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00:00Hello, hello, hello. Y'all still with us? Still awake? Sleepy-itis? No? Okay, good.
00:09Thank you all so much for hanging with us. I promise you we have another exciting session for
00:15you with a very, very special woman. This next session is called Don't Wait, Slay the Legacy
00:24Game. It is a fireside chat for entrepreneurs and anyone else who wants to do more than just
00:30have success, folk who want to have meaningful impact on this earth, in this lifetime. We have
00:37a legacy strategist and coach coming up by the name of Nia Ford, who reframes legacy as something
00:43you live now, not just leave behind after death. Through her storytelling and reflection, she will
00:49invite you to align your life with your deepest purpose and to create impact with intention.
00:55Without further ado, please welcome to the stage, Nia Ford. Give it up for y'all.
01:04Hey girl. Hi there. Thanks for having me. Of course. Y'all, this is going to be good. Last night over
01:11drinks and oysters, we talked a lot about legacy and the work that she does. And Nia has a very,
01:18I say unique way of thinking about legacy. A lot of times we think about death, right? What we want
01:24to leave behind after we die, what we want the will to do for our loved ones after we are no longer
01:29here. But Nia thinks about legacy as something we live, right? And interestingly enough, her origin
01:36story for her work and her business centers a little bit around death. And so Nia, if you would,
01:42please share that story with us, share the work that you do and the why behind your purpose.
01:47Absolutely. Absolutely. So, you know, one of the things that I always say is that legacy is not
01:53about death. Interestingly enough, it is how I came to do this work. So when my father passed,
01:59he was an activist and, you know, up until his death, he had been sick for a couple of weeks
02:05and he was just my father, right? And as, as he passed, you know, all of these tributes started to
02:13come in. And I remember that I share this man with the world and all of his stories and his legacy. And
02:20I remember being like, oh my gosh, this man's legacy is so powerful. And so, you know, as a part of the
02:27grieving process, a couple of months later, I decided to do a personal self-guided retreat. And during that
02:33retreat, I reflected on and asked myself the question, well, what is mine? What is my legacy? What am I
02:40doing? And a part of that just brought up so many wonderful things, including that I was already
02:48living my legacy and that I did not even realize that I started creating my legacy when I was 16 years
02:55old, starting the black student union at the boarding school that I went to, right? And so this notion
03:02that legacy is about death is just so not true. It's how I came to start thinking about the topic,
03:10but it is very much about how you are living your life every day. And one of the things that came up
03:16for me once I realized that I started, you know, creating my legacy at the age of 16. And by the way,
03:23that organization still exists today, 35 years later, I was like, I'm doing it. I'm doing it. And you
03:30are too. And so it's so important for us to take the time to think about what kind of impact do we
03:38want to have? Because that's all legacy is. It's about the impact that we want to have and being
03:42intentional. That was the takeaway for me was that, oh my gosh, I have started creating a legacy even as
03:49a 16 year old, didn't know it. Had I known it and had I been intentional, what might I have been able
03:57to do in that time. So this work as a legal, as a legacy strategist, I help people to think about,
04:05well, what is the impact you want to have? Even with children, we have to stop having our children
04:11answer the question, what is it that you want to be when you grow up? We need to be asking them,
04:16what kind of impact do you want to have? Well, how do you want to contribute? Because our community
04:21needs them. Our community needs them for their impact, needs them for their contributions. And
04:30so often what we find ourselves doing is we're spending a lot of our time in service of other
04:38people, other communities. And we have to be in service of ourselves. And so my approach is a
04:46legacy first approach. And it's a community first approach. That's so, that's so poignant that I
04:55have to sit in that. I didn't even expect this, Nia, but as you were, as you were talking, I thought
05:01about my mother who died when she was 21 and I was one. And she didn't have a will. She did not have
05:13guidelines for things to follow. She had not amassed wealth, but her legacy, her legacy has given me
05:2135 years worth of stories for people to tell me. It precedes me. Her, you know, and it was the things
05:27that she did in that amount of time, right? And so I'm even reframing legacy in my mind as I hear you
05:32talk because it really is about, um, I'd say not the success, not the accolades, not the titles,
05:44not the, the cars and the things we leave behind, but it's like tapping into who we really are,
05:49right? Who we were born to be, right? Uh, the things that come effortless to us. And those are
05:53the things that stay once we're gone. I mean, I want to double click on that, right? Because we're
05:57talking a little bit about our stories, right? And I want to maybe tap on some of the other
06:02narratives that you might hear when you work with some of your clients, like what have been some of
06:06the most limiting narratives that you've heard from people as you work with them around legacy
06:12planning? Yeah, that's, that's really important. So it's, let me just first say that legacy work is
06:18not just about, okay, what is it that I want to do? A lot of it is unpacking what are those stories
06:24that we tell ourselves about ourselves. And that's the most important story that you will
06:29ever tell about yourself is the story that you tell yourself. And so for me, I can even say
06:34personally, I had been for my entire career telling myself the story that I was a disappointment to my
06:40father. And it's because I did the work of unpacking what that meant that I got to hear my father tell me
06:50that he was mortified, first of all, that I ever thought that I was a disappointment to him.
06:55But what he was able to tell me was that he loved me, that he was proud of me, that he, he did not
07:03want his life, you know, for me. And so that was so important and powerful. So first of all, to say,
07:10oh, wait a minute, I am worthy, right? And so, so often what I hear people also saying is that
07:15legacy, oh, that's, that's something for someone else. You know, oh, I don't, I don't have the big
07:21MLK Gandhi legacy. That's okay. The legacy that you're going to leave is about your values, how you're
07:30showing up in your life every single day. So they say things like, oh, I don't have a legacy. Oh,
07:37that's for another time. This is for now. We don't have a lot of time, right? We have to have a sense
07:44of urgency about what it is that we want to do and how we want to show up in the world. So those
07:49are some of the things that they say, like, oh, I'm not, I don't have time for that. You know,
07:54I'm working. It's a lot of things that, that are just these very limiting stories around how we see
08:02ourselves. And for every person that's going to be different, it's just so important to do the work
08:07to figure out what it is. Yeah. And so I'm curious when, when folks are coming to you to get support
08:13around legacy strategy, what is it that they want, right? I'm assuming it's not necessarily
08:17the will or not necessarily thinking through what happens with assets, but like, what is their
08:21tangible ask of you? So the tangible ask is, is often about estate planning, right? That's a,
08:30that's what, that's what we're, we're programmed to think about in terms of legacy. Okay. What am I
08:34going to leave my, what am I going to leave my children? Those kinds of things. And what they want
08:40is they want to start to have an impact. That's what they want to do. They want to have an impact.
08:46And that's something that we can start right away and, and, and today. And so when we look at legacy,
08:52we look at it from multiple facets. We look at it from the financial perspective. We'll put folks in
08:58touch with the right people, the estate lawyers. We look at it from a, not just financial, we look at
09:04it from an emotional perspective, because an important part of the emotional work is that
09:10sometimes we are carrying baggage. We're carrying stories that we're not enough, that we can't do
09:17this, that we have limiting stories. And sometimes those stories are generational. And so an important
09:24part of legacy is to get rid of those limiting stories right here with me so that no other generation
09:33experiences that. So that's the emotional part of the, of the legacy story.
09:39Yeah. That's interesting. Cause I don't know about your families, but I know in, in my family,
09:44um, my family's on both sides, there are these stories that you overhear at the kitchen table,
09:49but aren't truly talked about. But yet as you age, you find yourself in some of these same cycles
09:54and these same loops. Right. Um, and so how, and even for us, right? Like if we know that
10:01I'm going to make up a scenario, right? If we know that we want certain things to happen with our
10:06assets or happen in our estate planning, but we know that there are certain hangups that our family
10:11members have around doing the right thing, right? Or, or hangups our families might have with
10:15addictions or anything else that might threaten our plan. Right. Um, how do we push past those things
10:23wanting to protect our family enough to be able to work with a professional, right? To help us navigate
10:27that. Like what, what are the, what are the steps? What are the practices that we can take to not throw
10:31our family under the bus, but to really deal with the real thing and do the work? Yeah. I think it
10:35starts with having a mediator, right? To have those conversations. And the first thing is, what are
10:41you feeling? And what is the story? That's always where I start. My personal work is what am I feeling
10:48about something? Am I feeling scared? There's nothing wrong with being scared because it's a message to me
10:54that I need reassurance around something. So I want to know if I'm scared about something. Am I mad
11:00about something? Was there a broken agreement between me and my, my cousin, you know, from the
11:06past that I'm still holding? Am I telling myself the story that she's going to show up the same way?
11:12And what am I sad about? You know, what is something that I've got to grieve and, and let go? So for me,
11:19that's where all of it starts is the emotional component of it. What am I, what am I feeling?
11:25And then what is the story that I'm telling myself? Or what is the story that we have from the family?
11:30What is the story that the society tells us? And because to your point earlier, sometimes we
11:37internalize these things and we, and we operate based upon the story. And so I think it's just so
11:45important to start with the feeling and being open, having, having guidelines around conversations
11:53is really important. You know, that we show respect for one another's feelings, that we show respect
12:00for what someone aspires to do, that we don't engage in shaming one another, that we don't engage
12:06in attacking one another, that it's okay for us to disagree, that just because you don't agree
12:12with the way that I want to do it. That doesn't mean that we can no longer communicate, that we can
12:19no longer build together. We just have to figure out how we operate around that. Those are important
12:25tools and skills that we work through in this work. And that's so essential. And it helps in every
12:31aspect of our lives. And that is when we're creating the legacy, right? That's where we're, we're doing the
12:37real work of saying, we're not going to operate in this way anymore. I think that's a good perspective.
12:44Because a lot of times, I know, I will speak for myself, I compartmentalize, right? Like the business
12:49is the business. It is non-emotional. It has nothing to do with my trauma or my healing or who I'm mad at,
12:53right? And I leave that stuff for the clinicians, right? I talk to the therapist, right? Maybe I talk
12:58to my best friend, but you're right. Like there is this convergence and maybe there's a level of
13:03vulnerability that needs to be had, right? With folks who are helping us plan for the business.
13:08Beautiful. And then I want to make sure that we speak to family situations that may not be about,
13:16you know, maybe there aren't a lot of assets to leave, right? Like maybe, maybe there is what I
13:20usually call like the black mundane, right? Like I have my rituals, I have my favorite things,
13:25I have a few things, right? How do I protect that, right? And make sure that that legacy sustains itself,
13:31you know, beyond me. What advice would you have for folks for really thinking about how to tie this
13:39to wherever they are, even if they're humble situations or humble beginnings and work with
13:44somebody like yourself to secure themselves? Yeah. So I think that it is important to acknowledge
13:50that we have assets, regardless of whether they're financial assets. We have our values,
13:57we have our experiences, we have our recipes, we have all of these things and we have our, our culture
14:04is really important and we want to make sure that we continue those things. And so the advice that I
14:10would give people is to, to honor it, to honor and to be joyful about what it is that we have
14:20and to share that with others. Our family reunions are an incredibly powerful, powerful, powerful thing
14:28that we have. I remember hosting a family reunion in 2015 in Washington, DC. And one of the greatest
14:34compliments that one of my cousins came up to me and said was, and I thought it was going to be
14:39negative. She said, I want to talk to you about the family reunion. And I was like, yeah, what's up?
14:44You know, and I was bracing myself, you know, she was like, that was not a family reunion.
14:48And I was like, oh, she said, that was a cultural extravaganza. And so it's really important that we
14:55own what the assets that we do have. And they don't always have some kind of financial value that's
15:03associated with them. They are the recipes. They are the family reunions. They are the traditions that
15:08we have and that we should be really, first of all, proud of those things and then continuing to
15:14carry those forward as well. Beautiful. Thank you so much for helping us unpack this. 15 minutes
15:20have flown by so, so, so quickly. But I do encourage anyone to talk with Nia offstage if you want help
15:26thinking through how you protect the things that you're leaving behind and articulate what those
15:31things are, right, beyond finance. Thank you so much for your time, Nia. And I look forward to
15:37getting support from you for those very things from my own life. Thank you. I appreciate you. This was great.
15:42Thanks.
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