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... Dennis Moseley-Williams!

Do you know Dennis Moseley-Williams? He's the founder of DMW Strategic Consulting, author of "A Serious Shift," and a certified Experience Economy Expert who has spent decades helping organizations understand what it means to create authentic experiences that matter.

If not, allow me to introduce you. Dennis is someone who can quote The Tragically Hip, reference Elvis Costello's concert strategy, and explain Marlon Brando's approach to acting - all while teaching you how to design customer experiences that create genuine belonging. I wanted to connect with him because he embodies something I value deeply: the intersection of preparation and authenticity, where structure creates the freedom to be fully yourself.

Our conversation is LIVE now on the Just Press Record YouTube channel (and this Cultish Creative Playlist). Listen and you'll hear Dennis open up about technical failures, customer secrets, and why sometimes you just need to show up and bleed.

THREE: That's The Magic Number of Lessons

In the meantime, I wanted to pull THREE KEY LESSONS from my time with Dennis 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: Control the Controllables So You Can Show Up Fully

Key Concept: Dennis reveals the paradox of preparation - you rehearse obsessively not to be rigid, but to create the mental space for flow. He wakes up early before keynotes, rehearses presentations he's done thousands of times, follows specific rituals - all so that when he walks on stage, he can be completely present and authentic. The technical mastery frees the emotional truth. Think of it like a restaurant designing every detail of the experience so the waiter can genuinely connect with guests, or an athlete training so intensely that game day feels instinctive. Structure doesn't constrain creativity; it liberates it.

Personal Archive Note-To-Self: Let the record show (as if my face when Dennis brought it up didn’t say it enough) - I will take any opportunity to talk Marlon Brando lore I can.

Beyond the sheer insanity of Brando taping his lines to people out of the camera’s site on The Godfather set, my next favorite (anti?) preparation trick he used, presumably to help keep everybody around him on their toes, was the cat you see in Vito Corleone’s office during the wedding scene. That cat was no Hollywood pet-for-hire union actor. That cat was just some stray who had wandered onto the set that Francis Ford Coppola picked up and plopped on Brando’s lap.

The controllables were the personality of the character that Brando had already internalized. The reality of how the scene took shape, even if some purring and suit-kneading were involved, they were all just color. And he didn’t fight any of them. He used all of it, under the organizing principle of what his character was doing and representing in that moment.

Am I saying Julia Duthie, Nancy Burger, and Dennis Moseley-Williams are all fully formed characters, and I am but the humble stray cat thrown into the mix? Yes. This is the entire show in a nutshell too. When stuff gets weird on Just Press Record - a stray thought, an unexpected tangent, a guest who takes us somewhere unplanned - the magic happens when everyone leans into being more themselves, not less.

Work question for you: What are the "controllables" in your professional life that you could master more deeply to free yourself to show up more authentically?

LIFE: You Are Enough Without Over-Preparing

Key Concept: Even masters struggle with knowing when enough preparation is enough. Dennis shares his own vulnerability about over-preparing to the point where he drowns in his own research and loses his authentic voice. The irony is rich: a world-class speaker who teaches about authentic experience design admits he sometimes prepares so much that he can't access his genuine self. This is the modern creative's dilemma - infinite information at our fingertips can become a prison rather than a tool. Sometimes you just need to trust that everything you've learned, everything you've experienced, everything you are - is sufficient.

Personal Archive Note-To-Self: The 1955 movie version of Guys and Dolls is one of my all-time favorite things to watch. And my wife’s too. It is cinematic perfection, with layers of stories beneath the finished product, not least of which being how poorly Marlon Brando and Frank Sinatra got along on set.

Sinatra had wanted Brando’s part, and, seeing as he did not get it, it was only right for Marlon to do a little onset trolling. Take the scene where Sinatra’s character (Nathan Detroit) is trying to win a rigged bet against Brando (Sky Masterson). The bet is over cheesecake and strudel sales. Detroit is making the pitch for Masterson to eat some cheesecake and does so by eating a bite.

Brando got wind that Sinatra hated cheesecake. So in the scene, after Detroit would take his bite, Masterson started to have trouble getting his next line right. Re-take after re-take, cheesecake bite after cheesecake bite later, an infuriated Sinatra realized what was up, walked off set, and Brando laughed hard enough to get a firm talking to by the studio.

Now as funny as I find this to be, the rivalry didn’t stop there and apparently the vibe onset was pretty horrendous from there forward. This is petty. This is what happens when you’re NOT in your authentic flow state. You obsess over powerplays instead of… musical plays. (I didn’t do that on purpose, it came out that way, and I’m leaving it in.)

This is the shadow side of the lesson Dennis is describing here. You want to lose yourself in revelatory work, not in a relatively silly rivalry. Find yourself in the flow state, not in the petty power play.

Granted, in the movie case, I never knew until long after how toxic some of the stuff was while filming. But, what if these guys had got along and done more together? Petty power plays deserve a backseat to getting in the right state of flow.

Life Question For You: Where in your life are you over-preparing as a way of avoiding just showing up as yourself?

LEGACY: Create Spaces Where People Can Show Up Different, Not Similar

Key Concept: Dennis describes a fundamental shift in how communities form in the experience economy. We're moving from gathering around commonalities to celebrating our specific quirks and passionate interests. Whether it's painting toy soldiers, having encyclopedic music knowledge, or any other "nerdy" interest - these aren't things to hide but rather the foundation for genuine connection. The opportunity for anyone building something - a business, a community, a movement - is to create belonging around specificity, to invite people to show up with their whole selves, weird interests and all. This isn't just about acceptance; it's about celebrating what makes us distinctly ourselves.

Personal Archive Note-To-Self: I broke mold a bit here and asked Dennis about how the lessons he was sharing apply to what I’m doing with guests on Just Press Record. I was (and am) genuinely interested in the idea of creating spaces where people can either show up not as their normal professional selves, or - in case they aren’t thinking that way on the way in, I can knock them out of that frame of operating with how I play host.

There’s another Coppola/Brando story for this. For Apocalypse Now, Brando’s weird mumbling dialogues and rants that are now regarded as cinema genius - they were actually improvised. And this comes straight out of the set stories where Brando showed up unprepared, overweight (cheesecake, presumably), and all but refusing to do any of the normal prep. Brando just started doing what he does - and when Coppola realized that was what he was going to get, he opted to just work with it. He let the strangeness become a key part of the art.

Brando’s character, Colonel Kurtz, is supposed to be evil and dark, and - I don’t know if Brando could have played it better. Or, maybe, I don’t know if Coppola could have captured a better essence than what occurred. He could have fought it, he could have forced him to do one line at a time, but is there actually a scarier evil darkness than an unhinged evil darkness?

Dennis embodies the same (much less evil!) principle. When he talks about celebrating what makes us different, creating belonging around the specific and the weird, he's reminding us: stop trying so hard to make things work the way you think they should work. The weirdness is already there. You can only hide it for so long. Why not make it part of the experience itself?

The advice I took away from what he said, especially in the wake of Julia and Nancy talking about showing up as their whole selves in the world, is that there’s an underlying thematic coherence every time we share time and space with another human. Sometimes it’s awkward. Sometimes it’s pure magic. Usually it’s a million things in between.

Like when Dennis shared how his keynote bombed. Or when Nancy confided in Julia about having zero experience before she became a consultant, and pure awe about getting on a stage for the first time at 40, compared to Julia starting at 14. If you set the stage of openness, you get to invite whatever happens in. The potential that’s in that risk…

We can shape what’s happening into something memorable. Into something worth sharing or telling somebody else about. Brando-style. Dennis embodies that. He doesn’t need a script either, he’s building scenes all of the time, and I admire the hell out of that.

Legacy question for you: What community or space could you create that celebrates people's specific passions rather than their broad similarities?

BEFORE YOU GO: Be sure to…

• Connect with Dennis Moseley-Williams on LinkedIn and Twitter/X

• Visit SeriousShift.com to learn more about his work

• Check out his book "A Serious Shift"

• Follow his increasing presence on YouTube

• Think about your own "customer secrets" - those special things only your people know

• Take a moment to reflect on where you're over-preparing and where you need to just show up!

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.