Announcing The Triple Cult Crown

This whole week is connected to podcast strategy. It’s one facet of my personal archive, and a cornerstone to my personal network. If intrigued, do catch up(!).

On December 8, 1990, Tom Hanks hosted Saturday Night Live for the fifth time. In his opening monologue, he explained the behind the scenes perks of being a member of the "Five-Timers Club." The joke landed but didn't become a recurring bit until 1999 when Danny DeVito hosted for his 6th time, and it went so well they started regularly retroactively inducting “new” members.

It's a great piece of SNL history. It's also a model detail in my podcasting strategy I'm still trying to work out. I don't think I'll make jackets, but I am looking into having Jon Lovitz as a waiter (in case anybody knows him, please tell I'm definitely interested. No need to mention the pay).

All I know is that as I was putting together this Intentional Investor clip show for Just Press Record, and I started thinking about the people who I've hosted on the Excess Returns, Epsilon Theory, and Cultish Creative YouTube channels.

It's a rare breed. They're a special group of people. They are a weird mix of skills, smarts, and - candidly, some part of them is willing to be silly with me.

The silly factor, or at least a good willingness to laugh, is kind of everything to me.

Which also makes Excess Returns the toughest one to add. That’s a relatively serious show. It kind of has to be, for audience related reasons, too.

Across the three shows I have a bunch more two-timers (that sounds bad, but you know what I mean) who are just barely on the outside. You have to be in or around the finance/business strategy industry in some way to be on Excess Returns, which can’t be everybody. And seeing as that's the industry that mostly pays my bills, so it's where I know the most people, I’ve also had to come to terms with how it’s the hardest one to pull my "regular" people of interest onto.

But in similar ways to how Tom Hanks got to get back to SNL with such a diverse set of projects, my Cultish 3-wayers have to have financial education chops, a backstory worth sharing, and then some deep enough side-interests where I get all excited about wanting to introduce them to another connection of mine.

That's what makes these people special. That's what makes them so interesting.

I have to do more with these people somehow.

Now, the main rule in figuring out meets my criteria is that I have to have been the host of one of their Excess Returns appearances. But from there, any combination counts across the show counts. So far, the list only has a handful of names, but its a hell of a list.

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls - today I present to you: The Triple Cult Crown.

These represent some of the most interesting individuals I (and now, you too, dear reader) have in the network.

This is the kind of list you'd want to draw keynote speakers from. Or feature articles. Or panel discussion collaborators. Or, if nothing else, probably book blurbs. They could all give the most interesting man in the world a run for his money.

The current holders of the much celebrated and often sought after Triple Cult Crown look like this:

Ben Hunt (Excess Returns, Intentional Investor, Just Press Record)

Jason Buck (Excess Returns, Intentional Investor, Just Press Record)

Kris Abdelmessih (Excess Returns, Intentional Investor, Just Press Record)

Eric Markowitz (Excess Returns, Intentional Investor, Just Press Record)

Grant Williams (Excess Returns, Intentional Investor, Just Press Record)

Eric Pachman (Excess Returns, Intentional Investor, Just Press Record)

Honorable Mention: Justin Castelli (Excess Returns,* Intentional Investor, Just Press Record, with this editor’s note - yes, that “*” is on purpose, see the footnotes for the lack of a link of a story)

If that's not networking in practice, I don't know what is. Because these are people I've now collaborated with on multiple layers of types of conversations - from actual business strategy, to personal history, to cold-introducing them to strangers - that I also happen to like, respect, and admire in some way.

This glorious Triple Cult Crown title means nothing in any official sense, if that’s not clear. But like the Five-Timers Club, it's a sign of their personality. It's a sign that they're the kind of people willing to show up in different contexts, to take risks, and to let me introduce them to interesting people they might not have met otherwise.

And by that, I do mean - this is a virtual participation trophy that, while it may not feel earned, symbolizes a debatably wasteful chunk of their life that I'd like to offer a small token of appreciation by recognizing how much fun it was.

Because to spend that much time with me, we had to have at least a few good laughs along the way.

And, there’s a reason they’re recurring characters on this adventure. I know that. I respect that.

Life can be so much fun. Which, is me trying not to admit I’m having too much fun. More than anything - this is me saying you should be playing more with your network too. You have a version of five-timers club in you somewhere, stop for a second and think about it.

I’m off to think about what this crown looks like.

(I’m pretty sure I’m starting with a ceremonial clip show project for them.)

*Justin technically qualifies, but only because he helped me test/create the Intentional Investor concept for Excess Returns, so this is more of an honorary induction. While we originally aired it there, it quickly became apparent it was the worst performing video in the channels history. The audience, or at least the algorithm, was NOT having in. But, Ben Hunt caught it, thought it was brilliant, and said, “Can we give this a home on Epsilon Theory?” The rest, as they say, is history. Castelli - you’re the Tom Hanks of this in more ways than one.