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... Marc Rubinstein!
Do you know Marc Rubinstein? He's a market analyst, investor, and writer who's spent decades studying financial systems - from the inside of investment banks and hedge funds, to the ringside seat of the 2008 financial crisis, to today's thoughtful commentary on markets and history through his newsletter, Net Interest.
If not, allow me to introduce you. Marc spent the mid-nineties through the crisis years as an equity research analyst and then fund manager, giving him a front-row seat to some of the most consequential moments in modern finance. He watched the tech boom, the European convergence trade, and the GFC unfold - and he wasn't just observing. He was positioning. His work now, through Net Interest, distills decades of pattern recognition into accessible analysis for investors who care about understanding the why beneath the what.
I wanted to connect with Marc because he embodies something I deeply value: the willingness to change how you play the game when the game itself changes.
Our conversation is LIVE now on the Epsilon Theory YouTube channel (and this Intentional Investor Playlist). Listen and you'll hear a man who's genuinely thought through what it takes to thrive across different market cycles, what separates teachers from mentors, and why your temperament matters more than your ambition.
THREE: That's The Magic Number of Lessons
In the meantime, I wanted to pull THREE KEY LESSONS from my time with Marc 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: Match Your Temperament to Your Method
"I'm quite a slow, methodical thinker. I quite like the problem solving. I like that there was a discrete answer, that there was a conclusion, but there were creative ways to get to that conclusion. I liked the way it presented as a kind of language of science that underpinned a lot of the other things I was studying."
Key Concept: The best career choices aren't about what looks impressive or what pays the most - they're about matching your natural thinking style to an environment that rewards that style. Marc's methodical, problem-solving mind found equity research compelling not because of prestige, but because it offered discrete answers reached through multiple creative paths. When you understand how your brain actually works, you can position yourself in roles where that becomes an advantage rather than a limitation.
Personal Archive Note-To-Self: I know it can make me annoying at certain types of cocktail parties, but I really do think that everything is metaphor, and you just have to figure out what types of metaphors you like. Some people like free jazz and beat poems, and others only want some good ol’ Ludwig van and check your lyrics at the door. We all have these preferences.
It’s extra interesting when we apply it to work, too. This is what personality tests all hope to describe, but often struggle with beyond generating a “that’s interesting, I guess it’s why we do/don’t get along.” Our preferences for metaphors and models determine how we learn, what work draws us in, and what effort produces a feeling inside of us that we want to revisit.
I would rather die than plug stuff into spreadsheets all day because that type of box filling problem solving is not a metaphor I can get behind. But I know people who love that type of gamified task-checking. For all of us, it’s normal, the question is - how self-aware are we to know which metaphors work best for us. Marc brought this concept home over and over in our talk.
Work question for you: What's your actual thinking style, and does your current role reward it - or work against it?
LIFE: Teachers Matter More Than Mentors
"You read, you watch interviews, you read biographies, and the importance of mentors is almost uncontested. The most successful people typically have mentors. I did have people like that, but probably over my career there were maybe three or four of them. They were influential. They were teachers, I would say, rather than mentors. Very, very good teachers."
Key Concept: There's a cultural myth that you need a mentor - someone guiding your trajectory, opening doors, believing in your potential. But Marc's experience reveals something more specific: what you actually need are teachers. Teachers are people who excel at explaining how things work - not necessarily invested in your success, but deeply skilled at transmission. A teacher shows you the mechanics. A mentor shapes your identity. Both matter, but we often confuse them. The best teachers appear unexpectedly and vanish when the lesson is learned.
Personal Archive Note-To-Self: My favorite part about Marc saying you need teachers, is it opens the aperture to allow for all the different ways we can learn lessons. You have room for learning both from the person 3 steps ahead of you and the person 300 steps ahead of you. You have room for the anti-examples too.
Lessons show up in lots of places when you aren’t trying to force a “mentorship” construct over a relationship.
The openness of Marc to this concept and the role it’s played in his life, even when I could have twisted his arm to name names here or go into greater detail, which wouldn’t have felt right in the moment based on how he was explaining it, but what really stuck out is the underlying truth in his statement, that teachers are what take us forward on our journey.
Life question for you: Who are the actual teachers in your life - people who've made complex things clear - versus those playing the mentor role?
LEGACY: The Ability to Shift Is the Mark of Excellence
"When I think about this, there are very few investors globally who are peak investors. One of the ways I would evaluate a really excellent investor is the ability to transition, to shift style. To understand that the market has changed, that the game has changed, and that they have to change how they play that game. The game will operate through various cycles, different market backdrops, and the ability to shift is essential."
Key Concept: Most people can be excellent in one environment. The rare ones - the ones who compound their advantage across decades - are those who recognize when the game itself has changed and adapt their entire approach. This isn't flexibility or pivoting. It's the humility to see that your previous winning formula no longer works, combined with the courage to rebuild it. Marc watched banks dominate markets, then become a declining sector. The investors who thrived weren't the ones who fought that shift - they were the ones who changed what they were betting on.
Personal Archive Note-To-Self: It’s the metaphors that work for us again. But this time, it’s the awareness that the metaphors that work for us at one phase of life might not carry over to the next. I’m flashing back to Tony Greer talking music and trading again, and thinking about how you have to be a good critic in the moment, without becoming cynical. An idea you used to hate might be one you love, and something you used to love might turn into something you can’t stand, and that’s a feature not a bug here.
Most of us can’t switch on a dime. It takes time. It takes frustration and stubbornness and a little luck, usually, to unstick us and wash us over to somewhere else. We can and should respect the people who figure out how to do that, with grace, in real time. They are rare and that’s special.
But what’s also special, even if maybe a bit less profitable, is avoiding ever being totally stuck and immovable. If life and career and all this stuff is about growth and evolving, we need to be in the habit of tinkering, experimenting, and playing around with the world around. We also have to model it for anybody watching. It all carries forward.
Legacy question for you: What game are you playing, and when was the last time you genuinely questioned whether the rules had changed?
BEFORE YOU GO: Be sure to…
Most importantly, subscribe to his newsletter Net Interest for weekly deep dives on banks, financial history, and the systems that move markets
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.
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
