The Foolproof System To Achieve Peak Performance

We all experience fear and doubt at times, but we must push through it if we're going to be successful. And that is why we've got a special guest today and he's going to share his full proof system to alleviate fear and doubt so you can reach peak performance.

Watch This Episode

Listen To The Podcast

Subscribe To The Podcast

• Apple Podcasts
• Spotify
• Google Podcast
• Stitcher
• iHeart Radio

Read The Transcript Here

Podcast Transcription

The Foolproof System To Achieve Peak Performance

Tim Fitzpatrick: We all experience fear and doubt at times, but we must push through it if we're going to be successful. And that is why we've got a special guest today and he's going to share his full proof system to alleviate fear and doubt so you can reach peak performance. Hi, I am Tim Fitzpatrick with Rialto Marketing, where we believe marketing shouldn't be difficult. All you need is the right plan. Thank you so much for taking the time to tune in.

Tim Fitzpatrick: I am really excited to have with me John Davis, the Corporate Action Hero. John, welcome, and thanks for taking the time.

John Davis: Oh, I'm really excited to be here. Thank you for having me. It's gonna be really fun, I think.

Tim Fitzpatrick: Yes, I am. I am looking forward to this. You've got some really cool things to share with us today. Before we dig into that, got some rapid-fire questions just to help us get to know you a little bit better. You ready to jump in?

John Davis: Whenever you're ready? Let's go for it.

Tim Fitzpatrick: OK, let's do it when you're not working.

Tim Fitzpatrick: How do you like to spend your time?

John Davis: Wherever my son is and whatever we can do together, that's how I like to spend my time, He's my favorite person, so that's what I do.

Tim Fitzpatrick: Awesome. I love it. What's your hidden talent?

John Davis: I am a painter.

Tim Fitzpatrick: Oh wow.

John Davis: That's one of my paintings right there.

Tim Fitzpatrick: Damn, I never would have guessed. That's pretty darn good.

John Davis: Thank you. Thank you.

Tim Fitzpatrick: So do you. Are you I mean, are you official? You signed in your name on the bottom of the painting.

John Davis: Signed my name and the whole bit. Yeah. I've been painting since I was 11 years old.

Tim Fitzpatrick: Wow. That is a talent.

John Davis: I'm kidding.

Tim Fitzpatrick: That is a talent I never had. So I'm always envious. What's the best piece of advice you've ever been given?

John Davis: Very good friend of mine, Dan Thurman. He's one of the top keynote speakers in the world right now. I asked him one time, I said, "Dan, when did you become successful?" He said, "I became successful when I stopped doing everything else." And he says, "When you stop doing all those things that you're not really focused on, making successful is when you're going to become successful."

Tim Fitzpatrick: Love it. So, you got to focus on those few key elements that are really going to get you to where you want to be.

John Davis: Absolutely.

Tim Fitzpatrick: Awesome.

Tim Fitzpatrick: What's one thing about you that surprises people other than being a painter.

John Davis: Alright. I used to be the lead singer of an acappella group called the Acafellers, and I sing the high parts.

Tim Fitzpatrick: The Acafellers. I love it. How long did you do that?

John Davis: We did that for a couple of years. And we sang in beach bars from my hometown of Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. We used to go out and do the four of us who go out, I mean, we work our harmonies up and go, do you know, under the boardwalk and Sixteen Candles and Sloop John B and we do all that kind of fun stuff. It was so lovely and so much fun doing that.

Tim Fitzpatrick: Now, how old were you when you were doing that?

John Davis: Oh, that was I was legal to drink at that time because that's how we loosened ourself up to go on stage. So I would say 20s. In my 20s.

Tim Fitzpatrick: OK, cool little liquid courage. And then you were ready to sing.

John Davis: Right. And that's why I was still doing the high part so.

Tim Fitzpatrick: It's funny. What does success mean to you?

John Davis: It's interesting because I find success in the word, success in the word, freedom to be interchangeable. I think that if you are truly successful, you're free to do the things that you'd like to do in life, free to live where you want to live, free of debt, you know. So I think freedom is really the key to success. People, you know, the lack of mental stress of anything that's negative.

Tim Fitzpatrick: Yeah, yeah. I had a guess recently that said to me, "Choice, success is about choice." In a similar vein, right? You've got freedom to make the choices that you want to make rather than feeling like you have no choices.

John Davis: Compound. I agree with that sentiment.

Tim Fitzpatrick: Where is your happy place?

John Davis: My happy place is anywhere where there's water and sand. So you want to beat you put me on a beach with my I have a jeep and you put me in a jeep and out in the middle of nowhere and I'm as happy as I can possibly be.

Tim Fitzpatrick: Hey that's awesome. What about what qualities do you look for and value in the people that you spend time with?

John Davis: Number one honesty. Number two a sense of humor. And they can be interchangeable depending on if the joke is good enough.

Tim Fitzpatrick: Yeah. So before we dig into talking about peak performance, just share a little bit more about you, what you're doing, how you're helping people. You get a very interesting background. So sure away, man.

John Davis: Yeah, I have a very, very, very strange background when it comes to working with corporations. I was a stuntman, a flight director, a college professor and artistic director of theme parks. And now I'm a professional keynote speaker. And what I do is I go into organizations who are going through change or adversity or starting new initiatives. And I awaken the interaction here and their team. I get them empowered. I shorten their learning curves, I get them more productive, and I get them reaching their goals more swiftly.

John Davis: And I do that with fun interactive programs and bullwhips and dump trucks and world-class comedy.

Tim Fitzpatrick: So it's a fun experience to go through. It's not one of these boring, humdrum events.

John Davis: Absolutely, and there is no PowerPoint and no one of my programs, it's in the room interactive experience, and it's specifically, you know, when you turn on a PowerPoint presentation and you split the audience, the focus, the psychologically, you actually are splitting their mind to a point where they're actually going into a state of trance, which is why when the screen goes on the camera, the telephones come out and the texting starts happening because they're so split focus that they're actually shut down the part of the brain that holds for content retention.

John Davis: And so I don't make them ever give them the moment where they can have that experience. They're too afraid I'm going to pick them and drag them on stage.

Tim Fitzpatrick: So how have you had to shift with the pandemic? Can you do these things virtually or?

John Davis: Absolutely. It's been really interesting. My system. I use my system daily. I don't you know, I'm not just the president. I'm also a member.

Tim Fitzpatrick: Yes. Yes.

John Davis: Yes, see how it is? I use my system because it works. And I found my system because of some things that happened in my life. But when the pandemic hit, I had to manage my own fears. I had to leverage my present moment and move forward. So it happened. And just like the Marvel blip, half the speakers went away and all the business, right? So suddenly I was in this situation where what can I do?

John Davis: So I always look at adversity as an opportunity. So when it happened, I said, "OK, what's the opportunity?" I up my video game. I got my video studio setup here. I got my larger studio on the other side of the house. I really started doing virtual events all the time. I love it, by the way, because the year before Covid I traveled over two hundred days. And so now I'm like, I'm doing, you know, I can do half of my work right now in my underwear.

Tim Fitzpatrick: Yeah.

Tim Fitzpatrick: So you've got right now you've got on a black shirt and underwear, but we can only see the black shirt.

John Davis: Right. Right. Right. It's a onesie.

Tim Fitzpatrick: Yeah, it's awesome.

Tim Fitzpatrick: So how did you come up with this Corporate Action Hero? Why do you call yourself that?

John Davis: It's a great question. The word action means to create motion, start momentum, or to do something. And the word hero is someone who achieves extraordinary results in service of others. And I put together a comedy funny show called Hack and Slash. And that show went all over the world, including the front lines of Iraq and Afghanistan on six USO tours. And I had the opportunity to really see action here as a play. And I wanted to give back.

John Davis: And what happened was I discovered after years of doing that show that I was enjoying the time after the show more than I was last time on stage, because after the show is taking the things I learned about how to create peak performances in my own life and helping other people achieve them in their life. And I can't tell you how many people today tell me I saved their marriages. I got them new jobs and it wasn't me. Of course it was them awakening their power.

John Davis: But I said the right thing at the right time. And so I said, how can I come up with a job where I can actively help people achieve more in their life and live those really amazing lives with dynamic lives that they want to live and also get to play with bullwhips and nunchakus. Because that's fun too, right? Comedy. So I said, "Well, let's create something." I said, "Now, first of all, where do people need the most attention?"

John Davis: Well, in corporate America, people are they struggle in those jobs and they get into that space that beat down mentality. And I'm like, if they could be empowered, they could do so much more. So I started promoting myself to corporations to go out there and be the Corporate Action Hero in their environment. What I do is I come in and I do these amazing events. And let me just give you a quick example. Using that Five F System as a leader, because the Five F system is based on the fight or flight response.

John Davis: We'll talk about that later, I'm sure. It's based on that hacking, the primal fight or flight response. And it's a response that everyone has. And so because it's a response that everyone has, you can use it as a leader because you can guide them through. You can use it as a salesperson because you're guiding the client through and you can use it personally. And so what I do to end one of my big keynote speeches, because I do multiple speeches, my main keynote speech, the Corporate Action Hero speech, I picked the most timid person I can find in my audience.

John Davis: I bring them to the stage and leading them through the Five F System. They learn to crack a whip and take targets out of my hand with that whip in under five minutes.

Tim Fitzpatrick: OK, I can't I can't wait to see it.

John Davis: Nothing nothing has ever happened .

Tim Fitzpatrick: Yeah, you have most of your fingers left.

John Davis: Most of them. Alright I'm back.

Tim Fitzpatrick: Oh, that's interesting. So, I mean, it sounds like you've really you've created a business around your talents and your expertize. And your passions. And that's awesome, because I think that's where we succeed most is when we love what we're doing and we're adding value doing it.

John Davis: Do what you love and money will come.

Tim Fitzpatrick: Yes. So you had mentioned, you know, your past a little bit. We talked about that. Was there a pivotal moment on your career path that you feel is responsible for your success and where you've been able to get to today?

John Davis: Absolutely. As I said, I was a stuntman and a fight director, but before I was a stuntman and a fight director, I was a young kid who always had a stick in his hand pretending it was a sword riding in the woods. I wanted to be a young Errol Flynn. Right. And that sort of manifested into the idea of becoming an actual stuntman and a flight director. And I was working at Renaissance festivals and I met two of the top flight directors in the world and started having really amazing experiences.

John Davis: They were training me for free and I was really getting a lot of positive reinforcement in my life. They were telling me that I had talent and I was, you know, going for my black belt and everything was going great and I was big and strong and buff. In those days, I had long Fabio hair.

John Davis: And then later on, it started sliding backwards.

John Davis: And I had Ben Franklin hair, but I ended up a buddy of mine said, "Hey, can you come over to my house and help me unload my van?" And I said, "Sure, no problem. "Well, my friend was a professional potter. He made beautiful pottery. And I got out to his house, and his van was filled with 80-pound boxes of clay. Now, for me, at this point in my life, I was like, "Good, another workout, 80 pound boxes of clay.

John Davis: All I'm doing was working out my muscles." Right? When I climbed up in that van, all excited to move those 80-pound boxes of clay. And I picked up that first box and I turned to set that box outside of the van and my spine split in two. And let me say that again, my spine split in two. When I twisted with the extra 80-pounds of weight, the upper part of my spine broke off the bottom part of my spine and I collapsed.

John Davis: They took me to the hospital. They told me, "John, you have a condition and a spinal bifida occulta" to which I promptly said "Gesundheit." But, I had no idea that was. Basically what that means is three of my vertebrae never formed properly at birth.

John Davis: And they were just these wonky little pieces of mush there. And when I twisted with the extra 80-pounds that day, I literally unscrewed my upper part of my body from my lower part of my body, pinched off my spinal column, and was paralyzed. And the doctor told me flat out, "I don't know whether you're ever walk again, but if you do, you will never have a physical career." Basically, "Throw all your dreams away." And that to me, that's a hard moment to come through then, you know, and I'll be totally honest with you and say I went to some very dark places at that time because I really wanted to end everything.

John Davis: And a friend of mine came in and gave me what looking back on it could look like a really cruel joke. But it was not a really cruel joke. It was the best thing he could have done for me. He gave me a book called The Daljeet Quando by Bruce Lee. So he gave the martial artists who's just been told he'll never do martial arts again, a martial arts book by the greatest martial artist that ever lived.

John Davis: So I'm like, "OK, this sounds like a really cruel joke," but, as I read that book that I was very into my martial arts at that time, I read that book. I realize this book is about his philosophy of martial arts and his philosophy behind things, and so I read into it some things that were very interesting. You know, one of the things was staying very present, your present moment. The other thing was that you have to remain mentally flexible at all times.

John Davis: And one of the adversity comes up. You have to remain completely flexible and that you are responsible for your outcomes. And so I had to take that moment and go, "OK, I could take what this doctor says is my belief and my outcome, or I can grab a hold of my own belief in my outcome and start leveraging my present moments." So what I started doing was that day when the doctor told me I couldn't actually was around a week or so after I read that book and that I said,

John Davis: "OK, so today I'm just going to flex my upper back muscles." And I literally just took that moment to flex my upper back muscles. And I slowly moved down the back. And then about three weeks after I started, I flexed my hips. The doctors were blown away because it was below the injury. They didn't think I'd have to move my hips again. And at day 30, I was able to push myself up and sit on the edge of the bed.

John Davis: By six months, I was walking up and walking around. A year, I was back to what I would consider a normal human, not my buff rock-hard masculine self, but at least back to normal, normal function. And a year in six months, I gave myself a gift. I climbed up on top of a three story tower and I jumped off into a four-bed. And then I went on to do over 4000 live comedy sword fighting stunt shows all over the world.

John Davis: I have worked in movies. I was, you know, movie stars. And I've had I do whips and dump trucks and guns spinning. And I do all this physical stuff for over 30 years after that. And it's all because of the fact that mindset that happened in that moment, that injury showed me. Now, here's the other thing. I did all those cool things, but I also knew at that point because of that, that I can achieve anything.

John Davis: I went to 30 countries. I climbed Mount Sinai. I climbed Mount Machu Picchu. I was in the pyramids of Giza. I have done more things than most people will do in five lifetimes in this lifetime. And it was all because I knew I could and I took my present moment and leverage it properly.

Tim Fitzpatrick: That is a crazy story. Um.

John Davis: Yeah. Tell me about it. I think it's crazy too.

Tim Fitzpatrick: Yeah. Jeez, I mean, I can only imagine what was going through your head at that point, you know, as you're like lifting this box of clay and all of a sudden you're just down. So did they have to like fuze vertebrae together? What did they do?

John Davis: I'm so glad you asked that question because they wanted to fuze it and put a pin in my back and I refused. And the reason I refused is because I had set a goal to be a stuntman and the fight director, and once you fuze a back or put a pin in the back, you've created a rigid point of your back and you can't do falls or roles. So what I started doing was, number one, I started with chiropractic. I had a chiropractor in every day doing adjustments to get my keep my spine in place.

John Davis: But then I started doing yoga and lifting with my lifting my working my out my back muscles, basically. And still today as we sit here, I still have the condition, but I, I walk every day. I flex my back every day. I do something with my back every day. And there have been a couple of times, well I would say since that time, about probably 10 times that my back had popped out, but not to the point of being paralyzed again.

John Davis: But you know something that knock me down for a week or two over those years. But the interesting thing was they never happened on a show day. It never happened when I was going to perform.

Tim Fitzpatrick: It's good timing.

John Davis: And of me and my comedy partner, I am the only one who never missed a show.

Tim Fitzpatrick: Uh, what's his excuse?

John Davis: We don't want to go there?

Tim Fitzpatrick: Yeah.

John Davis: Let's put it this way. He never had a traumatic injury or any issues like that, It was personal stuff.

Tim Fitzpatrick: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, man.

Tim Fitzpatrick: So let's start let's talk about these Five Fs as you've framed them, what are these Five F's in helping us achieve peak performance? Let's break it down.

John Davis: All right. So the five FS, as I said earlier, are based upon the fight or flight response. And that is the primal response that we all have. And these protocols, when you look at them, are are just really how to hack that response. So let's talk about the first one. The first one is fearlessness. Now, when we talk about fearlessness, you can't really talk about being fearless until you talk about what fear itself is.

John Davis: You know, so I ask audiences all over the world, what is fear and the response? What basically what usually happens is the room goes silent and because nobody can come up with a real good answer and then somebody in the back of the room will say the pat response, false evidence appearing real.

John Davis: And so they'll say false. But I don't buy it. I don't believe that that is the truth. Because when you break down fear scientifically, fear is an emotional reaction to some future event that may or may not happen. You focused on a negative outcome. So really, it breaks down even further to negatively focus uncertainty and so that's all fear really is. But the issue is people get inside their fear. They say they're in fear.

John Davis: Well, when you're psychologically inside something, you can't control it. So the first thing people have to do is recognize they're in fear. Easiest way to recognize if you're in fear is how are you breathing? You know, if you can't if you don't feel like you can get a deep breath, that's usually because you're in some sort of fear. Right? The interesting thing about this statement is it's not that they can't breathe. It's that their body is having a primal response that's making them store air so they can run further and faster.

John Davis: So it's not so they literally are holding air in not being able to get air and actors on Broadway are trained that if they're on stage, they forget all their lines. There are literally trained to exhale and relax. All the muscles and all their lines rush back into their head. Because they shut off the primal fear response and the cognitive thinking brain turns back on, right? So if you're in a fear response, first of all, label it.

John Davis: I'm in fear. Recognize that it's in fear. Understand that it's not a bad thing. You are recognizing. It is a really good thing. So you go, "I'm in fear." Then take that moment to exhale. And then realize since it is about a future event, it's not here right now, so you can take this moment and deal with whatever you've got to do. Now, when I was on the frontlines of Iraq and Afghanistan, I talked to soldiers and said, "How can you go out and go into see situations?

John Davis: And they said exactly the same thing, that they would exhale and get relaxed. But then they said something really interesting. They said, "But it's easy for us to also break our fear cycle because we have an objective." They have something to focus on. Number two, fearlessly focus and that focus is important. The interesting thing about focus, we kind of talked about this earlier. You can possibly focus or you can negatively focus, right? If I'm positively focused, my subconscious mind is trained to show me whatever I focus on.

John Davis: And I can prove to you. I'm a Jeep big fan. I have Jeeps. I've had six of them in my life and I love Jeeps. When I drive down the road, I see every Jeep that's on the road, including the jeeps are in driveways. And so for me, my conscious choice is Jeep. So I see Jeeps, you know, so and it's the same for most people, if they decide they want to buy a certain kind of car, they start seeing that kind of car everywhere, right? Because they consciously chose.

John Davis: So their subconscious mind has two jobs. One, to show them the pathway towards what they focus on, which is what we're just talking about. Two, to store subconscious memories of present moments. Which creates the underlying subconscious belief, so you've got these two jobs back here, right? The other thing is, is that when you're focusing on a goal, a lot of times you can get out of your own timeline and look at that goal as something that you have to get to, you know, and you have to go you want to be in the future.

John Davis: But the way the brain works is you can't go to the future. You can only stay right here. So your job is to make small present moment successes, get very focused on making your present moments positive and successful. And then what happens is, is that big thing comes to you and surrounds your present moment experience.

John Davis: What's also cool about that is these present moment successes you're creating are creating successful present moments behind you. Your subconscious belief is changing as well. So the more positively you focus, the more everything in your life changes for the better. And it's just amazing change. You're fearlessly in focus. The next one, if you look at number five, the middle one is the one that holds the two on either side up. It's the pivotal one, right?

John Davis: And it's faith, belief, confidence. Do you believe you can do it?You know, my son and I, when he was six years old, he we have a Nerf crossbow. Are you a Nerf fan?

Tim Fitzpatrick: You know, I was when I was a kid. I have girls now, so we don't play with those.

John Davis: Oh, the Nerf crossbow. Just I have to share this now. It is the most accurate Nerf weapon that was ever made. It's amazing.

John Davis: You can hit your target any time anywhere. My son at six could hit the target every time anywhere. And we had a game we used to play. It went like this. We would one of us would sit on the couch in the living room, shoot across the living room floor, and hit the side of the trashcan in the kitchen, you know, go ping. And my son would laugh, right. And so he'd hit it, but he could hit it every time. Right? And then I would get up and we got my turn to shoot and I'd shoot the wall on the floor and the ceiling and him and anything.

John Davis: But because he was six right at one of the when. Right?

John Davis: At the fourth or fifth time he starts laughing. I said, "What's that? Why are you laughing?" He says, "Dad, I know why you missed." I said, "Why?" He says, "Because you don't believe you're going to hit it." You know, you have to believe it, you have to have faith in your outcome, you have to believe that the things that you set are going to happen no matter what. I am going to be a stuntman was what got me out of that bed.

John Davis: Right. And if you break it out into spirituality, I'm a very spiritual person in the sense that I was raised Catholic, but my mom told me to study everything and find my own personal journey. And, you know, Buddha says, "What you think you become. You create your world." Gandhi says "You must be the change you want to see in the world." Krishna said, "You are the culmination of your thought." And Jesus said, "Whatever you ask in God's name is granted."

John Davis: And Moses said, "God's name was I am." So if I am going to be a stuntman, that's an important. That's asking. That's asking. So for me, I'm very much into my I am statements. I am this. I don't believe in affirmations because I believe the word of affirmation itself to try to shore something up. It's not solid. A belief behind that word. I believe in declarations. Right? And I took certain words out of my vocabulary, wanting, needing, hoping, and trying. Gone. Right?

John Davis: So we got fearlessly focused with faith. The next one is the hard one, the hardest of all of them. And it's follow through. Follow through, actually getting off the couch and doing something, you know, you actually have to do it because your present moment is filled with three things thought, word and deed and thought and word without deed is just daydreaming. You have to do the actions to make the momentum move, you have to do the things.

John Davis: If I didn't flex my muscles, then I never would have gotten out of the bed. I had to do, you know, think it, say it and do it. So the more I put that focus behind it and then had the faith and then took an action, I started to see exponential change in my life, you know, and I was able to go on and achieve amazing things in my life. So we still forgot fearlessly focus with faith and follow through.

Tim Fitzpatrick: And follow through. Have you ever read the book to see The Slight Edge by Jeff Olson?

John Davis: No.

Tim Fitzpatrick: One of the things he talks about in there, and that's similar to taking action is just like you just need to show up. If you show up every day, you put yourself far ahead of the vast majority of people, it's that little action of showing up that differentiates so many people, it's so easy to not show up, it's so easy to show up.

Tim Fitzpatrick: You just need to choose which one you're going to do and do it consistently.

John Davis: And it's really easy to be there and still not show up.

Tim Fitzpatrick: Yeah, right.

John Davis: And I mean, their hand-off power to somebody else.

John Davis: And the reality of it is, is that what I did when I directed theme parks, I got known as the guy who could save your theme park. I would come in on parks that were failing and I would bring them back. And the way that would work is I would come in and I would assess the team. I would assess where they are. I wouldn't change anything when I first got there. I would just really look at it and then.

John Davis: Most of the time, what I found was there was a small set of egos at the top and the egos were keeping five other people below that one person down. And now to these five other people, that person was the greatest and there's no way this thing will function without them because that's the story they've been told by that person. And when I fire that person, they go, "What are you doing? You're going to destroy the thing."

John Davis: I said, "No, I just started powering them." And next thing I know, I have five that are as good as he was. Right? And so and you do that across the board. What happens is we had one of the parks I took over had a 60 percent growth in a year. And it was just by changing the dynamic inside the structure of the team, you know, the team structure is huge. You know, I say any business is as strong as its weakest attitude, right?

John Davis: Because, you've got to make sure but his attitude in play. Right? And attitude comes from faith. Belief. And that's a hugely important right? And then what? By taking that person out of the loop, these five were able to take actions, and do the follow through, which is amazing, right?

Tim Fitzpatrick: Yeah, I love it.

John Davis: Now, the last of the five Fs is the one we kind of started on in our conversation.

John Davis: And it's it's an interesting one, because something when you're trying to achieve anything, you're taking your actions. You're moving towards a goal. Something is always going to come up. This seems contrary to what you're trying to achieve. And at that moment, you can choose to stop. Or you can choose to remain flexible and work with what's been given you, right? As Bruce Lee would say, "You could choose to be like water." You flow around, over, or through.

John Davis: You know, you have that power. For me, understanding how the subconscious mind works was really it was really powerful because I consciously chose a goal, and when things would come up that would seem contrary to what I was trying to achieve, I never took my eye off the goal because I knew that if I focus on a goal, consciously, my subconscious mind was going to show me things to achieve it. So when something would come up, I would think of it as, "Oh, this is being shown to me because I need to address it to get to my goal."

John Davis: I never said, "Oh, this is being shown to me. I can't get my goal" because that's losing faith in the goal. Right? So I need to stay in this lane. But there's a famous Shakespeare quote, "There's nothing good nor bad, but thinking makes it so." So some adversity comes up. You can think of it as a positive. Now, I can tell you in my own life, when an adversity comes up, I either had to incorporate it into what I was doing.

John Davis: I had to address it to get it solved, or I just had to say, "OK, that's no longer important." You know, and that's those are the three real choices, right? Sometimes you really have to address it. You have to get into a deep but sometimes you can literally say, "OK, we're not that anymore." Just push it aside. But you never take your eye off the goal. You never if you consciously choose something.

John Davis: You know, Robin Williams once said when they asked him, what one of my favorite quotes of all time.

John Davis: So he said, would you ever do a Mork and Mindy reunion? And his response was, "You don't look backwards if you're trying to move forward or you just run into a tree." Right? The cool thing about that statement is that. When I fired that one guy who was really good, I can guarantee you within a week he's going to call me and come back, want a meeting, because he's going to want to come back because he was in a position of power and he wants that power back.

John Davis: Right? And he would come to my office and he would come in the room and I would say, "I'm so glad we have a chance to have this conversation. We can both learn from this experience, I think. But before we start talking, I just need to tell you, I never go back on my decisions, what you want to talk about."

John Davis: And then usually I hear something about my mother and then some, you know, some interesting things, or sometimes I've had some really productive conversation out of it too which has been great. I love being in those kinds of situations. Sometimes the most loving thing you can do for somebody is be a consequence, you know, because the consequences and if you're clear enough to know that this is good for them, no matter what they, you know, you can do this great.

John Davis: You know, so I had to remain flexible. So when I was going through my experience, you know, there were days that I my back didn't want to work. And I had to realize, "OK, well, today might be a day that I just need to rest my back because I worked hard yesterday", you know, and that that can be an action, too. So I had to keep my eye on the outcome and see fearlessly focus with faith and follow through now.

John Davis: If you're a leader, guiding someone through this process is simple, as simple as watching their fear responses, and you can always tell when somebody's having a fear response because their body gets tight. Right? And they start saying things. Another thing is there's a leader. If you start listening to what people are saying about their present moment, what they're saying about the I am moment, you can understand exactly where they are and what they're creating. And as you can change that perspective of that I am moment, then you can change everything in that experience.

John Davis: Right? So you can get them fearlessly focused. When I had the lady with the whip, I had to I was constantly alleviating her fear. The first fear she had when she hit the stage is that she's suddenly in front of thousands of people that she knows. Right? And she and I already said she's timid. She's a timid person. So her biggest fear is being in front of her peers. So the first thing I do is I give her a positive from me because I'm a stranger.

John Davis: "Thank you so much for coming. It's really I'm so honored you came up. Thank you." And then I turned to the audience and I say, "Isn't she a rock star?"

John Davis: And they start cheering for her, right? So now I'm getting positive reinforcement from the people she wants to love from. So I negated that fear. Next thing that happens is we I start talking to her about fishing. I never talk to her about whips. I talk to you about fishing. I say, "Today, I'm going to teach you how to cast a fishing rod the right way." And I said, "et me get you a fishing rod", and, you know, meanwhile, we've had we're having a calm, serene conversation.

John Davis: I said earlier, the most important thing is attitude. You know, the weakest part of your business is your weakest attitude. And so I had to keep her in a calm attitude. So fishing, you talk about fishing, you're talking about calm, serene, relaxed. You talk about whips. You're talking pain, danger and frisky friday night, some of them. But we don't go. I don't want them thinking those things.

John Davis: I want them thinking I want them thinking about the idea of commentary. I said, this is a fishing rod. And I said, it's the same action. This is a it's just a fishing rod. So now she's thinking fishing. Now I also know her subconscious mind saying, "I'm holding a whip, I'm holding a whip on". So I turn to the other side of the audience that she's facing and I get them to make funny fish faces.

John Davis: So the whole side of the audience, and she's laughing, "What have I done?" I've lightened her mood by getting her laughing at the people in the room. Right? So she's having a good time. And I said, "All I want you to do now is choose the fish, which you hate the most, and catch your fishing rod", and then she cast her fishing rod, and the whip cracks.

John Davis: Right? So now I've adjusted her fears all the way through the process. I've managed it all. Now I say I'm about to put her in a situation where she has to be flexible. I say, "So you know how to crack the whip now, don't you?" And she goes, I said, "Did you hear it crack?" "Yeah." "So you already know how to make it crack. You already know how to make it right, don't worry about it, you already know how to make a crack."

John Davis: Now, for those of you were watching the video of this. You'll notice I'm doing this hand swiping action as well. This is a natural action that we all do naturally. Somebody gives you a compliment. You get a little embarrassed, you go, "Stop."

Tim Fitzpatrick: Yeah.

John Davis: Right? The reason you do this because you want it to go away, right? In hypnosis, if you start with a positive reinforcement and you get an acknowledgment of something. "So did you hear it crack? Yes, I heard a crack. So you already know how to make it crack." I'm actually dropping an anchor into her brain that she is no longer in the learning phase. She is in the knowledge phase. So I've just shortened her learning curve by a lot. She cracked it twice.

John Davis: Now she's already got it right. That's how I could turn around.

John Davis: Then I pull out of Target and I put the, I hold the target in my hand. Now I know her next fear is hurting me. That's her biggest fear is hurting me now. So I say, "Look at me. You already know how to make it crack. I promise you're not going to hurt me." You know, sometimes when you're leading somebody through something, something stressful, you got to lie to them. I have to realize I'm a leader, not a dragger.

John Davis: I'm not dragging her along. I'm leading her along, which means I have to meet her where she is and bring her along with me to where I want her to be. So I'm going to where she is. Where she is is the fear of hurting me. If I can go there and take that fear out of her head, then she's back into her cognitive thinking brain and I say,"Sso, you know, don't worry, I promise you're not going to hurt me."

John Davis: So I took the fear out. I said, all I want you to do is focus right here. So I said, "Fearlessly, focus. you can do this. I have complete faith in you." Faith, fearlessly, focus in faith. I said, "Just cast your fishing rod."

John Davis: And she casts her fishing rod and hits the target out of my hand, so I got her to fearlessly focus with faith and follow through. The flexibility came when I pulled the actual pretzel stick out that she had to hit because it was something new that she didn't want to do. Right? So I took her through my process and she does all of that stuff that I just said. All of that happens in under five minutes. I mean, literally played by guiding someone through the process and

John Davis: It's the same process that your customers going through if you're trying to sell them something, if you can understand where they are in the cycle, you can totally guide somebody through it. If you yourself are trying to see something more of your life, you can totally guide yourself through it. And that's one of the things that I want to make sure that your audience gets today is this free gift that I give to only podcast audiences. You won't find it on my website at all.

John Davis: It's the 5 F Workbook. And what that is, is it's a workbook to take you through your own five F process and bring you out the other side. It's even more. Now, I want to be clear about something I said it's a free gift. When you go to that link, you're not going to find anything for sale on that entire website. And you're also not going to have to put your email address in. This is about bringing value to you, not taking something from you.

John Davis: So dig right in there and grab that.

Tim Fitzpatrick: That's awesome, John. So these five Fs we can use in all facets of our life, it's not just about peak performance. It's something that people can use to improve things personally or accomplish certain goals in the selling process. You can use it. What other areas can you use it?

John Davis: Raising kids. I use my Five F process with my son all the time. And what I find really interesting is he has really come to understand them. And I actually walked into a room one day and he had some friends before the Covid-19 situation.

John Davis: And when people were allowed to come over to your house. He had several of his friends over and two of them got into a big argument and I heard them arguing, "Oh God! Got to go be dad," right?

John Davis: And bring my big dad arms into the room. And I walked around the corner and I heard my son using the Five F's and completely defuzed the entire situation. Now, let me can I share with you a situation that I use this in a a very tense business situation?

Tim Fitzpatrick: Yeah. Yeah, please do.

John Davis: OK, so I was directing the Tennessee Renaissance Festival and it was it's a lovely little fair and I just I increased the attendance. It was the biggest year we've ever had and today was payday. Now, the way actors at Renaissance fairs get paid, they get paid on one contract, but like two pay periods, sometimes three, depending on how long the various .Tennesse had two. So you get paid halfway through and at the end. So it was payday and I was out on the ferry sight and something I had my little spider sense go off.

John Davis: Something's not right. I better go down and check and see what's going on at the office. And I walked in the office and to my left was the owner of the festival, to my right was one of my top musicians for the event. And they were screaming at each other. And I mean, screaming at each other and now understand in this situation, I'm the middle management, I'm the one in between these two and I just walk into this, I turn to the bookkeeper.

John Davis: "So what happened?" "Well, the musician's paperwork wasn't correct and his Social Security numbers wrong on the paperwork he turned in and the IRS contacted us and asked us to hold 30 percent of his pay." So now, I mean, what's the fear? So in my mind, I'm going, "He's afraid he's not getting his money and he's afraid the IRS is going to come down on them." So how can I defuze the situation?

John Davis: The first thing I have to do is I have to get fault and guilt out of the room. So I walked right in the middle of the fight, "Guys, I'm so sorry. This is my fault." And they went, "Oh?" I couldn't believe that somebody just walked in and said that, I said, "If this is a clerical error, I missed it on the paperwork, I, I should have figured this out a long time ago.

John Davis: I am so sorry." And then I. And so everything's calm now. The whole flight just ended. Right? I turned to the owner of the festival to say, listen, he is on one contract and the IRS wants us to hold 30 percent of his pay. But he gets two checks. Can we take the entire 30 percent out of his second check and give him his full pay today? "Yes, we can." I turn to guy number two?

John Davis: I say, "You're going to get your full check today and we have a couple of weeks to get all this paperwork squared away. You know, I'll come pick you up tomorrow. We'll go down to Social Security, get a copy of your Social Security guard, and that resolves the entire thing. You'll get your full pay at the end too." Whole fight was over, what did I do? I took their fear away, I got them focused on a solution, right?

John Davis: Right? I put faith in it because I both of these gentlemen knew me. And they knew that when I said something, I meant something and my word was good. So they had faith in me and I had to take that faith and gave them confidence because my going into it with faith that I'm going to solve this gave them confidence as well. So fearlessly focused in faith, then I had to get them to follow through.

John Davis: And the way that follow through happened was I literally met him at his campsite and drove him to Social Security myself and got it done.

John Davis: And then at the end he got his check. So this is the way this works in the real world. This can be done in any situation. This is a natural, primal response that every person on earth has. And if you understand it, you can not only deal with it for yourself personally, but you can lead and guide others and resolve situation. Conflict resolution is much easier when you understand what the primal responses are going through.

Tim Fitzpatrick: John, this has been fantastic. What last-minute words of wisdom do you have?

John Davis: The simplest words of wisdom. I can give is this, remember that today's choices are tomorrow's outcomes. And if you're making today's present moment really successful and positive, then you don't have to have fear because you're not negatively focused or positively focused. So fear will be abated and you'll achieve more quicker.

Tim Fitzpatrick: Awesome stuff. Now, you had mentioned the free gift. So I know if people go to corporate action hero dot com forward slash free Dasch gift, Dasch page, they can get that. We'll make sure that we put that in the show notes. But if they want to learn more about what you're doing and how to engage with you, they can certainly just go right to your website at Corporate Action Hero dot com.

John Davis: Right. And if you're on that page, you're going to find a daily blog. Every day I put out a small piece of motivation. I find a quote that I find inspiring and I kind of expand on it. So and that is also on YouTube. And I put that out on Twitter and everywhere else as well.

Tim Fitzpatrick: Awesome.

John Davis: So you'll find just great stuff there. And my I also have a podcast that I just started that's on there as well.

Tim Fitzpatrick: Fantastic.

Tim Fitzpatrick: If you guys have learned from this. I know I have. You owe it to yourself to go over there, get the free gift, reach out to John if you've got something that you think he can get involved with, speaking and educating people on how to use this Five Fs System. John, this was fantastic. And I really do appreciate you taking the time to do it.

John Davis: Oh, thank you.

John Davis: Like I said, to be an action hero, you have to give value and create extraordinary results in the service of others. So that's why I do what I do. And just to leave your audience a one thing.

Tim Fitzpatrick: Yeah.

John Davis: There's a difference between an action hero and superhero. Action heroes are ordinary individuals who create super results, superheroes are people who wear their underwear on the outside of their pants and usually irradiated by some sort of a goo.

Tim Fitzpatrick: There you have it. That's an awesome way to leave things. So I really appreciate everybody for tuning in. Again, I'm Tim Fitzpatrick with Rialto Marketing. If you want to gain clarity on where to focus your marketing efforts right now, hop on over to our website, Rialto marketing dot com. That's R-I-A-L-T-O marketing dot com. Claim and get a free consultation button guarantee you'll get a ton of value from it and walk away with some clarity, knowing what you need to focus on right now.

Tim Fitzpatrick: Till next time, take care.

Connect With John Davis

• Linkedin

Links From The Episode

• The Corporate Action Hero 5F Workbook
• The Corporate Action

About the Host Tim Fitzpatrick

Tim Fitzpatrick is the President of Rialto Marketing. At Rialto Marketing, we help service businesses simplify marketing so they can grow with less stress. We do this by creating and implementing a plan to communicate the right message to the right people. Marketing shouldn't be difficult. All you need is the RIGHT plan.