Playing With Networking (Weekly Recap 3/15/2025)

The VMOST and the Future You're Building

I've been carrying around this planning framework for years, never giving it the proper Cultish Creative post it deserves. VMOST – Vision, Mission, Objectives, Strategies, Tactics – might sound like corporate alphabet soup, but it's the most clarifying tool I've found for aligning big ideas with daily habits. Where most people stumble is the misalignment between their ambitious Vision and their cautious Tactics. The framework demands consistency from top to bottom, which is precisely why it works.

Quote from the (Personal) Archive: "If your Mission doesn't get people on board with your vision, what good will your Strategy be? If your Objectives are too big and your Tactics are playing it too safe, how will you know at the mid-year point you need to take some risk? You can't hide outside of VMOST."

The Stories They Tell When You're Not There

When Elie Jacobs met Eric Markowitz on Just Press Record, something clicked about the distance between how we see ourselves and how others see us. Elie calls this the "risk aperture" – the gap between your brand (the story you tell about yourself) and your reputation (the story others tell when you're not in the room). The wider that gap, the more vulnerable you are. It's not just business theory – it's life design philosophy.

Quote from the (Personal) Archive: "When you truly understand the difference between how you frame yourself and how others frame you, you've got something more valuable than mere reputation management, you've got a dashboard for navigating reality itself."

In Praise of Not Knowing

What happens when you put a hedge fund manager (Jason Buck), a financial consultant/marketing master (Dave Nadig), and me in a room with one planned topic, one surprise topic from each of us, and a strict "no Googling" rule? Turns out, you get a strange kind of intellectual freedom. It's the second episode of "Click Beta," and I'm starting to understand why it feels so good. In a world where everyone's expected to have confident takes on everything, there's something almost revolutionary about saying "I don't know" without shame.

Quote from the (Personal) Archive: "Good thinking isn't always clean. It doesn't arrive fully formed and perfectly articulated. It meanders. It doubles back. It sometimes contradicts itself. But when done in the company of people you trust, people who are interested in understanding rather than winning, it leads somewhere worthwhile."

Lindsey Bell & Shannon Saccocia on Market Volatility

Two of the smartest women I know in finance joined me on Excess Returns to talk tariffs, consumer resilience, and the Federal Reserve's tightrope walk (fire walk? do I bring David Lynch into this? It feels appropriate…) through uncertain economic terrain. We explored why the Atlanta Fed's concerning Q1 projections might be overblown and mapped the investment landscape beyond the Magnificent 7. The through-line? Maintaining perspective in the noise – something we could all use a little more of these days.

Other Personal Archive Entries This Week

Sound Discovery: David Johansen of the New York Dolls' "Trash" has me reconsidering how the in-between artists shape everything. "The Dolls never blew up. There probably aren't the pre-grunge post-punk Replacements without them, and 50 million other bands we never heard of either." Some influences leave fingerprints everywhere without ever making the headlines.

Fear and the Hurdle We Set: When Neil Young told Dan Rather about his interview with Marc Maron, he praised him as "fearless and wasn't afraid to fail." The biggest hurdles aren't set by intimidating people – they're the ones we construct in our minds. "The fear is real. It's everywhere we want or long or are curious to go. And, it's imaginary."

The Value of Strategic Wandering: Eric Markowitz's global search for the world's oldest businesses revealed a counterintuitive truth – "Real innovation comes from wandering." In our efficiency-obsessed culture, we're systematically eliminating the human connections and inefficient meandering that breeds true creativity. What if the most revolutionary act today isn't embracing the latest technology but preserving space for the inefficient human connections that technology is designed to optimize away?

Personal Archive Prompts (for you): Who do you know this reminds you of, and/or what do you think about…

The gap between your brand and your reputation?

Planning with VMOST?

The courage to say "I don't know"?

The value of inefficient wandering?

Fearlessness in the face of intimidating people or tasks?

Write it in your own Personal Archive.

(then, be sure to let me know where you're keeping it, I'm in search of the others too)