Sunday, July 19th, 2026
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
They're Discounting the Degree 57% — and Still Can't Sell It
“What's the going price of a college degree these days?”
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:
Documenting my progress holds me accountable.
I hope these updates will show other young men that there is another path we can take.
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.
Max.....The $75,000 should be not a problem, if you emphasize that it is put out over a period of time, and not all at once. If you earned money during all of this; then tell people that. I think you said that you did. Because you had the money to spend on this, you went at a very brisk pace. Maybe some of those wanting to do this, will do it in stages, as they earn the money. It is working well, and if that many people actually signed up, it was great for a first time introduction. You are a success!!!!!
I would have loved to be there. Sadly, I was working but, thank you for all you do!