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... Tony Greer!
Do you know Tony Greer? He's the owner and purveyor of TG Macro - a newsletter, community, and trading advisory built on nearly a decade of democratizing Wall Street thinking for independent traders, wealth advisors, and portfolio managers.
If not, allow me to introduce you. Tony spent 25 years working on trading desks at Goldman Sachs, UBS, and other major institutions before realizing he could serve people better by going independent. He's the host of Macro Dirt (with Jared Dian), a daily navigator of markets, and someone who's figured out how to make a living doing exactly what he loves - thinking about markets and teaching others to think like traders.
I wanted to connect with him because he embodies something I value deeply: the belief that building a real business means choosing your people and serving them consistently, one subscriber at a time.
Our conversation is LIVE now on the Cultish Creative and Epsilon Theory YouTube channels. Listen and you'll hear how a trader's mind works, why most people struggle to sell positions (and it has nothing to do with the markets), and what happens when you decide that freedom - not money - is the real goal.
THREE: That's The Magic Number of Lessons
In the meantime, I wanted to pull THREE KEY LESSONS from my time with Tony 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: Was The Market Gonna Close? When Process Beats Psychology
"I'm so transactional, Bogumil, perhaps to a fault, and I understand that. But it's always been the way that I've either thrived or survived, and so I'm okay with living with those conditions. But I say I think about people's psychology and because I'm wired so differently, I can't understand it. I'm like [to a client], well, have you traded it all around it? And he's like, ‘no, no, no, no, no, no. I don't sell anything. I can't sell any of the position,’ you know? And I'm like, why not? And he's like, ‘well, you know, 'cause I won't be able to buy it back.’ And I'm like, was the market gonna close after you sell it? I don't understand. The market's still open. You can buy it back five seconds later. Like, what do you mean you don't know how you're gonna buy?"
Key Concept: Tony's spent decades watching people sabotage their own decisions because they believe a choice is permanent when it isn't. The market closes, sure - but it opens again. The real barrier isn't logistics or opportunity scarcity. It's the emotional conviction that selling means you lose forever, that you can never come back. This is the gap between what traders know intellectually and what they believe emotionally. Tony sees it clearly because his wiring is different - he separates action from attachment.
Personal Archive Note-To-Self: It took me a lot of life, and then a lot of therapy, to understand that the real obstacle is usually in my head. I had to learn, that the faster I could understand it from internal perspective, the more quickly I could actualize an actual, and often externally existing solution. When Tony tells this story, it puts me right back on that therapist’s couch.
“How am I complicit in creating the things I say I don’t want?” That’s my question. And you have to ask the inverse of it too. But the obstacles are the things you don’t want that you’re keeping around. It sucks, but it’s better to accept reality than fight it.
Because good pressure is mixed in there too. I think of writing these posts. On one hand, I can get awful frustrated when I don’t have time to sit down and put some words up on the screen. I can start weighing my streak and all sorts of other factors.
But then on the other hand I remember how much I love stopping to think and writing this stuff down. The little act of reflection, of teasing out an open loop to snare and close, it’s one of my favorite things to do. Our state of minds are as impermanent as many of the choices we make.
Seeing optionality is seeing freedom. Because - the market will open tomorrow, your mind will shift tomorrow, your current job or your new job will be one day closer, and that’s just how future works! You’re in a state of mind and it’s a gift that it keeps changing.
Work question for you: What decision are you avoiding because you believe it's permanent when the market (metaphorically) opens again tomorrow?
LIFE: One Subscriber at a Time - Choosing Your People
"I knew that when I started this business coming from Wall Street where you're kind of thrown on a team with a lot of teammates that you didn't pick and maybe didn't want, that you necessarily wouldn't want to work with, and this and that - I knew that I was gonna be getting away from that into a world of all these individuals that I was gonna have to get to know at some level, and I knew it was gonna have to be one subscriber at a time, to win people over, like you said, with that personal touch that makes them feel good. And you know, maybe it takes me a little bit longer to figure that out than other people, but I think that part of it has been really cool because the people that I've met along the way have been spectacular."
Key Concept: There's a fundamental shift that happens when you move from obligatory relationships (your team at Goldman, people assigned to you) to chosen relationships (your subscribers, your community). Tony recognized early that scaling a business built on trust means doing it slowly - one person at a time. This isn't inefficient. It's actually the opposite. When you build relationships deliberately and individually, they compound. People stick around for years because they feel genuinely known, not because they're locked into a contract or dependent on you.
Personal Archive Note-To-Self: The myth of overnight success is a joy to look for and look beyond. I love the reminders, partly because I so desperately need the reminders, that you don’t win people over at scale, not at least until you’ve already achieved a substantial amount of scale the old fashioned way.
I think about the modern tech company myths. About how a great idea can scale on basically nothing and eat the world. And I don’t disagree with it, I just can’t help but also think of the myriad of cases where it won’t ever apply.
Early in the pandemic I checked out a lot of online writing advice. I tried some of it, if only because I enjoy writing and hey, maybe there was some money to make for it, but most of it felt weird and like nothing I would want to read in 5 minutes let alone 5 years down the road. I went through a phase of experimenting, but then I went back to just moving along with my writing one post, and now one (or two) people at a time.
If I had kept on down that path - I mean, can you imagine if I had lost a year to writing about growth hacks? Can you imagine? Did I just puke in my mouth a little bit - ugh. That would have taken even more time to quit and undo. Even worse if somebody would have hired me to do it. It’s crazy.
The pace better fits who I am. Plus, I also think of how when, during those pandemic times, I came across people like Tony and we slowly circled each other for a few years before we got here. Good work is a signal to good people. It’s ok to go slow and have an impact at that micro level. Scale later, if ever.
Life Question For You: Are the relationships that matter most in your life obligatory or chosen? How does that distinction change how you show up?
LEGACY: The Number One Fear - Knowing When To Let Go
"The number one fear, the number one problem that literally everyone has is figuring out when to part with something. Yeah. And how they're going to feel once they're down to no position."
Key Concept: Tony's identified something universal that most people don't talk about directly - the terror of letting go. Not the act of selling, but the emotional state that follows. What happens to your identity when you sell? How do you feel when you're flat, when you have nothing, when you're down to zero? This fear runs deeper than markets. It shows up in careers (what am I without this job?), relationships (who am I if this ends?), and life chapters (what comes after?). The people who win long-term aren't the ones who never feel this fear. They're the ones who've made peace with it - who understand that the market opens again, that there's always another opportunity, that letting go is how you make space for what's next.
Personal Archive Note-To-Self: Tony says the number one fear, from his years of trading and then teaching, is knowing when to part with something. Largely because once you’ve parted you’re down to having no position and on the sidelines is a very strange place for a player to be. But it’s not just about a position, it’s about holding all of the positions in your mind at all times.
It’s hard to hold on. It’s hard to let go. It’s hard to figure out that you’ll have to do both things, which means sometimes you’re going to be up to your eyeballs in stuff of some sort, and other times you’re going to be completely alone with knowing to show for anything, wondering how to start again.
Nothing prepares you for it except life. And in the truest wax-on-wax-off sense, the micro lessons are there if you start looking for them. This bit, and a million of the others from Tony and Bogumil’s introduction, hit me really deeply.
It’s a reminder to ask “What am I with xyz” as often as “What am I without xyz.” There’s a separation there and it’s as hard for you as it is for everybody else so, try to have a little bit of grace.
There’s no other way for me to put this better, so I’m leaving this on Sturgill Simpson, “Woke up today and decided to kill my ego / It ain’t ever done me no good no how / Gonna break through and blast off to the Bardo / In them flowers of light far away from the here and now.”
Legacy question for you: What are you holding onto because you're afraid of how you'll feel in the space after you let it go?
BEFORE YOU GO: Be sure to…
Check out TG Macro - the newsletter, community, and coaching
Listen to Macro Dirt with Jared Dillian (and all the shows on YouTube)
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
