Writing to you from Uruguay

Not every week in The Preparation is exciting. I’m 157 weeks into it — just passed the 3-year threshold 2 days ago — and most of it has been steady “uneventful” progress.

Some weeks are slower than others, some are intense, some are exciting.

This past week was one of the slow ones.

I got sick, was trying to fix my sleep schedule, and had a little less on my plate. Still, I think it was a good week.

Writing

Although I’m not particularly good at it, I’ve realized the sheer value of writing over the course of the past few years. It’s shown up when writing these weekly updates, when trying to communicate effectively with people, and when I was doing marketing for my drone seeding business that I started for the Entrepreneur Cycle.

Writing frequently changes the way you view the world.

It also amplifies your effectiveness within it.

If you can draft an intelligible written plan, persuade people to adopt an idea or buy a product, or even just view the world through the eyes of a writer — the gain you get from that cannot be measured.

It’s amazing, but it takes decades to hone the craft, and I’ve hardly scratched the surface.

But, with the creation of The Preparation Forum there was another obvious gap to fill which required writing: one-on-one sessions between myself and a person in The Preparation to help them plan out a solid cycle or potentially several different cycles of the program. Several people have come to me already asking for “guidance” sessions for their son’s. So, after creating the community forum, it was obvious that this was the next step to provide a valuable service to those on a difficult individual path.

I spent a fair portion of the past week writing emails to introduce The Preparation Strategy Sessions in a way that was interesting and engaging but also conveyed the full value that some of those in The Preparation can gain from the sessions.

My interest in copywriting (studying the greats like Halbert, Masterson, and Carlton) has been hugely helpful at different points in the past. This was another point where it mattered.

Still, continuously learning and relearning how to craft an email, understand who you’re writing to, and editing is tough to do.

Writing these emails gave me another run to practice.

Cattle App

I made a few more small changes to my Uruguay-specific cattle app that tracks your herd, weights, expenses, vaccinations/medications, sales, and the national cattle prices.

At this point, the app is basically done.

The only thing missing is the data which, due to weather, we were not able to weigh all of our own cattle last week. The plan is to weigh all 300 or so cattle this week. We need to do it anyway to get all their up-to-date weights, but it’ll also give me the info I need to populate the app with our data.

If the timing works out this week, I’ll record the cattle weights myself with the app so that I can see how well the workflow process is for actually imputing new cattle data into the app.

The goal is to make the workflow process as smooth as butter.

If it is, there’ll be no reason for ranchers not to use it.

Anyway…

Once that’s done, there’ll be about 300 head of cattle registered in the app along with their specific weights, ID numbers, and any vaccinations/medications they’ve recently received.

I’m excited to see it.

That'll be the last step before determining what needs to be changed, finding bugs to fix, and then getting the app in the Apple and Google app stores.

Activities

Weightlifting (5 out of 7 days)

Going very well. Feeling strong and energized.

Chess practice (6 out of 7 days)

Also going very well. I’ve made a fair amount of progress recently. The big challenge is finding the right time to play — times of day when I’m most alert and awake but also motivated to play. Getting the timing on that right largely determines how well I’ll play.

Reading

• Finished reading The Charisma Myth by Olivia Cabane

This was a pretty good book. I think anyone would benefit from reading it. Funnily enough, parts of the book reminded me of a chapter I wrote in The Preparation book called “Managing Your Mind”. Almost all of the methods to overcome social anxiety that I wrote about in that chapter were nearly identical to what Olivia Cabane described in this book.

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 threefold:

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

An idea hasn’t left my mind for two months now — an idea tied to this question:

If all of the necessities of life are taken care of — shelter, food, water, bills, and the presence of good people — what’s the best thing a person can do with their time?

The answer to this question, at least as it seems to me at the moment, is to create or build. That could mean building something in the physical world, maybe a house or garden for example. It could mean building good relationships. It also could mean martialing your time, skills, and resources for the sole purpose of creating something beautiful. Of course, what that beautiful “something” is could be tangible or intangible, but it’s always done for the sake of simply creating something beautiful — not for any specific financial outcome or obvious personal gain.

The beauty of what’s created serves a purpose that can never be easily explained.

But, the creation of something beautiful takes time. Usually decades, a lifetime, or multiple lifetimes. It takes intention, cultivation, continuous work, and an irrational drive to see it through.

Anyway…

That’s a topic for another day, but it’s been stuck in my mind over the past month as I’ve been trying to create things that could end up helping people.

Something for us…and potentially thousands of others

My most productive time of the day recently has been from 12am to 6am. Then after 6-8 hours of sleep, I get up and have another 2-4 hours of productivity. Not good in the long term, but it works for now.

At the end of one of my “night shifts” last week I had an idea come to me.

What if I built an app to help Uruguayan cattle ranchers manage their cattle, keep track of vaccinations and other treatments, track weight gain of specific cattle and of an entire herd, and combine that with week-by-week updates on cattle prices?

That’s where it started, but it’s turned into a whole lot more than that after just finishing version 31 of the app.

And before you say it — I know that everyone is making an app nowadays using AI. AI is shoved in everybody’s faces and most of what comes from it is low-quality slop. That’s what happens at the beginning of any major technological advancement…especially when people think they can use it to “farm” money through apps or videos or defer their thinking to something that does their schoolwork for them.

Side note: It’s shocking to hear the stories about just how many people are using AI to get through every step of college from people who’ve seen it firsthand.

But, the real difference lies in whether or not — at least in the creative and productive front — a person can actually identify a clear problem that could be solved or a process that could be made easier and they build something for a very specific type of person.

Now, I’ve seen and done the work firsthand here on our ranch in Uruguay. The most wholesome work I’ve ever done is actually ranch work. It’s peaceful (most of the time), real, tangible. Yet the one area we are lacking in, which I’m sure is the same for every other rancher in Uruguay, is the personal data tracking. Everything is very rudimentary here in ranching as it is in almost every other part of the world.

You can have sheets and sheets of paper or pages upon pages of Excel spreadsheets full of disorganized data: vaccines and other treatments, weigh-ins and overall cattle weight gain month-by-month, births and deaths, etc…

But, at least in Uruguay, that data can also be spread out across handwritten notes, spreadsheets, and data entered into your personal account in the national database (SNIG — the national livestock information system in Uruguay).

Disorganization and lack of data get in the way of clarity which could be leaving profit off the table.

How my app solves the problem

I’ll leave a screen recording here for you to watch so that you can see what the app actually looks like.

Let’s get the features of the app out of the way so that I can start to paint the picture of why this could be very useful:

• My Herd page: This page contains all of your cattle, their weights, displays the type of cow, it’s date of birth if applicable, and any other important info on specific cows, along with their specific national database numbers. Total head count along with total herd weight (in kilos) is displayed at the top. Cattle info can be updated, weights can be manually updated, and each cow’s national database number can be searched and verified.

• My Batches page: New groupings of cattle can be created here. Herd weights can be updated as well. A target weight can be set and you can also set a date for the next weigh-in. When that date is set, you’ll be notified a week in advance of the scheduled weigh-in date.

• Health Records page: Administration of vaccinations, vitamins, antibiotics, or any other medication or vet visit is added here. You can also add the specific dosages of medications, date of application, next scheduled date for a medication, etc. To make it easy, any administration of anything or any vet visit worth noting can be assigned to a specific cow, group of cows, or the entire herd.

• Market Prices page: The app scans the national average cattle prices each week from INAC (national institute of cattle) and updates current market prices in the app. Specific cattle prices are displayed along with a chart that goes back a year to show the overall market trend. On this page you can also create an alert to be notified when the price of steers (for example) hits a number that you want to sell at.

• Management and Tools: There’s a lot of features in these two categories, but it’s worth skipping over some of them for the sake of time. These categories contain features with everything from the ability to track sales, calculate sales based upon your cattle weight and the current market price, an annual summary of cows sold and money made, a “Fattening Margin Calculator” to calculate your margins based upon a cow’s purchase price and weight vs target weight and current cattle prices, a performance tracker that tracks your herd’s weight gain over time…

Needless to say, there’s a lot in it…

The bigger picture

But, the additional “Uruguay specific” thing that I think will be valuable is the ability to use all of your organized data to much more easily fill out the annual livestock report (that occurs every July) for the government.

Two more things I should mention are that any existing herd data that is kept in a database or spreadsheet can be imported into the app instead of manually entering it all in. Also, I’ll be adding a feature to track all expenses — hay, vet bills, vitamins, salt blocks, medications, vaccinations, etc.

Anyway…

The features are interesting, but the important stuff is in the benefits.

Ultimately, it should make any serious Uruguayan cattle rancher’s life easier because all of the information he needs to know about his livelihood (and how to move forward towards progress with it) will all be stored in one place. He can make decisions of when to buy cattle or sell. He can view all of the important information about his herd — individual weights, health information, weight gain over time, births and deaths — and he can do it without sifting through handwritten notes, spreadsheets, or a collection of receipts.

Once this app is complete, it should be a no-brainer for any rancher here to want to use.

On the other hand, this app will help my family directly. You see, my father works all the time, my stepmom is nearly always busy and she does manage the ranch as well, and I’ve been gone for most of the last 3 years. We, as many other foreigners do in similar situations, have (and currently need) ranch hands that do just about all of the work.

They’re great people, in fact I think we lucked out in finding them but getting the full picture of what’s actually going on, what our herd size is, how the birth to death ratio is in a given year, and other valuable data is not tracked or presented well. We never get the full picture. This matters to us because we really do care about making our operation successful in the long run. We want this ranch to sustain many generations of our family after us, but our current situations don’t allow us to do all of the “boots on the ground” work ourselves quite yet. At least not consistently.

Making it successful in the long run requires the work — of course. It also requires organized and understandable data to make wise and profitable decisions.

Some additional context: Anyone who’s spent a significant period of time in South America knows that productivity, high achievement, and hard work are not valued. At least not to the same degree or same way that it is in the western world. Sounds harsh, but that doesn’t matter because it’s just the truth. Data collection, attention to detail, and organized effort to improve one’s situation or improve a business are much rarer qualities here. Again, it’s nothing but the blunt truth. There is a good side to that, for example many people here are content to have nothing but just enough money to live off of and the people they love around them. Ease and a pleasant life are usually the main goals. That’s great. It’s also not conducive to shaping the future, building things to outlast you, or significantly improving yourself and your overall situation in life.

With that, foreigners like us can use this app to have a very clear understanding of what’s going on with their ranch. What’s working? What’s not working? When should be actually sell or buy? When do we need to vaccinate? What animals have been treated for health issues?

All of those questions can be answered with this and laid out in front of you.

It’s going to take a lot more work going into this next week to eventually come out with a finished product. I need to gather all of our data and import it into the app for one. I also have to add some features, remove a couple, find all of the bugs with the code, and make sure it all works before it’s ready for use.

I’m excited to do that whether or not it can eventually be sold as a product to ranchers here. At very least, it’ll help my family.

How do I help those on an alternative path?

I won’t go into a lot of detail on this because you’ll be hearing more about it very soon, but this past week I’ve been trying to figure out how I can help more people with the Preparation Strategy Sessions I’m now offering. There are only 7 spots open to book a session.

Many hours went into figuring out how to get the word out about the sessions, detailing specifically who they are for, and what people will get out of them.

I think that the strategy sessions are one of the biggest ways I could have an impact on a person’s life. Living through The Preparation for the last 3 years, I’ve been able to figure out what works and what doesn’t. Not only that but I’ve learned a lot of lessons along the way and seen massive success from the entire process.

If a young man is lost and needs help getting started on his own path, I can help him do that in The Preparation through a strategy session. I can help him design a solid cycle to make serious progress, give personal input to tell him what he needs to know before going into it, create a plan specific to him, and leave him with that detailed plan (that we design together) that will make his next 3 months successful. If that young man followed through with the plan (and has drive and ambition) I have little doubt that success from the initial 3 months could translate to success over many years.

The same applies to those who are already in The Preparation.

I’ll leave it there for now. Like I said, I’m working on stuff at the moment, but you’ll be hearing a lot more about this very soon. So stay tuned.

In the meantime, you can get more info about the Preparation Strategy Sessions by clicking HERE.

Activities

Chess practice (5 out of 7 days)

Chess has been going pretty well. It’s one of the first things I do to start the day. That’s usually when my mind is fresh and ready to sit down and really think about the pieces, the moves, analyzing what’s changed with each move, ect.

Working out (4 out of 7 days)

Feeling pretty good on the physical front. Still very far from where I want to be. Eating more and eating consistently would help with that, but it’s a tough thing to do when you want to get a lot done.

Academics

I continued working through a financial analyst course for the Investor Cycle of The Preparation.

Reading

• Started reading The Charisma Myth by Olivia Cabane

Not my typical kind of book, but I do think that one of the most useful qualities a person can cultivate is the ability to be charismatic. I can’t think of an aspect of life that isn’t improved when you’re charismatic. Building relationships, getting around dumb rules, managing people, building things with others, day-to-day interactions — it’s all easier for the person who’s charismatic. So far, I’m only about halfway through the book. Most of the content is fairly obvious, but I think there’s some useful stuff in it.

• Continued reading Enlightened Leadership by Ed Oakley and Doug Krug

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 threefold:

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.

If you’re new to The Preparation, doing it yourself, or are thinking about your son or grandson taking the alternative path — this is the presentation to watch.

-Maxim Benjamin Smith

Writing to you from Uruguay

My objective over these next couple months is to use what I’ve learned in the past 3 years to help as many people as possible. It’s tricky to define exactly what that means because there are rarely any opportunities to fly a plane, sail a boat, treat someone with a major injury, use any rope rescue skills…and try to do it all within 3 months. So, “using what I’ve learned to help as many people as I can” really means to use the hands-on skills I’ve learned when the opportunity arises AND trying to use the life lessons I’ve learned to help people.

What I’ve been working on for the past couple of weeks centers more on the latter of the two.

I started off by building a community forum for those in The Preparation — a place where preppers can meet, discuss successes or problems they’ve had, create new cycles, and potentially schedule meetups. Given the nature of the program, I think that having a place where people can meet others that are making serious life progress can bring about amazing results in the long run.

The Forum

22 hours of each day have been spent inside these past few weeks. Much of that time being dedicated to building the Forum. Like I said last week, there’s no telling whether or not it’ll be successful. Any self-made thing is nearly always void of the guarantee of being successful. Almost nothing that you set out to do independently turns out exactly as you thought it would. It’s a fact of life. Nothing is guaranteed. Some things go much better than you thought they would, others don’t work out. But no matter what happens — what you learn from the experience is always beneficial.

Success, in my mind, would look like 300-500 users with at least a quarter of them posting and interacting with each other consistently.

Will it pan out? I don’t know, but even if it does it’ll take quite a while. I’m not dependent on the outcome. What I set out to do was help people with what I know, so I’ve built one thing to aid those pursuing a difficult alternative path. The people who push through the difficulties of The Preparation and come out the other side with a lot to show for it could potentially become some of the most impressive people anyone could ever know. I want to help them get there.

So, what changes did I make to the Forum this past week?

All of the primary features are already in place — the global map where you can display your location, the forum itself, the list of forums for each individual cycle, the “Groups” page for people to make private groups, the leaderboard, and the consultation call page.

The one thing that I thought was needed was a main page that acts as a feed of posts for those who are already logged in. The idea behind it is to increase engagement in order to give members more reasons to interact with one another. Anything could be posted on the feed: weekly updates from substack posts, pictures of what preppers are doing, questions or comments, and even links to courses that people find. It’s a great way for people to get a chance to interact with each other on the fly instead of posting everything to substack and hoping that all the preppers see it there.

Eventually, if a lot of people do join the Forum then I’ll turn it into a mobile app as well. Everyone carries their phone on them so why not tap into the ease of opening up a mobile app once we get more members?

I think I’ll create the mobile app if we can get 200 people to join.

My First Time for This…

Part of this past week went into drafting emails for a live event that I hosted yesterday afternoon for anyone who wanted more info on The Preparation. It was pretty cool.

Aside from school (which doesn’t really count) I have never presented anything to a live audience. Sure, the idea of it is nerve racking, but I also haven’t had any reason to present anything until now. Overall, I think the presentation went well. 220 people registered for the call and about 60 people showed up to stay for the call that ran for nearly 2 hours.

What the presentation was about:

• -How The Preparation works: where the program came from, its core ethos, how the sixteen Cycles fit together, and what an ordinary three months inside one actually looks like.

• -The honest economics: what the program costs, how the anchor courses help participants develop income-producing skills and pursue real paid work, and how the economics compare with four years of college tuition.

• -The Forum: at the end of the presentation, I introduced the Forum as well as the consultation calls for those who would benefit from it.

At the very end of the call, we had a Q&A where all of the participants could ask anything. By the end if it we hit on just about every important topic relating to the program.

There were a few ways in which things could have gone better — all of them having to do with me. For one, I could have emphasized the benefits of The Preparation once the topic of cost came up. The cost of all 16 cycles is about $75k — about one year’s worth of tuition at a prestigious university — but even that number has a negative effect on some. In reality, that negative emotion completely disregards the true benefits: a mountain of skills, unique opportunities to make fairly good money at a young age, life lessons learned extremely early, an international set of interesting friends and allies…

The list goes on.

I failed to emphasize that once the question was brought up. I think any parent or grandparent that sees the clear and true benefits wouldn’t hesitate to pay for all of (or some of) the $75k in costs. It’s a no-brainer.

I also could have slowed down a bit. Usually, I talk slowly and that allows me to say exactly what I want to. It gives me the time to really think about what I want to say and how I want to say it. That’ll be something to work on in the future.

There’s probably about half a dozen other things I could have done to improve the presentation, but it was a good first go around. I enjoyed it.

If you’d like to watch the presentation, I’ll be posting to my substack page tomorrow.

Additional activities

On top of working out and practicing chess, I started a financial analyst course.

It seems to be a pretty thorough online course, so it might take a while to complete, but it’s a good way to continue the Investor Cycle of The Preparation.

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 threefold:

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

I don’t know what it is, or exactly why it’s happening, but the best hours of my day have been from 12am to 6am. Another 2-3 hours of productivity come later in the day, usually around 2-5pm. How long I sleep varies slightly but usually is from 6am to about 1 pm. Not my usual schedule…that’s for sure.

But, a lot of good has come out of it.

Maybe the reason for it is because of what I’ve been trying to do recently by building The Preparation Forum. My mind doesn’t shut off at night — actually it only improves. My ability to imagine different things to do (or worth doing) and the outcome of those things is at least 10x the norm. I can power through monotonous tasks better than I usually can when the rest of the world around me is awake and busy. I can problem solve and think better overall.

Being asleep during a good portion of the day is the only downside. It reminds me of the time I worked the night shift on a wildfire in eastern Oregon. We stayed up all night—worked about 16 hours—before heading back to fire camp to sleep in an air-conditioned tractor trailer full of bunk beds during the day. Time moves strangely when you work the night shift. If you do it for too long it feels like your life is slipping away from you.

I guess one major difference between now and then is that my objective then was to do and experience something. Whereas my current objective is to produce and create.

Anyway…

Looking over all of the odd hours of work, I think I managed to get a lot done given the timeframe and all that I’ve needed to learn in order to build The Preparation Forum.

Version 1 — Finished

The Preparation Forum is live.

It isn’t perfect — no version 1 of anything ever is — but it’s real, it works, and it’s finally out of my head and onto the internet.

You can check it out for yourself here: forum.thepreparation.com

Most of this week went into the stuff that doesn’t show up in a screenshot: making the thing actually usable. I cleaned up the look of it, got the individual cycle forums in place, sorted out the registration flow, and wrestled with the email system so that when someone signs up they actually receive their confirmation instead of it disappearing into the void.

That last one ate more hours than I’d like to admit. Turns out getting a website to reliably send a single email is its own major issue.

But it’s done.

Along with that, I made tweaks to the achievement system. Preppers who complete cycles of The Preparation can now receive an achievement for that specific cycle — that’s how credibility and reputation is built in the community. The more achievements you have, the higher ranked you are, more respect is gained.

Those who complete cycles and want the achievement will have to ask me to give them the achievement due to the fact that there’s no obvious way to automate that system. Once you complete a cycle — and send proof that you did it — the achievement is applied to your account along with several thousand points which put you higher on the public leaderboard.

I still don’t know if it’ll be used consistently as a useful tool. I’ve said that before and I’ll probably say it again next week. But it’s built now, and whether or not people show up isn’t something I can control. Building it was. So I built it. There are some people who’ve joined the forum already which is very nice to see.

Writing to the List

The next chunk of my strange hours went into writing emails — to you, actually.

I’ve been putting together the emails that will introduce the Forum to everyone on this list. It sounds simple. Write an email, tell people the thing exists, hit send. But I keep catching myself over-thinking every line.

And I realized something while doing it…

I’ve spent almost three years doing things — learning lots of skills, meeting interesting people, traveling to strange places — and I haven’t used what I’ve learned (or my experience) to build something beneficial that I could offer to people.

This the Forum is the first big thing.

The Presentation

The last thing I worked on was a presentation.

I’m putting together a presentation for a call I’m hosting on July 18th to walk people through The Preparation — what it is, why it exists, how to use it, and how it can work for you or someone you love. The plan is to get on a call with whoever wants to join and actually show them around the thing live, rather than just dropping a link and disappearing.

What you’ll get from joining the call:

• -The full presentation: where The Preparation came from, the program’s core ethos, how the sixteen Cycles fit together, and what an ordinary three months inside one actually looks like

• -The honest economics: what it costs, how the anchor courses generate real income along the way, and how it compares to four years of tuition

• -Live Q&A: bring the skeptical question. Bring the practical one. Bring the one about your own son or grandson.

• -A first look at something new: the piece that lets young people do this alongside each other rather than alone. I will unveil it on the call.

Who it’s for:

• -Young people wanting to pursue an unconventional path toward realizing their full potential - whether you’re pre-college, attending college, or a recent graduate unhappy with his prospects.

• -Those already following The Preparation, please join. Maxim has something specifically for you.

• -Parents/Grandparents who recognize the sorry state of higher education and want to set their heirs up with a better future.

Register for the Zoom Call here: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/Cj-vU_EiRWCURkMZFMN97w

It took quite a while to put the presentation together since a lot of thinking has to go into the most natural order of things. By that, I mean that a lot of attention has to be put toward introducing each idea in The Preparation in a way that flows well over more than a dozen slides. It takes time to figure out what I want to say, how I want to say it, and gather the concepts and ideas that shouldn’t be left out of the presentation.

We’ll see how it lands.

Activities

Chess practice (7 out of 7 days)

It took a few days to get back into the flow of things. Overall, there isn’t much to say regarding this. Practice is going well. Improving…very slowly over time.

Worked out (5 out of 7 days)

Weight lifting has been going pretty well. I feel much stronger than I did when I first came back to Uruguay a few weeks ago. Eating consistently, sleeping more, and working out has been pretty nice.

Reading

• Started reading Enlightened Leadership by Ed Oakley and Doug Krug

Seems like a good book, but I’m not far enough into it to give a definitive answer on its quality. One thing I noticed: there’s an early emphasis on indirect or “soft” leadership, which is a good sign. From what little I’ve seen the indirect approach to leading people is nearly always the best possible method.

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.

Here’s the problem. The deal has quietly expired.

Thirty years ago a degree was a genuine edge. Today the unemployment rate for recent grads is running around 5.7%, higher than the workforce as a whole. Think about that. The people holding the golden ticket are now more likely to be out of work than the average worker. Meanwhile the price of the ticket tripled over thirty years while graduate wages merely doubled. Parents are paying more than ever for an edge that’s mostly gone. And young people are leaving university with crippling debt.

I wasn’t willing to make that trade with my own son.

Three years ago Maxim was seventeen and, in his own words, adrift. Doug Casey and I sat down to answer a different question. Not “what job will he get?” but “what would actually make a young man capable?” Doug wrote out a list of skills, games, and occupations. That napkin became our book, The Preparation with its sixteen three-month cycles, each built around a hands-on anchor course, 40 intentional hours a week. No diploma at the end. Only proof of work.

Maxim became the beta tester.

Three years in, here’s a partial scorecard: certified EMT and wildland firefighter, with fifty-plus days on real fire lines. He learned to fly an airplane. Spent twenty-one days sailing around the Falklands and through the Strait of Magellan. An apprenticeship to an Uruguayan gaucho. Mules packed into the Rocky Mountain backcountry. He launched his own business, an agricultural drone business in Uruguay. Over a hundred books read. A book co-authored.

That’s just part of it. He’s learned about investing, practiced martial arts, learned to play the guitar and so much more. All while completing rigorous college level courses online and stacking accomplishment after accomplishment. All with Zero student debt. All before turning twenty-one.

Maxim is a good kid. I always knew he had plenty of potential, but just three years ago we had no idea he’d become the young man he is today. It’s The Preparation that took him from anxious and aimless to the competent and confident person he is today.

Now go back to that list of things parents are really buying with tuition. Maxim got every one of them.

The runway into adulthood? He managed his own time, money, and logistics across three continents. Not in a dorm with a meal plan. On fire lines, on ranches, on the open ocean. He’s gone from child to adult, capable of handling all the demands of adulthood.

The network? College hands your kid four hundred classmates all competing for the same jobs. Maxim built something better: relationships with fire captains, ranchers, sailors, pilots, and men like Doug Casey. He learned to look up, not sideways. Elders want allies. Peers are competition.

The broadened horizons? A hundred books and a dozen cultures met on their own turf, not through a lecture hall window.

The character formation? He wrote his own Personal Code and lived it in public, publishing an accountability post every single week for three years.

And the credential? He has something better than a piece of paper that tells an employer next to nothing. He has a public body of work anyone can inspect. Proof of work.

He still has a year left in the program. But, I’m happy to say - every hope a parent pins on college, delivered. But delivered through a life-enriching, skill-building adventure instead of four stale years, institutionalized in a classroom.

And here’s the part that matters for your wallet: the total cost of all sixteen cycles is roughly one year at a prestigious university. And the program is orientated in such a way that, like college once was - you can pay your way through it.

This Saturday, July 18th at 12:00 PM ET, Maxim is hosting a free live Zoom call to walk you through all of it. Not me. Him. The one who actually lived it, and who has every reason to tell you the parts that were hard.

What you’ll get:

• The full presentation: where The Preparation came from, The program’s core ethos, how the sixteen Cycles fit together, and what an ordinary three months inside one actually looks like

• The honest economics: what it costs, how the anchor courses generate real income along the way, and how it compares to four years of tuition

• Live Q&A: bring the skeptical question. Bring the practical one. Bring the one about your own son or grandson.

• A first look at something new: the piece that lets young people do this alongside each other rather than alone. Maxim will unveil it on the call.

Who is the session for:

• Young people wanting to pursue an unconventional path toward realizing their full potential - whether you’re pre-college, attending college, or a recent graduate unhappy with his prospects.

• Those already following The Preparation, please join. Maxim has something specifically for you.

• Parents/Grandparents who recognize the sorry state of higher education and want to set their heirs up with a better future.

If you’re already walking The Preparation yourself, you belong on this call too. What he’s unveiling was built for you.

Saturday, July 18th · 12:00 PM ET (9:00 AM Pacific · 5:00 PM UK · 1:00 PM Uruguay)

[RESERVE YOUR SPOT →

https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/Cj-vU_EiRWCURkMZFMN97w]

Somewhere in the next year, a young person you love is going to be asked what they want to do. Nobody is going to ask them who they want to become. Come Saturday and we’ll ask the better question.

Best wishes from a proud father,

Matt

Writing to you from Uruguay

I had a lot of time to think about what I wanted these next few months to look like after my month of wildland fire, ropes, and survival in the states. It was clear to me that I wanted to come back to Uruguay, but this time I wanted to try something a little different.

What if—for 3 months—I spent my time trying to help as many people as I could?

That question lingered in my head for a while. I’ve learned a lot, and done a lot, within these past 2 years and 11 months (I’ll hit the 3-year mark in The Preparation on August 1st) and I want to see how independently useful I can be to others within a short timeframe. It’ll be its own Cycle of sorts.

Being useful could mean helping someone I know with farm chores or using any of the skills I’ve learned to solve a problem. Improving the circumstances for other people is the main goal. It’s also vague. So, I came up with a concrete plan that aligns with a long-term goal.

By the end of my deployment on the South Fork Fire in Nebraska, I knew what I was going to do…

The Long-Term View

Back in mid 2023, my dad, Doug Casey, and I started down a path that would (unknown to us at the onset) lead to the creation of The Preparation program. A culmination of different interests and issues converged at that starting point and pushed on into a greater project.

Thousands—and I’m not kidding you—thousands of hours went into constructing the final product.

There were times we wanted to throw it all away. My time as the beta tester was especially tough in those first 9 months. What I was doing was brand new and no one around me understood the philosophy behind it. I asked my dad what the point of it all was a few times, wanting to throw in the towel. He picked me up and kept me on track when I needed it. On the other side, my dad spent a massive amount of time mulling over the program and the book while also trying to guide me when I needed it. At one point, while writing the book, he was so frustrated by the current draft that he literally threw it in the fire, not knowing what to do or what changes to make.

Why the headache of it all?

It was clear, due to the effect it had on me while being the beta tester for the program, that we had something of real substance…something that blew the conventional paths out of the water. If a lost, anxious, and angry 17-year-old boy could rack up a list of accomplishments, unlock unimaginable opportunities, overcome fear, and set himself up for a better future—anyone could replicate it or even do it better within a shocking timeframe.

Flash forward to today, we have several people going through the program and documenting it here on Substack. Their progress is impressive. I’m always interested to see what they’ll accomplish next.

The book is published and is ultimately the best thing we can do to help people, but we have several goals going into the future…

Not only do we want to see just how many people we can get to actually start The Preparation, but we also want to aid those who actually make the leap. From firsthand experience, I can tell you that it’s not an easy thing to do, but the rewards are impossible to comprehend. Anyway, everything we are going to try to do will be done to smooth out the general path and make it clearer, and more convincing than it already is.

But if this isn’t convincing enough, I don’t know what is: at 20 years old I’ve been able to rack up 4 pages of major accomplishments, 41 pages of total accomplishments within the last 3 years, friends all over the world, serious foundational skills, and wild opportunities. That’s what you can do with The Preparation.

The tough part is (again) to get people to take the leap. The other tough part is getting people to keep pushing forward until the idea of doing anything else seems foolish. It takes about a year to get there. So, some of what I want to do is to help people push through until they catch their stride.

The Forum

This is what I’ve been working on for the past week.

The Forum will be a website for those in The Preparation. It has an actual community forum, a field map that shows the general location of other people so you can connect with them, individual forums for every cycle of the program, a function to create private groups, and a ‘Calls’ feature.

The idea behind this is to solve a few issues:

• -Create a community that extends beyond Substack

• -Easier communication to answer questions, solve problems, discuss cycles, and offer encouragement

• -Make the whole process of going through the program a little less lonely since you’d be able to plan “Group Cycles”

• -Offer the idea of hosting monthly calls on the website than any Prepper could join (the idea being that the group calls would push the community to accomplish more since solutions to peoples’ problems, new cycle ideas, and true encouragement could come from the calls)

The website is still fairly bare bones at the moment and not very aesthetically pleasing, but all of the main features are in place. I have no clue if people would actually use this, but I’m building it anyway. Plus, I think it would make the idea of starting the program a lot easier for some if there was a way to easily access and actual community where the people actually working through the program could share their success stories.

I think it could be something good.

Anyway…

I’ve been putting most of all of my energy into the Forum this past week. I’ve never tried to build a serious website, especially not one with the features I want, so it’s a steep learning curve. My thought is to make the necessary aesthetic and functional changes to have this site up within a week. We’ll see how it goes.

Reading

• -Finished reading The Great Crash 1929 by John Galbraith

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

Rope rescue training, survival training, and a fire deployment is a lot to fit into one month…

Within that timeframe, I travelled internationally twice, killed more hours on the road than I could count, and spent some amount of time across 5 different states. I guess that goes to show that planning or preparing to do something is half the battle when actually trying to do something. For the most part, I hit my initial objectives that I had for myself before heading back to the states: deploy to a wildfire and make money, complete the rope rescue course, and go to the survival course in southern Utah.

I’d say it was a reasonably successful month.

Let me tell you a little bit about it…

South Dakota to Utah: Rope Rescue to Survival School

I’ve been too busy to update you weekly as I usually wish to do. We last left off at the end of the rope rescue course (last weekly update) in Custer, South Dakota. Well, right after that ended, the next thing started. I had my orientation call with Boulder Outdoor Survival School for the 14-day expedition.

When the interviewer asked what my motivation was for taking the course, I told him about The Preparation and that I’ve been the guinea pig for it over the last 3 years.

A smile came across his face and what he said shocked me…

Apparently, about 3 or 4 other people have already gone to Boulder Outdoor Survival School to complete the Survivalist Cycle of The Preparation. A part of me was wishing that someone else from the program would happen to be taking the same course I was. I wish I could know who those 3 or 4 people were. Anyway, it was amazing to hear that.

Moving on…

Fast forward several days later. I had already driven through some of the most beautiful country I had ever seen and, after staying at a small hotel for a couple of days, arrived at BOSS for the expedition.

It was dry, and I mean very dry. Hot too. The sun shone down and cooked my skin. By the end of the day my face would be red. The students were told to show up at noon for orientation before we’d organize our stuff and then eventually head out to the field. Everyone was friendly, instructors and students alike. Just about everybody was over 25 except for me. There were paramedics, EMTs, ex-journalists, stay-at-home moms, and office workers—all wanting to do something difficult and learn something new.

It was interesting.

A new mom was wanting to spend some time in the wild before heading back home to her child and wildland firefighter husband. The ex-journalist I mentioned was recently divorced…and obviously distraught after a long relationship. He had already moved back home and picked up a new job. This course was the reset he thought he needed. Another mom from the Midwest was tired of her mundane life back home. She too was here for a reset of her own.

All of these people, from so many different walks of life, here for one reason or another.

Orientation took much longer than it should have. At least that’s what I thought as we were sitting under a canopy packing stuff and talking for hours. Once we were dropped off in the middle of the desert as the sun was setting, I realized that it was done by design. We were supposed to hike out into the middle of nowhere into the night. We had no pack, just a cloth to carry our gear. We had no blanket, just long underwear and the clothes on our back. We had one bottle of water. No food.

Unbeknownst to us, our last meal for a little while would be the small lunch they fed us earlier that day.

So, we hiked. The sky opened up into millions of stars as we walked single file, tripping ad stumbling more now that we couldn’t see as well. We stopped several times. Once, we stopped to look up at the night sky. The instructors pointed out Polaris, the Big Dipper, and Leo to name a few. Our breaks were short, which was fine since it was starting to get cold. Cold in the way that only the desert can be.

The instructors told us nothing about where we were going or what we were doing. By design, of course.

The First Cold Night

We had hiked far. At least, far enough that the instructors decided that it was time for us to bed down for the night. Exhausted, I laid on the desert ground, using my sack of gear as a pillow. I fell asleep at what I think was 11pm or midnight. Next time I woke up, I was shivering. My upper body was warm from 3 layers: cotton shirt, wool sweater, and a wool jacket. My legs and feet were freezing. I opened my sack of gear, pulled out my long underwear and put them on underneath my pants. Better, but still freezing.

I think I slept a little more. Not much though.

The next time I awoke, the sky was turning gray. Must have been about 4:30am. No point in going back to sleep now. It was too bright and we’d all be getting up soon.

The Second Day

The sun was up. And again, without any information, we were told to start hiking again. We hiked for the rest of the day through canyons and juniper forests in search of water. Eventually, we found some water in a canyon, and that was where we’d be stopping for a few hours to ride out the midday heat. We drank a lot of water (after treating it). We napped and talked to kill time under these massive rock formations with ancient petroglyphs carved into them. Then we drank again and napped again.

When the sun had started to get easier to endure, he hiked out of the canyon and back into the juniper forest that would eventually lead us to higher elevation.

The end of that day was rough. Few times have I felt worse than I did then.

We all slowed down. Only those who managed to occupy their mind with conversation for a long time kept their pace. My mind started to wander and think of cold drinks and burgers. By the time the sun had set, I slowed down a lot. My feet didn’t seem to function well either as I was stumbling more than I should have been otherwise. Then the nausea came. It came for a lot of us. 3 minutes away from our camp for the night.

A total of 5 people threw up back-to-back.

Our stomachs (after being used to food, having nothing to eat, and lots of exertion) were producing too much acid. Mine included, although somehow, I managed not to throw up. It was close.

Eventually, we all made it through the thick brush to our campsite on the other side of a creek. The atmosphere was different. Instead of cold desert ground, there were pine needles and ponderosa pine trees everywhere. Their bark smells like vanilla. It was noticeably warmer despite the fact that we were at a higher elevation. By that time, we had all become a bit more accustomed to being around one another, so we slept closer together to preserve warmth. Personally, I won’t voluntarily choose to sleep directly next to someone unless I’m absolutely freezing, so I was a few feet farther from everyone else.

The next morning, after a hike, I left.

I had an abnormal (and frequent) number of heart palpitations throughout the entire course. In fact, I’ve had some since then weeks later. Since we were heading into terrain that was largely inaccessible, I figured that it was best to leave. Less and less food, cold, and physical exertion didn’t seem like it would help. I’ve also had some occasional chest pain as well since that time. I’ll be getting that checked out soon.

I didn’t stay long enough to fully enjoy or appreciate the course. I wish I would have been there for the entire time, but I did learn more about finding water, personal hygiene in the wild, and how to keep yourself warm by choosing the right places to sleep and building the right camp.

Maybe I’ll go back and finish that course someday.

All that matters is that I did what I could, with what I had, where I was. I did what I thought was reasonable.

Utah to Colorado to Nebraska: Survival School to Wildfires

On the way back from the survival course, I stopped in Colorado to come up with a new plan for what I‘d be doing and where I’d be going. There seemed to be two options: head back to Uruguay or go to South Dakota to help my friends Tyler and Brennan (from Minuteman EMS, who I’ve worked for) pack medical bags and/or stage an ambulance for the fire season. I opted for the second since it would give me a chance to do some more productive stuff, see good people, and help them out.

Well, things always take an interesting turn…

On the way to South Dakota, I got a text:

“Do you have all of your fire gear?”

I answered ASAP.

“Alright, how far are you from Chadron, Nebraska?”

I was only 4 hours away. Another fire had blown up in Nebraska and they needed another ambulance to work on the fire. We were called out. My paramedic (who I hadn’t yet met) was driving the ambulance to the fire while I was in my personal car. We arrived at about the same time and started the checking process.

The next day, we were officially working on the South Fork Fire.

Everybody expected this thing to burn out quickly. It was a Nebraska fire after all. Grass fires go out quickly. The only thing that kept us on that fire for a total of 9 days were the pine and cottonwood trees that burned for hours, torched, and started spot fires. It was a short fire assignment, but it felt long. Perhaps that’s what flat (and mostly boring) land does to the mind. With little to look at, time passes by slowly.

Day 3 or 4 brought the most excitement.

Early in the morning we heard a call over the radio:

“We have a red IWI”

As soon as you hear that, your heart beats faster and your ears perk up. An IWI is an “Incident within an incident”, which is a term in wildland fire for a medical incident. All of the moderate or major incidents (yellow and red) must be mentioned over the radio for all personnel to hear. We shut up and listened close to hear where we needed to go, or if we would be the ones needing to respond anyway.

Once we got confirmation we moved fast. A National Guard REMS team (rope rescue team) was with us as well. They were apparently needed too. They hauled down the road in their UTVs full of rope gear while we chased them in the ambulance.

The red IWI was for a man who had slid into a tree root, got his leg caught in it, and twisted over his leg. His tibia was fractured and he was in a lot of pain. The National Guard team only had EMTs. So, my paramedic was the only one around who could administer pain meds such as ketamine. Once we got close to where the guy was, my paramedic grabbed his bag of medical gear and hopped into the NG UTV. I had to stay behind with the ambulance since we assumed we would transport him on the ground.

I had everything prepared: my mind, the gear, the ambulance. I was ready.

Unfortunately for me (fortunately for the guy), the medical team back at the base made the decision to transport him via chopper. My paramedic had his first ride on a helicopter while transporting the patient to a hospital about 45min away. He was very happy, and I was happy for him.

We all did what we could, with what we had, where we were.

I was prepared to do my job as an EMT—completely ready to go. The National Guard team set up a 3-to-1 rope hauling system in minutes to pull the guy out of a tough spot, and my medic did what was required of him given the situation. Perfect set up and execution in terms of most rescues.

That was the highlight of the fire. The rest was all mundane. That’d how it goes though: 98% boring and 2% exciting.

Anyway…

That’s how these past couple weeks have gone. Not all to plan, but it was a success in my eyes. Now, I’m looking forward to being in Uruguay for quite a while. I’ve had some stuff planned for over a month, which I’m really looking forward to finally get to now that I’m here.

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 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.