The Work We Leave Behind

I want it to have mattered that I was here.

In a recent conversation with a mentor, I shared that at 53-years old I’ve arrived at a place where I am starting to think about legacy work. The work I know I’m meant to build. The work I know I’m uniquely suited to build. The work I know I must build.

It has felt for a while now that it is time for me to stop thinking about how I will build it one day and start thinking more about building it now. Why hold back what I’ve learned when it could help someone else have an easier go?

And yet, the question that keeps surfacing is one I suspect never entirely goes away: Do I know enough yet? Must we wait until the end of a life to put everything we’ve learned into context? Must I wait another decade before my work has the appropriate (to whom?) depth and gravitas?

These thoughts have been an open tab in my mind for many months now.

And then: Glen Hansard died.

Whether you are aware of his work or not, whether you like his music or not, it is likely you’ve seen at least one tribute by someone you very much admire who can’t stop talking about how much they admired him.

What has struck me most in the days since his death is how little the tributes have separated the work from the man who made it. Again and again: the extraordinary songs, yes. But also the kindness. The generosity. The time he made for strangers. The artists he brought onto his stages and into his spotlight. The causes he gave his considerable gifts to.

It is another essay entirely to talk about the impact of his music on my life and how it got me through one of the darkest stretches. A stretch where the concept of legacy work was not even a glimmer. Where I was just trying to survive the difficult days, wondering why I was here at all. Wondering what my usefulness was or could be.

Reading tribute after tribute — Bono’s and Bruce Springsteen’s in particular, but every random person who ever met Glen as well — has brought me full-circle to the very tab that has been open for all these months. What is the work we leave behind? What will remain because you were here? When do we begin to build it? It’s so clear to me now that it is a two-part answer.

How we live and treat others is legacy work. What we create while we’re here is legacy work. Both are what we leave behind. And we’re building both right now.

I’ve been wrong to imagine legacy work as something we build later. We’re building it already.

We spend so much time in business and entrepreneurship asking questions like: how big can it get? how much can I make? how fast can it grow? how much can I sell it for? what’s next? These are legitimate business questions.

And yet, I believe we can also ask another one: what good will exist because I built this? I’ve always believed that doing work that makes a difference need not always look like building a charitable foundation or feeling guilty every day about what we have relative to others. We need not destroy ourselves in service of doing “meaningful work.” There are so many ways we can do work we love, live as we wish, and leave others better for having encountered what we made. What will remain because you were here?

Maybe you employ twelve people beautifully.

Maybe you make an object people treasure.

Maybe you design clothing that makes women feel extraordinary.

Maybe you run the neighborhood restaurant where people celebrate birthdays for thirty years.

Maybe you teach 128 new coaches how to stand behind their work with integrity.

Maybe you write songs that guide strangers through parts of their lives you’ll never know anything about.

That is work that matters. And it’s the only kind of work I’m interested in.

I’ve spent thirty years sitting in rooms with founders. I’ve learned things. I’ve watched people make mistakes big and small. I’ve made plenty myself. I’ve developed ways of seeing businesses — and the people running them — that can help founders do better work, make better decisions, and build something that reflects what matters to them.

I don’t know exactly what I want my legacy to be. I’m not sure we’re supposed to.

But I know that I want the work I’ve spent my life doing to be useful. I want people to have an easier go because I learned some things the hard way and have shared what I learned. I want the people I’ve worked with to build better businesses and better lives because our paths crossed.

And I want to have been good to people while I was doing it.