Legacy, Lyrics, and Life, with Shawna Wells

hometown. So when I was here, met my now partner, and when I finished in Philadelphia, he called and said, Hey, are you thinking of moving somewhere? And I said no, and he said, How about back to Las Vegas? And I said, I don't know. And he's like, because I'd like to get married. And so I ended up back here with my now partner and three kids, and here I am. So now I've been here for 14 years.

lived. And so what I do is I get the opportunity to work with leaders who come to us for various reasons, and I'll tell you a few questions they ask us when they get on the phone with us, the first is, I want to figure out what my next job is. The second is, I want to figure out how to spend my time better. I want to figure out how to manage my team better. Or I'm

just confused. I'm not really sure where to go next. Some people call this a quarter life or a midlife crisis, but a lot of people come to us with those types of questions, and what we do is we think about, well, what's the legacy that you're aiming to live? And we choose the word live, because when most people think about this word legacy, they think it's big and

they think it's about dying. And so what we do is we help them articulate or declare in one small statement, what is it that you're here to do in the finite amount of time that you have with, frankly, finite possibilities for the time that you can spend. What do you want to do? What are you here to do? And then how do you shape your life, your organization, your

leadership team, around what you said you want to do? And where are the spots where you're leaking, where there are betrayals of self that are deeply impacting your ability to align, feel fulfillment or connection.

on this planet. And one of the most beautiful things that mentor and teach. Our mind says is it's not in the amount of the years, it's in the amount of breaths. And so at seven Jen, we talk a lot about, well, as you're breathing through life, what are the things that you want to do? How do you want to be as you do them? And those two things combined can help you leave the impact or the fingerprints that you want to

leave on the next generations to come. And the reality is, we're all leaving a legacy, whether you claim it or not, we're all leaving one.

willing to spend time and energy on it. So when we define legacy, what we say is legacy is a life well lived by way of six realms. And so I'll share the six realms, because I think they're helpful to make legacy a little bit smaller as we start to think about then, what do I do with that? So play, you can leave a legacy of play. And we start with play, because most people try to leave legacy at work, and so it's a little bit disruptive.

So a legacy of play. How do you play? How do you teach others how to play? How do you use play to disrupt generationally, maybe some of the harmful patterns that have been put in place well being. How do you leave a legacy of well being, both spiritually and emotionally and physically? The second the third realm, relationships and community. What's the legacy you're living by inside of your relationship, in your community? How are you

treating the people around you? How are you building with them? What have you teared down a legacy of financial freedom. And we say financial freedom because it's not about accumulating as much. It's your as you can. It's about accumulating enough to live the life in which you find energy, joy, commitment, connection, and the ability to move through the tensions that that creates a legacy of service. How do you choose to

serve? And then a legacy of work. And we take the two apart, because most people, a lot of people we work with, work in lines of service, and those two things in bed together can cause a relationship of tension, right? I'm wrapping myself around my work and my service, and I have lost my identity. So those six areas are where we can start when we think about legacy.

impact. So those three words really are in relationship to one another when we're working inside of legacy, which is to say you've got your legacy statement. What would it mean to align all of these pieces to it? And then how does that help you build with intention and leave and live the impact that you intend.

stay and so two things we found out. The first is that three generations of wealth is the pivot point of being able to build sustainably, a legacy of wealth. Well, in order to do that, if you look at some of the wealthiest people, like the carnegies, for example, in order to do that, you have to have all sorts of familial structures around that, and you've got to be able to meet and talk about the things that are most important to you and for them, it was about the passing of

money. We said, what if we apply what we know to every other realm? What does that mean? Well, in three generations, you gain the things that you need, or the thought processes that you need, the structures that you need to really carry forth

the belief system of your lineage. After three generations, then it's on the next three generations to really make that solidified, to make sure that everything that has been passed on continues to get passed, and that last generation, the seventh generation, we hope, then gets to live in freedom. Now, do we have proof? No, because I haven't lived for seven generations. I don't know, right, but I do rely on the wisdom, and we rely on the wisdom of those who have come before us to tell us this

generational thinking is helpful. Generations is 20 years in the making. So if we go back three generations, that takes us back to the year 1965 so you can think about what was happening in 1965 and the generational impact that we experienced. Less than three generations. There are five generations in the workforce, which is why we're experiencing so much friction that people the newest generation is having trouble understanding the oldest generation, and so it's been

hard, right? Why we're so mad at all the different millennials, Gen Zs, Gen X, right? All those things boomers, right? We're so annoyed with each other because we just don't understand generationally, all different life experience that are informing our decision making and what we value. And so we take this principle and we spread it over seven generations. We think if we can lead to continuity of the conversation, then we can start to connect in different ways.

her doorstep. Now my grandmother was she grew up in Alabama, and she was a sharecropper, and her family also sharecroppers, and she was the first entrepreneur that I've met, and I draw a lot of strength from her, but she could not understand how I use my phone to order chocolate to her house from a whole different

zip code. She just didn't get it. So then you think about that's like, just a silly example, but you think about, then all of the ways in which we're just living differently because I don't know it, my automatic human instinct is to judge it, because I don't know it, right? And I feel I'm like, oh, I should know this. I'm older, right? And so part of it is we need new systems and conditions to be able to talk

generationally. And one of the things that we're really proud of is that we run this program in high schools to help students really start to think about what's the legacy I want to live and leave, so that they can that they can make informed decisions about, Do I want to go to college, or do I want to do something else? Or when I say I want to build generational wealth, what do I actually mean? One of the first assignments we ask them to do is find someone who is 60 years or older and

interview them. We help them write the questions for the interview and the kinds of things that they learn that help them and gain perspective on their own existence is really magical, because they're not thinking about that. I'm not thinking about that. So slowing down long enough to ask questions is a real gift. I know my teacher used to say, you're going to use this algebra every day? Well, I never, I don't think I use algebra ever. We have people who run numbers in

our company, right? But this concept of we're going to use these mindsets every single day. We're going to use this idea of legacy every single day to help us make decisions in our lives through our you know, our teens, our 20s, our 30s, that's what we're working to give so people can work with us. We come into high schools and we actually embed ourselves inside of the

high school. We work alongside teachers and leaders to help them understand the concepts of legacy, and then to take that and work with their students to really help them think about when I make this big choice at 18 years old to do whatever is next for me. What do I want to consider? And of course, it will change. We all change. I'm different than when I was 18. But what are the questions I might ask myself to really understand what it is I'm trying to do?

legacy or aiming to live and leave? After our first session, she said, I did a lot of thinking. She came back to our second session, and she said, I love the work that I do. I did not think about it next to what it means to be the mom I want to be. I said, Well, what does that mean? And she said, My son is not well, like he has a generational disease, and I have chosen to locate my family in a place where he cannot get access to the doctors that he needs because of my work. I said,

Well, what are you going to do about that? She said, My legacy tells me I have to change jobs. And so she worked for 18 months to build up the financial freedom she needed, the relationship she needed, the community she needed in the place where her son could get the best care, and she moved and. Is all of that because she interrogated, what is it that I'm really about? What do I care about? And I tell that story because, notice, it took her 18 months to get from where she was

to where she wanted to be. Most people think legacy. Once I got my personal legacy statement, I'm going to change all the things. And we're actually working with people to say, No, build the life that you want over time to get to the outcome you want to get to. And I just share that story because we started working with her, because she wanted help as a leader, to build the team and the structure and time

management and all those things. She really made a personal decision to say, I have constructed a life that used to feel relevant and no longer does and made did the hard work to shift and change it. Sometimes we convince ourselves we don't have the power or agency to do that we actually do. But back to

those words of intention and impact. It takes intention to get to the impact that we intend, and these times, it's easy to get distracted by things that by the next best thing, and to be able to really come back to the self and research the self is a real testament to the work of legacy.

lot. And so to me, that's what success was. They were like, you are going to achieve. So great I achieve. But I was feeling so wrapped up. My identity is, if you take work away from it, pretty non existent. So over time, I evolved my legacy statement to be something that's much more robust and pictures the six realms. And there's this portion that I'll share because

people say it's the most powerful. What I say in my legacy statement is that I will be someone who builds spaces of joy and possibility unapologetically, and that in order to do that, I will get energy from my closest friends and my children. And when I say my children, what I mean is the generation coming after us. If I didn't have my own I would take responsibility for and I do take responsibility for the generation coming after as much as I can. And those two things

actually help me fuel my day. It allows me to make decisions about my own well being, for example, if I don't have any time with close friends in a given week, I know I'm going to be less effective in creating spaces for people enjoy and

possibility. So as I think about the work that I do, I create spaces of joy and possibility, particularly for women and for black women, women of color and those working in allyship to ensure that we actually can create a declaration for the lives we want to live and lead.

story, which is why I love your podcast. On you're really interrogating this idea of robustly, what does the word mean, right?

ago. Was a farmer, and he would graft his own apples, which they think is a beautiful story and could have been forgotten, but not for a little map that was left inside of the basement of the barn, and it has each of the names of the apples, which I just think is such a beautiful, natural articulation of legacy, but to connect to our ancestors. I told you, my grandmother was not by choice, a farmer, and I watched her growing up in her

backyard. She moved from Alabama to Hamilton, Ohio, which. Which my dad still wears proudly as a badge and has just moved back there. But in her backyard, she had the most beautiful garden.

And growing up, I told you, I grew up where I sat out of outside of Philly, I didn't experience people growing things, and so when I would visit her, putting hands in the dirt with my grandmother is one of the most profound memories that I have of her, and I was so taken aback by her ability to say, this ground isn't well, and she would do something to it, and like collard greens, would be growing next, what the place in Vermont has allowed us to do, and what the farm in our

backyard here, and I call it a farm, it's a garden our backyard in Las Vegas. It's allowed me to get back in touch with my ability to grow things, and actually, to create synergy between my ability to grow my company and my ability to grow a natural thing in the backyard. And that is a gift from my

ancestors. And so I say often, Vermont has given me the chance to one own land, which my ancestors were not always able to do, and two to tend to it and to learn who we have become through that physical exercise, as opposed to leaving behind of the material.

impact of living with a legacy mindset. So on our podcast, we interview leaders who have really started to embody this idea of legacy, and they talk about what's hard about it and what's good about it, and what they've discovered along the way. And I like to say it's a very candid podcast. I know most of the guests, so we talk very intimately about their journey,

so you can hear from them. Here's what it's been like to come in into contact with this word, and then at the end, we ask every guest, what's a lyric that would embody your legacy? Because I am a music nerd, legacy is often left in music, and we can hear the legacy of the instrument, or the legacy of the singer, of the designer, of what we hear with our own ears through music and so often. And I'm going to ask you in a second, Gary, what's your song?

change is going to come. And I say that because, for better or for worse, change is coming always beyond like today feels poignant for some folks, but yesterday could have felt poignant for some folks. And the day before and the day before,

change is always coming. And I think we can actually find real power in embracing that change is part of our lives, and that we get to decide how we respond to it, and that is part of a life well lived, is to figure out, how do I how do I align myself in moments of change that feel rather disruptive to some and change is different for everyone.