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 Roger Mitchell? Scottish sports executive, serial industry transformer, and the guy who somehow turns careers in accounting, investment banking, sports journalism, the music business, and sports rights strategy into one coherent narrative of relentless learning.

If not, allow me to introduce you. Roger's spent the last 25+ years as founder and partner at Albachiara, an advisory firm working with rights holders, broadcasters, tech companies, and investors across sports and media - but that title doesn't begin to capture what he actually does. He spent his career asking the uncomfortable questions that everyone else missed: What happens when Napster becomes Spotify? What's the actual future of sports rights in a digital world? How do you build something people want when conventional wisdom says it's impossible?

I wanted to connect with him because he embodies something I value deeply: the willingness to be useful first, to stay curious through career pivots that look random on the surface but reveal perfect intentionality in hindsight, and to see human dynamics as the real variable in every equation.

Our conversation is LIVE now on the Epsilon Theory YouTube channel. Listen and you'll hear stories from Paisley to Bologna to the City of London to the music industry to running Scottish football - and everywhere in between, Roger shares how he learned to read people, trust his instincts, and make himself indispensable rather than just employable.

In the meantime, I wanted to pull THREE KEY LESSONS from my time with Roger Mitchell 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: There's a critical difference between being useful (which keeps you employed) and being indispensable (which opens doors). Useful is transactional - you complete your assigned work competently. Indispensable means you solve problems your boss didn't even know existed. You see what needs doing before you're asked, you handle the complexity so others don't have to carry it, and you do it without complaint. This isn't about working longer hours - it's about deploying the 3-4 hours of genuine productive work most people have in a day toward things that actually move the needle. The pattern Roger identifies - the person who reads everything, synthesizes it to one page, removes friction before it becomes visible - that's the template.

Personal Archive Note-To-Self: In or around 2010 I was 3-4 years into my financial services career and read Lynchpin by Seth Godin. The GFC was barely in the rearview, I’d managed not to get fired (yet), and the book helped cement the decision I made in my gut to keep myself indispensable to as many important people around me as possible.

Going through this life and career phase I gradually learned, partly the hard way, that I didn’t want to become a butler. I’ll clarify - it’s when I learned I really didn’t want to do white-glove-service for people with a vested interest in making sure I stayed a butler. I could do garden-glove service and get my hands dirty in the mutual effort to grow something, but no way was I going to be someone’s butler. I wanted to move needles, and get credit for their motion.

Roger’s life is the embodiment of this lesson, over and over again. I’ll tell myself his path is a function of the pre-internet era, when he was pulling off being a lynchpin to multiple jobs across multiple industries at the same time, and yet - WTF, man. Yes, there was some luck, but the way he treated each twist, turn, win, and faceplant - he read the environment so, so well.

Even without becoming a FIFA head, he was figuring out that besides the work you do, it’s the output you manufacture and keep yourself attached to that people will notice, promote, and lift you up on, as time goes on.

Work question for you: Where in your current role could you identify the grunt work that's eating your boss's time - and how could you systematically handle it before they have to ask?

Key Concept: Displacement isn't punishment - and it can be a form of curriculum. When Roger left Scotland for Italy at 21 with zero Italian language skills, he wasn't running from anything, he was running toward growth he couldn't access at home. The key insight: he treated it as an education, not a job. Every small failure (not understanding in a shop, feeling inferior about style or culture or taste) became data rather than shame. The magic wasn't Italy itself - it was the attitude of showing up daily to a place where he didn't know the rules and choosing to learn rather than retreat. That daily small improvement compounds. Two years later he could speak Italian fluently and had completely shifted his relationship to beauty, culture, and presence. The lesson applies everywhere: small town to big city, new job, new relationship, new country. The people who thrive aren't smarter - they're just committed to the compounding effect of daily improvement.

Personal Archive Note-To-Self: I give this piece of advice now that I wish someone had given me when I was at Roger’s Bologna stage - look for the people 3 steps ahead of you and 300 steps ahead of you. The person 3 steps ahead of you can tell you where to put your feet down and follow their lead, but they can’t tell you much about broad perspective and strategy. The person 300 steps ahead of you can’t tell you where to put your feet down because they’re in a totally different place now, but they can give you all the perspective on what the view is from where they sit, and the direction you’d have to move in to catch up to their location.

You need both of those people, largely because as you learn something every day, it’s a combo of A. what’s the actual thing you learned, and B. is it moving you in the right direction? Oftentimes you’ll learn something moving in the wrong direction as much as you’ll learn something moving in the right direction. The point is that the lessons are in the actions.

But in all of these cases, you need repetitions, you need compounding lessons, and you will never get those or learn them purely in your own head. Roger had to go to a different country, to learn a new language, to experience different approaches to business and strategy, that would open up his mental aperture to all of the ways entertainment and business were evolving in the world around him. Maybe he didn’t have those exact two people ever, but he figured out a way to drink it in via experience, and it’s remarkable to hear him tell.

Life question for you: What displacement - geographic, professional, social - could you intentionally walk into to accelerate your growth?

Key Concept: The industrial economy paid for time. The knowledge economy pays for outcomes and insight. Roger's distinction is crucial: being present for four focused hours where real thinking happens beats eight hours of theater. He's arguing for a fundamental reset in how we value work - not the hours logged but the juice delivered. This applies whether you're in corporate structures or building your own thing. The real leverage comes from being the person who, when you show up, can offer the insight that reframes the problem. That requires being somewhat removed from daily operations (so you can see patterns others miss) while staying connected enough to understand context. It's a delicate balance - too far removed and you're irrelevant, too deep in the weeds and you can't see the forest.

Personal Archive Note-To-Self: I remember a marketing book (feels David Ogilvy, but not positive it was him) where the author admitted that a big part of what people pay him big bucks for was to stare out the window. The person knew they couldn’t say that was part of what people hired him to do, but it was the truth. Because all the experience stewing around in his head - staring out the window was when a new connection or explanation was going to come together and that was the magic people wanted and expected and paid him for.

It takes a while to have the stones to put that out in the world as part of your value. Roger’s journey from accounting - which is totally an hourly or project-based gig - to consulting, where it’s more often flat fee and real-time meets real-world problem solving, probably explains how he got here.

I know it’s scary to think about building multiple careers across multiple domains. I lived in fear of having a music background (and not a fancy one, a local musician, etc.!), and then a disparate finance background, followed by the investing and planning work, on top of the podcasts, and other eccentricities I do now, and how I explain it to people. It just seems like so much. And what even rhymes with all THAT?

But then I talk to Roger. Now, why would anyone hire an accountant-turned-sports media-person-turned-music industry-insider-turned-football league president-turned-consultant? Because - just look at the breadth! And it’s touching so many corners of so many industries that - there’s a brainstorm inside of his own head at all times, let alone across all of these experiences.

There are so many ladders to climb and chutes to slide down. So many people focus on one ladder their entire life. If you’re willing to experiment, if you’re willing to play, people will be drawn to your stories. I’m drawn to Roger’s (and hopefully you are, too), and I’ve come to respect the value of giving people space to take the time to think about these old experiences out loud, which certainly have lessons that could get mapped onto today.

Roger’s 3000 feet in front of most of us. Take the perspective. Even if you’re not moving in the exact same direction, the map-making he’s done is more than meaningful.

Legacy question for you: What would change if you stopped measuring your value by hours worked and started measuring it by insights delivered?

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