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 Brent Donnelly? He's a foreign exchange and macro trader at Spectra Markets, a writer who puts out a market piece every day, and the author of Trade Outside the Box. Before all that, he somehow got a cartoon onto Canadian TV.

If not, allow me to introduce you. Brent has worked in currency markets since the late '90s, built his brand almost by accident (a morning email to a trading desk that grew into a list), and tests his own beliefs against data, then tells you when the data says he was wrong.

I wanted to connect with Brent because he embodies something I value deeply: earning your reputation on top of being authentic.

Our conversation is LIVE now on the Epsilon Theory YouTube channel YouTube channel (and this Cultish Creative Playlist). Listen and you'll hear why conviction and accuracy don't go together, why a one-trick pony runs out of road, and what happens when a currency trader and a microcap investor compare notes. That investor is Ian Cassel, and his Grow Your Network post is tomorrow.

In the meantime, I wanted to pull THREE KEY LESSONS from my time with Brent Donnelly 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: Brent was answering the same question from 30 salespeople every morning, and one email replaced all of those calls. Writing it down made his thinking forwardable, and forwarding is how a list starts. Salespeople asked to send it to clients, then requested it, and the audience formed around work that was already useful. The mechanism is a repeated question, answered once in writing, that people pass along.

Personal Archive Note-To-Self: One of my favorite business ideas that I apply over and over again is the marrying of operational and organizational leverage. This is the key to work, so far as I can tell. Operational leverage is all about productivity, and organizational leverage is all about network efficiency.

What I see Brent doing here is knowing he has the answer to a question multiple people want, so instead of saying it 30x over, he writes it down once and then distributes one to many. This is a form of organizational leverage because it leverages the people around him to make everybody's life easier (hence the leverage here: a lever lets one small push lift something heavy over an obstacle, and one email lifts 30 separate answers over the friction of repeating them).

On top of that, by knowing the question in advance and answering it in a way that will be useful to the people on the other side, he's adding operational leverage, too. The key here is he knows what the people will want, so he's getting the message refined and simple to spread to the salespeople in this case. There are so many ways to do this wrong and a handful to do it right. No single way is perfect, but there is a right direction to move in, and knowing it gets you directionally right, if not exactly right. That's why this is an operational gain worth really thinking about.

Work question for you: What question do you answer over and over in a given week, and what might happen if you answered it once, in writing, and let people pass it along?

Key Concept: Brent tracks stats on his own calls, so he knows he'll be wrong about half the time. When one trade got stopped out within an hour of sending it, he wrote the postmortem and expected the response to be shame. The response was warm, and he came away convinced that honesty pays off in credibility over the long run. Being wrong is part of the record, and saying so out loud is the part that gets noticed.

Personal Archive Note-To-Self: Most people are living all the ups and downs of life in private. It feels like everyone is online sharing their wins 24/7 (that's what LinkedIn and Instagram are for, I think), or kvetching about the ills of the world (mostly what Twitter and Facebook are for, it would appear), but that's actually a tiny fraction of people in the world. This matters a ton for the point Brent is making.

Because most people are passive consumers and observers of the stuff that gets said on the internet, when somebody actually takes the time to say something honest, something humble, something respectful of the humanity of their audience, it can really grab hold of people.

Consistently, one of the topics that gets the most responses is when I talk about my experience in going to therapy. It's never comfortable to write it down or put it out there, and I usually question if I'm oversharing or "being needy" but the response says otherwise. We don't say these things in public very often, and it helps others to model the behavior, whether you realize it or not.

Life isn't about performatively celebrating your wins and incessantly sounding alarms at the shortcomings of others. Real life is about being a real human, and taking time to share those moments and experiences is a way to remind ourselves and our community that more of us go through the hard and mundane parts of being human, the ones that feel like they're only happening to us, than we tend to notice.

Life Question For You: What's one mistake you've been quietly carrying that you could say out loud to someone this week, and what do you think would actually happen?

Key Concept: Brent calls authenticity the first bar to cross, with a second bar right behind it: results. If you don't produce anything of value, people eventually pick up on it, however sincere you are. His trading performance gives his brand something to stand on, and the books then open doors on top of that foundation. Reputation here is two layers stacked: honesty that earns attention and a track record that keeps it.

Personal Archive Note-To-Self: I put this quote in the legacy bucket because I think learning to be yourself (authentic) is a behavior you model for others. Both the friends you keep and the community you're directly a part of, and however you show in the world and attract others to your personality type. Let's be clear, especially post-midterms and being flooded with political ads on TV, there is a difference between people we know and admire and people who are just personalities in a race.

Knowing yourself and building a reputation of some amount of comfort in your skin and with your behaviors is maybe one of the most important things to model? A society needs respectable elders. In public office would be nice, but even in private spaces, we need good people to look up to (who aren't just fictitious characters).

Ian actually has the best line to tie this all together in our episode: people's perception tends to outdo the reality of what they're living and producing, so it's important to be "the example of what you're writing about." He tipped his hat to Brent for doing exactly that. Being authentic to yourself and earning your reputation on top is a big part of why I wanted Brent and Ian to meet each other. Beyooteeeful.

Legacy question for you: Ten years from now, what will people be able to point to that backs up what you say you stand for?

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