Be Present To Save The Universe

Tony Martignetti
Hello and 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. Oh, I'm glad you're with us. I'd be stricken with idiopathic intracranial hypertension if you pressured me with the idea that you missed this week's show. Here's our associate producer Kate to tell us what's up this week.

Kate Martignetti
Hey, Tony, here's what's up. Be present to save the universe. If you want your presentations and messages to persuade people, you need to be present, Clear, confident, unscripted, and have fun. Whether you're meeting one-on-one, one-on-100, or you're on stage facing 2,500, whether you're in person or virtual, Paul Gordon preaches the gospel of get out of your own way in order to say what you truly mean. On Tony's Take 2.

Tony Martignetti
My book and I thank you.

Kate Martignetti
Here is Be Present to Save the Universe.

Tony Martignetti
It's a pleasure to welcome the man who preaches the gospel of getting out of your own way in order to say what you truly mean in business and in life. Paul Gordon has a worldwide audience, over 2 billion people, for his TV and stage work, including David Letterman and Lincoln Center. He's certain that his 7 years a garbage man are as essential as his fancy careers as a performer and a university professor. He's at thepaulgordon.com, and he's on LinkedIn. Although try to find him on LinkedIn. We'll talk about that. Paul Gordon, welcome to Nonprofit Radio.

Paul Gordon
It's a true pleasure to get to speak with you, my man.

Tony Martignetti
Thank you. I felt like we connected through your pitch and our various emails, even though you're halfway around the world in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Paul Gordon
Yeah, right. The energy bleeds through in your writing, you know, as we exchanged email info So just as clearly as your energy on your podcast, it's, you know, it's delightful because you, you bring it.

Tony Martignetti
Well, you're very gracious. And you the same through just email and your website, some YouTube videos I watched. You're— it's sort of an infection, an infectious, not an infection. You know, you're an infection.

Paul Gordon
We can, we can always try to find the cure. And it should be, we should be the antidote. So yeah,

Tony Martignetti
we are the antidote. Yes, but we're not— we don't need an antidote because you're not an infection. You're not a streptococcal infection or something. No, not at all. Uh, but, but the energy is infectious for sure.

Paul Gordon
Right. Hopefully, hopefully on a regular basis that— and, and, and we will talk about that because in fact your, uh, listener viewership is hopefully Within the wish to embody and embrace this exact feeling of the contagion, the infectious quality of energy that compels, right?

Tony Martignetti
And compels whether we are connected by screen or live and in person. I happen to prefer, much prefer live and in-person audiences. However, I very much believe that you can connect through the airwaves, through the internet, and reach people the way you're encouraging us to do. And training people, not just mere encouragement, but you train people to do. So this is— so let's first clear the— make it clear that this connecting with people— Yeah. And an audience might be one person, right? It might be a one-on-one meeting, or it might be an audience of 2,500 in a, in a theater, or you're working Lincoln Center. What would you— this can be learned. This can be learned.

Paul Gordon
Yes, presence. You know, what I refer to as presence is a 100% trainable skill. Um, it's not a personal personality trait that you're born with or born without. Um, For the most part, I have broken this down into the obstacles that people have from when they were very young. They either are bringing forward their mommy issues, their daddy issues, their inner critic issues, and their peer issues. And these are the things that we carry with us. Without, without finding the ways to shed ourselves of them so that they can just slough off and let us be the more, you know, profound version of ourselves, right?

Tony Martignetti
Yeah. And rather than trying to be the, the persona that we think we need to embody In order to connect in, again, in a meeting one-on-one or a meeting with— all right, maybe most of us don't do stage presentations of 2,500, but 50 or 100 at a conference, eminently likely. But we feel, we feel there's a persona or a facade that we ought to bring. And we put this up, and I think audiences And individuals recognize it. I think you see, I think people see right through it. They may not articulate it, but they feel that I just can't connect with the person or the person is just not connecting with me.

Paul Gordon
Right. And a long time ago in the celebrity performance world on movies and stage and screen and what have you, or in fashion, it was referred to as the it factor. Factor, right? Who's the, who's the current it girl or that thing? And in fact, people are focused very, very deeply on the formula that is preached by so many to simply, you know, do it this way. And you will have enough. And in fact, we can smell it on people. Hmm. When people are performing their safety, often they have been— they have allowed themselves to be convinced that memorizing, doing the copy-paste research currently now in this, you know, world of Massive AI growth, allowing the script to be delivered unto you by Claude or whichever. They then are taking exactly that and they think, if I can just quote, you know, here's my air quotes, get it right, I will have done my due diligence. And that is so contrary. Yeah. to what most people want to feel when they're sitting in the audience, whether it's live or virtual. Because in fact, anytime you're performing your safety, you are doing yourself a disservice because it reads flat.

Tony Martignetti
Yeah, performing your safety.

Paul Gordon
Yeah.

Tony Martignetti
All right, let's talk about presence. This, this is essential to your work. It's core. Uh, you, you choose presence instead of confidence, although they— you can distinguish them if you like, but your, your core is, is about presence. Please, uh, just put a quarter in the slot. I'm putting a quarter in the slot.

Paul Gordon
Yeah, good. So here's an important distinction. So many are wanting to feel that confidence, and in fact When you develop your inner core sense of what it is you're burning to speak about, what it is you have as what I call your passion play of truth, you can learn the exercises that allow you to be able to express that stuff from within. From your soul. And when you allow yourself not to say what you think people want to hear, but in fact say what you know they need to be explained, they need to be offered, you will then be actually training your entire— your, your body, your voice, your face To step up into that which gives you the confidence. The reason I just explained it that way is that so many are wanting the confidence and they go to people who are like, you know, confidence coaches or, you know, mindset shift people. But actually, it works the other way around. When you learn how to express what you care about, That builds the confidence that then feeds the loop that develops even further your ability to offer the expressions, the phrases, that which you truly care about, which then in turn improves your confidence, and so on and so on. It bounces back and forth in an upward Asymptotic, you know, curve. Makes

Tony Martignetti
sense. Yes. Um, there's a lot there. Um, the passion play, the face, the exercises. Uh, where should we go? Can you share an exercise? Uh, yeah, yeah, I like, I like action items for our listeners. They're not gonna— this is not gonna replace working with you. But if you share an exercise or 2, you have these rituals that you can do 5 minutes a day, or— right, right. Yeah, yeah. Share, share some, share some of this.

Paul Gordon
Yeah, easy. And, uh, you know, I'm, I'm delighted to. I am not one of those, uh, gatekeepers of stuff. These are things that I really want everybody to embody because they then, you know— and, and I'm saying this in order to kind of get people, you know, juiced up and jazzed about the idea that they can separate themselves from the generic herd of droners that are all around us. Right. So for starters, let's just take a look at this. You're, you know, I was on the Letterman Show that went out to 40 million people. I did a live gig in front of my biggest audience was 25,000. That was a big audience. But I've also performed and presented for little kids that, you know, a classroom of 70 year olds, you know, and, you know, maybe there were, maybe there were 10, maybe there were 12. That's fine. It doesn't matter. Here's the thing. You look into that camera, or if you're— and if you're on the Letterman Show, you're looking into a camera. If you're on a stage, you're doing the same exact thing, and it is one person. Now, many, many listeners here may know, oh yeah, right, it's one person, and that's a no-brainer. However, I'm gonna step it up a little bit. Who are you speaking to when you're looking into that camera? Most people are imagining that it is, you know, that scary bunch of people that they're gonna ask for money, right? Or you're performing and, you know, oh God, please like me. That's not the person that you're actually Choosing in your own being, in your own mind, when you present, to present to. You are staring right into that lens or out into an audience to one person who is a dear friend of yours, who knows you, who gets you, who supports you, and who at every step of what you do. is nodding and smiling, saying, yeah, more, yeah, more. That's actually you making that choice to address in that way.

Tony Martignetti
At first I was thinking of my wife, but the more you described it, the more I realized that's the— that's— she's not the right one.

Paul Gordon
Right. It's often—

Tony Martignetti
Started that way. Didn't end that way.

Paul Gordon
All right. And, and, and I want, I want your wife to know when she hears this that if she needs some, uh, retribution, then she can call me and I'll come over and I'll hold your arms for her.

Tony Martignetti
It was that.

Paul Gordon
But, but yes, thank you.

Tony Martignetti
It was the part where asking for more and more and more. That's where, that's where she, that's where she dropped out.

Paul Gordon
Yes, more, more, more.

Tony Martignetti
She's not in. She's not up for, uh, it's more like enough, enough, enough.

Paul Gordon
Oh, stop impressing me, Pete. But, but yeah, so let's, let's get back to this because in fact, it's, it's not, it's not your spouse often. And the reason why it's not your spouse, it ought to be one of your dearly beloved close friends. This is the person with whom you would talk in the same exact way. Across the— across from them at a lunch where you're just hanging out and you're actually explaining a new cool idea. You're getting the hang of rehearsing it, you've paid attention to it, and you know what it is you want to say, but that's who you're speaking to. So remember that this is a a dear friend. It might be kith, it might be kin, but this is the type of supporter that gets you, and that's who you look at. And when you're in— when you're on a stage in front of a bunch of people, each person you look at, and it's important to actually make eye contact with each different people.

Tony Martignetti
Lots of people. Yeah.

Paul Gordon
Right. There's lots of people. If there's a depth, you're looking to the back, you're looking to the front, you're looking to the sides. But each time, you're not looking at a different person. And you're not assuming that that has changed. Each one is that same incarnation of someone who supports you and gets you.

Tony Martignetti
So you're making eye contact with that person who's important to you as you're making contact with the physical eyes that are in the audience if we're, if we're in person, or they're, they're on the other end of the camera.

Paul Gordon
Yeah.

Tony Martignetti
Okay. Okay. So

Paul Gordon
that's the first thing. That's the first thing I just want, you know, and, and some, some of your listeners may say, yeah, okay, boring. Next. I've gotten that before. I know how to do that. Okay, good. So let's, let's now go to the next thing because I touched on this idea of body, voice, and face. Yeah. I am going to speak a little bit to the idea of what it is to extend yourself a little bit. Now, in this particular case, we're talking on a Zoom call and I am standing. I'm standing for a very specific reason. I don't have to, but I stand in order to allow this to be something that is a little more Um, of a grand gesture for me. I get to get my yayas out by allowing myself a little more dynamics. That looking to one person and talking the way we explained actually is one of the early aspects of offering more dynamics. Now For your voice, we want to understand some dynamics too. For your body, we want to understand some dynamics too. And for your face, we want to understand some dynamics too. And in order to practice before you ever go anywhere, you can go beyond what is normal, beyond what is what you may consider acceptable, in order to push yourself a little further. So that you can pull back and actually have a broader sweet spot for your presentation ability. Does that make sense?

Tony Martignetti
Yeah, no, very much. Go beyond and then, and then draw back to where, where you want to be. But I like the idea of pushing the bounds of, I don't know, what, what, what's, what's, what's acceptable. Go beyond where you would perform and then And then recede a little bit.

Paul Gordon
Exactly. And, and when you, when you recede back, you will have receded back a step or two more advanced than you were before you had pushed, right? It's like, it's like when we stretch muscles, we wake up or we're doing exercise. I mean, I'm a trained dancer and performer. And, you know, the, the body as a tool, you stretch, so you stretch the muscles further, and then they are more limber. So the reason I— that, you know, all that is a prologue to this idea that why am I standing? Because this is part of the body dynamics. When you are standing, it allows you to have to confront a few things. One is that you are more capable of actually using this space that I refer to as the camera universe when we're doing virtual stuff. Right. And in fact, if you're on a stage, you are going to be standing at some point or another. If you ever do a solo talk, you will in all likelihood at some point confront the need to be standing. So you have to get comfortable with it. And it's brilliant to be able to get comfortable with it because You need to be comfortable in your own skin. But when you are standing in a virtual situation, your camera universe has more breadth of experience when you activate the entire thing. Yeah. What people are seeing on the, you know, on their screen is your camera universe. That's what they're seeing. So you activate your ability To energize your screen and your presence by learning how to explore standing upright, legs a little bit wider than shoulder width so that you can play with moving from one side to the other, right? This is actually important. Why? Because you want to be able to use that. The next part of it is you can put both of your feet splayed, one more forward than the other so that you can play with moving back and forth. Because in fact, when you're leaning in to, you know, talk to your friend who supports you across the table, you share a secret and you do lean in, and you take a breather and you do relax back. That's part of the dynamics. So having this gives you more of a freedom and I'm going to say something a little, you know, I don't know how weird it may be to some of these people. Paul, what does that have to do with me because I spend most of my time sitting? Well, I'll tell you this. Good question. And here's your answer. It actually teaches you to incorporate yourself into the space even when you're seated. You will be more in touch with how you work within your camera universe once you have stood and played with some of this. When you sit back down and consider yourself to be that sedated, docile version of yourself, you don't have to remove the energy even when you're seated. And you get better at it by pushing further, by playing with it when you're standing.

Tony Martignetti
Well, that's perfectly consistent with what we were saying. You, you may end up performing seated, but, but, uh, prepare, rehearse. And I don't mean by rehearse, I don't mean memorize, but, but work, work in advance beyond that. So you do have more agility, you, you do have a greater canvas to work with. And then when you're seated You know, that's the— you're receding back to where you'll actually perform. But you will have— you'll— yeah, it makes perfect sense. You'll have a better— you have a better feeling for your space if you prepare by standing and, and moving, moving in dimensions that you're not gonna— you're not gonna do while you're seated. But all right, let's, um— There's so much here. I want to talk about preparing Your material. You alluded to not memorizing and, you know, using Claude to prepare your content. Unscripting is what you refer to it as. I mean, I like to just think through versus memorize. I don't like memorize, but what— let's prepare, help us prepare our content in your method.

Paul Gordon
No problem. You and I are both talking in a way that makes complete sense to us. And we are engaged in what I refer to as a relatively structured improvisation, because we know what we are talking about. And we know the why. And we know the issues at play. Right. That's how we're able to actually allow it to flow more. That's the improvisational part. The structure of it comes from actually understanding what it is you want to talk about, which is based in why. Now, let's get into a pre-why concept here. It's something that I refer to as essentiality, and it's not a word I made up. Essentiality is a word. You can look it up. Yeah. When you tap into the purpose of your mission, of your issue, of whatever topic, you want to make sure that you are respecting it, honoring it with the due diligence to connect it to something really, really essential. And here's my way of— Yeah. Tapping into the essentiality on a universal level, down to the molecular. It is well known that anything with good intention actually can command a certain agency even over the molecules around us. So I want you to always be aware that when you're saying something that you feel matters, you have thought about how this thing actually improves the entire universe. Your purpose for describing what it is, is actually connected to saving the planet and the universe. That when you do that due diligence will allow you to know why you are saying what you're saying. Okay, that's the bait, you know, that's, that's the precursor to this. So then you can have a loose structure that I can offer this simple 7-point structure that I have that I refer to as— it's my 7-point structure broken down into anchor points, which, you know, some people can call them bullet points, some people can refer to it as other ways of breaking down an outline, but I, I think of this as anchor points. Each part of what you want to say, you can reduce to a simple couple of words or a simple, simple phrase so that that is the overarching umbrella of that aspect. And then when you practice that, not to memorize it, but you go into the essentiality of knowing what it is you want to say and why you want to say it, then each of those anchor points allows you to tap into that particular section And then you can get better at letting it be that structured improv. The 7-point system we can talk about.

Tony Martignetti
Yeah, can we?

Paul Gordon
Yeah, you want to—

Tony Martignetti
I just want to tell you, I love the idea of saving the universe.

Paul Gordon
Good.

Tony Martignetti
What I have to convey to you is that important.

Paul Gordon
Yeah. And, and, and, and, and this is a great tie-in because I don't want you to forget to bring up the ask, because the ask, I think, is something, you know, this, this particular group of people, hypothetically, theoretically, hopefully, is, is going to be addressing the issue of asking for money, right? Mm-hmm.

Tony Martignetti
Yeah. Yeah.

Paul Gordon
So it does tie in very strongly to that. And I want to touch on that with you, with, for, for their benefit in a little bit. So those are the anchor points. Now, a 7-point structure for something I'll just mention, you're making, you're making some— let's talk about an online chunk of content. Okay, here's, here's this as an example. You have a problem. that you know people are dealing with, and they actually are dealing with it poorly because they have been paying attention to some other schmo that you know is not guiding them in the way that you can. So it would be the problem, and that's the second thing, because the intro is the first thing, and we're gonna actually address the intro afterwards. The problem that they're dealing with, followed by the poor results that they are actually generating by going in the poor direction. Then, if you can explain to them that there are better results that can be achieved if they actually go in the way that you know will improve their situation. Right. You can talk about those results, after which you can speak about your credentials on why you know this to be true, after which you can then offer them the afterglow that they achieve when they are actually engaged in the thing that you know helps them better. And then you can go to the call to action. Those are 6 steps. And let's go—

Tony Martignetti
7. 7. That's 7.

Paul Gordon
Well, right. That, that is what I sort of— yes. So let's, let's take those in order. And then we are going to now reverse engineer the introduction. Okay, once we have solidified that arc, With those anchor points in each of those steps, then we can look back and we can say, what exactly is a somewhat controversial way of talking about this topic?

Tony Martignetti
Your introduction— wait, before, before you do that, I just want to make sure everybody's on the same page because they may not have been taking notes the way I was. So I have your introduction The problem, the poor results, the better results, your credentials as speaker, the afterglow of achievement, and a call to action.

Paul Gordon
Yes.

Tony Martignetti
Okay, please. Now you want to reverse engineer to the introduction,

Paul Gordon
right? The introduction we leave until we have actually defined the others. So starting from number 2 until the call to action, right? Once we have that as the guts of the entire thing, We can then look at it and we can say, what is it that I'm actually trying to speak about here? And it is with your essentiality and your purpose that you can muster enough gumption to actually say the introduction in a way that needs to be said, not in the nice way. For instance, for my stuff, it's not that you're bad at being on camera, it's just that you suck because you've been paying attention to that scripted, templated bullshit out there. Drop that, for Christ's sake, for the love of everything you hold dear and sacred, right? And, you know, and this is, this is just me playing with the idea that I can say what needs to be said. I don't have to listen to some of that standard templated boilerplate softened rhetoric. That's not me.

Tony Martignetti
Yeah, middle of the road that offends no one and grabs no one, that any schmo— you invoked schmoes. I love schmoes. I talk about schmoes all the time. Any schmo could do XYZ. I'm always saying any schmo. So, yeah, that any schmo could deliver, you know, again, milquetoast offends no one, grabs no one.

Paul Gordon
Offends no one, grabs no one. If it, you know, if you're, if you're performing that safety, you will read flat.

Tony Martignetti
Yeah,

Paul Gordon
that will, you know, flat is flat. There's no way around it except to say that It actually smells and feels worse to those people than they even realized because they're not gonna be paying attention. They'll be, you know, quietly, silently swiping on their phones, um, coming up with their shopping list, whatever it is. And the stuff that's memorable is the stuff that, you know, they need to hear.

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

Tony Martignetti
Thank you, Kate. My book and I thank you. You've been hearing about the book. You've heard rumors, right? You've heard rumors about this book, this thing, Planned Giving Accelerated. Now, you've been hearing about it for weeks. And I thank you for listening. You know, I shared a lot of milestones with you. Through the months, and of course more very recently leading up to the launch, which was last week, as, as we recognized in last week's show with, with Stephen Nill. So just, you know, I thank you. The book is out. It's at wherever fine books are sold, which in our time means Barnes& Noble, and Amazon. There's a hardcover version, there's a paperback version, and there is a Kindle version. There will be an audiobook version, but that's a few months away. I have to actually record it, and I'm still involved in the— deep in the promotion of the book. Got some speaking gigs coming up, got more podcasts coming up, so there's still a lot of promotion going on. You don't just launch it and then drop it. And then you gotta launch it and then sell it. So I mean, I'm involved with that. So I thank you very much for following my book journey through the many months. And that's really, um, I would say that's pretty much Tony's Take Two. Thanks very much for following the book journey. Kate.

Kate Martignetti
I'm still waiting for my special signed copy to the associate producer.

Tony Martignetti
Yeah, after you go to Amazon or Barnes& Noble and buy it, then I'll be happy to sign it for you.

Kate Martignetti
When you come to visit, I'll make sure that I have it ready. I'll get a little Sharpie and everything.

Tony Martignetti
Please do.

Kate Martignetti
We've got buku buttloads more time. Here's the rest of Be Present to Save the Universe.

Tony Martignetti
Love it, uh, your, your philosophy. And all this is— it gets to being entertaining without being jokey, without— I mean, I, I used to do stand-up comedy as a, as a, uh, as an amateur. The most I ever got paid was $20 once. Oh, good. Uh, in, in— I used to do this in New York City, so Uh, you know, but that's— so I like to weave in a little, some, some explicit entertainment, you know. But, but for folks who haven't, you know, if you haven't done that, you don't, you don't need to, to be entertaining, to be interesting, to be— to, to grab people's attention so that they're not doing their shopping list. And that's so that at the end, it's not— Yeah.

Paul Gordon
Right.

Tony Martignetti
Wow, thanks. You know, yeah, it's not that. It's, whoa, he moved me. I, I'm— I, I can only remember— I, I can— yeah, I can only take back 3% because there was so much packed in here, but that 3% is going to move my board, or I'm going to go have a conversation with the CEO, or, you know, something I, I'm going to act on. Because I was moved to action to, you know, to save the planet.

Paul Gordon
Right. There's— and you're bringing up a great thing because I've done some, you know, I do stand-up currently here, and I've done some at the Comic Strip Live on the Upper East Side. And, you know, I've also— there was a show a long time ago called Caroline's Comedy Hour. And that was a, that was a great club, um, did those gigs. And so— Oh,

Tony Martignetti
you were a big name. You were a, you were a headliner. I was at, uh, I used to do— I did most of mine at Gotham Comedy Club on, uh, 6th, 6th, uh, 23rd Street, 23rd between 6th and 7th, I think. Uh, but I was one of, you know, 8 or 10 comics. We all got 6 or 8 minutes on stage. Um, you were— if you were doing carolines That, or what's the one you mentioned on Upper East Side?

Paul Gordon
Uh, yeah, the Comic Strip Live. Yeah,

Tony Martignetti
Comic Strip Live. Yeah. All right, so you were, you were headlining, so that's why I hastened to say I was an amateur.

Paul Gordon
Well, however, yeah, however, it's good because, you know, here we are talking about this and we may, um, uh, we may alienate some folks who say, well, I can't be, you know, entertaining and This— that you introduced this is worthwhile riffing on for a moment. The performative nature, what I offer— I mean, my book is, you know, Mean It, and, you know, this Mean It method that I truly believe in. I got my master's degree in developing processes for this type of stuff. Yeah. The performative nature comes from the fact that practically everything we pay attention to has a theatrical quality. Okay, that is to be separated from the concept of learning theater. You don't need to become an actor, right? You don't need to do that in order to understand that a slice of life on a YouTube video or whatever type of social media thing where you take a look and it's just a slice of life, or if you're standing there looking at a sunset, these are theatrical by nature. And the theatricality of it has nothing to do with building a theater, uh, you know, years of theater training. Okay, good. I just want to say that can be learned by anybody as soon as you embrace the fact that everything in your life to a certain extent is theatrical. Mm-hmm. Once you are allowing yourself to be present and actually hear yourself say the things you're saying, You want to allow yourself to enjoy being there.

Tony Martignetti
Hmm.

Paul Gordon
And when you are— or not even there, you're enjoying being here right now. And when you can allow yourself to hear yourself think, you can actually allow yourself to have that improvisational space That gives you the chance to enjoy being there. And then you might surprise yourself with a little analogy, a short little story. You don't have to go off on tangents that go nowhere. Short little story that you get a kick out of. I can tell you a story. Yeah. That I can get a kick out of, and then it affects the way people are paying attention. Right now, I, I do want to come back to this idea of vocal dynamics because I just have been using with you, and you have been using it too, and the audience needs to understand that your vocal dynamics allow you to be able to also own a certain audio space. Mm-hmm. And that is pauses. It is when you speed up the tempo. It is when you talk quietly to share something and when you talk loudly because you're excited. And those are also trainable exercises. And then you allow yourself to embody more of that. So there's the body dynamics, there's the voice dynamics, And there's also the face dancing that I refer to, the art of face dancing, which is just the neck-up presentational ability to animate yourself.

Tony Martignetti
All that is making you interesting, entertaining without being an entertainer, which is what you're getting to. Uh, it, it draws people to you and to your, your, your content, your message, even more than— uh, content's not a good— draws people to you And, and your message.

Paul Gordon
Yeah,

Tony Martignetti
yeah, let's talk. Go ahead. I

Paul Gordon
was just gonna say, it— the next step of this is the whole idea that when you're allowing yourself to, you know, animate that space that you're in, whether it's virtual in your camera universe or whether it's on the stage, and you're really grooving with this stuff, because you have gotten it under your skin, and you're allowing yourself to do it, then you're having fun. And when you're having fun, it's actually, you know, like we started the whole joke of this, this interview, it's contagious, it's infectious, it's, it's a thing that people get, and they will lean in because of it.

Tony Martignetti
Absolutely. Not even going to Amplify it. Absolutely, absolutely true. People know you're having fun. They feel it. They just feel it. They feel it. Let's talk about Paul Gordon. I don't know, uh, Letterman. What were these? We've got, we've got garbage man, we've got Letterman, we've got salmon fishing. But Letterman, most people still, thankfully, now in a couple of years, people are going to be, well, you have to go to YouTube to see who David Letterman was. But we're not there. We're not there now. So what was your part in the Letterman Show?

Paul Gordon
My— I had a movement-based performance company for many years, and we traveled around the world doing our stuff on TV shows and stages and festivals, what have you. And we were invited to do our gig at the New Victory Theatre Broadway house. Sure. For some weeks.

Tony Martignetti
42nd Street, New Broadway Theater.

Paul Gordon
Exactly. 42nd Street. Yep. And great space, wonderful place. We got invited after having done our stuff for many years, and the Letterman folks saw us there and they invited us to do one of our pieces. We were Here, you'll get a kick out of this because it's a little hard to describe or define, but our company was a blend of movement, dance-based stuff, acrobatics, comedy, a certain amount of circus thrown in, audience participation, and ingenious costumes and props. So we blended all of that in our show. And one of, uh, well, 2 of the pieces that we created were very attractive. They were sexy on TV. So we got invited on TV shows around the world to do those particular pieces. And we had this one with Velcro balls and Velcro hats. Um, I'll send you the link. It's on my, uh, performance page on my website. And, um, it— we, we did it on Letterman. Um, Letterman, we, we got a wonderful, uh, note of thanks from Dave's producer afterwards because he said he, he walks, he, he walks off during the performances, he walks off stage and just does whatever he wants to because he needs to take a break. Yeah. And for yours, he has a— he had a screen, a monitor down in his desk so that he had a glass— he had a glass desk and he had a monitor down in his desk. And the producer said he just sat there kind of with his mouth open and a big smile watching your thing the entire time. He, uh, he got a real kick out of you guys. So, uh, that was very nice. My mom was there. I invited my mom. Some of my best friends were there. Um, and, uh,

Tony Martignetti
all right. Now that video is at, uh, thepaulgordon.com?

Paul Gordon
Yeah, thepaulgordon.com.

Tony Martignetti
Okay. What's the name of the company? What was your company name?

Paul Gordon
The company was called Secondhand Dance Company. And I'm currently in the process of putting us on Wikipedia so that people can find us there because it was never done before. We, yeah, we traveled around the world for 16 years and did our thing our way.

Tony Martignetti
Excellent. What's the garbage man gig?

Paul Gordon
So, yeah, I have done, I have I have done a lot of different things. You mentioned that pie shop in Pie Town, New Mexico, the salmon fishing up in Alaska. And I've done a lot of different jobs. And one of them, I was— I needed at one point with my wife to get health insurance. And I needed a regular type of job when I had dissolved my company. Right. And I— there are reasons why I didn't continue to perform continually after I dissolved that company. Um, so I needed a job, and I inadvertently met with the mayor in a, uh, in a, in, in a neighborhood situation, and I put my word in that I was looking for a job. And then I was talking with my garbage man, showed up, and I was talking with them. And I like to be friendly. Do you have any, you know, positions? He said, yeah, this is how you do it. I mean, maybe you can get a job. It's a great job in many ways. And that was very nice. I spoke with one of the people who was a garbage man and actually was happy to be a garbage man because a lot of them A lot of them don't always like to identify as a garbage man. And I ended up becoming a Teamster, and they have fantastic health benefits. And I did the garbage job for 7 years, and it was a fantastic experience.

Tony Martignetti
Where was this?

Paul Gordon
This was upstate in Binghamton, New York.

Tony Martignetti
Binghamton. Oh, the big— so that's a big town. Binghamton University, SUNY Binghamton.

Paul Gordon
I was on faculty at the university. I Oh, you know, we were— we— our company was actually celebrated, given— having been given the keys to the city when we did our Letterman gig. And then, then many years later, I found myself in the back of garbage trucks, which was a wild, bizarre transition. Yeah.

Tony Martignetti
Listen, I always will remember during the pandemic, we recognized the essential services that we have. People who work in food stores, essential. People stocking our food store shelves. Restaurants.

Paul Gordon
Yeah.

Tony Martignetti
And of course, for a lot of the restaurants, you'd order and they'd run it out to you in your car. You didn't even go in to pick it up. They'd hustle it out to your car. And garbage men, garbage collection, garbage collection, essential. We didn't need We didn't need Silicon Valley. We didn't need Wall Street. We would have survived without those. But some occupations are absolutely critical, even just for a couple of days. We could do fine without Wall Street for a few days or even a week. And I think the world would be fine. But let your garbage collect? Right. You can't go food shopping for a week or two? Now you've— now you're really experiencing, uh, you know, desperation when, when, when that happens. So we learned what's truly essential to us.

Paul Gordon
Yeah. When, when I was training in ballet in, in Manhattan, uh, you know, I was one of the, uh, scholarship kids at the Joffrey School, right? And, uh, I was very glad for that. But you're, you're getting a job someplace and waiting on tables is one of the things. And I think that the garbage job, the waiting on tables, all that type of stuff, I think everybody deserves to have a certain amount of a tenure as a service person for a period of time in their lives in order to develop an understanding of what it means. You know, there's humility there. There is the challenge of learning to drop some of the hoity-toity notion of you're all that and a bag— you know, I'm all that and a bag of chips. Right. You know, it's like, no, get over yourself. And finding the brilliance in the garbage job was, was something that I was able to enjoy. It's not always easy. And it's not always, you know, there's a lot of grossness to it. But we're also garbage magicians. People, you know, you know, people put their garbage out, they go to work, they come home, and the garbage is gone. They didn't see him. You know what happened? It's magic.

Tony Martignetti
Yeah, yeah. Whenever my guys come by, I always— I'll stop what I'm doing, I'll go out on the deck and say thank you. Yeah, because they, they— here in my town, they wheel the, they wheel the empty bin up like 20 feet or so up to your driveway. Not, not all the way to the house, but they'll— they way off the road. They— so they're coming close to the house, and I always go out. I make a point and go out and say just thank you. Thank you, have a great day. You

Paul Gordon
know, if on a hot day, if If you're one of the people who brings them some waters, that will go a very long way. When, when you need them to take something that is not completely within the rules, if you've been good to them, like deliberately giving them, you know, just, you know, here's some money, treat yourselves to some lunch today on me. It doesn't have to be more than, you know, Yeah. $10 or $20, you know, once a year when you have something that they could tag, then I think they'll just plain take it.

Tony Martignetti
You're right. You're right.

Paul Gordon
True. Yeah. Yeah. It's a funny little thing. That's an aside. Maybe I shouldn't— I can't speak for all of my garbage peeps in the world, but, you know, it is a thing. Yeah.

Tony Martignetti
You make a very good point about service. If not, you know, if we don't have— we don't have mandatory service to the country in the US. I think we should. Of some sort. It could be military, but go out and VISTA, go out in the Peace Corps, if we haven't dismantled these things completely. But service, service to the country, to your town, to the world, service to others in some form, I think is essential and should be mandatory. Maybe after high school or after college or somewhere. Instead of— but

Paul Gordon
yeah,

Tony Martignetti
everybody, I think, should, should do some service for others, like 2 years, you know.

Paul Gordon
Is this, is this a perfectly reasonable segue to that whole concept of talking about the ask for a moment before we forget it?

Tony Martignetti
That's a very good idea. Yes, because I did forget it. And I was gonna, I was gonna wrap us, wrap us up. Please. Yeah, absolutely. It's essential for our audience. Yeah, we're all in small and mid-sized nonprofits where we're asking, we're soliciting for gifts all the time.

Paul Gordon
Yeah. And so let's just rewind back for those who are tuning in late. I mentioned something earlier with you. We talked about the essentiality. One of the fascinating concepts with the ask is that People sneak up on it in an apologetic way, often in a desperate and hoping way. And when we tap into the essentiality of the purpose and the why, we want definitely in advance to know the number we're going to be bringing up. And we owe it to the purpose of the meeting, the purpose of the session, to respect the value that this thing that we are asking money for offers the world and the universe. And when we honor that, we can then proudly and unapologetically state, for the reason of saving the universe, that these people who get where you're coming from deserve to know that you are standing with this number. Mm-hmm. As a truth and a need and an essential part of improving whatever situation you are contributing to, right? So that allows you to stop being cloying, to stop being desperate, to stop trying so hard because you're standing for something that really, really matters. And I think that some people may not quite get it, but you can actually stand there and say, if you need me to explain something about why this is so important right now, you can come up to me and we can talk. But It's the equivalent of saying, you know, the ship is leaving and I'll be back, but I'm not waiting for you, and I'm not gonna ask you time and again to get in the car because we have to go now. No, I owe more respect to this thing.

Tony Martignetti
Hmm.

Paul Gordon
This, you know, this widget, this cause, this belief. So I am simply laying it out there. That's what it is. And this is why.

Tony Martignetti
Paul Gordon. Paul Gordon, thank you for bringing us back to that. Thank you, my friend.

Paul Gordon
Yeah, you're welcome. I really, I really hope that, you know, I would, I personally would love to hear from any of your folks who reach out to you with questions about this, because, you know, of course, they will— they deserve to pore through your substantial library of fantastic guests with all that valuable information. And if anyone has any curiosities about this, then they can reach out to you and, you know, pass it on to me. And, you know, we can speak. I

Tony Martignetti
certainly, I certainly will. Or they can reach out to you directly at thepaulgordon.com. They can also find you on LinkedIn. Oh yeah, I have that little LinkedIn bone. I, there are— I did the real— I did the Paul Gordon. Uh, there are 370-some Paul Gordons.

Paul Gordon
Yes.

Tony Martignetti
I'm not finding you. I looked. I, I am not finding you. Will you connect with me, please? Uh, there are fewer Tony Martinettis than there are Paul Gordon's.

Paul Gordon
So, so I'm going to send you the linkedin.com/thepaulgordon that does get directly to me.

Tony Martignetti
Oh, okay. Oh, that's true. That's, that is on the Google page that you shared with me. That's right. All right. Yeah. Okay.

Paul Gordon
And that'll be there. And, and, and of course, you know, like, we, we, we could have spoken about so many other things. But the fact is that, you know, with, with a certain punctuality, we can wrap up and, you know, you can have me back.

Tony Martignetti
Yeah, yeah.

Paul Gordon
A couple of other things some other time. But, but my, my Mean It book teaches people how to do all of these things in order with this no fluff, no bullshit, straight up lessons and exercises, right? And on my, on my website, I have this free deck where you can press and it will shuffle a prompt for you that you can use in order to be able to use the lessons in my MEAN IT method from, you know, in the MEAN IT book. And you can take that prompt and it will allow you to press record and go in a way that allows you to get out of your own way and actually bring it big, say exactly what you mean. So that's, that's, you know, the deck's there for free. The MEAN IT book costs a little bit, but, you know, damn, it's, it's all right there.

Tony Martignetti
It's all at thepaulgordon.com. Paul, thank you very much. Very enjoyable, informative and fun, entertaining. Thank you. Thanks so much for sharing with me and our listeners. Thank you.

Paul Gordon
Tony, it's a true pleasure. Really, it's a lot of fun. You're, you're You're— you are all that and a bag of chips, man.

Kate Martignetti
Next week, your board's role in talent management. If you missed any part of this week's show,

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

Kate Martignetti
Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. I'm your associate producer, Kate Martignetti. The show's social media is by Susan Chavez. 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.