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... Phil Pearlman!

Do you know Phil Pearlman? He's a former psychology graduate student turned polymath - someone who's lived multiple professional lives, reinvented himself repeatedly, and at 58 is getting faster at running every single year while thinking with surgical precision about behavioral psychology, role modeling, and what it actually means to show up authentically in every single context.

If not, allow me to introduce you. Phil embodies something rare: the intellectual rigor of someone trained in psychology paired with the hard-won humility of someone who's had many careers and learned something genuine from each one. He writes thoughtfully online, coaches people through life transitions, and has one of the most genuinely curious minds I know.

I wanted to connect with him because he represents something I deeply value: the willingness to be radically authentic about how you actually work, without pretense or the exhausting performance of it all.

Our conversation is LIVE now on the Cultish Creative + Epsilon Theory YouTube channels. We actually started by watching a clip from Nancy Berger and Julia Duthie discussing what consistency really means - two women who've reinvented themselves completely and embody transformation - and then Phil took us on a masterclass about behavior, role modeling, boundaries, and why your actual actions matter infinitely more than your stated intentions.

THREE: That's The Magic Number of Lessons

In the meantime, I wanted to pull THREE KEY LESSONS from my time with Phil 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: Behavior Is The Blueprint

Key Concept: Phil is describing something radically simple that most of us overcomplicate: you don't need to feel like a runner before you become one. You don't need to feel consistent before you start being consistent. You pick the behavior, repeat it, and through that repetition, you become that identity. He's getting faster at running not because of genetics or talent, but because of compounding repetition. This isn't motivation - it's behavioral architecture. Your identity doesn't precede your actions. Your identity follows them.

Personal Archive Note-To-Self: We behave our way into being. And that covers good, bad, ugly, indifferent, and incredible ways of being. All the same. Micro choices, stacking up, and aware or not, life, like time, has an annoying habit of compounding. If time is the currency we’re all trading, we might as well get comfortable with thinking of it this way.

Phil wanting to run more takes me back to one of our earlier Just Press Record conversations, when I introduced him to Jessica Yarmey. He told a story about how the happiest he can remember being in life, was when he was running with his friends. Now obviously, you can’t recreate the exact feeling of being in elementary school and racing your friends. But you can emulate the experience and give it a new life within your current life.

Phil sprinting more, and recognizing he’s incrementally getting stronger and faster at it, is a life metaphor. The joy element of his childhood friends didn’t come up here, but I’m adding it because it’s a core part of his DNA that I only know from hanging out with him. I love that it’s showing up again here. I love that when he adds it back to his life, as a component of who he wants to be, he sees it as progressive, with the splits to prove it. This is a life of progress.

Work question for you: What's one behavior you've been waiting to feel ready for, when you could actually just begin today?

LIFE: Role Modeling Is More Powerful Than Gravity

Key Concept: Phil references Bandura's research, but here's what most people miss: the point isn't about the aggression kids imitate. The point is deeper. We absorb what we're around. You generate a current - an actual, measurable current - just by being consistently yourself. Your kids, your employees, your friends, they're all taking readings from you the way a compass takes readings from magnetic north. The further away they are, the weaker the signal. But those closest to you? They're absorbing your baseline behavior constantly. This is why the "do as I say, not as I do" leader fails every single time. There's no faking it.

Personal Archive Note-To-Self: Current isn’t a word I ever thought much about the etymology of. It comes from a mishmash of old words that mean to run, but in the sense of running, and flowing, and moving along. It makes me think of how the current in a body of water, a current of electricity, and the current moment are all interconnected. Language is so beautiful sometimes.

Phil’s explanation of absorbing what we’re around is an example of what we’re in the current with. What we’re currently in current with? Something like that. And the point stands. It’s a directional orientation of flow, and we either accept moving with it or choose where and how to move against it, either in cooperation with others or in opposition to them.

Life is about the currents. It’s as simple as the bobo dolls in Bandura’s research, or as rapturing as a samba behind some bossa nova. There are currents we pick and currents that pick us. There are those we watch navigate their currents and internal reflections on how we navigate our own. To not see the currents for what they are, to not question our role that we play in relationship to the current moment and its pull, is to miss the joy of not only the work we do each and every day, but the work to be done.

Life question for you: Who is closest to you right now, and what are you actually modeling for them - not what you intend, but what you're genuinely demonstrating daily?

LEGACY: You Only Get Graded Against You

Key Concept: Phil reframes the entire conversation about self-improvement and legacy. You will never be Usain Bolt. You will never be John Coltrane. You will never be Tom Brady. So if you compare yourself to anyone else, you lose immediately. The only meaningful benchmark is: am I incrementally better than I was yesterday? He references Minuchin's insight about family systems - if you take a family from a 3 to a 7, their quality of life doesn't just improve, it transforms logarithmically. The power compounds. Your internal compasses are still in there underneath all the noise. You just have to gradually retune them. Direction matters more than destination.

Personal Archive Note-To-Self: Intuition is an instrument. And instruments are kind of the total embodiment of a current as a tool, aren’t they? They take outside feedback, attenuate it in some way to a measured signal, and then we can adjust based on that feedback. We don’t need it to be a compass. It can be as simple as a gut check.

And there are obvious limitations. Just because you want to fly doesn’t mean you can fly. Just because you want to be fast doesn’t mean there isn’t somebody faster, and - do carry that over to every metaphor you can dream up.

Work is about the currency of time for everything else in life. Life is about the current, meaning the present moment, and how we sit with it. But legacy, this is about the wake of our current as we move through time. Others can ride along. Others can study it, or rebel against it, or realize it’s just where we were and choose for themselves how it matters. We all choose how and what we want to compound, with or without any genuine awareness for what we’re doing. If joy is the goal, and spreading joy to others in some way, even if just by performance like a Bolt or a Coltrane, we need a shred of intentionality in our habits, to let it all flow forward.

Legacy question for you: Where have you been waiting for perfection when moving just 10% in the right direction would completely transform your experience?

BEFORE YOU GO: Be sure to…

• Connect with Phil on X/Twitter at @PPearlman

• Check out his writing and thoughts at philpearlman.com

• Dive into the full conversation to hear him on Bossanova, cover bands, Soul Coughing, the power of role modeling with children, and why you should absolutely cook dinner to Brazilian jazz

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.