Sasha Strauss was clinging to the doctor’s “good news” that he had brain cancer.
It was an unusual cancer that happens not to spread.
Good news.
Bad news?
It needed to be cut out.
Immediately.
It had been a normal morning for the global brand whiz and devoted dad of three. In fact, he was on his way to the hospital to pick up his son after a routine tonsillectomy when suddenly, Strauss collapsed and passed out.
Surgeons operated within 48 hours. He nearly died twice. And he didn’t wake up for three full days.
Watch Sasha Strauss at METAL
“My first thought upon waking,” recalls Strauss, “was ‘thank God I have life insurance.’ My second was, ‘how will my kids remember me?’”
Legacy.
WHAT WILL YOUR LEGACY BE?
A lot of us, once we turn 40, 50, and beyond, think about what we are leaving behind. We assume that we have decades to forge something impressive.
We may not get that runway.
As Sasha Strauss learned.
Sasha, who also teaches at the Executive MBA programs at USC, UCLA, and UC Irvine, counsels a unique sort of branding. He asks his many corporate and non-profit clients not how to get people to know or understand their brands, but rather, “what am I putting out into the world that will help make people love me?”
Lying in his hospital bed, he ruminated on his children. How would they remember him? What does he do to create love with them? What would they write on his tombstone?
WE ALL LOVE PUPPIES AND BABIES
In his UC Irvine TEDx talk, Strauss emphasizes that we all subconsciously read each others’ energies all the time. “We love puppies and babies,” he says, “because they are purely present.”
He asked himself now, was he truly present with his own family, day-to-day?
Are you?
When Strauss found himself less than a week after surgery at a conference room table for nine hours straight, he realized he needed to change his ways. This wasn’t the life he most wanted. The pull of entrepreneurship is mighty, but not always wise.
So he decided on two things.
The first was to apply to his own life the Personal Brand Positioning Statement he uses when working with clients. He wrote out a description for his own “brand father” and “brand husband”…
- I am the (what my personal brand does for people every day).
- …who is known for (special qualities, values, or style that people remember me for).
- …and helps people (the big picture impact my brand helps people achieve).
He recommends that you do the same and consider questions such as:
- What do you do for your family?
- What are the values they know you for?
- How do you show up for them?
- Are you rushed? Present? Playful? Helpful?
- Toward which decisions are you guiding them and how?
- What do they love you for?
- What would you like them to love you for?
- What is your lasting legacy with each of them?
- What would you like them to inscribe on your gravestone?
DELAY YOUR GRAVESTONE INSCRIPTION
The second thing he decided was to delay that gravestone inscription moment for as long as humanly possible by becoming far more proactive in his medical screening.
“I love you! Get screened!” he impassionedly calls out to everyone in his life now. “Get tested. Do the preventive medicinal exams you can find and afford. If you do,” he says, “then may you live many, many, healthy decades more… just like my mother!”
Sasha Strauss’s mother just turned 109.
We wish Sasha 109 good, love-filled years as well.
Written by Adam Gilad
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