Permissionless Apprenticeship: Takeaways from Jack Butcher's Course
Jack Butcher is building an online empire.
His latest course is called Permissionless Apprenticeship — where he shares his growth method for leveraging the Internet’s network effects. He starts the course with a solid reminder:
“We're living in times of unprecedented opportunity.” He calls this the “era of permissionless creativity.”
It’s true. The Internet offers unprecedented opportunities to create, network, sell, and scale.
As creators, we have to leverage this massive opportunity.
The philosophy behind permissionless apprenticeship
The internet is big.
4.5 billion people have access to the Internet. As a creator, access to an audience is not the problem. We can knock on any door we like. But the only way to connect with an audience is to provide value.
Many people think the market is too saturated, but the Internet is just getting started.
If you’re reading this, you’re probably a go-getter, motivated, and engaged. You are the perfect person to leverage the Internet.
The Internet rewards productive people who can create their own work.
Things you don’t need:
Permission
Certification
Six-figure tuition
Things you do need:
Patience
Practice
Skill
Consistency
What is Permissionless Apprenticeship?
We’re all familiar with the apprenticeship model. You work for someone and you don’t just get paid in dollars, you get paid in:
Experience
Knowledge
Connection to someone esteemed in your industry — and consequently, their network of connections
Think of how this differs from mentorship or coaching. When we seek a mentor, we’re asking someone more esteemed than us to help us for free. That’s not very interesting to them.
When we seek a coach, we’re asking someone to help us but we’re required to pay them a lot of money (ugh).
An apprenticeship is when you help the person who knows more than you in order to learn from them and leverage their network for free.
The Internet has created a massive shift in the way talent is discovered at every level. You can deliver value to people that have a problem no matter who they are, where they are, or what level of stardom they’ve reached.
Let’s look at an example.
Want to connect with Jack Butcher? I did.
I wrote this article for him, sent it to him, and said, “Need more content for your website? I wrote this for you and you can publish it anytime for free.”
He read it and loved it.
For this model to work, you have to offer something valuable. You need a craft you’ve been honing. For me, it’s my writing. I’ve been writing online professionally for seven years. I felt confident I could write a piece for Jack that he would love. No matter what happened to the article I pitched, I was practicing my craft. If he said no, I could’ve repurposed the content for my own site. Either way, I’m building work for my portfolio— which gives me proof of talent.
Examples of Permissionless Apprenticeship in action
Jack offers a wealth of examples in the course:
One case study jumped out at me the most: Polina Marinova Pompliano studies the world's most interesting people and companies for her media company The Profile.
She researches big names, writes in-depth profiles, and leverages her Substack newsletter to own (and monetize) the relationship with her audience.
Her articles go out to thousands of subscribers every Sunday. Like every other creator, her audience started at 0.
One of her recent features was about Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson. She created this Twitter thread about The Rock, which he then retweeted to his millions of followers.
You can see how Polina’s audience has quickly grown with this method by getting exposure to massive audiences.
How to leverage this technique now
Decide what you want to deliver. This should be based on your unique talents (writing, design, video editing, etc.) For example, let’s say you want to deliver a blog summarizing a celeb’s recent book or course.
Decide who you’re delivering your talent to. For example, you want to send it to the course creator in case they want to send it out to their followers as proof of their excellent work.
Create the asset.
Hit send.
Build a portfolio of your work somewhere. This is a permissionless portfolio. Start to build proof of your talent online with your social profiles and website. Let yourself experience the compound effects of publishing consistently.
In my opinion, the best place to post your portfolio is on a website, especially if that portfolio includes words. The SEO opportunity is huge and I haven’t seen the compounding opportunity of SEO replicated with podcasts or Instagram yet. If you’re going to publish consistently, consider doing it on 1) Twitter 2) A blog 3) A newsletter. Or better yet, all three.
No matter what, you win
This course helped me see the exponential potential of:
Working in public
Leading with value
Leveraging open networks
You get to practice your craft, offer esteemed people your work for free in exchange for potential network growth, and build a compounding portfolio.
Next Steps
If you enjoyed these concepts, delve deeper by taking Permissionless Apprenticeship for $49
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