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- Playing With Networking (Weekly Recap January 17, 2026)
Playing With Networking (Weekly Recap January 17, 2026)
How Deep Work, Real Questions, and Authentic Connection Shape Everything
Matt Zeigler
January 17, 2026
Let's connect some dots from this week's notes...
This week felt like watching the arc from creative restraint to audience clarity, but instead of stopping there, following it all the way through to what actually makes culture work. It’s about the lived experience underneath all of it. It started with The Alchemist knowing exactly how deep to dig. It moved through the uncomfortable truth about who you're actually building for. Then it hit what makes the work feel real - spoiler, it's the culture, not just the output. And finally it reached toward understanding how your scars and your practice and your willingness to ask better questions than everyone else - that's what compounds into a genuinely good life.
The throughline that kept popping up was how intentionality without lived experience is just strategy. But when you start to understand the work deeply enough to live it - when you stop asking whether you belong in the room and start listening to who's actually in the boat with you - something shifts. Does that feel profound? It feels profound to me.
If you prefer to receive these recaps weekly instead of daily posts, you can manage your subscription preferences right by viewing this email on the web. Look for your profile icon in the top right of the browser, and you can update your settings from daily to weekly (and vice versa) there. However I can get you the full narrative arc without it feeling cluttered - I’m just happy you’re here!
The Alchemist took the same 1976 Millie Jackson record and used it to paint for both Mobb Deep and Dilated Peoples. Same source material. Wildly different outcomes. What got me was realizing this is the exact answer to the question I've been asking since college - how do you stay self-sustainably viable and still respected for your artform? The Alchemist did it by being willing to dig deeper than everyone else, to know his materials so completely that he could create entirely different pictures from the same ink.
Quote from the Personal Archive - on what deep curation actually looks like "Even the internet hasn't fully caught up to mid-90s Al. And one thing you can hear almost straight away when you play any of the songs is that Al definitely lifted drums from these records."
Your peers are not your audience. That's the uncomfortable truth that stops most creators from actually reaching anyone. I watched an author friend realize he'd been networking exclusively with other authors instead of building with readers. The fishbowl is comfortable - everyone speaks your language, understands your problems. But the actual work happens in the aquarium. You have to deliberately track whether you're narrowcasting to the fish or broadcasting to people you don't know yet. When I tested the 4% rule on a non-fish audience first, the strangers who showed up in the comments told me everything - that's how you know you've broken through.
Quote from the Personal Archive - on where the work actually is "The fishbowl will always be comfortable. But the work is in the aquarium."
Culture doesn't live in the output. It lives in how you feel while you're making it. Manufacturing cars, creating content, building a team - the product matters less than whether you whistled while you worked or cursed beneath your breath every single day. I think about where Cultish Creative's name came from and realize I've been circling this truth the whole time. We're asking: who are we doing this with, what are we making together, and how does it feel to be in it?
Quote from the Personal Archive - on what actually counts "How I feel when I'm writing this, how you feel when it shows up in your inbox, the exchanges we have about an idea like this over time, that's what counts."
Aaron Gwyn held up his severed finger and Mike Perry listened like someone who knows that physical scars and psychological ones tell the same story - that we survived something. This is where all the theory becomes lived experience. Two writers from working-class backgrounds (Wisconsin farm kid, Oklahoma ranch kid) talking about how their childhoods shaped their art, why certainty frightens them, and what happens when you choose practice over talent. The conversation moves between graphic and heartwarming so seamlessly it reminds you that the person at the steering wheel always has a better story than the celebrity up front. Brought to you in collaboration with Panoptica!
Quote from the Personal Archive - as Cormac McCarthy told it "Scars have the strange power to remind us that our past is real."
Michael Perry asked about the bus driver instead of the celebrity, and that single decision changed everything about how he sees people. WORK: Ask about the person everyone overlooks - that's where the real story lives. LIFE: Listen to the person in the boat beside you rather than the man yelling in the distance - proximity matters more than ideology. LEGACY: You got on the right bus even though you never thought you'd be here - gratitude for the journey outlasts any award. Michael embodies what I've been building toward: staying grounded in real relationships and real places even as you build something most people from your background never thought possible.
Quote from the Personal Archive - on who to actually listen to "It's gotten to where we would rather listen to the man yelling in the distance than the person in the boat beside us."
Aaron learned in the kickboxing ring what most people learn too late - talent is overrated, practice is everything. Getting hit and learning from it was how you got better. When his mentor Mark critiqued his writing, Aaron didn't feel rejected, he felt coached. WORK: Practice compounds - the willingness to be mediocre for long enough that you become good. LIFE: Certainty is a fundamentalist problem no matter what you believe - the closed mind shows up in atheists and Christians and everywhere else. LEGACY: Your scars are real, they happened, they shaped you - that's not weakness, that's clarity. Aaron and Michael together show you what it looks like when small-town kids refuse to separate their origins from their art.
Quote from the Personal Archive - on what fundamentalism actually is "I began to meet more and more people who claim to be atheists, but were absolutely fundamentalists. They just didn't believe in God."
Where Else I Showed Up This Week
Three investment conversations and one conversation about what makes a life good - all of them orbiting the same center.
With Sam Ro and Kai Wu on Excess Returns, we asked how investors should actually frame valuations when the market feels both expensive and transformative. The point wasn't to predict the future - it was to ask better questions about profit margins and AI's real impact, and why history teaches us to be cautious about certainty even when enthusiasm runs high.
Grant Williams talked about what he calls the hundred-year pivot - why today's environment feels fundamentally different, why long-held assumptions may no longer apply. This is the big-picture version of Aaron's warning about fundamentalism. What if the things we were certain about for decades just don't work anymore? Listen to this for the history lesson, Grant was on fire for this talk.
Aswath Damodaran walked through how he actually builds his portfolio - not chasing stories, but waiting for price to meet value. Using probability distributions instead of single-point estimates - this is valuation thinking as a practice, not a prediction, and it is so cool to hear him break down. He’s everyone’s professor, right?!
And then Mark McCartney asked the question underneath everything - What is a Good Life? I love the name of his show and I’m grateful he had me on (even if I worry I’m pushing him towards a midlife crisis… but, I’m just a guest!) We talked about vulnerability, connection, transformation from disconnection to meaningful relationships, and how small intentional moments build real bonds.
Personal Archive Prompts
Who is the "bus driver" in your world - the person everyone overlooks who actually knows what's really happening?
WHAT SKILL ARE YOU AVOIDING BECAUSE YOU'RE AFRAID OF BEING MEDIOCRE AT IT FOR THE NEXT TWO YEARS?
Where in your own thinking have you stopped questioning because certainty feels safer than doubt?
What scar from your past are you still pretending didn't happen - and what would change if you acknowledged it was real?
IF YOU GOT ON THE "WRONG BUS" BUT REALIZED PARTWAY THROUGH IT WAS EXACTLY THE RIGHT ONE - HOW ARE YOU HONORING THAT GIFT?
What does it feel like to create or work or live in your current community - and is that how you want it to feel?
Who's in the boat with you right now that you've stopped actually listening to because you're distracted by the noise?
As always, I did my part, now it's your turn to write some reflections 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)
ps. Claude helped me organize and synthesize these thoughts from the week's posts. If you are curious how I use AI, read this post: Did AI Do That: Personal Rules