Legacy > Currency

In addition to biking, one of my other great loves is wine. Everything I learned about wine I learned from Gary Vaynrchuk via his video blog Wine Library TV. Well, tonight I was watching Batman Begins (which you'll hear more about in upcoming posts) but all his talk about Bruce Wayne continuing his family's legacy (or when he was younger, intentionally disregarding it) made me think of GV. He's a huge internet celebrity - just search for him in google, twitter, facebook, or flickr - who has earned that celebrity because of his business acumen AND enthusiastic passion for good people. Remember Good People Day 2008? That was his idea and it cascaded through the internet like Hurricane Ike. I can't think of anything that's MORE pop culture then this internet sensation.

Anyway, back to legacy. A recent post in Gary's personal blog is "Legacy is Greater Than Currency." It's something he believes in so strongly you can see him wearing it on his shirt above. This mantra reflects his belief that you should make business decisions based on your long term legacy. For him, his long term legacy is building a successful business (which arguably he's done a few times over!), but there's much more behind that then just the money. It's pretty clear that in fact it's not about the "bones" - - he often says he'd rather have a million friends over a hundred million dollars. For me, this is what philanthropy is about: PEOPLE. Gary may not know it, but a concern for people's happiness is at the core of a philanthropic life and Gary is living it.

He sums it up best: "Your social equity is more important than your financial equity."

So, now that I've covered 2 of my 3 favorite activities in this blog, how am I going to relate salsa dancing to philanthropy????