This morning in Boston, the descendants of that class open the doors on FAB26, the world’s largest gathering on digital fabrication and making. Twelve hundred people. Two hundred fifty sessions. A Fab Lab is a community workshop stocked with laser cutters, 3D printers, computer-controlled milling machines, and electronics benches. There are now more than 3,000 of them in 150 countries.

Look at what that growth ran on. No accreditation. No admissions office. No federal loan program bidding up the price. A workshop where you learn the machines and make something real spread across 150 countries on word of mouth, because it fed a hunger the official system starves.

MIT’s most successful educational export of the past 25 years isn’t a degree. It’s a workshop.

The most prestigious technical university on earth runs lecture halls, problem sets, and a $65,000 tuition bill through the front door. Out the side door, almost by accident, it released a model where nobody checks your transcript and the only thing that matters is whether the thing you built works.

I keep coming back to those hundred students. They were already at MIT. They had won the credential game outright. And what they lined up for was the first chance anyone had ever given them to make a physical object with their own hands. Kindergarten was the last time school let them build something; every year after, education meant more abstraction, more screens, more paper. The hunger never left. The system just stopped feeding it.

This is why The Preparation tells young men to choose physical experience over virtual education nine times out of ten. It’s the rule behind the whole program, and it’s why one of the sixteen cycles is the Maker cycle: three months in a fab lab, finishing with a portfolio of objects you designed and built. Welded steel, milled parts, working circuits. Things you can hand to another human being.

The reason is practical, not romantic. A built object can’t be faked. An employer doesn’t have to trust a grade or take your word for anything. He picks the thing up. It works or it doesn’t. And the young man who has watched his own hands produce working objects for three months carries a confidence no seminar can install. Competence you can hold is competence you believe in.

College now averages about $43,000 a year to sit in the abstraction machine. Fab Lab access runs a tiny fraction of that, often free, in 150 countries. The book lays out how to turn that access into a deliberate quarter of full-time work. It’s called The Preparation, and the Maker cycle is one of sixteen ways it converts a young man’s time into capability instead of debt.

One more detail from Boston worth noticing. This year FAB26 added a Kid Lab Pass: nine-year-olds, real machines, real projects, all week. While most of the culture childproofs everything a young person touches, the makers hand a fourth-grader a design challenge and expect results. They have the expectations right.

The Fab Lab network publishes a map of all 3,000 locations, and odds are one sits within an hour of your house. A young man can walk in this week, learn one machine, and build one thing. Then a better thing. Twelve weeks later he has a shelf of objects that argue for him, and he knows something about himself that no acceptance letter can tell him.

If you don’t already have a copy of our book, The Preparation, you can get one here. The Maker cycle is just one of 16 we outline in the book. All together they lay out a better alternative to college and a path for building extraordinary young men.

Best,

Matt Smith

The years we sell as the ones that hand a young person direction are the years that quietly take it.

That study, out in late June, surveyed more than 2,400 young Americans. Add up everyone who feels short on meaning, purpose, or both, and you get 45%. Nearly half a generation, adrift.

We keep blaming the job market. AI, layoffs, entry-level roles vanishing. All real, and I’ve written about all of it. But a thin paycheck doesn’t explain a hollow chest. Something underneath broke.

Gallup found the antidote buried in the same numbers. The strongest predictor of whether a young person feels their life means something isn’t income. It isn’t a degree. It isn’t even having a job. It’s whether they believe they make a real difference in someone else’s life. Among the ones who strongly feel they help others, 93% say their life is meaningful. Among the ones who don’t, 22%.

Nearly eight in ten say they want work that helps people. Only about half who want it have found it.

This is the oldest wisdom on earth wearing a lab coat. Meaning isn’t found. It’s a byproduct of being useful. “Produce more for others than you take for yourself.” That line is in our book, The Preparation. The reason so many young people feel empty isn’t that they failed to find themselves. It’s that we sent them looking, at eighteen, for a thing you can’t find by looking. You build it. You become good enough at something that another human being actually needs you.

College sells the reverse. Follow your passion. Find yourself. Explore. Four years and six figures to locate a self that was supposed to be waiting at the end. That’s mimetic desire. Kids chase the prize because everyone around them is chasing it. Monkey see, monkey do. Then they win it, hold the diploma up to the light, and feel nothing. You can’t be satisfied winning a game you never chose to play.

So ask a better question. Not “what are you going to do?” A job is just a way to make money. Ask a young person: what kind of man do you want to become?

The Preparation answers with capability, not a credential. A nineteen-year-old trained as an EMT can keep a stranger breathing on the shoulder of a highway at midnight. He never has to wonder what his life is worth. A young person who can weld a seam, pull a calf, frame a house, or run a real business makes something other people need. Meaning shows up uninvited.

Now the objection those same kids raised. Half of them told Gallup the helping jobs don’t pay. They’re half right. Passion without skill pays nothing. But competence rewrites the deal. Get good enough to matter and the market pays you to be generous. That EMT can go earn $600 a day on a wildfire line. The skilled tradesman names his own price, because scarcity sets it and competence is scarce. You don’t have to choose between a full wallet and a full life. Real skill buys both.

There’s a second half the culture forgot. Competence makes you useful. Character tells you what to be useful for. Every young person in The Preparation writes a Personal Code. Their own rules, their own handful of virtues, borrowed from Stoics who solved this problem two thousand years ago. Without a philosophical core, a man drifts like a ship without a rudder. Know who you are and you’ll know what to do.

That’s the entire cure for a generation that can’t find meaning. Get genuinely good at something people need. Decide who you are before the world decides for you. Do both, and purpose stops being something you hunt for. It becomes something you can’t shake.

Competent. Confident. Useful to someone who needs you. That’s where meaning actually lives.

Best,

Matt Smith

The tech sector alone announced nearly 140,000 cuts in the first six months of 2026. Nearly double the same period last year. Roughly a third of all American layoffs. And about a quarter of all cuts this year explicitly named AI as the reason.

Now, as a general rule, when you see a statistic, figure out how it’s calculated. Challenger counts what companies say, not what’s true. Even Sam Altman admits, “Almost every company that does layoffs is blaming AI, whether or not it really is about AI.” Fair enough. AI makes a convenient scapegoat for plain old bloat.

So ignore the statements and watch the behavior. Entry-level job postings are down 35% since early 2023. Some tech and data roles are down two-thirds. Around 43% of recent graduates are working jobs that never required the degree they just paid for. The bottom rung of the white-collar ladder is being sawed off, whatever name you give the saw.

Here’s the truth.

College is a trade school for white-collar jobs. And white-collar jobs are exactly what’s being automated.

Nobody calls it a trade school, of course. They call it “the college experience.” But strip away the climbing walls and the football, and what your family is buying is four years of training for entry-level knowledge work. The very positions the Challenger report says are disappearing. In The Preparation, the book I wrote with Doug Casey and my son Maxim, we estimated that around 44% of degrees are in fields primed for AI demolition. When we wrote that, it was a hypothesis. This summer it’s showing up in the layoff data.

Run the numbers like a buyer instead of a believer. A private four-year degree runs a quarter million dollars, give or take. The cost has roughly tripled in thirty years while graduate wages merely doubled. You’re spending more than ever for a ticket into a factory that’s automating. College can still be a great tool for the right person, in the right field, at the right price, at the right time. But those four conditions almost never line up anymore, and “everyone goes” is not a reason. That’s just monkey see, monkey do.

As an employer myself, I’ve interviewed countless job candidates. Rare is the young person who shows up with a body of work instead of a piece of paper. The paper tells me next to nothing. The body of work tells me almost everything. In AI’s world, competence wins.

That’s why we built The Preparation as a four-year alternative: sixteen three-month cycles where you become an EMT, a welder, a builder, a sailor, an entrepreneur. Forty intentional hours a week, and you publish what you did every week for the world to see. There’s no diploma at the end. There’s only proof of work, and the proof of work is you. All sixteen cycles cost about what one year at a prestigious university does.

I watched it work on my own son. Three years ago, Maxim was a good kid, but anxious and aimless like a lot of young men. Today he’s worked wildfires as an EMT, learned to fly an airplane, sailed through the Strait of Magellan, and launched his own business. The program did that, not some rare talent.

So if you’re 17, or raising someone who is, here’s my plain advice. Stop asking “what job will you get?” and start asking what kind of person you want to become. Build capabilities a machine can’t fake and an employer can see. Learn to use AI yourself, hands on, now. And before you sign for the debt, demand that college justify itself like any other quarter-million-dollar purchase.

I could be wrong about how fast this unfolds. Timing is always the hard part. But the mechanism is no longer a debate. It’s in the layoff reports.

The degree was a promise. Proof of work is a fact. Choose accordingly.

Best,

Matt Smith

P.S. If this hits home, The Preparation lays out the whole program, cycle by cycle. The book is on Amazon, and the program lives at thepreparation.com.

Sources: HR Dive · CFO Dive · TechTimes Supporting: Bloomberg on grad underemployment · Metaintro on entry-level postings

Ron Hetrick, principal economist at the labor data firm Lightcast and a former BLS economist, called it “elite overproduction.” The term comes from the complexity scientist Peter Turchin. It describes a society that mints more credentialed workers than its economy can employ. The Niskanen Center put it even better: it’s a game of musical chairs where players keep getting added and nobody ever removes a chair.

Except nobody’s adding chairs either. Look at the numbers.

American colleges award about 2.1 million bachelor’s degrees a year, and the pipeline is still growing. The Bureau of Labor Statistics tracks more than 800 occupations. Just 178 of them typically require a bachelor’s degree to get in. And most openings in those 178 aren’t new jobs. They’re replacement seats: someone retired, someone quit, a fresh graduate gets to compete for the vacancy against people with years of experience.

Two million new players a year. A fixed set of chairs. You don’t need an economics degree to finish that math. In fact, that’s rather the point.

Here’s where the music stops:

A year after graduation, 52% of degree holders are working jobs that don’t require a degree. Ten years later, 45% still are.

Read that second number again. This isn’t a rough first year. For nearly half of graduates, the detour is permanent.

The defenders will point to the college wage premium: graduates still out-earn high-school-only workers by around 75%. True. But that premium is an average of the winners and the 45%, and average wages for college graduates have been falling for the better part of a decade. Averages hide bodies.

And the racket has a second layer. A Harvard Business School study found employers demanding degrees for jobs that never needed them. For production supervisor roles, 67% of postings required a bachelor’s while only 16% of the people already doing the job had one. So the degree is simultaneously required for jobs that don’t need it and worthless for the jobs it was supposed to unlock. You must buy a ticket to a game with no open chairs.

So why do kids keep lining up? René Girard had the answer: mimetic desire. Monkey see, monkey do. Seventeen-year-olds go to college because everyone they know goes to college, and their parents ask “where are you applying?” instead of a question that matters. When you play a game for a prize you care nothing about, winning cannot bring satisfaction. Losing is worse: you’re 22, in debt, and holding a ticket to nowhere.

The alternative isn’t to win the game. It’s to stop playing it.

The economy Turchin describes has a shortage on the other side of the ledger: people who can do things. Not people certified as generally intelligent. People with capabilities and a track record you can inspect.

That’s exactly what The Preparation builds. Doug Casey and I wrote it as a four-year alternative to college: sixteen three-month cycles, each anchored in a real-world skill. Medic. Welder. Pilot. Sailor. Entrepreneur. Investor. Forty intentional hours a week, 480 hours minimum per cycle. Real academics alongside the hands-on work. And a weekly public post about what you actually did, so the accountability is built in and the record is there for anyone to inspect.

Run the math one more time. The total cost of all sixteen cycles is about one year at a prestigious university. At the end there’s no diploma. There’s something better: proof of work. A young man who is competent, confident, and dangerous, with a documented body of work instead of a ticket stub.

A degree tells an employer you sat where two million others sat. Proof of work shows him what you can do.

If you’re a parent, stop asking where he’s applying. Ask what kind of man he wants to become. If you’re the young man, don’t sign the loan on autopilot. College still works for the right person, in the right field, at the right price, at the right time. That’s a narrow gate, not a default. Get The Preparation and pick your first cycle.

The music is slowing. You can hear it in every one of those statistics.

Let the other two million fight over the chairs. Build your own.

Make it count.

Matt

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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 large enough to only fill a napkin. 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 wildland firefighters, 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

This week the Department of Education began rolling out a rule with a name I couldn’t have written better myself: the “do no harm” test.

Here’s how it works. If the graduates of a college program don’t earn more than people who never went to college at all, that program gets cut off from federal student loans. By the department’s own count, more than 800,000 students are sitting in programs expected to fail.

Stop and think about what just happened.

The federal government just admitted, in regulation, that college can leave you worse off than skipping it.

The same institution that guaranteed the loans, inflated the tuition, and sold three generations on the degree as the ticket now needs a rule borrowed from medicine. First, do no harm. As if a diploma were a surgery that might kill you.

In The Preparation, Doug, Maxim and I argued that going to college has become the single worst financial decision a young person can make today. People told me that was hyperbole. Now Washington has built a regulation around the same premise.

But here’s the part worth your attention, and it’s my standard advice with any statistic: figure out how it’s calculated.

The test asks one question. Four years after graduation, does the median graduate of a program out-earn a high-school graduate in the same state? The bar sits around $30,000 to $41,000 a year depending on where you live.

That’s the whole test.

Not “did the degree beat the quarter million you spent on it.” Not “did it beat putting those four years into work and compounding skills.” The test doesn’t count debt at all. A graduate earning $42,000 with $100,000 in loans passes. By this yardstick, that program did “no harm.”

Do the arithmetic yourself. Four years at a private university runs roughly $262,000. The prize for that outlay: clearing a $35,000 bar that a 19-year-old heavy equipment operator steps over in his first year, debt-free, with a four-year head start.

Most bachelor’s programs will pass. Roughly 99% of them, per the department’s data. That should comfort nobody. A test this easy doesn’t tell you college is worth it. It only tells you which programs are so bad even the government can’t keep pretending. About 18% of career-focused certificate programs fail. Cosmetology tops the list. Among bachelor’s degrees, the failures cluster in theater, music, and studio art. The rest get a passing grade for out-earning the people the system spent decades calling failures.

Meanwhile, in the same news cycle: layoff trackers count roughly 186,000 tech workers cut so far in 2026, and 56% of this year’s layoff announcements explicitly cite AI. Recent college grads now face higher unemployment than the workforce at large. That’s a reversal. For my entire lifetime the degree meant lower unemployment, not higher.

College is essentially a trade school for white-collar jobs, and those jobs are in AI’s crosshairs. The new test grades programs on the 2025 earnings of students who finished back in 2021, before ChatGPT existed. It’s grading the last war.

So separate what you can’t control from what you can. You can’t control the credential cartel or the pace of AI. You can control what you build.

I’ve hired hundreds of employees. Rare was the young man with a body of work to stand on instead of a piece of paper. The paper tells me next to nothing. The body of work tells me almost everything.

That’s why The Preparation works the way it does. Sixteen three-month cycles: medic, welder, builder, pilot, entrepreneur. 480 committed hours per cycle. A public weekly write-up of what you actually did, and a running log of capabilities anyone can inspect. No diploma. Proof of work. The total cost of all sixteen cycles is about one year at a prestigious university.

I could be wrong on timing. Maybe the white-collar economy limps along another decade. But the mechanism is now plain enough that even the Department of Education wrote it into regulation.

The government just told you where the floor is. Don’t build your (or your son’s) future on it.

Best,

Matt Smith

Sources:

• NPR: New ‘do no harm’ test targets low-earning college degrees

• NPR member stations (July 6): Under a new federal rule, colleges must leave grads better off or lose financial aid

• Supporting: TechCrunch (July 6): Major tech layoffs in 2026 where employers cited AI, SkillSyncer layoff tracker (updated July 9)

Writing to you from Cordova, Illinois

In this world that can sometimes seem stale or bland there are jobs hidden in the cracks that supply far more than money. Lifelong friends, invaluable experience, incredible stories, real adventure, and sometimes extremely good pay — all of that exists for you to have if you know where to look. Much of the bedrock of The Preparation is composed of unique jobs because of just how much they can offer.

Those who delve into these jobs will benefit far more than they can imagine. Only courage is required for the undertaking.

Gunner (a new Prepper undertaking his own version of The Preparation) is definitely beginning to reap the rewards. Last I heard, he’s working on a fire crew in Southern Utah, doing a welding project on the side, and undertaking a lot of reading for the program.

Let me tell you, the work isn’t easy on a fire.

On fires you’re facing the elements all day every day. On top of that he’s digging fire breaks, hiking all day, and launching prescribed fire missions where he uses a drip torch to burn specified areas. If you’ve every seen it in action you know how impressive it can be.

To be blunt, Gunner is making some of the best progress right out of the gate that I’ve seen from almost everyone who’s entered the program. He’s working a unique job, working out frequently, reading a ton, writing and reflecting on what he’s doing often, and doing projects on the side. The combination of real world work and academic study is great, but the real key to success in The Preparation (and in life) is rapid action, quick decision making, and the will to put yourself in a position to learn and improve…no matter how uncomfortable it may be.

From my thousand-mile view point Gunner seems to be doing just that.

Now, I’ve already been following Gunner on Substack for a few weeks and I urge you to do the same so that we can continue to encourage him to make fantastic progress. There’ll surely be many more interesting weekly updates from him in the near future:

-Maxim Benjamin Smith

Buy The Preparation

Writing to you from Osaka, Japan

What if you could make it to the top 0.3% of people in the entire world in just 2.5 years?

No, I’m not talking about making an income of $150k+/year which, when compared to the other 8+ billion people in the world would put you around the top 0.3%. Being able to earn an amount of money that will allow you to be reasonably prosperous is a good thing, but earning money is much more easily done when you amass a series of skills, accomplishments, and experiences that, when combined, put you in the top 0.3-0.1% of people worldwide.

Many reasonably ambitious and competent men can stick to a career long enough to see $150k/year numbers, but the men who willingly wade the waters of uncertainty in order to pick up a vast array of skills and experiences will have more freedom, more opportunities, and likely have more money when all is said and done.

Those men might also go on to become some of the most interesting men in the world…

But, What’s the Blueprint for This Path?

Well, I am biased, but I have 2.5 years of proof and progress to back me up…

The path to getting into the top 0.1-0.3% of people in the world is best done by going through a 4-year alternative to college called The Preparation. The program has 16 cycles (semesters) with each cycle being 3 months long. Each cycle is centered around learning one major skill (i.e. house building, piloting, EMT, welding, entrepreneurship) but also comes with a variety of “secondary pursuits” like learning chess, how to play guitar, or scuba diving.

Each cycle builds upon the last. Skills stack. Experiences and abilities intertwine and connect in unexpected ways.

As I said, I’m now 2.5 years through this program. The other day it occurred to me that it would be interesting to input a list of all my accomplishments into ChatGPT in order to get an idea of how many people have skills/experiences similar to mine at 20 years old.

The results speak for themselves.

You can get the full in-depth breakdown by clicking HERE, but here’s the basic synopsis:

• EMT +wildland fire work - 0.01%

• Making $600/day doing risky work - 0.1%

• Building a business (the drone business I started in Uruguay) - 0.5-1%

• Published author - 0.1%

• International immersion - 0.3%

• Physical capability stack - 0.1%

• Serious writing - 0.2-0.3%

• Aviation training - 0.05%

• Agricultural/animal husbandry skills - 3-5%

But the combination of all of those skills brings things to a completely different level. ChatGPT estimated that 0.1-0.3% of 18-22 year old men worldwide have similar skills and experiences.

Now, I’m not using myself as an example to toot my own horn…far from it. I’m doing it to show you what’s possible if you have the courage to make the leap — to venture down your own wildly uncertain, frequently difficult, and incredibly fulfilling path. Not only that, but you have to know this: you can accomplish much more than I have in the last two in a half years with The Preparation.

It wasn’t until just last year that I had the same blueprint of this program available to me.

So, imagine how easily you could become a competent, confident, and dangerous man — making it into the top 0.1% of people with your skillset and experiences globally — in 2-3 years.

Those Making the Leap

There’s nothing wrong with being the reasonably ambitious and competent man that spends his life pursuing a career, nothing wrong with that at all. Though, you can’t help but give honor and deep respect to the “man in the arena” that Roosevelt spoke about in his famous speech — the man who goes beyond the perceived confines of “normal life” to accomplish great things, to dare greatly.

Anyone who makes the leap to tread their own path is worthy of respect.

That is why I want to introduce you to 3 more Preppers who have just started their own Preparation. One of them is currently working on welding, another is planning to start the Builder Cycle of The Preparation, one is training Muay Thai, and the last one is doing a combination of entrepreneurship and work within the program. I wouldn’t be surprised if several of the Preppers joining the program find themselves in the top 0.1% of skilled/experienced people worldwide in the coming years.

I highly recommend you check out their Substack pages and follow along with their progress just as I will be.

• Emmett’s Preparation

• Daniel’s Preparation

• Dyson’s Preparation

• Noah Gibbs

Reminder to all starting The Preparation:

Once you make the decision to start down your path set up a Substack account to post weekly updates on your progress throughout The Preparation.

Not only will you be holding yourself accountable, but you will have unique opportunities come your way over time, your writing will improve, and we will push more people to your page — supporters that will wish to see you succeed.

-Maxim Benjamin Smith

Buy The Preparation

The Preparation in the media:

Writing to you from Chiang Mai, Thailand

I shouldn’t have let so much time go by without posting another update here to tell you about the new people starting The Preparation…but while time slipped away from me in Japan we had 4 more important emails show up in our inboxes.

, , , and — all young people who certainly seem like they’re going places — sent us emails to let us know that they had started The Preparation.

From what we’ve seen they all have specific plans for what their first Cycle (3-month dedicated learning timeframe) will consist of.

I’m impressed.

Cody is undertaking the Medic Cycle which consists of going through EMT school, completing all the requirements, and passing the national exam to become a certified EMT. He’s two weeks into it and seems to be doing great.

You can (and should) follow his Substack page here:

Cody's Preperation

My account of my journey through The Preperation.

(As a side note, we cannot emphasize the value of EMT skills enough and that’s why we recommend that everyone does the Medic Cycle as their first Cycle within the program. The sheer amount of life-saving treatments you can preform after EMT school make you amazingly more competent and confident after just a couple months of schooling.)

Sophia is taking her own unique route with the program, which we encourage!

She’s going to complete a 180-hour online Texas Real Estate school for her Anchor Course. In addition to that she’ll be doing the required reading, academic courses, reflection/accountability, and working a job as an office assistant for a home inspection company.

I have a feeling she’ll be further proof that it’s entirely reasonable to take on a ton of study AND work while completing each Cycle of the program.

You can follow Sophia here:

Sophia's Substack

My personal Substack

By Sophia's Preparation

Let’s move on to Mack…

Read through 2 paragraphs of his latest update and you’ll get a pretty good sense of the kind of guy he is — hard working, already capable in a number of fields, and self-directed.

He’s already got a great resume. It’s cool to imagine what it might look like in 4 years…

Currently he is saving up to complete the Anchor Course for the Builder Cycle, Pilot Cycle, and Cowboy Cycle later in the year. All the while he’s getting a good amount of stuff done.

You can check out his page here:

Mack's Preparation

Documenting my learning and growth towards my goals.

Last, but definitely not least, we have Abbott.

Currently, Abbott is going through Cycle #2: The Pilot Cycle. Until the Cycle is over he’ll be learning how to aviate, navigate, and communicate effectively in the old (but reliable) Cessna 172. By the end of it he will have gained a great skill. I’m looking forward to seeing his progress with it.

Abbott is also working on the side, completing academics, reading, and holding himself accountable by (obviously) posting these weekly updates.

Please follow and support Abbott at his Substack page below:

Abbott's Preparation

I like creative writing, painting miniatures and playing strategy tabletop games. I have an interest in science fiction and fantasy, and enjoy listening to music while writing. I am starting my Preparation, to become the man I would like to be.

If you’re reading this while currently in The Preparation remember to start holding yourself accountable by posting weekly updates on your own Substack page. Trust me, it makes a huge difference in your overall performance and progress.

-Maxim Benjamin Smith

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The Preparation in the media:

Article from Tom Woods on The Preparation: HERE

Podcast with Doug Casey and Tom Woods: HERE

Writing to you from Uruguay

There are a world of opportunities out there at your disposal. Some take intentional effort to seek them out. Others, unbeknownst to you, have been staring you in the face all along…waiting for you to take advantage of them. All that was required was a simple shift in perspective.

The realization of opportunities requires an open mind — someone who lengthens their life’s timeframe in their mind, has a keen understanding of the passage of time, sincerely wants to improve, and is willing to take on the burden of radical personal responsibility.

I’d say that cutting off some societal expectations and not falling to peer pressure is part of the equation as well…

Isaiah Bull is no doubt seeing this now. After recently joining The Preparation, he is diving into it fast and expanding his already impressive skillset. Here’s what he had to say about The Preparation in a recent post:

“One thing I really like about The Preparation is that it’s made me realize the opportunities that are already right in front of me.

For example, with the Sailor Cycle, my wife’s uncle works on sailboats in Sicily and is involved in a business that teaches sailing. They are usually hiring people to work with the big machinery in the port, and he said I’d most likely be able to find employment using the skills I learned after completing the Heavy Equipment Operator cycle if I wanted to.

Another example is that my mother-in-law, a chef in Italy, is always baking and making chocolates when we visit. I could learn from her for the Chef cycle.

With the Cowboy Cycle, my parents live out in the country in Texas, and their next-door neighbor/friend teaches people how to become cowboys for a living.

One of my high school friends, who I still stay in touch with, practices regenerative farming and has always been passionate about it. He could probably help out with the Farmer Cycle.”

-Isaiah Bull

Chances are you already have a few of opportunities in your life — maybe a highly skilled relative you can learn from, or a family friend who runs a unique operation halfway around the world.

Whatever it may be…those opportunities are here already. What you need to do is shift your perspective and take advantage of those opportunities ASAP.

It is awesome to see that Isaiah is already picking up on this. Increasing your opportunities through an ever more robust skillset is the path to success and, no doubt, a fulfilling life. Every skill you learn comes with a range of hidden possibilities.

Quantifying the lifetime value of a single skill is nearly impossible, but skills build on one another in unexpected ways and amplify one another’s value.

If you add 16 valuable skills to your skillset within a 4-year timeframe, the breadth and depth of your life and its opportunities will be immeasurable. This is the name of the game. This is what your after.

Back to Isaiah…

He’s a US Navy vet, a PADI certified scuba diver, a father, and a man with a lot of other skills which you can check out here: Skills Acquired

I will be following along closely with his path and I urge you to join me in doing so. Just click the link to his page HERE, subscribe to him, and tune in to his updates. It’ll be interesting to see where he goes from here.

-Maxim Benjamin Smith

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The Preparation in the Media:

Go to 2:03:30 to hear about The Preparation:

I was wondering if I’d just be telling you about The Preparation media appearances this week but, I’m happy to say, we had another new Prepper send us an email with their Substack page attached.

Some people I’ve spoken to seem unsure about starting a Substack page for one reason or another. It seems to me like the reluctance stems from either a misunderstanding of the benefits or a fear of potential criticism.

In the wise words of Aristotle: “To avoid criticism, say nothing, do nothing, and be nothing.”

You’ve gotta put that fear to rest.

But, in terms of the benefits…let me rattle off a few: you develop the highly valuable skill of writing, you connect with interesting people, you can potentially make money…but the most important benefit of all is that if you’re consistently making good progress, and you post about it, opportunities will come your way.

Beau took the first step in potentially reaping some of these rewards. I recommend you join him.

Here’s Beau’s Substack page: Beau

I’ll be supporting him and following along with his progress and I want you to join me in doing so.

Reminder to all starting The Preparation:

Once you make the decision to start down your path set up a Substack account to post weekly updates on your progress throughout The Preparation.

Not only will you be holding yourself accountable, but you will have unique opportunities come your way over time, your writing will improve, and we will push more people to your page — supporters that will wish to see you succeed.

Current Preppers:

JD Breen, Nathan Ockrim , Victor Jones, leviticus, Erik Morgan, James Harrison, Zach, Kevin Oneill, Senna’s Preparation, Nicolle, Theodore Victor, Tyler

Buy The Preparation

The Preparation in the media

• The Schilling Show (radio show is Charlottesville, NC) had Matthew Smith on to talk about The Preparation

• InternationalMan.com: Here’s Why Smart Parents Are Skipping College and Choosing This Instead

At this point it seems like not a week goes by without a new Prepper sending us an email with a link to their Substack page. It’s enjoyable — and I mean it — to see another “Help hold me accountable” email show up in our inbox. Mostly because it’s an indication of a few things like:

• We’ve probably done a good job with the book

• We did a fairly decent job of convincing people to hold themselves accountable on Substack

• There will be an ever-increasing range of unique opportunities in the future

• We’ll probably begin seeing interesting personal progress on the part of the new Prepper

This is the long way of saying that this excites us…

Anyway, I’d like to introduce you to a new Prepper: Tyler

He’ll be documenting his progress along the way and I want you to join me in following along and supporting him.

Check out his first post:

Reminder to all starting The Preparation:

Once you make the decision to start down your path set up a Substack account to post weekly updates on your progress throughout The Preparation.

Not only will you be holding yourself accountable, but you will have unique opportunities come your way over time, your writing will improve, and we will push more people to your page — supporters that will wish to see you succeed.

Buy The Preparation

-Maxim Benjamin Smith

Whether you’re 13 years old or 70, retired or still working, a new father or a grandfather of 7…like I said, it applies to everyone. Honestly, I can’t tell you how many times we’ve had people tell us, “Hey, I’m not an 18 year old guy, but The Preparation definitely applies to me…I’m starting it now!”

We’ve been blown away by it.

Anyway…

I want to introduce you to . He’s a new father — no doubt he feels a heavy burden of responsibility — but he’s obviously aiming to take on multiple worthwhile tasks going into a new era of his life.

One of those worthwhile tasks is to begin his own Preparation.

He’ll be documenting his progress along the way and I want you to join me in following along and supporting him.

Check out his first post:

Atlas Foundry

The Preparation Begins- Chapter One

Doug Casey, Matt Smith, and Maxim Smith wrote The Preparation as a guide for building freedom through skill and self-reliance. It’s a challenge to reject the narrow paths we’re handed and create our own foundation for the future…

Read more

9 months ago · 3 likes · Theodore Victor

Reminder to all starting The Preparation:

Once you make the decision to start down your path set up a Substack account to post weekly updates on your progress throughout The Preparation.

Not only will you be holding yourself accountable, but you will have unique opportunities come your way over time, your writing will improve, and we will push more people to your page — supporters that will wish to see you succeed.

Current Preppers:

, , , , , , , , ,

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-Maxim Benjamin Smith

Writing to you from Uruguay

25 years from now you’re sitting down with your kids at the dinner table. Growing up, you had told them of some of the wild things you did, lessons you learned, and skills you acquired. Each new story would bring a smile to their face along with a, “That’s so cool!” Or, sometimes, they’d listen quietly and intently to what you had to say –completely immersed in the story.

But now…they’re looking at you from across the table wanting to hear more stories.

Well, after all that you had already done up to that point in your life…everything is kind of a blur. The good thing is, years ago you started documenting what you were learning and doing, week by week.

You remember that, and tell the kids to come back in an hour – you were going to go back and read the weekly updates…

The hour passes fast – you couldn’t believe all that you had forgotten while reading your own updates from years ago. The memories come flooding back. Things you had forgotten so long ago are now clear in your mind.

The kids come back…”Well? What were you doing?”

Across the table you smile, “You guys ready for a few more stories?”

The more you speak, the more you remember, and you can’t help but thank your much younger self for documenting your life. The kids are getting hours of more stories out of you and are so fixed on your every word that they don’t notice the look of great reflection in your eyes.

It’s a win-win.

Your kids get great stories and a better image of the younger version of the person they look up to. And you, well you get to recount the stories, reflect on how far you’ve come, and realize how much farther you can go.

That’s the long way of saying you should be documenting your progress just as these two new Preppers are within their own versions of The Preparation. There’s no doubt in my mind that they will look back on this decision to start documenting their progress and be very thankful for it.

Let me introduce:

Kevin and JD

Kevin Oneill

The Preparation Journal: September Reflections on Growth, Nature, and Self-Development

I'm on the bus to Montpellier now — a new town, new people, and a fresh routine. Looking back on this month, I have accomplished what I set out to do: recenter myself, get back in touch with nature, get my pod business up and running, read some books, and spend time building a relationship with Jesus Christ…

Read more

9 months ago · 2 likes · Kevin Oneill

Pretium Insights

"The Reparation"

Atlanta, GA…

Read more

9 months ago · 8 likes · 2 comments · JD Breen

I will be following along with their weekly updates to see what they manage to accomplish on their own paths…and I’d like you to join me in doing so!

Reminder to all starting The Preparation:

Once you make the decision to start down your path set up a Substack account to post weekly updates on your progress throughout The Preparation.

Not only will you be holding yourself accountable, but you will have unique opportunities come your way over time, your writing will improve, and we will push more people to your page — supporters that will wish to see you succeed.

Buy The Preparation

-Maxim Benjamin Smith

The list is building and, better yet, it consists of people both young and old who are starting (or continuing) down their own path in life and using The Preparation to do it. I want you to know about every last one of them because I think they will be huge positive, generative forces going into the future.

In my weekly update that I just posted I spoke about how so many people have little faith in others nowadays. But, the fact is there are plenty of people who want to become more capable and virtuous while walking down their own path.

Those are people worth having faith in.

So, without further ado…let me introduce you to Victor, Zach, James, Leviticus, and Nicolle.

You can find all of their Substack pages posted below:

leviticus

The Preparation

October 13-19…

Read more

9 months ago · 4 likes · leviticus

James' Preparation

Week #1 - Welcome to My Preparation

I often find myself asking, “What kind of man do I want to be?” and I always knew a very vague answer: “a good, honest, strong man,” but I never knew what this specifically means. How do I become this person? I’m still unsure of the complete answer to this question, and I’m sure my answer will change slightly over the course of my life, but one thing ha…

Read more

10 months ago · 7 likes · 3 comments · James Harrison

Victor's Substack

My personal Substack

By Victor Jones

Preparation for Mid-Life

a living chronicle of designing & implementing my own experimental mid-life rite of passage

By Zach

Reminder to all starting The Preparation:

Once you make the decision to start down your path set up a Substack account to post weekly updates on your progress throughout The Preparation.

Not only will you be holding yourself accountable, but you will have unique opportunities come your way over time, your writing will improve, and we will push more people to your page — supporters that will wish to see you succeed.

Buy The Preparation

-Maxim Benjamin Smith

Obviously, he was a man who was wildly impressive, but had (like we all do) a number of vices, particularly in his early years. Lust, pride, procrastination, overspending, and his argumentativeness plagued him. But, when he was 20 years old and making a voyage across the ocean, something changed. He asked himself, “What would I have to do to become morally perfect?”

He began drafting a plan: each week, for 13 weeks, he’d focus on a single virtue to pursue. After those 13 weeks he would start over—running through the cycle 4 times by the end of the year.

Did he reach moral perfection?

Certainly not, but it made him a far better man, and no doubt changed the course of his life. You see, when it comes to making (or instigating) change it comes down to asking the right questions—questions that’ll shift or reorient the frame of thought.

For as long as anyone can remember, we’ve been asked this question— the wrong question: “What do you want to do when you grow up?” Which actually means, “Who do you want to work for when you grow up?” The frame of thought that put you in is dull, lifeless, artificial. That question is reinforced by a system that, to be frank, doesn’t desire critical thinkers or truly impressive individuals…but that’s a topic for another day.

The right question, particularly for young men, is this: “What kind of man do you want to be?”

When I heard that question two years ago it was like a spark was lit inside me. The universe, all of the possibilities, and all of my uncertainties about the future…it all fell into line. My priorities became clear. The question cuts through to the truth. It’s the RIGHT question.

But, don’t listen to me. This is what a friend of one of our long-time friends (Craig Ballantyne) had to say about it:

For context, she’s referencing a podcast that Craig and my dad (Matt Smith) did together, which you can watch by clicking HERE.

There are many questions young men need to be asked that they aren’t hearing in today’s world. But, this is primary among them since it can be the origin of a life lived on the individuals’ terms…a life well lived.

-Maxim Benjamin Smith

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The Preparation in the media:

• Matt & Maxim Smith: Raising Renaissance Men in an Age of Weakness

• Fed’s quiet war against the middle class – LewRockwell.com

• Doug Casey on the fed’s quiet war against the middle class – The Burning Platform

• DEI View: “Wrong…Absolutely Disgusting!” – Daily Reckoning

• The Greater Depression is here – Doug Casey and Robert Kiyosaki

Our dream has been to garner a vast number of young and ambitious people who start their own Preparation. Not only to get a lot of people headed down their own interesting (and highly impressive) paths, but also to create a network of these people.

The goal, as we talk about throughout the book, is threefold: push more opportunities to the “Preppers” who start their own Preparation, create a network that holds one another accountable, and (in the future) host events — put on by us — for “Preppers” to learn new skills and meet one another.

Well, for it all to come true we need to get enough courageous individuals to start down their own path (and give weekly updates on their progress on Substack!)

Erick Morgan started his Substack to hold himself accountable a couple days ago and so did Nathan Ockrim.

Nathan picked up The Preparation book a few weeks ago, started reading through, then found himself unable to stop reading. It struck a cord…now he’s moving full steam ahead down his own path.

Before starting this, Nathan was already in flight school to get his Private Pilot’s License and will be taking his check ride in the coming weeks. He’s got a head start in learning valuable skills and is now considering to start with either the Builder Cycle or the Medic Cycle.

Here’s Nathan’s most recent Substack post:

Nathan Ockrim

Nathan Ockrim’s Preparation

Reset button: Wolf Lake at sunset after a full day on the trails…

Read more

10 months ago · 3 likes · Nathan Ockrim

I’m sure he’ll be making the decision to start one cycle or the other ASAP. And, of course, I think you’ll be hearing from Nathan much more in the future…

We look forward to seeing where he will go and what he will manage to accomplish.

-Maxim Benjamin Smith

Reminder to all starting The Preparation:

Once you make the decision to start down your path set up a Substack account to post weekly updates on your progress throughout The Preparation.

Not only will you be holding yourself accountable, but you will have unique opportunities come your way over time, your writing will improve, and we will push more people to your page — supporters that will wish to see you succeed.

Buy The Preparation

The goal, as we talk about throughout the book, is threefold: push more opportunities their way, create a network that holds one another accountable, and (later on down the line) host events — put on by us — for “Preppers” to learn new skills and meet one another.

Well, for the more grand aspects of our dream to come true we need to have enough people make the necessary decision to head down their own path…and document it.

I couldn’t be more happy to say this…it’s starting. Today I was tagged in a post by Erik Morgan . He heard about The Preparation on The Art of Manliness Podcast, decided to start his Preparation, and (per our instructions in chapter 15 of the book—Unlocking New Possibilities By Holding Yourself Accountable) created a Substack page to track his progress and hold himself accountable.

Erik is starting the Builder Cycle first. Where he goes from there…I don’t know, but I’m excited to see.

I’ll be watching intently and I hope you will too.

Check out Erik’s page here, but don’t just glance at it—follow him along his Preparation:

Preparing Erik

A week-by-week account of The Preparation. Learning, lifting heavy, and wandering.

By Erik Morgan

Remember, if you start The Preparation you should create a Substack page. Not only will your writing improve (a useful skill to have) but you will be held accountable for your progress (or lack of it). And, random opportunities will—no doubt—come your way throughout this.

Not only that, but we will promote your page to help more people find you who want to support you and give you those occasional wild opportunities similar to those that I (Maxim Smith) have gotten over the past two years—working on wildfires, hiking through the hot desert of Nevada for a geophysics crew, and learning the foundations of mule packing in the Rockies to name a few things...

We want to see more impressive people in the world. Help us help you become one.

-Maxim Benjamin Smith

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Buy The Preparation Here

The problem with the old path

“For generations, the path to adulthood was straightforward. Go to college, get a job, build a life. But many young men are beginning to question the college component of that path. Tuition keeps rising. AI has made the professional landscape more uncertain, and there’s just a sense that after four years at college, guys graduate feeling like they haven’t been very challenged, haven’t much changed, and haven’t gained a lot of real confidence.” —Brett McKay

What The Preparation offers

“My guest today, Matt Smith, has created an alternative to college—a four-year, 16-cycle curriculum designed to shape participants into Renaissance men, skilled, self-reliant, and grounded in character.” —Brett McKay

Building real confidence

“After I read that section, I thought: I’m gonna have my son—he needs to get EMT certified. I want to get EMT certified after reading about it.” —Brett McKay

Raising the bar

“If you did just the Medic, Cowboy, Builder, and Fighter cycles, a young man would be head and shoulders above his peers. He’d have real aura.” —Brett McKay

Why it matters now

“I really love this Renaissance-man model—someone who not only knows a lot, but can do a lot, and is actively engaged in shaping the world around him.” —Brett McKay

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Brett also has a great substack worth checking out:

DYING BREED

Cut from a stained glass mountain

By Brett McKay