Calling This Decision Making Only Scratches The Surface

Tony Martignetti
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 podfather of your favorite hebdomadal 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.

Kate Martignetti
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, Rey Ramsey, reveals his research and thinking that go way beyond decisions. Let's talk about following your inner voice and moral compass. The 3 Virtues We All Need: Thought Liberation, Boundary Crossing, Navigating Defining Moments, and Spirituality. Rey is CEO of the Nathan Cummings Foundation. On Tony's Take 2.

Tony Martignetti
My book is for the people.

Kate Martignetti
Here is Calling This Decision Making Only Scratches the Surface.

Tony Martignetti
It's a pleasure to welcome the author of the book, The Tyranny of False Choices, Rey 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 nathancummings.org, and you'll find Rey Ramsey on LinkedIn. Rey, welcome to Nonprofit Radio.

Rey Ramsey
Tony, it's good to be here, especially with all the energy you brought in your intro. It's good stuff.

Tony Martignetti
Thank you. I love, I love, you know, there's some too many podcast hosts. Welcome to this week's show. I am highly excited To bring on, you know, I like to be a little energetic. So I hope it— yes, I'm glad it motivates you. Not that you came unmotivated, but I hope it's infectious. That's what I mean. I hope it's infectious.

Rey Ramsey
Wonderful.

Tony Martignetti
You have this cool book, The Tyranny of False Choices: A Guide to Authentic Decision-Making. Congratulations on the book.

Rey Ramsey
Thank you.

Tony Martignetti
Can we start with some fundamental questions? What are these

Rey Ramsey
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 mindset to make the right choices. Okay. Discernment. But 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 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 external. Yeah. It is what I call the internal whispers, right? And I always jokingly say, well, 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, carrying guilt, hatreds, concerns, All of those have the potential to distort your ability to make good decisions. So that's what I mean by false choices. And then I used the provocative language of tyranny because that means someone or yourself, your inner voice, taking over and limiting you. So anything that limits— 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.

Tony Martignetti
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 control over 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 feels like a call to introspection.

Rey Ramsey
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 really, uh, have been into for a long time are Stoics. As well as Socrates. And you just literally named one of the key tenets, which is controlling the things that you can control. 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. It was 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 by Dr. Edith Stein. Yeah. with Edgar. And what's powerful about it, and I chose 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. Wow. 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 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, like media literacy and understanding how to view what's being presented. And I don't pooh-pooh that. But you're 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 going to 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. Yeah.

Tony Martignetti
Defaulting our willingness, exercising our agency, and especially, as you say, in the age of AI, which is just so— it's compelling, it's convenient, it relieves us of burdens and time constraints and things. But it's It's a false— 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's a presence and it's not going away any more than smartphones are going away. I'm just cautious about how we use it and what we cede to it in terms of creativity and our own agency, which we're talking on, which you're You're bringing in. I have on my books, on my nightstand, one of the books on a nightstand. I'm not a great reader, but it's Meditations of Marcus Aurelius. And so, I'm learning slowly because I'm a slow reader, the Stoic, their thinking. It's a pretty dense book, but it's not long, but it's dense and it takes a lot of thought. But the Stoics, can you talk more about the Stoics? You know them better than I do.

Rey Ramsey
Yeah, it's a whole lot of work.

Tony Martignetti
Through one book.

Rey Ramsey
Remarkable philosophy. Yeah, please enlighten my— Greek philosopher Zeno is credited with being the first. And it really— they flow out of Socrates, right? And so Socrates being one of the most well-known modern philosophers of the Greek era 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 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

Tony Martignetti
we're going to get to the virtue. Yes, the virtues we need.

Rey Ramsey
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 note, 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 false choice 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 Horatio Alger belief that like Anybody can just make it up by the bootstrap and you can do it alone and rugged individualism. I look around, I go, I don't see that many self-contained examples, you know, 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 with some of this part of the message, but it applies to everyone. Yeah. 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'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 going to opt in? Are you going to opt out? You know, and some people have advantages over others. So life is not about everything being, you know, even. And if I had grown up, if my parents hadn't moved, I might have been involved in gangs. But we moved to a different neighborhood. And then I would have been confronted with a choice. Do I opt in? Do I opt out? 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 tried to do was 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 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 navigation device internally. And there have been all kinds of analysis about that where young babies have some inherency 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 the journey of life is, do you block out the navigation or are you willing to listen? And if you listen, it'll help you guide many of the big decisions that you have in terms of defining moments in your life.

Tony Martignetti
That is a beautiful segue, Rey, to what I wanted to talk about, chapter 2, your follow your inner voice and moral compass. It's exactly— this is what you're— this is exactly where you're headed. Just, yeah, say more about what you talk about.

Rey Ramsey
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, you know, you're a kid.

Tony Martignetti
Would you say inner voice— let me ask you, inner voice and intuition, are we talking about the same thing?

Rey Ramsey
No, I, I don't think— not quite. No, I think, I think I'm okay 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 an inner voice and a compass. And so I use the word compass, you know. Um, the great management guru Stephen 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. Mm-hmm. And so I always tried 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 in the book, but I'm not afraid of saying that I consider myself a spiritual individual, not really religious, but spiritual. Mm-hmm. 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 were not— they were polytheistic, but they still believed in gods. And, and, you know, they invented, you know, different causalities based on the wishes of the gods. Right. But it was still about how do I lead a more virtuous life? How do I make the noble decisions, the right decisions? And that's what was so amazing about Marcus Aurelius and the book that you have on your nightstand, which is something that I would recommend that you read every few years because it— I have probably read it 4 times and I learn every time. I love it. I learn 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 Stoic and who had written— who actually was written about his teachings called Discourses. And so through that, that really influenced him. Because here you see this man, and Epictetus was a slave and had written about philosophy. And now you've got this king. Right. 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. Plus, he also was navigating tragedies in his life, losing children, you know, dealing with war. 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 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 for nonprofits, that North Star

Tony Martignetti
That's where we have to avoid the draw to conformity or tradition and fear and fear of change and scarcity. These are the things that we can easily internalize and default to the way you've described it. Yes. I want to make sure we bring this back to decision-making.

Rey Ramsey
Sure.

Tony Martignetti
Because that's the second— the subtitle of your book is A Guide to Authentic Decision-Making. But I'm so touched by the— moved by the theory too. I'd like to spend a little time with the virtues. You have a section, a couple of chapters, the virtues that we need: humility, courage, Please, let's spend a few minutes with each because, again, I'm moved by this part.

Rey Ramsey
Yeah. And so, from a basic— Humility. I'm sorry, Tony. Go ahead.

Tony Martignetti
Yeah, humility. I just— what does it mean to us? How can it help us be better people, better leaders, and even better decision makers?

Rey Ramsey
First, let me say that there is no magic to the number 3 because Okay. There are numerous virtues, and philosophers debate this all the time, right? So there are debates, and I've recently been reading Plato, and he wrote about the debate, and he was challenging somebody to even define what a virtue is. So it's this pull-tug. But I thought these 3, 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, I talk about Galileo, and other people, you are often ridiculed in that time. And so the courage requires— Mm-hmm. 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. Mm-hmm. Or this old adage, I don't know where, where this 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 pursuit. And that's what humility is. And what we have, particularly when I'm critical of policymakers and other people in authority, and I candidly, I see it in philanthropy, When people walk around with certainty, everything is certain. I go, well, how's 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, the 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 without boundary. Right. 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 Facebook group, my 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 mentioned something that I used and it means a lot to me because a number of years ago I was the commencement speaker at my alma mater and I have to get in Rutgers because I love Rutgers.

Tony Martignetti
Great. Rutgers University, the University of the State of New Jersey. Did you grow up in New Jersey? Did you go to Rutgers?

Rey Ramsey
Yeah. Yeah. And I love Rutgers.

Tony Martignetti
Where?

Rey Ramsey
Where?

Tony Martignetti
Where? And wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Where'd you grow up in New Jersey?

Rey Ramsey
Little town called Atco.

Tony Martignetti
I don't know where that is. I grew up—

Rey Ramsey
Which is near Berlin, which is the next big city is Cherry Hill.

Tony Martignetti
Oh, way south. Okay.

Rey Ramsey
Way, way south because I'm a Philly kid. So

Tony Martignetti
close to Philly, right? Close to Philly. All right. I grew up on the other end of the— I grew up in, up in Bergen County.

Rey Ramsey
Oh, 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, that everybody's an artist.

Tony Martignetti
Yeah, you say this in the introduction.

Rey Ramsey
In the very beginning. And it goes back to this notion of defining moments. And so your defining moments are reflective of what is on the canvas that you're going to leave behind when you leave this world. We will all leave behind the canvas. It will be the Rey canvas, the Tony canvas. We leave that behind. And what's on it is— are how you've handled the defining moments of your life. And then I ask 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 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, choices that I made. And he's a military or was a military person and different choices and decisions. And I happen to be very proud of him. But I love the fact that he was being reflective on— Yeah. What made me make this particular decision versus that? Was it my own? Was I being dragged into it? What were— was I influenced? 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 want to project that. And so 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 like that. They're literally openly saying, my role is to influence you. Yeah.

Kate Martignetti
It's time for Tony's Take 2.

Tony Martignetti
Thank you, Kate. Just within the past 2 weeks, my book got rejected by arguably the 2 most prominent media outlets in our nonprofit community, the Chronicle of Philanthropy and the Foundation Center. And Nonprofit Times. Neither one would excerpt or review the book. It didn't meet their conventions. 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. They may not have even gotten past the title. I don't know how far they got, but— Yeah. 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 Midsize 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 going to be in the Columbia University nonprofit fundraising management curriculum. And clearly, the legacy nonprofit media don't care for it 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-sized 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 may be dying. Oh, they— I'm not even going to 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 trying to avoid excessive adjectives here. You're not going to 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. Right. That is Tony's take 2. Kate?

Kate Martignetti
Eh, 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.

Tony Martignetti
Uh, that may be, but I'm not, uh, I'm not really internalizing their criticism. Quite the contrary. I wear their rejections as a badge of honor.

Kate Martignetti
We've got beaucoup but loads more time. Here's the rest of Calling This Decision Making Only Scratches the Surface with Rey Ramsey.

Tony Martignetti
Again, it's the introspection. But you're describing what your brother did in reaction to the book. Yeah, I I just admire the idea. You've hit on this a couple of— we're going to come back to the virtues, your 3, the way you identify. We'll come back to courage and perseverance. But you've mentioned a couple of times the defining moments in life. And by the way, I love the metaphor of the canvas. Is it going to be shades of gray or colorful and bountiful? Yeah. Talk— share a story, your own, one of your own defining moments.

Rey Ramsey
I'll share one 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 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. You're trying to look for the one that has— Yeah. And 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 this 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 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, young Mr. Ramsey. 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, Rey, 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've made me sit down or stand up and run. It's a bad 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 wanna make it about salacious details, but it was bad enough where lawyers had to be brought in. And I know there was in Nepal on a trip, and he called me and he was so ebullient 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 okay. And then I got this call a little bit after that, and he just took my head off along with his wife, 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.

Tony Martignetti
And you're the chairman, right? You're chairing the board.

Rey Ramsey
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 Build because this matter had to do with women. And it was 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, 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 mentor. And it all ended up— and then President Carter got involved. I won't ever give all the details of that other than they had been friends for a long time. So it's not easy. And President Carter invited us to his home 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. Mm-hmm. 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 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 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. We spoke only one more time after that. Wow. And then he— 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 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 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. Yeah. 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, the hero worship, 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 inner core. It'll be the right decision. Just go with that. So 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. Mm-hmm. 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 going to take it all. I never responded, never responded, and took a lot of incoming 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'd have looked like a hero, but I wasn't going to, quote, win that way. And it wasn't about Rey 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 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 going to be a moral, you know, like this battleground. And I said, because I love the man. Hmm. 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 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 gonna be easy. So I shared 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.

Tony Martignetti
That's a, that's a poignant story, right? Uh, and the, the tension. The guy you loved, your mentor, young Mr. Ramsey, he called you. And, you know, I can't summarize. I'm not going to even summarize.

Rey Ramsey
It was really tough.

Tony Martignetti
It's a poignant story with great lessons. And there were enormous consequences for you personally, for Habitat for Humanity, for Millard Fuller. Yeah,

Rey Ramsey
but his mission is great. His mission endures. He did a great thing. He did a great thing for the world.

Tony Martignetti
Leave the story there. It's outstanding. That's, um, let's go back to the virtues. Uh, courage. Courage. I don't think we need an example. I'm not going to ask you to—

Rey Ramsey
No, there's so, there's so many, right? But it's—

Tony Martignetti
Well, but that's a great one. But that's a great one. But how do we bring ourselves in the moment? Do we recognize— now, that was a big one. You probably recognize that. I don't know if you personally called it a defining moment, but you knew you were in something enormous. You're the chair of the organization and a beloved founder is now— 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 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?

Rey Ramsey
We do. You know what it is? It's fundamentally— this is an opinion, it's not science— it's 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 approach to it, which his 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 going to conform with the norm. And so, we are all challenged with that, right? And we have friend groups 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 going to go up. Yeah. 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. And I'm like, what was, what was the worst thing? A few people looked at you and said, Tony's nuts. You ever done it? Like, like, and then you realize like, oh, oh, okay. 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 okay. Yeah. But it's mostly like recognize what's going on and sort of keep tabs on that. And then say to yourself, I gotta 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. Yeah. Citing the famous case 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 used it, you know, it dates myself. And I go, they went bankrupt. And then when you look at it, you do the research and you see, well, they actually had an engineer that discovered how to do digital 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, 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 a lane and said, 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. Mm-hmm. 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 fate 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 joke when I look at our own country. And I go, boy, you got to work awfully hard to spend $2 trillion more than what you take in and still fix nothing. Mm-hmm. 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 2 guys should get together. And I said, you know, I said his name and I said, 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, well, if I'm willing to spend more, I'm more virtuous. But 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, get a hold of me, and he you know because 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 going to 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 three." 3 groups. And I said, right now you have one group that all they want to 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 want to 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. Mm-hmm. And I said, and that group gets the least attention because of the false choices being belched out by these 2. And we don't— those of us who care about that, so like we're being blocked out. We're being blocked out. So I am like, I'm trying to encourage people. I advise different folks, not going to go into it, but about displaying the courage, particularly from a policy standpoint. Hmm. To step forward when you see nonsense. But it is 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 like courage. It's not courage to spend the next generation. What you want are solutions. So we're asking the wrong question. And so I talk about in the book and I say we need radical pragmatism. Right. Radical in the sense of the courage to step forward. Pragmatic, taking concepts and ideas where they come. But you have to put them 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.

Tony Martignetti
And this is where we get to the tyranny of limited choice.

Rey Ramsey
Yes. And it's like, and it doesn't have to be. So, if you think about education, when you look at the big 40 countries in the world and you look at where United States 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, 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,

Tony Martignetti
which is yeah, which is more difficult. Exactly, which is a harder, which is a harder process. But you'll end up with a much greater outcome because nothing worthwhile is easy. Otherwise, we'd be we'd all be doing it.

Rey Ramsey
We'd all be.

Tony Martignetti
I didn't want to interrupt you. You referenced someone named Emerson.

Rey Ramsey
Yeah.

Tony Martignetti
Who's that?

Rey Ramsey
Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Tony Martignetti
Ralph Waldo. Okay. Okay.

Rey Ramsey
Yeah. And and I I just. Early in my life when I was reading and I studied literature 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 help it. 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? And I said, you got outta 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—

Tony Martignetti
You got to talk to both. I got to talk to both sides.

Rey Ramsey
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 going to 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, they had 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. Wow. 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. Mm-hmm. I don't

Tony Martignetti
need

Rey Ramsey
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 into 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 Republicans, 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, yeah, there's a little bit of money left over. And they said, what are you going to 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 didn't, quote, like me because I wasn't using the perfect language. And you think about all the language policing, all the different stuff. And remember I said earlier, virtues are about more about what you do than about what you're saying.

Tony Martignetti
Of course. And that's also a great example of what the 3rd virtue that you identify of many virtues that we need, which is perseverance.

Rey Ramsey
Yep.

Tony Martignetti
It sounds like— that sounds like a story also, not only of courage and being what you call the boundary crossers in the book you refer to, but also a story of perseverance.

Rey Ramsey
Absolutely. What you need. And 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 going to tour the state. I'm going to like talk about my housing, right? And so my chief of staff and I, 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 advance work. You know, I was like, you know, make believe. I said, go in the room and make sure it's all. And so I'll never forget John. His name was John Blatt. He came out of the room 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, 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, Tony, 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 told him, I said, we just have to lean in and we're going to go to every corner. We're going to take every meeting that we can and we're going to get this. And we did. And so it was just one of many examples, but mine pale in comparison to some of the historic examples I give or the people I point out as boundary crossers. And I also talk about some of them where I almost foolishly, by my own biases, didn't do it. And there was this woman who's now deceased, Elizabeth Furse, and she became a congresswoman from the 1st District. Oh, yeah. 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 assigned 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, dumb things that we're all capable of doing. Right. But we can recover. And sometimes life gives us another shot, like in that case. And we were thrown together 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 at the time. I said, what am I getting? I was the only one wearing a suit. Everybody was like wearing moccasins. Yeah. 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 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 like, okay. You know, it was like no big deal. She went to do work. And it was so inspiring to see someone like that. So I put people like that in there because there are boundary crosses. Yeah. 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 hope that one, people will be introspective, two, 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'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.

Tony Martignetti
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 don't— I'm not questioning your title, but it has such implications way beyond our professional and even personal decision-making. You're a Renaissance man, a student of philosophers. You're a philosopher yourself, because you're coalescing some of the greatest minds that you can read. And you're bringing them into the modern time for, according to the book, it's for decision-making. But I'm sticking with, I think it's way beyond mere decision-making.

Rey Ramsey
I'm going to stick with you on that, Tony. Mere decision-making in life.

Tony Martignetti
All right. That's Rey Ramsey. When you look him up on LinkedIn, it's R-E-Y, Rey Ramsey on LinkedIn. And you'll find the Nathan Cummings Foundation where he's the CEO at nathancummings.org. And Rey Ramsey, I thank you very much for really almost a spirit, maybe a spiritual conversation. Thanks so much.

Rey Ramsey
I greatly appreciate it. And let's talk Marcus Aurelius one day in the future.

Tony Martignetti
Okay, I have to— give me time. Give me time. I'm not as proficient and prolific a reader as you are. Thank you again, Rey. Real pleasure.

Rey Ramsey
All right. Bye-bye.

Kate Martignetti
Next week, The Revolutionary Board.

Tony Martignetti
I know we had promised you The Revolutionary Board for this week. That was a host mistake. He simply— whoever the lackluster host is— 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.

Kate Martignetti
If you missed any part of this week's show,

Tony Martignetti
I beseech you, find it at tonymartinetti.com.

Kate Martignetti
Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. I'm your associate producer, Kate Martignetti. The show's social media is by Susan Shaw. Marc Silverman is our web guy, and this music is by Scott Stein.

Tony Martignetti
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.