I have had so many people who have taught me so many things over the years. It would be very easy to adopt what I feel is the majority world opinion and think, “well, they were paid to teach me.” And it’s true that many, if not most, were paid to teach me things.

But I feel that information and knowledge are free. “Free as in beer,” meaning available without the exchange of money or value, and also “free as in speech” meaning available without restriction. What we pay for is the TRANSMISSION of knowledge: we pay for the teacher’s time, not what’s in their heads.

And that’s why I teach. Yes, sometimes I get paid for that, but plenty of times I don’t. And it’s fine — if I’m making enough to cover expenses, then I don’t feel I should be hoarding knowledge.

While I feel that most of life is not as binary as it’s sometimes made out to be, I do feel that knowledge is pretty binary: you’re either sharing it, or you’re hoarding it. Maybe you get paid to share it, which is absolutely fine and respectable, especially if knowledge transmission is your full-time job.

But if you already have a full-time job, and if it’s already making ends meet for you, you still need to be transmitting knowledge. You don’t need to change the world. You don’t need to moonlight as an instructor. Share something small, with just one person. Constantly be transmitting knowledge that you have, so that other people have it. The transmission of knowledge, I feel, is what truly sets us apart as a species. Other animals use crude tools; it’s our ability to share what we’ve learned that allows each generation to iterate and improve our tools, our processes, and our collective lives.

So many people have taught you things without being paid to do so, haven’t they? I mean, really think about it — I’m sure you learned something yesterday, or the day before, that didn’t come from a paid teacher in some kind of formal class, right? Well, if that knowledge was transmitted to you free of charge, then you’ve incurred a debt. You can pay it off by transmitting something to someone else, also free of charge.

The success of your life is measured by the lives you’ve helped succeed. And you don’t have to help in some major, earthshaking way. Remember, even horseshoes are powerful.

Wouldn’t you rather live in a world where you helped one person take even one tiny step forward than in one where you didn’t?

One thing I feel people get wrong about “Be the Master” is around the word teaching.

The word “teaching” gets a bad rap in many organizations, because nearly everyone immediately visualizes a classroom environment. They start to worry about resources, like where they’ll find room for it, and how they’ll set aside time for everyone to basically take off work and go into class. That’s not what teaching should mean, but I get that all of our cultural experiences tell us that’s what it is.

“Mentoring” gets more love in most organizations, but I still dislike it. Mentor was a dude in “The Odyssey,” and his student wasn’t named “Mentee.” And mentoring STILL creates that toxic “teacher-versus-student” vibe, where one person is demonstrably better than the other.

In most true apprenticeships, teaching isn’t a formal thing you set aside time for, go into a different room for, and so on. Teaching isn’t one person being set above another. In a true Master/apprentice relationship, it’s just people working together. One of them likely has more experience than the other, but they can both learn from each other.

When I worked as an aircraft mechanic apprentice, I worked alongside a journeyman or Master mechanic. They taught me a lot, much of which wasn’t in our extensive manuals on how to assemble the aircraft. The “tricks of the trade,” so to speak. Yet even as a first-year apprentice, I could contribute, because I was never made to feel like I was in a traditional classroom environment where my instructor was “superior” to me. A good example: there are a couple of hard-to-reach spots in an F-14, and you have to snake your hand up through machinery to install cotter keys in the end of bolts. It’s hard, because you can’t really get any tools in there, so you have to bend the end of the cotter key by hand. I suggested snaking a piece of safety wire up and round the cotter key, and then yanking down on it to bend the key’s “leg” down. “Huh,” the guy I was working with said. “Let’s try it.” It worked, and it called a couple other mechanics over to show them.

If you read “Timothy the Blacksmith” again in “Be the Master,” you’ll see that Timothy and Edmund learned from each other, and though Timothy was in the “superior” position in the smithy. THAT is what apprenticeship and Mastery is all about. It’s teaching in that it’s knowledge transfer, but it’s not a class, it’s not a “lunch and learn” session, and it’s not “mentoring.” It’s simply working alongside someone, showing them what to do but also letting them actually do it — and paying attention to their observations. Apprentices often bring a fresh, unbiased view to their work, and it’s useful to have them articulate that view. It’s a good way to have “ah-ha!” moments and change your perspective on something that you’ve just gotten in a rut about.

A true Master/apprentice relationship doesn’t require you to take time away from work to teach; you teach AS PART OF that work. Working and teaching as there exact same thing. Sure, it takes a little longer to get things done, because you’re letting your apprentice do some of the work, and they’re just learning how. But it’s nothing like hauling everyone into a classroom and talking at them for a few days, hoping they remember it all, and then tossing them onto the job. Because apprentices get to work right along their Master, and because they get an opportunity to make mistakes (which their Master will catch and correct), they actually learn faster and more thoroughly than the “tried and true” classroom approach.

It’s 30 years later and I can STILL absolutely remember which actuator in an F-14 needs that safety wire trick.

Since the late 1990s, I’ve been a fairly regular speaker at technical conferences. I’ll talk to groups of 15, and I’ve spoken to groups of 5,000. I’ve almost always done pretty well, but if you think all that experience makes me any less nervous…

When it comes to serving as a Master to one person or hundreds, we all get afraid.

Back in the late 1990s, I worked for a company called Micro Endeavors, based near Philadelphia. They were well-known in the FoxPro world at the time, and they were growing a name in SQL Server education. They were approached by Shirley Brothers, who now runs the “Intersection” conferences (like Dev Intersection), who wanted to partner with them to launch a FoxPro event and a SQL Server event. Part of the deal was that some of Micro Endeavors’ trainers would get speaking slot at her other dev-content shows until the new ones launched, and I was tagged to be SQL Connections’ first conference chair. So that was my first speaking gig, back in 1996 or 1997 – I think I presented on ActiveX Data Objects (ADO; this was before .NET had launched).

So my entry into the world of conference speaking was a little unusual; honestly, with most conferences these days, it’s easy to submit a session proposal. Most conferences are eager for a diverse variety of speakers and actively solicit submissions. The exceptions are your major first-part vendor shows like Microsoft Ignite; they’re less open to outside speakers (and if they do accept you, can get a little dictatorial about what you present on and what you say, which is why I don’t present there).

Once I got over the basic nervousness of standing up in front of a bunch of people and pretending to know what I was talking about, I’ve really only had a couple of scary presentations.

One was at TechEd… 2007, I think, in the US. This was a few months after Windows PowerShell had launched, and Jeffrey Snover called me and asked if I could give a presentation on it for TechEd. He’d been scheduled to present, but had a schedule conflict and wasn’t going to be able to attend. “SURE!!!!!” I said. Well, TechEd time approaches and the organizers contact me. They tell me that the session is overbooked, and ask if I’d be okay scheduling a repeat the following day. “SURE!!!!” I said. A few weeks later, the repeat was overbooked, and they asked if I’d be okay live-streaming the first session. “SURE!!!” I said. This was in the LiveMeeting days, so I show up and they’ve got the stage bathed in lighting. There are three cameras. I have to present slides from their machine, and if I want to do a demo, I have to make a big deal that I’m about to do a demo so that someone in the back can push the screen share button in Live Meeting. The lights are hot, and I’m sweating bullets. The room has like 5,000 people in it. I was working with SAPIEN Technologies at the time, and my partner, Christopher, was working for them as well. He came up from the expo hall and sat in the front row, right in front of the podium, for moral support. And Jeffrey Snover walks in and sits next to him. “Um, hey, what’re you doing here?” I asked. “Oh, PowerShell is getting an award, so they rearranged my schedule so I could come accept it. Have a great session!” Gulp. So I start. I’m telling my jokes, I’m waving my arms around, and I’m sweating like a whore in church. I do my demos, and I keep seeing Jeffrey leaning over and whispering to Christopher, which makes me even more nervous. I finally get to the end – a perfectly timed session, by the way – and everyone claps. Jeffrey stands up, says, “good session,” and hustles out. Gulp. I answer a few questions for people, and start walking out with Christopher. “What the hell were you guys talking about?” I asked. “The first time, he said, ‘I’m glad he’s up there, because I couldn’t say that but it needs to be said.’ After that, we realized it was making you nervous, so we just kept doing it.”

Sigh.

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In fact, don’t even worry about your heroes. Here’s what I mean:

Too many of us too often measure ourselves against our heroes and role models. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that; having something or someone to look up to can not only push us to succeed, it can also give us some clues on how to do so.

But you have to draw a clear line between that and valuing your own worth by comparing yourself to someone else.

“I’m not nearly as smart as [person], so there’s no way I could teach someone the way they do!” is something I hear a lot. And you’re right: you can’t teach the way they do.

But you can teach differently.

And your different might be just what your audience needs. Remember, your “worth” isn’t something you can define for yourself. Your “worth” is defined by the people around you. Are you providing them something they assign value to? Are you making a positive impact on their lives?

If so, then you’re “worthy,” by definition.

So admire your heroes and role models. Just don’t measure yourself against them; don’t try to be someone they’d be impressed by. Instead, be a hero for someone who needs one.

We all get lazy sometimes. It’s okay: there’s a perfectly good reason for it, and it’s not always a bad thing. But it’s important to know where it comes from, and important to know when to fight it, and why.

Laziness is tied to some of our very deepest survival behaviors. “This thing works, and I understand it, and it at least isn’t harming me; trying something new or doing something else could put me at risk.”

For example, if you’re the type of person who’s satisfied with “basic” foods when you eat out, you might not enjoy going to a “fancier” restaurant that has foods you’re either not sure about, or know you don’t like. Some of your friends might mock you (sadly, I probably would, as I love food), but look: you worked hard for your money and your time, and you want to spend them both on something you know is risk-free. Fine.

But you have to be careful about applying that same kind of thinking to other aspects of your life. For example, if you’ve decided to go to the gym and make some kind of change in your body – whether for appearance or health or both – you have to stare the laziness in the face and conquer it. And you’ll probably have to do it every day for a long time before your deep-brain stops fighting you.

Sometimes, just acknowledging the fact of the matter can help. “I’m being lazy about this, and I know I need to stop,” said aloud, can at least give you the opening to look for solutions. Or even for tricks, or other motivations, or whatever. Knowing what you’re up against can give you the opportunity to be thoughtful and deliberate about dealing with it.

Changing your life. That’s what we’re here for, right? That’s a big deal. We’re talking about making YOU successful, and still somehow finding the time to help pass that success on to others. Finding others to pass it on to. Teaching and sharing. It’s going to be pretty hard to find the time to do that, right?

Except… it shouldn’t be.

When I I’ve my full-day “Be the Master” workshop, we spend a lot of time discussing this. Thing is, for MOST people, “finding your success and teaching others” doesn’t mean abandoning your career, starting a new one, and also being a college professor in your spare time. It’s kind of like all those studies that say a glass of red wine can be healthy for you — the first thing half the readers do is rush out and drink a case of the stuff. It’s all about MODERATION, and that’s true with “Be the Master” as well.

If you sit a six-year old down and say, “I want you to become a United States Senator!” They might smile and say, “sure!” But they can’t really grasp what that MEANS. What will be INVOLVED. It’s too big; to them, you just maybe apply for the job one day and either get it or not. Well, that’s true with big, far-reaching life goals, too: they’re usually too big to grasp. Intellectually, you and I as adults could break it down, though. To be a Senator, you usually need to start as a lawyer someplace. That means law school — three years of education — as well as an internship as well as some working experience. You could probably take those things and break them down further: law school means first passing the LSAT, and it means first having a 4-year degree. You could keep going, breaking each requirement down into single steps, all the way down to “Pass English 101 in Freshman year” and so on.

That’s what you need to do with your path to mastery. BREAK IT DOWN. Even if you are defining your success to require a new career and a professorship, BREAK THAT DOWN. On a WEEKLY basis, you can only accomplish small, incremental things, so you need to break it down into those small, incremental steps. And no, there’s no point in charting out a ten-year plan in 520 weekly steps! No plan will survive that long, anyway. So it’s great to have that 10-year goal in mind, if you can think of one, but you need to have something a lot closer to focus on.

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One of the biggest ways that you can help a lot of individuals, over the long haul, is to unite. Sadly, a lot of people who take a stab at that get it wrong. But there’s no reason to not keep trying!

One of the “Aspect of Mastery” presented in Be the Master is simple: Masters Unite.

In the old days, that meant – in practical terms – that Masters often joined together to form Guilds, which took the jobs of preserving their trade’s practices, bringing new apprentices into the fold, setting standards that customers could rely on, and providing a collective bargaining voice when needed.

Think about that value that a Guild offered its members at the time, and remember that the “value” of anything is defined by its recipients. Masters worked with Guilds because the Guilds provided something that the Masters found valuable; if enough of them felt the Guilds were valueless, the Guild would have eventually ceased to exist.

There’s a lesson there about modern Mastery and uniting.

For example, a lot of well-meaning and industrious folks will start user groups, only to struggle to get people to attend, and many times to have them fizzle. In most cases, that’s because the Guild user group members didn’t find value in the effort.

In fact, it can be hard to bring together a group of people and continue providing value to them over the long haul. That’s why “Masters Unite” is only one of the aspects of Mastery. To really provide continuing long-term value to a group, you’ve got to do more than just help them learn new technology tricks. They might find that valuable now and then, but not always.

Think instead about the whole person that you’re trying to draw into your effort at uniting. They have a family. They have a career. They probably want to find ways to help people, just as you do. They probably work on a variety of things. How can you speak to that whole person? How can you help them understand how they could help the group?

Remember: lots of us have Imposter Syndrome, and lots of us are basically lazy inside (it’s our brains’ fault). It’s easy to sit back and let someone else do the work. To let someone else lead. But remember, the real power of a movement is not in its leader, its from the people who show other people how to follow the movement.

Maybe your group could use some public speaking sessions, to get people comfortable with the idea. Maybe career-development sessions are a good idea. Guilds, in the old days, did more than just pass along “tricks of the trade;” they served as the binding force for the members’ entire lives. Uniting people means uniting the whole person, which is a substantially more challenging task. A task that is infinitely more valuable, too.

You’re even free to use Be the Master (you can get a free Special Edition copy) to help. When you bring your group together, occasionally read a chapter the book aloud, and then discuss it as a group. Talk about what actions you might each take in your lives based on that chapter, and what you might expect from it. This kind of “take a break from the routine” exercise can help freshen a group, broaden its perspective, and get you thinking of each other as whole people. That’s the key to unity.

Are you a participant in that thing called the “Rat Race?” I certainly was, and I look around and suspect a lot of people are. It’s where you kind of just race to the next, bigger-better job, bigger-better salary, or bigger-better whatever, without really wondering why you’re doing it, or what the finish like looks like.

It’s because a lot of us just succumb to what our culture tells us we “should” be doing. We “should” go to university. We “should” get a job. We “should” get married and have kids. Should, should, should.

But why?

There was a point in my life when I got really depressed about it. I mean, I had a great job that I enjoyed. My family and I went on great vacations. We had a nice apartment at the time, and a good number of friends. What was there to be depressed about?

It’s because all I knew about work is that I needed to keep “moving up.” I wasn’t even sure what that meant, but it felt like a better salary, a better title, that kind of thing. And the idea of just doing it without knowing why started to gnaw at me.

I didn’t know it at the time, but that’s where Be the Master was born. I sat down with my family and defined success. Money is a part of it, of course; you need money to have things like housing and food. But how much did I need? And what else did I want in my career that would make me happy and feeling fulfilled? It’s how I realized I was closer to success than I’d realized, but that I wasn’t lining up my daily actions toward what I really wanted. It’s when I broke out of the rat race and started to do my own thing.

It really does work.

I’m sure you’ve been in a taxi or a ride share at some point, right? Think about what that felt like.

You were a passenger. Yes, you got to express a strong opinion about where you wanted to go, but really, if you think about it, you were just being aspirational. The destination was a thing you wanted.

The driver decided if you got it or not. True, if they didn’t you might complain, give them a one-star rating, or not pay – all valid outcomes. But you weren’t actually in control. At most, you had a potential for after-the-fact revenge, but that’s not the same as control.

The driver also decided how you got there. They chose the roads. They decided whether or not they’d hit another car, or a pedestrian, or a street light. They had an immense amount of control over what has happening, and what the outcomes were.

In day to day life, a lot of us are passengers. We kind of make a vague statement about where we’d like life to take us – maybe – and then we kind of just sit in the passenger seat and see what happens. Sure, if something goes horribly wrong, like running into a streetlight, we might slide into a different car, but we’re not exerting a lot of day to day control.

We know where we want to go, but we’re not really focused on how we get there.

If I could sum up Be the Master in just one concept, it’s this: the book helps you slide out of the passenger seat, get behind the wheel, and take control over whether and how you get to your destination.

It starts by teaching you how to enter that destination into your Life GPS by defining your success. It forces you to think about the tradeoffs you’re willing to make by defining yourself (am I in a rush, or am I willing to take in some scenery along the way?). And it lays out a system that forces you to make weekly decisions about the drive, so that each decision is active. Maybe some weeks you’re not working toward your success – fine, but you made a decision about that, rather than just letting it happen.

Give it a shot. It costs zero to try. And, if you like it, I’d love a review on Amazon, to help other people understand what the book’s all about.