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 Joseph Moore? He's a historian, author, and former professor who spent over a decade researching how everyday Americans have thought about money - and what actually worked. His debut trade book, How to Get Rich in American History: 300 Years of Financial Advice That Worked and Didn't, became a national bestseller before it was even fully in stock.

If not, allow me to introduce you. Joseph spent years teaching at small liberal arts colleges in the Southeast, building a history department around intellectually diverse faculty who genuinely cared about students - and watched those students go on to do remarkable things. He came up from a working class South Carolina family, accumulated nearly $80,000 in student loan debt chasing a PhD in a subject nobody thought mattered, and eventually turned that obsession into something that resonated with a whole lot of people who never thought history could speak to their financial lives.

I wanted to connect with him because he's proof that the things nobody else thinks are interesting are often exactly the things worth spending a decade on.

Our conversation is LIVE now on the Epsilon Theory YouTube channel. Listen and you'll hear a man who named his LLC after a Scottish army that lost a battle because they stopped to argue theology - and who will tell you that was the right name all along.

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

Key Concept: Joseph is describing the premortem - a simple exercise where you imagine your bet has already failed and write out what that actually looks like. The insight isn't that failure is fine. It's that most people never do the math on worst-case outcomes, so fear stays abstract and paralyzing. When you force it onto paper, you usually discover the floor is survivable. And once you see that, the asymmetry between inaction and a calculated bet on yourself becomes a lot clearer.

Personal Archive Note-To-Self: Failure always sucks because you’ve failed. It’s what Coach Vass was saying on Just Press Record a few weeks ago - how the probabilistic thinking in football of “but it was the right call to make” still doesn’t matter when you lost a Super Bowl because you didn’t make the right call. Failure sucks.

All we really have to combat it, besides avoiding obvious mistakes as best we can, is embracing our compulsion to act anyway. Despite failure. Despite warning signs and threats of how hard or challenging something might be. You can still imagine through the obstacles in advance, you can even imagine the feeling and weight of the failure at the end.

BUT, and this is a big but, if you are still compelled to do it anyway despite all of that risk, you have to go ahead with it. You can’t be left wondering about all of those shots you didn’t take.

Bonus Drive-By Truckers song that kind of does this: “Decoration Day” is about a son inheriting the violence his father started. This is a dark version of compulsion, because it’s unexamined compulsion. Treat it as a cautionary tale here, which is the way I believe Isbell intended it, given the song’s backstory.

Work question for you: What's a bet on yourself you've been avoiding - and have you ever actually written out the worst case? What would happen if you did?

Key Concept: Joseph's pastoral care professor told him, plainly and kindly, that he wasn't built for ministry. That conversation - from someone with authority and something to lose by saying it - became one of the most clarifying moments of his life. The lesson isn't that you need someone to push you out. It's that the people who care enough to tell you the hard true thing are rare, and when they show up, that's a gift worth receiving.

Personal Archive Note-To-Self: I had a teacher in college who told me, as I was falling asleep at my desk during his 8am sight-singing class, that if I wanted to be out all night playing in bands, I should quit school and go do that instead of needing to sleep in his class. It was pretty rough. Honest, but man, he made his point. Joseph’s story took me back to that moment.

Joseph listened in his case. I drank some extra coffee and got my degree. Both of us made the right move. But also, what do you know when you’re 20? What does a 20 year old know only after they’ve turned 40? Life is a strange teacher.

The best we can do is pass down ideas and lessons, not in specifics, but in nudges and suggestions, with their best interest in mind, so that they can figure it out for themselves. Nobody learns without some experience.

Bonus Drive-By Truckers song that kind of does this: "Outfit” is a love letter of sorts to Isbell’s dad’s advice, cautionary and celebratory at the same time, which is exactly how the best mentorship feels.

Life Question For You: Who in your life has ever shown you a door you didn't know existed - and did you walk through it?

Key Concept: Joseph isn't trying to win arguments or stack credentials - he's trying to say the thing that hasn't been said yet, in a way that someone might actually receive it. That's a specific and disciplined mission: only speak when you have something genuinely additive to offer, and frame it so the audience can actually hear it. It's a legacy built not on volume but on the question he keeps asking - are you sure you know what you know?

Personal Archive Note-To-Self: The hardest part about finally accepting you just have to be yourself, is understanding how you are all you’ve got. All your little weird experiences, interests, and compulsions along the way, they are what make you you, and nobody else.

When Joseph sees how he’s still that liberal arts professor, just with a new set of focuses and modes of teaching and explaining history, it’s a form of self-actualization. The history can exist outside of him, the lessons can extend beyond him, but his framing for whoever his audience is, that represents an act of co-creation - where those people might become something else in the world because of what he’s teaching.

The world is an ecosystem. We choose the role we play within it. We are not our legacy. We are part of a larger evolution.

Bonus Drive-By Truckers song that kind of does this: “Let There Be Rock” is about how Patterson Hood never saw Lynyrd Skynyrd, but he sure saw Molly Hatchet, and for a rock and roller from the American south, to have that influence without the direct contact, is as beayooteeeful sentiment as is Joseph’s.

Legacy question for you: What's the thing only you are positioned to say - and are you saying it?

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