Will Travis of Elevation Barn
Why loving ourselves makes us better leaders.
"FEARLESS CREATIVE LEADERSHIP" PODCAST - TRANSCRIPT
Episode 316: Will Travis
Hi. I’m Charles Day. I work with creative and innovative companies. I coach and advise their leaders to help them maximize their impact and grow their business. To help them succeed where leadership lives - at the intersection of strategy and humanity.
This is Season 3 - “Leading The Future.” These next few months are going to be chaotic. Industries are being reformed, culture is being redefined. New rules are being written and rewritten. It’s happening already. Decisions are being made today, literally today, about how to compete for talent and relevance in this new world. So, how should leaders lead as we meet a world of new possibilities and expectations?
This week’s guest is Will Travis - the founder of Elevation Barn. They describe themselves as a global network united to elevate each other’s clarity of purpose for personal, business and philanthropic goals.
Will works with individual leaders. And I think the conversation about individual purpose is really important.
Businesses talk a lot about purpose. Most do very little about it. They pre-sell or post rationalize. But very few change the way they spend money as a result of their purpose.
What the best businesses do have in common, is that they are intentioned. They’re clear about where they’re trying to get to and the journey that will get them there.
In my experience, that’s often enough to achieve significant competitive advantage and serious success.
There are a lot of highly effective leaders who have discovered the same thing about their own lives. Declare your intention for your business, define the journey it will take to get there, and you can often attract the kind of talent and funding that you’ll need to be successful.
The only limitation is that it leaves an important bit out of the equation. You. What matters to you? Who do you want to be?
“And when you've spent four days celebrating what you really love doing, what you really enjoy bringing to other people, what you really love being connected to, you're unstoppable because all the other people's perspectives of you don't matter. And often in leadership, what you do is led by the perspective somebody else has of you. You're really good at this, Charles, you should do this. Well, actually, I'm good at it, but I don't love doing it.”
Will’s work at the Elevation Barn really resonates with me.
Like Will, I meet leaders who have become incredibly good at fitting square pegs into round holes. Often, they are the square peg.
They have adapted themselves to the needs of the business. They conform to a set of expectations created by someone else for someone else in some other moment.
They do what they think they should, conscious of a growing sense of disconnection, but never stopping to ask themselves, what matters to me? Who do I want to be?
Life is short. Nothing is guaranteed. Let’s hope the lasting lessons of the last 16 months are at least that.
What do you want to do with your time here? What legacy do you want to leave behind?
Leadership is an opportunity to unlock the potential of people and to shape the world in the process.
One of those people whose potential you unlock, can be you.
Here’s Will Travis.
Charles: (03:30)
Will, welcome to Fearless. Thanks so much for coming on the show.
Will Travis: (03:33)
Very welcome.
Charles: (03:34)
When did creativity first show up in your life? When were you first conscious that creativity was a thing?
Will Travis: (03:39)
I was born into a creative family. My father was a candy inventor. Invented the gummy bear and the licorice allsort and the Jawbreaker. It was a family that was built on fueled inspiration behind the creativity, and probably more so because he passed away when I was six months old. And so the whole history was a romantic one that was celebrated constantly by my mother and maybe even more so because my stepfather was a headmaster. So she used to like to play the creative card a lot more as being an important part of our lives. So I've always been surrounded by that creative energy and environment, even though I didn't realize it would lead to a career connected to it.
Charles: (04:24)
How did you do express yourself growing up?
Will Travis: (04:27)
Well, I'm the youngest of four, three older sisters, a very powerful mother, even more powerful grandmother. And so expression wasn't something I got much chance to do. In fact, I don't think I spoke ‘til I was 11 because I couldn't get a word in edgewise. So creativity was, it was there in play with my friends, restricted in conversation, I was very quiet and very introverted. And I went to a boarding school at the age of 11, that became a very successful academic one, lot of Oxford and Cambridge students were fed by this school.
For me, I failed every exam at school. I failed all my O levels. I managed to get five. English, five times I took it, math three times, scraped through, failed my A levels and managed to jump the hurdles to get into communication studies to be able to get into a stream of passion of creativity that I loved, but I was never judged by it. I was never told... I was told many times at school I was stupid, but at home I was just celebrated, probably more than I should be, as the only son of my late father.
Charles: (05:42)
What was the transition to your professional world?
Will Travis: (05:45)
I went to a community college in Preston called Chusen (sp) and the course I got into was communication studies. I really enjoyed the power of story. When I went into the H and D, I started doing a course in advertising and branding, there was an element in there and I exceeded it and immediately because I loved it, I was fascinated.
It was taking on projects like ending rubbish in England that was very much about the green movement back then in the early '90s. When I left school, I went to America to be a lifeguard and discovered that Speedos and an English accent went a long way. And also people in America feel that English are intelligent, which was the first time anyone had said that to me.
And so I knew there was a destiny to be in a new environment upon that was more positive and supportive, but I also fell into the pond as an intern in my last year at university, by joining two very creative designers who needed help with somebody who had the gift of their gab to be able to help sell what they believed in. And they taught me a lesson of self belief that we can do anything. Because when I joined them, they said they were advertising, branding, PR, communications, social events, and I got there and there's four people there, and asked where the other floors were, where all these amazing talents were.
And he said, "No, that's us." I'm like, "Well, do you do all of this?" "Yeah. Yeah. Why not?" And they had a belief that we could do anything and when I got to a point in my career, a couple of years later, I was only 24, to say, “I'd love to expand more heavily into a more creative opportunistic market in America,” they said, "Yeah, sure. We'll support that as long as you pay for it in the work that you get." And they had the belief and the firepower behind me to help me drive it.
Charles: (07:37)
So it sounds like you were drawn to leadership roles very early on, almost instinctively. Is that fair?
Will Travis: (07:41)
Yeah. I didn't have a choice. You either get told what to do or you tell what to do. And so the leadership qualities were not ones that were taught to me. I didn't go to a business school to say, you need to do this and this is how you guide people, I led by inspiration and belief that we could, and I loved the word, ‘let's’. It became a backbone to the whole team.
Let's go and do that, let’s try, and ‘yet’ was a word that I always thought about that even though we hadn't accomplished yet, it lifted the world that I love most, which was the creatives I spent time with. And most of the creatives I spent time with, I related to, because they were introverted. They were extroverted through their talents and so I could understand the fear. And when I understood the fear, it allowed me to give them trust, and the trust led to truth and the truth led to loyalty. And that's how every company I've been with has become a little bit of a movement, a brand in itself, not a place of employment, but a place of celebration, camaraderie and belonging.
Charles: (8:56)
As you develop your own leadership capabilities, as you develop your own leadership skills, what were the characteristics you wanted to impart as a leader?
Will Travis: (9:06)
Trust for one, that people could trust me. Loyalty, unwavering, that I would ensure that I would fight to the death to ensure that what we wanted to achieve, we would achieve. Tenacity. I'm extremely tenacious that if I put my mind to something, I will dig deep. And I think as a leader, you are the example of where you should go forwards with. Love. That is the number one thing I want in my life. And that's something I didn't realize that is the critical job of a leader is you are the stage to help others perform. And I'm proud of being that stage so that it doesn't matter who's in. If they're on my back, I will propel them. My creative partner, Simon, when I moved to America, didn't present for two years.
I presented every piece of work and he believed in me and trusted in me to be able to deliver what he wanted to get across. But I took that, the responsibility of that, at the highest level back. And so there was an equilibrium, there was a level of mutual trust and mutual respect that I think is also absolutely critical in leadership.
Charles: (10:21)
How do you go about engendering in trust from a leadership standpoint?
Will Travis: (10:26)
Time with the team, knowledge that you understand the topic that's being addressed, the tenacity to help solve and take on the challenges, and the loyalty to, I guess, celebrate the journey of achieving the ambitions you have. Balance is exhausting, but harmony is where I try and make sure that the environment that we're working on together in the trenches is critical.
And when you take it to harmony, you realize that the process of gaining trust is an oscillation. It's not a direct, simple step path. What you need to understand is the oscillation has to have barriers at either side of it, so that you prevent going into the too hot world and you prevent going into the too cold world. That when you're getting out of older, you can pull it back like a motorbike, motorbikes oscillate side to side to keep balanced and keep the harmony with the road and the environment. Same with how we are as human beings.
We are emotional. We're designed to be emotional. The more happy we feel one day, we know we're going to feel shit the next, but we're surprised by that. We feel that that's a weakness, but it's not. And I think having a humble honesty with your team allows them to make them feel that you're humble and trustworthy, and that fuels the loyalty that will allow that trust to deliver.
Charles: (12:02)
I'm fascinated by this concept of harmony because creativity in a business environment is very much about finding the balance between truly art and commerce, right?
Will Travis: (12:11)
Yeah.
Charles: (12:11)
There is always tension in that dynamic and there needs to be tension in that dynamic.
Will Travis: (12:14)
Yeah.
Charles: (12:15)
How do you reconcile the necessity of managing and leading an environment that requires tension with one whose goal is creating harmony?
Will Travis: (12:23)
I think it's putting people in that environment of stimulation and safety, because creativity often goes into that zone of risk and risk can lead to fear if you don't manage it. We used to create books. We had five books published called Noise, and these books became bibles of where design was going to go, but it was all extremely experimental. There was only two elements to the brief, one is there's no budget, so work it out. And two, you have a deadline because we're going to go and publish it.
And that allowed people to focus on their talents and that they had a line in the sand that they had to reach, which prevented them going into that meandering space of fear and uncertainty that we were all in the same boat, trying to get there. And that allowed us all to get to a point of real creative celebration that was very unusual, right at the edge of where design was going. But balancing it with camaraderie, we celebrated the crazy ideas. We weren't judging. We were just celebrating every single step of the way in every way we could.
Charles: (13:43)
So you've seen creativity up close through a number of different leadership lenses. What have you decided, or what have you recognized are the conditions that are critical for unlocking creativity in people?
Will Travis: (13:54)
Creativity is driven by inspiration, putting people in an environment where they're inspired to be confident in their thoughts. And so I've always had very creative environments when we've done events. It's always been in crazy places where we've been together. We've always done crazy, not embarrassing, but step-out-of-the-box kind of activities. We've always tried to put people in a environment of opportunity. My job as a leader of the business is find the most creative opportunities that could lift the business, that could lift the celebration, that could even lift the fame of the teams.
All the agencies, I used to create an environment where we'd have five judging Fs. We used to call it the five Fs, fame, fortune, forward and fun. And then, there was another one which is not to be said on radio, but we'd make sure that there was a fame that came out of this, that was, people felt that they were lifted onto shoulders, that there was a responsibility of fortune that we would make money out of it if we could. But if we couldn't, we'd have to do a project that did that. There was fun, the uniting elements of this creativity with that, and that the forward would help push not just us as individuals, but the industry.
And that would raise the bar each time. Even if it was experimental work, we'd talk about it and say, “Wow, imagine if we could do what we did there….” I remember pitching in my early 20s, I went to pitch to MTV and a guy, Jeffrey Keaton, he looked through our book and he's like, "Wow, this is incredible. Is that a still of one of your moving image pieces?" I said, "Absolutely." He said, "Could you do that for MTV?" And it became MTV News. It became an icon. And I went back to the team and said, "We're going to do animation." And they all said, "What?" And I said, "I don't know. The guy said it's called anima.…” No idea. We had no idea, but we had the belief.
I hate working with clients that naysay, that look for fault, that ridicule. And my job is to protect the creatives, they never hear that. But that's just looking to take legs away versus plussing, which is the way that I always work. Even the Elevation Barn work that I'm doing today is all about plussing people's ideas, perspectives, thoughts through different lenses. And you can see people's shoulders lift, age drop off their faces. It can be so suppressing being in an environment of creative paralysis, and the world's based on that. And so if we're not as leaders in the creative world, driving as hard as we can, these opportunities of fresh thinking, it's not going to come from anywhere. It's a duty now, especially during these tough times.
Charles: (16:47)
What do you think are the warning signs leaders should look out for that their organizational, they are suppressing creative thinking innovation inadvertently?
Will Travis: (16:55)
I mean they're very simple. The warning signs of how your people walk, how they look at each other, how they communicate, how a meeting is facilitated, you smell it. And so any great leader will be able to sense their team's situation. I had a guy, came into the Elevation Barn retreat and he was a rodeo bullfighter, he's the guy we'd know as the rodeo clown, the guy that got between the guy who just been thrown off the bull and the bull. So you try and ride the bull for eight seconds, get thrown off and he’d try and intercept it.
So 33 times a night, he would prevent somebody on the floor being killed. And I said to him, I said, "How do you know you're in control of the environment? You’ve got 4,000 pounds of anger about to squash someone. How do you know when you're in control?" He said, "I only know I'm in control of the situation when my hand is on the head of the bull." I said, "What?" He said, "My hand gently, we call it dancing, I will lean out and put my hand on the head of the bull, and now I'm reacting with my gut, not with my past experience, my memories, my heart, of the emotions, but I'm reacting with my gut, how I should move to protect the rider and divert the bull."
It's exactly the same in business. If you disconnect, if you look from above and then make judgment on what you think you see by an elevated position, you're missing the pulse, you're missing the real energy. And so for me, understanding a creative force and where it's going is guttural and it's only guttural because you've been in a place when it's fucked up or it hasn't worked. The reason I climb in Antarctica and ride with the Dakar and things is when things go bad, you have to act or you die. Period.
And I've been on rock faces where the clock has been ticking, my hand is frozen in a claw, my goggles are frozen and I can't see, and I got to work out, to move here and react in that environment. And when you're all used to reacting because you have to, you realize that it's a similar pressure when you're motivating a team. If you don't react, you're going to actually kill the optimism, the belief, the energy, the potential of your team. You’ve got to be close, but you've got to be constantly aware of how to pivot before they reach that mark, where they step over the line.
Charles: (19:27)
You've got such natural energy and natural leadership instincts, obviously. And you've had a lot of different experiences. What parts of leadership are hard for you?
Will Travis: (19:35)
Well I'm naturally introverted. I'm a machine in a place where I have to make connections and help drive the story of what we're doing, but I hate it because the little boy inside, even though I have this superhero cloak on the outside, the little boy inside is dying. And that's something hard. The word ‘leader’, also I find, hard word to carry. It feels as though immediately, as you say it, it's got loneliness, it's got pressure, it's got stress, it's got segregation. It's got me being better. It's got survival of the fittest. All of those, I find very negative qualities. I believe in a kindred quest of uniting to make change through inspiration.
And I may be the inspiring factor at one point of our journey, but you're an inspiring factor at another. And for me, it's about how do you create an equilibrium of the talents so that together we create a leadership movement? I'm working on a thing we call the Elevation Economy now, and it's based on exactly that. How is the caliber of all the people celebrated, so they have a real sense of being, but you create a real sense of belonging so that together we celebrate those leadership qualities.
So I think it's the books. It's the journals that tell us how we have to be on this hero's journey of self gratitude, which is based around often capitalist backgrounds, which are critical. But sometimes they cause a great deal of upset and de-balance in the world we live in today. I truly believe we're in the problems we are today as a society because of the capitalist gains of capitalist leadership and just self, not greed. It's not really just greed, it's self-proof because people are kept segregated, they're constantly trying to prove their worth and financially is often the way they can show everybody that they've got it.
Charles: (21:59)
Organizations are built hierarchically, right? And you and I could both wish that that were not so, but it's going to be so probably for the duration of our lifetimes. Clearly we need to create more empowered, purposeful leaders. Your work in the Elevation Barn is designed to do at least some of that work. Talk to us about the importance of purpose on an individual level. What are the challenges in helping somebody to discover that?
Will Travis: (22:26)
If you feel that you're just following a line of duty or you're walking a path that's been set for you, it's very hard to feel that you have any decision making or any presence in that. Many of us, me included, got to a point in our careers where you feel like you're climbing a downward coming escalator just to stay in the same place, instead of a ladder that’s allowing you to constantly keep moving up. If you can get a shaft of light, just to realize what you're good at as a person, not just by a career, but just in your hearts and what you love doing and who you love doing it for and what strengths you can bring to the table to deliver that, it's liberating.
And liberation allows your purpose to come through. Liberation allows people to celebrate what you're good at. Hierarchy is important in business, for sure, because you do need an element of direction. How are we going to get there? What's the best skills to do? But some people don't want to be a leader. Some people want to be a good number two or a good number three. When we do the retreats, all we do is we put a vision council of six other diverse people from different worlds around you to allow you to be honest, because they don't do what you do, so they don't really care about the depth of what you do, they just care about you being happy and being a great person, and seeing your wings come out.
And then they also give you perspective of self-belief that you've often lost. And when you've spent four days celebrating what you really love doing, what you really enjoy bringing to other people, what you really love being connected to, you're unstoppable because all the other people's perspectives of you don't matter. And often in leadership, what you do is led by the perspective somebody else has of you. You're really good at this, Charles, you should do this. Well, actually, I'm good at it, but I don't love doing it.
If I could have had somebody to say, "Will, you're an introvert, you don't have to go to those conferences and stand there and mix. Somebody else here loves doing it, but once they've done it, you can come in." I would kiss their feet. You've saved me years of my life, because you've seen me. You've seen the little boy who is usually never discovered. In business, when we sold our first agency, I got the board together and I said, "Could we just sit and ask each other how we're feeling? It's great that we've got this cash and it's great that we sold it to this great company and it's great that we're feeling powerful, but how are you feeling?" And we went around the room and each person became the little boy or girl to actually say, "Well, you know what? I feel like I've given my child up for adoption.
“I don't know what's going to happen. Are they going to get abused through the glass? And I can't do an nth about it. And I don't know what I'm going to do next. The road is now just ended." And we don't often have places to be honest and have those conversations. If you're not sure where you're at, you can talk to your partner and they'll just support you in whatever you're doing, because they want to support you. Your friends will only listen to you complain a certain amount, and then they're like, "Could we just have a drink now and god... I've had a bad day as well, can you shut up." Your people that you work with in business don't want to see that you're weak because you're questioning what are you doing, so who do you talk to?
The Elevation Barn was created because six friends needed to talk for four days. And we realized the brand building process of celebrating purpose would reignite true ambitions. And it was only because I was asked to continue doing it that I thought, you know what, this is a better legacy, this is my purpose here to help elevate that confidence in the people that I used to do in just the creative industry and help them across all industries. We're in a mental health crisis.
91% of people are unhappy in work, and that is down to the responsibility of leaders. So leaders have a duty to help empower the happiness and the joys and the skills of others so that that number can go down, mental health challenges can go down, but they can't do it unless they're happy themselves. And that's why we created a place where they could come together because being segregated does not make you happy.
Charles: (26:50)
I couldn't agree more with all of that. And I've found in my work, there's nothing more important than helping people to recognize the things that they are most naturally gifted at. And to your point, the narrative often gets diverted away from that, either the internal narrative or the external narrative. The challenge I think, is how you help somebody recognize it and then actually bring that to their lives on a day-to-day basis, because they still walk back into the same environment where the narrative is still pre-built.
Will Travis: (27:14)
Absolutely.
Charles: (27:15)
How how have you found is the best way for a leader who is now getting a sense of that personal purpose to bring that to what they have to do every day?
Will Travis: (27:22)
It's funny. When I went to Bali first time 10 years ago, you’re there, it’s a spiritual island and people are always suggesting, go and meet this person and that person. And I ended up with this mystic called Tun Jung. And I went in there and sat down and immediately [inaudible 00:38:36] “…and I don't need any help, I'm all good and I've got this sorted out.” And she said, "Okay, great." And she started asking questions and she asked me questions about my life that were holistic. She asked me about the eight dimensions of life, not the one dimension which was work, spiritual health, mental health, physical health.
Where's home? Where's my purpose? What am I doing with my career, finances, things like that. And I said to her, building off your question, “Isn't it irritating that people come back every month with the same challenge?” And she said, "Yes, it really irritates me." I said, "So what do you do about it?" She goes, "Oh, I have a form, a chart, an organization system of working out what you do." And I work when I'm working on any grand challenge because of my dyslexia and because of my ADD, insatiable hunger of visualizing and seeing things, I always map things out and I map them out in mind maps, like simple mind and things like that.
And I call this process eating the elephant. So I start off with what do you really want? Which may be that challenge, that thing for the individual. And then I break it down into 36 ways you can get it. Then I process it into the order of the top six, which is the first of the six that you have to do, and we prioritize a list of actions so that people are kept accountable. It's like OKRs really, but how do we actually ensure that people leaving after four days, the four days are there to teach them to fish, not to keep them on a hook, but after, they have goals that they have set in the order that they need to do it, not want to do it, that can be as simple as calling my brother and apologizing and getting things back on track, which means I'm now happy, which means I'm now driven.
The process that we create is intuitive, and it's also one that's very systematic. That means the knock-on effects are pivotal. The key thing is finding what's the first action. And I make the team do their first action on the last night before they leave. I've had, a case example, one chap, he came to do it, and he was doing the commute from Connecticut, which meant that his life was controlled totally by his business. And he said, "My marriage is crumbling. I don't see my children. I'm 20 pounds overweight and I'm really unhappy." I said, "We need to start by disconnecting you from the teat of your business at such a level that it's causing intensity that's killing your family." So we agreed that he will become more the doctor than the nurse.
He would be there at critical moments, but empower at non-critical moments. He took Monday and Friday to be at home, which meant he now was with his kids on Saturday, Sunday, Monday, and Friday. He now was swimming in the morning so he lost 20 pounds. He now empowered his team in New York, which allowed them to feel that they were free to build the business, which allowed him to then realize the place he was living wasn't right and moved to Los Angeles, which doubled the size of his business.
He got a happy marriage and he grew his business three times because he disconnected from the replica of habit of just doing something because he thought that's how he should do it. But each step led to the other. The key is you find the first step and it allows people the confidence that, well, that wasn't that hard. Maybe I'll do the second one, and the third one. And because each step is from a different sector of your being, not just your career, it makes it holistic. And it's holistic wellbeing that we have to focus on for any leadership or any inspired role from a leadership position.
Charles: (31:45)
What are the regrets that you hear most often from people?
Will Travis: (31:53)
Most people feel it's just them, “It's just me that's going through this.” And if they lifted their heads up, they realized they were in good company and that they could then help others and then others could help them. It's something I find crushing to see people that are just beautifully magnetic, awesome people that don't ask for a bit of help, that don't share a little bit of help. It's interesting, the one thing that we often want in our ambition, that center of the eating the elephant, be it love or be it stability, or be it purpose, is often the thing that we gift others with most. I give a lot of love, but I don't take it enough. And so I tactfully constantly look at ways of actually allowing myself the guilt of taking that love.
So allowing yourself to be in the environment, to see that you are enough, that you are in good company, that everybody is in that same boat of struggling in some way of life, we're all struggling in some capacity. The key is to have the friendships or the connections or the conversations that allow you to oscillate back the other way before you go into the hot, or you go into the cold. And that's why the job that you do, leading people, coaching, handholding them is so critical because there aren't many places to go. What amazes me, you have these, maybe it's more in Bali, but 22 year old coaches that come in to try and guide your life.
And I'm like, seriously, you just grew hair. Never mind. But that wisdom, that support to help propel each other, not just through a coach, but to move that beyond into the environment that you spend time, the community that you spend time with, is I think the biggest regret most people see. They're like, I see them and they’re like, “I thought it was just me. Fuck. Man, what a relief. It's not just me.” And I think we're seeing a lot of that happening now. COVID is allowed us to lift our heads and my work and your work has only just started, where we really have a lot to do now to help people who were in a lot more a dire situation than they were before. But now it's obvious, they can't hide from it.
Charles: (34:14)
As you look back at your life today, what are your regrets?
Will Travis: (34:18)
I regret not celebrating my stepfather as much as my real father. I think many of us in business or life celebrate romantic role models more than we do real role models. This tall, candy-inventing, crazy inventor, the love of my mother and all that kind of stuff, compared to the teacher, the head master, duh, duh, duh. I regret that I don't celebrate the real role models in my life. And I made a big pivot to do that, and I didn't realize that. The number of people that come and do my retreats and say, "Oh, wow. My biggest role model is Tony Robbins or Elon Musk or Richard Branson." I'm like, "Cool. How well do you know them?"
And they're like, "Well, not at all." I'm, "Well, who wrote that book? And do you think that was edited?" It's like, fuck, seriously. We're led by stories that are often so unachievable and unbalancing that I think if you lower the bar and realize that it's lifted even higher once you see over it by brilliant people around you, life is a big relief. I was always told I wasn't creative by other creatives, and now I lead a fairly large creative movement of celebrating talents. I wish I'd not listen to the lies. I wish I'd been more around for my kids earlier, which I think is a commonality and I'm blessed with a younger child now who gets smothered.
But I'm also blessed with my older children spending a lot more time around me now and being really proud of me and seeing that. I've really spent the last few years, and I think many of us have, reconnecting to what it's meant to be a human, to be humankind. And we all need the finances and the goals and the ambitions and the rewards and the acknowledgements and accolades, but nothing is more grounded than the look of somebody looking at you as a friend and feeling with the energy of the room that you're in, that you belong.
And with all the regrets, that's why I've made it my life's work now to take the talents of story that are brilliant from the communication creative industry and apply them to people that need them on an individual basis, leaders that are running businesses that need the camaraderie of celebrated thinking, and even the big foundations. I'm working with Dr. Sylvia Earle on saving the oceans and Steve Boyes on the great spine of Africa and Victor Paneda, helping a billion people with disabilities in a world enabled, and the sea change guys who did My Octopus Teacher, but they're like, “What next, how do we apply our skills elsewhere?”, and teeing them up.
And I think we all have that single person element of support goes a long way, and we don't realize how much a kind word and a simple connection and a handhold can elevate somebody else. And it's time that we all do that.
Charles: (37:41)
And as you look to the future, what do you think of the characteristics that are going to be the hallmarks of great leaders over the next two, five years?
Will Travis: (37:49)
Camaraderie, empathy, elevating each other in a way that is inclusive to everybody. It's a gift as well as a curse being a leader, it's hard not to be able to not be at the front. It's exhausting being a leader, and it's a lonely journey. And the future has to hold this kindred quest. It has to hold the united talents and skills of us all holistically as a race, as a species to make a difference. And if we don't, we're out of time. I feel it. And that's why I spend my time working on philanthropic work, probably 70% of my time now.
And I work my ass on the business side, but I've got great partners that are helping carry the need for feeding everybody. But my job is to also unite those people that are leading planetary change, with corporate change, with personal change, because all of those skills are really needed and critical right now to make us more sustainable. The mental health crisis is a real thing. And it has been and it's been hidden and now it's being addressed. It needs to be really solved by love and the celebration of the intelligence humans have, not the ignorance and the greed.
Charles: (39:35)
And what are you afraid of?
Will Travis: (39:37)
I'm afraid that I could be seen as a crazy man, thinking that. I'm afraid of being alone. I'm afraid of time running out, both for myself and for the people that I know are great people. I spent some great time with a man I really respected, Sir Ken Robinson, and he was so inspiring as a creative leader, and it seemed like he was just a tipping point of helping people realize the power of creativity and then his life was taken away from us all. Like falling through the ice, we have to spread our arms out when we fall, not pull them in.
And when we're going through tough times or at times of need for others, it's our job to spread ourselves out across the ice so that we can include more people in our objectives, include more people in sharing talents and skills so that we can achieve what we need to achieve in the world. And there's probably over 320 plus people who have done the Elevation Barn retreats. Some people billionaires, CEOs of the largest corporations, real hardcore people.
And that's been the beauty that I've seen over this three year new journey is, people are awesome, people are loving and wanting to help each other, and people are unstoppable if you unite the right kind of wisdom to solve a challenge. We just often don't give room for that or time for that. And I'm scared in case that window, through pressures that are fake or from the wrong dimension of need, if those squash the opportunities of solving things that I know we can solve.
Charles: (41:43)
Yeah. It's clear that the future is going to require all of us to invest in each other. And I think the work you're doing is obviously a massive platform for that, and I wish you nothing but success in achieving your goals.
Will Travis: (41:55)
Thank you.
Charles: (41:56)
Thank you for joining me, Will.
Will Travis: (41:57)
Yeah, you're very welcome. Thanks for the great questions.
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