Episode 152
When Travel Becomes a Business Risk
Summary:
I unpack why I canceled a planned business trip to Toronto, despite real opportunities, because the personal risk calculus changed after what we just watched unfold in Minnesota.
I was set to go to Toronto to help teams scope AI projects. Then the headlines out of Minnesota hit, and it wasn’t background noise anymore...it was a new rulebook. In this episode, I walk through why I pulled the plug, how I’m re-thinking “business as usual,” and what builders and operators should do when the system itself starts feeling unstable.
Chapters:
00:00 – Why I canceled Toronto and what changed after Minnesota
01:30 – The new risk model: borders, legitimacy, and operating in turbulence
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Music Credit: Good_B_Music
Mentioned in this episode:
Left in Exile Outro
Left in Exile Intro
Transcript
We were planning this. In Q4 of last year, and I was on the fence at that time and I mentioned to Susan that I'm not sure if, I'm gonna be able to attend on site because of the situation at the northern border. Getting into Canada isn't a problem, but getting back into the us, especially when you've seen countless brown and black faces get terrorized and shipped off and disappeared, that creates a problem.
oncerns that every brown and [:Maybe you've just ignored it because the people that were getting brutalized and disappeared didn't look like you. So I told Susan, it's too much of a risk. I don't wanna get hassled at the border.
What we saw in Minnesota tells us. That the rules in the game has changed because what we saw happen in Minnesota and just a day later, what we've seen happened in Oregon tells us we are seeing the rules of engagement shift in real time and expand to other demographics who might have felt safe operating under this regime.
population in this country. [:That's the lesson that you need to take away from what happened in Oregon, but there's a broader thing that's happening as well. All of this is designed to restrict your access, restrict your movement, and restrict your opportunity. I walked away from an opportunity because the risk was too high. Now that's expanding to everybody else.
And what's interesting is that no matter what platform you go to, the vast majority of people are behaving as if nothing is out of the ordinary. And especially on LinkedIn, what we see are people going through their day-to-day humble, brags, and tech pro speak, and completely ignoring what's happening in the world around them.
What we saw over the last couple of days. Is a clear message that we cannot continue to operate as if it's business as usual because nothing about this is normal.
