A (3:21)

Well, I, I'd love to talk about your experience with gtd, but, but because you mentioned improv, as I think I told you, you know, I work with, you know, some improv people and professional folks and I love the idea, I love the whole context of improv and how do you make somebody that you're working with as a partner look better?

B (3:47)

Yeah, that's exactly, yeah.

A (3:49)

And, and that whole idea of improv as a, as a model is, is fabulous. How'd you get into improv and what, what still turns you on about it?

B (4:01)

Oh, gosh. It's funny because I, I thought after a few years it would get old, but it's only gotten better if that, if that makes sense. What turned me on to it. I, we would go downtown, these, these line, these lines out of the door, you know, of this little place. And we, and they had speakers on the, on the street and you'd hear these improv scenes going on. But you know, improv was relatively new. This was in the late 90s, early 90s. And as we would pass by the. Sometimes they'd have people outside going, hey, you want some free tickets? You want some free tickets? And, and in our head we were like, well, there's a line, but they're giving away free tickets, so how good could it be, you know? And so, so we decided one night to go. And as soon as I walked in, I was hooked. Because not only were they making things up quickly, not only were they ridiculously intelligent and fast, they were also playing together like they were, they were. It was as if they had it done where two teams competed. And it was as if the only goal between the scenes was to just screw around with the other team. And I just thought that, I thought that was like, I love that. And I, and the reason it was attractive to me was because I come from a family of seven and we did everything together and if somebody had an idea or a bit, we, we didn't judge. We just, you know, jumped on and then probably you don't judge any idea, you just jump onto it and you just keep going. And like you said, your, your whole goal is to make your person, your partner, your audience member shine. And so if you. So that's kind of how our family was every time we would make jokes together. Yeah, exactly. We make jokes together. And it was always about in service of making something fun or not making fun of somebody, but making something fun. And so it was fantastic.

A (5:42)

So can we, can we continue the rest of this conversation with you and me?

B (5:46)

Yeah, yeah. I'll tell you more later. It's so much fun. But yes, please.

A (5:51)

It's like, okay, wow. Okay, Jim, play with this one. And what do you do with that?

B (5:57)

Yeah, exactly. You go fast.

A (5:59)

But let's, let's frame this a little bit more for the more sort of GPD esque population that may be listening to this. So how. How did you run across gtd? And as you know, you had some pretty intimate conversations in email with me about how deep this may go in terms of what GTD did. But I'm inviting you to say whatever you feel comfortable sharing about all of that.

B (6:28)

Well, I felt, I felt honored to be asked here for many reasons, but. But I think my intention today is to help perhaps people who may not be in the corporate world, actually. Because if this is okay with you, we were home for Covid and we had to work at home, and it was very different. And I was feeling a little uneasy and uncomfortable. And then my brother passed, which was horrible. And so when that happened, grieving, sort

A (6:58)

of alone, was that expected or unexpected?

B (7:00)

Unexpected. It was. It was from COVID And it happened rapidly and. And, yeah, very unexpected. And what I found was that. Okay, so I'll kind of back up. When I worked with Meg as my coach, we did a Kairos assessment. And would you like to explain what that is? Okay, great.

A (7:21)

It's just your. Your cognitive preferences in terms of how you like to process incoming and outgoing information in your brain. Brilliant stuff. Yeah, yeah, brilliant.

B (7:31)

It was brilliant. And so I was. I was outside and I was reading your book, and I like to do yoga, and so I had my toes in the ground and I was just. I just started reading it in the, in the part and the part where you said, you know, if you have something, you put it by the front door and you just leave it there. And my husband and I laughed because I leave stuff there for three or four days. So I don't forget, you know, my meeting on Friday or. And he. And I just. I literally started crying, both from grief, but also from seeing. Just hearing what you had to say, because that's how my brain works. But it doesn't do it with one thing or two things. It does it with thousands of things. I. I have a. I discovered during Kairos that I. I input things from. From all of my senses and what was happening.

A (8:16)

I observer.

B (8:17)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it Started to make me feel, are you really okay? I had a sense. And then I. I sense Meg is as well, fascinating, because when I learned that, I was like, oh, yeah, that's why my. My brain doesn't stop in grief. My brain wasn't stopping even more. And so I started to. I started to just not have places for things to go. And when I. When I read your book and I started the process, things started coming out of my brain that were. That were emotional grief. Some things that I experienced that I wasn't. That I recognized I wasn't feeling safe in certain things. But I only got to that by clarifying what was going on in my head and by bringing it out. So the. Probably the biggest thing that I got out of the book was getting everything out of my head so that I could clear my head so that I could grieve and so I could kind of go back to finding myself again. So I hope that helps somebody in the. In the world.

A (9:18)

But how did you do that? I mean, come on. There were some steps you had to take, some things you needed to do that made that happen. It wasn't just like, oh, that's a great idea.

B (9:30)

Not at all.

A (9:30)

Let that happen. You actually had to then go do some stuff.

B (9:35)

No, I just started. I thought that the brilliance of. Of your writing. And I also listened to the audiobook. I thought the brilliance of that was the simplicity and that you. That you guided. I felt like it was for me, so. Just so that, you know, I felt like you're just talking to me and you guided. I was.

A (9:53)

I was o. Oh, my God, there's a Gina out there. I'm gonna write the book for her.

B (10:00)

I knew it. I knew it. It just must have cut off at the beginning of the audiobook. And I didn't hear it, but that's okay. So we go. We go. And I start. I just look and I. So I start. I start doing the mind sweep, you know, and I started to. I. I think I read someplace that you said that, you know, just taking the time to do the mind sweep could take several hours. The mine took almost a week. And that's okay because it was. It was perfect because it took everything out. I also loved the acceptance of your book, if that makes sense. For example, I didn't feel like I had to. That it was a bad thing that I had a week's worth of, you know, things to call. So I just kept on. I did that, and then I. Then I. To be honest, I got anxious and stopped because it Felt overwhelming. There were, there was so much stuff. And I thought, okay, trust the process, trust the process. Because at that point there was just crap all over the house. And then my husband gets an award because this was not a short term thing. This was, this went for a long time. What was great was then when I started to actually do the next part of the process, which was clarifying, I got stuck. I got very, very stuck. Even going backwards and asking more questions, even going. And that's when I hired Meg because I was getting stuck in the clarifying stage. And if I'm making an honest assessment, makes a parallel to other areas of my life when I perform. Sometimes if I don't clarify well and that doesn't communicate the next idea to my partner as easily. So this is how, this, just so that, you know, everybody in the world, GTD helps you in other facets of your life without you even knowing.

A (11:44)

Fascinating to me that it showed up in all those different areas. Yeah, yeah, for sure.

B (11:50)

Yeah, for sure. And I think what it was was that deep down in my soul there's all of the, all of the ideas were leading to something, if that makes sense. And I didn't know what.

A (12:00)

And.

B (12:01)

And so they all started coming together and then suddenly I said, oh my gosh, I have been doing improv for 20 something years, but I can connect better with an audience member now than I ever have. And that's because I was clarifying, why am I doing this? Really? I am doing this for the audience. Sometimes the focus can go to the other players. Sometimes the focus can go to, you know, just a gag or something. But it's like when you focus on the audience member, you can't mess up. You can't, you know, not have a great show.

A (12:32)

I get that. And, and by the way, I just did an interview with an old friend and a colleague of mine, Charles Duhigg. He has a new book out called Super Communicators. And it's about what are the key elements of how we connect? And so you just represented a whole lot of how you connect. You understand what they're saying and then you let them acknowledge you acknowledge what they're feeling. And then you say, and I'm feeling the same way about X, Y and Z.

B (13:06)

Yes.

A (13:06)

And suddenly you are now partners. You are now, you are now connected in all of that. So read Charles new book. It's called Super, Super Communicators.

B (13:19)

I love that. And, and in. Sorry. Or did you finish your thought? I apologize.

A (13:24)

No, that was it. Oh, yeah, I just Say, you know, for anybody listening or watching this.

B (13:29)

Yeah, please.

A (13:30)

That's an incredible book. Taught me a whole lot about. I'm pretty good at all of that, simply because as an early child, I hated conflict. So I was into trying to figure out, how do I make people happy around me?

B (13:47)

Yeah.

A (13:47)

So they stopped arguing or yelling or whatever they're doing that I couldn't stand. And so I had to figure out, okay, who are they? What are they doing? What can I do that could make them happier or whatever. That was a very negative trait for many years, ultimately. Was a positive trait.

B (14:07)

Yes. Ultimately. It's interesting you say that, because I didn't know how deep you wanted to go, and I kind of. I came from some childhood trauma and the same type of thing. I felt. My. My brother passed away. My oldest brother passed away when I was two. And the sad. The. The good and the bad about is. I don't remember it, so that's good. But then the sad part was, for much of my life, my. My mother, who had blessed that she put herself in with us, she. She got back up, you know, she got off the horse. But there was always this light, this small depression with her. And then I. I felt like all the kids in the family felt like we could jolly her out of this. We could, you know, we could. We could make her happy. We could kind of distract her. And so I think all of us became these givers of joy, these. These, you know, we. We wanted to. Yeah, anything but her being sad, you know, kind of a thing.

A (14:56)

And so, yeah, you were the improv players as kids.

B (14:59)

Yeah, as kids, we. We did so much of that kind of stuff together with. And for her. Right. And so. And. And all of us. All for us as well, but just a lot of fun. And so it's interesting that you say that. I hadn't heard many people who. Who have expressed that where it's like, I just want to bring joy because I don't like this, you know, And I think that that sums it up

A (15:19)

for me as well. Yeah, Come on. You know, it took me 30 years of personal growth to realize that's okay.

B (15:25)

Yeah.

A (15:26)

You can still be the frugal suck, and that's fine.

B (15:30)

And that's okay.

A (15:31)

Just use it to your advantage, not to your disadvantage. Yeah, there's that.

B (15:36)

Exactly. And that is you. That suddenly becomes you. And for whatever reason you were using it to cope, you can throw that away. But now it's. It's part of who you are. So. So I. I love that about myself. But I. What I've love is that in so doing, I got to. In your, in your book, what it. It has helped me to clarify why. Why do. Why does this relationship matter? And when I do the sales, most of the time I don't even meet people. I'm on the phone or perhaps on an email. So it's. I find it weird that, that people will. Will put their trust into something and they haven't even met the person. But what I love about it is that I enjoy listening to their stories. I enjoy hearing, why do you want to have us? Why do you want to book us? And then in so doing, I can give them the most perfect experience. And I love that. I love to just kind of like the little cherry on top to say, oh, gosh, I know they're going to love it, but I'm going to throw this in there too so that they enjoy it that much more. And it's going to be a nice. Oh, here's your surprise that you didn't expect. You know, so. So those are the so. And this helped me also to do that in real relationships. I. I can meet, I think, because when my brother passed away, you know, people would always come over the house and I think maybe there was this, oh, we gotta wait to kind of see what the vibe of the room is gonna be. And as soon as I know that, you know, then I'm gonna. I'm gonna get in there. And I think that with people, I like to listen to their story. I really enjoy getting to know people. I think people don't relate to that, but I enjoy hearing about somebody's background, their story.

A (17:12)

I love stories. Whenever I'm meeting somebody that I haven't met in person, maybe virtually, but I go, tell me your story.

B (17:20)

Yeah, tell me your story.

A (17:21)

I love, I love the stories.

B (17:25)

And then I find. I find that that builds relationships quickly as well. And, and that it. I'd love. That's why I'd love to read this gentleman's book, because it's a quick way to build a relationship. When we're doing an improv show, we. We might meet a person for one second, but we still have to make them shine and make it feel like we're old friends. And that's a very hard thing to do. So it's. So this book, regardless of what it did for everything in my home, it really helped in other relationships as well, because I can go, all right, I can clarify. What is it? I can read people see what they want to get out of something. And then quickly and easily give that to them. And why not? Like, why not do that? That's fun.

A (18:05)

So while you were in the connection, the improv is nothing about connection.

B (18:09)

Yeah, it's everything.

A (18:11)

Connecting with your partner, connecting with the audience, connecting with the topic you were just given.

B (18:17)

Yeah.

A (18:18)

You know, again, you know, because, you know, I've dealt with the improv people, you know, at a different level, and. And that's all they're about. They're about, who are you? How do we engage? Okay, let's play, you know, let's do this.

B (18:39)

Yeah, yeah, there's nothing. Yeah, let's all do this together. There's. We start the whole show out. I find it fading because if. If you. These are disparate people, they don't know each other. There's 200 of them. And suddenly by the end of the show, you know, they're talking to each other and they're laughing and they're walking around the door. Let's go get a drink, you know, and it's like, it's. It's the great evil.

A (19:01)

Come on. So much of business now is improv. So interesting that you've moved into that world to kind of sell this idea. Tell me more about that. And people listening. Tell them what have you discovered, what works, what's cool, and what are some of your good experiences with this?

B (19:23)

Oh, gosh. What's cool is listening to them. We worked with a sports, like a gaming company, ea. They do the. They do video games. Sports. Video games and some other things. But they just wanted more help brainstorming. So we just went in and said, tell us what you do and. And we'll help you brainstorm a little bit more. So we can. We can kind of really get to the crux of I can teach you how to. How to do something quickly. I can teach you how to brainstorm quickly with just a few improv tricks. And I can teach you. Or we might teach sales teams how to. How to connect quickly on a cold call. You know, how do you. How do you connect quickly when you call somebody that you absolutely don't know? And it's just about asking questions, listening and. And accepting and adding and making the conversation collaborative versus if that helps. So I think. I think probably.

A (20:18)

Oh, by the way, let me stop you there. Pause button. You know, Charles, in his new book, talks about there's three elements of connecting. There's the. The. The. The content called what are you trying to accomplish?

B (20:34)

Etc.

A (20:35)

There's the. There's the emotional content. How are you Feeling about this.

B (20:40)

Yeah.

A (20:41)

What's. What's going on with you about that? How'd that feel? Let me share how I felt about something similar. Not that I have to agree with you.

B (20:49)

Yeah.

A (20:50)

But that we then connect in that way. And the third thing is, you know, you're white, you're a woman, You're. You're. You're American, whatever. And as opposed to, I'm black, I'm Nigerian, I'm, you know, I'm a CEO or whatever. So being able to sort of acknowledge all those three aspects, and I. I had been, you know, apologetically ignorant about number two. How do you feel? Are you feeling about that? What's going on with you about that? But improv is so much about that. I would. I resume. Right.

B (21:31)

Yeah. How do you get somebody to. To try to learn this craft, which is being vulnerable? And how do you. How do you start with somebody who doesn't know how to do it? It's a lovely experience because it's exactly what you said. How do you feel about this? And, you know, of course, when you're doing improv, the initial. I'm anxious. I feel like I have to be funny. And so we. We immediately squash those things by having everybody. I hear the little puppies. By having everybody kind of just get together as one group, and then we do some brain exercises.

A (22:05)

Hold on a second. I'll put her on my lap.

B (22:07)

Okay. Then she'll start, and she'll be good.

A (22:11)

Come on. Hang on, little puppy. Yay. Yay, little puppy.

B (22:26)

Oh, hi, baby. I don't know if they can talk to the Zoom, if they even get it, but. Hello.

A (22:32)

Yo. Yay. Her name is Phoebe.

B (22:38)

Hi, Phoebe.

A (22:39)

She just tends to bark at things. Just know what's happening out there.

B (22:44)

Yeah, that's all right.

A (22:45)

Anyway.

B (22:46)

Yeah. Okay.

A (22:50)

They make. I don't know if we cut that out.

B (22:52)

Yeah. They may come back. That's all right. My voice tends to.

A (22:55)

That's impromptu. Oh, my God, there's a puppy. How do we deal with the puppy? What do we say up now at the puppy, and yay.

B (23:05)

You can't ignore the puppy in the room, so. Yeah.

A (23:09)

But in the business world. Gina, come on. Immediately. Wow. There's a new thing. There's a new thing. We need to decide. There's a new thing that's happening. How do we play together to make that work?

B (23:26)

We start them out by playing together by building things on paper, actually, so that they don't have to worry about what they're saying so they don't have to you know, feel like they have to think a lot. And the, the exercise that we do is we, we add to a drawing just one line at a time. And the interesting thing that happens is the drawing changes every time you add a line. You can twist the paper around and it might look like something different. And so what people say it's sort

A (23:55)

of mind mapping in 3D, right?

B (23:56)

Yeah, exactly. And you can put anything you want, but it ultimately comes out to be some type of a picture, good or bad, but you've built it together. And the, the joy is that people start to recognize, oh, as I added a line, it changed it. Oh, my input meant that this went in a different direction. Oh, now we're, we're deciding together what this is. And you suddenly, suddenly work with a partner that you may not know, and you're suddenly building something and you're having a great time because now you're seeing. Okay, but it's, you know, you're, you're recognizing the changes and now you have a commonality and it's an immediate connection with somebody that you may not have connected with before. And why did we connect? Simply because we were creating something and it became something we didn't expect it to be. Flash forward to. Oh, you're an engineering group and you're having some trouble figuring out whether we should do this kind of bridge or that kind of a bridge. But suddenly we work together and we decide, well, let's see how it would work if we did it this way. Let's see how it would work if we did it this way. Oh, wow. It could go a bunch of different ways. I didn't, you know, I was stuck on my way. And it suddenly opens their brain to. There could be more than one possibility to this. And it's a beautiful experience to see that.

A (25:05)

Do you actually have Gina, do you actually have people, you know, some sort of mock ups of these kinds of improv things on stage with themselves or, or what do you do? What do you do that sort of coaches people into this kind of freedom?

B (25:23)

Oh, gosh. We start with a lot of exercises that are designed to move your body and move your mouth a little bit after we get people on their fe. Because that gets the, that puts them into a creative place. It kind of knocks. It does. It knocks down the noise.

A (25:38)

Isn't it amazing? Isn't it amazing, by the way, pause button. How we have stifled ourselves from childhood about talking, expressing, moving, whatever. And yet. So you're, you're unlocking a lot of that. That's Cool.

B (25:56)

Yeah, it's great because it unlocks it suddenly because now it takes some people longer than others. There's, you know, it can be five minutes for one person, 20 minutes for another. But once they, once they recognize that freedom or don't recognize it, basically they're not thinking as much, they're not as anxious. Then we teach them a couple of quick games, my favorite of which is where I might say, okay, David, you and I, we're going to be talking about a topic. We're going to be experts on coffee cups, whatever it might be. And we just, we start. I maybe say one fact about a coffee cup is a made up fact and you add right on to that and we're now suddenly people on tv, a news show, an expert show, you know, something. And we're talking about a coffee shot, a coffee cup. But we are making it sound so convincing and so we're so confident in it. And that's the instruction and the only job is to, for you to say yes to the idea that I give you by saying, that's right. If I said coffee cups were invented in Sweden, you'd say, that's right, they were invented in Sweden. So you repeat what I say and then you add right to it and you just add the next little bit of information and then I go off of that. Suddenly we have a five minute explanation of how coffee cups were made and it sounds plausible and it's total bs but it's fun.

A (27:12)

There's no, there's no but. There's just an and that's so cool about improv. You know, it's like. And here's another thing we could do. Here's another way we could think about that. There's a, you know, wow.

B (27:26)

And it applies to everything. People. The big thing now is people wanting to write the brand of their story. The, the company brand. Oh, what's our journey? What was our story? So we can help people use. Yes. And to write their story. What do you want people to know about it? All right, let's put that into a, you know, a flowery, you know, a flowery paragraph. But let's build it together, you know, so.

A (27:48)

Or a coffee cup.

B (27:49)

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

A (27:52)

Indeed.

B (27:53)

Yeah, yeah.

A (27:56)

How, how cool is that? So let, let's sort of rewind back to gtd.

B (28:02)

Yeah, please.

A (28:03)

Because. And your experience with, you know, Meg's coaching with you and what this did about your life, if you're willing to share about any of that.

B (28:13)

Sure.

A (28:14)

Because, you know, for me, I, I couldn't stop doing what this is about, because to me, it's about creation and completion. It's about how do we complete the things we've put in motion, whether that's 43 lifetimes ago or this or this afternoon. And how do we then focus our attention on where we're going?

B (28:38)

Sure.

A (28:39)

So to what degree has that impacted and in what way did that impact your life and your process?

B (28:50)

Interestingly, it was more philosophical and. And I'll explain what I mean by that. The process of doing it, of course, helped me with work. Of course, it helped me be more organized. Of course it helped me, you know, get things out of my head and put them in motion. But the biggest thing. And I don't know if you experience that, so please share if you do. So what happened was I. Over the years, John, my husband, and I have experienced some interesting situations where maybe there were sick family members or we had a lot of miscarriages and a few losses. You know, a lot of losses, but they were very close together. And. And if anybody's ever experienced loss, first of all, I'm sorry. But second of all, there's a heart. You know, you have to kind of manage that through. In addition to living. Right. And so I felt very strongly as we were going through. Through all this, that there could have been more resources and. Or the resources could have all been one place. And it was so hard to find information about. We dealt with Alzheimer's and some dialysis and things like that. And so there were all kinds of things that we dealt with. And what was interesting was along the way, I absorbed all of these great. I found great resources, great people, a lot of great help. And so as I was doing this process, and some of that started flooding back to the front of my brain. Some of that stuff that I learned started just kind of going, hey, don't forget about me. And then I started to kind of formulate this passion project to help people in crisis that I would never have done had we not done this thing. I think it's always been there. I think it's always been, gosh, wouldn't it be lovely if all of this would be in one place? Wouldn't it be lovely if I could help people in the world? But I had not started that, nor did I ever think I would, because it felt so overwhelming to. Well, where do you put all of this? How do you make a website? I've been in comedy for 25 years. I wouldn't know the first thing about starting something like this. And then suddenly I started to Break it down into bite sized pieces. I started saying, well, if I were to do it, where would I start? Why do I want to do it? What would I want people to get out of it? How could I make that accessible? How could I make it sustainable? So I started to outline all of those little pieces using gtd, and it started to suddenly become more surmountable. But in addition, the philosophical part was, suddenly people were put into my orbit, and maybe they were there all along, but I didn't pay attention. But suddenly I'm connecting to a hospital that's interested in what I want to do. Oh, and then there a senior center that is just starting a new memory care facility, and perhaps I might start consulting with them. These are people that have been in my orbit, but I didn't put together, hey, what? How could we possibly work together? Or, gosh, you're a great person, but I don't know that I'll ever use your services or something like that. And so has that ever happened to you where it just suddenly started falling together in a way that you could not possibly have done?

A (31:56)

Come on, Gina. I. I never had a strategic plan.

B (32:01)

Okay, me neither.

A (32:01)

That's kind of how I just tried to deal with what was in front of my nose. I had gotten great internal advice and said, david, you've created in this life and many others, more than you need to deal with. You just need to handle what's in front of you with perfection or elegance as best you can, and then see what shows up next. And that's how I've lived my life for the last 40 years. Okay, thanks, Gina.

B (32:34)

Okay, thank you, too.

A (32:35)

Ciao for everybody.

B (32:38)

Have a great day, everybody. Thanks, David, so much. Appreciate it,

A (32:50)

Sam.