Jake Anderson, founder of Build with Jake

Through at the speed of bytes, we have landed successfully everywhere we're supposed to be. Welcome to Creative on Purpose, a show about defining, developing, and delivering the difference only you can make in the second half of life so you can live your legacy. I'm Scott Perry, Encore Life Coach and author of The Art of Encore Living, in addition to being Chief Difference Maker at Creative on Purpose. It's time to play your game. Visit creativeonpurpose.com to get started now. Let's meet today's guest. So thrilled to have Jake Anderson with us here today. Jake, please tell our viewers who you are, what you're up to these days, and where can people go to learn more about you and the difference you're making?

Yeah, thank you so much, Scot. This is great to be on the show with you and an honor to be here to serve your, your audience and your community. So my name is Jake Anderson, and I am, as far as what I am and what I'm about and what I've, what I've been working on, I would say the best way to explain the way that I serve is I focus mostly on purpose-driven creators and business owners by removing the limitations that get into the way of progress, acting as a project manager. So more specifically, I do a lot of work in podcasting. I am the co-host of a podcast called Inside the Den, which is a Web3 community that I am part of. Scott's also part of the same community. This is how we met, the Guardian Academy and the Wolf Den. So I've been very involved in the Web3 blockchain space for a little over a year now. And I also am launching a podcast tomorrow, as a matter of fact, called Journals of a Guardian. And it is an audio journal series. It's a solo podcast where I'm going to be talking about— there's an open-loop learning method that Scott's very familiar with. This is something we've been working through in the Guardian Academy. Where we take certain lessons and we weave it through multiple loops of learning through observation, application, you know, discussion. Of course, there's a consumption of it. So this is a whole experience that I have personally have developed for myself, and I'm going to be bringing forth, you know, to the world, to the public, and how I'm executing that and also creating space for discussion. I also will, in conjunction with this, there's a lot of things rolling out tomorrow. So this is a good opportunity. I also will have my actual community on the Success Finder that's going to be launching with that. So, um, yeah, that's, that's me in a nutshell. I love podcasting. I love connecting with people. I like to get my hands into projects and build. That's where the whole Build with Jake, uh, tag kind of came from, because, you know, if you need somebody that really is ready to take action and, and work through, you know, the technical details and, and, um, and help you formulate, you know, the whatever the project is and get it to the finish line that you're working and connect with to, to make that happen. So that's me. Hopefully that gives a pretty decent summarized version of what I'm up to.

Yeah, it absolutely does. And one of the reasons why I was so thrilled to meet you inside the Guardian Academy and the Wolf Den and to bring you on the show is one of the things that I love the Build with Jake tagline. One of the things that I've noticed about just some of the conversations that you have had, both, you know, in the community, but also, we've had a chance to meet in real life. We happen to be almost neighbors and neighbors in southwestern Virginia, Miles. And, you know, you, one of the taglines for Creative Our Purpose is, you know, doing what, whatever it is that you do with intention, integrity, and imagination. And I see that very much in the way that you are, because you and I had a conversation as you were starting to build out some of the things that you just mentioned. And you bring all of that into what you do. You also mentioned Web3. And I would love— this was a new-to-me term. You actually gave me the definition that helps me wrap my head around it. So I'd love first for you to just share tell our viewers what Web3 is, but also when I'm thinking about Web3, I don't necessarily think about integrity and intention and imagination so very much, but you are helping bring that in. So I'd love to just hear a little bit more about how you see Web3 starting to roll out and the opportunities for people that are making intentional change and using their imagination to, make things better and doing that with some integrity. So starting with a definition of Web3.

Yeah, yeah, that's a great question. And I think the best way to answer what is Web3 is start with answering what is Web1 and what was Web2 and then how that moves into the third version of the internet being Web3. So if you, you know, take a trip down memory lane for anybody that was around during the, say, the mid-'90s when we had AOL and the only way that you could get on the internet was through some dial-up that took forever. You were limited on how much time you could actually spend on the internet. You had the free nights and weekends, and the experience at the time was with the internet, it was more of a read-only format. You would go in, they had chat rooms, which is, we'll get into that in a second when I talk about Web2, but it was mainly just to access information. So that's what you can think of when you think of Web1. Web 2 was the transition to the more having a peer-to-peer interaction where people are actually— and there's a decentralized component of that too. If you think about, um, the internet and how people can access information, you know, you can go on and you've got people like Scott Perry that is delivering a message. He's not really part of any centralized network, although you can look at, you know, platforms like Facebook that does have a centralized component to it, but you as the distributor of information is you're your own entity, right? So with Web2, you can think of it in that fashion where there's now more of an exchange. You know, this is when like the whole social media movement really started to happen. And frankly, a lot of the business that we do these days, and you know, it's funny 'cause Scott mentioned that, you mentioned that like we live close to each other and being online and collaborating with people online, whenever you find that somebody is close to you, it's almost, it's rare and it almost feels feels surprising to see even if somebody's in the next state. But like in the Web2 world, you can do business with anybody in the world. It's— it really opens up those opportunities by removing those barriers to connect and collaborate. Web3 is the trans— really, the difference between Web2 and Web3 is the blockchain piece. And this requires a pretty significant paradigm shift in how you think about things. And it was tough for me because like When I first got involved in the whole crypto NFT space, I actually was probably one of the biggest critics of it. And as I started learning more, you know, through the Guardian Academy, especially the whole concept of the fusion of innovation, it became clear to me that, well, yeah, this is a space to get scrutinized because it's still in that early adoption phase. And if you go back and look at history, even with the evolution of the internet, there once was a time when the internet was called a fad and called all the names because it's new technology. So when you get into Web3, you're like, okay, well, what's actually happening here that is so game-changing and disruptive? And why does this thing still continue to stick around? Well, the way that I see it is with Web3, it's really like, it kind of flips everything up on, on its head, you know, where if you think about community, for instance, and this was one of the biggest observations that I had when I got into the space When I was like really heavy, especially in the internet marketing space, online entrepreneurship, and I was connecting, collaborating, there were a lot of Facebook groups. And I would go into a Facebook group and typically the experience was you would have a group and that leader would kind of be on a stage. They would be presenting. The community might be, you know, in a really like heavily engaged community. You would see some participation, people would show up, they would ask questions, and that might be the extent of it, right? In Web3, because you have ownership, like when you think about Web3, think about ownership being transferred to the community through like an NFT, right? So you take something like the Wolf Den. Well, to get access to the Wolf Den, you have to have a Wolf Pup NFT. There's 5,000 NFTs, that's all that will— there will ever be, and this serves as your ticket. And when, you know, when you think about who holds the tickets to get access to this community and all of the benefits, it's the community that holds them. It's not like centralized within one person. So there's incentive there for the community to actually build on top of the platform. This creates a very interesting dynamic and a lot of divergence too. So people will— you'll see somebody like myself and Duane, we launched the Inside the Den podcast, right? There's incentive there because we actually have ownership. And again, these are observations I've seen because it does— like, like I said, it flips it upside down on its head where you see this distribution of ownership go from one central source down to the community, and communities now have ownership, which which completely changes a lot of behavior and how they show up for the community. So us doing Inside the Den podcast, that not only benefits us as holders, that also benefits Scott as a holder as well because he's part of the community. Scott and, um, and Nicole, you guys do your, your, um, your Space Jams on Twitter Spaces, right? Um, this is, you know, it's, yes, you're doing it because it serves a purpose and there's Yeah, you know, you have people, you're coming together, you're having quality discussions, collaborating around ways that you can grow and develop. And that's one thing that's really cool about, you know, this community that we're in with the Wolf Den and Guardian Academy, because there's intention that's been instilled in that in terms of how people can develop and build themselves. That's creating that behavior, but it's also benefiting the holders because that action is accruing value back to the assets that you hold that serve as the ticket to get access to the community that's showing up way. So that was the biggest observation I saw. And there's so many use cases, you know. Essentially, if you just look at the fundamental level, a blockchain is just an accounting ledger. It's just a way to account for value, for transferring value. And when you think about the internet and where the internet is going, you see a lot of things that are, are kind of moving over to digital, you know. We're not going backwards in terms of technology, we're going forwards. Well, the mechanism for accounting and reconciling and, and, you know, having, you know, documenting transfer of value and assets, that's also going to move along with it. You know, you don't need a trusted third party to verify ownership because that's all done through the blockchain and smart contracts. So what does this mean for, you know, somebody that might want to— this is another observation I saw. Let's say that Scott Perry and I want to do a joint venture collaboration. And part of this might be, you know, hey, you know what, if you do something that supports any holder of my collection as a community— you'll see this with Wolf Pups, right? You had Recovery Punks that came out. This is all about supporting addiction recovery. And, you know, Wolf Pups Labs is— or Wolf Den Labs is a publishing company for intellectual property on the blockchain. So what they want to do is always make sure that any collaboration they do, that value accrues back to Wolf Pup holders because there's incentive there to, um, to build these projects that supports the, the original community that they've created. Well, all of the, you know, the back-end processes, you know, there's royalties that come out of NFTs when they're traded. You can set terms in a smart contract where all that stuff's automated. So I could have it set up where if Scott and I do a joint venture and there's a transaction that happens, then the smart contract will automatically send through the royalty some money over to Scott and some money over to me. And maybe there's a nonprofit that we mutually support that it sends money to. And these are just very tactical examples, and I could be over-explaining a little bit, but I'm just trying to give you some idea as far as use cases to where in the Web3 world this is how things will start to look. Because it's, it's not— it's the accounting piece that's coming over. It's the ledger, and it's the ability to transact and hold and transfer value in a way that's trusted, and you don't need all of the limitations of human human beings to go in as a third party to reconcile and verify. It can all be done using blockchain technology and smart contracts.

Yeah, well, what I— so what I'm hearing is that this, um, transparency and accountability, uh, breaks— it helps lead to this more decentralized system where everyone is empowered. So it's not just about joining a Facebook group and you have some guru that's, you know, setting— I mean, I think any community benefits from having guardrails and bumpers about what, what kind of behavior is in bounds and out of bounds, and what happens if, if someone is not being a good actor within a community. But in general, you know, in the Facebook group paradigm, you have one person making subjective decisions about— and it may change day to day— about what's happening and what things are allowed and what value certain things have. With a decentralized Web3 community built on a blockchain, you actually have, there's accountability on all sides, the person that created the community, the people inside the community, the people that are maybe administrators within the community. And if you care to, you can take a look at what's going on, like where, where is value flowing in a kind of financial or DeFi sense. So that's, I think there's so much potential here. It's one of the reasons why I joined the Guardian Academy is I didn't even, I couldn't even tell you what blockchain was, nevermind crypto or an NFT when I joined. And I'm not sure I could give you a very clear definition right now, but I have some understanding of it. But there's so much potential there. But you mentioned that part of the Build with Jake, project is you're helping people overcome limitations. So what are the kind of limitations that people are going to come up against as they're thinking about Web3 and how are you helping people navigate and negotiate those limitations?

Oh man, Web3, there's quite a few limitations that can get in the way of somebody as they come into the space. The tech is changing and adopting vastly. And, you know, at one point I was, I was in the process of creating kind of like an onboarding guide, an onboarding flow of how to get people from, I don't know anything about this space, to I can safely participate. And I started creating this document, and I realized, uh, after like a couple months that a lot of the things that I put into it were already outdated. Like, that's how fast the technology is evolving. So in my mind, I was like, okay, it doesn't make sense to, to necessarily, um, uh, create a course or anything like that because by the time I'm finished with it, or even just a couple months, it's already going to be outdated. So the way that, uh, some, some of the things that we're really focusing on, and a lot of this pulls in my, my co-host Duane Moffett, who is with Inside the Den. Inside the Den, and you can actually, if you go to staywolfish.com Uh, there's a website there where we have put, you know, all— it's where all of our podcast episodes— we're interviewing people from, from the Wolf Den community, the Guardian Academy. We got the whole syllabus there as well for people if they want to go through the educational content. That's a great place to actually start because that's going to help you build self-efficacy. One thing that's really a huge limitation that you'll see when it comes to people getting into the Web space. There's the regulatory environment. There's not a lot of clarity around how to protect yourself. You have to kind of rely on other people. And what it does is it requires extreme personal responsibility. I'll tell you what, if you want to learn how to protect yourself online and take more responsibility of your behavior, go jump into the Web3 space because that is going to teach you faster than anything. It is, uh, and it's just online in general. It happens in Web2 just as it does in, in the blockchain space too. I mean, people get scammed and there's a lot of bad actors out there and you have to protect yourself. I mean, I've got a horror story about my mother-in-law who got scammed on a real estate deal because a scammer sent a fake fax to the title company with different bank account information and somehow they got a hold of it. So it, it creates a system of checks and balances. Now, so that's a big one right there is like removing, like getting your own self out of the way, because there's a lot of responsibility you need to take as a person. And eliminating that, I guess, that learned helplessness is a term we like to throw around, that can really prevent you from stepping into a new space, shifting a paradigm, and being able to safely participate. So inside the Den, staywolfish.com, we're always building. We actually have a great episode on safety. And, um, just online safety and Web3 security that you can find if you go to staywolfish.com. It's, it's in the episode, you just click there. We're going to be organizing the content, you know, as we, as we continue building it, showing the people, like the people that are actually showing up to, to participate and build in the space, getting some idea of use cases. Um, that can also be a limitation. It's like, well, what does this even do? Where's the value? In a cryptocurrency or an NFT. I used to think that NFTs were just digital JPEGs and pictures. I'm like, why would somebody spend that much money on a picture? I can just get the picture. I don't need— but once you understand that this is something, this is a piece of value that's stored on a blockchain, and this represents ownership in something, um, that opens up a whole nother world of opportunity. It's really what's behind the art that actually is where the value is, is access and utility. And you can do that with NFTs. I just talked about that with the Wolf Pups, right? That represents access. There's also some art with it, but the access that it represents, it changes a whole nother dynamic. So those are some of the limitations, you know, really, you know, bringing forth, you know, using Inside the Den as kind of the channel of communication to broadcast out to people that are really looking to, to get, uh, onboarded and oriented in the Web3 space safely. You know, there's a lot of good people in the Wolf Den, the Guardian Academy. I'm not going to rebuild— I'm not going to build something that already exists and already does a great job. So, you know, the community with the Wolf Den, the Guardian Academy, they've done it. The team there has done an amazing job. The people in the community have also done an amazing job of stepping up and becoming educators and contributors. We're just another example of that and we're doing our part. When I say we're, I'm talking about myself and Duane with Inside the Den to bring education and help people in the Web3 space or people coming into the Web3 space get oriented safely and also effectively understand how to navigate it. So yeah, that would be really where I'm trying to show up and remove some limitations. Hopefully that makes sense. You know, if there's anybody or Scott, if you've observed, because I know you're kind of new to the space, if there's a limitation that you feel like I haven't uncovered, let me know. I'd love to speak to it. Or maybe I have covered it.

No, I think, I think you've done a great job. I mean, I think that, you know, the— for, for people like me that really had no idea, you know, it's, it's first just like getting your head wrapped around the vocabulary. And then, and then, um, you know, one of the first things that happens, you know, when you start to enter the world of NFTs or crypto or the blockchain in general is you're gonna have to do this thing called, called setting up your wallet. Wallet. And the first thing they tell you is, whatever you do, under, you know, pain of death and loss of your firstborn, make sure that you don't give up your seed phrase. And it's like, holy crap. So I think there's the, you know, the, the barrier at first is, um, you know, just the language that's used as you're getting into— you spoke to the safety and security stuff. What I love about the Guardian Academy is that, and you know, I kind of jumped into the wolf den and went through, you know, had to get past all the fear around the safety and security stuff and then got into the Guardian Academy and did all the self-efficacy work. But the Guardian Academy is doing a great job about helping you build it, you know, develop that personal responsibility, giving you the tools to you know, think a little bit more rationally and to avoid, you know, making emotional decisions or, you know, decisions based on negative emotions and that sort of thing. And so I think you have really addressed that. There is something that I would like you to speak to that is a subject near and dear to both our hearts that also speaks to some of the things we learn in the Guardian Academy. And that's open loops. So for someone that heard open loops and thought, hey, that's weird sounding but kind of cool, what would— when you're talking about open-loop learning, tell us exactly what that means.

Yeah, this is a, this is something that has— I've really embraced just the past month and has, has actually made a profound impact on my life. So it's something I'm really passionate about, uh, and I, and I will even drop you a call to action for, for a free resource that will be coming out tomorrow. But let me, let me me, let me address something about open loops first and how it's really impacted my life and give you some context here. Uh, so there's single loop learning, right? And this is something that a lot of us is very accustomed to, and it's the process of just you consume a piece of content and you acquire some information, and then you close your loop. You close the loop, meaning that you, you pretty much come to a conclusion of what you think about it. And there's a, uh, there's a part, or there's an episode that comes from the Guardian Academy. It's through their foundations where it speaks about open loops in learning. And what they reference is a Harvard Business Review. It's called "Teaching Smart People How to Learn." So that's something that smart people would, would do as a way to kind of protect their identity was through this process of single-loop learning. Because, you know, you're smart; you've been told you're smart your whole life. So when you're, you know, presented with a question or a problem, you have to show up and be smart. And typically, the orientation is to be valid or right.. It's not so much being useful. It's like, oh, let me— this is me, I got to be smart. Let me show you how right I am and correct about an answer here. So that's like, that's single-loop learning. The alternative is open-loop learning. And what that involves is the complete opposite. It's, it's you consume a piece of content and you acquire information, but rather than just closing with a conclusion about it, you keep it open. You observe it in reality. You go and journal on it. And for multiple— the way I see it is you end up creating the space where multiple perspectives can kind of enter into this lesson you just acquired, this new piece of information, new concept, whatever it may be. And through this process, and frankly, I don't think you really ever close the loop on it. I think you should always be a student of life and gathering new perspective around things. And, you know, the minute you name the puppy and close the loop on it, the minute you stop learning. The way I see it. So open-loop learning is, is more continuous observation, curiosity into the concepts you're learning. So what I had done is, you know, there's this open-loop learning process, is I took the process of journaling and kind of made it the center and core of how I go through this learning process of open loops. So what I'll do is I'll just give you a quick, like, tactical framework of how this comes together, is I'll listen to a piece of content. I like to listen; I'm an auditory learner, visual learner too, to a degree. But It's more through this. I'll just listen to the podcast episode or consume the piece of content, and then I'll write my key takeaways as I'm listening. After that, I'll finish it up with a summary of a 6-word update. This is something we talk about in Guardian Academy where you summarize your thoughts into just 6 words on what you just learned. And then the next day, I'll actually repeat that same process. And the reason I do that is because it just gives me a little bit different perspective that second go around. Now, when I'm not, you know, outside of this process, usually the rest of the day, I have this journal. I should have brought it with me just so I can show you an image of it, but it's basically just a binder, and it's— I got printout sheets where I put my findings on, document my observations. So I'll actually spend time observing what I just learned, and I'll actively go and see where I've seen this show up in the real world around me, my experiences. I'll think I'll reflect and I'll document those observations. And then the last part— well, there's two pieces. There's discussion and then there's share. So the share piece is I'll, I'll take what I've learned and then I'll share it. So that's what's coming out tomorrow, is a new podcast called Journals of a Guardian. They're just audio journals of me sharing these lessons that I've learned using the open-loop learning method. I'm also in my Instagram— this is going to be heavy with, uh, I've created these carousel cards because I'm also— when I use visuals and design my lessons and thoughts through visuals. It helps me, I guess, just kind of build new perspective around it. I see things a little bit differently. I kind of look at it, I'm just sitting there, just shaping and modeling this concept and building perspective around it. It's making it more well-rounded, using open-loop learning as the model for it. And then there's discussion. That's getting on a call with people and actually having dialogue with what you've learned around these concepts, because typically people will see it a little bit different than you. And as you've gone through this, you know, a number, you know, weaving these multiple loops through the learning process, never fully closing it. You know, you'll go back later to the actual lesson that you learned, go back to the source and re-listen to it again, and you'll hear something completely— not completely different, but it's much different than when you originally heard it. And so you'll see like there's growth. There's also application. I kind of look at application just through the whole process, you know. The minute I listen to the content, I'm already thinking like, "Where could I apply this in my life? Where could this be put to action?" That's really important. So the thing I'll wrap up with, with open-loop learning, it's really the process of acquiring wisdom. That's how I see it. Single-loop learning is the process of acquiring information. Wisdom comes with multiple perspectives, and it also comes with the action and application of the thing that you just learned. So that's the really big difference between the two.

Yeah, I love that. Well, it's, uh, I, I love that you pointed out that, you know, we, we live in a, in a culture that rewards certainty. Um, and if you think about the things that are actually certain in life, um, the only one I can really think of is death. And, and we can't necessarily be certain that that's the end because we don't know. Um, and so, you know, The open-loop learning is facilitating, you know, cultivating curiosity and resilience. Because if you, you know, if you are clinging to ideas, just your beliefs, just because they're your beliefs and you cling to them in the face of evidence to the contrary or better ways of doing things, you've created a very fragile way of being. And open-loop learning allows you to continue to develop and grow., that increases resilience and actually leads to antifragility. You're coming up with better ideas and deeper perspectives. And as you were saying, wisdom. So it's a really profound way of being. I encourage all the, everyone that's viewing this, uh, discussion to, to, um, check out Jake's new podcast and, and his journal. So we are at the end of our time and we haven't even touched, I have a whole list of things I was hoping to to touch on, including Success Finder. Jake and I recently have both been invited to this community, which will have a Web3 component baked into it very soon. So I'll leave some, some links in, uh, below this episode so that people can check all of these things out, including, um, staywolfish.com, where you can actually access almost all the things that Jake has referenced today. Jake, our last question is always just around, um, sharing one insight, quote, maxim, exercise, principle, or practice that you would like to leave with listeners that they can take and apply to, you know, the difference that they're trying to make in the world, help them play their game with a little bit more clarity and confidence. Open-loop learning would be a great one, but you've already covered that one. Is there a second, another idea that you can leave our listeners with, or another exercise you could leave them with that would help them fly a little bit higher in the difference that they want to make and help them live their legacy after this broadcast.

Yeah, and this is certainly open-loop learning. I will say the other thing would be to don't, don't pursue, like pursuing excellence is really the idea here. But when it comes to taking action on something, I have found a lot of value in operating in a feedback loop. Right? Like, we don't— like, a lot of people, and I've made this mistake plenty of times, so I will raise my hand as guilty as charged, but when you're starting a new endeavor, a new business, you have this, like, like, perspective, like, oh, I've got to have a logo, and I've got to have the website, and everything's got to be there and done, and before I can ever go and serve anybody. Like, there's— you don't need to put all these barriers in front of you to just start taking action, you know? Taking action and really keeping yourself in that state of action and operating through a feedback loop. Go take a little bit of action, play some soft offense, get feedback, and then let that tell you what the next 1 or 2 things that you need to do. You know, you don't have to overbuild. Scott's actually helped me with this recently because I was, you know, and I fall, like I said, I fall in this trap sometimes. And sometimes you need a good coach like Scott to remind you that, you know, hey, like, I think right now you look like you're ready right now. Like, why do you need to wait? Why do you need to put things off? So So I would just remind anybody that is looking to take that first step to just take the step and, you know, remember that it's OK to, like, everything has to be done, you know, build with your community, build with your people, let them be part of the process, and things will evolve as it should. And a lot of times when you do it that way, you'll look back 6 months ago, wow, I could have never conceived that this is what it would look like. Back when I started. But that's because you got your people involved in the process. So that would be my piece of advice.

Really appreciate that, Jake. Learning that does not lead to action is useless. And it's— if you can build out loud and in public in a community, then you will get the feedback and the insight and the inspiration you need to iterate more quickly and build something bigger and stronger. And as I was sharing with Jake when he was overthinking his thing, focus on what's essential and learn how to do that effortlessly before you add any complexity. Also just want to give a shout, quick shout-out to Simone Jo Moore, who shared that, "Wouldn't it be great if we rewarded people for their curiosity and lifelong learning focus?" Indeed it would, Simone Jo. I would just encourage you to check out the Guardian Academy and what's going on at Success Finder. I think you'll find people like us that do things like this. And with that, I want to thank everyone for tuning in. Jake and I really appreciate you lending us some of your valuable time and attention. And we hope that today's broadcast motivates you to take a bolder step into possibility, to keep go-go going with the ideas and finding, developing, and delivering the difference only you can make. Visit creativeonpurpose.com. If you're watching on social media or YouTube, leave a comment, share a question, or tell us your biggest takeaway from this episode. And if you're listening as a podcast, please leave us a 5-star review. It helps more of the right people collide with the conversations that we're having here and helping us all work together to make things better. Now take the insight and inspiration from today's show, play your game all in and full out. Jake, thank you so much for, uh, giving us the benefit of your time, attention, and, uh, wisdom today.

Thank you so much. It's been a pleasure, Scott. Really appreciate it.