In this solo YouTube episode, Scott Perry – an Encore Life Coach, former professional musician, and former head coach for Seth Godin’s Akimbo Workshops – presents his Guardian Academy capstone project. He begins with a personal introduction, outlining his multiple vocations and his role as a husband, father, and new grandfather. Perry recounts his unconventional entry into the Guardian Academy, sparked by a Facebook ad coach (Laurel Portie) who introduced him to Nick Peterson’s book Bumpers and the Success Finder app. He describes the Academy’s mission to help purpose‑driven people navigate Web3 and explains his path through various community channels, including acquiring a Wolf Pup NFT and joining the Personal Development Council. Perry identifies his single most powerful insight from the Academy as the dual nature of decentralized communities – their potential for empowerment when grounded in personal responsibility, and their perils when that responsibility is lacking. He then defines a solvable problem: the need to flip the ratio of time spent on his online business versus time spent caring for his grandson Jasper, after volunteering to provide daycare for his daughter‑in‑law. To address this, he creates a “bumper” schedule (a concept from Bumpers) that allocates early‑morning work, dedicated childcare hours, flexible midday time, and evening family time, visualized in a PDF. He details the actions taken to embed his new knowledge: publishing TGA‑inspired blog posts (tagged “TGA”), integrating concepts into his Coaching Business Prescription program, referencing the ideas in an upcoming book, and developing an exercise called “Isn’t That Interesting” to promote mindful pauses. He also shares links to his prior book Onward and invites viewers to engage via comments, email, or by joining the Guardian Academy. The episode closes with a call to sign up for his newsletter and a motivational sign‑off encouraging listeners to live their legacy. Overall, the presentation blends personal narrative, community insight, practical scheduling methodology, and resource sharing to demonstrate how Perry applied Guardian Academy teachings to his family and professional life.
Welcome to Creative on Purpose, a show sharing insight and inspiration for defining 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 Chief Difference Maker at Creative on Purpose. Today is a special episode. I'm sharing my capstone project for the Guardian Academy. I get right to what each of those things means, so let's get right to the episode.
Hey, I'm Scott Perry, owner of Wolf Pup #3717, AKA Artemis the Wonder Dog, and this is my Guardian Academy capstone project. Uh, for those of you that haven't collided with me yet inside the Guardian Academy, I'm going to give you a little introduction of myself first. And then for those of you that know me outside of the Guardian Academy, that— and I'm going to give you a little description of what the Guardian Academy is and all about. Then I'm going to jump into my capstone project. There's links somewhere below or next to this video that will take you to some of the people and places that, that I'm going to be referencing in this, in this video. So for those of you inside the Guardian Academy that haven't collided with me yet, my name is Scott Perry. I am first and foremost a husband, father, and recently grandfather. I'm also an Encore Life Coach, helping people define and deliver the difference only they can make in the second half of life so that they can live their legacy. I've had several vocations of my own over the years that I've pursued, uh, 25-year career as a professional musician and guitar teacher, as well as a 5-year tenure as a head coach inside Seth Godin's Akimbo Workshops. But now I'm dedicated to leading this movement to help people reconnect with their unique gift and share it with others that would benefit and whose lives would be enhanced by colliding with them. For those of you that know me through my work at Creative On Purpose or through my work at Seth Godin's Alt MBA and Akimbo Workshops, or maybe even as a, as a musician friend or neighbor, I want to tell you a little bit about the Guardian Academy. And I'm just going to read the way that they describe themselves. The Guardian Academy is a community helping purpose-driven individuals, organizations, and companies navigate the emerging Web3 world and bridge the gap between emerging new technology and everyday life. My origin story as to how I collided with and joined the Guardian Academy is a little complicated, so I thought I would just share that. I didn't come through the front door. I'm not even sure I came through the side door or back door. I think I came in through a side door trapdoor of some sort. Um, what happened was I began working earlier in 2022 with a Facebook ad coach named Laurel Portie, and even though Laurel is a really fantastic Facebook ad expert who teaches people how to leverage low-cost ads in a way that's empathetic and ethical, I learned so much more from her than that, in part because of things that she had learned through TGA founder Nick Peterson. So she made me aware of Nick, but I didn't really investigate his work until Laurel sent me a copy of Nick's book Bumpers. And I read that over a weekend when my wife and I were spending a weekend hiking around the New River Valley Gorge. And It was a really profound book in many ways. My first impression was this book has a lot of grammatical errors and spelling errors and so forth. But I was able to get past that because the ideas inside it were just so compelling and so profound. And I'll get a little bit into how I leveraged one of those lessons a little bit further on in the capstone. And then towards the end of my time being coached by Laurel, she sent me an invitation to join an app called Success Finder. And this is a project that Laurel's involved in, that Nick and Dan Nicholson have created along with Brandon and Dr. Jeff Spencer and some other folks. They're all in there, and Jeff Moore as well. And I joined the Success Finder, and Nick had in his, uh, in his community, uh, all of his Nixmas collection videos, uh, and a lot of other great content. And I watched literally every single one of those videos twice, uh, twice so far because I'm planning on revisiting them some more. So I was really getting a deep dive into Nick's work. I was finding a lot of resonance and alignment with things I had been already thinking about and working on and principles and practices I was applying in my own life and business, but, you know, through a unique perspective that really enriched, you know, ideas I already was aware of, but also turned me on to a lot of new compelling ideas, principles, practices that I was able to bake into the work that I was doing and also just bake into my everyday life and relationships.
It wasn't—
so I became a member of Nick's Telegram channel, and I remember seeing a message where he was offering this opportunity to work more closely with him doing something called over the shoulder, and I just decided I was going to do this. It appeared that I had to buy this Wolf Pup NFT to do that. So I figured out how to do that and joined the Wolf Den discourse after I had my NFT, totally unaware that there was this first step that I was intended to take through the Guardian Academy. And again, Laurel came to my rescue when I was trying to sort some things out. She said, oh, you need to go to the Garden. Academy, and I did that. Wasn't aware that there was a discourse associated with it. Raised my hand to become a, a council member, uh, person in the Personal Development Council in TGA, and then finally realized that there was a TGA discourse of its own. And so that's kind of how I ended up in this ecosystem, and again, very convoluted path. More complicated than it had to be, probably, uh, all due to my own, um, my own failures and irresponsibilities. But I'm really grateful that I collided with this community. And, uh, so I'm gonna just go through the capstone questions now. Um, the first is, what's the single most powerful insight from my time in the Guardian Academy? Well, I would say that that is, um, just the power and the perils of a decentralized community. And how building that community on the fundamental principle of personal responsibility and seeing, stepping into, staying in, and sharing your power to be a force for good and to build connections that are intended to enhance all parties, that really helps mitigate the downside of decentralized communities and leverages and creates asymmetry for the upside. If anything, that, that was the most powerful thing. There's been a lot of ahas and takeaways. The next step in the, in the capstone is clear communication of my solvable problem. So this began when I was working with Laurel, and it was I had to flip the ratio of time spent on my business with time spent with my family. And this was sharpened to a fine point when in August of 2021, my son and daughter-in-law announced that we were going to become grandparents, my wife and I immediately raised our hand saying we wanted to provide daycare when our daughter-in-law went back to being a teacher. And my son, of course, was continuing at his job. And after we volunteered to do this, we both realized, oh, we spend like 8 to 10 hours a day in our online, you know, respective online businesses. How are we going to make time to take care of Jasper for 8 or 9 hours a day? So I literally had to flip the amount of time I was spending in and on my business with the time I spent with my family. And so my macro belief is this idea of legacy isn't the money and monuments you leave behind, but it's the difference you're making right now. And so this is my macro belief is that We all are sufficient as we are, even as we strive to do and be more and better with and for people we care about. And so, macro belief was I had to align my macro behavior, spending more time with my family and less time in and on my business, with my micro actions, which were spending way too much time in and on my business and not enough time with my family. The outline of the bumpers I put in place was literally I took, um, the, uh, last exercise in bumpers, which is creating your schedule, um, and I just mapped out a way that I could, um, that I could work for the first 2 hours of my day, which begins at 5 AM, uh, so that I could then take Jasper from 7 a.m. until noon, which is the time my wife really needs to be working on her business. And then I had what I called flex time from noon until 5 o'clock when Jasper gets picked up. And then from 5— and 5 is my digital sunset— and then from 5 o'clock until 9 o'clock, that's time that I spend with my wife. And so I literally mapped that out in a PDF. I'll share a slide that shows that, but that was the, that was the primary bumper that I put into place. Next step is just the other evidence, excuse me, other evidence of action taken to implement the knowledge I gained from TGA into my personal, social, or business life. So I have taken not just the things I've learned in TGA, but the things I've learned through the Success Finder app, and the Nick Smith videos and other videos, And I've kind of repurposed and reframed those ideas from my perspective and, and also in the work that I do. And so I've created several blog posts that are kind of based on ideas I learned in TGA or from other connections with the TGA family, like Nick and Dan, Jeff, and, and Dr. Spencer and Randy. Um, and so I've, I've created a, actually a tag TGA. If you want to see my take on some of those things, you can go to creativeonpurpose.com/blog and click on the TGA tab, uh, tag, and it will take you to the, the posts that are informed and inspired by TGA. And then I also, um, actually before I even was aware of the Guardian Academy was taking some of the things I was learning through the Nixmas videos and baking them into my coaching programs. And I created a program called the Coaching Business Prescription, which helps coaches that are actually doing great work, um, that people that are independent contractors, not gurus, uh, experts or charlatans, but coaches that are profoundly, deeply dedicated to really making a difference by helping people bring forth, uh, their unique gifts and step into their power, um, to share that gift with people that need them to show up so their lives will be enhanced, um, by the difference only they can help them make. And I took some of these ideas like form over function and closer doesn't equal more, or more doesn't equal closer, um, and, uh, the bar— Seneca's Barbell and other things I was learning, and I literally baked them into the curriculum of, uh, a course, uh, an accelerator based, uh, on the, uh, coaching business prescription. There's also a book where these are referenced, uh, that's coming out, um, in the near future. And I've shared links to the YouTube videos. You can see those, um, and you'll see whenever I reference or wherever I'm kind of repurposing ideas, um, from Nick or the TGA, I make sure I give them a hat tip. And then, you know, the other is just that I definitely am baking all the concepts, all the principles, all the practices into my Difference Maker community and my Art of Encore Living coaching programs. Those are not linked below because the only way that you can work with me is to It has to start with the conversation, making sure that it's a right fit for all parties concerned. And then finally, just additional relevant insights or experience related to TGA. I've shared links to two things. The first is this exercise I created called Isn't That Interesting, which helps kind of insert a pause when you find yourself in an anxious or difficult situation and you need to pause so that instead of going into reactivity and human mindset mode, you can pause and, and assess. You can case the situation, meaning collect the data, assess the data, create a strategy, and then execute that strategy in a way that is much more responsive and champion mindset. And so that's just an article that you're welcome to look at if it's helpful. And then I shared also a link to my latest book, not the one that I'm writing about coaching, but one I've written in the past at the beginning of the pandemic to help people make better decisions and deeper connections during the pandemic. That book is called Onward. So that's my capstone project. I hope for the Guardian Academy, I hope if you're in the Guardian Academy that you find this helpful. And if you are not in the Guardian Academy, but this has piqued your curiosity, There's a link down below where you can learn more about the Guardian Academy, and if you choose to do so, join. And of course, you're welcome to send me an email or, or leave a comment wherever you're finding this, and I'll be happy to answer any questions and supply any encouragement or support. So that's my Guardian Academy capstone project. Hope it was helpful. Thanks very much for the opportunity. And, uh, thank you, Nick, uh, and team for the great work that you're doing and the difference you're making.
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