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 the President and Director of Research at ETF.com - which might sound like a neat resume bullet point until you realize he's actually lived through three different eras of ETF.com, with markets experience going back to his time as a co-PM at MetaMarkets during the .com bubble, surviving (and thriving through) the collapse, and now building conversation engines at the (multi)media company he keeps coming back to.

If not, allow me to introduce you. Dave's the kind of person who doesn't just build things - he survives the wreckage and figures out what actually mattered. He got challenged by Jim Cramer on live TV in the late 1990s. He's archived decades of internet history through personal websites and platforms. He's lived through the entire mutation of how we connect, trade, and talk to each other.

I wanted to connect with Dave because he embodies something I value deeply: the ability to spot real patterns, then act boldly on what actually matters - all while building a life you're happy to be living.

Our conversation is LIVE now on The Intentional Investor YouTube channel (and this playlist). Listen and you'll hear the unvarnished story of what it took to build something ahead of its time, why loyalty to an idea (and a mission) sometimes means returning three times over, and what Dave's learned about the fragility of digital legacy.

THREE: That's The Magic Number of Lessons

In the meantime, I wanted to pull THREE KEY LESSONS from my time with Dave 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: Boldness + Accountability = Built Different

Key Concept: Dave and his partner Don Luskin didn't just talk about transparency - they bet the house on it. They were live-streaming trades in 1998 when the concept didn't exist yet. They invested their own money alongside clients. They got on TV and talked their book even when it made them targets. The boldness wasn't recklessness; it was accountability. They had skin in the game and they weren't hiding. When Jim Cramer called them criminals on live television, they didn't slink away - they hired the lawyer who won Carol Burnett's defamation case and went straight to court. That's the kind of boldness that only works when you're actually clean.

Personal Archive Note-To-Self: It feels weird now to remember the world prior to social media and smart phones. But, it feels extra important to stop and think about it from time to time. Obviously, Dave’s story about live streaming trades feels quaint now, but it was outlandishly absurd in the late 90s, and that’s part of what made it such an easy target for criticism.

Apart from the humor factor of Cramer calling them criminals (which, not funny at the time!), I love the signal we can get from negative feedback. I have had so many moments of thinking I have a good idea, only to have somebody else crap all over it. The trick, which is easier to say than it is to do, is to conjure up whatever you know about the person offering the criticism, and their taste, and decide if their feedback is useful as critical advice, or culturally valuable as a form of market intelligence.

Most people won’t do things that inspire any reaction, let alone any action. You have to learn that when somebody is mad, that reaction has some information in it. The world didn't make Dave a celebrity for livestreaming trades in 1998. But what matters is the fact that Cramer reacted, THAT was the signpost that they were onto something. That reaction is the revelation.

Validation shows up in weird ways. You have to take swings to get those types of responses. And not every response is created equally. In other words, Cramer reacting back then is better than Cramer reacting now (or, taking advice from somebody in your YouTube comments, trust me and Dave on that truism).

Work question for you: When was the last time you made a decision that required you to put real skin in the game - not because it was the smart play, but because you believed in it enough to stake something that mattered?

LIFE: What Survives Is What Mattered

Key Concept: Dave's spent decades documenting his own digital legacy - blogs, websites, personal archives - only to watch most of it vanish. But the conversations he had on Usenet in the early 1990s? Those still exist. The public dialogues. The back-and-forths where people actually engaged with each other. This is the paradox of personal curation: the things we carefully craft for an audience often disappear, while the things we created just to talk with people endure. It's a strange reversal of what we'd expect. It suggests that what survives isn't polish - it's authenticity. It's not content - it's connection.

Personal Archive Note-To-Self: I’ve been building the Cultish Creative website partly to preserve my own reflections, but Dave made me realize something crucial about what actually survives and why that matters (including why it doesn’t matter, too). Capturing in the present isn’t the same as being in the present. The internet losing stuff, like any technology does, isn’t all that bad. Maybe.

I obsess over preserving these reflections. In a healthy way, but it’s an act of love (and obsession) to keep this streak alive. But Dave's showing me that the stuff worth keeping isn't what I carefully curate for an audience here, alone, it's the conversations I have just because I want to have them. With myself or with others. These unguarded and unedited moments and making time and space for them - they’re important. Maybe more important than we like to admit, for posterity and all that.

I wrote this down in my notes: “Authenticity is a survivor.” I’m realizing what I meant now. Curation is a lot of fun. It might even last on the internet this time around. But those authentic acts that happen before anything gets curated, those conversations you have when you’re not performing, or worried about saving, like they were having on Usenet - those transcend the technology.

Maybe the internet will remember it all, maybe it won’t. But if we can remember to be a little extra present with each other, that distinction matters more than I want to admit.

Life question for you: What conversations or connections of yours are worth preserving, even if nobody sees them except the people in the room?

LEGACY: Start With Two People Talking

Key Concept: Dave joined ETF.com for the third time because Matt Middleton is building it as a conversation engine, not a broadcast platform. Not one-to-many. Not viral. Two-to-one. Actual relationships. After living through the dot-com hype cycle, the financial crisis, the rise of algorithm-driven social media, and now the resurgence of AI-flattened recommendations - Dave's learned something essential: legitimacy starts with someone actually talking to someone else. No algorithm exclusively mediating it. No engagement metrics deciding what matters. Just two people in dialogue. It's not scalable in the way we've been taught to think about scale. But it's the only way real things start.

Personal Archive Note-To-Self: I really wanted to grab that “if it doesn’t start with two people talking to each other, it’s probably not legitimate” quote for this Grow Your Network. Not just because it’s a core belief of mine that he poetically captured so flawlessly. But - OK, yeah, I just feel like it’s so important.

The world got de-personalized. We all feel it. None of us know what to do about it. AI is only making it worse. It can clean up so much, so fast, and, boy is that handy in our basic little lives.

So where’s the messes? Where’s the live performances? Where’s the lived in moments of one to one presence? We just have to make time for them. They’re not hard to do. They just require you to choose them. You have to push against the default option to let life happen to you.

Dave calling out what he sees as missing in the world, with the perspective of all he’s experienced, to focus on how that scarcity drives value for a business (massive respect to Matt Middleton and co. here too), is a truly, special insight to have a front row seat for.

Real stuff happens in reality. Presence can only be experienced. You can’t simulate it, but you can experience it virtually (oh, like on a podcast, ahem). I have a strong feeling that the people who are focused on this problem are about to do very well for themselves and how they’re remembered (on and off Usenet).

Cheers to everyone who hears this and realizes that building for presence instead of optimization doesn’t need to “win.” We’ve already won because we stayed human. That matters now more than ever.

Legacy question for you: What would change if you decided that the first step of everything you wanted to accomplish had to start with two people having a real conversation?

BEFORE YOU GO: Be sure to…

• Connect with Dave Nadig on his personal site nadig.com and follow his ETF research at ETF.com

• Follow Dave on social media (Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.)

• Listen to his podcast appearances and interviews across platforms (best found on his socials, but check us out on Click Beta and Just Press Record for starters!)

• Reflect on the moments in your own life when boldness + accountability changed the game

• Think about what's worth returning to, again and again

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.