College is dead. Young men need this instead.

Join Maxim's July 18th Zoom Call

Ask any parent why they’re writing tuition checks and you’ll get some version of the same answer: it’s the safe path. Go to college, get the degree, get the job. That’s the deal we were all sold, and for prior generations it was mostly true. But the job is only half of it. Parents are also buying a four-year runway into adulthood, a network of friends and future business partners, and a credential that signals to the world their kid turned out fine. The kids believe it too, though mostly because everyone around them believes it. Monkey see, monkey do.

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)

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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