for sharing.

[00:25:32] And you know, the five components of a performance mindset, every single person can look at that and, uh, use those to become more special in whatever they do. Absolutely. Thank you Fran, for giving us all that. Um, now quick little speed round. I'm gonna ask you three quick questions. You just, uh, oh, tell me the first answer that comes to your mind.

[00:25:57] So, uh, what does Fran [00:26:00] Racho do for fun? Besides sitting in this office and work , um, what do I do for fun? I, I, uh, I enjoy spending time with my kids. Um, I spent a lot of time away from my family. I, I've talked about it in a number of, of episodes. Uh, I spent a lot of time away from my family. I spent a lot of time being a person that I wasn't very proud of.

[00:26:20] And, um, and now, you know, I'm very focused on, on, on the kids, very focused on my family and my wife, and building a building. Cohesive unit that won't endure what, what I put the family through. Nice. Well, well said. What's your favorite quote, ? This one right behind me. Uh, well next, So there's two, well, there's two right behind me.

[00:26:44] The one dude with the special Forces, um, uh, in Sydney here is says Dale Price Bear. And Dale Pres Bear is, is the motto of the special forces and the s regimental crest, uh, over there. And that is to freely oppress. But the, but on the other side [00:27:00] is George Washington. And, uh, and it says, First in war, first in peace, first in the hearts of his countrymen.

[00:27:07] And to me, that's a very important quote. That's a very important, um, statement. Uh, because as leaders, that's what we have to do. We, and regardless of if you're a leader on, uh, uh, on, in a company, a big company, a small company, or if you're a leader in, uh, an athletic team, uh, or if you're building a company and you're an entrepreneur and you have, you know, visions of, maybe your company's always gonna stay small and you want it that way, but you still gotta lead yourself where you want to grow into something massive or.

[00:27:38] You're the, you are the, the general who had multiple horses shot out from under him and believed he couldn't die and created the greatest nation in the world has ever seen. Uh, it matters. You gotta be, you have to be first. We have to lead from the front. We have to do it in war. When it sucks and it's hard and nobody wants to be there, we have to do it in [00:28:00] peace when we're making money and everyone feels good and we're fat and happy and we don't feel like anything can go wrong, uh, and we have to.

[00:28:07] Care about people. We have to put people first. That's what leaders do. Well said. And uh, last one is, who has inspired you the most besides George Washington? Um, , I, General Jim Lin. Um, Hands down, uh, general Jim Linder was my, uh, he was the general that I was the aid for in Special Operations Command Africa.

[00:28:30] Uh, one of the finest leaders and finest gentleman that I've ever worked for, uh, and ever had a pleasure of knowing. And that, uh, that's who inspires me the most. He, uh, I talked to him all the time. He still inspires me to this day, even though we're both post-service. Um, and our paths continue to, Daily, whether it's through, you know, talking to each other or something going on that we both find ourselves involved in.

[00:28:54] Uh, when you find people who are of, of like mind, who may have more years on the planet than you, [00:29:00] and can show you what right looks like, um, in war and peace, uh, and in the mind of your countrymen than you latch onto that pretty quick. Great. And so now I wanna ask you, how can people listening connect with you further?

[00:29:15] How can they get to know more about. Yeah, it depends what, depends what you wanna do. So, uh, so certainly listening to the Jedberg podcast. Um, so we're on all social media at jedberg podcast. Go to jedberg podcast.com, full transcriptions, uh, and webpages for every single one of our episodes. Um, we put a lot in into those and getting that information out there available on like, 30, 35 different podcast platforms.

[00:29:40] Um, and then, you know, Instagram, Twitter, uh, LinkedIn, TikTok, wherever you get your social media and YouTube. Uh, we're trying to scale our YouTube too. So YouTube is a, is a whole beast when it comes to trying to crack that algorithm. But we're putting a lot into our videos. Um, we do video versions, we do all of our episodes on lo almost everything on location [00:30:00] with our guests.

[00:30:00] And so there's some really great videos and that and episodes there that we have. Um, As far as leadership development, um, I have my sort of a company called FFR six, that's my leadership development company, um, where we train, uh, executives and we train teams and we train people and organizations on, uh, on these five components of a performance mindset.

[00:30:21] And we work with them on group, an individual basis. And then also, uh, I have a partnership with a, with a company called Retro Fitness, which is a national gym franchise. So if you wanna bring your team in and have a little shared suffering, uh, and put these five components to work as we, as we work through some special operations.

[00:30:40] Oriented team building events, uh, throughout the course of a four eight hour day. Uh, we're doing that in almost all retro fitnesses so we can reach out and, and find me there. And then, um, and then, uh, yeah, we do some, uh, My, some security work with, uh, with f with my company FFR six. And, uh, [00:31:00] I've been in security for a long time and so we have some stuff there and, and, uh, and my company analytics, who, who's the backbone of a lot of what we do here, uh, in the development of their leadership development program, uh, and scaling that organization is a big, big, big focus of mine.

[00:31:14] Wow. Unbelievable. That was packed. Sounds like you've put this mindset to work. Everything you've done and excelled at, so get on you, man. Continue on. Well, thank you and I'm, I'm very appreciative and very fortunate that you did look over at us in the, in the restaurant in Orlando, at the Hilton, and you said, and you came up and, and approached us and, and it's been a great friendship and getting to know you since that point in time, and I appreciate it and love everything that.

[00:31:48] Both you and Jennifer are doing and, and we're gonna tell your story here soon on the Jedberg podcast because it is one of that truly exemplifies absolutely everything we talked about and everything that I've brought up here.[00:32:00]