Becoming a World Changer: Purpose, Global Citizenship, and Your 100-Year Legacy
On last week’s Friday Focus, I sat down with Mackenzie Stanton, host of The Nomad CEO podcast and founder of World Changers. By the end of our conversation, I wasn’t just inspired; I was recalculating how I want to spend my remaining years. I hope this does the same for you.
The Girl From Idaho Who Became a Global Citizen
Mackenzie’s story doesn’t start glamorous. She grew up on a small farm in Idaho, raised by a single mom working multiple jobs. At fourteen, a letter arrived inviting her to travel to Australia with a student ambassador program. Her mom, who had every reason to say no, said yes instead — and told Mackenzie they’d find a way to make it happen.
That trip planted a seed that never left her. Two decades later, after building a business, walking away from international travel for six or seven years to grow it, and eventually becoming a full-time nomad, Mackenzie found herself walking down a street in Bali when the name for her company hit her: World Changers.
She told me she was timid about the name at first. Who was she — a girl from Idaho with no fancy credentials — to claim something that big? But she said something that’s stuck with me all week: she came to believe every person carries a world changer within them. The name wasn’t a claim about herself; it was an invitation to everyone else.
Three Ways to Travel — and Three Ways to Live
One of the most useful frameworks Mackenzie shared was about types of travelers, and I think it applies well beyond travel.
There’s the tourist — going somewhere purely to take, to absorb the highlights, to check a box for yourself. Nothing wrong with that; it’s part of being human, and we all need seasons of simply receiving.
Then there’s the traveler — someone who goes deeper, learns the language, eats where locals eat, tries to understand how people actually live rather than just what’s on the postcard.
Then there’s the world changer: someone who does all of that, and then asks a harder question — what can I do, in the time I have here, to leave this place better than I found it? Crucially, Mackenzie was clear that this isn’t about imposing what we think a community needs. It’s about listening first, understanding what people actually want for themselves, and then offering resources, time, or connection in service of that vision — not our own.
Swap “travel” for “life,” and you’ve got a pretty good filter for how to show up anywhere: at work, in your neighborhood, in your own family.
The Long Road to Believing You Can Change
What struck me most was how hard-won this philosophy was for her. Mackenzie spent ten years in an intense battle with addiction, moving in and out of twelve-step programs. Four years into that fight, she remembers driving down a road in North Seattle, genuinely unsure if change was even possible for her, or if she was doomed to repeat the same battles forever.
She did change. It started with rewiring her mind, leaning into community, and rebuilding her physical health so she could show up with real energy. It’s exactly that arc — from doubting she could change at all, to believing everyone has a changer within them — that became the foundation of her work.
Mapping Your Hundred-Year Legacy
Toward the end of our conversation, Mackenzie described a tool she’s been building: a guided exercise to help people map out their legacy as if they’d lived to one hundred, whatever age they are now. It breaks life into three spans:
- Life Span — how long you live
- Health Span — how healthy you are during those years
- Purpose Span — how much of your life you actually spend living out your purpose
The point isn’t to obsess over the finish line. It’s to work backward from it — taking that hundred-year view and reverse-engineering it into a season of days you can actually act on right now.
Your Turn
You don’t need a passport stamp from twenty-two countries to be a world changer. You need a willingness to ask (in whatever room you’re standing in) – what does this place actually need, and what do I have to offer it?
Here’s my challenge for you:
Picture yourself at one hundred years old, looking back.
What’s the purpose span you want to be able to claim?
What’s one small, practical habit you could start this week that moves you toward it?
You don’t have to change the whole world today.
You just have to start owning the impact you make daily.
Catch the full conversation with Mackenzie Stanton on Friday Focus, and find her at worldchangers.me.