1. He describes the "canvas strategy" which includes serving as a variety of tasks as an apprentice or 'go-fer'.
2. Holiday worked for Robert Greene who has written the bestsellers The 48 Laws of Power and Mastery. Apprenticeships were standard practice since antiquity. For example, Michaelangelo worked in sculpture from the time he was six, often ten hour days. When he had created the Pieta by age 26 and was told it was remarkable since he was so young. He answered that one might not think so if they knew he had twenty years of grueling experience.
3. The trainee uses the 'canvas strategy' by "finding canvases" for his patron to prepare. Benjamin Franklin used it to enter the printing trade as a route to becoming a writer instead of pursuing the family business of candlemaking. As 'trainee' the student gets experience and inside access, at the expense of low wages and anonymity. But by serving the 'master' well, the student gets opportunity for advancement.
4. Malcolm Gladwell documents the vestiges of apprenticeships in his book Outliers in his chapter 10,000 Hours. As examples, he suggests that medical, legal, musical, and chess mastery all traverse paths with 10,000 hours or more of training. We simply don't have shortcuts to mastery.
5. Very successful coaches have risen using the 'canvas strategy', including Lawrence Frank who rose to become an NBA coach after starting as a manager for Bob Knight at Indiana. Bill Belichick started as barely-paid errand boy for the Baltimore Colts' Ted Marchibroda.
Trainees can feel unappreciated, used, and disenchanted. They can be the butt of jokes. Medical students are called "wedges" because "the wedge is man's simplest tool." But ultimately, when you clear the way for your senior, you make a life for yourself.
