Don’t be bland if you want to be remembered

This week two clients messaged me, both thank me for the difference I had made for them personally, nothing to do with their business. When this happens it means the world to me. Beyond words, really. Whatever I do with my skills and experience to help them and their business now and in the future, I believe they will remember me more for who I was for them as a human being.

What will you be remembered for?

Yesterday, thanks to Nick Parker (past guest on WhatComesNextLive) and his “Journal of Messy Thinking” newsletter this week (only available via (free) subscription), I read a great Bloomberg piece called: “Welcome to Your Bland New World“. The article dissects and eviscerates all the “same old, same old” D2C consumer brands that have emerged in recent years, all telling us they are disruptive and meeting a need, whereas really a) they don’t care about the consumer, b) they are really only meeting the privileged needs of aspirational consumers such as the “VC Bro” cliques that fund them, and c) they are not there for the long term, only for a fast buck “blitzscale” exit. The authors calls these businesses “Blands” not “Brands. A brilliant piece, I highly recommend it.

This lead me to David Brooks, who in a post called “Eulogy Versus Resume Virtues” wrote this:

It occurred to me that there were two sets of virtues, the résumé virtues and the eulogy virtues. The résumé virtues are the skills you bring to the marketplace. The eulogy virtues are the ones that are talked about at your funeral — whether you were kind, brave, honest or faithful. Were you capable of deep love?

We all know that the eulogy virtues are more important than the résumé ones. But our culture and our educational systems spend more time teaching the skills and strategies you need for career success than the qualities you need to radiate that sort of inner light. Many of us are clearer on how to build an external career than on how to build inner character.

But if you live for external achievement, years pass and the deepest parts of you go unexplored and unstructured. You lack a moral vocabulary. It is easy to slip into a self-satisfied moral mediocrity. You grade yourself on a forgiving curve. You figure as long as you are not obviously hurting anybody and people seem to like you, you must be O.K. But you live with an unconscious boredom, separated from the deepest meaning of life and the highest moral joys. Gradually, a humiliating gap opens between your actual self and your desired self, between you and those incandescent souls you sometimes meet.

David Brooks

I want to work with companies that have Eulogy Virtues, that will truly be remembered and missed.

I want to work with leaders who bring that same sense and focus to everything they do.

Oh, and it is election season in Cayman (with elections in mid April), and earlier this week one of the candidates called me to talk. They are truly in it for the right reasons, with their passion for their country meaning they have taken a truly brave step in running for office.

I will be there to do anything I possibly can to help that leader. Whatever happens, they are living life from eulogy virtues, not resume ones, they are living a life in full colour, there is nothing bland about their choices and their actions.