The End of Jobs: Money, Meaning and Freedom Without the 9-to-5 by Taylor Pearson

Author:Taylor Pearson [Pearson, Taylor]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
ISBN: 9781619613362
Published: 2015-06-27T22:00:00+00:00

10

The Return of Apprenticeships

The other social script that is emerging (or rather re-emerging) is apprenticeships. For thousands of years leading up to 1900, careers were started not by degrees, but in apprenticing. Benjamin Franklin started his career as an apprentice in his older brother’s print shop. He stair stepped his way into owning his own print shop before moving into politics and foreign affairs.41

In Medieval Europe, it was traditional for aspiring tradesman to apply for apprenticeships with a master of their craft. They would go to work in the master’s shop, usually for around seven years, before passing into the journeyman phase where they were required to do a project that they would submit for review to their prospective guild. If they passed, they’d be accepted as a master who could start the whole cycle over by taking apprentices. This was the way skill sets were passed on among families and communities.

In that sense, apprenticing today works on the same premise as stair stepping—it’s a way to build skillsets and relationships. While stair stepping works on the premise of having some alternative source of income—be it consulting/freelancing or a job—and investing that in building products, apprenticing is based on the idea of aligning your primary source of income with building skillsets and relationships.

The premise is pretty straight forward: you find someone that is doing what you would like to be doing in five to ten years and cut them a deal: “I’ll come work for you for relatively cheap and I’ll create results you would normally have to pay a lot more for, in exchange I get to train at altitude. I get to see the inside of how your business works: how you launch products, what the industry looks like, and who I need to know.” Instead of playing with your own money (like what you would need from consulting, a job, or savings), you play with house money.

Apprenticing was how I got started in entrepreneurship. I taught myself a bit of Search Engine Optimization using Moz’s Beginner’s Guide to SEO, a free guide online. I paid $20 to get a hosting account from GoDaddy.com and built a website outside my job at the time, as an English teacher. I cold-emailed a handful of marketing agencies and used those sites as proof of my skills. That turned into a part-time internship, and eventually a full-time job where I learned a lot about internet marketing, project management, and technology.

I went and worked in another small entrepreneurial company for two years, where I got to move from SEO to Marketing Manager to running a small division.

I was able to acquire entrepreneurial skills by being on the inside of an entrepreneurial company.

Unbeknownst to me until very late in the game, it turned out I was investing into entrepreneurship.

Charlie Hoehn originally worked with business coach Ramit Sethi and then author Tim Ferriss as an apprentice for a few years before publishing a book, Play It Away.

New York Times bestselling author Ryan Holiday apprenticed

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