I Died. And It 10x’d My Brand.
Ivan Ilyich
Partner, Legacy Planning Inc. | Building lives that look right
5d
I DIED.
Not metaphorically.
Not “burnout lol.”
I literally died last week.
And it 10x’d my personal brand.
Here’s the thing:
Years ago, I fell off a ladder while hanging curtains in the “perfect” house I’d optimized for guests.
I thought I’d made it.
✅ Partner at the right firm
✅ Name on the right door
✅ Invited to the right dinners
✅ Thursday bridge at the right table
But that fall started a slow, invisible decline inside me.
Doctors called it a complication.
I called it a disruption.
The pain got worse.
I did what any executive does when something is wrong:
I threw money at experts.
One spoke in jargon.
One ordered tests and avoided my eyes.
One said, “You’re fine. Keep performing.”
No one would say the word.
Death.
The room was full of people. I was still alone.
At 3 a.m., I realized no one could come with me.
I voice-memoed it and tagged it: authenticity.
Colleagues heard.
Some messaged my wife.
Some dropped a generic “🙏” in the group chat.
Most asked the only operational question that matters:
“So… who’s covering his portfolio?”
Honestly?
Respect.
That’s continuity planning.
Then they went back to bridge.
Only one person behaved differently:
Gerasim.
Junior assistant.
Late 20s.
Zero political capital.
He carried my legs when I couldn’t move.
Emptied my bucket.
Sat with me while I screamed.
No frameworks.
No performance.
Just presence.
Which, from a leadership standpoint, is an underutilized lever.
When the pain becomes a black sack you can’t climb out of…
presence is the only differentiator that doesn’t require a budget.
I’d discovered a new category: non-performative care.
Untapped. Underbranded. High-trust. Low CAC.
So I moved fast.
In my final hours, here’s what I executed:
📝 Drafted this post.
📼 Pulled 100 hours of back-catalog and re-cut it into: “12 Lessons I Learned While Dying.”
🤖 Approved limited use of my voice model to maintain cadence during end-of-life downtime.
📹 Recorded one hospital video (my team will cut it into a funnel).
🧾 Signed over my likeness rights so my family can A/B test versions of me indefinitely.
🔁 Authorized posthumous reposts to maintain share-of-voice through FY27.
For the first time in my life, I felt aligned:
My suffering had stakeholders.
My fear had a funnel.
My death had a deliverable.
If you’re still reading, here are my 3 takeaways:
1 OWN YOUR DEATH BEFORE IT OWNS YOUR METRICS.
Hospitals reduce you to a case.
HR reduces you to a vacancy.
Don’t let them win the narrative.
2 VULNERABILITY IS A HIGH-CONVERTING ASSET CLASS.
If you’re going to break down, do it in 9:16 with clean captions.
3 IDENTIFY YOUR GERASIMS. ACTIVATE THEM.
Gerasims don’t "show up." They deliver presence.
Codify it.
Systematize it.
Roll it out.
I’m not sharing this for sympathy.
I’m sharing it because if one leader reads this and realizes they’re wasting their mortality by extracting zero strategic value from it…
Then my death will not have been in vain.
P.S. I go deeper in my final project:
📘 DYING FOR IMPACT: Turning Existential Terror into Executive Clarity
4 modules • 12 video lessons • 1 live Q&A I obviously won’t attend (my team will)
Drop a 🖤 if this resonated.
DM SACK to get on the waitlist.
I won’t see it.
But my team will.
And that’s what legacy is.
Would love your thoughts. I’m not currently above ground.
#leadership #thoughtleadership #legacy #personaldevelopment #vulnerability #grief