You are going to die.

If you don’t think about death every day, if you don’t remind yourself that one day, you won’t be here anymore, you’re missing a powerful reminder of why your work matters.

When you don’t have that reminder, you’re wasting pages in the journal of your life and the journal of everyone building or using your company.

Memento mori (Latin for “remember that you have to die”) is a powerful tool to create priority and meaning.

To use it to build your strategic narrative, ask yourself the following questions:

• Why is it important for people to get your services or product now?
• What impact can you have today on the life of people working with you?
• What would everyone miss out as a result of your company’s death?

The answer to these questions matters because there is urgency.

The impact you want to have through your business is limited by time.

And you don’t have a lot of time.

I used to see death as a depressing reality that I would rather ignore.

But I chose to embrace it as a way to keep in mind that my window of opportunity is finite, and it’s shrinking by the minute.

My mission is to turn every company into a source of inspiration few can resist.

Will I succeed? Never.

But I might help a few CEOs, Founders, and business leaders, and that’s what matters.

That’s if there is enough urgency; that’s if I remind myself that there is not a lot of time left to create impact.