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 Ted Merz? He spent 32 years building Bloomberg News from the 15th employee into a global powerhouse - covering emerging markets, running editorial teams across continents, and later transforming how Bloomberg's product strategy evolved as information went from scarce to infinite. That's the kind of resume that should guarantee you never work again.

But then 2022 happened. Bloomberg let him go. And instead of retreating into a comfortable advisory role, Ted did something most people don't do after three decades at one company: he reinvented himself completely. He started writing publicly about what he was learning, built a ghostwriting and communications agency called Principals Media, and became obsessed with helping leaders tell their own stories in a world that's shifted from institutional gatekeeping to individual voice.

I wanted to connect with him because he embodies something I value deeply: the willingness to look at what worked yesterday, realize it doesn't work today, and start from scratch.

Our conversation is LIVE now on Epsilon Theory. Listen and you'll hear the origin story of someone who went from Mexico City reporter to Bloomberg pioneer to startup founder - and the throughline connecting all of it.

In the meantime, I wanted to pull THREE KEY LESSONS from my time with Ted Merz 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: The difference between a network and a community is the difference between transactional extraction and ongoing cultivation. A network concentrated in one place - one company, one industry, one era - evaporates the moment you leave. A real community is built across time, across multiple contexts, across generations. Ted's realization wasn't that he had too few connections; it was that he had built something that couldn't survive outside its original container. The lesson isn't to network harder. It's to network differently - with intention toward genuine connection rather than instrumental gain, and with particular attention to people at different life stages than you.

Personal Archive Note-To-Self: The best networking advice I ever got was from David Burkus. In his book, Friend of a Friend, he got me to start thinking about networking the same way you’d think about a computer network. It wasn’t a new idea, but it was a novel one, especially to me. A network, versus the act of networking, was about seeing the spider web everything was spread out across. It was about noticing the nodes.

A network as a web was also about noticing exactly what Ted described - how you could get trapped in a dead end (and being trapped, even in confused stillness, it will kill you, too). To actually have a network, to genuinely do networking, is to keep moving. Burkus will love this - this is my reminder to introduce them.

Because once you start moving across a network, you start vibrating it. Once the network starts vibrating, different parts become aware of you. You might be multiple steps removed from Kevin Bacon for all eternity, but somebody in the great Bacon’s orbit might notice you, and then you can decide what to do with that.

Ted’s lesson on what not moving produces, inspired his current activity which, even following along with him on LinkedIn will help you feel in motion. There’s no reason to stop moving. You never know who you’ll meet or what might happen.

Work question for you: Are the people in your professional circle connected to you, or connected to the institution you represent? How would you know the difference?

Key Concept: Most of us learn by imitation - we watch what others do and mirror it. That's efficient. But immersion strips away that safety net. When Ted arrived in Norway at 18, not speaking the language, he couldn't ask "what is this?" He could only observe and guess and sometimes get it completely wrong (the egg). The power of immersion isn't that it's a better way to learn; it's that it's the only way to learn certain things. You can't become fluent in a language, a culture, or a skill without moments where imitation fails and you have to power through on your own. That's where real integration happens - not when you're following the pattern, but when you have to create your own.

Personal Archive Note-To-Self: I went to Germany for a choir related trip in high school and had the same weird Euro-egg experience with my host family. What is it about a language barrier and the desire to serve an egg that looks like it might be hard boiled but is very much not that confounds at least 2 Americans in the history of the world? I don’t know but, it’s worth a great laugh.

There’s an imitation point inside of this that hits me extra part. What do you do when you don’t know what to do and there’s nobody to copy? You will, puns intended, get egg on your face, at least some of the time. You will make a fool of yourself and, I’m pretty sure in my case, go to pick the egg up to crack it only to have somebody say, “Nein, err, no? no” and then hand you a baby food spoon only to have you stare at them like, “Are we going to eat baby food or cook dope with this? Neither of which I want, for the record!”

The secret is to not be afraid to screw up. And ok, even if you are afraid to screw up or embarrass yourself or whatever, which is totally natural and I still can feel my own confusion from 30 years ago when it happened to me, laughter is a means of survival. Because what happened with Ted and what happened with me was, even though we didn’t speak the same language, we all laughed about it - really hard - and then somebody showed me what to do, once, and for the rest of my time, I knew how to fit in, and I bet we all still tell that story from time to time.

Life question for you: What are you trying to learn by watching others instead of putting yourself in a position where you have to figure it out alone?

Key Concept: Ted spent decades thinking about the Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting. He understood its significance intellectually. But he never went - until last year, his last chance. Being in the room is more effective than reading about it, watching clips, or hearing secondhand accounts. But it's not more efficient. It requires the time, the cost, the friction of actually showing up. This is the trade-off that defines legacy thinking: efficient is staying comfortable with what you know. Effective is getting uncomfortable by being present to what you don't. Most of us optimize our careers for efficiency. The people who build something that lasts optimize for effectiveness - which means choosing presence over productivity, environments over email, the room over the desk.

Personal Archive Note-To-Self: The modern era changed how we can put ourselves into different environments and just saying that I can’t help but think of what an advantage it is for those that know it. Ted got to practice, and so did I, being put in another environment by going abroad. I think of this one a lot for how formative it is. You also don’t even have to go abroad to do it, because I know I got several similar experiences traveling around the tri-state area in the northeast eating pizzas at the same age. But the bigger point is, you have to get out of YOUR normalcy to see how else other people behave in the world.

Most people don’t do it. Most people wont do it. Comfort, and having a little corner of the web where you can be stuck and safe, is a wonderful thing. Or, at least, it’s wonderful until it’s not. Even with the global traveling he did at Bloomberg, and to think how much of a ball Ted was having on his Bloomberg-spiderweb until the layoff, it’s not the same as truly putting yourself out and into new environments.

Having a strategy to take risks and have laughs, without dying or getting fully stuck, is the secret to post-pandemic era life, and I don’t know many people doing it as well as Ted. He’s as super-connected as they come, in record time by the way, because he does a mix of meeting people in real life, and sharing his reflections on those moments online, in his own way.

He respects just how weird the world is, and, most importantly, how interested he is in learning about it. It’s a magnet for other people. Whether that’s with strangers at the Berkshire meeting, or when I send him an email saying, “Oh you should totally meet these people who just relocated to NYC.” Being respectful of the opportunity and interest in this network we all already exist on - that’s the magic.

Legacy question for you: What room have you been thinking about entering for years but haven't? What would change if you did?

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