What will people say at your funeral?
You’ve probably heard the question before. It’s been the centerpiece of countless leadership talks, books, and motivational speeches.
But here’s a question I haven’t heard anyone ask: How many people will cry at your funeral?
Not just show up. Not just say something kind. I mean be moved to tears.
Because if someone cries at your celebration of life, that tells you something. That kind of emotion doesn’t happen by accident. It means you got close enough to someone, invested enough in them, that your absence leaves a real hole.
That’s a different kind of legacy. And I’m not sure most of us stop to think about whether we’re building it.
A Funeral That Stays With Me
I’ve been to a lot of funerals over the years. The ones that stay with me aren’t always the ones with the biggest crowds or the most polished eulogies. They’re the ones where you could feel the weight of what someone’s life meant to the people in that room.
When our founder Deane Wymer passed, I cried as I gave the eulogy. Deane was my business partner and one of the most formative people in my life, and it is genuinely hard to put into words what his presence meant. We couldn’t have built what we did without each other, and none of it exists without him.
What strikes me now, looking back, is how intentional he was with people. That didn’t happen by accident.
And it made me start asking myself: am I doing that?
Leaning Into the Lives of Others
Your family grieving you is a given. But what about everybody else? The people outside your home whose lives you actually changed? I want to be that kind of presence for my daughters-in-law, for the people I work with, for the people in my kids’ lives.
As I’ve grown, I’ve come to realize the most valuable impact isn’t from the things you can list on your resume. It’s the way we lean into the lives of those around us. Having the compassion to recognize there is something more important than yourself and choosing to act on it. We can all stay in our own bubbles and be perfectly comfortable. There’s no shame in that. But I think we miss a lot of people that way.
I think about the patterns in everyday life… the regular rhythms, the same restaurants, the same faces. It’s easy to move through those interactions on autopilot. But if you slow down enough to notice, there are real people there with real stories. A bellman saving up to take his daughter to Disney World. A driver with a remarkable story of survival, trying to build something in a new country. A server who’s saving up for a computer to improve his family’s quality of life.
These aren’t just the details of a person’s life. They’re what make them who they are. And by leaning into these things, we find opportunities to connect, serve, and bless those around us.
Living Out Your Legacy
I’ve been thinking about it in terms of direction. Are your arrows pointing in or pointing out? You get to choose: every day, in every interaction. Not just with money, either. With time. With attention. With a real conversation instead of a passing one.
I am a firm believer in the idea that God puts people in our paths. Those interactions are opportunities. Whether we treat them that way is up to us.
So I invite you to join me in asking: What legacy do I want to leave?