How do you build a business empire out of your passion, and what lessons do you learn along the way?

Join Laura Gassner Otting as she hosts this episode of LGOtv with special guest, Travis McKenzie - Storyteller, Endurance Junkie, Dot Connector.

Timestamps:
2:10 - You are my first COIVD positive guest.
3:25 - "Usually politics and religion are that third rail. They're the third rail of polite society. They're the third rail of business."
4:35 - "You need to go to where people are."
5:46 - "As the cliche goes — I didn't leave the Party. The Party left me."
9:20 - My kids can be anything they want to be. They only thing they cannot be is non-voters.
11:40 - The more votes we have, the less contested this election is going to be.
15:45 - How do you take that stance and what do you do with risk of possibly alienating half of the people who are your customers?
17:40 - "As a business leader, if there is something going on that is against your moral code and what you stand for as a leader and what's behind the values of your business — then I think you ought to say something."
21:28 - "To me, wearing a mask is a statement that you care about other people."
24:02 - "Now that I'm running my own business, I can decide what I stand for."
28:49 - "Now everybody has their own Tik-Tok experience, their own Youtube experience, their own social media feed on Twitter...There's very little that we have in common anymore."
33:40 - "We've gotten to the point where people think you have to pick one or the other."
38:38 - "American society has become all about ME."
39:25 - I think we should reinstate the draft. It doesn't have to be military service, it can be community service.
41:55 - "Are you better off than you were 4 years ago? The people that were better off to begin with ARE better off now...They don't have that empathetic eye as to what's going on."
46:02 - "Emotional intelligence is made of four different things: self-awareness, self-management, relationship management, social awareness."
48:04 - "The leaders that we have that inspire us are people that we develop relationships with, that we hear from on a regular basis."
52:35 - "The way you show up to the job and the way you take the job seriously and the way you treat people around you...that speaks volumes about who you are."
55:38 - Gaslighting
56:45 - "If you are having a discussion with someone and you gaslight them and tell them what they're seeing is not actually happening, then you're violating their dignity."