Hello and welcome to welcome. To Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio, big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host and the pod father of your favorite hebdominal podcast. Did my voice just crack? Welcome. Like I’m 14 years old. Oh, I’m glad you’re with us. I’d be stricken with papilledema if you made me swell up because you missed this week’s show. Here’s our associate producer, Kate, with what’s going on. Hey, Tony, we’ve got calling this decision-making only scratches the surface. The book is The Tyranny of False Choices, A Guide to Authentic Decision Making. The author, Ray Ramsey, reveals his research and thinking that go way beyond decisions. Let’s talk about following your inner voice and moral compass. The three virtues we all need thought liberation, boundary crossing, navigating defining moments, and spirituality. Ray is CEO of the Nathan Cummings Foundation. On Tony’s take 2. My book is for the people. Here is, calling this decision making only scratches the surface. It’s a pleasure to welcome the author of the book, The Tyranny of False Choices, Ray Ramsey. He’s CEO of the Nathan Cummings Foundation and Century Capital. He has devoted his career to building and leading social enterprises with emphasis on housing equity and expanding access to technology in low income communities. The foundation is at Nathan Cummings.org. And you’ll find Ray Ramsey on LinkedIn. Ray, welcome to Nonprofit Radio. Tony, it’s good to be here, especially with all the energy you brought in your intro. It’s good stuff. Thank you. Uh, I love, I love, you know, I, there’s some too many podcast hosts. Welcome to this week’s show. I am highly excited to bring on, you know, I, I, I like to, I like to be a little energetic. So I, I hope it, I hope it, yes, I’m glad it motivates you. Uh, not that you became unmotivated, but I hope it, it’s infectious. That’s what I mean. I hope it’s infectious. Wonderful. You have this cool book, The Tyranny of False Choices, A Guide to Authentic Decision Making. Congratulations on the book. Thank you. Can we start with some fundamental questions? What, what are these false choices that you see and, and why are they tyrannical? Well, let me, let me kind of break it down, you know, because when you ask that about which false choices, it depends on what situation you’re in. So it’s less about a list and it’s more about recognition of patterns and looking at motivations and bringing critical thinking when confronted with situations and so it’s, it’s really a book about. Breaking that down and having the proper discernment, but what it, what it is, it’s ultimately remember we all make, we all have choices to make, we all have decisions within that and really it it it says should you make those choices and decisions with a narrow perspective or an expanded aperture and then recognize that there are people, systems, organizations that have a motive. To try to reframe, shape, and decide for you, right? And one of the most obvious, of course, in the age that we live in this digital age and now this AI age are algorithms that are feeding you what someone else is hoping for you to believe and so we’ve got, we’re bombarded with all of these quote forces as I call them and the question is what do we do? What do we do? But, but as much as I like to talk about the external things because it’s very easy to make. Everything about the ex. It, it is what I call the internal whispers, right? And I always jokingly say to people, what, no matter what, you go to bed with yourself every night and you are there without the mask on and you’ve got all of these things that are floating through your mind, very often weight of the past, trauma, uh, carrying guilt, uh, hatreds, concerns, all of those have the potential to distort your ability to make good decisions. So that’s what I mean by, by uh false choices and then I use the provocative language of of tyranny because that means someone or yourself, your inner voice taking over and limiting you. So anything that limits, you know, tyranny limits your choices, it limits your possibility. And I begin the book by talking about thought tyranny and how that expressed itself in my life early on. I, I admire the sort of call to introspection that, you know, let’s control the things that are constraining our choices and our decisions that we have that we have control over, uh, uh, uh, within ourselves versus, you know, those things that we could blame, but we don’t externally, but we don’t have a lot of, or any agency or authority over. So I think it, it feels like a call to introspection. Yeah, that’s a big part of it, uh, Tony, and I, and I, I say very openly, uh, in the book that I rely on the wisdom of, of philosophers and the passion of poets and the philosophers and it’s peppered throughout that I, I’m really, uh, have been into for a long time are, are stoics, um, as well as Socrates and you just. Literally named one of the key tenets which is controlling the things that you can control. Um, I was really motivated a few summers ago, you know, I went to the, believe it or not, I went to the Oprah book, you know, thing and it’s like what’s on here? And I saw this book called The Choice, and I, you know, and I’ve always been obsessed with the concept of choice and so the book was called The Choice, um, by Doctor Edith. Edgar and um what’s powerful about it and I chose to um to cite it in the book was she was captured by the Nazis and was in a concentration camp and she just put a stake in the ground and she said, you know, she couldn’t control one part of it, right, the things that were happening around her and so she says very poignantly I was victimized but I was not a victim. And it was just yet another one of those expressions like that’s the only part that she had control over and she decided to master that part. And we just lose sight of it and I think increasingly we live in a world where people are, you know, you’ve heard the expression, you know, victim Olympics and, and different things like that pejoratively where people are like searching for something else to look at. But the most important thing is to look inward and with all of the tools that I try to express that are available where people say well we should have this kind of training and this kind of program and many of them might work, you know, like media literacy and understanding. How to view, you know, what’s being presented, and I don’t pooh pooh that, but your, your best armor, your ability to discern, your ability, so what we ought to be teaching most if you look at it from young, but we all need it is critical thinking. And we’re gonna need that even more as we have AI and other tools like that. Our ability and our willingness to apply critical thinking to different situations rather than defaulting, um, things. Defaulting our willingness, exercising our agency, and especially as you say, in the age of, uh, of AI, which is, is just so, um, it’s, it’s compelling, it’s convenient. Uh, it, it, it, it, it, it relieves us of, of burdens and, and time, time constraints and things, and, but it’s, um, it’s, it’s a false, I, I, I’m, I’m very skeptical of the. I’m very skeptical of our usage of it. I’m not skeptical of how it’s going to advance. It’s certainly, it, it’s a presence and it’s not going away any more than smartphones are going away. Um, I’m just, I’m just cautious about how we use it and what we see to it in terms of creativity and And, and our, and our, our, our own agency, um, which we’re talking on, which you’re, you’re, you’re, you’re, you’re bringing in. Um, I have on my books, on my nightstand, one of, one of my, one of the books on a nightstand. I’m not a, I’m, I’m not a great reader, but it’s Meditations of Marcus Aurelius and, and some of the, and, and so I’m learning slowly because I’m a slow reader. The stoic, their thinking, it’s a pretty dense book, but, uh, it’s not long, but it’s dense, and, and it takes a lot of thought. But the stoic, I think the stoics, can you talk more about the stoics? You know them better than I do. I have it’s, it’s a 16th of the way through one book remarkable philosophy, um, philosopher Zeno, um, is credited with being the First, and it, it really they flow out of Socrates, right? And so Socrates being one of, one of the most well known modern philosophers, um, of the Greek era, um, influenced. Now the thing about many of them like Socrates, he didn’t write a lot, so what you know about Socrates are the things that were written by his students like Plato. And then people tended to start writing and writing more, but the Stoics came along and, and this core philosophy rooted in virtues. And if you note in the book I talk a lot about virtues, and we’re gonna get to the virtue, yes, the virtues we need, and, and what they really foundationally, you know, put forward is you want this, and this is again flows out of Socrates, this pursuit of wisdom. And then trying to dig inside of yourself to say, how do I lead a virtuous life? How do I lead a virtuous life? And what you know, what you notice missing from there is this sense that you’re the master of the universe and you will affect everything around you. And so what I’ve always tried to do is adapt that, that philosophical belief and, and I bring up this, uh, false choice, uh, in the book and it plays out, right? So you have, think about the fights that we have in society now, you know, and so you have one group that has this horegio Alger belief that like anybody can just make it up by the bootstrap and you can do it alone and rugged individualism. And I look around and I go, I don’t see that many self-contained examples, you know, um, of that. But what we also have to interrogate, Tony, is the other extreme which, and we don’t sometimes realize we’re doing it and the effects that this has particularly on young people, and I focus a lot on young people, um, with some of this part of the message, but it applies to everyone is you say, well, the systems are all broken. And if you overdo that and you take it to the nth degree, you’re actually taking agency from the person. You, you’re getting them to somehow believe, well, actually my actions don’t matter. And I always say like, no, no, no, you’re the lead actor in your play. You’re the lead, you’re the lead. And there are things that are going on around you, but there are parts of that. There are things. Are you gonna opt in? Are you gonna opt out, you know, and some people have advantages over others, so life is not about everything being, uh, you know, even, and if I’d grown up, if my parents had moved, I might have been involved in, in gangs, but we moved. Move to a different neighborhood and then I would have been confronted with a choice. Do I opt in? Do I opt out? Um, do I join? Do I not join? So there are a number of decisions and I call these defining moments in our life that we have to do. So what I try to do is pull together and share a few defining moments of my own life. And then sort of walk the reader through what are some things I leaned on in terms of the tools that are available. So I talk about harnessing various tools and I, I, I keep saying, you know, this is tough stuff, but there’s good news because there are tools. There’s some time tested tools they’re leaning into your virtue and, and fundamental to everything is I think everyone, every single human being born into the world does have a, a navigation device internally. Um, and there have been all kinds of analysis about that where young babies have some inherency of, of understanding certain things that are good, certain things that are bad, and you just kind of know it. I think it travels with us as human beings. The question is, and, and the journey of life is, do you block out the navigation or are you. You willing to listen. And if you listen, it’ll help you guide many of the big decisions, um, that you have in terms of defining moments in your life. That is a beautiful segue, Ray, to what I wanted to talk about chapter two. Your follow your inner voice and moral compass. It’s exactly, this is, this is what you’re, this is exactly where you’re, where you’re headed. Um. Just, yeah, say more about what, what you, what you talk about. I, I, I just believe, you know, I grew to believe this. First it was a little bit of mythology because my mom would always talk about it. Your inner voice, your universe, you know, you’re a kid. Would you say inner voice? Let me ask you, inner voice and intuition, we’re talking about the same thing? No, I, I don’t think quite. I, I think, I think I’m OK with words being, you know, and I’m not the judge and jury. Words can be interchangeable, but I, I often will interchange the notion of it. inner voice and a compass and so I use the word compass, you know, um, the, the great management guru Steven Covey, I was enthralled a number of years ago when he introduced this concept of the compass and the clock and what he talked about with management is he said the trick is to align your compass and the clock, the clock, what society tells you, what, what time of day it is, but your compass coming from the inside. And so I always try to use that and earlier in my career when I was reading those books with great intent, that was one of the ones that really got me or or another one leadership from the inside out. So this is all about that expression from the inside and I think, you know, and I tend to be a person and I don’t wear it on my sleeve uh in the book. But I’m not afraid of saying that I, I consider myself a spiritual individual, not really religious, but spiritual, and it just means that there are, it’s relying on faith because I look up and say there are things I actually can’t explain, things I can’t understand, but there is an inner core telling me that there’s a higher order and I should listen. I should spend some time listening and that’s really where that comes from and you know and if you go back to what we were saying earlier with the philosophers, you know, they, they were not, they were polytheistic, but they still believed in gods and, and you know they invented, you know, different um causalities based on the wishes of the gods, but it was still about how do I. Lead a more virtuous life. How do I make the, the noble decisions, the right decisions, and that’s what was so amazing about Marcus Aurelius and the book, you know, that you have, you know, on your nightstand, which is something that I would recommend that you read every few years because it, it, I have probably read it 4 times and I learn every time. I learned every single time because you think of it, this was like his diary. He was not writing for it to be published and he had studied the Stoics. He had got had received information from Epictetus who was a famous um uh stoic and who had written um. Well actually was written about his teachings, um, called Discourses and, and so through that that really influenced him because here you see this man and and Epictetus was a slave and had written about philosophy and now you’ve got this king and that’s why he was called the philosopher king. And, and he was troubled by things that were going on around him, and he was posing those powerful, almost Socratic questions, why? What does this mean? What’s important? What’s real, and so he wasn’t bedazzled by all the great things and plus he also was navigating tragedies in his life, losing children. You know, dealing with war and, and, and asking, does this make sense to have war and so part of it is, Tony, it’s about the willingness to question, right? And this gets away from always just doing things and I, and I use in management, I say to my team all the time I want. You to work on doing some more things by not just defaulting into it and having some intentionality. What is guiding you? What is the North Star? What are we focused on? And I, and for nonprofits that North Star effort is so important. That’s where, you know, we have to avoid the, the, the draw to, you know, conformity or, or tradition and fear and fear of change and scarcity. These are the, these are the things that we, we can easily internalize. Uh, uh, the, and, and, and default to the way, you know, the way you’ve described it. Um, I’d, I’d like to, I wanna make sure we bring this back to decision-making, uh, because that’s the second, the, the, the subtitle of your book is A Guide to Authentic Decision Making. But I, I, I’m, I’m so touched by the, you know, like moved by the theory too. Um, I’d like to spend a little time with the virtues. You, you, you have a section. There’s a couple of chapters. The virtues that we need humility, courage, and perseverance. Please, let, let, let’s spend a few minutes with each because again, I’m, I’m, I’m moved by this part. Humility humility. No, humility. I just, I, what, what it, what it, what does it mean to us? How, how can it, how can it help us be. Better people, better leaders, and, and, and, and even better, you know, better decision makers. First, let me say that, that there is no magic to the number 3 because there are, there are numerous virtues and philosophers debate this all the time. Right, so there, there, there are debates and I’ve recently been reading uh Plato and he wrote about the debate and he was challenging somebody to even define what a virtue. Um, is, so it’s, it, it, it’s, it’s this pull tug, but I thought these three because what I was looking at was what have I leaned on, what have been foundational for me, and, and a lot of people that I respect were always that, well, one of the foundational virtues is courage, um, because that’s the. Willingness to stand up to the status quo, right? So the famous people that we think of the Martin Luther Kings, the people who were willing, you know, Mandela, you know, all of these people were people of courage because they said I’m not going to conform but also going back in history and I talk about Galileo and other people, you are often ridiculed in that time. And so the courage requires I don’t look good today. So what I often tie that is to the person willing to say I’m gonna bet on the arc of history, and it means I might look stupid today, but I’m, I have the courage to stand up for what I believe and what I think is right. When I talk about humility, and I say this in the book, it’s not this cartoon version of humility, you know, it’s like my head is bowed. My voice is low, you know, I’m sort of like taking on these characteristics as though it’s a cartoon. It is very rooted in the concept of intellectual humility which says again to quote Socrates, I know that I know little. And so when the oracle said to him, you’re the smartest. And he questioned that he was the smartest, tells you how smart he really was or this old adage, I don’t know where, where this, uh, came from, but about walking into the great library and then seeing all the books and it should humble you about what you haven’t read and what you haven’t, what you don’t know and so it is adopting this mindset of a of a pursuit and that’s what humility is and what we have. Particularly when I’m critical of policymakers and other people in authority, and, and I candidly I see it in philanthropy when people walk around with certainty. Everything is certain. I go, well, how is it certain because we still have all these problems. We’ve been spending money. And we haven’t fixed it, so that ought to keep you humble, which is what I, which is, and I often point, you know, to different evidence. And, and so if you look at the virtue part of it and think about the policy conundrums that we’re in in the country and the fight back and forward, the red blue fight. And the absurdity of thinking, well, the answers only come from the red side, or the answers only come from the blue side, that’s crazy in the sense of the pursuit of knowledge, and so that means you’re willing to put your tribe, In front of the pursuit of an actual solution. So what I often say to folks is if you actually care about that issue, your pursuit is almost uh without boundary. And so the more you erect all of those boundaries, it means you’re actually not putting that first. You’re putting my political identity, my, my Facebook group, my, you know, willingness to have everybody say I’m cool, you know, the concept of signaling virtue. Virtue is not about what you signal, it’s about your beliefs put into action. And so that’s really what that’s about and it’s this moment of truth that we all have because everyone has defining moments and at the very, very beginning of the book Tony, I, I, I mentioned something um that I used and it means a lot to me because a number of years ago. I was a commencement speaker at my alma mater and I have to get in Rutgers because I love Rutgers. Great. Rutgers University, the, the, the university of the state of New Jersey. I, I, did you grow up in New Jersey? Did you grow up in? Yeah, where, where, where, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Where’d you grow up in New Jersey? Little town called Atco. Uh, I don’t know where that is. I grew up in is near Berlin, which is the next big city is, uh, Cherry Hill. Oh, way south. OK, yeah, way, way south, because I’m, I’m a Philly kid, so close to Philly, right, close to Philly. All right, I grew up on the other end of the, I grew up in, uh, up in Bergen County. 00, of course. Well, and having gone to Rutgers and I knew a lot of people from Bergen County, but the message was in front of the students I said, congratulations, everyone is an artist, and this is my belief in life. I said everybody’s an artist. Yeah, you say this in the introduction in the very beginning, and, and it goes back to this notion of defining moments. And so your defining moments are, are reflective of what is on the canvas that you’re gonna leave behind when you leave this world. We will all leave behind the canvas. It will be the Ray canvas, the Tony campus. We, we leave that behind. And what’s on. It is are are are how you’ve handled the defining moments of your life. And then I asked the question, will it be tepid shades of gray or broad strokes with bright color? It’s up to you. So again, that’s back to the agency. That is up to you. And so this is why when I was writing it I said it’s not a story about me, it’s a story about us. It’s, it’s all of us because we’re all making decisions. When my brother read it, he said, wow, it made me think back to some of the things I did, didn’t do, you know, choices that I made, and he’s a military or was a military person. And, and different choices and decisions. I’m, I happen to be very proud of him, but I love the fact that he was being reflective on what made me make this particular decision versus that. Was it my own? Was I being dragged into it? What were was I influenced, uh, and so these are just things to just be aware, not to walk around in a state of paranoia, but also to be aware. Because there are, you know, external forces in addition to internal, but the external often are connected to money, power, status. And so they, they want to project that, and so they’re, they’re spending money, and even it makes me laugh, but we have positions called influencers. Like years ago you wouldn’t have had something going. They’re literally openly saying my, my role is to influence you. So you just need to be aware. It’s time for Tony’s take 2. Thank you, Kate. Just within the past. 2 weeks. My book got rejected. By Arguably the two most prominent. Media outlets in our nonprofit community, uh, the Chronicle of Philanthropy and nonprofit Times. Neither one would, uh, excerpt or review the book. It didn’t meet their conventions. Uh, I think what they didn’t like is that it has shit in the title. It’s not a conventional book. I mean, you know from the title, well, they knew, uh, they may not have even gotten past the title. I, I don’t, I don’t know how far they got, but, uh, as a reminder, the title is Planned Giving Accelerated. The Cut Through the Shit, no-nonsense, practical, step by step guide to start legacy giving fundraising at your small to mid-size nonprofit simply in one week with bequests. The title may be longer than the book. Did you need a nap? This is not the kind of book that’s ever gonna be in the Columbia University nonprofit fundraising management curriculum. And clearly the, uh, legacy nonprofit, uh, media don’t care for it, uh, as well, but it’s for the people. The book is for practitioners. This is a practitioner level book. Start planned giving in your small to mid-size nonprofit simply within a week, starting with bequests. This is a book for our nonprofit professionals. It’s for the people. It’s not for the media outlets, legacy media outlets, maybe dying. Oh, they, I’m not even gonna get into the, the diatribe about. Dinosaur media, legacy media, but The book is for the people. It’s not for the media, so. You’re not going to find it, uh, reviewed or excerpted in any. Nonprofit. I’m, I, I’m trying to avoid, uh, uh, uh, I’m, I’m trying to avoid. Excessive adjectives here. You’re not gonna find it in the nonprofit major media outlets. Say it that way. But you’ll find it direct to the people, and that’s who it’s for. It’s for you, the nonprofit practitioner. That is Tony’s take 2. Kate, Yeah, it’s their loss, but also. What I, I may not be saying the, the quote right, but I think it’s all criticism is good criticism. Or useful criticism? Uh, that may be, but I’m not, uh, I’m not really internalizing their criticism. Uh, quite the contrary, I, I, I wear their rejections as a badge of honor. We’ve got boou butt loads more time. Here’s the rest of calling this decision making only scratches the surface with Ray Ramsey. Again, it’s, it’s the introspection, uh, but you’re describing what your brother did in, in reaction to the book. Yeah, I, I, I just did, I admire the idea. You, you’ve hit on this a couple of, we’re gonna come back to the virtues. You, your three, the, the way you identify. We’ll, we’ll come back to courage and perseverance, but you’ve mentioned a couple of times, the defining moments in life and, and, by the way, I love the, uh, I love the metaphor of the canvas. Is it gonna be shades of gray or, or a colorful, colorful and, and, and, and bountiful. Um, talk, share, share a story, uh, your own, one of your own defining moments. I, I, I’ll share one that, that’s in the book, and you know, there are many and there are things to be learned, and there’s also pain, right? And so at a book event, a young person was asking me a question and, and I said to her, I said, well, what you’re really trying to ask me is if there is a consequent free. Decision and I go, no, no, because the big defining ones, they all have consequences, right? So it’s not to be in pursuit of having no consequence because that’s the false choice like you’re, you’re trying to look for the one that has no and it, it’s not true, but I, one of the big honors in my life was being the chairman of Habitat for Humanity International, so not a small group. And one of my heroes in my career that I met when I was a young lawyer and actually patterned a lot of my career after him was Millard Fuller, who founded Habitat. And he was a lawyer. I too was a lawyer. He gave up the practice of law to start and go into housing. I did the same thing. He started his own organization. I also did the same thing. I met him as a young lawyer and he was very charismatic and he put his arm around me and said, Young Mr. Ramsey is my lawyer, and he had the Southern voice, you know, and all the Southern charm. I was like, wow, you know, I was like, whatever Miller wants, Miller gets and. When I, when I got elected, because we had elections and we did a town hall meeting in, uh, America’s Georgia, which was where the headquarters was and it was packed in this church and he said to the audience something that actually wound up being. Prophetic, at least in the minds of people in the habitat world, and he said, and he always called me young Mr. Ramsey. I was younger, and he goes, You, you know, young Mr. Ramsey, Brother Ramsey is going to be the most consequential chairman in the history of this organization. So I was Tony flying high and I would say in a matter of weeks after just flying high, I was home one evening and the general counsel called me and at first I was annoyed with her and she goes, Ray, are you sitting down? Who calls somebody to say, are you sitting down when you’re at, it’s 9 o’clock and you’re at home, of course I’m sitting. I go, of course. You know, Regina, I’m home and I’m sitting, and she goes, well, I’m, I’m here with the head of HR. Well, let me tell you, if I wasn’t sitting down, that would have made me sit down or stand up and run. It’s a bad com combination and this, and she just said, I have an accusation, and she knew how close I was with Miller of misconduct. And I always avoid, even in the book, I don’t go into it. It’s not hard for people to discover what it is, but I didn’t want to make it about salacious details, but it was bad enough where lawyers had to be, um, brought in, and, um, and I’ll never. In Nepal um on a trip and he called me and and he was so ebullent about how wonderful the trip was going and then I had to interrupt and say, well, hey, I want to bring something up, and again, the lawyer in me, it’s like you have to do this orderly, and I said, here’s the accusation, but I’m hiring a lawyer, so everything is going to be treated fair and confidential, and at first he was OK and then I got this call a little bit after that and he just took my head off along with his wife. Um, who was part of the organization. Long story short, this dragged on for a while. It was ripping the organization apart on the inside. He was extremely popular, and you’re the chairman, right? You’re chairing the board. I’m the chairman, but he is popular all over the world. We signed an agreement with a big firm that was called Women’s Bill because this matter had to do with women. And it was a women’s build, and the chief marketing officer calls me and he goes, If you don’t get this matter settled, you know that $50 million it’s gone. So that was one threat. We had affiliates who were calling and threatening, if this isn’t handled right, meaning basically leave him alone, we will pull away and start a new union. Um, and then you had board members who had differing perspectives because I was still the new younger guy, and this is the legendary founder who was an award winner and my friend. And so the defining of all of this was the pull tug and being a human being and at different points people giving me an off-ramp saying you could drop this, you, you could let it go. And then receiving the other side where I got this letter one evening from someone who was impacted by the same type of incident saying to me, you’re fighting our fight too. And so it was this enormous strain, you know, back and forward, and he was a dear friend and my and my mentor. And it all ended up and then President Carter got involved. I, I, I won’t ever give all the details of that other than um they had been friends for a long time, so it’s not easy and President Carter invited us to his home um for a mediation. And my first instinct was not to do it right because they’re friends and but who turns down a Nobel Peace Prize winning president? You take him up on the offer and we sat at that kitchen table going backward and forward. Long story short, it ended up with me terminating his employment. And when I gave my farewell speech um at Habitat I said we kept our corporate partners, we kept President Carter involved, we lost no affiliates and we continued to press ahead with our uh fundraising effort and the man that I hired at that time that we voted on as a board, Jonathan Reckford is still the CEO today. And so the organization flourished. I lost that friendship, um, we spoke only one more time after that and then he, um, I get this notice that he had passed away and I went to Ebenezer Baptist Church where the service was and attended that funeral and it still leaves a hole because I wanted it. To have that human conversation with him to see if we could resurrect some of that despite the pain of the separation, which was the right thing to do. But there are consequences to it and so I just had to deal with the consequence of that. It was very difficult and I disappeared for a long time and this was, I met with Jonathan, the CEO, as a courtesy, um, last year to tell him I was writing about this a little bit but not in a salacious way. And we just exchanged stories. We were grateful, we were marking the accomplishments of the organization, but it was at a critical point and it was about the values of the organization, and it’s about, do you stand by the virtues of this great organization or do you do what we too often do in society, um, the hero worship. And, and just put individuals above the cause and above your values, whether it’s based on friendship, whether it’s based on ideology, right, and you fundamentally can’t do that. And so my mom was alive at the time and she said, God rest her soul, go with your, your inner core. It’ll be the right decision. Just go with that. So that’s, that’s an example and so our defining moments are not always that dramatic and it was tough because I was dealing with the newspapers. I’ll never forget getting ripped by a paper in the South. I was so angry, so I got a taste of them and I was like, how the hell could they do this? And they never called me and they wrote because it was all favoring him and I had a PR and crisis management firm that I argued with because they wanted to do more counterpunching. And I adopted my own strategy, and I said, and it’s not always right, but I just said, you know. I’m the new guy, um, he’s a legend. I kind of have to show the Habitat family that I can take it and that it’s not about me, it’s about the mission, so I’m gonna take it all. I never responded, never responded and took a lot of incoming um fire and then the Washington Post finally did a story because there was a blog posting. And a former person associated with the organization basically posted something and the reporter got a hold of him. So by the time the reporter got a hold of me, he had information that a lot of the public didn’t have that I refused to release. Because if I did, I, I, I’d have looked like a hero, but I wasn’t gonna quote win that way and it wasn’t about Ray winning, it was about advancing the organization and so you take it and that’s what I said and then I disappeared for years and I, I gave one public speech during a habitat fundraiser because one of our biggest chapters is in Jacksonville and the place was packed so everybody was like, now we’re finally gonna and. People cried because I still honored him and they thought that it was gonna be a moral, you know, uh uh you know like this battleground, and I said because I love the man. And so it’s not about that, and we’re all flawed. And, and so it’s not about that, but I spoke about it because I said, here’s what’s going to happen today. All of you have heard rumors. There’s a lot of back and forward, and I’m going to tell you the truth whether you like it or not, and I’m the only guy that was in the room for every important decision that went into what happened. And then I just went through some of the key things and then people were like, oh my goodness, but I would never go to the media, never make it a thing because I think that organization is so important it’s important in the world today and you, you have to make choices and it’s not always going to be easy. So I shared it in the book it’s the first time I ever wrote about it and I cried as I was as I was typing. So that was a longer answer than what you wanted, but that’s a, that’s an example. That’s a, that’s a poignant story, right? Uh, and the, the tension, you’re, you’re the guy you loved, your mentor, young Mr. Ramsey, he called you and, and, uh, I, you know, it’s. I, I, I can’t summarize. I’m not gonna even summarize. It’s a poignant story with great, with, with great lessons, and there were, there were enormous consequences for you personally, for Habitat for Humanity, for Millard Fuller, uh. Yeah, but his mission is great. His mission endures. He did a great thing. He did a great thing for the world. Leave the story there. It’s outstanding. That that’s, uh, um, let, let’s go back to the virtues, uh. Courage, courage I don’t think we need an example. I don’t, I’m not gonna ask you to say there’s so there’s so many, right? But it’s, well, but that’s a great one. But, but that’s a great one. But how do we, how do we bring ourselves in the moment? Do, do we, we, do we recognize now that, that was a big one. You, you probably recognize that. I don’t know, you’ve, you’ve personally called it a defining moment, but you knew you were in something enormous. You’re the chair of the, the organization and Uh, a, a, a beloved founder is now the salacious accusations and you knew you were in something big, but how do we know? How do we know when, when, when to, when we’re in, well, the decisions are the decisions are universal, they’re ubiquitous. But how do we bring courage? How, how do we, how do we, how do we find our inner courage because I think we all have it, but how do we bring it to the surface? What, what we do. You know what it is? It, it’s fundamentally, this is an opinion, it’s not science. It’s fun fundamentally remembering where does your actual. Self worth come from. And when you do that. You’re able to do things because courage is what you’re looking at when you have to, and again I use the sort of the Emerson Emerson approach to it, which is famous quote shun conformity. Which was always attractive to me growing up because he was just like I don’t believe in conformity. I’m not just gonna conform with the norm and so we are all challenged with that, right? And we have friend groups and you know and the concept of groupthink and it’s like we’re all confronted with that like should I raise my hand? I’m the only hand that’s gonna go up for acts of courage, right? And so, but what you’ll see, and what I would say to people is if you give that a shot, you’ll be amazed on the other hand. Where the consequences aren’t what your brain is like telling you. So like the inner voice like, oh my God, oh my God, I’m like, what was, what was the worst thing? Few people looked at you and said, Tony’s nuts. You never don’t like, like, and then you realize like, 00, OK, I, I can, I can raise my hand, and of course you’re going to calibrate, right? And so if you’ve got like the board of directors there and you want to be this out, like you pick spots, and that’s OK. But it’s mostly like, recognize what’s going on. And sort of keep tabs on that and then say to yourself, I got to break this habit. Like you don’t have to do it every time, you know, no one is asking you to run in front of the bus, you know, needlessly, but it is recognize what’s going on. Is there a pattern. And then does that affect me as an individual? What does it mean for my organization? What are we blinded to, you know, and again, I couldn’t resist citing the, the, the, the famous case of a, of an organization that just lost sight of itself in terms of conformity, you know, and that’s Kodak, you know, and I say to young people and they’re like, huh, what? Because they never heard of it, but I still use it, you know, it dates myself. And I go, they went bankrupt. And, and then when you look at it, you do the research and you see, well, they actually had, had an engineer that discovered how to do digital, um, um, um, photos, and, and, but they were like, oh my God, but we get 90% of our revenue from film. And so we, so they put it on the shelf until Canon and Sony came along and like, poof. You know, and so it’s like a reminder in your organization. So remember when I was writing this, I, and I, I said to the publisher, I said there are 3 dimensions of thinking about false choice, self, organization, and nation. And so in this case, it was applied to an organization. So the groupthink of the organization was pervasive and they stunk. And so if you look at the winners, the people who are like winning, you know, like Steve Jobs and what he did with Apple, right? And he didn’t let sometimes. The false choice can be the small, right? So you get yourself caught up in the tinkering, and I often say to people like Apple’s not great because they have the best technology, you know, they picked the lane and say we’re going to focus on creating these elegant, wonderful consumer driven attractive tools. It’s like a lifestyle. You want it in your hand. They knew what they were doing and so Jobs would take all of these risks. The challenge for Apple is, are they going to take more risk or are they just going to continue to collect coupons of money? And so, you know. Fate will, will, will, will let that be determined, but this is what happens to organizations. This is what happens to countries. And so if you just continue, it’s like I, I, I joke when I look, you know, at our own country and I go, boy, you’ve got to work awfully hard to spend $2 trillion more than what you take in and still fix nothing. And, and yet we’re having this fight, and I said this to a well-known, I won’t say his name, but a well-known guy that has his own show and started out at a newspaper and we had, it wasn’t a debate, but I challenged him and people in DC, we were together and said, you two guys should get together. And, and I said, you know, I said his name and I said, I, I just, my only thing I want to ask you is, you often write. About quantitative, how much, how much, how much, how much, and there seems to be a virtue attached to if I’m willing to spend more, I’m more virtuous. But what, what happens is you just bid that up and then you never have what I call the qualitative conversation or I had a reporter, you know, uh, get a hold of me and he, you know, because the, the, this administration was, you know, taking some shots, you know, at philanthropy. And he was like, what, how are you responding, you know, the classic like, are you gonna rally around? I was a little bit of a contrarian, first I was a little flip and I said, well, I like the letter R, so the reporter looks at me, what the hell are you talking about? And I go, well, my name is Ray Ramsey. And then I go, but let me explain what this means. And I said, and this kind of sums up how I think. I said there are 3 groups. And I said, right now you have one group that all they wanna do is reduce. So there’s a blind sense of like, if I, if, if I reduce, the world will be better. But you have another group that all they wanna do is restore. And then they want you to believe, well, if we just restore all the cuts, it’ll be great. And I’m like, I don’t know when that great time was because our schools have been in decline for a while. And I said, I’m in the 3rd R, which is reform. And I said, and that group gets the least attention. Because of the, the false choices being belched out by these two. And, and, and we don’t, those of us who care about that, so like we’re being blocked out. We’re we’re being blocked out. So I am like, I, I’m trying to encourage people, I advise different folks, I’m not going to go into it, but about displaying the courage, particularly from a policy standpoint, to step forward when you see nonsense. But it’s easy. To spend, because as I say to people, Santa beats the Grinch. But yet we have this perversion that’s like, oh, it’s an act of courage to spend more. It’s just not courage. It’s that courage to spend the next generation? What you want are solutions, so we’re asking the wrong question. And so I, I talk about it in the book and I, and I, and I say we need radical pragmatism. Radical in the sense of the courage to step forward, pragmatic, taking concepts and ideas where they come. But you have in these boxes, and that’s why I like the design is like red and blue, but it happens in organizations like I said, it happens to us as individuals. And this is, this is where we get to the, the, the tyranny of limited choice. Yes, and it’s like, and it doesn’t have to be. So if you think about education. When you look at the the the big 40 countries in the world and you look at where the United States, you know, lands, how in the world does that keep happening? And I look at people and I go, and we just pass budgets every year. And so the whole thing is like, what’s the number, what’s the number? And so the number becomes a proxy for solutions, a proxy for getting to making things better, and we should not allow that. It is not a proxy for doing the thinking, so we have to put in the extra work. But it’s easy, which is, yeah, which is more difficult, exactly, which is a harder, which is a harder process, but you’ll end up with a, a, a much greater outcome because nothing worthwhile is easy. Otherwise, we’d be, we’d all be doing it. I, I, I didn’t want to interrupt you. You referenced someone named Emerson. Who’s, who’s that? Ralph Waldo Emerson. Ralph Waldo, OK, OK. Yeah, and, and I, I just. Early in my life when I was reading and I studied literature um as my minor and I remember coming across some of his reading and I was just like wow. So my brother was like, well, you got some of your old greatest hits in there because he said, I know you throw Thoreau in there, and I go, you betcha, you know, and of course, you know, Emerson, and we laughed about that, and I said I couldn’t have, but they all influenced me as I moved through different positions because the other thing is the arc in the book is I give these different examples like being out in Central Oregon, you know, and I called it, you know, my learning journey there. At every spot, I was humbled because I had to learn something all over again. And so when, when in Oregon, and the governor appointed me to be the head of housing for the state, I was a 29 year old and I had no prior background in housing, and yet I was in charge of housing and homelessness for the entire state. And I say to young people and I go, and there was no internet. They look at me like, how, how, what did you do? What did you do? I said, you got out of the library. You know, it seems weird, and I would sit in the library at night reading and learning about these things, and then that’s where I learned about crossing the aisle, because I was appointed by a Democrat and the Republicans controlled the House. They were very conservative and the Democrats had the Senate. And so, you know, logics of civics, which unfortunately we don’t teach enough. It’s like, well, if you want a bill passed, you have to talk to both. I gotta talk to both sides. But, but there was a group called like the housing lobby advocates and my chief of staff came in one day and said, I need to give you some bad news, and I said, What? And this is kind of funny now, and he goes, because I’m not gonna say all the words that came out of my mouth as a young guy, but he said they don’t like you. And I had some choice words and I said, why, why the hell? And he said, well, you’re not using their language and they question whether you care. And my, my watered down reaction was, first of all, they wanted me to start using the language of it’s a basic human right, blah blah blah, all this stuff, right? But I had my eyes fixated. On passing legislation and I remember saying to my chief of staff, I, I did call them with the L word. It’s like losing. I said, how many times have they tried to get a housing trust fund? And so we were laughing about it and I said, and how many times have they won? Never won. So in the entire history of the state that never spent general fund money on affordable housing. This is a true story. So I put together this housing strategy. I had 14 pieces of legislation and I got all 14 passed. And I crossed the aisle and, and it annoyed people and I learned that some people aren’t here to actually solve the problem and they’re here for different purposes. I don’t want to spend my time trying to examine what those purposes are again stoicism. I don’t need to spend my time trying to figure it out, but I knew that they weren’t because I actually got booed in a, in a meeting. I walked in. To the to a Senate Democrat meeting and I’m, I was a Democrat and got booed by some people. You’re the guy that killed because what I did was I got rid of a program that wasn’t working well, horse traded it to get the flexible capital, pledged that I would leverage the money 3 to 1, which I did. 5 to 1 and the Republican, and they were like, you really want to do that? And they’re like, we’ve been wanting to kill that program for a while. And I said, but remember, in return for this, there’s a little bit of money left over. And they said, what are you gonna do with that? And I said, I’m going to return it to the Treasury. They’re like, huh? And I go, Well, I don’t need it. I’m gonna give it back. And don’t you guys have budget issues? People looked at me like I was a Martian, and I just thought, because I was unencumbered. By all of the nonsense that people get encumbered by, and I also said to people, I have a shelf life here and I’m gonna use all my political capital to get stuff done. People in Oregon, people still remember that, Tony, and that’s one of the things I’m most proud of, but that’s one of the working examples, and I put those principles in the book. I wouldn’t conform, even though I took those hits, even though, you know, they, they didn’t like me because I wasn’t using the perfect language, and you think about all the language policing, all the different stuff. Remember I said earlier, virtues are about more about what you do than about what you’re saying. Of course, and that that’s also a great example of what the third virtue that you identify of, of many virtues that we need, which is perseverance. It sounds like that sounds like a, a, a story also not only of courage and being what you call the, the boundary crossers, the in the book you refer to, but, but also a story of perseverance. Absolutely, what you need, and I’ll, I’ll, I’ll give you one. Quick, I know we’re getting close, but this is funny, and it was very humbling. So I said, I’m gonna tour the state. I’m gonna like talk about my housing, right? And so, my chief of staff and I, we, we get to Southern Oregon, you know, a little cocky, I told you I was young, right? And so I get there and I said, I need you to go in the room, do like advanced work, you know, I was like, you know, uh, make-believe. I said, go in the room and make sure it’s all, and so I’ll never forget John, his name is John Blatt, and he came out of the room and, and came to my car and I go, so what’s, and he goes, well, You got the kind of podium you wanted, you got the, you know, blah blah, blah, all those. I said, great, so what’s the bad news? And he said, um, what were you expecting in terms of the crowd? I said, well, you know, I was promised, you know, we could hit anywhere from 150 to 200. And he said, well, it’s not quite that. And I said, what does that mean? I’ll never forget this, because he said, oh, there might be 18 people, 20 and I went, oh my God, oh my God. And so you just face it, right? This is like perseverance, and I just said. One day, this is before the legislation passed, and I was trying to convince people and I, I told him, I said, we just have to lean in and we’re going to go to every corner, we’re gonna take every meeting that we can and we’re going to get this, and we did. And so it’s just one of many examples, but mind pale in comparison to some of the historic examples I give or the people I point out as boundary crossers, and, and I also talk about some of them where I almost foolishly by my own biases, um, didn’t do it and there was this woman, um, who’s now deceased, Elizabeth Furs, and she became a congresswoman from the 1st district and we were in a leadership class. Together and I heard her accent, which I knew was South African and at the time I calculated in my mind I went, oh my God, this woman was part of all of that, you know, over there and I was like I want nothing to do with her. So I was sitting there I was like I hope, and then by the serendipity of life we had these like buddy things and I thought, please no and then Elizabeth was signed to me and she literally was the friend of a lifetime. She’s now deceased, but one of the most extraordinary human beings I’ve ever had the privilege of knowing, who taught me so much, and I gave that example of my own foolishness and where my biases could blind me and what a dumb choice I almost made. And so I share some of these different things about getting embarrassed, having these, you know, uh, dumb things that we’re all capable of doing, but we can recover and, and sometimes life gives us another shot like in that case, and we were, we were thrown together as, as buddies and then she chose to run for. Congress and I remember I showed up. We had like we were at a shopping mall in downtown and there couldn’t have been more than like 15 people at the announcement and I thought, what did I, and I was practicing law. I said, what am I? And I was the only one wearing a suit. Everybody was like wearing moccasins. She was like the hippie woman, and I thought we were going to get crushed and wouldn’t you know it. We somehow won And she was so not into um the trappings of it. We were seated on election night and John, her husband and I were the ones who walked up to her and said, you’re going to Washington, and she just kind of like shrugged her shoulders saying, OK. You know, it’s like no big deal. She went to do work and, and it was so inspiring to see someone like that. So I, I put people like that in there because there are boundary crosses. There are people who put some of these principles to work and I just wanted to share some of those individuals. Some of the aspects of philosophy and I hope that one, people will be introspective, 2 motivated, that you can do something about this if you recognize it, but never, never give up your own agency and what I always say, and I, I’ve given talks to a lot of young people and I said remember you are the only one who gets to determine the boundaries of your destiny. No one else gets to do that. That is for you. And if we just remember that. The book is The Tyranny of False Choices, A Guide to Authentic Decision Making. And it’s a lot broader than mere decision-making. I, I don’t, I, I’m not questioning your title, but it has such implications way beyond our professional and even personal decision making. Uh, You, you’re a, you know, you’re a, you’re a Renaissance man, a student of, uh, a student of philosophers, uh, you’re, you’re a philosopher yourself because you’re, you’re coalescing. Some of the greatest minds that, that you can read and, uh, you’re bringing them into the, to the modern time for, according to the book, it’s for decision making, but I, I’m sticking with, I think it’s way, way beyond mere decision with you on that Tony mere decision making in life. All right, that’s, uh, that’s Ray, Ray Ramsey. Ray, when you look him up on LinkedIn, it’s R E Y Ray, R E Y Ray Ramsey on LinkedIn. And you’ll find, uh, the Nathan Cummings Foundation where he’s the CEO at Nathan Cummings.org. And, uh, Ray Ramsey, I thank you very much for really, uh, almost a, almost a spirit, maybe a spiritual conversation. Thanks so much. I greatly appreciate it. And let’s talk, uh, Marcus Aurelius one day in the future. OK, I have to give me time. Give me time. I’m not as proficient and prolific a reader as you are. Thank you again, Ray. Real pleasure. All right, bye-bye. Next week, the revolutionary Board. I know we had promised you the revolutionary board for this week. That was a host mistake. Uh, he simply, who, whoever the, the lackluster host is, uh, simply didn’t look at his own recording calendar correctly. Good thing he’s a, he’s a better author than he is calendar keeper. If you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you, find it at Tony Martignetti.com. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. I’m your associate producer Kate Martinetti. The show’s social media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our web guy, and this music is by Scott Stein. Thank you for that affirmation, Scotty. Be with us next week for nonprofit radio. Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. Go out and be great.