Figuring Things Out, Spreading The Word, Picking Up The Pace

A Radical Alternative to College

Monday, November 3rd, 2025

Writing to you from Uruguay

The bittersweet part of doing anything new is that you’re opening yourself up to a new aspect of reality without any ability to gauge your success…at least in the beginning.

You’ve got no clue whether what you’re doing is right or wrong. And, if it is wrong, you have no idea why.

A beginner can (assuming they understand the basic rules) sit down at a chess board and, with enough time, learn some of what works and what doesn’t. Yet, he will undoubtedly hit a plateau. He isn’t making progress and he doesn’t know why. How he’s going to move forward is just as unclear…

I haven’t felt more like a complete beginner than I have in the last month. When the money you make (or don’t make) is directly and obviously tied to your own actions it completely changes the game.

There’s so much that goes into entrepreneurship—sales, marketing, accounting, a basic level of knowledge about your product/service…and never having done this before it’s difficult to gauge where I’m at.

Am I not doing enough? If so, what do I need to do more of? How can I fine-tune my effort and where should I put it? So many questions…

But going back to the chess beginner…

When he reaches that plateau—that area of uncertainty and ignorance—the best thing he can do is seek wisdom from the “masters” who’ve broken through countless plateaus. They will label his issues clearly, reorient his strategy, and introduce him to a set of eternally reliable principles.

The beginner goes from feeling like he’s trapped in space—with every direction holding possibilities and uncertainties—to being sucked back down to earth with a map and compass.

I think I’m at the point where it would be well worth it to seek out some entrepreneurial wisdom.

Here I Am

This past week I started experimenting with Facebook ads to promote my agricultural drone business.

So as to be cautious, I set the daily rate relatively low so that I wouldn’t blow through money, but high enough that I’d be able to reach a couple thousand people per day in this specific province of Uruguay. Considering Uruguay has a population of only 3 million people, reaching about 2 thousand a day isn’t bad.

Thus far I have gotten 4 responses, turned away one rancher (who wanted herbicide spraying services, but told him I wasn’t qualified to do that yet), and I have one lead.

We’ll see what happens!

The responses I get are great even if they don’t work out because they allow me to test how well I can interact with potential clients—it’s an art in of itself.

More Testing…Always Testing

Multispectral map of our property

In order to get more practice with using the DJI Agras T40 drone for seeding I’ll be spreading a mix of white clover and velvet grass over a few hectares of our property.

Plus, we do need to increase our grass biodiversity and add some legumes to the mix for their nitrogen fixing properties. For not previously being ranchers, we’ve done an alright job of improving this place over the last 4 years, but we’ve shied away from personally doing any seeding or occasional fertilizing until now.

White clover and inoculant

This morning I mixed the inoculant with the white clover to prepare for some seeding.

So, that’ll be getting started in a few hours!

Weekly Fun

I forgot to mention it last week, so I might as well tell you about it now.

As part of my effort to start doing more fun things, my girlfriend and I camped out on a nice part of the property. The moon was out, temperatures just cool enough to keep the bugs at bay, and the crackling of the fire was nice.

Our fire. Somehow the image got completely distorted…I promise this isn’t a picture from a horror movie.

Of course, we brought the staple camping food: hot dogs.

But, something was off. I can’t remember ever having hot dogs in Uruguay before, but these ones were not right. Instead of getting that nice crispy char on the outside it would shrink like heated plastic.

Honestly, I really can’t tell if that’s how a real hotdog is supposed to be—and if the ones in the USA are made of fake meat—or if we just got crappy hotdogs.

But, still, I enjoyed it…and I think she did too.

Adventure bike fun on rural roads.

Yesterday’s fun was taking our adventure bike out for a 45 minute ride. Lots of fun.

Electives

1 hour of guitar practice (6 out of 7 days)

Thanks to your suggestions I started learning the basics of music theory on guitar. A little bit of effort has gone to understanding melody, rhythm, tempo…but most of my time has been going to learning scales.

1 hour of chess practice (3 out of 7 days)

Halfway through the week I thought I’d bring back the chess practice. I want to keep improving with that.

Weight lifting (5 out of 6 days)

My workouts have been more intense and I’m already seeing some improvements in muscle and strength over the past month. Also I’m getting more protein (and food in general) in, which is good.

Reading

• Continued reading Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss

Excellent book filled with great stories to back up what Chris was trying to get across in the book. I’m very close to being finished with this and will write more about it once I have a complete image of the ideas within the book.

Things I Published

October 31st video:

This May Be One of the Most Important Books You Read in the Next 4 Years...

November 1st post to The Preparation:

When You Need to Tell a Good Story...

Also, I did a Substack Live with Collapse Life and Susan Harley about The Preparation:

A Conversation About The Preparation w/Collapse Life and Susan Harley

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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

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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.