David,

Excellent piece. I love tips 9 - 13, but they are all great tips. I would add tackle BHAGs too. Big, Hairy, Audacious Goals, a term made popular by Jim Collins in Good To Great, are the stuff of legacy. In the summer of 2010 I survived cancer AND rode a bicycle across America.

Martin's Ride To Cure Cancer was a 20 year old BHAG that felt like it needed accomplishing NOW since NOW is all we are ever promised. I may have learned the NOW lesson the hard way, but it is an invaluable one.

Now I'm working with the talented team at Atlantic BT, a Raleigh based software and web development company where I am the Director of Marketing, to create CureCancerStarter.org. Cure Cancer Starter will be a crowdfunding platform for cancer research. Our goal is to cut out the middlemen that take 50% off the top for self perpetuating marketing and plug cancer patients, their friends and families (and their money :) directly into the research process.

By eliminating the gatekeepers we speed up research and so the cure for cancer. I know what you mean about legacy. The third thought I had after hearing "cancer" and my name in the same sentence was about my legacy. Sure I've made a lot of big companies a lot of money and WHO CARES. In the end none of those accomplishments have legs, they don't last.

Family, friends and those who love you is where your legacy resides. I'm all in on Cure Cancer Starter using my 401K to fund the project. I couldn't afford to make such a gesture if I didn't have cancer, so life's ironies never cease to amaze. Do I care if Martin Smith is remembered? Not at all. Do I care about helping cancer patients their friends and families? Yes very much.

There is a kinship in a chemo room that is hard to describe. We are instant friends and fellow travelers. There is pain there, but glory and grace too. I want to spend my time focusing on recreating that kinship, that special connection because in there is where LEGACY lives, in there, in that special generous grace, is where we cure cancer so our children and their children will only have to know about cancer from what they read in books not by remembering who they lost.

That is a legacy worth a BHAG :). Great post.

Marty

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Martin W. Smith
Marketing Director
Atlantic BT

Founder, Cure Cancer Starter