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Grow Your Network: Lara Crigger Is A Strategic Communications Expert

Here's HOW and WHY to connect with Lara Crigger

Author

Matt Zeigler
June 06, 2025

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.

Find my Personal Archive on CultishCreative.com, watch me build a better Personal Network on the Cultish Creative YouTube channel, and follow me on social media (LinkedIn and X).

This approach has helped tons of clients strengthen their networks and unlock new opportunities. You can:

I can't promise you'll learn from me, but you'll definitely learn something with me. Let's go. Count it off: 1-2-3-4…

Do you know Lara Crigger? She's a freelance marketing and communications consultant and former Editor-in-Chief of VettaFi, who spent years explaining complex financial instruments to everyday investors before stepping away to focus on what matters most.

If not, allow me to introduce you. Lara built her expertise by diving deeper than anyone else, reading every SEC filing and prospectus to become the definitive expert in ETF structures and market-vehicle mechanics. I wanted to connect with her because she embodies something I value deeply: the intellectual courage to master complexity and then walk away from success to chase meaning.

Our conversation is LIVE now on the Just Press Record YouTube channel and wherever you get your podcasts. Listen and you'll hear how her astrophysics training translates to financial analysis, why the heroine's journey matters at least as much as the hero's journey, and the unexpected costs and upsides of wanting to be the smartest person in the room.

Three key lessons from Lara

In the meantime, I wanted to pull THREE KEY LESSONS from my time with Lara 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: Deep Expertise Requires Going Where Others Won't

"I would go deeper than most other people would on a particular topic, I would sit there and just do research and read all the prospectuses and read every single page of an SEC filing, because I wanted to be the expert. I wanted to know more than anybody else."

-Lara Crigger, Just Press Record on Cultish Creative YouTube

Key Concept: True expertise isn't about being naturally brilliant - it's about being willing to do the work others avoid. Lara's competitive advantage in financial journalism came from her methodical approach to understanding complex structures completely. Like successful investment research, real insight emerges from going beyond surface-level analysis to understand the fundamental mechanics underneath.

Personal Archive Note-To-Self: Self-diagnosing my own ADHD/OCD tendencies - not clinically, but to accept how I'm wired differently, has been great for my professional life. Like Lara, I've learned that if you can channel obsessive attention to quality in a self-aware way, you've found your professional edge.

And, your edge can surprise you. She was physics major turned writer who loved video games. Who in the world understands the non-linearity of how she could be sucked into financial product mechanics but… another person who has a music background and got sucked into financial planning, apparently.

We’re all drawn to do something others naturally avoid. If we can accept it, even when it makes no sense, we can build a career around it. Bonus points if you can help unlock it in others too, because it requires you have an open-minded awareness to how different their skill-stack is too.

Work question for you: What's the equivalent of "reading every SEC filing" in your field? Where could you go deeper than your competition is willing to go?

LIFE: Success Permission Comes From Belonging, Not Achievement

"It took me many, many, many years, not even until I think I had kids, to find a place for myself in the world where I felt like I finally belonged, like I finally deserved to be there. And that place was - being my kids’ mom."

-Lara Crigger, Just Press Record on Cultish Creative YouTube

Key Concept: Lara discovered that external validation and career achievements couldn't provide the sense of belonging that came naturally through authentic relationships. After years of fighting to prove herself in male-dominated fields, she found her center in family connection. This mirrors how the best investment strategies focus on uncovering intrinsic values gradually, over time, rather than short-term market validation too. Compounding really is the 8th wonder of the world.

Personal Archive Note-To-Self: Parenting. Talk about a job only you can do. And yet, how many people fight even that one? I’m not a parent. I can’t argue it. I’ve worn a version of a parenting-adjacent hat before and, I learned about the complexity of wanting to help even when it's unwelcome or impossible.

The world, and especially our jobs, are full of places other people will hire us (or volunteer us) for help. But those are commercial commitments at the end of the day. They’re not real relationships, in the sense that we can quit them and ultimately feel ok with it.

When Lara looked deeper, and when I reflect on my own friends and family, what sets them apart is how non-commercially viable they are. The only reason they make sense is because they’re the relationships that make going out and trading other time worth it. I can sell myself everywhere else, but with those people, there’s nothing for sale, because it’s all love (and there it is again, my life’s tagline, “don’t sell yourself to fall in love with the things you do”).

Life Question For You: Where are you still trying to earn belonging through achievement instead of embracing where you naturally fit? What relationships provide you with unconditional acceptance?

LEGACY: The Heroine's Journey Transforms Through Descent

"If the hero's journey is a mountain that the hero must climb, the heroine's journey is a pit that they have to descend into and come back out... when she's at that lowest point, she realizes she didn't need all of these trappings, all these weapons or anything. She had the power within her all along."

-Lara Crigger, Just Press Record on Cultish Creative YouTube

Key Concept: While traditional success narratives focus on conquering external challenges, the heroine's journey teaches us that real transformation comes through internal discovery during difficult periods. Lara's insight about this cyclical, community-centered story structure reflects how sustainable growth often requires periods of apparent retreat or reassessment - much like how the best business strategies sometimes require stepping back from noise to focus on inherent, fundamental, and often foundational strength.

Personal Archive Note-To-Self: Most of my life, and probably a bit as a guy, I’ve envisioned myself going out to find the treasure that I bring home. It used to be in bands, where you’re building status in different areas, to validate yourself in the social circle of who you’re creating with. I turned that into building a business. Now there’s an aspect of it in doing these podcasts.

I really learned this in therapy when I got stuck on asking the question, “How am I complicit in creating the things I say I don’t want,” there’s a difference between the external treasure you want to bring home to share, and the internal, fundamental, foundational treasure you have to excavate to be at peace and enjoy what you’re creating and sharing with others.

My wife and I spend a lot of time talking about this concept. What we want from the world, and what we want from ourselves, and then how what we want for each other sits in the middle of those understandings. How can we be complicit in creating the things we actually do want? That’s the variation on my old favorite question.

When you embrace both the hero and heroine within you - the external treasure-seeker and the internal excavator - you find balance in the most Jungian sense. I love story-frameworks like this because they can help us make sense of the variables in our own lives. if there's wisdom worth passing on, it’s worth repeating (just like both Battlestar Galactica and Peter Pan taught us), "All of this has happened before. All of this will happen again"

Legacy question for you: What tools or credentials are you carrying that you might not actually need? How could viewing your setbacks as descents rather than failures change your approach to growth?

BEFORE YOU GO: Be sure to…

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.