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 Angie Colee? She's a marketing consultant, creative strategist, and the founder of Eat Play Launch - a business retreat concept she built by trusting her gut, sending one email, and convincing a group of entrepreneurs to drive bulldozers in the Las Vegas desert together.

If not, allow me to introduce you. Angie spent years in corporate before breaking loose and building a consultancy around a simple but radical premise: work should be fun, and the human touch is a competitive advantage - not a soft extra.

I wanted to connect with her because she lives the message she teaches, and she has zero patience for anyone who doesn't.

Our conversation is LIVE now on the Cultish Creative YouTube channel (and this Just Press Record Playlist). Listen and you'll hear how Angie thinks about the Minimum Viable Promotion, why she'll never be the reason someone gives up on themselves, and how a broken Airbnb bed count turned into one of her best events ever.

In the meantime, I wanted to pull THREE KEY LESSONS from my time with Angie Colee 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: Most people get stuck waiting for the perfect plan. Angie's Minimum Viable Promotion is a direct antidote to that paralysis - it asks only one question: what's the smallest step that creates real information? Not research, not a survey, not a strategy deck. An email. A direct contact. A personal feeling (because it is actually personal) invitation. The bulldozer event wasn't bold because it was elaborate - it was bold because she skipped the elaborate part entirely and went straight to the human beings she wanted in the room. The plan came later. The momentum came first.

Personal Archive Note-To-Self: The very first episode of Just Press Record more or less happened by intentional accident. I knew I wanted to start some type of conversational podcast where I could knock people out of their normal media patterns (meaning, I wanted the guests to be forced into a positive high wire act, and totally be taken out of featured or presentation mode), but I just wasn’t starting it for whatever reason.

And then a twitter conversation with Jess Bost and Tom Morgan turned into a real/Zoom conversation, that I asked if I could kind of host/guide us through, on a recording, because we were already there and why not, and then at the end, they told me “this should be a show.” I told them I was already thinking of something like this - but what even would I call it, all we did was just press record, and Jess said “That’s it. Call it Just Press Record,” and here we are.

I think about that random conversation with Tom and Jess a lot - mostly because they made it so simple to test out an idea I had barely formed in my head. Sometimes life experience doubles as project due diligence. And sometimes, when someone hands you a name - trust the universe and take it.

Work question for you: What's the one email you've been putting off sending because you don't have all the details figured out yet - and what would happen if you sent it anyway?

Key Concept: There's a cultural lie that hustle signals commitment. Angie has reframed efficiency not as laziness but as intentionality - the recognition that getting something done well and fast creates space for the things that actually make a life. She left the 20-hour corporate grind behind and built a consultancy around the opposite philosophy. The key isn't working less, it's refusing to fill reclaimed time with more noise. Low cost, low tech, high impact - then stop. What comes after the work is part of the point.

Personal Archive Note-To-Self: Laziness is part of the process, just like rest is part of practice, and recovery only comes with rest. Now, not that I’m particularly good at this all of the time (says the guy up early and writing on a Saturday morning, that will also take Sunday fully off, ahem), but you have to give your brain time to work, and that means giving your brain time off from working.

I get the contradiction, but isn’t the contradiction the whole point? That’s the range. You want to practice until you’re insanely productive in small doses, and then build recovery time around that. It’s a whole other angle on where purpose comes from too.

I realize it probably doesn’t look lazy for me to be doing a million different things, but I also think it’s not crazy. Because on those Sundays when I’m daydreaming stuff up for the time ahead, it’s really exciting to think how much farther laziness can push us.

Life Question For You: Where in your life are you adding complexity - more plans, more tools, more steps - that's actually just filling space you could be living in?

Key Concept: Angie's coaching philosophy starts with a single diagnostic question: is this coming from inside you, or from outside pressure? If it's yours - genuinely, deeply yours - then her job is to find the path, not debate the destination. That conviction comes from having been on the other side. Too many people in positions of authority used their influence to make her smaller. She chose to do the opposite. "I will never be the reason somebody gives up on themselves" isn't a tagline - it's a response to lived experience, and it shapes every client relationship she enters.

Personal Archive Note-To-Self: It’s hard to say “no.” It’s hard to turn stuff down that people want you to do and especially when you feel like you should be doing it, including when there’s money on the line and the scarcity-monkey in your brain just wants to dance and clap the cymbals at every opportunity. I get it and I feel it.

But at some point you have to ask the question or have somebody like Angie hold up the mirror to you and ask where the decision to say “yes” is coming from for the areas you’re most excited about. It’s easy to frame it as “why” but it runs so much deeper.

Much like in the Ackermann and Stafford clip we were reflecting together on here, other people will often think of your whole contribution in a smaller way. Not even always in a mean way. I need my accountant to do the tax return, not the 50 million other things on my to-do list. I make my accountant smaller in that sense, and I’m pretty sure that’s the way she wants to keep it, too. There’s no F-it here, because we’re both getting what we want.

But sometimes, when you have that larger pull inside you, when something isn’t being fulfilled outside of you, and you see what you want to say “yes” and “no” to at the same time, you have to harness the bigness inside of you and just say F-it to some stuff. We all need people around us to encourage us along in the right ways.

ps. My wife is that for me. She makes me get out of my head, but then go back into it, to ask “why” something really matters. It’s a good reason to marry someone. And, in lesser ways, my dogs do their version of forced reflection time, too, which is, granted, mostly me projecting values on their selfish attempt at getting treats and whatever happens in their tiny little brains on walks where they act like we’re reclaiming the neighborhood to restore justness to the world that only exists within a mile radius of our house aka their treat and nap palace. But, the point is, when we say F-it and do it for ourselves, but also nest that in the smaller communities we care most about, the experience can lift everyone around us up too.

Legacy question for you: Think about the people you've influenced - formally or informally. Have you ever been the reason someone talked themselves out of something? And conversely, who in your life has played Angie's role for you?

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