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... Meg Lurtz!
Do you know Meg Lurtz? Meg (Dr. Meghaan Lurtz, Ph.D., FBS®) is a financial psychology researcher, educator, and Partner in Learning & Development at Shaping Wealth. She's a leading voice on the psychology of financial planning and financial therapy, helping advisors and clients see the emotional and relational forces around money that normally stay hidden.
If not, allow me to introduce you. Meg doesn't just study how people make decisions with money - she designs ways for real humans in real rooms to talk, think, and feel their way through those decisions together.
I wanted to connect with her because she's one of the rare researchers who can sit with a 58-second clip of two people she's never met, watch the whole episode, write 27 bullet points about it, and then show up to the conversation with all of it fully loaded - because that's just how her brain works.
Our conversation is LIVE now on Panoptica, the Just Press Record YouTube channel (and this Cultish Creative Playlist). This one's a little different - I sent Meg a clip from a prior episode (Chuck Marohn and Aaron Hurst talking about transitions, trust, and building community) and she watched the whole thing, then wrote me a 27-bullet-point email about it. We just talked through the email.
THREE: That's The Magic Number of Lessons
In the meantime, I wanted to pull THREE KEY LESSONS from my time with Meg 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: Write Your Reasons Down Before You Walk Into the Room
"If you wanted to do something, you'd be talking to Bob and Sue, and Jared on the other side of the campfire would hear you and say, 'No, no, that's not how it works.' You'd learn something from that, because talking together, your confirmation bias gets a little bit blown up - and that's a good thing. The problem with groupthink isn't groups, it's groups that skip the part where everyone has to write down their own reasons first."
Key Concept: Meg's working from the argumentative theory of reason: humans evolved to reason with each other, not alone, and confirmation bias is what happens when that social check disappears. Her fix is a sequencing change - have everyone write their own reasons down before the group conversation starts, so different people's underlying logic surfaces even when they land on the same answer. But that only works if logic is actually what's driving the room. Skip the sequencing, and a group of individuals defaults to something else entirely.
Personal Archive Note-To-Self: The problem with groups is that they're full of individuals, and anytime you get a bunch of individuals into a room, status and stories take over. That's everything about work and middle school cafeterias that I know, in a nutshell.
When you learn to let go of logic as the basis for how decisions are made, you start to save a lot of sanity. Not to throw logic out the window, but to know logic is only one part of the equation can make for a world of difference, especially in a corporate setting when storytelling (and other less rational artifacts) are involved.
One of my favorite pieces of advice to give to younger people starting a career journey is to know this. Get the school-based merit / good grades earner mindset in check, because those table stakes are going to matter at the margins, but then turn your attention to status, finding people your gut says are good people, and building relationships with them - because that's what will carry you forward to your next chapters.
Work question for you: Next time you're heading into a group decision, what would happen if everyone wrote their reasoning down first - before anyone spoke?
LIFE: When the Only Place You're Allowed to Go Becomes the Only Place You Want to Go
"When I was living in Spain, the grocery store normally is open in the morning, then closes for siesta, then opens again in the evening. The community decided to close the evening hours so it only stayed open in the morning. Because the only place you were really allowed to go during COVID was the grocery store and home. And they found that Spanish people would just go to the grocery store and walk around, and stop and talk to each other. There were hundreds of people in this tiny grocery store - it was the only way they could be together."
Key Concept: This is convivial infrastructure in action - the idea that the physical design of a place either invites people into each other's lives or quietly isolates them. When COVID stripped away every other "third place," Meg watched a town's grocery store become church, plaza, and living room at once, and the town adjusted its hours to protect that. The infrastructure didn't create the need for connection - it just revealed how much was already there, waiting for somewhere to happen.
Personal Archive Note-To-Self: I hadn't heard the term convivial infrastructure before this conversation. It's a perfect third space explainer. It's also a perfect reminder for how different it is from home and work because of who gets to show up there (re: anyone and everyone in the community).
I also hadn't realized how different this is from what we have here. I mean that literally and legally (re: Europe). I've felt this difference and experienced it first hand when I've traveled but didn’t understand exactly how it was protected. Like most people, I've heard the Starbucks pitch for forever and respect the engineered attempts at third spaces, but the less capitalist angle, like the Spanish grocery during COVID, really warmed my heart.
It's because a convivial space, when done right, creates a scene. It's a space that doesn't scale, can't scale, and derives its meaning only from the purpose of providing local individuals the space to develop a shared identity together. Life is not made in these places alone, but it is fulfilled with them - we all need to have at least one in our lives.
Life Question For You: Where's your version of that grocery store - the ordinary place that's quietly doing the work of keeping you connected to people?
LEGACY: It's Not In-Group, Out-Group - It's Our Group
"You know now that Bob always rides the bus, and he's a fan of Spain, or whatever. And now it's not in-group, out-group - it's our group. It's not this person or that person, or the way that they live versus the way that I live. It's the way that we live."
Key Concept: Meg's tracing what happens after a single moment of real contact - a bus ride, a podcast, a conversation with a stranger. The categories we use to sort people (in-group, out-group) are provisional, not permanent, and one piece of specific knowledge about another person ("Bob rides the bus, Bob likes Spain") is enough to dissolve them. What's left behind isn't a fact about Bob. It's a shared "we" that outlasts the interaction that created it.
Personal Archive Note-To-Self: Any group is just individuals until something turns the identity from all "I" to at least some "we." Status still applies. Social roles still exist. But it's a social good to help that shift happen.
The convivial spaces, the places we want to work, the life we want to lead - it doesn't exist in a vacuum. It doesn't keep going without conscious intervention.
Just like COVID challenged some of the norms for gathering, for all the reasons - good and bad - we can’t just passively let the world evolve in ways that serve these interests. It takes active engagement in the third spaces, in how they interlock with each other, and in how we experience life.
Legacy question for you: Who's one person you've moved from "them" to "we" - and what was the specific detail that did it?
BEFORE YOU GO: Be sure to…
Connect with Meg Lurtz on LinkedIn
Check out her Substack, (Less) Lonely Money
Check out her work at Shaping Wealth
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
