Speaking to you from Escalante, Utah

A reader came to me with a few questions that he and his family had about The Preparation. Ultimately, they were unsure about two things:

1. How do you know you’re actually making progress instead of just keeping busy for 4 years?

2. How do you know whether or not you’re actually becoming capable instead of delaying committing to one path?

Similar questions, but each required its own answer.

Well, after sending my response to the reader, I figured this would be a great topic to speak about to you. These are the kinds of questions I get a lot about the program. Parents are apprehensive to give approval to their kids to walk down this path because there has yet to be someone who has completed the full 4 years. On top of that, the core philosophy of The Preparation counters our society’s current view of life to such a degree that it takes time and personal experience to see the beauty and value in it.

Of course, it’s not the fault of the parents. Not at all.

They grew up in a world where the best thing to do was to follow a linear life path: get through high school, go to college (or military or trades), get a “good” job, and eventually retire after a long career. That system worked for a time. In today’s ever-changing (and rapidly changing) world, it doesn’t.

The Preparation is the solution.

I go over all of it in the video—the philosophy, the benefits, the problems, and the comparisons between traditional paths vs. The Preparation.

-Maxim Benjamin Smith

Writing to you from Rapid City, South Dakota

There are some weeks that feel as long as a month. So much happens within those seven days that it seems impossible for all that you did to only measure out to 168 hours. Several days of travel, a day learning auto extrication, and two days practicing rope rescue will bring that strange feeling that more time must have passed.

Entering a time warp or limbo (whatever you want to call it) is usually, as I’ve found, a sign that you’re undergoing intense learning, or work for that matter.

The time warp can either be extremely positive, negative, or dull depending upon the circumstances and your attitude. Proper attitude is always the most important no matter what. Luckily, the circumstances this past week were extremely positive. I learned a lot, did a lot, and am happy to have kept a good attitude through it all.

Speaking of time warps…

It’s been two years, to the month, since I was last in South Dakota for the same exact reason. After having been given the opportunity to work with Minuteman EMS on wildfires as a brand new EMT, I drove up through Colorado and Wyoming to meet the man who had thrown the opportunity my way, Tyler Olson. Days later, we were in the Black Hills for my first ever REMS (Rapid Extrication Module Support) course.

We rappelled, learned how to build raising and lowering systems, nearly met a bad end after an anchor broke, and almost got into a bar fight during our last night there.

I can’t believe how much time has passed. It’s always nostalgic to come back to a place where you really did something. Not only that, but it’s interesting to reflect on how differently you think now compared to then.

Anyway…

Let me tell you about all of the interesting things I was lucky to learn and do this past week.

Auto Extrication

We met up at a junkyard on the outskirts of Rapid City. Cars were stacked on top of each other. An old Chevy and school bus were flipped upside down in the middle of the yard. The sun was hot, but the breeze was nice. I had never been to an auto extrication training, so I resorted to following orders.

“Put on your PPE (fire gear, helmet, gloves, and eye protection) and go meet up by the black truck. You’ll get more info from there.”

Standing over there were some guys that I had met two years ago during the first REMS course. All good men, skilled, and very funny. Whether the felt the same doesn’t matter, but to me it was like seeing old friends. We picked up from where we left off.

That boosted the mood, but now it was time to learn.

For the rest of the afternoon, we learned how to stabilize cars and bust open (or cut into) car frames or doors using haligans. We also used a smaller version of the “jaws of life” that structure firefighters use once in a blue moon when it’s finally time to be a hero. It’s tough work sitting around in a firehouse all day with your buddies. Just remember, as soon as you get the title, you inherit the reputation of all those firefighters who died on 9/11. No matter what you do, you’re just as cool, badass, hardcore, and good-willed.

Man, it’s nice to get that little jab in.

Moving on…

I had the chance to cut a couple doors off during the exercise. Holding up a 60 pound tool is no fun—and positioning it can be tricky—but watching a door crumble apart and eventually pop open is genuinely fun. Overall, it’s a great skill to have, but just as important is the ability to properly stabilize a car (or school bus) after an accident.

Those preventative measures can save you a lot of time or from serious injury.

Rope Rescue

Each day was split into 2 parts: rope-only work and medical+ropes.

Once the auto extrication course was over, we headed to Custer, SD to set up camp in an outdoor training facility. The Black Hills are beautiful and offer a top-tier place to train due to the rugged terrain and steep rock faces. We barely had to walk 30 seconds away from camp until hitting a good rappelling spot.

What little I had managed to remember from the first REMS training came back to me quicker than I’d imagined it would. I understood how to use rappelling devices like an ATC in conjunction with a VT Prusik for a backup. To use these two devices as an example, the ATC attached directly to your harness and is a very simple rappelling device. However, you can attach a Prusik (essentially a small rope that you wrap around the primary line and attach to your harness as an additional level of safety) to the main line as a backup just in case the ATC fails.

Redundancy is a major part of rope rescue…or using ropes in general.

That all came back to me fairly quick, but what pleasantly surprised me was the fact that I could finally fully grasp how to build basic raising and lowering systems.

What do I mean by raising and lowering systems?

Well, let’s say that you came in contact with a patient in the backcountry, or wildfires, for example. Let’s also say that they fell down part of a cliff and sustained a broken tibia (compound fracture) and a traumatic brain injury (TBI). A helicopter or ambulance can’t get to them due to terrain. Our job is to use our knowledge of ropes to get the patient to a place where they can be transported to a hospital.

We hike in or drive in with UTVs, locate the patient, treat them, and use the terrain to build a system that either raises them up a cliff, hill, or mountain…and a lowering system does the opposite. Each of our harnesses carry a set of devices that either create friction, allow steady flow of a rope, can be attached to a rope, or capture (hold onto) the rope.

The rope systems can look complex, but many of them are fairly simple. Only a basic understanding of what you’re trying to accomplish and what each device does stands in your way of getting the job done.

For the most part, we stuck to building 3-to-1 systems. Meaning that for every 3 feet of rope we pulled at the top (trying to lift a patient) the patient would be moved 1 foot. There are many variations of rope systems and different times to use them, each one has its pros and cons. For example, if you need to lift a ton of weight (perhaps literally) you could build a 9-to1 system. The problem is…for every 9 feet of rope you pull, only 1 foot of rope could move.

It’s a process of trial and error. A process you have to shrink down to seconds or minutes when you’re doing it in the real world.

I feel as though I walked away with a solid level of competency this time around.

Medical Scenarios

We had a huge opportunity. A local college allowed us to train on some of their expensive dummies…and no, I’m not talking about the professors. Just a joke, take it easy.

These dummies could talk, blink, breathe, and you could even drill an IO into them to administer certain medications through the bone. Of course, only the paramedics could do that. Plus, these dummies were heavy. One of them must have weighed about 200 pounds.

Each dummy had its own medical “problem”, and they were placed around the property. Some had traumatic brain injuries, some had heart attacks, some had broken bones. For each scenario, we had to assess them (figure out what happened), treat them to the best of our ability in the given timeframe, and build rope systems to raise them up or lower them down rock faces.

Each scenario went pretty darn good.

Our final scenario on the last day was the most interesting…

They had us load up in a UTV as if we were on a wildfire, drive out to a location a couple of minutes away, and listen to the radio for the call.

The call came in and it turns out that a mass shooter had killed a few people in the camp. The shooter was dead, but several patients laid strewn out around the camp for us to find and treat. We rolled up on the scene. Another EMT and I were assigned to 1 of the 2 human “patients”—a woman with a gunshot wound to the abdomen. Funnily enough, this patient was Tyler’s girlfriend. She’s Puerto Rican and was speaking Spanish to try to throw off any EMTs or Medics during the scenario.

“Oh, hablo Espanol”, I said.

I started speaking to her in Spanish, trying to ask her questions. Turns out I was the one that threw her off. It was funny.

What wasn’t funny was how the shock of the scenario caused me to pause too much instead of acting in the moment. That’s what training is for. The only thing I wish I had was more experience. Personally, my care for the patient could have been better. If I had done a more thorough assessment, I would have found that there was an exit wound. I would have gotten the shirt off faster and bandaged the wounds in a more timely manner.

I’m not upset about it. Many good things have come from my own failure.

Usually, I’m reminded of a quote from Napoleon Hill that goes something like, “Every defeat brings with it the potential for an equal or greater success.”

But the patient died. She was going to die in the scenario no matter what we did. Again, it was kind of funny during the scenario. For a brief second, we thought it was our fault.

Once she was gone, I moved on to helping another EMT and paramedic splint a compound fracture and bag a patient (meaning that I helped them breathe through a bag valve mask) until the scenario was over. Overall, it was a great time and a wonderful test of skill. What made it better was the people. I’m always impressed by Brennan and Tyler’s (founders of Minuteman EMS and The Journeyman App) ability to bring together a group of seriously good people.

It was a good week.

Reading

• Finished reading The Revenant by Michael Punke

While the entire story in the book isn’t all true, the core of it is. Hugh Glass, a man who went on a trapping expedition during the early 1820s, was attacked by a grizzly and left to die by the men who were supposed to take care of him. He suffered day after day to find those men who left him for dead and take his revenge. Eventually, he found them. That part of the story is all true. The rest is lost to history. No doubt, he encountered hostile indians, nearly died of infection, starved, and froze. Hugh Glass really does show us just how much we can endure. I highly recommend this book. Excellent story.

• Started reading Dreams of El Dorado by H. W. Brands

Are these updates informative? Are they useful? Entertaining?

Leave a comment below if you’ve got any suggestions or questions for me.

And don’t forget to send this to someone who might benefit.

I’ll see you next week.

-Maxim Benjamin Smith

I am acting as a guinea pig for a program which is meant to prepare young men for the future. This program is designed to be a replacement for the only three routes advertised to young men today - go to college, the military, or a dead-end job.

All of these typical routes of life are designed to shape us into cogs for a wheel that doesn’t serve us. Wasted time, debt, lack of skills, and a soul crushing job define many who follow the traditional route.

This program, which we can call “The Preparation”, is meant to guide young men on a path where they properly utilize their time to gain skills, build relationships, and reach a state of being truly educated. The Preparation is meant to set young men up for success.

What appeals to me about The Preparation is the idea of the type of man I could be. The path to becoming a skilled, dangerous, and competent man is much more clear now. I’ve always been impressed by characters like The Count of Monte Cristo, men who accumulated knowledge and skills over a long period of time and eventually became incredibly capable men.

Young men today do not have a guiding light. We have few mentors and no one to emulate. We have been told that there are only a few paths to success in this world. For intelligent and ambitious people - college is sold to us as the one true path. And yet that path seems completely uncertain today.

We desperately need something real to grab onto. I think this is it.

I’m putting the ideas into action. Will it work? I can’t be sure, but I’m doing my best. I’m more than 60 weeks into the program at this point. So far, so good.

You can follow me along as I follow the program. Each week, I summarize all that I did.

My objective in sharing this is three fold:

1. Documenting my progress holds me accountable.

2. I hope these updates will show other young men that there is another path we can take.

3. For the parents who stumble upon this log, I want to prove to you that telling your children that the conventional path - college, debt, and a job is not the foolproof path you think it is.

Writing to you from Evergreen, Colorado

Alone, again.

I’m back in the states for a short time to get a few things done. I’ll be doing a 4-day rope rescue course in South Dakota similar to the one I did back in 2024. Along with that, the plan is to do the 14-day wilderness expedition with Boulder Outdoor Survival School and work on wildfires for a couple of weeks.

It’s tough to be alone. The Preparation is nothing short of amazing when it comes to individual growth in the form of increased skills and bettered character, and it certainly blows the competition out of the water, but there are tradeoffs with everything…

In nearly 3 years of being the beta tester for the program I’ve found two major challenges—one that goes away with time and one that sticks with you: loneliness.

Let’s focus on the latter for now…

I’ve been lonely while working in the Nevada desert. I’ve been lonely while working on wildfires in Oregon. I’ve been lonely on a sailboat in the middle of the south Atlantic, in the mountains of Thailand, and on our own ranch in Uruguay.

More than that, I’ve experienced the loneliness that only those who live life fundamentally different from other experience.

That’s all to say that I understand what some of the other people in The Preparation are feeling. It’s a tough thing—and it’s thrown me out of the saddle a time or two. Loneliness cuts so deep and seems to wish nothing but that you feel as weak or incapable as possible. It feeds on negative emotion while conjuring more of it up at the same time. It sits with you when you’re alone and offers nothing but the worst.

A person who doesn’t constantly reflect on the meaningful path they’re on and actively look for joy in the things around them will be consumed by loneliness.

Trust me, I’d know by now.

Anyway…

I’m saying this to those who can derive use out of it, but I’m also writing this so that I remember what I have to do and how I have to think for the next few weeks.

Continuing on

I haven’t abandoned the Investor Cycle. In fact, I was going through a course on technical analysis and finished reading another investing book the week before last.

It’s a slow cycle, one that can be drawn out during a period where things are more time sensitive. Given everything that’s going on in the world, this may be the last time in a while that I venture outside of Uruguay to learn/do something. It seems clear that the wise thing to do for a bit will be to stick to learning things locally instead of travelling 6,000 miles to take a couple courses.

That being said, I’m going to make this short time count.

I’ll be doing the Survivalist and Investor Cycles at the same time while doing everything else I want to do here. Not everything will go my way. I might not get around to doing everything before it’s time to go. That’s okay. Ultimately, all that matters is that I do all that can and have a good attitude while doing it.

That would make this time, and the loneliness that comes with it, worth it.

I’ve got no clue of what I’ll be doing once I get back to Uruguay. It’ll probably be near the 3-year mark of my time in The Preparation. There will be a couple birthdays and I’m probably going to want to rest for a couple weeks. I need to do some more thinking about what’s next.

Reading

• Finished reading The Most Important Thing by Howard Marks

• Finished reading You Can Be a Stock Market Genius by Joel Greenblatt

• Finished reading Education of a Wandering Man by Louis L’Amour (again)

Last update

Are these updates informative? Are they useful? Entertaining?

Leave a comment below if you’ve got any suggestions or questions for me.

And don’t forget to send this to someone who might benefit.

I’ll see you next week.

-Maxim Benjamin Smith

I am acting as a guinea pig for a program which is meant to prepare young men for the future. This program is designed to be a replacement for the only three routes advertised to young men today - go to college, the military, or a dead-end job.

All of these typical routes of life are designed to shape us into cogs for a wheel that doesn’t serve us. Wasted time, debt, lack of skills, and a soul crushing job define many who follow the traditional route.

This program, which we can call “The Preparation”, is meant to guide young men on a path where they properly utilize their time to gain skills, build relationships, and reach a state of being truly educated. The Preparation is meant to set young men up for success.

What appeals to me about The Preparation is the idea of the type of man I could be. The path to becoming a skilled, dangerous, and competent man is much more clear now. I’ve always been impressed by characters like The Count of Monte Cristo, men who accumulated knowledge and skills over a long period of time and eventually became incredibly capable men.

Young men today do not have a guiding light. We have few mentors and no one to emulate. We have been told that there are only a few paths to success in this world. For intelligent and ambitious people - college is sold to us as the one true path. And yet that path seems completely uncertain today.

We desperately need something real to grab onto. I think this is it.

I’m putting the ideas into action. Will it work? I can’t be sure, but I’m doing my best. I’m more than 60 weeks into the program at this point. So far, so good.

You can follow me along as I follow the program. Each week, I summarize all that I did.

My objective in sharing this is three fold:

1. Documenting my progress holds me accountable.

2. I hope these updates will show other young men that there is another path we can take.

3. For the parents who stumble upon this log, I want to prove to you that telling your children that the conventional path - college, debt, and a job is not the foolproof path you think it is.

Speaking to you from Uruguay

While screwing around with AI the other day, I asked a question that had been on my mind for a while, “How do my accomplishments over the last 2.5 years stack up to those of other 18–22-year-olds?”

The answer shocked me.

As my questions expanded out from the original answer, I began to see something that just couldn’t make itself more obvious: The Preparation dominates the competition.

No doubt about it.

But, let’s dive into the video so you can see that I’m not blowing things out of proportion. The evidence, the data, that was displayed in a simple AI prompt is a testament to the program that Doug Casey, my father (Matt Smith), and myself have created…and I only say that because it’s true.

The proof is in the pudding.

Check it out.

-Maxim Benjamin Smith

Writing to you from Uruguay

Planning.

It’s absolutely key in The Preparation.

They say, “all good things take time”. Oh, how true that is. The time you put into planning for future courses—or entire cycles—will determine the quality of your year. Trust me, I’m not a great planner. I’ve learned the hard way. If I had diligently planned every major thing I was going to do over the past 2.5 years, I would have gotten much more done. Instead, I’ve floundered in certain periods trying to set things up on the fly or unsure of what to do next.

Sacrificing a little bit of your time to plan things a few weeks or months ahead is the way to go.

Well, that’s what I spent much of this past week doing…

Aside from making sure I got the 1890 Spanish sword and Napoleonic-era vase as birthday gifts for my dad, I was trying to figure out where I’ll be going next, what I need to do, and how I’m going to do it. The year will be even better with this planning.

Like I said, proper planning changes the game completely…

Learning to sail in the Falkland Islands required planning.

Working on wildfires as an EMT in Oregon required planning.

Flight school required planning.

All good things require planning…

You’ll only get half as much done without it, maybe less.

Here’s the Plan

Everything is up in the air these days. There’s no telling what will happen from one day to the next. I’m not talking about my own life, or yours, I’m talking about large-scale events in the world.

Wars start for no reason, economic problems are caused by them, and the looming financial issues is the states only amplify the potential threat of things.

I said it before, and I’ll say it again: I’m lucky to have a place to go to get away from those problems.

The problem is…a lot of the things worth doing are in the states.

So, you just have to be cautious.

My plan for the next couple months is to head back to the states in about 2 weeks and stay there until early August (assuming all goes to plan). The idea is to go through a quick course in the Survivalist Cycle (a 14-day Boulder Outdoor Survival School expedition) from June 7th-20th.

Then, hopefully, there will be some wildfires to work on for at least 2-3 weeks.

While I’m there, I’ll also have to finish my wildland fire annual training, get a DOT physical to be able to drive ambulances, and go to a short rope rescue course in South Dakota.

I’ll still continue working through the Investor Cycle at the same time. As you can imagine, this cycle is purely study.

What I Learned This Week

To clarify again, learning about investing was a minor part of this past week.

Although, after finishing the Stock Market Investing for Beginners course I moved on to a different online course to learn the basics of technical analysis. Fundamental analysis (figuring out and understanding the true, or potential, value of a company) is more my speed, but technical analysis seems to have its merit, too.

I can’t speak on technical analysis in an interesting way at the moment because I don’t know enough about it yet. For the most part, I only understand the definitions of certain trend lines or indicators that show whether a stock is likely to go up, down, or stagnate at a particular price range.

Let me give you a briefing on two of the more interesting things I’ve learned about thus far…

1.) Support and Resistance levels.

A support level is a price at which there is demand (buyers) for a stock. It allows for a good opportunity to buy a stock at a better price—depending on other conditions, of course. On the other end, a resistance level is a price at which there is supply (sellers) for a stock. These levels provide the opportunity to sell or short a stock.

2.) Channels and Trend lines

Channels use trend lines to mark the highs and lows—as well as the direction—of a stock. The information this gives you (combined with other detailed information I’m sure I’ll learn about later in the course) a fairly good idea of where the market is heading and what is likely to happen with the stock price.

Activities

Chess practice (7 out of 7 days)

Going pretty good as usual, but I still need to take more time to analyze each movement.

Worked out (3 out of 7 days)

Just didn’t have time to go to the gym every day this past week.

Guitar practice (5 out of 7 days)

Going fairly well. Still sticking to practicing the same few songs.

Reading

• Started reading Bowdries Law by Louis L’Amour

• Started reading The Most Important Thing by Howard Marks

Last Week’s Post

Are these updates informative? Are they useful? Entertaining?

Leave a comment below if you’ve got any suggestions or questions for me.

And don’t forget to send this to someone who might benefit.

I’ll see you next week.

-Maxim Benjamin Smith

I am acting as a guinea pig for a program which is meant to prepare young men for the future. This program is designed to be a replacement for the only three routes advertised to young men today - go to college, the military, or a dead-end job.

All of these typical routes of life are designed to shape us into cogs for a wheel that doesn’t serve us. Wasted time, debt, lack of skills, and a soul crushing job define many who follow the traditional route.

This program, which we can call “The Preparation”, is meant to guide young men on a path where they properly utilize their time to gain skills, build relationships, and reach a state of being truly educated. The Preparation is meant to set young men up for success.

What appeals to me about The Preparation is the idea of the type of man I could be. The path to becoming a skilled, dangerous, and competent man is much more clear now. I’ve always been impressed by characters like The Count of Monte Cristo, men who accumulated knowledge and skills over a long period of time and eventually became incredibly capable men.

Young men today do not have a guiding light. We have few mentors and no one to emulate. We have been told that there are only a few paths to success in this world. For intelligent and ambitious people - college is sold to us as the one true path. And yet that path seems completely uncertain today.

We desperately need something real to grab onto. I think this is it.

I’m putting the ideas into action. Will it work? I can’t be sure, but I’m doing my best. I’m more than 60 weeks into the program at this point. So far, so good.

You can follow me along as I follow the program. Each week, I summarize all that I did.

My objective in sharing this is three fold:

1. Documenting my progress holds me accountable.

2. I hope these updates will show other young men that there is another path we can take.

3. For the parents who stumble upon this log, I want to prove to you that telling your children that the conventional path - college, debt, and a job is not the foolproof path you think it is.

Writing to you from Uruguay

This past week in the Investor Cycle of The Preparation went well…

Apologies for being a little late on the update.

As I said before, I know practically nothing about investing, but I think that these past two weeks have given me a fairly solid initial glimpse into what investing looks like, how to do it, and how to look at the world through the eyes of an investor—at least to a certain degree.

Anyway, this past week ended with a good balance of analytical aspects of investing as well as a broader understanding of why investing today is much different than it was in, for example, Warren Buffett’s day.

What I Learned This Past Week

I’ll save the detailed (and more boring stuff) for later…

For now, it’s worth going over something incorrect on a broad scale: Current investing philosophy. Chances are you were taught or told, at one point or another, that all you’ve got to do to invest properly is put a portion of your income into the S&P 500, Apple stock, Microsoft, Google…

Maybe you were told about dollar-cost averaging: The idea that you should buy a certain stock or index on a regular basis.

Usually, the two ideas came together. Invest, let’s say, $500 dollars of your paycheck into the S&P 500 (a “trustworthy” and somewhat stable index that only seems to go up over time) and do it using dollar-cost averaging…meaning you continuously invest $500 of every paycheck into the index.

That’s essentially what I was told to do in school. Invest in “safe” stocks like Apple or Microsoft, keep your money there, and it’s a guaranteed win!

The other side of things (that’s also incorrect today) is the idea that long-term value investing is safe because “that’s what Warren Buffett did”. For context, value investing is basically its own philosophy, but to put it simply it’s about finding stocks that you think are undervalued currently but you think will have a higher value in the future. That is what Warren Buffett did and he earned a lot of money doing it.

So, now we have two ideas that tend to be presented together…

First, the thought that certain big-ticket companies or indexes are safe and will continue to steadily rise, therefore you should take the route of dollar-cost averaging. Yet, parallel to that idea is the “Warren Buffett did it so I can too” idea that you, too, can make hundreds of millions by steadily investing in companies like Apple, Microsoft…

These ideas aren’t bad. In fact, without inflation or any other external distortion these ideas are not only sound, but useful too.

The other thing is…without the financial or economic distortions (such as the closing of the gold window in 1971, which cut the tie between the price of gold and value of the dollar) caused by the banks and the government, Warren Buffett wouldn’t have been nearly as rich as he is today. He was born at the right time when the dollar had real value, he invested at the right time, he stuck to his philosophy of value investing. With huge bursts of sudden inflation in the 70s and 80s the stocks he had been holding onto largely went up in price simply because the money supply was larger.

Take this chart of the S&P 500 for example…

The growth it has seen in nothing short of unnatural. So, you’ve got to ask yourself…would Warren Buffett have even gotten close to being as rich as he is without external factors driving distortion.

I bring this up because Warren Buffett has, for my entire life, been hailed as an absolute untouchable genius. If anyone aims to delve into investing his image and philosophy is shoved in your face. Did he do an excellent job of making do with what he had, completely understanding fundamental analysis, and sticking to his guns with value investing? Yes.

Does his method work anymore? No.

You’ll be lucky if any of your long-term investments outpace inflation.

What I Find Interesting

This is what’s interesting to me: learning about the bigger picture, how things actually work, to be able to slowly put the pieces of the puzzle together to understand not only what is right and wrong, but also understand what actually works and what doesn’t.

The week before last allowed for a look into the 3 main forms of inflation: fractional reserve banking, quantitative easing, and government bonds.

Check out the last post in the Investor Cycle to read more on this topic:

Inflation, especially at the degree we have to face it in the states now, is a macro-scale problem that affects investing as a whole. Does it tell you where to invest your money? Of course not. Yet, understanding problems and changes gives you a better idea of how to invest your money.

The Detail Side of Things

This is the boring stuff. I’m going to fly through it because spending a ton of time on any of this.

Here’s a few terms I learned this past week:

ROIC: Return on Invested Capital measures the percentage return a company earns on the capital invested by its shareholders and debt holders, reflecting how efficiently it generates profits from its invested capital.

ROE: Return on Equity measures profitability relative to shareholders’ equity; key for investors and analysts. (ROE= Net income/shareholder equity)

EBITDA: Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortization measures a company’s core operational performance.

DCF: Discounted Cash Flow is a method to determine the intrinsic value of a company.

P/E: Price to Earnings Ratio is a financial metric that compares a company’s stock price to its earnings per share (EPS). It indicates how much investors are willing to pay for each dollar of earnings. (The formula is: P/E Ratio = Share Price ÷ Earnings Per Share)

P/S: Price to Sales Ratio is a metric to measure a company’s stock price to its total sales or revenue. (Formula: P/S Ratio= share price/sales per share)

P/B: Price to Book Ratio compares a company’s current market value to its book value, which is the net value of its assets after subtracting liabilities.

All of these terms and methods for measuring the value of a company (which I learned from the Stock Market Investing for Beginners course) came together to help me read financial statements and make judgements about a company from them.

Activities

Chess practice (6 out of 7 days)

Still doing alright with chess. Hit a small plateau recently, but I think that’s just due to my occasional lack of patience and ability to slow down and really think about a set of circumstances. Practice is needed.

Guitar practice (6 out of 7 days)

No comments here. Still going ok.

Working out (6 out of 7 days)

Still doing a mix of weightlifting, running, and at-home Muay Thai.

Reading

• Finished reading Passin’ Through by Louis L’Amour

• Finished reading The Dao of Capital by Spitznagel

This was a good book. It’s worth reading because it gives you a clear idea of how one should think about investing. It’s not a technical book by any means…more of a philosophical book.

Things I Published

Are these updates informative? Are they useful? Entertaining?

Leave a comment below if you’ve got any suggestions or questions for me.

And don’t forget to send this to someone who might benefit.

I’ll see you next week.

-Maxim Benjamin Smith

I am acting as a guinea pig for a program which is meant to prepare young men for the future. This program is designed to be a replacement for the only three routes advertised to young men today - go to college, the military, or a dead-end job.

All of these typical routes of life are designed to shape us into cogs for a wheel that doesn’t serve us. Wasted time, debt, lack of skills, and a soul crushing job define many who follow the traditional route.

This program, which we can call “The Preparation”, is meant to guide young men on a path where they properly utilize their time to gain skills, build relationships, and reach a state of being truly educated. The Preparation is meant to set young men up for success.

What appeals to me about The Preparation is the idea of the type of man I could be. The path to becoming a skilled, dangerous, and competent man is much more clear now. I’ve always been impressed by characters like The Count of Monte Cristo, men who accumulated knowledge and skills over a long period of time and eventually became incredibly capable men.

Young men today do not have a guiding light. We have few mentors and no one to emulate. We have been told that there are only a few paths to success in this world. For intelligent and ambitious people - college is sold to us as the one true path. And yet that path seems completely uncertain today.

We desperately need something real to grab onto. I think this is it.

I’m putting the ideas into action. Will it work? I can’t be sure, but I’m doing my best. I’m more than 60 weeks into the program at this point. So far, so good.

You can follow me along as I follow the program. Each week, I summarize all that I did.

My objective in sharing this is three fold:

1. Documenting my progress holds me accountable.

2. I hope these updates will show other young men that there is another path we can take.

3. For the parents who stumble upon this log, I want to prove to you that telling your children that the conventional path - college, debt, and a job is not the foolproof path you think it is.

I’m not talking about thinking that you could run for congress, win a Nobel Peace Prize, or become an astronaut. That’s largely childish.

I’m talking about developing the ability to analyze your life—where you’re going, what you’re doing, who you want to be, where you want to be—and being able to properly execute on those ideas in the future.

But, not only that…

I’m also talking about understanding how to pull yourself out of the present moment and circumstances to see the world as a vast expanse of potential that can aid you here and now in getting to where you want to be.

How do you do it?

Well, that’s the tough part, and what I try to explain in this video. In my mind, there are a few methods to working it out….

Stay tuned for more.

-Maxim Benjamin Smith

Writing to you from Uruguay

It’s a big transition to go from an action packed cycle like the Fighter Cycle to another that really only requires study at a desk.

With all the wild things that have happened in the past couple months, the slow pace is welcome. Beyond that, I think that this is actually a great method: undergo a period of high volume action and then transition to a slower paced period of intense study on a new subject.

Fast-paced living creates a desire for the inverse and vice versa.

Anyway…

This first week in the Investor Cycle of The Preparation has actually been really good. It’s reminded me of when I was studying the fundamentals of economics a couple years ago. I’ve been learning new terms that help me better understand investing as a whole, but on top of that I think I’m starting to develop a new way of seeing the world—similar to how a new entrepreneur looks at the world through a new lens after making his first sale.

Of course, I have a long way to go and this is only the beginning in terms of “knowing how to invest”, but it’s enjoyable to get a handle on something I didn’t understand at all not too long ago.

What I’ve been learning about

Now, there’s a ton of terms I’ve learned from Stock Market Investing for Beginners course on Udemy—terms to describe different types of stocks, indices, methods of investing, or types of companies. It’s not worth taking the time to define a list of fairly simple terms. Instead, I’d rather stick to the interesting stuff.

I don’t want to bore you by explaining what the Dow Jones is or why you should buy a value stock instead of a growth stock.

While I did learn a lot of basic things that I didn’t previously understand from the Udemy course, the more valuable things I learned this past week came from talking to my dad about the book The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham. Going over a couple chapters of the book with him allowed me to learn much more than I would have otherwise. He was able to explain things like bonds, quantitative easing, the bond price to yield ratio, and a number of other things like that.

Government Bonds

Bonds are oddly difficult to understand and I can’t say that I understand the entire concept yet, but let me try to explain the basics.

Essentially, government bonds are loans that people or institutions make to a government. When you buy one, you are giving the government money now, and in return the government promises to pay you interest and give back the original amount later. Governments use bonds to raise money for things like roads, wars, public programs, or paying existing debts. They are often considered relatively safe because they are backed by the government’s ability to tax, borrow, or print money.

It’s funny that they seem safe for those reasons because the government’s methods for maintaining the bonds involve taking money away from people (taxes), by devaluing the currency by printing more money, or by borrowing (creating debt and an obligation to print more money to pay that debt).

To my understanding, government bonds are debt created by the government. The investor, by putting his money into bonds, is choosing to pay for a portion of that debt now and is promised that he will collect a percentage in interest based upon the price he bought the bonds at. The idea is to help the government pay a debt while benefiting the investor, but it screws everybody in the long run.

After all, how could somebody create debt by using money to pay for debt or services using newly printed or borrowed money, pay back their investor using debt, and generate even more debt by printing or borrowing money to pay interest to their investor?

Perhaps there’s something I’m not understanding. To me, this is nothing short of entirely immoral. It’s a great way to make sure the dollar means less and less by the week.

I’ll get back to this in a second, but let’s take a look at why you can make a lot of money if you invest in government bonds at the right time.

This graph is interesting because, although not totally accurate in terms of bond prices and yield rates, it shows you the bond price to yield ratio. When bond prices get higher, the yield rates go lower and vice versa. If you invested $10,000 in 10-year treasury bonds at their peak yield (15.32%) in September of 1981 you would walk away with your original 10k plus $15,320 in interest. That’s $1,532 in interest per year.

A 15.32% guaranteed return every year (as long as you don’t pull out of the investment before the end of the 10-year mark) is a fantastic investment.

(One quick point to make things clear: if you invested in 10-year treasury bonds at the 15.32% for yields in 1981, you’re investment would draw a return of 15.32% every year. No matter how much the market may fluctuate you will receive a fixed-rate return based upon the price you bought the bonds.)

Bonds, as I said, can be a great investment. However, they are one of the 3 main ways that our money is inflated away. Debt can’t be paid with debt that paid for debt that paid for debt…

So, just remember that this is one of 3 ways that the government destroys the value of the dollar. Why can you afford less and less every year? Why is everything so expensive? Why can’t your money take you very far?

This is one of the reasons.

Dividends

Dividends are much easier to understand than bonds.

Some companies will pay you back a percentage of their profits (dividends) for investing into the company. These are paid annually, semi-annually, or quarterly and can allow you to make money even when you invest in a company with a stable stock price.

Actually, dividends are a sign that a company has long-term thinking.

When a company pays dividends it’s a signal to investors that the business wants to create a symbiotic, mutually beneficial relationship. If you invest in our business you’re giving us an opportunity to be more successful in the future, so to incentivize you to continue your support we are going to pay you a percentage of our profits.

You benefit.

I benefit.

Everyone benefits.

On the other side of things, a lot of companies will buy shares of their own stock to drive up market prices, creating an illusion of greater success and a desire within people to get in before the stock prices get higher.

There’s a major problem with this: the people who invest in your business have no reason to watch your company succeed other than to watch the stock price reach a point where they’ll be satisfied to recoup their investment (plus profits). Through this method, people benefit when they sell their shares of your company—when they no longer have a stake in your success. Dividends promote the opposite.

Honorable mentions for other terms I learned:

• ETF

• Long vs. short

The 3 main forms of inflation

This came up during the conversations with my dad. I think this is important because it changes the way you look at the world, and investing itself. The knowledge of these forces, and how much they affect your life, changes how you look at making and managing money.

So, there are 3 forms of inflation: Bonds (which we already spoke about), fractional reserve banking, and quantitative easing.

Let me go over these quickly…

Fractional reserve banking: A quick summary doesn’t do it justice. You’d need to spend hours to understand it all and how screwed up it is. Fractional reserve banking is a system where banks keep only a fraction of customer deposits available as reserves and lend out the rest. For example, if you deposit $1,000, the bank may keep some on hand and lend most of it to someone else. That borrower then spends it, the money gets deposited again, and the process repeats. This expands the amount of “money” circulating in the economy through bank credit.

This can contribute to inflation because it increases the supply of money and credit faster than the supply of goods and services.

If the reserve requirement were 10%, then your $1,000 deposit could support up to about $900 of new lending by your bank. If that $900 gets deposited into another bank, that bank could lend $810, then the next could lend $729, and so on. But, the reserve requirement in the U.S. is 0%…meaning that banks aren’t required to hold onto any of your $1,000—they can lend a huge portion of it.

Here’s the catch: you can go back and withdraw you’re $1k at any time, but the money the bank created out of thin air as a “loan” to someone else is still in existence. So, new money was added to the money supply. Each dollar created means each dollar means less.

It’s a complex concept, but an example of how broken things are.

Quantitative easing: is when a central bank creates new money electronically and uses it to buy financial assets, usually government bonds (literally printing money to buy debt). It does this when it wants to push more money into the financial system, especially during a crisis or recession like the financial crisis of 2008.

Here’s the simple version: the central bank buys bonds from banks or investors. Those banks and investors now have more cash. That extra cash is supposed to make lending easier, lower interest rates, raise asset prices, and encourage people and businesses to borrow, invest, and spend.

QE “stimulates” the economy in the short term during a crisis. In reality, QE just makes an inevitable crisis worse.

A change in thinking

With these 3 main causes of inflation, the devaluation of the dollar, and the chaos in the world, it’s basically impossible to make any long-term investments.

Wars start and end (affecting economies) erratically. The financial system is its own terrible ponzi scheme. The devaluation of the dollar by inflation outpaces the financial benefits of much long-term investing.

Short-term, speculative trading is necessary to properly counteract the devaluation of your dollar.

2nd and 3rd order consequences

As I’ve learned, perhaps one of the most important—if not the most important—skill one needs for investing is the ability to see and understand the 2nd and 3rd order consequences from an economic event.

If you play chess you’ll get it…

My dad and I walked through the exercise of looking at how the closing of the Strait of Hormuz could impact the price of coal and, working on the assumption that coal will increase in price, which coal producers would be best to invest in. To be specific, we focused on the impact it could have in Asia and parts of Europe.

First, it was necessary to understand why coal could go up: a lot of liquid natural gas used to supply Asia and parts of Europe goes through the strait. Some of Qatar’s natural gas plants were damaged recently and will take 3-5 years to put back online. Qatar exports 20% of all the world’s LNG and 80% of all of that goes to Asia. 10-15% goes to parts of Europe. So, with that in mind, and the likelihood that the strait is closed for a prolonged period, there is an energy crisis on our hands. Coal would be, and already is, becoming necessary for many countries.

Japan is already trying to maximize its coal usage to reduce natural gas usage. Thailand is reopening decommissioned coal plants. Korea has lifted its 80% cap on coal-fired generation and suspended its efforts to reduce coal plants in the country.

That’s just a snapshot of what we were looking at. I won’t get into the coal companies we were looking into at the moment since they’ll be used in the next issue for Crisis Investing.

The exercise was very helpful. Understanding the ripple effects of an economic event, political event, war, or government policy is key.

Activities

Worked out 6 out of 7 days

My workouts consist of some weight lifting, some running, and some at-home Muay Thai (which really just means hitting the heavy bag). Ever since going to Thailand, I’ve realized how important cardio is.

Chess practice 6 out of 7 days

I’m getting better. Recently, I’ve decided to take the advice of a chess master I’ve been able to play a few games with: play 30 minute games. They give you time to really think about things (i.e. the 2nd and 3rd order consequences of every move).

Guitar practice 6 out of 7 days

Not much to say about this. Just practicing some of the same songs I did a few months ago.

Reading

• Continued reading The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham

• Started reading The Dao of Capital by Spitznagel

• Started reading Ask Monty by Monty Roberts

• Finished reading Hondo by Louis L’Amour

Are these updates informative? Are they useful? Entertaining?

Leave a comment below if you’ve got any suggestions or questions for me.

And don’t forget to send this to someone who might benefit.

I’ll see you next week.

-Maxim Benjamin Smith

I am acting as a guinea pig for a program which is meant to prepare young men for the future. This program is designed to be a replacement for the only three routes advertised to young men today - go to college, the military, or a dead-end job.

All of these typical routes of life are designed to shape us into cogs for a wheel that doesn’t serve us. Wasted time, debt, lack of skills, and a soul crushing job define many who follow the traditional route.

This program, which we can call “The Preparation”, is meant to guide young men on a path where they properly utilize their time to gain skills, build relationships, and reach a state of being truly educated. The Preparation is meant to set young men up for success.

What appeals to me about The Preparation is the idea of the type of man I could be. The path to becoming a skilled, dangerous, and competent man is much more clear now. I’ve always been impressed by characters like The Count of Monte Cristo, men who accumulated knowledge and skills over a long period of time and eventually became incredibly capable men.

Young men today do not have a guiding light. We have few mentors and no one to emulate. We have been told that there are only a few paths to success in this world. For intelligent and ambitious people - college is sold to us as the one true path. And yet that path seems completely uncertain today.

We desperately need something real to grab onto. I think this is it.

I’m putting the ideas into action. Will it work? I can’t be sure, but I’m doing my best. I’m more than 60 weeks into the program at this point. So far, so good.

You can follow me along as I follow the program. Each week, I summarize all that I did.

My objective in sharing this is three fold:

1. Documenting my progress holds me accountable.

2. I hope these updates will show other young men that there is another path we can take.

3. For the parents who stumble upon this log, I want to prove to you that telling your children that the conventional path - college, debt, and a job is not the foolproof path you think it is.

Writing to you from Uruguay

It’s been a long time since things have been calm, steady, and peaceful. For the Fighter Cycle of The Preparation, I travelled to Japan for a few weeks before heading to train Muay Thai in the north of Thailand—Chiang Mai to be exact. Training in Thailand is unlike anywhere else. It’s intense, real, and taken very seriously. So, that was a difficult few weeks in of itself. Then, the series of infections and sicknesses I got while being there made the following months fairly uncomfortable.

Not to mention the travel back to Japan, driving around the states, and the 24 hours of travel to get back to Uruguay…

On paper, I have fewer accomplishments this to show for this first quarter of the year than I’d like. On the other hand, I did have a vast amount of new experiences that broadened my understanding of the world and was able to pick up the very basic foundations of Muay Thai.

I think that an inevitable fact makes itself clear at one point or another: the more you do, the more you accomplish, fewer things begin to be viewed as accomplishments.

If I look back at my old journals from a year ago—or even two years ago—I have double (sometimes triple) the amount of accomplishments written down for each month. Is it because I was actually accomplishing more? Not necessarily, but sometimes yes. There’s an ebb and flow to life—periods in which much in done in a short time and other periods that are slow. The reduction in those “on paper” accomplishments comes from the simple fact that those smaller things no longer seem like notable wins because of the sheer volume of things that has been done over 2.7 years…

That’s natural and to be expected, but I still need to try harder

So, there’s two points that I’m trying to make here—let me put it in simply:

1. In reality, so much has happened in this first quarter of the year despite the fact that fewer written accomplishments have come from it.

2. The further you progress, the more you manage to accomplish, fewer things begin to seem like accomplishments when stacked up against what you’ve already done. Understanding that and still trying to move forward to continue making lots of progress is the right thing…and it’s what I’m trying to do

Where I’m going from here

Things are always somewhat uncertain and up in the air, but with the world getting crazier and crazier by the day (and the increasing chances of large scale war and economic problems) the uncertainty is off the charts. I’ve felt as though I can’t make promises or even strongly imply to people that I will be anywhere specific at any designated time. The world is getting increasingly chaotic and dangerous—and sometimes the potential for danger is too high to be ignored. During those times the best thing to do is to be in one place where you’re surrounded by the people you love.

Ideally, that place also happens to be safe. Obviously, I’m lucky to be able to check all of those boxes.

The problem is, with the world moving in a bad direction, it’s hard to have anything set in stone. For example, I’ve said to just about everyone I know that I want to work on wildfires again this summer. I still need to get a few things in order and do the annual refresher training unfortunately, but that’s manageable. The question is…will it be wise to head back to the states in early June? We’ll have to see.

I certainly want to work on fires for at least 30 days if possible. Plus, I feel an obligation (which only exists in my head, not in reality) to the man who first gave me the opportunity to join his wildland EMS company several years ago, Tyler Olson. He’s a good man, tough too, and I want to show appreciation for what he’s done for me by taking advantage of the opportunity.

Anyway…

As I said, the world is (on a large scale) more unpleasant by the day. When December of this year rolls around, myself, along with every other man 18-25 will be automatically registered for the draft in the states. These things usually don’t happen unless war, along an anti-war attitude, is expected. So, this will be a major problem going into the future.

Who wants to be part of the military—cannon fodder for those who hate you? Who could be so foolish as to go, whether by their own free will or force from another, to die a dishonorable death—in a pointless war—in a hellscape?

Personally, death by FPV drone for people who hung out with Jeffery Epstein doesn’t sound so glorious.

Moving on…

As things were getting a little iffy with the war in Iran recently, it was clear that being here for at least a little bit was the best option. While I’m here I will be completing the Investor Cycle of The Preparation. Then, I’ll make the decision of whether or not it’s best to head to the states.

What I did this past week

Well, for the most part I’ve been taking it easy: stacking firewood, reading a lot, writing, working out, and spending some time in the sauna twice a week.

The antibiotics I took to get rid of the staph infection I had caused some lasting effects. Yet again, this is the ideal place to be. We have raw milk from our own cow, yogurt, meat, plenty of space to walk around, things to do outside, a gym, and that sauna that I mentioned. After weeks of travel I was ready to take it easy.

I’m starting a little late, but this week will be the first official week in the Investor Cycle. Looking ahead, there’ll be over ten books I need to read, a few academic courses to finish, and additional study. I don’t think that it will take up too much of my time, so I’ll have to figure out something else to do while I’m here.

Vamos a ver, as they’d say.

Activities

• 1 hour of chess practice (5/7 days)

• Lifted weights/running/at-home muay thai (6/7 days)

Reading

• Finished reading Borden Chantry by Louis L’Amour

• Finished reading Hondo by Louis L’Amour

I picked these two Louis L’Amour books up from an old antique store in a town called Central City in Colorado. It was the right kind of place to find a bunch of Louis L’Amour westerns. The antique store building was from the 1870s, several floors high, all brick in that old western style. Central City was a mining town at one point, and it looks the part, but it’s all been taken over and converted into casinos. No bueno. Yet, these two books were great. If you’re unsure of what it means to be a man…just open one of Louis L’Amour’s books. The answer will be clear on each page.

• Started reading The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham

Are these updates informative? Are they useful? Entertaining?

Leave a comment below if you’ve got any suggestions or questions for me.

And don’t forget to send this to someone who might benefit.

I’ll see you next week.

-Maxim Benjamin Smith

I am acting as a guinea pig for a program which is meant to prepare young men for the future. This program is designed to be a replacement for the only three routes advertised to young men today - go to college, the military, or a dead-end job.

All of these typical routes of life are designed to shape us into cogs for a wheel that doesn’t serve us. Wasted time, debt, lack of skills, and a soul crushing job define many who follow the traditional route.

This program, which we can call “The Preparation”, is meant to guide young men on a path where they properly utilize their time to gain skills, build relationships, and reach a state of being truly educated. The Preparation is meant to set young men up for success.

What appeals to me about The Preparation is the idea of the type of man I could be. The path to becoming a skilled, dangerous, and competent man is much more clear now. I’ve always been impressed by characters like The Count of Monte Cristo, men who accumulated knowledge and skills over a long period of time and eventually became incredibly capable men.

Young men today do not have a guiding light. We have few mentors and no one to emulate. We have been told that there are only a few paths to success in this world. For intelligent and ambitious people - college is sold to us as the one true path. And yet that path seems completely uncertain today.

We desperately need something real to grab onto. I think this is it.

I’m putting the ideas into action. Will it work? I can’t be sure, but I’m doing my best. I’m more than 60 weeks into the program at this point. So far, so good.

You can follow me along as I follow the program. Each week, I summarize all that I did.

My objective in sharing this is three fold:

1. Documenting my progress holds me accountable.

2. I hope these updates will show other young men that there is another path we can take.

3. For the parents who stumble upon this log, I want to prove to you that telling your children that the conventional path - college, debt, and a job is not the foolproof path you think it is.

Writing to you from Uruguay

Well, I can’t say that this last week was productive. It wasn’t. Just like many of these past weeks. Travel gets in the way of doing anything productive—and I’ve gotta say—traveling (especially by plane) gets worse and worse with every flight.

Travel isn’t the relaxing and romantic thing it used to be.

As the demon-like megachurch owner Kenneth Copeland once famously said, getting on a commercial flight is like being in “a long tube full of demons”. That was how he justified buying a new private jet back in 2016. He was wrong when he said it, but that statement feels more and more true by the day. I’m telling you, I’ve never seen more disrespectful, loud, crazy, and stupid people in my life.

In the last month alone I’ve spent just shy of 40 hours on planes or in airports.

Even that is far too much nowadays. There’s a lot of good people in the world, but in comparison to the entire population they are few and far between. I’m convinced that most people on earth don’t have souls.

That’s a topic for another day. I have a few stories that could be added to a future article…

Posted above is a map of everywhere I’ve travelled in the last month along with the path of travel. The Japan to Denver line is technically incorrect since we flew the opposite (and easier) way around the world. Anyway, this map accounts for nearly 40 hours of travel in planes and about the same in driving from Denver to Grand Junction to Cedar Rapids Iowa to Illinois…then all the way back to Denver.

Needless to say, there’s been a lot going on. Too much actually.

The slow and peaceful pace of things here in Uruguay will make it 1000x easier to get a lot done.

-Maxim

Writing to you from Cordova, Illinois

I spent the majority of this week, including Easter of course, with my mom’s side of the family. All of my family—mom’s side and dad’s—is from Illinois. And no, when I say Illinois I’m not talking about Chicago, or anywhere close to it. My family are all midwesterners from the western part of Illinois near the Mississippi River where you’ll find cornfields, John Deere, fast food, and small towns. I was born just across the river in Davenport, Iowa which isn’t much different.

It sounds crappy…and it is.

But, there was a time not too long ago (a similar story for most parts of America) when this place had real industry. John Deere is a great example of this. He was a Vermont-born blacksmith who moved to Illinois and ended up creating a plow that would cut through sticky midwestern soil. The plow became so popular that, despite economic panic in the mid 1800s, Deere’s company was able to incorporate as Deere & Company. By the time John died in 1886 he had created the world’s largest plow manufacturer. Years later in 1918, Deere & Company entered the tractor market and thus gained the reputation it’s known for today.

A great great uncle of mine (or maybe it was a great great grandfather, I can’t recall exactly) was once a janitor for John Deere. After many years of work he was able to climb all the way up the corporate ladder to become the VP of the company. I suppose that’s what people mean when they talk about the “American dream”.

Even a short story such as that one is proof that a place was once relatively prosperous.

But, working your way up the ladder in a huge corporation wasn’t the only way to “make it” around here. The Quad Cities area—two cities on the Illinois side and two cities on the Iowa side of the Mississippi—used to dominate. River services, sawmills, and logging brought life to the area in the early 19th century. As said, John Deere followed not too long after. Things became even more interesting when the first railroad bridge to cross the Mississippi was built—transforming the region into a great junction for commerce in 1856. This, of course, drew more people and resources into the area which created more money-making opportunities. A domino effect.

The Civil War brought another temporary economic boom to the area. The Rock Island Arsenal was established during the war as a military center and manufacturer.

Then, as is true for most parts of America, the final boom—the last hurrah—came with the major increase of manufacturing in the early 20th century. Heavy machinery, construction, and agricultural companies like International Harvester gave way for what probably was the most prosperous time in midwestern history. I hate to say it, but it’s been all downhill since then.

It’s hard to say, is it better for a people to strive, succeed, and create something great only to watch an unstoppable rot overwhelm everything? Or is it better to live content and humble among the land?

The former sees the greatness that people are capable of—truly the best of the best. Yet the circumstances of the former suffer the pain of an endless Birth, Growth, Peak, Death, and Rebirth cycle. The circumstances of the latter mean that, while no great things may be achieved on a large scale, people escape the endless cycles of civilization and may be more easily able to live peaceful lives as individuals. The answer of what is best is unclear and probably doesn’t matter.

Remnants of Great Times…or Humiliation?

I was looking around for something to do—something fun and entertaining that would make this time in the QC more interesting. The Putnam Museum of Science and History seemed like a good pick. They have exhibits on the history of the Quad Cities which, I thought, would be good to check out since I know so little about this place.

The museum was interesting to say the least…

Michael Yon spoke to me about it a few weeks ago. He told me that, although he had recently been to museums and art galleries that were dark and degrading to the places they came from, it was still good to learn as much history as you can from the places you go. Plus, museums and art galleries aren’t just a look into the past, they are a deeper look into the present because they highlight how we think about the past.

Modern museums are humiliation rituals for people to visit and whip themselves for the sins of their fathers. Well…only some of us have to get on our knees, raise a fist, and flog ourselves. The “victims” of history get to walk through each exhibit and writhe in self-pity—feeling the pain and bigotry that their ancestors dealt with.

The exhibit I wanted to see which was about famous people, events, and inventions from this area was small and little detail was added.

Also, I never thought I’d see a Moderna COVID vaccine on display, or BLM shirt, but that was foolish of me. The quickest way to learn about how you’re “supposed” to think about the world is to go to a museum. The psyop is literally on display.

Think about this with me: How many wild and complex events occur in one person’s life? Too many to count. Within a person’s life, let’s say 75 years, you have a long and intricate set of events to speak about that molded that person’s life into what it was. Now multiply that by the lives of several billion people that lived over the course of a couple hundred years. You suddenly have 100s of billions, if not trillions, of notable events happening in short order. Each spontaneous action of a single person, every random life event, every quarrel, and every invention has incomprehensible long term effects.

What I’m trying to say is that history is so incredibly complex. The effects of human action, reason for human action, the “feeling” of a certain era, motivations, and problems are endless and impossible to understand unless you were there. Even then, no matter where or when you live, you’re view is limited.

Don’t trust anyone—teachers, professors, museums, or a society as a whole—who seeks to simplify history and label the “good guys” and “bad guys”. On a large scale, this effort to restructure your thinking is malicious.

History is complex.

Reading

• Finished reading “Economics in One Lesson” by Henry Hazlitt

A good book to read. Definitely recommend it. Even a basic understanding of economics puts you far ahead of everyone else. It allows you to foresee potential economic issues, opportunities, and the major problems created by central banks and governments.

Additional Events

• Chess practice: 5 hours

• Worked out: 5 out of 7 days

Things I Published

Are these updates informative? Are they useful? Entertaining?

Leave a comment below if you’ve got any suggestions or questions for me.

And don’t forget to send this to someone who might benefit.

I’ll see you next week.

-Maxim Benjamin Smith

I am acting as a guinea pig for a program which is meant to prepare young men for the future. This program is designed to be a replacement for the only three routes advertised to young men today - go to college, the military, or a dead-end job.

All of these typical routes of life are designed to shape us into cogs for a wheel that doesn’t serve us. Wasted time, debt, lack of skills, and a soul crushing job define many who follow the traditional route.

This program, which we can call “The Preparation”, is meant to guide young men on a path where they properly utilize their time to gain skills, build relationships, and reach a state of being truly educated. The Preparation is meant to set young men up for success.

What appeals to me about The Preparation is the idea of the type of man I could be. The path to becoming a skilled, dangerous, and competent man is much more clear now. I’ve always been impressed by characters like The Count of Monte Cristo, men who accumulated knowledge and skills over a long period of time and eventually became incredibly capable men.

Young men today do not have a guiding light. We have few mentors and no one to emulate. We have been told that there are only a few paths to success in this world. For intelligent and ambitious people - college is sold to us as the one true path. And yet that path seems completely uncertain today.

We desperately need something real to grab onto. I think this is it.

I’m putting the ideas into action. Will it work? I can’t be sure, but I’m doing my best. I’m more than 60 weeks into the program at this point. So far, so good.

You can follow me along as I follow the program. Each week, I summarize all that I did.

My objective in sharing this is three fold:

1. Documenting my progress holds me accountable.

2. I hope these updates will show other young men that there is another path we can take.

3. For the parents who stumble upon this log, I want to prove to you that telling your children that the conventional path - college, debt, and a job is not the foolproof path you think it is.

Speaking to you from Illinois, USA

I tend to just stick to the serious stuff—tips and tricks, insight, guidance, stories, mistakes, and lessons from The Preparation. Well, this time I thought I’d mix things up a bit…

Having fun, or “doing fun shit” as we like to call it, is a huge part of the program. For those like me who are introverted, reserved, and often too serious having fun can often be difficult to do right.

I know, it sounds funny, but it’s true.

So, in this video I have a story I want to tell you based off of a question that a new prepper left for me. Watch the video and let me take you back to a game-changing moment not so long ago while I was in Japan…

-Maxim Benjamin Smith

Writing to you from Cordova, Illinois

Well, I don’t know what to say…

So much yet so little has happen since I last spoke to you almost 4 weeks ago. I didn’t mean to go so long without posting an update either, but if you can believe it things have managed to get even crazier recently. Let me list off everything that has happened in the last 2 months and then I’ll fill in the details about what’s happened recently:

• Travelled from Uruguay to Japan, stayed in Japan for 3 weeks, then travelled to Thailand to train Muay Thai

• Scratched by a dog in Thailand which led to me getting 4/5 rabies shots over the course of several weeks

• Chest pain, tightness, and crazy hypertension 24-36 hours after the first 3 shots

• Got sick twice in 3 weeks in Thailand

• Picked up a fungal infection in sparring that I falsely assumed was staph

• Went back to Japan

• Took Dicloxacillin for what I thought was staph, found out it wasn’t, then treated the fungal infection with a topical cream

• Decided to start training Muay Thai again in Japan, got strange cuts on my arm after the second session, cuts turned into boils and spread everywhere

• Went to the doctor who falsely diagnosed it as dermatitis or psoriasis

• Went to another doctor who diagnosed it as staph and prescribed Cefalexin

• Started taking the antibiotics and feeling lots of strange effects

• Flew 10 hours back to Denver from Tokyo

• Got up the next day and drove 4 1/2 hours to Grand Junction, Colorado with very little sleep to attended a conference

• Woke up feeling bad — super shaky, anxious, and hot

• Went to the hospital to get blood tests, nothing showed up, but found out I have an oral yeast infection from taking antibiotics

• Decided to not go to conference or rope rescue course in Utah

• Felt a crazy tightness in my throat for an entire day

• Drove 15 hours from Colorado to Iowa

• Felt very weak, poor circulation, headaches lasting for days

• Feeling better now after March 28th

And that’s about it thus far…

My unwillingness to allow extra time to rest certainly has made it worse. I never should have trained again in Japan because that created a whole slew of other issues to deal with, but I assumed that it wasn’t a problem at the time. In retrospect I was pushing the limit to try to salvage the rest of the cycle since I’d only spent 3 weeks training in Thailand instead of the intended 6 weeks…and I didn’t fight like I wanted to.

At this point I’m certain that it’s the antibiotics that have caused much of my suffering over the last couples weeks. My brain has definitely been affected. Those close to me know that I’m not the most positive person in the world. The destruction of my gut microbiome lowers serotonin and dopamine levels, which has increased overall negative feeling and definitely heightened anxiety. I’m not someone who goes around saying I have anxiety. I don’t and I’m not one of those people. Feeling anxious can be great at a certain level because it makes you want to get up and do stuff. Over the last 2.5 years I tend to wake up with at least a low level of anxiety in the morning due to the fact that there’s often quite a lot that I want to get done in a short amount of time.

Anxiety stemming from wanting to do what you need to do is good, but what I’ve felt recently is way over the top.

Anyway…

These last couple weeks have been the worst part of the last two months. I’ve never felt anything like it. My current conclusion is that the combination of all the travel, medications, changes of environment, hard training in Thailand, infections, and poor sleep have led to my nervous system going haywire. Too much going on in too short a time.

Recent symptoms which have brought me to this conclusion: poor circulation, muscle weakness, band-like headaches that last 12+ hours that also cover the neck, poor cognitive function…

As I write this I’m feeling much better. I’m staying with family in Illinois and getting plenty of rest. The only thing I need to do differently is eat better food to get my gut back on track, but that’s easier said than done when so many of the nasty fast food staples haven’t been available to you in quite a while. With some more rest, good food, and very little stress I’ll feel better in no time. I want to get back on track ASAP because although I’ve had plenty new experiences this year I want to be more productive again.

Asia for 3 Months

We left Tokyo on March 18th after spending our final week in Japan with a friend we had met at a conference my family hosted in Uruguay last year. Not much to say about that except that it was good to see him again. He’s a good friend — very positive, extroverted, and smart. We took showed him around parts of Osaka, Kyoto, and Tokyo.

Overall, I think he enjoyed the experience, but he was much less impressed with Japan than I was when I first got there. This is probably because he’s lived in Asia for much of his life.

My view of Japan was beginning to fade around the time he arrived, so my negative thoughts about the place might have swayed his opinion slightly. My default is to spot all of the negative things about a place or people — and I’m very good at it. Once the initial wonder of being in Japan had faded (after 5 1/2 weeks) there was a shocking contrast to what I saw around me.

I won’t speak about it because I don’t want to dissuade people from going there. In truth, all places are the same after you're there long enough. I’ve seen parts Africa, much of North and South America, some of Asia, and a strange set of islands in the South Atlantic. There are large cultural differences, lots of different languages and customs, but people are largely the same at their core. Some better than others, a few extraordinary ones, and a ton of crap.

Don’t get me wrong, travel is good. Travel with purpose is the best.

If you go somewhere new with the intention of learning something specific you’ll meet some of the best people, walk away with interesting stories, and truly gain something from the experience. Travel without purpose — tourism — is cancerous. It’s destroyed Thailand, Japan, parts of South America, much of Europe. Travel with purpose gets you working right alongside locals and learning from them. Respect is earned that way.

So, that’s a long way of saying: Don’t travel aimlessly. Don’t believe that travel will allow you to “find yourself”. Find the best of a country or people by putting yourself in the position of a student.

Anyway…

Spending 3 month in Asia turned out to be a very different experience than I thought it would be, but I don’t regret it. The events of the last couple months were proof of something I’ve thought to be true, but I wasn’t certain until I saw it firsthand. You see, one of the things I love most about The Preparation is that it’s difficult and occasionally dangerous. Oftentimes I’ve heard people wish me “good luck with your adventures” with a very lighthearted emphasis on the word Adventure. Sometimes it is said in a demeaning tone, but more often than not it’s said with total sincerity. The funny thing is that adventure comes from a difficult, and sometimes dark, set of circumstances that are incredibly challenging and sometimes painful.

Adventure is best enjoyed in a chair with a coffee and a book. Louis L’Amour said it best:

“Adventure is just a romantic name for trouble. It sounds swell when you write about it, but it’s hell when you meet it face to face in a dark and lonely place.”

As I said, I had an inkling that adventure isn’t what most people think it is after doing a number of “adventurous” things over the past couple years that didn’t seem so glamorous when you were in the middle of it. It wasn’t until Thailand — and the events that ensued — that Louis’ quote finally came true for me. Bacterial infections, fungal infections, dog scratches, rabies shots, and sicknesses — a set of completely unexpected events after diving head-first into the romantic idea of training Muay Thai in its birthplace.

Now that’s adventure. I wouldn’t change a thing.

You’ll have plenty of adventures in The Preparation. Don’t let these past two months of weird issues I’ve had turn you away from doing new things in strange places.

Changes

“If you could use one word to summarize what you think your time in Thailand will be like, what would it be?”

“Meditative”, I said.

In retrospect, that was by far the funniest thing I could have said after taking into account what actually happened. Though, at the same time, it was the most true thing I could have said. My time in Thailand wasn’t peaceful and calm as I thought it would be, but the difficulties that came out of it set the stage to allow me to make it a meditative experience.

I must confess that it wasn’t until very recently that I took advantage of the situation to actually meditate on the experience.

It was 2am. I had been feeling pretty rough since getting back to the states, but now we were making the 15 hour drive from Grand Junction, Colorado to Iowa where my family is. I couldn’t stop thinking about how bad I’d been feeling, was feeling, and would probably feel after this long drive. So much had happened in the last couple months and, to make things even more angering, I had been so unproductive. Then a switch flipped again and I realized once more that everything happens as it’s supposed to happen, all that matters is that I do the right thing regardless of the circumstances. The thought of what Socrates or Marcus Aurelius would have done in my situation made this clear. No matter what, they would have acted like men. They would do what needed to be done, rested if necessary, and would have continued to do, say, and think the right thing.

I’ve said it before, but I’m often painfully reminded of it again and again: You can throw all of the skills, experiences, money, and interesting stories out the door — all that really matters is the kind of man you are.

Sometimes the endless pursuit of skills — or any other external thing for that matter — can throw you off course if you don’t frequently reflect on what actually matters.

That same night that I was driving I thought back to the story of the Count of Monte Cristo. 14 years of his life were taken away after being falsely imprisoned and betrayed. The first six years were full of endless pain and hopelessness to the point that he no longer believed there was any higher good in the world. Something changed (I won’t spoil it) in those final eight years that led to him becoming an extremely impressive man. He learned and improved continuously while still being confided to the dark and dingy cell that he thought he might die in.

That story is always beautiful to me because, although it is fiction, it showed what a man can do even in seemingly hopeless circumstances. Edmond Dantes (the main character) didn’t worry about the passage of time or external circumstances — he did what he believed he needed to do regardless.

(Of course, he was motivated by the bad external circumstances he faced, but I’m only talking about those 14 years he was imprisoned…not the rest of the revenge story.)

One last note

I know I haven’t been responsive to messages, emails, and comments from you guys.

That will change along with the lack of videos, paid-only content, and weekly updates.

Are these updates informative? Are they useful? Entertaining?

Leave a comment below if you’ve got any suggestions or questions for me.

And don’t forget to send this to someone who might benefit.

I’ll see you next week.

-Maxim Benjamin Smith

I am acting as a guinea pig for a program which is meant to prepare young men for the future. This program is designed to be a replacement for the only three routes advertised to young men today - go to college, the military, or a dead-end job.

All of these typical routes of life are designed to shape us into cogs for a wheel that doesn’t serve us. Wasted time, debt, lack of skills, and a soul crushing job define many who follow the traditional route.

This program, which we can call “The Preparation”, is meant to guide young men on a path where they properly utilize their time to gain skills, build relationships, and reach a state of being truly educated. The Preparation is meant to set young men up for success.

What appeals to me about The Preparation is the idea of the type of man I could be. The path to becoming a skilled, dangerous, and competent man is much more clear now. I’ve always been impressed by characters like The Count of Monte Cristo, men who accumulated knowledge and skills over a long period of time and eventually became incredibly capable men.

Young men today do not have a guiding light. We have few mentors and no one to emulate. We have been told that there are only a few paths to success in this world. For intelligent and ambitious people - college is sold to us as the one true path. And yet that path seems completely uncertain today.

We desperately need something real to grab onto. I think this is it.

I’m putting the ideas into action. Will it work? I can’t be sure, but I’m doing my best. I’m more than 60 weeks into the program at this point. So far, so good.

You can follow me along as I follow the program. Each week, I summarize all that I did.

My objective in sharing this is three fold:

1. Documenting my progress holds me accountable.

2. I hope these updates will show other young men that there is another path we can take.

3. For the parents who stumble upon this log, I want to prove to you that telling your children that the conventional path - college, debt, and a job is not the foolproof path you think it is.

Writing to you from Osaka, Japan

Things have been tough…no doubt about that. This past month and a half has been wild, uncertain, and ever-changing. Every move to continue training — not just in Thailand but also now in Osaka — has faced one brick wall or another.

Despite the chaos I’m learning a lesson that I wish I had learned a year ago…

I’ll get into that in the video because it might just keep you from making the same mistakes I’ve made (and continue to make) within this process. The life lessons learned alone are enough to make the past 2.5 years of difficulty worth it. I suppose it was just time to learn another one of those lessons.

Anyway…

Check out the video for this past week’s update!

-Maxim Benjamin Smith

Writing to you from Osaka, Japan

It was time to get things moving again after a couple weeks break from training Muay Thai. The break was needed, no doubt, but it’s time to get back to making progress in order to make the most of the first cycle of The Preparation for this year.

Luckily, a Thai-owned Muay Thai gym is only a 30-minute walk from the place I’m staying. That will make the process of quickly getting back on my feet much better.

After all, time moves very fast. I’m telling you…every time I reflect on the last 2.5 years I see just how quickly it has gone by. With only a year and a half left in the program I can only imagine that it’ll go by in the blink of an eye. Making the most of this period of time is key. Moving fast after a setback is absolutely necessary.

The progress this past week was the first step to moving forward at full speed again.

-Maxim Benjamin Smith

Writing to you from Osaka, Japan

A life similar to that of men like Louis L’Amour — a man skilled in a range of areas, very well traveled, and strong-willed — can be lived today. You might not work as an elephant handler, longshoreman, deck hand, cattle skinner, or caretaker of a mine as L’Amour did. The world has become much more limited and constricting since the early-mid 20th century. But, you can still find those diamonds in the rough — jobs that pay well, require you to travel to strange places, are packed with skill and physical work, and are in desperate need of young and able-bodied men of good character.

I’ve stumbled on 3 of these jobs and personally worked in 2 in the last 2.5 years. They are game changers when you take into account the boring, step-by-step nature of most modern jobs. These diamonds in the rough are dynamic, the environments are ever-changing, and the people you’ll meet are fundamentally different than most others.

Finding these jobs is the hardest part. I’m here to make it easier for you.

Tough Work in a Strange Place

Breakfast in that old bar in the town of Gabbs, Nevada (population: 132) always seemed too short. The food and coffee were great, traditional American style, but it was the brief moment of calm before a long and hot day that made it so good. Seated around me were three Mexican geologists and an old and wild French-Canadian geophysics crew leader that never parted with his pipe. These guys were men, true men, that had all spent a great portion of their lives in places and under conditions most will never meet. Sharing a table with them was an honor.

Abruptly, as always, breakfast ended. We had to load up the trucks and head out to the field.

We drove 30 minutes away to a spot the geologists had surveyed for us (as the geophysics crew) to conduct the induced polarization geophysics work. The geologists had found a few signs of potential precious metal deposits in an area full of old mines. They wanted us to go in and collect additional data for further confirmation of their findings.

The work, which we had been doing for several days now, entailed stringing several kilometers of wire across the desert along a very specific bearing. Typically, two lines are placed: one which is used to shoot out an electrical signal into the ground and another that receives the signal via copper “pots” placed at intervals along the wire to measure the resistivity/conductivity of potential precious metals underground.

We carried heavy spools of wire, dug holes for the copper “pots”, and shot several amps of electricity through the wires while one or two of us collected the data using a very old piece of tech.

It was tough work…though I never imagined I’d do any work for an exploration mining company.

Wild things happened every day. A guy got heat exhaustion on the first day, we had a damaged truck transmission, a flat tire, lots of drama among the crew, equipment failure, wild horses breaking the electrical wire, and the same guy that got heat exhaustion happened to be touching the wire when the current was sent through. Less than one amp is enough to kill a person. There were usually about 4+ amps running through the wire. He touched it with his left hand which, luckily for him, meant that his wedding ring somehow redirected the current away from his heart. He walked away with only minor second-degree burns on his hands.

Everybody was aware that the job could be dangerous when we signed up. It became very real after that event. Within less than 2 weeks I was able to use my EMT skills twice on that crew. I can’t imagine how many more times I might have used it had I stuck around for a few more weeks. Of course, you never want to see anybody get hurt, but there’s nothing like having an uncommon skillset and actually being able to use it.

Anyway…

Day after day, the worst part of it all — the biggest thing that made the experience so much worse — was the crew. They were hired from a nearby town where they had previously been working in warehouses, stores, and restaurants. They were lazy, unskilled, disrespectful, and slow — the complete opposite of what I thought the crew would look like going into it. These people talked trash about the geophysics crew leader behind his back, disobey his orders (despite him having 30 years of experience), and even yelled and lied about him to his face. I respected the man and couldn’t stand it. I yelled at them and decided to leave the same day. In retrospect, my only regret is that I didn’t stay to help the leader of the crew for even just a few more days. I was the only one on the crew that he trusted.

But, let me backtrack a little bit.

Geophysics crews are almost always comprised of unskilled and often lazy people from the town nearest to the job site. As you’d suspect, this can turn out to be a very bad idea since the lowest rung of society (i.e. drug addicts, alcoholics, gamblers, lazy laborers) tend to sign up the most out of desperation for money.

There were lots of conversations about the quality of the crew during those few weeks. One of the geologists managed just about everything at the site, so all of the complaints went to him. When I told him that they have to hire more young, physically capable, and good men he told me something to the effect of, “That’s not possible because we don’t know where we could find people like that.” I objected to that statement and told him that the only problem was that nobody knows that jobs like this exist.

This is where your opportunity lies.

More exploration mining companies and induced polarization crews exist than you know. They are always operating in the long, draw-out, complex, expensive, and challenging race to locate porphyries of precious metals and build mines. The geophysics companies are always in need of workers. If you can competently do the work you could even learn how to operate the data-collecting receivers, which is an incredibly rare skill and immediately makes you 100x more valuable on a job site.

You could be paid anywhere from $170-$250/day while learning how to splice wire, communicate effectively, lead people, and operate interesting equipment — all while building your body and hiking around mostly untouched land. Plus, you’ll learn a little about geophysics and geology.

Not only that, but any well-meaning and hard working young man will be cherished in an environment that’s usually chock-full of incompetent, lazy people.

So, here’s what you should do if you’re a young and ambitious man of good character:

• Look for geophysics crews and exploration mining companies on the internet.

• Find a way to get in contact with them.

• Ask them if they are hiring or plan to hire in the near future.

• Tell them that you’ve heard about the work. Tell them how old you are, that you want to learn and work, and that you’re willing to fly out to their location at any time within a specific time frame.

• Make it clear that you want to learn how to do the job well.

• Clarify pay, accommodations, conditions, and location of the job.

• Don’t stop contacting different companies if your first email or call gets rejected or ignored. There are companies that need workers.

This is a great way to make some money as part of the Work Cycle of The Preparation, pick up new skills, and go places most never go.

Fire

I first heard about wildland firefighting when I was going through EMT school. Our instructor asked us what we all wanted to do after getting certified and one of the guys there brought up wildland fire. Out of all of the jobs available to an EMT, working in wildland fire seemed like the coolest thing you could do. Especially if you work out west, you’re surrounded by beautiful country as you’re doing dangerous and difficult work. It is a man’s profession.

Well, something entirely unexpected happened a couple months after EMT school…

Tyler Olson (paramedic, ex-military, entrepreneur, and one of the founders of Minuteman EMS) had heard about my progress within The Preparation and he wanted to give me a major opportunity. He asked if I wanted to deploy onto wildfires as an EMT with his company during the next wildfire season. I said yes. All that was required of me was that I take a few online classes, attend an in-person “field day”, and do a pack test — a physical endurance test where you have to walk 3 miles in 45 minutes with 45 pounds on your back.

On July 14th of 2024 I was deployed to the Falls fire in eastern Oregon. The fire had exploded to 50,000 acres within a few days and would burn over 150,000 acres before it died out.

My partner (a 21 y/o paramedic) and I had the #2 ambulance on the fire. The first few days were a shock to my system. Everything was different and entirely new to me. Smoke covered the entire campground as we arrived. We slept on the floor of the town’s only elementary school for several days…oh and we were sleeping during the day because we were put on night shift. I spent a total of 26 days on that fire and later spent another 15 days on a fire in western Oregon.

Wild things happened all the time.

There was a plane crash on the fire one evening that resulted in the death of a 74 year old man. There were tons of accidents on the Falls fire — everything from rolled ankles, bee stings, poison oak, chainsaw cuts, and heat stroke. The second fire I was on (the Willamette Complex) brought some interesting moments as well. One night we — as in everybody in the camp — woke up to the sound of multiple gunshots, probably 8 or so. At another time one man was removed from the fire due to “behavioral issues”. And, another entirely separate event: a man came out of the woods and threatened a fire crew with a spear.

The whole saying about every day holding something new is not only true, but also amplified a thousandfold on some wildfires.

I’m not telling you this to dissuade you from working on wildfires. In fact, all of these wild events only added to the already interesting experience. Some fires are boring and some are wild, but being able to work and practice your skills in an environment like that cannot be compared to anything else. You make great friends very quickly, you get to do something that well under 0.1% of people ever do, and you make great money…depending upon the route you take.

If you work for a private contractor as an EMT you could make anywhere from $500-$650 a day. Yes, a day.

The wildland EMS community is very tight-knit. Usually EMTs and Paramedics that try wildland work once end up doing it again and again every season. However, that doesn’t mean that there isn’t space for new people to move in. Depending upon the fire season, some private contractors are in desperate need of new EMTs or paramedics to take the place of people who are leaving or resting for a few days.

And just like the geophysics crews, wildland EMS private contractors cherish young, physically fit people of good character.

So, here’s your blueprint for getting into wildland EMS:

• Complete EMT school and the NREMT exam (you should be doing this as your first cycle within The Preparation)

• Ideally, you should get a few months of experience working in 911 (I wish I had done this before diving headfirst into wildland)

• Complete the required training to become a Type 2 firefighter.

• Get in contact with private contractors. Tell them about your experience thus far, what you’re looking to do, and that you’d like to be on their crew or that you’re filling to fill in when members of the crew are leaving or are on R&R.

• Use The Journeyman App to easily find training courses, keep track of your certifications, and get in touch with wildland companies.

I highly recommend that you at least become an EMT and try wildland fire work once, especially if you’re young. It is some of the most interesting work you’ll ever do.

Now, it isn’t easy to get into wildland fire because there isn’t a clear step-by-step process. I was very unsure if I was doing all the right things during my first year. Nonetheless, the uncertainty was worth it.

Luckily though, the entire process is made a lot easier by The Journeyman, which was also founded by Brennan Holloway and Tyler Olson of Minuteman EMS. The app really does smooth out the entire process of getting certified, re-certified, getting in touch with wildland companies, and finding work. I’ll be using the app going into this fire season and I highly recommend you download it now if you plan on taking the wildland EMS route in the future.

Anyway, walking this path of becoming an EMT and using the skills to work on wildfires is a great way to complete 2 of the cycles from The Preparation: The Medic Cycle and the Work Cycle.

Walking a Unique Path

Those are just 2 of the “diamonds in the rough” that I’ve stumbled into over the last couple years. No doubt, there are many other gems like them waiting to be found.

But, going back to Louis L’Amour, he walked a very interesting path that was largely shaped by the various types of work he did. His experiences shaped him into the man he would become. His own life story and vast range of experiences, combined with travel and stories he had heard of other men, all led to the one thing he would become known for: being a fantastic writer. Although he’s no longer with us, more than 320 million copies of his books have been sold worldwide. You should read them if you haven’t already.

I’d start with his Sacketts Series.

Louis and many other great men like him lived amazing lives partially due to the unique forms of work they threw themselves into and became accustomed with.

Work allows you to take the skills you learn to directly and effectively apply them in the real world. That’s part of why the EMT to wildland fire path is so great — you’re put through several months of schooling and then deployed out to strange and beautiful places where your skills are put to the test. The geophysics crew work requires you to drop yourself into a place with zero prior experience, only learning as you go.

So, if you’re a young man with a few cycles of The Preparation under your belt and wanting to make some money, it’s worth pursuing one of these jobs.

-Maxim Benjamin Smith

Writing to you from Osaka, Japan

Spent the last week recovering from all the ailments I acquired during my 3-week stay in Chiang Mai, Thailand. The staph infection seems to have gone away…only to be replaced with a fungal infection that is spreading faster than I’d like it to.

The real question is…what to do from here?

Well, watch the video to hear about my plan going forward. Unfortunately, Thailand isn’t on the docket, but Muay Thai training will continue nonetheless. From here it’s about turning a poor situation into a success. I think I know how to do it.

-Maxim Benjamin Smith

Writing to you from Osaka, Japan

I was in Chiang Mai, Thailand for 3 week to train Muay Thai…but a few things happened that have caused me to return to Japan for a little while.

Watch the video to find out why.

It’s unfortunate that my time in Thailand had to be cut short, but there’s good reason for it. Really, it seemed to me like leaving was the best option for the circumstances of the time. So, I’ll have to continue the Fighter Cycle of The Preparation from here.

-Maxim Benjamin Smith

Writing to you from Chiang Mai, Thailand

Today marks two weeks since I arrived in Chiang Mai to train Muay Thai as part of the Fighter Cycle from The Preparation. Some days go by fast, some go by slow, but overall it feels as though I’ve already been here for months.

Analyzing the whole experience thus far (which is easy to constantly do when going back and forth from training to sitting in a small room) has brought me to the very solid conclusion that this time here, more than anything, is much more mentally difficult than physically difficult.

Let me explain…

You can drag your body along to do things even when you’re tired, sore, and fatigued. It sucks, no doubt, but it can be done.

The most difficult thing is training hard, leaving the gym, and coming back to consciousness about the situation you’ve put yourself in. You’re surrounded by unfamiliarity, swarmed with discomfort, and all your mind continues to do is ask you again and again, “How many days are left?”

I have 27 more days here — that realization was one of the first things that came to mind when I woke up.

The reason why this is as mentally difficult for me as it is is because I’m counting down the days until I see my fiancée again. Every time I think about how much more time needs to pass I feel my face heat up and the pit in my stomach grow heavier. This feeling looms in the background all day every day and only disappears during brief moments of focus on training — or as I’ve been doing a lot of recently — writing.

What to do?

I’ve felt this feeling in the past, probably seven or eight times, but it never gets easier.

How many times have I left do go and pursue something new? I couldn’t count at this point. I was away from her when I learned the foundations of mule packing in Colorado, when I went to work on wildfires in Oregon, when I was learning to fly Cessnas in the states, when I was working on the ranch in Uruguay, when I worked on a geophysics crew in Nevada, when I learned to sail in the Falkland Islands, when I went to a rope rescue course in South Dakota…

Months and months without her throughout our relationship hasn’t made things easier over time in the slightest. It’s only gotten harder.

For some reason, I assumed that my mental ability to not feel the pain (or even dampen it) would have hardened — allowing these times away to be easier.

I suppose it’s a good sign for our relationship that it isn’t easy!

Anyway…

I’m not telling you this to whine, only to write about how things actually are here, that way you can better understand the difficulties you may also experience if you take this path. The Preparation has completely changed my life for the better. Yet, due to the fact that you are engaging with life head-on, again and again, there are many forms of temporary suffering that come with it.

Last note about this: Reflecting back on the past 2 and a half years…the times of progress that were accompanied by suffering were some of the most beautiful.

Moving on…

What to do about this great mental challenge?

I spoke to my father this past week about these mental difficulties that were starting to bubble to the surface yet again. He, as a man who’s always in my corner and absolutely the best man I know, offered a temporary aid for the remaining days I’m here. But, that wasn’t until after he told me about the training he underwent after he signed up for the army many years ago.

There were eight weeks of basic training. All of which, as he said, were hell. Every moment of every day sucks. As he said, “The army has a great way of making the most awesome things suck”. It was constant suffering made worse by the fact that you could only make one call home each week…with no guarantee that the people you love would be home to pick up the phone.

8 weeks of suck.

On top of that, he (after a short break) went off to spend another 8 weeks in Advanced Training after that.

While he was telling me this I was comparing my current situation to the one he faced quite a long time ago. He had 8 weeks of Basic Training to get through…I only have 6 total weeks to get through. He had no agency over his own time…I can choose when and how I want to train, as well as how I’d like to spend the remainder of the day. He could make one call a week to the people he loved…I can be in contact with everyone I love at nearly any time during the day.

Comparison after comparison was passing through my mind and I only began to realize more and more just how much easier I have it.

“All I did to combat the suffering was write. I’d carry around these small notebooks in my breast pocket and write about what was happening any time I had a free moment. To this day I wish I had those notebooks…I’d pay one million dollars if I could get them back”, he then told me.

Writing eased the pain of the moment by causing him to view his situation from “30,000 feet”. All of the pain was transmuted into the writing — at least that’s how he described it to me.

So, his temporary solution for me: Write everyday.

Since our conversation I’ve been writing frequently and will continue to do so for the rest of my time here. I have to say…it’s been hugely helpful for me in terms of viewing the bigger picture and taking things day by day.

Training

Training has been going alright. Monday was the best day by far because I told one of the coaches that I want to fight by the end of February. All of a sudden, he brought a young Thai boy over to punch me repeatedly in the stomach after I’d finish a round on the pads. Then — and I swear they came out of nowhere — 2 or 3 other Thai boys appeared. The guy holding the pads said something to them that I didn’t understand and then told me to hold my hands above my head.

The Thai boys (one on either side of me) started throwing leg kicks to my stomach until I backed away from the pain.

It made me smile.

Other than that I’ve been feeling as though I’m just going through several intense workouts each week and not learning very much. Today I realized that I really only have 3 weeks to prepare for a fight. So, I have to figure out how to learn and improve as much as possible within that timeframe.

I have to train harder.

First Experience

This past week I went to watch Muay Thai fights for the first time.

It shifted my attitude toward my time here because up until then I had only seen what the training looked like. Now, with the ring in front of me, loud music, bright lights, crowds, and people getting hurt I realized what I’m training for.

As a side note, I made a friend here who happens to be a very good guy. He’s also seriously dedicated to training and the art of Muay Thai as a whole. He fought that night and gave me the privilege to film it for him. He went up against a Japanese kickboxer who was a very hard puncher.

In the end, after a flurry of knees and elbows, my friend split his face open and seemed to break his arm in the final round.

The winner was obvious.

Stunned, he climbed out of the ring and walked to a back room where the fighters prepared for their fights. He has given everything he had to the point that he threw up from exhaustion.

To put it plainly, I was impressed.

Although he is a much better fighter than I am, I intend to win my fight in a similar fashion: all out war.

Perhaps I’ll talk about this experience in the future. I’ll see at least a few more fights before I leave and, as I said, participate in one as well. It’s a wild experience and very difficult to describe the atmosphere in an intelligent manner, but I’ll try.

Additional Events

• Met with a subscriber in Chiang Mai for coffee.

• Received some training from my friend to improve my form and movement with blocks/punches.

Reading

• Continued reading Fate is the Hunter by Ernest Gann

This was a short update. Not too much to talk about at the moment. Plus, I have to get to bed so I can train hard and write well tomorrow morning. Much more coming in the future so stay tuned!

Are these updates informative? Are they useful? Entertaining?

Leave a comment below if you’ve got any suggestions or questions for me.

And don’t forget to send this to someone who might benefit.

I’ll see you next week.

-Maxim Benjamin Smith

I am acting as a guinea pig for a program which is meant to prepare young men for the future. This program is designed to be a replacement for the only three routes advertised to young men today - go to college, the military, or a dead-end job.

All of these typical routes of life are designed to shape us into cogs for a wheel that doesn’t serve us. Wasted time, debt, lack of skills, and a soul crushing job define many who follow the traditional route.

This program, which we can call “The Preparation”, is meant to guide young men on a path where they properly utilize their time to gain skills, build relationships, and reach a state of being truly educated. The Preparation is meant to set young men up for success.

What appeals to me about The Preparation is the idea of the type of man I could be. The path to becoming a skilled, dangerous, and competent man is much more clear now. I’ve always been impressed by characters like The Count of Monte Cristo, men who accumulated knowledge and skills over a long period of time and eventually became incredibly capable men.

Young men today do not have a guiding light. We have few mentors and no one to emulate. We have been told that there are only a few paths to success in this world. For intelligent and ambitious people - college is sold to us as the one true path. And yet that path seems completely uncertain today.

We desperately need something real to grab onto. I think this is it.

I’m putting the ideas into action. Will it work? I can’t be sure, but I’m doing my best. I’m more than 60 weeks into the program at this point. So far, so good.

You can follow me along as I follow the program. Each week, I summarize all that I did.

My objective in sharing this is three fold:

1. Documenting my progress holds me accountable.

2. I hope these updates will show other young men that there is another path we can take.

3. For the parents who stumble upon this log, I want to prove to you that telling your children that the conventional path - college, debt, and a job is not the foolproof path you think it is.

Writing to you from Chiang Mai, Thailand

I’ve climbed 14,000ft mountains, spent long days in the hot Nevada desert, worked cattle on horseback, and sailed through the South Atlantic — but none of those things come close to the physical intensity of training Muay Thai.

Now let me be clear…

The point is not to come here to mess around in a unique place, buy cheap stuff, train a little, and walk away with Muay Thai shorts to show off.

My intention is to become a competent fighter — not to build mastery or gain exceptional fighting ability — but to reach a foundational level of competency which would make me far more physically dangerous than the average person. In addition to that, I am training to (hopefully) fight in the ring before I leave Thailand.

All of this is for the Fighter Cycle of The Preparation.

The First Week

Back in December I said that I was preparing to come train in Thailand by hitting the bag for a few rounds and running a little…

As I write this I’m literally laughing at myself for thinking that would help me get in better shape for the training. I completely underestimated this. Each day of training is always different, but usually it’s a combination of jump rope/warm up, sparring, pad work, bag work, pushups, sit ups. It might not sound too bad, but keep in mind that a combination of all of these things is going on for 2 hours straight and few short breaks in between.

Mindless movement during any part of those 2 hours is frowned upon.

Each and every thing you do should be intentional no matter how tired or out of breath you are. You keep going through it all. And, if you do all of this consistently you’d be (as the Thai’s would say) “showing heart”. That is the most important thing to them.

Anyway…

The first few session were rough for me…enough to put me out of commission last Wednesday. I picked training back up on Thursday, but managed to get some minor scratches from a street dog on Friday and had to go to the hospital for the 1st of 5 rabies shots, which meant I missed my classes that day. Then, I went back for training on Saturday evening to finish off the week’s training.

All in all, I trained for a total of 10 hours last week.

My legs and arms are bruised, but I’m happy to see it.

The Hardest Part

Despite the fact that the training is wildly difficult it isn’t the hardest part of this experience.

When it comes to all of the Cycles of The Preparation that require you to envelope yourself in both a new pursuit and a new environment the most difficult part is that there is likely nothing familiar around you. Until you actually take a few days to dive head first into whatever you’re learning you’re going to feel like the walls are closing in on you whenever there’s a second for your mind to wander.

Oftentimes you’ll hear a voice in your head saying, “You don’t really have to be here. You can just leave if you don’t like it.”

Your family, friends, people you love, things you know and are familiar with — they aren’t with you. You have thrown yourself into the fray and the fight is to find enough meaning and fulfillment within your current pursuit that the fears and anxieties can be handled.

I miss my fiancée like crazy. I think about her every time my mind has a moment to wander…every time I’m not directly focused on something. The thought of seeing her (right now) makes me want to pack my bags and get on the next flight to see her. She is, to my unending delight, one of the things that makes it so hard to be away, in a strange place, doing something entirely new, all alone.

You probably have someone or something that’ll cause you pain to be away from it.

Good.

You have something good to come back to as a better man, a smarter man, a more physically capable man, a more virtuous man. So, take any pain or discomfort from these experiences and use them as fuel to do what you came to do.

As Wesley from The Princess Bride said, “Life is pain, highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something.”

But, don’t let that great quote from a great movie bring you down. If you align with the view of the Stoic’s you’ll know that God sets difficulties before a man worthy of surmounting them. There isn’t a difficulty that life presents to you that isn’t meant for you to endure.

So focus on the task ahead of you and keep moving.

Academics and Activities

I just finished the Understanding the Human Body anatomy course by the Great Courses. Not easy to get through as there were 32 detailed lectures about the human body, but I certainly did learn a few things from it.

In addition to that I did 6 total hours of chess practice and learned a few basic Thai phrases.

Reading

• Finished reading The Art of War by Sun Tzu

• Started reading Fate is the Hunter by Ernest Gann

I’m only about 45 pages into this book about the wild stories from pilots and co-pilots in the days of early commercial aviation, but it is very entertaining.

• Started reading The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman

Things I Published

The Preparation

4 More...I'm Happy to Say

Saturday, January 24th, 2025…

Read more

5 months ago · 12 likes · 5 comments · Maxim Benjamin Smith

Are these updates informative? Are they useful? Entertaining?

Leave a comment below if you’ve got any suggestions or questions for me.

And don’t forget to send this to someone who might benefit.

I’ll see you next week.

-Maxim Benjamin Smith

I am acting as a guinea pig for a program which is meant to prepare young men for the future. This program is designed to be a replacement for the only three routes advertised to young men today - go to college, the military, or a dead-end job.

All of these typical routes of life are designed to shape us into cogs for a wheel that doesn’t serve us. Wasted time, debt, lack of skills, and a soul crushing job define many who follow the traditional route.

This program, which we can call “The Preparation”, is meant to guide young men on a path where they properly utilize their time to gain skills, build relationships, and reach a state of being truly educated. The Preparation is meant to set young men up for success.

What appeals to me about The Preparation is the idea of the type of man I could be. The path to becoming a skilled, dangerous, and competent man is much more clear now. I’ve always been impressed by characters like The Count of Monte Cristo, men who accumulated knowledge and skills over a long period of time and eventually became incredibly capable men.

Young men today do not have a guiding light. We have few mentors and no one to emulate. We have been told that there are only a few paths to success in this world. For intelligent and ambitious people - college is sold to us as the one true path. And yet that path seems completely uncertain today.

We desperately need something real to grab onto. I think this is it.

I’m putting the ideas into action. Will it work? I can’t be sure, but I’m doing my best. I’m more than 60 weeks into the program at this point. So far, so good.

You can follow me along as I follow the program. Each week, I summarize all that I did.

My objective in sharing this is three fold:

1. Documenting my progress holds me accountable.

2. I hope these updates will show other young men that there is another path we can take.

3. For the parents who stumble upon this log, I want to prove to you that telling your children that the conventional path - college, debt, and a job is not the foolproof path you think it is.