The End of Traditional Mentorship and the Rise of Self-Taught Coaches

I hear a lot of talk about mentors these days as if the only way to grow is to find one great guru who takes you under their wing. In fact there are quite a few people who make a pretty good living doing just that. But the truth is, excellence in any field rarely comes from being hand-picked by a master. It comes from the drive to seek, study, and steal from everyone who’s doing it well.

“Self-Taught” Isn’t a Limitation. It’s a Superpower

In college I was an art major, I didn’t have a long résumé of formal training behind me. Before college, my “education” was graffiti on walls and the comic books stacked next to my bed. I looked at what inspired me and I copied it. That was my process before college, during college, and long after. College expanded my view and vocabulary but the process remained the same.

It turns out, that’s not amateurish, that’s traditional.

For centuries, the world’s greatest painters learned through the apprenticeship system. A young artist would enter a master’s workshop, grind pigments, sweep floors, and—most importantly—copy. They copied their master’s drawings, their master’s paintings, their master’s technique. The goal wasn’t originality; it was mastery of fundamentals. Only after they could recreate a masterwork with near-perfect fidelity were they considered ready for their own artistic identity.

Even today, if you walk into a serious art school, you’ll probably see students copying Rembrandt, Caravaggio, or Vermeer. Why? Because imitation teaches line, color, composition, and process. Every artist you copy becomes one more tool in your toolbox, another palette, another stroke, another way of seeing.

Stealing, Not Borrowing

Pablo Picasso once quipped, “Good artists borrow; great artists steal.” He wasn’t advocating theft, he was recognizing that creativity is transformation. You take something you love, absorb it, remix it, and push it into something new. Steve Jobs said something similar: “Creativity is just connecting things.”Originality isn’t inventing from thin air; it’s combining familiar elements in unexpected ways.

Author Austin Kleon built an entire philosophy on this idea in his bestselling book Steal Like an Artist. His message is simple: nothing is completely original, and that’s not a problem, it’s the creative process. You learn by studying the greats and remixing their work through the lens of your own experience.

So What Does This Have to Do With Coaching?

Everything.

We’re living in the most connected era in human history. A generation ago, you needed to meet your heroes in person, work in their programs, or get lucky enough to land at a top club. Today? Their philosophies, interviews, training logs, presentations, and books are all in your pocket.

I didn’t have a “traditional” mentor. Not in art or coaching. A handful of years into my coaching career the closest thing I had to a mentor, a colleague really, told me “you need to do all the ASCA schools.” Challenging me to go learn, and find the answers for myself.

You don’t need a mentor, you need curiosity.

Search. Read. Watch. Study. Look up the coaches you admire and dissect what they do:

• How do they structure training cycles?

• How do they communicate with athletes?

• What do they emphasize technically?

• What language do they use?

• What habits do they model?

  
  

Then copy. Implement. Evaluate. Iterate. That is mentorship in the digital age.

Austin Kleon would call it “stealing”: absorbing the best ideas you can find and reshaping them into something that fits your program and your athletes.

Steal Like a Coach

Every great coach steals because every great coach wants to learn and grow. With that said, the trick isn’t to take Katie Ledecky’s workout and expect your swimmers to become the next Katie Ledecky. Context matters. What works for an Olympic champion won’t automatically work for a 12-year-old age-grouper.

But studying elite training gives you:

• Templates

• Principles

• Progressions

• A sense of what excellence looks like

  
  

That’s why resources like ASCA, USA Swimming’s coaching education, and other professional development programs are invaluable. They expose you to a wide range of “masters” whose ideas you can adopt, adapt, and remix.

Empowerment Over Gatekeeping

You don’t need to work at a top club.

You don’t need an “in” with a famous coach.

You don’t need someone to knight you and say you’re ready.

You have the world’s best mentors at your fingertips, living, archived, written, filmed, and recorded. Your job is to take what you find, shape it into your own philosophy, and build something uniquely suited to the athletes in front of you.

That’s what the master artists did.

That’s what the great coaches do.

Steal like an artist. Steal like a coach.

Not because you lack originality, but because that’s how originality is built.