Apprenticing Under an Engineer

My Evolution as a Journeyman

Some jobs change the way you work. Others change the way you see.

This one changed the way I think, the way I move through problems, the way I hold responsibility, and the way I value craftsmanship. Over seven years, I helped restore a single home — and while I was paid, it was well below my market value at the time. The money wasn’t the driver. This was an apprenticeship under a man whose life had already contained several lifetimes of mastery.

We didn’t just paint walls. We stripped the home back to its bones and rebuilt it piece by piece. Cedar doors were taken off one by one, carefully sanded back, refinished, and rehung. Brass door hinges and handles were removed, polished, and refitted by hand. Existing slate floors were carefully cleaned, restored, and recoated. Exterior weatherboards were repaired, replaced, and sandblasted back. Every surface, every junction, every detail was questioned, improved, or rebuilt. Nothing was rushed. Nothing was assumed. This was restoration in the truest sense — not returning something to how it was, but elevating it to how it should have been all along.

I worked for a low hourly rate, deliberately. I wasn’t there for the money. I was there to learn. To apprentice under a retired engineer whose career spanned window factories, shipbuilding, furniture manufacturing, and executive leadership as a CFO in large American corporations. He had built companies, systems, and machines at scale — and yet his greatest skill wasn’t what he knew, but how he thought.

This man carried what I’d call embodied knowledge — not information, not theory, but understanding earned through decades of real-world consequence. He had one focus: to do things properly. I had one intention: to be fully present, receptive, and to do my absolute best. I may have taught him a thing or two about paint, but he taught me everything you can’t learn from books.

He taught me how to handle the numbers behind the work with care and respect — not emotionally, not fearfully, but precisely. To him, even the most complex job could be distilled down into a simple set of numbers on a page, or a single clear question that revealed what really mattered. He taught me how to frame problems and dissect them calmly, like a surgeon removing a tumour. He taught me that when something breaks, the correct response isn’t frustration — it’s curiosity.

There was a wood chipper he bought from China. Early in its working life, the metal grate that breaks down trees into mulch tore clean in half. Most people would have written it off. He didn’t. He rebuilt it with triple rebar, reinforcing it beyond its original design. The engine shaft snapped too — so he replaced that as well. And still, he’d say almost casually,

“The engine is actually good for a Chinese machine. It’s worth repairing.”

If he had counted his hours, the economics wouldn’t have made sense. A cheaper machine that took thirty hours to rebuild may technically cost more than buying a premium one outright. But that was never the point. After the grate, he replaced the ripper blades with thick 10mm pieces of iron. When the machine went back together, it was bolted up with fasteners twice the original thickness — and upgraded to a more usable bolt type that could be removed and serviced easily. The whole machine was then lubricated and oiled religiously, like a piece of equipment that mattered.

It became priceless. Handmade. Custom. Known. A tool he trusted — not because it was perfect, but because he understood it deeply and knew that if it failed again, he could repair it and make it better.

That mindset changed me.

On Apprenticeship, and How Humans Truly Learn

To apprentice under someone is to enter one of the most ancient and powerful forms of learning we have as humans.

I believe apprenticeship is the most valuable way embodied knowledge is passed on — and I also believe we’re slowly forgetting it. Not because it isn’t powerful, but because modern life is obsessed with speed. We want to teach more people in less time. We want to scale knowledge. We want to have a bigger impact.

And yet, the irony is that the faster we try to spread it, the more we dilute it. Some teachings can only be transferred at depth — and those are the very ones falling away, because they can’t be communicated through the shallows of speed.

Embodied knowledge can’t be rushed. It must be absorbed slowly, through repetition, proximity, and lived experience — the one-to-one way, the way humans have always learned. Replaced by one-to-many teaching models, abstract theory, and information stripped of context, body, and consequence. We have mistaken information for understanding.

Our nervous systems are not wired to learn from words on a page alone. They are wired to learn through observation. Monkey see, monkey do — not monkey read, monkey do. Our mirror neurons exist for a reason. We need to see the master. To imagine ourselves in his shoes. When we do, the body bridges the gap between imagination and reality on its own.

This is how deep, embodied knowledge is formed.

An apprenticeship is not the transfer of concepts. It is the transfer of a complete operating system — a way of being. When learning a craft, the body must absorb posture, rhythm, restraint, and timing. How the master stands. How his weight sits in his feet. How his hips turn. How he holds the brush. How he breathes. How he pauses. How he resumes. All of it is gathered subconsciously and packaged into a single felt sense.

Once learned, that felt sense can be activated at will.

This is effortless learning. There are no abstractions to force into the mind. Only seeing, believing, and doing. Through exposure, frequency, and intensity, that feeling becomes familiar — then natural — then identity.

When an apprentice enters that contract, knowingly or not, he agrees to absorb more than skills. He absorbs standards, temperament, and energy. But for it to truly work, the apprentice must genuinely aspire to the qualities of the master. He must want to imitate the master’s way of being — because imitation is the first stage of mastery. We copy before we become original. And only once the foundation is fully absorbed can the apprentice begin to add his own signature on top. Because the master is living proof that the way works.

To take on an apprentice is a responsibility not unlike a father-son relationship. The commitment is to guide another human first to become like you, and then to surpass you. Only once the craft is fully learned can it become personal.

A journeyman is a craftsman who has begun to make the work his own.A master is one who has succeeded — whose work carries his original signature.

This was the lineage I was invited into.

John, the Engineer

John was the engineer.

There were phrases he would repeat over the years — not forcefully, not as lessons, but casually, as if placing stones in a river and trusting repetition to do the rest. Whether or not it was his conscious intention, those phrases embedded themselves deeply in me.

One of them was this:

“Engineers today are useless — most of them anyway. They know books and theory, but put them into a real-world situation and they struggle to adapt. They lack real embodied knowledge.”

It wasn’t bitterness. It was disappointment.

John had lived on both sides. He respected theory, but he understood its limits. Knowledge confined to paper collapses the moment friction enters the room.

When you look at the education model, the problem becomes obvious: one-to-many teaching, abstract learning, books without bodies. Minds trained in isolation while the rest of the human system remains uninitiated.

We are raising brilliant heads attached to inexperienced bodies.

Our hearts remember. Our guts remember. To fully understand something, the entire human must be trained. I believe that’s why we call it a body of knowledge.

John’s brilliance showed itself most clearly when things didn’t go to plan. A problem arising was never met with emotion — it was simply a new data input. Okay. Let’s take it apart. He would dissect the situation, rationally and calmly, until the best course of action revealed itself. No drama. Just method.

Over time, through proximity and repetition, that way of thinking began to wire itself into me.

Gifts That Cannot Be Invoiced

Over my career as a painter, I’ve received many gifts like this. None of them are monetary. None are physical. You can’t see them or invoice for them. They are teachings — passed quietly, patiently — from men like John.

Today, when we run into problems on site and clients watch me work through them methodically and calmly, what they are seeing is not just a painter solving a problem. They are watching an embodied engineer.

In those moments, I am operating from memory — from identity. I am stepping into the version of myself shaped while working alongside John. That is the gift he gave me.

That gift would not have been possible had I approached the job as an expert painter on a fixed-price quote, with minimal client involvement. The truth is, the house wouldn’t have reached the same standard — and I didn’t yet have the experience at the beginning to deliver what it ultimately became. There was so much we learned along the way. The path we took to get to the end was a rare one, and by the end, not many people would have been willing — or had the time and patience — to walk it.

By accepting a pay cut, I received an education that was invaluable.

If you were to place a future value on what I learned during those years, I would put a large multiplier on the fixed-price contract we could have taken. We are often given exactly what we need at the time — just not always in the form we expect.

The Work, in Practice

The total hours would have been well over 2,000.

Near the end of the job, John asked playfully,“I know what this has cost me, but out of curiosity — do you know what you’d quote me if we were to start it all over again?”

I laughed.“I can’t put a price on that work, John. It’s impossible.”

He laughed too — then stopped.“No, seriously. If you had to.”

Silence.

“John… I think it would have to be $100k plus. That’s my gut feel, without even doing the measurements.”

I don’t actually know what the final cost to John was, but my gut estimate landed around that number. What struck me most was that the figure didn’t come from calculation alone — it came from experience and a true understanding of what the work would demand.

This is critical when quoting unique work. We pride ourselves on providing fixed prices that remove the fear of the unknown for our clients. Our work is rarely cookie-cutter, and it can’t be priced from a textbook of rates. Instead, I reach into lived experience and intuition to set a price that reflects the real scope of the task. That foresight allows me to allocate the right time window and resources to do the job properly — which, in turn, means no rushed work for the client.

John always insisted on paying me on time. Every time.“It’s important to pay the little guys first,” he’d say. “This is their bread and butter. This is their family’s food. The big guys can wait.”

We spoke often about investments. I would talk about Bitcoin. He preferred gold. Different instruments — but both rooted in unshakeable foundations and integrity, things that hold their value because they are built properly from the ground up.

"Build your foundations right — the rest is easy."

The job itself began back in 2015 at a rental property we were leasing downstairs from. Out the front was a beautiful timber door, weathered and showing its age. The door itself didn’t scare me — but the thought of stripping it back did. Still, the inspiration to bring it back to its original glory outweighed the fear. I had never stripped and re-stained a door before, so I decided to do it for free — purely as an experiment.

When I finished, John — a friend of the owners — happened to come by, saw the work, and asked me to work on his home.

We began with the cedar weatherboards. Rough-sawn, neglected, blackened by time. The coating needed to be removed, acid-washed, and re-stained. John made one request: keep the rough-sawn texture. No sanding.

Paint stripper worked — but one wall took two days and $2,000 in materials. Fifteen walls to go. Not viable.

Sitting in my car, scratching at my phone, I stumbled upon wet media blasting. Mobile. On-site.

Two blasters said it couldn’t be done. Cedar was too soft. The third had never done it — but was willing to try.

He tested a small patch on low pressure.

Viola.

Beautiful raw cedar. Texture intact. If anything, slightly exaggerated — an upgrade.

“I love how your mind works,” John said.“It doesn’t quit,” I replied.

For around $8,000, the entire house was stripped — roughly a quarter of the original cost.

John insisted on buying a proper trestle set for me to pay off through my work. At one point, there was a particularly tricky section of roof that was difficult to access safely. John disappeared into the shed and custom‑fabricated a bracket that could be screwed onto the roof, allowing a plank to slide from it back to a trestle. The bracket was millimetre‑perfect — the plank didn’t move a millimetre and sat dead flat. In minutes, what had been an awkward problem became simple, safe, and efficient.

“Good tools are the best investment.”

That lesson stuck.

A 20% return in stocks is good — but a tool that doubles your working speed can deliver a 100% return in a day, a week, or a month, and then compound with every use. Since then, we’ve invested over $100,000 in tools. Each one holds value. Each one multiplies capability.

Foundations

One phrase John repeated over and over was:

“Build your foundations right — the rest is easy.”

I carry that with me to this day.

Recently, working alongside another painter, he said to me, “I get how you operate. You take extra time prepping, then you paint fast.”

Exactly.

When we prep, we move slowly. Slow is smooth. Smooth is fast. We don’t miss anything. By the time we paint, we know the job intimately — and then we move in flow, with rhythm.

You can always fix a paint run.But if the paint doesn’t stick because the foundations weren’t right, you’re not back at square one — you’re further back.

That philosophy didn’t come from a book. It came from apprenticing under an engineer.

The approach I now take on my jobs is to build foundations like an engineer, then step into flow and paint like a professional athlete. The flow state I work from today was learned through my Master, Carlos — who I’ll introduce properly in a future article.

John’s Sayings (That Stayed With Me)

There are a handful of sayings John repeated over the years. Simple sentences, but loaded with meaning. I still hear them clearly. In simple form, can be applied as principles to general everyday life.

• “Are you happy with it?”(Every time I completed a task.)

• “Okay, let’s think about it. What are our options?”(The starting point for every problem we faced.)

• “Tiredness is contagious.”(During all-night work challenges, if anyone started yawning, he’d send them home. He was always aware of how one person’s state could spread through a team.)

• “I like gold. I can see it, feel it. I KNOW it’s there.”(His way of describing certainty.)

• “Build your foundations right. One millimetre out at the bottom becomes ten millimetres out at the top.”(The philosophy that shaped the entire job.)

Some jobs change the way you work. Others change the way you see. This one gave me both.