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. 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.

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!

Introducing… Bryan Moore!

Do you know Bryan Moore? Host of the Active Advisor podcast at Harbor Capital, former trading floor veteran who's built ETF desks from scratch at major firms like Morgan Stanley, RBC, and WisdomTree, and one of the most thoughtful voices on how active ETFs are reshaping the investment landscape.

If not, allow me to introduce you. Bryan has spent over two decades in the trenches of financial markets - from trading futures in the Chicago pits to building international ETF operations to educating institutional clients about the evolution from passive indexing to smart beta to active management. I wanted to connect with him because he embodies something I value deeply: the ability to synthesize complex market knowledge with genuine curiosity about human behavior and psychology.

Our conversation is LIVE now on the Epsilon Theory YouTube Channel (and this Cultish Creative Playlist). Listen and you'll hear how a colorblind kid from Virginia who joined the military became one of the most connected voices in ETF education, why he drives in silence to cultivate quiet thinking time, and his legendary Vatican trade story.'

THREE: That's The Magic Number of Lessons

In the meantime, I wanted to pull THREE KEY LESSONS from my time with Bryan Moore 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.

WORK: The Psychology-First Approach to Understanding Markets

Key Concept: Bryan's decades on trading floors taught him that successful market navigation starts with understanding human behavior, not financial models. The most innovative ETF products today - like “active” ETFs that focus on specific non-passive/dynamic flexibility in their construction - succeed because they solve for investor psychology first. When you understand what people don't want (losses, pain, uncertainty), you can build better solutions than when you focus purely on what they think they want.*

*”succeed” here refers to their potential ability to raise assets, based on what people want from these products, and not necessarily “succeed” in terms of delivering “better” performance.

Personal Archive Note-To-Self: My favorite piece of career advice to dole out, whether it's to a high school senior or a 40-something looking for a changeup, is to remember all of life is a middle school cafeteria. You can be amazed or deluded by all sorts of things in life, but throw a group of people in a room and you are two misplaced words away from a food fight.

Bryan saying markets are about psychology goes this deep too. If you think of (OK, I am thinking of it, judge however you like!) markets as a middle school cafeteria trading experiment with cool kids, and goths, and jocks, and all your favorite sub-categories, you can quickly start to see who is exerting influence and how.

No fancy calculators required. And, if you survived middle school, you’re already pretty well equipped for this. Learning the psychological labels is a bonus.

Work question for you: What if you started your next project by mapping the psychological barriers your clients face, rather than the technical features they request?

LIFE: The Power of Cultivating Quiet and Boredom

Key Concept: Bryan drives in silence, treats his commute as meditative time, and believes boredom is essential for creativity and problem-solving. In our constantly stimulated world, the ability to sit with quiet thoughts has become a competitive advantage. Innovation requires space for the mind to wander, connect disparate ideas, and imagine solutions that don't yet exist.

Personal Archive Note-To-Self: It has never been harder to shut the inputs off. The phone alerts alone, visual and haptic, are never (ever) ending unless you put some controls on them. A lot - but not enough - ink has been spilled on what this means for kids who are growing up not knowing otherwise, and as many a burned out adult can confess too, modern life is “a lot.”

One of the easiest hacks available to all of us is just to shut off access. It doesn’t mean you have to go into a cave or get yourself locked into solitary. But, it does mean you have to at least shut off notifications and put the phone face down and away from you.

My dog walks are done without headphones or any device in hand. We have sidewalks in about half of our neighborhood. it’s a total head clearing exercise at least 2 times a day. Next to taking a hike or a shower, it’s the best creative pondering time I’ve got. Something happens when the inputs are all down and your internal sensitivities finally have a chance to start working. Bryan’s onto something with those car rides, even if that’s my sacred music/audiobook/podcast space.

Life Question For You: When was the last time you deliberately created space for boredom in your day, and what might emerge if you did it consistently?

LEGACY: Building Through Exclusion Rather Than Addition

Key Concept: Bryan's approach to major decisions - from choosing schools to building investment strategies - starts with elimination. Rather than trying to optimize for everything you think you want, first remove everything you know you don't want. This creates clarity and focus, whether you're advising your daughter on college choices or helping institutional clients navigate ETF selection. The things you'll love often emerge as upside surprises, but the things you hate will predictably drag you down.

Personal Archive Note-To-Self: Rory Sutherland has this idea that when you’re searching for a house/place to live, it’s better to figure out what you want to exclude than what you want to include. The logic is, if you take your hard no’s out of the equation, you’ve left a lot of room for potential positive surprises.

You might know you don’t want to live across from an elementary school, and then find out, to great delight, how much you enjoy living across the street from a neighborhood pub. The more bad stuff you eliminate, the more inexplicable good stuff you create room for.

When I was choosing a new firm to work for, I made a list of things they wouldn’t say “no” to. On one hand, that’s kind of inclusive too (knowing what I wanted then), but - I was also very open with what I didn’t know (because I hadn't tried most of these things yet).

Take YouTube interviews. I needed to exclude any wide-range “no” decisions to my options in order to leave an abundance of space to experiment. They might have limited me to finance-only, compliance-approved content, but then how would I have discovered all the creative categories I've expanded into?

By staying very wide in their definition of “no, you can’t do that” I ensured the upside potential inherent in all sorts of experiments I hadn’t even dreamt to run yet. Even this episode of The Intentional Investor that Bryan’s on - it came along over a year after I started tinkering in this domain.

By generally excluding instead of specifically including we can leave so much room for positive surprises.

Legacy question for you: What would change about your long-term plans if you started by listing everything you definitely don't want, rather than everything you think you do want?

BEFORE YOU GO: Be sure to…

• Connect with Bryan Moore on LinkedIn

• Listen to The Active Advisor podcast

• Check out my appearance on his show where we dive deep into networking and archive building

• Take a moment to reflect on all these ideas!

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.

Last thing: 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.