Episode 208. Want to create your legacy? Here’s how I’m doing it…
In this episode, I’m diving into something that’s been on my heart for a while now: legacy. You know, the kind of stuff that makes you stop and think about what really matters in life. Losing my mom earlier this year, and my brother years ago, has completely reframed how I view life, work, and what we leave behind. Again.
Today, I’m talking about how we can create a legacy that feels authentic, meaningful, and (surprise!) doable. Especially for us entrepreneurs—what happens when we shift from chasing revenue goals to creating something that lasts longer than an Instagram story?
Here’s What I Cover in This Episode:
What Legacy Means to Me (and Maybe You, Too): I break down how the traditional definition of legacy doesn’t quite cut it anymore—and why I think we’re living in a time where legacy can be so much more.
Why Loss Has Shaped My View of Legacy: Personal stories about losing my mom, my brother, and how those experiences have guided me to focus on leaving an impact—both for my family and the world.
Legacy Through an Entrepreneurial Lens: What if your business wasn’t just about making money? I share how shifting my perspective has helped me realign my work with my deeper values.
Legacy-Building Tools of 2025: I geek out on my favorite ways to leave your mark:
Writing a book (the highs and lows of this massive mountain to climb).
Podcasting (spoiler alert: it’s more than a marketing tool).
Social media (yes, if you save and archive your content thoughtfully).
Digital courses (they’re not just for revenue—they’re timeless capsules of your wisdom).
It’s Personal, Not Perfect: I share why your legacy doesn’t have to be a bestseller or a viral hit. It just has to be you. And it doesn’t all have to be public—your legacy can include things meant only for your family or even just yourself.
What I Hope You Get From This Episode:
A fresh perspective on why your life’s work matters.
Inspiration to create something meaningful without getting caught up in perfectionism.
Practical ways to start thinking about (and building!) your legacy today, even if you’ve never considered it before.
Don’t Forget:
If you loved this episode, I invite you to share it with someone who could use a little inspiration today.
Let’s chat! What does legacy mean to you? DM me your thoughts on Instagram or email me—I’d love to hear your take.
As always, thanks for being here with me on this journey. You being part of my world? That’s part of my legacy. — Nichole
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Transcript:
Okay, it's been a wild couple of months since I last podcasted and I can explain myself. My last episode came out at the end of September. I felt like I was ready to start flowing into the mic on a regular basis again. And then Tampa got slammed with two storms. We're okay. I've posted on my social media that we made out.
Okay, we're fine. We're safe. Everybody's fine here. So all is well on that front, but it takes a lot, a lot out of you. And if you have never gone through something like that, then good. I'm glad I don't wish this on anybody. Um, but I think I finally feel like I'm recovering.
And I woke up a couple days ago with this fire that I haven't felt since April of 2024 before my mom died. And so it's the first time in like seven and a half months that I have felt , that fire energy of ready to create, ready to flow, ready to help, ready to talk, ready to work. , and it feels really good.
I've missed this feeling. And even though I woke up with that feeling one day last week, it still took me several days to get onto the microphone. And that's because of who I am and how I operate as a human being. So the more I understand myself, the more compassion I have for how I navigate the world.
Let me explain before we dive into the episode. So the old me would have felt like, why didn't I start right away? If I felt that energy, why didn't I jump in and start doing things immediately? And that's partly because part of my design. Right now I'm speaking human design. Part of my design is that I really like transitions I really like bridges from where we were to where we're going It's this feeling of and we have no problems you and me But it's this feeling of like we broke up even though we didn't break up but the podcast was on a sort of hiatus after my mom passed and Part of me felt like that bond was broken between us It still exists.
It's really complicated for me to explain because obviously it didn't. Obviously it still exists. And I've shared a couple things here and there on social media, but I haven't really gone deep, um, on many things except for a few conversations about grief. And that's because it felt like the bond was broken and I needed to bring us back together.
So for us to get back together, you listening to me in your ear and me sharing with you through my mouth and flowing into the microphone. I needed to feel like we bridged or we have a transition
through another lens of looking at my chart . Astrology of which I will admit I'm not well versed, but , the little bit that I know about my astrology, I'm actually a Taurus, but I have Virgo rising. So again, don't expect me to come to you with a full astrology explanation.
I don't have it. But I do feel like I have that desire that some, not all, Virgos experience of needing things to be in their place. You may have heard jokes about Virgos being super organized. Um, for me, I like structure. I guess it comes from my human design as well, because I'm a quad left in human design.
So I'm very into structure and organization. So what that means when it comes to To podcasting or, um, creating things in my business is it can be really tricky for me to move forward on something different or have a different type of conversation until I feel like we have put something else in its place until things have been organized.
So in terms of the podcast, I've shared a little bit about grief. Um, but a lot of things felt like they had not yet been organized. And by a lot of things, I mean my thoughts. , admittedly for seven and a half months, I've had a lot of grief fog. Uh, understandably so, right? Like losing my mother is no small thing.
I'm navigating it in my own way. Some days the fog feels heavy. Some days it feels like it's lightened a little bit and I can kind of think clearly again. And so as this fog has been lifting, I've been feeling something else come in, this new emotion. Return of an emotion that I haven't felt in some time.
And that is that burning desire to share and to offer my medicine with you again. Hence, I'm back on the microphone. Before we move on with this particular episode, one other thing I'll say about that is I'm not going to guarantee you weekly episodes just for the sake of having weekly episodes. I feel like what feels more appropriate is sharing when there's something really important that I have to share.
Um, maybe that's a little bit of the rebel in me who defies The business advice that we get that you have to create weekly content or else whatever. Um, I call bullshit. I don't think you have to create weekly content, especially the type of, um, deeply transformative long form content that I like to create.
I like podcasting. And for this particular episode, these thoughts have been percolating for weeks, sometimes months, and putting together this outline took me a very long time. And a lot of intention went into it, , with the hope. That it is really helpful for you. That it's not just something you listen to, um, like a conversation among people talking about beer, which is fine.
If you like that kind of thing, I don't really care. I'm not judging you. But my hope is that this conversation, , is helpful and that you can take something from it and apply it to your own life.
So having said all of that, let's get into what we're going to talk about today. Uh, the gist is legacy. We're going to talk about legacy and legacy is something that I've really, if I go back, I've been thinking about since 2016, which you know, is when my brother passed, he was 21 years old. He died in a motorcycle accident.
And it was one of those huge catalyst moments in my life that I've shared quite a bit about on the podcast and in my social media channels. And recently, you know, this year losing my mom, she was only 66 losing my mom. I've been thinking a lot about her legacy. , and how my kids will remember her. As you also know, I've mentioned a little bit on social media that I'm working on a book about her and I's relationship. And part of the reason I'm creating the book is for my mom and I's relationship legacy.
And as part of that, , I was doing a little bit of research about my aunt. , I should also give you a trigger warning. I'm going to talk about death. , and I guess I should blanket my entire podcast from here on out with a, with a trigger warning that I'll probably talk about death often
so when I was thinking about my mom's legacy and what will my kids remember about her,
I wonder if my kids are going to remember all the little things about her. I wonder if they're going to remember her voice. I wonder if they're going to remember her quirks and the way that she played with her animals. I wonder if they're going to remember her in her garden and all of the things that made her, her.
Because remember, they're pretty young when they're losing their grandmother, right? My son was 10 when she passed, my daughter was 7, and the other one was 5, and 5. I was roughly nine ish when one of my grandmothers passed and I don't remember very much of her. And that part is something that's been sitting with me for a long time of like, what will my kids remember?
Because I did not do a great job at documenting her in photographs and videos. And she didn't do much of that herself either. That just wasn't something that she was into. Now she had a camera roll on her phone, full of Facebook screenshots of mostly her grandkids and her great grandkids. But photos of herself, there really weren't many and videos of herself are virtually non existent.
I have only a couple where you can hear her voice. , and I will say the live feature on iPhone photos is pretty cool because if you hold it down and there's an audio you can hear the person's voice or laugh in the background as well.
But if I could go back , I know for sure that one of the things I would have done differently is finding a way to document her legacy, whether that's photographing her more or making her come to holiday photo shoots with us or creating video content of her, of interviewing her or asking her questions and writing down the answers.
She wasn't one to sit down with a pen and paper and write. She wasn't one to type out a story. She wasn't one to create a video of herself like I do all the time here on the podcast. And that's okay. There's still ways that I could have brought those tools that I like to use into her life and use them to help her document her legacy.
I was actually thinking, , with Christmas coming in the next month, , I was looking at my kids collection of holiday books, and they have a Polar Express book. And this one Polar Express book my mom got for them when they were very, very little.
You can record yourself reading the book so that whoever picks up the book, right, ideally you give it to your kids, grandkids, whoever, nieces, nephews, and they can go through the book page by page, press a button, and they can hear your voice reading it aloud to them. She gifted my kids this years ago, and sadly, I noticed probably four years ago that something broke on the recording device, so there's no audio.
Saved of her voice and this was one of those things, you know These kinds of things come up all the time in the last seven and a half months But this was one of those moments where I was like damn I really wish I would have asked her to rerecord that or I really wish I would have Replaced it when I thought about it so that the kids could hear her voice and feel her energy when they're going through Something like as silly as this book, which it really is not silly, right?
So as this legacy thought has been percolating and coming into my awareness more and more, , I have been working on my book. That's another thing I've been doing this month is continuing to get words out and get back into the energy of this book that I'm working on.
, it's about my mother and I. How we healed our relationship. I don't want to go into too much detail right now. . So I'm doing some research on the book and I'm searching some specific information about my aunt's murder. My mom's younger sister was murdered by a serial killer in 1984. So one of the articles that popped up, and there's not a whole lot of information, most of the information is centered around the serial killer.
Right? So one of the things I think that the media used to do that I feel like sometimes they're trying not to do as much anymore is centering, , the person who inflicted harm upon others. So this individual, there's plenty of information out there about him. What led him to this point? How many women did he attack and what happened when he died?
But what's not available back from the eighties is a whole lot of information about the victims, about the women, the real life human beings and who they were. And, you know, I was only a year old at the time, so I don't remember my aunt at all. And. And sadly, all I have to go off of is a little bit that my mom has told me, and now she's not here to answer more questions, a little bit that my dad told me based on a very short amount of time that he was in her life.
And I'm going to read to you the two lines that existed on this particular, , article that I found online. So I Googled her name, Kim Swan with two N's, Tampa. Tampa. This article says Kim Marie Swan, 21. Killed on November 11th, 1984. Swan briefly worked as a dancer at the Sly Fox. Just a few months before her death, she decided she wanted to change her life.
That's it. Nothing about who she was, nothing about. Her being a mother, nothing about her perspectives on the world, nothing about her relationships with her family, nothing about her as an individual. And reading those lines, just it really broke my heart in, in a sense of, I have nothing to know her legacy.
Right. And sadly, what I think of when I think of her was. The horrific experience she had before she died and that's it. I don't have anything else.
So all of this has me thinking about what is really important in this life. Like what are the most important things in life, right? So for me, I have my own priorities list, growth, expansion, , how I'm living my life day to day. But then second to that is what am I leaving? What is the mark I'm leaving on the world?
Both within the confines of my household. In my role in my identity as a mother to this family and to these beautiful children, but also outside of my house. What is the mark that I'm leaving on people all over the world who I work with or , who listened to the podcast maybe, or who read my blog or who read any of my Instagram posts who have taken my courses, people I've worked with in different capacities.
What is my legacy? And this is something that weighs really heavily on me.
Likely because of the up close and personal experiences I've had with loss this year.
And the other thing about legacy is I do believe that our understanding and how we create our legacy is evolving.
So one of the definitions that I found on legacy is the long lasting impact of particular events, actions, et cetera, that took place in the past or of a person's life. . That's fine. And I think it's incomplete. So I think in 2024, we can really elaborate on that and expand on that definition.
The way we leave our legacy shows up differently now than it did perhaps when Oxford wrote that definition. We have tools available to us now to allow us to express our legacy, leaving our legacy. actual pieces of us behind that future generations can not just read our written words, but they can actually feel our energy.
They can see us talking, they can hear us talking on audio, on video. They can read our words. There's so many ways that tools that are now available Including some AI tools. Hello, Aquarian age that help us make this so easy to leave our legacy.
So where I want to bring this conversation for you, ,
is one, , if you're also a mother, you can look at your legacy through the lens of your identity as a mother. Of course, that's very important. I'm not going to bypass that and act like it's not important. That's probably one of the most important identities to me in this lifetime.
And I need something outside of that as well. I need something outside of the role of mother and the identity as mother to have for myself and for humanity because I have other gifts to give the rest of humanity that don't fall under the confines of being these three humans mom.
So if you're an entrepreneur or if you have an entrepreneurial spirit, if you have that vocational prowess, I encourage you to look at your business through the lens of legacy building. What would it look like if you approached planning 2025 and beyond through the lens of I am creating legacy?
And I don't mean just offering services and products and opening shop. Primarily for the sake of generating revenue. Yes. Money's important. Yes. I enjoy having money flowing in so that I can do things with my life so that I can help the world, not as the primary motivating factor, if that's your primary motivating factor, it's going to be really hard to stick it out when the money hasn't yet shown up.
But you know how I feel about that. And on a personal note, this is something that I've been working through for a few years now, to be honest. And it could be another layer as to why it felt even trickier getting back into business after my mom passed. Because I was already shifting so much of my beliefs about, you know, Business and really deconditioning a lot of what I picked up from my earlier years in business and under a particular coach who I haven't worked with now for two and a half years.
I've been really deconditioning from that 10 K month emphasis of the primary goal being how much money can we make? And again, I'm not saying I don't appreciate earning money as an entrepreneur I do I do think it's important for an appropriate exchange of Energy money. I do think that that's all very important. That's a separate conversation. I mean Making it as your primary motivating factor
And so other than that heavy grief fog, this is probably one of those big reasons why I just couldn't get behind the things that I used to get behind. Right? So something really important to me in business when I'm offering services, when I'm sharing my work with the world, when I'm sharing my medicine really with the world, Is can I get behind it?
And for a couple of years now, I've been looking at my material and looking at my content, looking what I teach. Can I get behind it? The answer is a resounding fuck yes. I can get behind my material. When I rewatch my old videos, when I rewatch my old modules for my classes, I can get behind the material.
The piece that I could no longer get behind was money and revenue being one of the primary motivating factors. And it wasn't so much that that was my primary motivating factor. It's that it was conditioned upon me from somebody else who that was their primary motivating factor. It didn't belong to me.
And so a lot of times when I was out in the world speaking about my work, I talked about how, You can work from home, how you can build a digital business, how you can , earn money while you're raising children and doing all those things, which part of that I do still believe in, but a lot of the conditioning was, still there.
So I have been detangling a lot of that and actually doing a lot of energy healing on my business to remove that particular individual's energetic footprints, so to speak. And what I can get behind is legacy building, that is something I can get behind.
So when I think about legacy and what I want my kids, my grandkids, , anyone in the world to think about when they think about me. Obviously I'm going to start with the motherhood role, right? Like I think about what I want my kids to remember about me and what I hope that they share with their children and their great grandchildren, great grandchildren, whatever.
There's that piece of it. But then there's also what impact am I having on the world? What is the energetic deposit that I'm making into the collective? So we are individuated as human beings, right? But we're also one as part of the collective. This collective world, we are all connected, right?
So there's different frequencies when I think about like the motherhood frequency, right? What is the deposit that I'm making to the motherhood frequency in the ways that I be a mom every day? What's the deposit I'm making into humanity by the ways that I be human every day? What's the deposit that I make into the entrepreneurial space, into business ownership, and that, , vocational prowess space, what deposit am I making?
What contributions am I making is another way to think about it. And what impact am I having , on the collective and on a collective level throughout the world?
And if these are things that are lighting something, activating something inside of you, I urge you to sit and think about what your legacy would be, , with your family, with your friends, with your clients, with your communities, what legacy are you going to leave? And if you haven't yet thought about stuff like this, now could be a good time to look at that.
You know, a lot of people are going to be riding this energy of planning for 2025. So as you're doing that, can you incorporate and bring that in to part of your plans? planning for and creating alongside your business with legacy in mind.
So what are the different ways that you can do that? Um, do the lens of business and the ways that I'm pretty well versed in. I'll give you those first. , there's lots of tools that you can use. Number one, I think one that people would almost always Think of it first is a book, and a book is a fantastic legacy builder.
And I mean print or audiobook. , I have an audiobook. I have a published audiobook. It never made it to print, but I'm also working on my other book right now that I told you about a little while ago. It's a nonfiction memoir ish, and I can tell you. , if that's the only thing you're counting on, that could be a little bit tricky because a book is a large mountain to climb.
It's a huge project,
and not everyone will see it through. Not everyone who sits down and says, I want to write a book, will actually make it to the finish line and have a book put on Amazon or audiobook or whatever. And that's okay. You may write a book just for your own personal records. , I actually highly encourage you to do this just for funsies, even if you never share it with anybody.
Because again, I wish my mom, my grandmother, I wish some of my ancestors would have Written down their experiences in a journal even it doesn't have to be a formal book You don't have you might say I'm not a good writer. You don't have to be a good writer Could you imagine if your great grandparents and their parents and their parents wrote something anything in a journal that you could pick up and read Right now to hear what they were doing the challenges they had how they were navigating life I mean, I love personal stories.
So for me, it's fascinating but point being You don't have to share it publicly and you don't have to be a good writer.
The second one for me, it's going to be podcasting. You know, I love to talk, you know, I love to podcast. , oftentimes I video cast, which like this one I'm creating on video. Then there's an audio version as well. Sometimes it's only the audio that I have the energy for. My podcast is a legacy builder.
So long as after I die, somebody is maintaining my digital spaces, whether it's hosting my website or maintaining my Google drive, where all of my podcast videos and audios are saved, then I have a legacy tool. And really, there are some audiobooks that I've listened to on Audible that were from, let's say, the 80s, and they're not even an audiobook per se, the person who wrote or created and spoke the words that I'm listening to in the audio book.
It's actually a compilation of their recorded seminars, , workshops, discussions, almost like Ted Talks of the eighties. Right. And so back then they had these shoddy recordings and I say shoddy because the quality is not very good. You can hear people coughing in the background. You can hear sneezes, the audio quality is not that great, but The energy was so potent in the material that people still find it valuable to create this legacy building tool where they compile this person's speaking engagements into an audiobook.
And the beautiful thing about podcasting is there really isn't a lot of barriers to entry. It is so much easier than people think to actually get a podcast out.
The third one, digital courses. Okay. This would include like sharing your education, your experience, your knowledge into some form of digital teaching material.
I love this form of legacy building. I love this tool. I love it for many reasons, many of which you probably have already heard over the years. I am an avid course creator. I have a library of old webinars, workshops, classes, mini courses, full courses, replays of my Q and A's from my online business school days.
I love digital teaching.
And the beautiful thing is, like I mentioned before, there's an energy in the recordings that anybody who picks up and listens to, if you took one of my modules from course creation, Let's say teaching people how to build digital courses from a few years back
the energy can be felt when you pick up the video and watch it anytime in the future.
And digital courses are legacy builders. I can only imagine what it would be like for my great great grandkids to be able to access some of my old videos where I was teaching classes. the thought of that blows my mind. All right, number four, and I kind of struggled to include this one, but I decided to, and let me explain to you why.
So number four is social media. And at first I thought, is social media a legacy builder? No, not really, but also it is. So no, in a sense of if you open Instagram and post a photo and put a, you know, type in a little caption and leave Instagram, that's not a legacy builder. Really? I mean, the relationship that you're building with people who read the captions and are creating that relationship with you and may be inspired by something you say, yes, kind of, but also Instagram could be gone tomorrow.
TikTok could and may be gone soon. I don't know. I haven't checked the news to see what's going on with that. , but point being social media, all of it could be gone at any moment. So when I'm talking legacy building on social media. It is, in my opinion, especially if you are creating the material that you're going to put on social media, you're creating it outside of social media.
And then just copy and pasting it and sharing it to social media, right? But it actually lives either on a blog on your website or in a Google folder or somewhere else that you are compiling your thoughts, your perspectives, your expressions, the things you want to share. So I think it is really the legacy builder effect if it lives somewhere else and then you just use social media as like a broadcast channel.
And if you do that, then you get the double punch of social media because you'll have the content as the tangible piece outside of social media. But you'll also have when you share your thoughts and you open up and you talk about things on social media, the impact you have on others is most definitely part of your legacy.
Okay. So that was just a really quick list of four examples of the different ways you can do this. Now, when I'm looking at my 2025, when I'm looking at my year end, even for the next month and a few days, and then going into next year and beyond building legacy is something that I can get behind. And it's something that I actually feel very passionately about, obviously.
And as a reminder, know that it doesn't all have to be created for the sake of public consumption.
To the entrepreneurs of the room, something else I want to mention before we go is even though revenue generation is not going to be the primary motivating factor for creating all of these things, right?
As a by product of podcasting, of writing a book, of sharing things to social media. Of creating digital courses as a by product of those things, you will likely experience revenue. You will likely experience real life human beings who feel connected to you through your work, especially , when you're crystal clear and your energy is coming through crystal clear and they can hear you and see you and recognize you.
The ideal of Match of a client will likely show up in your DMS, in your inbox, pick up the phone and call you. They will likely connect with you and say, Hey, I heard what you said about this thing. You're exactly who I need for this project I'm working on. So it's not the primary motivating factor, but it likely happens as a by product
because you're making the path smoother and more clear from then to you.
Okay, so what I encourage you to do after this episode is pick one, start where you're at. Again, it doesn't have to be for public consumption. Pick one thing that you can create right now. Take five minutes and create something, something that somebody somewhere down the road will pick up and get to know a little better.
Piece of you and then if you're ready to go big and you want to go deeper on it I have loads of ways that I can teach you how to do that the courses that have the energy saved in the videos and I don't want to spill the details just yet, but I will be having flash sales throughout the end of the year on various courses.
And you'll need to stay tuned on my social media channels and on your inbox if you're on my email list. If you're not on my email list, go to my website, nicholejoy. com. N I C H O L E J O Y dot com. Make sure you're on my email list. That way you'll get the flash sale notifications. Or again, they'll be on my social media.
I will broadcast and let you know when those are all available.
Okay. Have a beautiful week until I see you next time.
Okay, so what'd you think? Since words of affirmation are my love language. No, I'm just kidding. I don't really do love languages because I, I like all of them. But the truth is that recognition and feeling seen and heard lights me all the way up. I'm a projector. If you don't know about human design, now you know a little something.
20 percent of the population are projectors and we light all the way up when we feel seen, recognized, heard, recognized, and heard. And so by you giving me feedback, whether that's a rating, a review, a subscribe, sending me a note, letting me know if this episode resonated, it actually lights me up and it gives me more energy and juice to keep going and bring you more.
Plus I'm forever grateful to hear your feedback for how my work is helping you. So, you know, do all the things, subscribe, rate, review, and I can't wait to hear from you.