Cultish Creative Weekly Recap (12/30/2024)

Jason Buck told a story about how everybody thought he was a loser for so long—when he dropped out of soccer, when he dropped out of school, when he started fumbling around with his path of entrepreneurship. Nobody didn’t think he was a loser until his net worth started to go up. Then, all of a sudden, all the previous loser stuff was cool because he was perceived to be rich.

How have we reduced so much of what we judge to be a successful life to money as incontrovertible proof? If you work with younger people or have teenagers and older in your life, share this interview and talk to them about it. All of my reasons for optimism in this world come down to conversations like this one (and candidly, all of my Intentional Investor conversations on Epsilon Theory):

For some extra finance-adjacent nerdery (and especially for those who might also insist that when anybody quotes Marx, you must follow up with Groucho Marx sentiments, and then Oscar the Grouch quotes), Jack Forehand, Dave Nadig and I have you covered over on Excess Returns. It’s a conversation about what the rise of passive investing means, using some of our favorite clips from (often, disagreeing!) experts on the topic. And, do not miss Dave Nadig’s blog post on the topic either, I’ll be saving this one for future reference (his source linking game is next level):

 Personal Archive entries you might have missed:

I’m fascinated by this metaphor of how in the post-Vanilla Ice “white rappers can make us money” chase the music industry did lots of weird stuff, and we can see that same model play out all over the place whenever there’s a surprise runaway success story people want to copy. This is a snippet of the story of Young Black Teenagers.

Miles Davis’ quote about how long it can take you until you sound the like you’re accepting of hearing is profound. Simple, yes, but profound.

How to write a Personal Archive worthy reflection on your grocery list example: “Band-Aids and Peanut Butter.”

My Thanksgiving post about how it’s not called thanks-taking for a reason.

All of your success will come down to your ability to design and curate experiences. I am positive of this. Extra credit to Dennis Moseley Williams for getting me to think about it recently.

If you didn’t watch it yet - Dennis and Josh Spector made for my most shared Just Press Record episode yet (for which I am very thankful!):