Please Unsubscribe, Thanks!
How to make your nonprofit more human

Based on my book, “Please Unsubscribe, Thanks!,” my focus is on helping leaders in the nonprofit space to make their ventures more human, thereby making them more connected to their mission and more successful.

As our world becomes more chaotic, digitally connected, and seemingly relentless, each of us needs to step back, create a very “sacred space” to re-evaluate our subscriptions/commitments, and then go forward boldly and with great love.

Julio Vincent Gambuto is an author and moviemaker. His new book, Please Unsubscribe, Thanks! is now available from Avid Reader Press at Simon & Schuster. Named “Pick of the Month” by Barnes & Noble in August 2024, it is a follow-up to Gambuto’s viral essay series “Prepare for the Ultimate Gaslighting,” which sparked a worldwide conversation reaching more than 21 million readers in 98 countries. Julio remains a weekly contributor to Medium.

For more information, visit https://www.juliovincent.com

 

The Interview Transcript

Hugh Ballou:
It’s not. Welcome to the Nonprofit Exchange. This is Hugh Ballou, your host, and founder of SynerVision Leadership Foundation. It’s where we build synergy with our teams because we’re clear with our vision. There’s no other way around it. SynerVision Leadership Foundation, transforming leaders, transforming organizations, transforming lives. My guest today is a filmmaker, and author, Julio Gambuto. Julio, tell us about yourself, your passion, and the work that you do. Sure.

Julio Vincent Gambuto:
Hi, Hugh. Thanks for having me. My name is Julio. I’m coming to you live from New York today and I’m a filmmaker by trade and training. I worked in television for a bit in family entertainment and then moved into a more independent space and made my first feature film. which came out during the pandemic in 2020. The timing was not good. But I’ve been in the film and TV industry for about 10 years now. And I just wrote my first book, which is hopefully what we talk about today. And that’s called Please Unsubscribe Thanks. And really, my focus has been on kind of helping people to step back and reevaluate not only how sort of life is going, but how their businesses are growing, and how organizations are going post-pandemic. So, you know, what did we learn in the pandemic? Now, five years later, what still resonates? What are the structural changes we can make? What are the day-to-day changes we can make to make our organizations a little bit more human and a little bit more connected to their mission?

Hugh Ballou:
Ah, a little more human. Well, let’s unpack that title. And I’m sure you have a copy of your book there. Do you want to share your book with us? Please unsubscribe. Thanks. So what’s behind that?

Julio Vincent Gambuto:
Well, so, you know, I’ve worked in media and obviously, I sat in the film industry, and life kind of before the pandemic was, like many people’s, very go, go, go, right? I just kind of didn’t stop. It was very often around the clock. It was the phone or the laptop. It was a meeting across town. It was jumping on a plane. It was constant, what I call in the book, relentless. And I think our lives have been relentless for a long time. in our country. And so much of it is because of our technology and the speed at which life moves now. And so I wanted to kind of take a look at that speed and what it has done to us. During the pandemic, life just stopped. And like so many other people, it was an illuminating time and just taught me a lot about kind of The power of stillness and the power of getting rid of the things that are in the way and keeping us from our greatest joys, our greatest successes, telling the story kind of as cleanly as we can. So that’s kind of the process I engaged in in my life and my business. And now five years later, things look very different. And so the book is it’s full of tips and tricks and all of the necessary tactical and practical strategies. But it’s a conversation about how we got to this relentless place and how we can make changes both individually and collectively.

Hugh Ballou:
You know, I’m with you on that. I’ve talked to a lot of people in my week, and the common thing is I’m so busy. I am so busy. We were talking and you gave me some things to think about, but you said as our world becomes more chaotic, digitally connected, and seemingly relentless, it is important for each of us to step back, create a very sacred space to reevaluate our subscriptions commitments, and then go forward boldly and with great love. You talked a little bit about that. What you woke up one day and just thought this or is this been?

Julio Vincent Gambuto:
It’s a Tuesday morning. It just popped it. No, I mean, this is kind of a culmination of, you know, decades of working and living in a hyper-competitive society, economy, career, industry, social network. And I think I’m the generation that’s like, we had email for the first time in college, and I got my cell phone for college graduation. So there’s this little mini generation of us that were born in the late 70s, early 80s, where everything before, you know, being an adult was analog, but everything from that moment on was digital. And so we sort of have had the experience of living in both worlds in an intense way. And so this is the culmination of kind of what have of the last 20 years. What has it done to us? How has it changed us? And are there things that we used to experience in life and in work before this that we might want to carry forward and not be so willing to give up?

Hugh Ballou:
So you’re a moviemaker in print now. You’ve created a journey for us. So you talked about some little tips and tricks in the book. Do you want to tease us with a couple of, for instance?

Julio Vincent Gambuto:
Sure. Well, look, the book, in the most obvious way, is about unsubscribing, meaning, gosh, let’s start in our inbox. Why am I getting 50 emails before 10 AM? And where are they all coming from? And how many lists am I on? And certainly now with Black Friday recently and Cyber Monday, we’re very clear and very aware of how many lists we’re on. But I wanted to kind of explore deeper than that. And so the book sort of hits three different areas of subscription. Kind of the superficial subscription, meaning everything I just talked about, the digital subscriptions. And then the subscriptions we have to our social networks, the people in our lives, whether online or off. Our colleagues, our work relationships, our romantic relationships, our social relationships. And then a third kind of deeper level of subscription about the ideas and beliefs that we have about money. success, power, society. So as far as strategies go, I like to frame it concerning speed and limits. Is there a way I can slow down what’s in front of me? And is there a way I can put limits back? So let’s take the phone, right? Like, is there a way I can slow this down and there’s a way to put a limit back in? And so I look and I say, okay, great. I’m only going to have 10 apps on my phone. That’s it. And as soon as the 11th one gets downloaded, I’m going to use it and then delete it. On my laptop, I’m only going to have 10 icons in the dock. I’m only going to look at 10 things at the bottom of my space. And bringing limits back to our lives in a visual way, in a tech touch way, but also looking at everything from our social relationships and limits there. I found myself like completely running around five days a week. Like, why am I overscheduling? Why am I pushing myself to the nth degree on this kind of treadmill? And how can I slow it down? And how can I build more time in for reflection and digestion and, you know, sort of like learning the lessons that life is presenting me instead of always being on the go?

Hugh Ballou:
So how can we say no?

Julio Vincent Gambuto:
Well, you know, I think at a really surface level, right? It’s like the click to stop us or the click to unsubscribe. That’s hard, right? I think the, or it’s easy, one or the other, right? So for some people, it’s easier than others. At a deeper level, I think it’s about evaluating why we do what we do all day long. And why are we so quick to subscribe to certain ideas and beliefs and stories that we’ve been told about how to be successful, how to grow your business, how to make more money, how to look better? All these things are benefiting someone else. And they don’t always benefit us. And I think if I’m advocating for anything, it’s for a sort of awareness of one’s behavior to make big changes in life.

Hugh Ballou:
We’re driven. We’re talking to non-profit leaders, maybe a few clergy, which they have to realize they’re running a non-private business as well. But non-profit leaders, we’re talking business sense here. We are running a tax-exempt-for-purpose business. We’re not focused on profit, but golly gee, if we don’t have that extra money, we can’t do our work. It helps, yeah. But we’ve inherited some myths. We’ve developed some of our own myths. So I think some of this that we have to say yes, we have to be kind, we misrepresent that and it costs us dearly. We give to other people, but we have to sacrifice. Any special words for those of us in this sector we call charity?

Julio Vincent Gambuto:
Absolutely. I think we have sort of inherited not only those myths but those behaviors, right? And we inherit most of our behaviors in the nonprofit space from the for-profit space, from big business. For example, I used to sit on the board of an independent school. And so I was like very intimately involved in kind of what the communication strategy was. And I was very surprised to sort of see that like, just sort of on autopilot, not with malice, not without thought, none of it. But they had just sort of inherited, you know, big business tactics, right? Emailing five times a day, you know, making sure that their website has a chat function, and has A, B, C, D, and G gadgets. And this is not to knock the school. This is just to point out that there’s a plethora of tools that we have at our disposal. And as leaders, it’s our responsibility to make active choices about what’s going to work for our organization and what’s going to work for the people that we’re serving, as opposed to just doing things because big business does it that way. Specifically, I’m talking about sort of communication tactics, communication strategies, our storytelling. Are we doing things that are serving the people that we want to be serving? Or are we doing things because, well, everybody’s on Blue Sky now, so I guess I got to be on Blue Sky, right?

Hugh Ballou:
Yeah, that’s sort of, we get swept into that. And like you say, if we just get off this treadmill and pay attention, when I met John Maxwell on a speaking tour years ago, he said that he sits down at the end of his day, 15 minutes, and he looks at his day and he writes down things that he could have done better. And then he puts it away. So he’s ended his day. That always impressed me as a very important discipline of learning from yourself and then putting it away. Because we want to do one more thing. I mean, we’re in a business. We’re social entrepreneurs. It’s people business. But we want to do one more thing, and we want to help one more person. And there’s a cost to that. So how do we stop that?

Julio Vincent Gambuto:
I love that you said that, Hugh, because I think that hits the nail on the head, which is that we have been swept in this thunderstorm of information and technology for two decades now. And it’s only getting more intense, right? AI is already changing everything we do and is about to change it even more. And what I want people to be able to do and what I strongly advocate for is that period of reflection, right? Whether it’s daily, whether it’s weekly, whether it’s quarterly, maybe it’s once a year, but taking a look and saying, What is working about all the ways that we do business and what’s not working about it what can I do better and that seems rather easy right as an idea but I think we don’t ever stop to do that because we’re going so fast and I certainly found that in my own life. and in my own business, and when you can build in those periods of reflection, like formally build them into your day, your week, your quarter, your year, those are sacred moments to be able to say, oh, that’s what’s standing in the way, I have to get rid of that. Or, oh, that’s what’s working, I have to double down on that. And that’s an important business strategy, right?

Hugh Ballou:
Having served in church ministries, in music ministry, you could work all the time. You know, it’s like the black hole, you get sucked into it without setting limits. And what I learned, and I’d like your reflection on this, is if I’m going to set time to plan, to think, to do team, any of these activities besides be online and work, rehearsal, preparation, study, I have to calendar it. And I have to calendar That’s where I need to be. So, where I need to be is in my study, studying, and let the door close. But I also need transition time, which we forget to do. We go from one thing right to the next, so we get late. So, any secrets for how do we make sure we set aside time to do what you’re talking about?

Julio Vincent Gambuto:
Well, I think at the service level, the calendar is the way, right? I mean, at least that’s been a effective tool for me as well, right? It took me years to get to this, right? Building in the reflection time, building in the processing time, meaning, okay, if I’m coming in on a flight on Monday, I have no commitments on Tuesday so that I can recover my body from what just happened the day before. That’s a privilege in many settings, and I’m not unaware of that. But I think understanding how long things take, how long they take to accomplish, how long they take to get up and running off the ground, and building that time into the calendar is really, really important. But beneath that is sort of this myth or narrative or story that we tell each other that oh if I just give 150% I’m a better person. Or if I just give 150, if I stay that extra three hours on a Thursday night, it’s going to push us over the finish line. In some cases, sure, it might. But in general, we have sort of dismissed the idea that saying no is a healthy way to maintain boundaries. It’s a healthy way to recover your body, your brain, your energy, your spirit. And it’s a healthy way to interact and communicate with people so that they have clear expectations about what we can deliver. And that’s a slippery slope, especially in the spaces that we’re talking about and the spaces that you work in, because people are doing what they love, right? They’re not necessarily at a corporation grinding away. They’re in the nonprofit space for a reason. They genuinely or generally love what they do. But boundaries and parameters and those kinds of structures can be really helpful.

Hugh Ballou:
I have found that saying no to something of less value allows me to say yes to something of higher value. And I see a lot of people in the weeds. So what’s your tip for people who haven’t learned to delegate? They need to do it. And they’re robbing a volunteer of an opportunity to use their passion for good. So what’s a way for us to get things off our plate that are low priority?

Julio Vincent Gambuto:
Well, I think one is to be clear with yourself about where your strengths are and where your weaknesses are, and what you’re good at and what you’re not good at. And take the ego out of it completely, and just objectively evaluate, oh, you know what? I can do X task in an hour, whereas some other people take three hours. Or I can be super empathetic in a way that perhaps my In your example, team of volunteers hasn’t yet mastered, whatever that might be, but recognizing our strengths and recognizing where we can contribute the most and getting rid of the smaller, less effective, less impactful commitments where we don’t show up as our full selves, where we’re not helping 100%, or where somebody else can be helping better, giving more, being more focused, more attentive, or whatever it might be. And I know I’m speaking in generalities here, but I think in general, when our work comes from the heart place, right, when we do work that matters to us, we sort of believe that, you know, we have to do more always. And sometimes we’re more effective doing less or doing it differently.

Hugh Ballou:
We’re doing it differently. So, Shirley, in your writings, in your films, in your work, you’ve influenced people. Do you have any stories of how you’ve helped people rethink some of these?

Julio Vincent Gambuto:
Well, I have a lot of friends who call and say, I tried that thing in the book, or I tried this, and oh my gosh, I love it, right? So there are plenty of stories like that, but my favorite story is that I walked into, so I do these exercises with myself where I leave my phone at home. I just don’t take it. I make sure that my messages are answered if it’s a business day, but I’ll push myself to go out to lunch with a colleague without a phone, or I’ll push myself to travel across town in Manhattan without a phone. And it feels like the analog wild, right? It feels like this sort of odd experience. But I walked into a restaurant once and I was meeting a friend for lunch and the host of the restaurant looked at me and said, well, it’s a big restaurant. Can you text him and tell him you’re here? And I said, I’m sorry, I don’t have my phone with me. And she looked at me and she said, Oh my God, you’re making me so nervous. You’re nervous. I said I’m nervous all day long with the phone attached to me. And, and, and, you know, she in that moment, we got to talking about the book and, and she said, Okay, I’m going to try it. I’m going to try it. So, you know, I think what I’m talking about can be and feel very overwhelming to cut the cord or to cut the tethers or to eliminate to spend time on the things that we love and that are meaningful for us. But I think we can start in really small ways to get our attention back, get our time back, and sometimes get our cash back, right? And sort of reclaim so much of what is being taken from us on a daily minute-by-minute, second-by-second basis. You know, our attention, our focus, all those things are really, really important in relationship building and in serving our communities. And, you know, imagine, you know, sort of going out with five people and no one having a phone on them, what that kind of interaction would be like and how it might be different if everybody has their phone on them. The book is about more than the phone, but I think it’s a good example.

Hugh Ballou:
That’s how radical that is. My gosh. So we have to disrupt our routines, don’t we?

Julio Vincent Gambuto:
We do. We’re on autopilot a lot. And I think that’s, you know, people take anything from this today. I hope it’s that what I’m advocating for is an interruption of the autopilot nature that we’re all on. Right. We’re on it. It’s an intense treadmill, whether because we’ve got to make more money in certain spaces or because we want to give more and contribute more in other spaces. But the interruption of those behaviors is so important to be able to reflect, reevaluate, slow down, serve differently or better.

Hugh Ballou:
Yeah, I had a guest here, Dr. Joseph Howell, about his book Becoming Conscious. It says, Becoming Aware. Our ego drives us, and we’re not aware of what our soul is. And the stuff you’re talking about is so in tune with that. So, Julio, you’ve been teasing us about the book. Talk about the book a little more. How is it laid out? What are we going to find in there? Give us some more.

Julio Vincent Gambuto:
Sure, so the book is about 250-300 pages, but the first half is an analysis of the history and economics of how we got here, right? How did we get to this relentless place? where we all feel what you were talking about, Hugh. Busy, busy, busy, busy, busy. How did our cultural life push us this way? How did we sort of land where we are? And then the second half of the book looks at how can we disrupt that and how can we make changes? And so I look at those three levels of subscription. I look at the surface subscriptions, digital, everything on the screen, whatever’s pinging and ringing and dinging. I look at the social subscriptions, right? The commitments and the emotional contracts that we make to our social networks, our coworkers, our colleagues, our family, our friends, our romantic partners. And then I also look at a third deeper level, which is the underlying subscriptions, meaning the narratives that we hold really dear and that we subscribe to about who we are in the world, in a society, as a person, And so the book sort of is laid out that way to analyze and reflect on each of those and offer tactical, practical strategies for how to step back and reevaluate each of those circles.

Hugh Ballou:
Wonderful. Well, let’s, um, your, your website is, is your name. So I’m going to show your website here and people that are listening, we can talk to them. There’s audio podcasts. Some people is viewing on video as well. But they can see my screen. If you want to go to thenonprofitexchange.org and find this episode, you can see it. And you can also find a full transcript of this. But it’s JulioVincent, J-U-L-I-O-V-I-N-C-E-N-T.com. So, Julio, when they get there, what will people find?

Julio Vincent Gambuto:
Yes, sir. Well, you know, my projects are pretty varied. So I have a feature film that I shot that came out during the pandemic. I have the book that just was released last year and in paperback this summer. And I also have an essay writing that I do frequently for medium.com. So yeah, my website is really just sort of a general house for my creative work. And, and you can read my work there and learn more about me.

Hugh Ballou:
And you can find out how to get the book so people don’t have to ask the question. So, is there, there’s a connection is that.

Julio Vincent Gambuto:
The link right there on the front is called Order Now or Learn More.

Hugh Ballou:
And the connection up here, what is that? If people click on the connect, will you talk to them?

Julio Vincent Gambuto:
It’s the contact page. Yeah. But you can order the book right there in that green space where it says Order Now.

Hugh Ballou:
If I sent you a message, you’ll answer me is what I wanted to know. So I might, you know, I might have a question for you. So you’ve helped me rethink my schedule. And it’s it’s all I have a nonprofit community we were talking about. equipping ourselves and constantly evaluating what we’re doing. So this is right in line with my day and my group also influences me. So we can have a group of people we lead help us do this stuff, can’t we?

Julio Vincent Gambuto:
We can and I think you have to embrace feedback and kind of gird yourself emotionally to hear that feedback and understand how you’re showing up in the world and what you’re putting in and what you’re taking and maybe there’s a delta between how you think you’re showing up and how you’re actually showing up. And it’s important that we hear that, right? As leaders in any space, especially in the nonprofit space, to understand politely, kindly, constructively, how are we showing up, right? Do you get 100% of me when you’re with me? Do you not? Do I deliver on the things I say? Am I true to my word? Do I do the things I say I’m going to do or that I endeavor to do? I think that kind of feedback can be tricky and can be prickly but is so important so that we can understand how to lead better.

Hugh Ballou:
That is a great ending place. We’ve covered a whole lot in this 25 minutes. So thank you for being spot on. Anything you want to leave people with today as a parting thought.

Julio Vincent Gambuto:
I guess have a happy holiday, right? I know this will be online and live forever, but we’re recording it in December and the holidays can be a really tough time for people or a really beautiful time for people. But I think the message is take the pressure off, right? Buy the gifts, send the cards, but remember what this is about, which is about relationships. and community and sort of gathering and put some light in the world in a dark time in the winter. So I hope that people have a great holiday.

Hugh Ballou:
Love it, love it. And we can create our own holiday anytime of year, because there’s always something to celebrate. Giulio Gambutto, Vincent Gambutto, sorry, got you here. We had such a great time. Thank you for sharing your wisdom on the nonprofit exchange today. My pleasure. Thanks for having me.