For years, I've been connecting with interesting people and documenting insights that might help my clients and myself. What was once private is now (mostly) public.

People often ask: "How do you know all these people?" and "How do you connect these (re: random) ideas?" The answer is simple: consistent relationship cultivation and thoughtful note taking. My north star is trusting my instincts, my maps are the constellations in these reflections.

This approach to multidisciplinary networking has helped dozens of clients, colleagues, and friends strengthen their networks and unlock new opportunities. Feel free to steal these ideas directly - that's what they're for! I can't promise you'll learn FROM me, but I guarantee you can learn something WITH me. Let's go. Count it off: 1-2-3-4!

Do you know Adam Bruderly? He's an investor, advisor, and life and health coach who built an entire philosophy - and a business - around a single timestamp: 9:03 AM, South Tower, September 11, 2001. The 9:03 Collective sits at the intersection of wellbeing and wealth, helping people live the best version of their lives across four pillars: physical, mental, financial, and spiritual.

If not, allow me to introduce you. Adam has spent 25 years compounding the lessons from one of history's most defining moments into a framework for how to actually live - not just manage. He coaches individuals and families, works with wealth management firms, and writes a newsletter that documents the work in real time.

I wanted to connect with Adam because he understands that the most important investments aren't always the ones that show up on a statement.

Our conversation is LIVE now on the Just Press Record YouTube channel (and this Cultish Creative Playlist, and Panoptica!). Listen and you'll hear what happens when a clip from the Greg Larkin and Mishka Shubaly episode lands in the hands of exactly the right person at exactly the right time.

In the meantime, I wanted to pull THREE KEY LESSONS from my time with Adam Bruderly to share with you (and drop into my Personal Archive).

Read on and you'll find a quote with a lesson and a reflection you can Take to work with you, Bring home with you, and Leave behind with your legacy.

Key Concept: The gap between "how have you been" and "how are you feeling" is Adam's professional superpower in practice. Most people are walking around with emotions already loaded - they just need a question precise enough to unlock them. Adam's insight is that the barrier isn't reluctance or resistance; it's that nobody asked the right thing. Ten words, asked sincerely, can collapse thirty minutes of distance in an instant.

Personal Archive Note-To-Self: There's the ultra-awkward effect you can produce at any point of any day where you say to a person, "how are you feeling" and then after they say fine you say, "OK, but really, how are you feeling?" The second stated drill down can work, theoretically, to deepen a conversation, but the odds the conversation just feels really strange are much higher.

Professionally, I do have a hack for this that Adam makes me think of. Mostly because I hate the small talk of "how have you been" in isolation as much as the cringe-inducing "but how are you feeling." The hack is to daisy chain it to anything else. You need an object.

If a person is about to retire, ask how they're feeling about retiring. If they just got back from a trip, you can ask how the trip made them feel or how they're feeling about being back or how it felt to be out on the trip. If you provide the framework and gently nudge people towards how they're feeling, it totally changes the nature of the conversation and the quality of conversation on the table. I take this to work with me every single day, just like Adam.

Work question for you: What's one conversation you've been having on autopilot - and what object could you attach to actually open it up?

Key Concept: Collective experiences - concerts, games, races, funerals - do something that solo ones can't: they grant permission to feel. The crowd isn't just backdrop; it's authorization. When everyone around you chose to show up for the same thing, the implicit message is that it's okay to be here, okay to feel this, okay to let your guard down. We're not looking for the emotion itself so much as the social signal that the emotion is allowed.

Personal Archive Note-To-Self: Sometimes you have to show up to understand why something matters. I think you can do it virtually, too, but in physical space it's a whole other experience. When Greg talks about walking into that room, of experiencing the room, for the show - re: concert - post 9/11, it's about the presence of all those other people. That does something to our brains.

We are social creatures. I say that as a person with introverted tendencies and strange areas of interest that I really want to talk about and really don't care about in any meaningful way. Even still, the only way to scratch most itches is to run into other people and thrash about whatever I've been obsessing over privately, in my head - or to my wife on the couch after work, or my dogs on our walks, etc.

Likewise, and I wouldn't say you need to engineer social proof into situations exactly, but I do think as you design events or gatherings or even get friends together for a drink at the bar - this life point is it's all about the vibes. Don't ignore the vibes. If you embrace them, or leave yourself open to how they'll influence you - positively! - magic can happen.

Life Question For You: Where have you been showing up solo for something that might hit completely differently in a room full of people?

Key Concept: Adam didn't choose a name for his business - he chose a timestamp. 9:03 AM, South Tower stairs, September 11, 2001. Everything he's built since is an attempt to honor the person who walked out of that building and make something useful from what that person learned. The philosophy that emerged is deceptively simple: life is moments stacked on each other, and the work is choosing which moments you create - the big ones and the small ones both.

Personal Archive Note-To-Self: Life is about embracing that s*** is gonna happen. All sorts of s***. Good s***, bad s***, meaningless s***. In what may be the most reductive version of anything useful Viktor Frankl ever said, what counts is what you do with it.

Legacy is complicated here. On one hand, you're setting an example for how you've handled it and then, via social proof, leading by that example. On the other you don't only have to lead with good - positive - upbeat examples.

You'll handle some stuff poorly and correct it later. You'll handle some stuff well and mess it up later. It's full of that kind of s***!

What counts is that we think in terms of our legacy as wrapped up with everybody else's. We are all moving away from some things and towards some other things. We are all aging, even if we're not all - or always - growing. And that mental exercise of how we put experiences and vibes together, like Adam taking his kids to the ball game, it's that intertwining that makes life worth living. No matter the s***, we, as humans, need that to be human.

Legacy question for you: What's the timestamp in your own life that split things into before and after - and what are you doing with it?

You have a Personal Network and a Personal Archive just waiting for you to build them up stronger. Look at your work, look at your life, and look at your legacy - and then, start small in each category. Today it's one person and one reflection. Tomorrow? Who knows what connections you'll create.

Don't forget to click reply/click here and tell me who you're adding to your network and why! Plus, if you already have your own Personal Archive too, let me know, I'm creating a database.

Want more? Find my Personal Archive on CultishCreative.com, watch me build a better Personal Network on the Cultish Creative YouTube channel, and listen to Just Press Record on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, and follow me on social media (LinkedIn and X) - now distributed by Epsilon Theory.

You can also check out my work as Managing Director at Sunpointe, as a host on top investment YouTube channel Excess Returns, and as Senior Editor at Perscient.

ps. AI helped me pull and organize quotes from the transcript, structure the three lessons, and sharpen the Key Concepts. If you're curious about how I use AI while keeping editorial control and my own voice intact, I wrote about my personal rules here: Did AI Do That: Personal Rules