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!

Introducing... Dave Nadig!

Do you know Dave Nadig? He's a researcher, curator, and community builder who's returned to ETF.com as President and Director of Research for his third time working with the organization. But that's just the professional descriptor - what makes Dave special is his genuine passion for zine/playlist curation, community connection, and the power of bringing people together around all sorts of shared interests.

I wanted to connect with Dave because he embodies something I value deeply: the commitment to showing up authentically in multiple spaces - excelling at your day job while never losing sight of the things that make you you. He balances serious work in the investment and financial education space with his personal passion for music journalism, playlists, and human connection. That's rare.

Our conversation is LIVE now on the Just Press Record YouTube channel (and this Cultish Creative Playlist). Listen and you'll hear us dive deep into music curation, the magic of community, why 300 passionate fans connecting with a 1980s one-hit wonder band matters, and how finding people who "heard the thing" keeps culture alive.

THREE: That's The Magic Number of Lessons

In the meantime, I wanted to pull THREE KEY LESSONS from my time with Dave Nadig 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: When Things Feel Aligned, Lean In

Key Concept: Dave's approach to decision-making reveals something profound about professional alignment. It's not just about taking any opportunity that comes along - it's about recognizing when your values, the mission, and the people involved all point in the same direction. When that alignment exists, resistance becomes resistance to your own path. Saying no at that moment isn't being selective; it's ignoring your intuition. The work becomes easier, more purposeful, and more generative when you're operating from genuine alignment rather than obligation.

Personal Archive Note-To-Self: Charles Bukowski famously has “Don’t Try” carved into his tomb stone. No doubt there’s an entire slacker cohort who finds this out and feels vindicated in further slackering. But, for the rest of us, there’s an alignment message embedded in those two words for the ages that Dave helped carve into my mental stone tablets.

When you don’t have to put more than the slightest amount of pressure on an object to move it forward, literally and metaphorically, things are aligned. It’s proof. It comes as simply as that, by its almost non-effort. If you do the pre-work of lining things up, you don’t have to try so hard - stuff just flows on through.

So as Dave recounts his years of work, which almost always centers around some form of community building (if you’re taking note, and I am), and then Matt Middleton shows up a few months ago, and invites him to come back to a reimagined version of a job he long left behind, it’s only right that Dave would check in with his “trying” muscle first, only to realize it all flowed through, and off he went.

If you want good things to happen to you, invest heavily in the quality of your relationships. I played the “I can take this world on my own, everybody else figured it out, I’m sure I can, too” game for a while. I had to unlearn that strategy first. Then I re-realized the quality of the people I was keeping around me had as much to do with my odds of success as my efforts. Dave keeping at it as long as he has is inspirational.

Because once you know good people and good people know you, then - you genuinely don’t have to try so hard. In fact, you want to look for the moments when you don’t try at all. The key to coming into alignment is setting life up so you rarely have to force it.

Work question for you: When was the last time you felt that alignment between opportunity, mission, and people? What made you recognize it?

LIFE: The Matrix Connection Still Matters

Key Concept: In a world obsessed with scale and reach, Dave reminds us that deep connection at intimate scale is where the real magic lives. Three hundred people at a one-hit-wonder throwback festival - fully locked in with a band from another era - that's not a compromise. That's the entire point. The "matrix connection" he describes isn't about virality or metrics, it's about genuine alignment where everyone on stage and in that crowd becomes part of the same story for those two hours. In our age of infinite choice and distraction, this kind of singular focus and mutual presence is becoming rarer and more precious.

Personal Archive Note-To-Self: While there are definitely money-grabby tours, where an artist well past their prime is making sure they (or someone with a vested interest) is getting paid, I’ve been to the opposite of that too. I’ve seen the Matrix lock-in of an artist and fans warping time and space together for a real moment.

There was a moment over this past summer, when my wife and I were in the crowd for Bastid’s Barbecue, where I turned to her and said, “There are at least 3 shows going on right now. There’s us and this whole crowd dancing to the DJ on stage, the DJ vibing back, and then there’s the other DJs on stage surrounding the performing DJ who are talking and pointing like school children with each other.”

This was the matrix. I hadn’t thought of it that way at the time. Because you could look around at the crowd of attendees losing their minds, you could look at the face of the DJ performing and clocking the crowd’s energy, and you could look at the other DJs hanging out on stage taking notes of the professional details in a way they don’t normally get to do.

For perspective, at one point, Grandmaster Flash was performing (he’s 67, and one of the originators), Jazzy Jeff was behind him (he’s 60, and helped evolve the techniques), legendary producers and personalities Kid Capri (58) and Hank Shocklee (58) were there, as was the host and modern torch carrier - Skratch Bastid (42). The audience is losing their minds, Flash is locked in on them, and this Mt. Rushmore of greats is taking notes.

You could be the most famous person in the world, but if you don’t have that audience who cares, or the friends and appreciators to love you for what you do with you, why would you want to be in that simulation? Watching that show and hearing Dave’s words - that's what legacy actually looks like. It's not about being remembered. It's about still being present.

Life Question For You: When was the last time you experienced that "matrix connection" with others around something you genuinely cared about?

LEGACY: Document Your Curation Engine

Key Concept: Dave is making a commitment that matters: to document his taste, his process, and his discovery in real time. This goes beyond personal hobby - it becomes a gift to future readers and listeners who will want to know "what was happening in 2025?" More importantly, by creating these temporal snapshots, Dave is preserving the human element in music culture at a moment when algorithms and AI threaten to flatten discovery into recommendation engines. Your curation engine - the unique way you find, evaluate, and connect with ideas - is a legacy worth documenting. It shows people what your mind finds important, beautiful, and true in a specific moment.

Personal Archive Note-To-Self: The best part of Polaroids were how you’d take a picture, let it set (ok, you’d shake it impatiently, but hey), and then - without having to go to the store to develop it or anything else - you captured the moment. From there, you’d throw it in a shoebox or tack it to your wall and, it was preciously simple.

This polaroiding idea - of having low friction methods to capturing special moments - is really resonating with me. Not just for the one-off capture, but for the collection you can build. Dave calling out Kevin Alexander’s style of “documentary playlisting” feels bigger than music.

You choose a frame. It could be a week, a month, a year, or a lifetime. You choose a collection it’s a part of, or declare it as its own. And, in the name of not just producing clutter/slop/piles of nothing, you make sure it really matters to you in that moment.

The world will produce endless noise. There’s too much stuff, too many people, and - it’s a lot. If you embrace it being your job to decide what's worth polaroiding, i.e. what actually matters to you in that moment, you get to align yourself in the activity. And that's the difference between a Personal Archive and a pile of screenshots. Preach, Nadig. Preach.

Legacy question for you: What curation process or discovery method of yours is worth documenting for others to find?

BEFORE YOU GO: Be sure to…

• Connect with Dave Nadig on nadig.com for music and meditation writing, and follow his “professional” work at ETF.com

• Check out his documentary playlists and curation projects

• Explore Kevin Alexander's Substack at On Repeat Records (referenced in our conversation)

• 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.

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.