415 - Write Your Obituary. Twice.

0:00Bruce Whipple:As I record this, the world has just lost Dolly Parton. Most people will remember her music, her personality, her movies, and the remarkable business empire that she built. But a large part of her legacy will have nothing to do with the song or the stage. In 1995, she started the Imagination Library because her father never learned to read or write. What began by providing books to children in her home county in Tennessee eventually grew into a program that has given more than 300 million books to children around the world. That is a legacy. Her death caused me to think about a difficult but important question.

0:44Bruce Whipple:What will be your legacy? Most people spend more time planning a two-week vacation than they spend planning their life. Scary, but true. They decide where they will stay, what they will do, where they will eat, how much it will cost, but they never sit down and decide what they want their life to add up to. I want to suggest an exercise that may sound initially uncomfortable. Write your obituary. Actually, write it twice. First, write the obituary that is most likely to be written if you continue on the path you are on today. Do not write what you intend to do someday. Write what your current actions and habits are likely to produce.

1:34What would it say about your family? Were you present or were you always too busy? What did you build in business? Did you create something valuable, provide goods, and develop other people? Or did you spend years talking about what you are going to do? What causes did you support? Whose life became better because you were here? What adventures did you take? Which ones did you keep postponing until the time was right? Be honest. This version is not meant to make you feel good. It is meant to show you where you are going with your present path and where that path will take you.

2:19Bruce Whipple:Then write your obituary a second time. Write the one you would want your family, your employees, your friends, and your community to be able to write truthfully about you. Describe the relationships you've strengthened, the businesses you've built, the people you've helped, the adventures you've experienced, and the contributions that you've made. This is not about pretending that you become some famous person who accumulated a fortune. A meaningful legacy does not require either one. It requires that your life touch other people. Now compare the two obituaries. Look for the things that appear in the second version, but are missing in the first.

3:06Bruce Whipple:Those differences are the gaps between the life you say you want and the direction your current actions are taking you. That gap is not a reason to have guilt. It's a set of instructions. Legacy is not something you create at the end of your life. You create it through the decisions that you make every week. Dolly Parton did not wait until the end of her life and suddenly decide she wanted to help children. She began in one county and continued building upon that commitment for more than 30 years. Your contribution does not have to be that large. It might be helping your family, mentoring someone, securing jobs for people, supporting a local cause, or building a business that continues serving people long after you're gone.

3:59For my business acquisitions, remember this. Buying a business is not a legacy itself. The legacy is what you do with the business. How do you treat employees and customers? What opportunities you create? And what that business allows you to do for your family and other people. Take 40 minutes this week. Spend 20 minutes writing each obituary. Compare them and identify the three biggest gaps. Then choose one action you will take during the next seven days to begin closing each gap.

4:33Bruce Whipple:If business acquisition is part of what you want to build, but you're not certain whether you're on the right path, go to askbrucewhipple.com. Again, askbrucewhipple.com. Take the free 12-question business acquisition readiness assessment. It'll help you identify the areas you need to improve in and give you practical suggestions for moving forward. And in my next video, I'm going to take this question of legacy further. In the meantime, do not leave your legacy to accident. Write it, compare it, and then start living it. Keep pushing. Never ask, never get, as I say often. And I hope this helps and that you actually do this exercise.