THIS ISN'T a SELF-HELP BOOK. IT'S a HELP OTHERS BOOK.
You enhance your life most when you make a difference in the lives of others. That work is at the intersection of your values, talents, and tribe.
It’s time to fly higher in an endeavor that makes a difference. Are you ready?
IT'S TIME TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE
Have you wasted enough time traveling the well-worn path of what’s expected? Are you done seeking a destination mapped out by the status quo?
That map leads to where everyone else is headed. Do you want to settle for the tried and true, the ordinary, and the unremarkable?
DRAW YOUR OWN MAP
It’s time to embark on a voyage of discovery. Who are you? What are you good at? Where do you belong?
Endeavor is a compass to help you draw your own map and a process to encourage you to step into your “what’s next” with integrity and intention.
THE WHAT, WHO, AND PROMISE OF THE ENDEAVOR BOOK
What's It For? Endeavor is a book about discovering your life's work. Finding fulfillment, prosperity, and meaning through making a difference.
Who's It For? You're not defined by your role or job, but by your values and vocation. Cultivate excellence through work that matters.
What's the Promise? The work you're meant to do is work you get to do. Work that's worth it. Endeavor helps you define "what's next" and step into it.*
WHO IS SCOTT PERRY?
Scott is a husband, father, teacher, and musician from Floyd, VA. Scott prospers in a number of enterprises beyond his 35-year career as a professional guitarist and teacher through the principles shared in Endeavor. A graduate of the altMBA, Scott now coaches in Seth Godin's Marketing Seminar and The Bootstrapper's Workshop. BeCreativeOnPurpose.com is the home of Scott's long-running weekly blog and broadcast sharing lessons for flying higher in endeavors that make a difference.
*Purchase of this title includes a free copy of The Endeavor Project Guidebook: A Companion Workbook for Endeavor, and a discount coupon for the companion online course.
Scott Perry is a husband, father, teacher, musician, and Difference Maker at Creative on Purpose. You may also know him as a head coach in Seth Godin's Akimbo Workshops and as the author of Endeavor.
Scott believes excellence is cultivated through work that enhances the lives of others. He helps people like you step into what's next with curiosity, courage, and a commitment to make things better.
So, right at the very end of this little guidebook on how to live and work with excellence, Scott Perry shares a sweet melancholy moment of personal awareness inspired by thoughts of his own mortality and purpose. “You don’t know when your last moment will be…,” he says, but “recognise that it will come.” With this recognition, he says, in that direct and personal way that sounds as if he’s speaking right to me, “begin an endeavour.” Begin something, some new work. It’s time, Kathryn, it’s time. It’s time to choose your next endeavour, he says. Some endeavour that will make a difference, an endeavour that will develop and deliver on your potential, an endeavour that will engage and nourish others.
Perry’s mortal meditation at the end of his “Endeavor” is actually the beginning of the whole story. When you embark on any endeavour from the perspective of your own mortality, the very nature of your endeavour changes. It’s not just the awareness and acceptance of the inevitability of death, but the awareness of your place in the universe—the little place you hold within your familial, social, communal, national, international, and global circles; this little place that is both infinitely insignificant in the grand scheme of the universe and yet infinitely significant in the smaller scheme of your own personal narrative—this perspective changes everything. Add thoughts of your personal death to that and your choices about what you will endeavour to do are radically transformed.
The French classical philosopher and historian of philosophy, Pierre Hadot—via the ancient Stoics—said as much. In his “What is Ancient Philosophy?” he wrote that “the thought of imminent death […] transforms our way of acting in a radical way, forcing us to become aware of the infinite value of each instant.”
Scott Perry, also via the Stoics, has arrived at a radical transformation with his current endeavour. He has transformed his lifelong learning of and dedication to Stoic philosophy plus his lifelong passion for music and teaching into a modern-day guide for the creative entrepreneur who wishes to be engaged, I guess, in a gentler kind of entrepreneurial activity where spiritual, ethical, creative, and social capital is invested for profits that surpass pure financial ones.
Perry’s guide is this compact and concise “compass” composed to help us map out a journey towards excellence, a journey not unlike Perry’s own, I imagine. When he says his book is not a self-help book but a “help-others” book, this is not a gimmick. Apart from a daily dose of death contemplation, the Stoics also recommended engaging with our fellow human beings and, where required, teaching, leading, acting as a role model. Since Perry has built a fulfilling and prosperous career as a professional musician and teacher, it's time for his own new endeavour and thus he endeavours to offer more guidance to like-minded creators, his “tribe” (to use Seth-Godin jargon) which he leads with integrity and intention. With his “Endeavor,” Perry, just like the Stoics before him, has composed a little handbook which we can all slip into our pockets or handbags to literally have “at hand” at all times of spiritual, intellectual, and creative need as we navigate towards a life of excellence with and for others.