← Doug Casey's Take
Doug Casey's Take
Doug Casey's Take: About Our New Book
01:10:45
Buy the book: In this episode, Doug and Matt discuss the concept and goals behind their newly published book, 'The Preparation.' Designed as an alternative to traditional education paths, the book aims to transform young men into well-rounded,...
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- [00:02]
A
All right. Good morning, Doug. You're in Virginia with your beautiful bookcase in the background. We kind of matched today.
- [00:10]
B
Yeah, that's right. We have matching. Matching libraries and certainly a lot of similarity in the books that they each contain. So I'm back on the shores of the Chesapeake in Virginia at this point, and it's. It's nice to be here. So. Nice to be in Argentina. It's nice to be in Uruguay. But it's nice to be back in the US from time to time, especially.
- [00:35]
A
With the weather, because I'll tell you, the weather is crappy here today, so you picked a perfect time to skip town.
- [00:40]
B
Yeah.
- [00:41]
A
Weather's kind of nasty.
- [00:43]
B
Yeah. It's mild and wonderful, and if they have summer someplace, that's where you want to be. If you.
- [00:50]
A
If you could do it, that's what you want. Yeah.
- [00:52]
B
Yeah.
- [00:53]
A
So today we're going to talk about. We're going to talk about our book, Doug. This. I am lucky enough to have a copy in my hand. You do not have one. It's kind of an oversized book. The book is called the Preparation. We've talked about it for quite a while, and it's oversized in part because part of it's a workbook, actually. But I wanted to start first. This is something that you had been. I remember the first time you pitched me on writing this book with you. We were driving from your place in Aspen to go get some breakfast, and you told me what you. You know what this book idea that you'd had in your head for a long time, that you. And what were your original intentions?
- [01:42]
B
That's a good question. This is almost lost in the midst of history at this point. Well, I've always liked the concept of the Renaissance man, or as they used to say in the days of the Renaissance when they wouldn't have called him a Renaissance man and homo universale, a universal man. And this is somebody that. Not just a polymath, a polymath taking another definition, is somebody who's got a broad span of knowledge across many disciplines, but also some depth of knowledge as well. But wait a minute. That's just an intellectual thing. A universal man has the. Has the intellectual plus, the physical plus, if you would, the moral, which is the most important part of all of this type of thing, where you've got to figure out what's right and what's wrong. Actually, that's the most important thing to figure out. It's to have a. Have a viable moral code. So. Yes.
- [03:09]
A
So the idea of a Renaissance man. I Didn't think it, you know, and the reason we called it the Preparation instead of Renaissance man is because I wasn't sure it would connect with young people today in the same way that it once did. But ultimately, the objective of the book is still the same, is to show a young man how they can become somebody who is both knowledgeable about a lot of the world and how things work, but also capable to act in the world, to do things in the world, to shape the world around them.
- [03:43]
B
Yeah. And the Renaissance man, although hopefully that's what you transform yourself into, it's probably not a good title for a book, because I'm informed that most college students.
- [03:57]
A
Don'T even know what the Renaissance is.
- [04:01]
B
They don't know what that is, and they don't even take a course in Shakespeare, for instance, today. So, you know, it's kind of an antiquated concept to be a Renaissance man, but it's an excellent one. So who was that. Was that you or Max that came up with the title the Preparation?
- [04:19]
A
It was me. It was me because. Because fundamentally, you know, what we were. What we're really competing with. The main idea we're competing with is the idea of going to college. And the fact is, is that college in no way prepares you for the future while it might give you some credentials, which then give you. Might give you the ability to get a job. And although this has dramatically changed with AI in the future, honestly, I think it's. That's put much of that into question. It doesn't prepare you for the future. It doesn't make you responsible. It doesn't make you independent. It doesn't make you understand how the world works and how you can be an effective agent in that world to get what you want out of the world and to shape it around you. So, to me, I wanted this book to be something that really was that. That really was the preparation that would prepare you to live a great life, to lead your life. Well, you know, and you're right, I think that the most important thing is the moral part, really. And we do spend a lot of time on that. And that comes from. And this confused me when you told me this in the car ride to that breakfast place 12 years ago when you said, well, there are three, you know, the three most important verbs in every language are be, do, and have. And this book has to focus on that. And I remember asking questions like, I don't understand what you mean. Like, it took me a long time to really figure it out. And I think we've got it here in the book. But maybe you can explain more about that. Be, do and have.
- [06:08]
B
Yeah, those really are the three most important verbs in every language. And most Americans certainly at this point concentrate on the have. I want to have a nice house, I want to have a good looking mate. I want to have a good job, I want to have a lot of money. But these are. To have something is ephemeral and actually kind of trivial.
- [06:41]
A
It's also a byproduct. It's a byproduct. It's also a byproduct.
- [06:46]
B
Exactly. And it's a byproduct of doing something, actually creating something. But so doing results in having. And people just focus at the end product the having. But the important thing of doing is not so much to have something, it's to become something, to be something yourself. And that's pretty much overlooked. So the object of following the plan of this book is to allow a young man. And at this point, when somebody's graduating from high school, he's basically kind of lost. What do you do? I mean the guy gets out of high school, what are his alternatives? Well, he's not qualified for anything. If his family's got a business, okay, the old man can give him a free ride and train him up in the business or he can join the military. That's an option, but I don't think it's a very good one. I wasn't in the military, but I did do four years of a military boarding school. And back in the days when they were actually kind of tough places, most they don't exist anymore. And the ones that still do exist aren't. Are much softer than they were back then. I mean even our military school was getting softer, even in the 60s. So. So what's a young man supposed to do at this time?
- [08:21]
A
Well, the other option is the trades. Right, you can go to the trades. Like Mike Rose strongly promotes that.
- [08:27]
B
Yeah.
- [08:27]
A
You know, and, and certainly I think that that's. It's nothing. It's an honorable thing to do to be a plumber or an H Vac guy or a, you know, a welder or whatever. Honorable things to do. But those are just.
- [08:41]
B
But, but it just results in a good income and back to have. And it's not a path to broadly expand your experience what you're doing or what you're being. It's maybe just a path to having stuff.
- [08:59]
A
Right. So the three, the three choices that are given to young men today are all basically paths that potentially lead to economic survivability if not independence, you know, the, to a job. Right?
- [09:17]
B
Yeah. And, and the thing is, is the whole point of an education is to qualify the whole man. In other words, if, if you were educated at Plato's academy or Aristotle's lyceum, the point was to become a universal man and to gain wisdom. And you go to college today, you're not going to gain wisdom. I mean, you might have a few good teachers, but it's going to amount to a lecture from maybe one or two of them every week or so. Mostly you're going to be subjected to teaching assistants. Or if you get a lecture from a top professor, you're probably going to be in a lecture room with hundreds of other people. He can't pay attention to you, he doesn't know who you are or you exist. And worse than that, once you go to college, which you've really become moral cesspools, chances are excellent that you'll have been out drinking or BSing with the other guys the night before. You may cut the class because you're just too beat. Or if you go to class, you fall asleep. Or if you go to class and you listen and take notes, your notes might be sketchy and you might not read them because you're not a good note taker. It's wasted. And you'll never hear that lecture again from that professor anyway if he's a good one. And most of them aren't. Because the problem is most of the professors today are Marxists and socialists. Because these people, woksters, they've totally captured the educational system from top to bottom. So it's a corrupting influence. Going to college today is not a positive value. It's not even a neutral value. It's a negative value because it's corrupting. And when you hear things from people that you're paying a lot of money to listen to them and they're in a position of authority and you don't know any better. Well, you naturally tend to accept whatever they say, but what they're saying is wrong and corrupt and destructive. So it's time to throw out the whole current system of education. That's my view.
- [11:40]
A
And I think it's going to crumble. I think it's beginning to crumble already. The costs have just made it almost impossible for people. And I think that, you know, it's been discredited greatly in the last couple of years. And I, and I think that AI is going to completely discredit it as you find out that most of these jobs I mean, there's just three articles I saw the other day, just three that were published last week that talked about people, recent graduates, unable to find jobs at all because these entry level positions most often can be filled now by AI. And what people don't realize, I've hired thousands of people in my businesses over the years. And the truth is it's a huge investment to hire somebody because you have to spend a huge amount of time training them, teaching them to be effective in the job. So as I said, the preparation is designed to prepare you to be able to do things. College doesn't even prepare you for the job that the certificate might even qualify you to acquire. So college, I think is, you know, it's a dead man walking at this stage. At least the vast majority of colleges, there are still some that will thrive, I think, but I think it's becoming self evident that it isn't the best option for everybody. Is why we see actually there's a boom apparently in trade school enrollments now because people are seeing the obvious problems with college. The trouble is, is that those three options, the military, trade school and college, don't really accomplish what's. Don't really enable the young man who's doing it to accomplish what's truly possible in their life. And I think, you know, I, I'm a college dropout. You're a highly educated man, graduated from Georgetown. I was basically unemployable, you know, by being a college dropout, so I had to be an entrepreneur. You, on the other hand, you know, with your education could have climbed corporate ladders and, you know, gone that route, but you made your own way in a completely different way. And because of the way you've done it, the way you've lived your life, you are as I. Our viewers who are probably older than college age might remember those Dos Eckes commercials about the most interesting man in the world. I think it was the best ad campaign ever. I think so. It was wonderful. I mean, they're amazing. And I write in the beginning of the book about this and this is honest to God, the truth is that my friends and I, behind your back, Doug would joke that you, that that was you, that you were that Dosaki's guy in real life. Because all the things that you did by going so many untraditional routes on your way to success.
- [14:38]
B
Yeah, no, I'm very flattered, Matt, and I appreciate that, thank you. But. But I'm unhappy in, in that I didn't have any plan when I got out of college at All I mean, when I found a fork in the road, I took it. But it was not with any intention really to do anything. In fact, when I got out of college, the only thing I really wanted to do was put together $5,000 cash, and in 1968 that's like $25,000 today, roughly, and use that money as a grub stake to hitchhike through South America going into the shallow end of the pool and then through Africa and saw and see what, what life presented to me. Well, I got somewhat sidetracked and did some of that. But what I'm saying is, is that I wish I hadn't misallocated those four years of my time to hanging out in the womb of college. And that's what it is. It's a halfway house for kids today. They're not mature enough to go into the real world. So it's four years where you can mature and meet some other people and get ready to go into the world, but you're still not ready because you don't know anything. You don't have any experiences, you don't, you haven't been anywhere, you haven't done anything, you really haven't learned anything that's practical. And the things that you've learned in college are not very usable. Whether you're taking, whether you took a Bachelor of Arts course, which is basically listening to lectures on history and English literature and really soft worthless subjects like sociology and psychology and political science, that's what a BA theoretically gives you. But even if you're good at it and learn all those things, you're very one sided. Because what about the subject of a Bachelor of science, which is to say, you know, biology, physics, chemistry, astronomy, this type of thing. And you really should have both. But it doesn't matter. If you're a hard working kid and you both learn all the things you'd need for a BA and a BS you still don't have anything that's practical. And in the real world, that is why people have gone to an MBA course to learn accounting, to learn some law, to learn the principles of marketing and business and management, these type of things. But that's another $100,000 and another two years. And by the time you finish your MBA, you're probably 23, 24 or 25 or even older. And you still just got theory.
- [17:45]
A
And you still, you've never yet confronted reality.
- [17:49]
B
No, you haven't. No, you've been told about it. And the problem is, is that even in the most practical of academic courses, MBA courses. Chances are excellent that your teacher has never run a business or been an entrepreneur himself. He's just telling you what research says about running a business. So it's a huge waste of time and money. It's a charade. And the point of this book, which everybody listening to this now, look, we're not in this for the money. You don't need money. I don't need money. We've got plenty of money. Buy the goddamn book. Because.
- [18:37]
A
You know, most of our, most of our, most of our viewers are probably not college age, are probably not at that point in making the decision. And so, but I, I would be willing to bet that everyone has a young man in their life. Child, grandchild, a nephew or a neighbor next door. You see, he's got a bit of ambition in him. And I, if someone had put something like this in my hands at that age, it would have changed my life completely. It would have saved me 20 years.
- [19:07]
B
Yeah.
- [19:08]
A
Of figuring this stuff out.
- [19:09]
B
Yeah, exactly. Because I didn't know which way to go. I mean, all the time I wasted doing things that you were supposed to do but shouldn't doing.
- [19:24]
A
Yes. And we spend the, you know, the first, the beginning part of the book is essentially trying to disabuse a young mind of the supposed to do things, you know, and understanding that this path to success, the idea of climbing these ladders, I mean, they experience from when they're in elementary school, you know, all the way up, it's about, you know, getting good grades and being a good dutiful student and you know, good attendance score and trusting authority. And then so, and then in high school, maybe taking some AP courses so you can get a better shot at getting into a good college. And so, and then you climb that ladder and you get to the top, you feel like you've made it. And then right there is the beginning of a new ladder. It's the corporate ladder that you, they're supposed to climb to the top of some promised land that's there that all of a sudden things are going to make sense and fit together. And that that whole climbing ladder thing is a lie. It's. You didn't climb any ladders.
- [20:30]
B
Oh. If you take the conventional route, best case is you're a successful organization man, a company man, and for most people that means just being a middle manager who with good reason are the first ones that are dispensed of when times get tough. And it's training you to basically follow orders and be an employee, which is really stupid and counterproductive for anybody that's capable of doing better.
- [21:06]
A
Yeah, and I think a lot of people are capable of doing better. And I think we offer a different metaphor, which is this idea instead of climbing ladders, this metaphor of building a web. And it's a much more organic way of structuring your life by doing. By engaging in lots of novel activities that give you skills, that create these opportunities for you to meet new and interesting people and build a reputation as a person who can deliver. And. And that rather than climbing a ladder, you should be building a web. It goes into great detail about exactly how you do that. But it's like I said, the first whole portion of the book is trying to disabuse people of these really terrible ideas that are totally mainstream and that everyone takes for granted. But all. I mean, and I mean all of the people that are successful today, that I know, that are successful, super successful, did not climb any ladders. No, they did not go that route at all. And as this. And so trying to disabuse people of that myth that that will get them to where they want to be is a big thing we do. And I think one of the core questions that we want people to answer that they will be answered by reading this book. And I think it's the most important question going back to the be, do have stuff is the options of the military, of college of trade school. Is it all about what you want to do in order to earn enough money to be able to cover your, you know, to be able to survive? But none of them ask even. Nobody asks a young man the question, what kind of man do they want to become? And there isn't any more fundamentally important question than that. And I think by the. We ask it early and we. We actually have a process in here. We help, we instruct them in developing their own personal code. Now, you and I both hate rules, right? We're not. We hate rules. All rules except for one small category. And that's the rules that we create for ourselves, exclusively for ourselves to follow. You know, it's the. The line in the sand that we draw, say, well, I'm not going to do that. I don't think that's good for me. The kind of man I want to become would not do this. He would not behave in this manner. He would not talk like this. He would not lie or cheat or steal or whatever, you know, but. And these codes are. Well, they evolve a little bit over time, but forcing this early really changes the trajectory of a young man. They start to think about something other than having they start to focus on something that motivates them because like, you know, that $5,000 that you wanted to, you know, scrounge together in order to go on an adventure, it really taps into what I think a little what a lot of what a lot of what many young men have, which is this desire to like, I don't know, maybe hero's journey kind of a thing, you know.
- [24:21]
B
Yes, everybody should take their own hero's journey. And trouble with, trouble with conventional thinking is it kind of invalidates taking a hero's journey where you have to do what everybody else is doing in the rat race to climb a ladder. And especially now when we're in the midst of one of the great revolutions in world history. I mean, we're living at a time similar to that of the Industrial revolution when the old ways of working and living and doing were all being overturned, washed away. Yeah. And it's happening again today. So now getting a conventional non education to enable you to climb a corporate ladder is really stupid.
- [25:20]
A
It's really stupid. It's really stupid. And so this book is basically broken down in two parts. The first part is disabusing people of these bad ideas, showing them a path that there's another way, helping them understand the be do have concept and you know, giving them some sort of tools to deal with their, their past. And they're like assumptions about their own capabilities. You know, that's well, and give the.
- [25:55]
B
And it's not just a theoretical thing. We're talking about specifically and practically exactly what you do over those four years. And we've broken, and this was largely something that you emphasized, breaking the four years down into 16 quarters and emphasizing 16 things. We somewhat arbitrarily chose the things that you would do over each of those 16 quarters in addition to getting a good Bachelor of Science, Bachelor of arts and MBA education. It's structured around 16 quarters where you're doing something hands on at the same time.
- [26:47]
A
That's right. And then we call them cycles. And basically the way a cycle is structured is it has something we call an anchor course. And this is the, this is where at least in some cases for sure there's adventure, but you're getting your hands dirty learning a real skill that has actual, in most cases, real economic value. You know, and one of them, for instance, it was the first one Max did, was becoming an emt. It took him a couple months to do. And you know, those skills are quite valuable. I mean, when there's a someone Gets hurt. Like he knows what to do. And so there's a problem, he can fix it. I mean, he knows how to do these things now. It's a real skill. He could, if he wanted to, I guess go work on an ambulance or something like that. I mean, it could turn into a career. He wasn't interested in that. But a lot of the anchor courses are like that in nature. And you know, in his case, he parlayed it into a summer gig where he was fighting wildfires, earning $600 a day, which is more than I earned at that age in a month, at least for my take home pay in the army, you know, so it's like we want to teach hands on real skills that have real economic value. And so that was one. That's one of them. That's one of the anchor courses. So you have an anchor course and then you've got a series of. You got an academic program with courses to take so that you're not missing out on anything that you might otherwise miss out on in college. I mean, in fact, you're getting more than you would get in college because like you said, it's more broadly based. It goes, you know, beyond just the arts and into the sciences. And a lot of these courses are available for free or nearly free online by some of the best professors in the world.
- [28:41]
B
Yeah, I don't see the point from a strictly academic point of view. Going to class, we have the problems that I enumerated earlier. When you can have a world class professor giving a command performance each time he gives a lecture and you can listen to the lecture as many times as you like. I mean, it's just far superior than going to class the way we've done. It's far superior and much cheaper.
- [29:14]
A
The cost of it, honestly, are almost nothing. They're almost nothing for these courses. Many of them are totally free online, some subscription for like $12.50 a month. $12.50 a month?
- [29:28]
B
Yeah. And unlike going to college where most of your professors are going to be bored and therefore boring and many will be just incompetent. In addition to all the other problems, I find it most enjoyable listening to classes and learning something that you want to learn. I mean it's. So the academic part of this program is very important. But the 16 cycles, all right, one of them is becoming an EMT.
- [30:05]
A
Yeah, so yeah, so there's EMT. The second one, and this is the most expensive one by the way, is pilot and becoming a private pilot. Now, are there a lot of economic value in becoming a pilot? Well, I mean, you could take it further and it could become something that could be where there's economic value in having it. But it's a real skill and it builds real confidence in doing it. And it opens doors to you that are otherwise not open to you. But that is by far the most expensive cycle of any of them in there. And, and you don't, you know, certainly I have to point that out, the third one we call cowboy. And you know, that's where you actually go and you learn how to be a cowboy. And not only is it fun because you get to learn all these specific things, I think it's actually pretty useful. I mean, it's really useful to me. I live on a cattle ranch, but that's one of them. And actually, let me explain a couple of things about the cycle structure. So you've got the anchor course in there. That's the main thing, the main event. Sometimes that main event might only last, you know, three weeks of that three month cycle, but sometimes it can be longer. But you have that main event and then you have this academic structure on top of it or below it. And then on top of that there's reading that's suggested and there's reading that's electives that you can fill in. And we have a whole bunch of courses that aren't necessarily required but that we ask you to fill in as electives. You choose the things you're most curious about once you get those core ones down, just like you would in college. And then of course, there's a lot of reading involved. And I remember you and I talking about reading and most people don't read anymore. And I think it's because they don't get exposed to reading. They don't get exposed to what you can get out of reading. And so we try and share a wide variety of books with people. Are they, is it all one should read in their life? I mean, there's an unlimited number of books I guess one could read. You know, I still read new and interesting things all the time, but reading is a big part of it. Of course, fiction and nonfiction, because we think fiction is super important, especially for helping a young man shape their character. You know, there's a. There's like, there's a series of books by one of my favorite authors. He wrote these pulp fiction, these pulp westerns called Louis l'. Amour. He was a prolific writer, but they're all moral tales.
- [32:50]
B
And Lamour was really something of a renaissance man in his own right.
- [32:54]
A
I think 100%. His autobiography is tremendous as well, in fact. So anyway, so. So this reading is a big part of it, of course. And then there's the one last main. Well, there's two actually, other things. The other one is to engage in these, well, we call it doing fun shit. And, and that is these hobbies, these activities, these, you know, things that could range from skydiving to fly fishing to playing chess, to learning to play guitar or another musical instrument or whatever. Because of course, a Renaissance man, a man who's capable of a lot, should be able to do a lot of these things, should have some basic competency in many of these things. And of course, we don't say which exact ones to do among those things, but we encourage people to do them because they. They do make a big difference. You know, one of the ones that's been big for Max is chess. Guitar, certainly jiu jitsu and kickboxing has been really, really, really good for him, but these are super important.
- [34:01]
B
And learning another language, I forgot that too.
- [34:04]
A
Spanish. Yes.
- [34:05]
B
Yeah. Along the way, there's no reason why you shouldn't learn, not just two, but at least have the basics in three or four languages.
- [34:15]
A
Right. And now this sounds like a lot compared to what you might do in college. And in a way it is, because as a full time.
- [34:22]
B
It is in college, most of your time in college is going to be hanging around with the boys who are as lost and unknowledgeable as you are in college and drinking and bullshitting.
- [34:34]
A
So, of course, yeah, I mean, I mean, to be technically a full time student, you have to have 12 credit hours, which is basically 12 hours of class time. And they assume there's some number of hours beyond that that you study. In my experience, there really wasn't any number of hours. Very few cramming for exams, maybe a couple days before, but otherwise it's 12 hours. How does that prepare you for the real world? If you're working 12 hours a week, where you show up and you're kind of passively engaged, you know, with this, basically we're talking about 40 active hours of engagement a week. 40 active hours of engagement a week and doing things that improve yourself. And we outlined exactly what to do. So the last element of it is this reflection. And this has been critical for Max because the learning is. It could be intense at times. And to make sure that you're really getting it, you got to reflect on it a little bit and write about it. And so Max, in part to hold himself accountable and in part to distill the learning and what he's been doing. He publishes publicly his own substack, which ironically has turned into a business for him too. That was not the plan, but that it has also turned into a business for him as well. He's developed a. It was like 3,000 people follow what he does now on substack. And he's also become a gone from being somebody who could write, I guess, to somebody who's a fairly competent writer for his age.
- [36:12]
B
Yep, he is, actually.
- [36:14]
A
So. So that's. That's an important part of it. And so that's what a cycle is. There's 16 of these cycles. The cycles are Medic, which is EMT, Pilot, Cowboy, Builder. This is where you learn how to build your own house. How cool is that?
- [36:32]
B
It means that throughout your life, you're much less likely to be taken advantage of by a plumber or a carpenter or an electrician or other tradesman because you built a damned house. And you know how to do it.
- [36:44]
A
You know how to do it. You know how to do it. There's a chef one. And this is where you go in one of my favorite cities in the world, Florence, and you study there for a month. You stay there on premises for a month. You study Italian while you're there, and you learn how to cook. And within that, the academic part all relates to ancient Rome and Italy, the historical portions of it. And so we try and tie together the themes of the cycle, the main anchor activity, with the academic work as much as possible. And there's a really important reason for that, is because when you're in college, you learn facts. You learn these details, not just in college, in high school too, but you don't have any way to really retain them. Well, because, you know, there's not any, like. Because everything seems so disjointed from one another, you know, so unrelated. And it takes a long time before you begin to form this mental lattice work of like, history and timelines and the world and, you know, with sciences, how one thing leads to another. And so doing these things, trying to combine them all under one theme, I think makes it vastly better as far as actually learning anything.
- [38:07]
B
Yep.
- [38:08]
A
So we got that. We've got heavy equipment operator. This is. Now, this just sounds like. This is just fun to me, honestly. It's also an expensive course, but you become a certified operator of basically all the heavy machinery that's out there today, driving bulldozers and backhoes and all that stuff, learning exactly how to operate these machines. Effectively. And so certainly if you like the blue collar work you want to do that, or if you just want to just have some fun on the farm, you know, these are, these are great skills to have. I kind of believe every man should be able to drive every kind of vehicle out there.
- [38:42]
B
And, and once you know how to do that stuff, you're not intimidated by the fact that other people are doing it and you don't know how because you'll know how to do it and can use it almost any way. It's great to go from being a classically trained chef to a heavy equipment operator. And we're just scratching the surface of what you're going to do.
- [39:06]
A
Yeah, that's right. And we have one devoted to welding. We found a great welding school that looks extremely interesting. And you know, welding is a, it's actually a super high in demand skill that pays extremely well. If you were going to follow Mike Rose route, you know, and go the blue collar way, that would be a great route to go, honestly, because welders are in high demand and you can make a lot of money. But welding in its highest form is an art form too. And you learn a lot about science along the way. So that's a big part of it.
- [39:38]
B
And metal work in general, perhaps how to forge your own knife or forge your own tools.
- [39:47]
A
Right? Yeah, it's the beginning of all of that. And I think the, the next one is we call fighter. And this is because the young men need some exotic in their life. They need, they need some travel, they need, they need that hero's journey. And so with this one, we've identified a school in Thailand. They have two locations, one on the beach and one in the mountains in Chiang Mai. And you go and you study for three months Muay Thai. And of course along the way there's all kinds of other things that you could do there. The whole again cycle is built around the academics that support it and reading that also complements it. But it gives a young man exposure to the exotic. And now the people. Someone commented when I use this as an example on the blog the other day on our sub stack, they said, oh yeah, that, yeah, I mean only. Yeah, I guess if your daddy's paying for you to go to Thailand and do that. Yeah, that sounds really great. Well, first of all, I don't pay for maximum stuff to do any of this, any of these things. I did save a little bit of money, probably an irresponsibly small amount of money, honestly for him, enough to pay for maybe One year of college and he's otherwise self financed this entire thing? Well, between his working and that limited pool of capital I've given him, but the truth is this is incredibly cheap. Yeah, I mean, the cost of him spending three months in Thailand will be one of the cheapest things he does in this entire thing. It'll be cheaper than the EMZ course.
- [41:22]
B
Yeah, exactly. And he gets. By doing that, you not only learn how to handle yourself in rough situations and pick up real martial arts skills, but you're in a truly alien culture. You're no longer a potted plant rooted someplace. You're branching out into the real world. By the time you finish this course, you'll have traveled to a number of foreign countries and not just as a tourist looking at old buildings. That's, that's a waste of time. Well, it's not a waste of time, but, but you'll gotten some in depth.
- [42:02]
A
Immersion to TRA travel. With purpose is amazing.
- [42:07]
B
Yeah, with purpose.
- [42:08]
A
Yes. And if the purpose is to acquire skills and invest in yourself, it's easy to justify.
- [42:15]
B
That's a, that's a good one. I would actually put fighter earlier on in the cycles, but.
- [42:23]
A
Yeah, yeah. By the way, one thing I should say is that these are not meant to be in any particular order. Someone can do them in any order. In fact, what I encourage people to do is pick the one that, that like, that tickles their curiosity, that their sense of adventure the most. The one that like the one that gets them fired up and motivated to go. Like that one should be your first, if you can, because the first one is the hardest. After that there's this, this renewed confidence in, you know, what you're doing, you know, and you will have real competence in something that. And you can see how you can go from having no competence to having real competence in such a short period of time. So it adds. So picking one that really excites you and motivates you is probably the very best place to start.
- [43:17]
B
Yeah.
- [43:18]
A
You know, the, the next one actually came from Matt Bracken, who's this former Navy SEAL he suggested for Maxim to do and it's sailing and he recommended this, one of the best high latitude sailors alive today. This course that he has and Maxim sailed around the Falkland Islands, which is. Which. Yeah, he's got that passport stamp, one of the few that you don't have, Doug. Actually, it's probably the only person. What up you there. But it was rough. It was. And it was engaging. And he, and he can sail and he's A certified crewman now he can work on any sailboat anywhere in the world because of the experience. And it was a trip.
- [44:07]
B
Not many people have sailed around Cape Horn, frankly.
- [44:10]
A
Yeah, not many people have done it at all. So it's, it's, it's quite an adventure one. Then that whole thing that's three weeks long. So the, the cycle is three months. There's three intense weeks, and then, you know, you have to. But there's, there's preparation time in advance and more time to do the academic stuff and the reading things beforehand. And then during that three intense week period, honestly, you didn't have a lot of time to do. He had no time to do any of the academic stuff during that period. So then there's a survivalist one and there's, you know, there's a number of survival outdoor survival schools in the world, but we picked one that we think would be good for people, and these are these. You learn these basic skills that odds are you're not going to need most of them in your life. But what you learn about yourself and what you're capable of through these experiences is tremendous.
- [45:06]
B
Yeah, living. Living in the woods. You know, I was a Boy Scout and advanced. Well, I didn't. I never became an Eagle Scout because I went off to high school. And then you're out of Boy Scouts, so I missed by a merit badge becoming an Eagle. But I did camp out. Oh, I used to keep track of this, like 40 or 50 days sleeping on the ground and building your own fires and all that. But this is much better than just being.
- [45:43]
A
It's definitely more intense. It's definitely more intense, but it's good. I mean, and I think these things are, these, are these in a culture today where there is no rite of passage for young men, that's a big part of what this is all about, you know, and these experiences are that for them. And so this is why we encounter people that are 30 years old that are still basically children because they haven't had these rites of passage.
- [46:15]
B
That's right. Rite of passage, rites of passage and hero's journey. These are elements that our society is missing and it really suffers from it. It's why so many young men today actually do wind up as incels in their mother's basement playing video games, afraid of women, afraid of life, not being very successful, confused. This book, I think, presents an antidote to what's going on in our society today.
- [46:48]
A
I agree. I agree. The other one is farmer. We encourage as many people as possible. And although it's very hard to get into Joe Salad system that he's got. But he's, you know, he's, he's a legend in this, in regenerative agriculture. But there are others as well that we present that you could apply to. And basically you, essentially you go work and you go spend some time and you work on a farm and you learn how it all really works and you learn real skills. Like most people don't even know where milk comes from. You know, they think it was from the grocery store or a carton or something. Curtains.
- [47:26]
B
Everybody knows that.
- [47:28]
A
Yes, exactly. I mean, but, but these are real skills and real capabilities. You know, Max knows how to shoe a horse. He knows how to, you know, he knows how to brand a steer and he knows how to do all this stuff because of this even, of course, you know, anyway, the cycles then get so, so all of these so far have been things that are really, you know, really hands on, feel very blue collar, ish, but are very butter, but are great rites of passage for young men. But there are ones beyond that where you get more into the abstract, more into the areas where real wealth can be created. And you know, one of those cycles is entrepreneur. Obviously as an entrepreneur and as a guy who's coached a lot of entrepreneurs and tried to and invested in a lot of startups, you know, I'm a big fan. I'm really biased toward entrepreneurs because I really believe that they're the people that create everything that we're lucky enough to have around us today. And so there is a cycle devoted to that where people will build and launch their own business during that period. And that actually, in fact is the cycle that Max is starting in 11 days. So. And it's a, well, I'll talk more about what he's doing I guess in the future, but that's the next cycle for him. Investor is a cycle too, because the money you manage to acquire, whether you're, you know, working on fires as an EMT or, you know, as a, as a crewman on a sailboat or whatever, or a summer or whatever, whatever you do, you got to be able to use that money wisely. So we teach people how to grow their wealth. We teach them actually how the markets work. We teach them, we give them instruction and we don't, not with trading their own money at first, but, you know, just learning through basically essentially paper trading, exactly how it works while reading the best books possible on how, on how to be successful in the markets. So investors a big part of it too. There's one we call hacker. And by that we don't actually mean hacking. We don't like, like trying to get into systems and, you know, cause problems or whatever. What we mean is like how to hack together technology to make it useful to you as a, for you personally or for a business, like how to build an app, how to build a website using these incredible tools where you don't really know, you need to even know how to code to do anymore. And with AI, it's becoming easier and easier to accomplish. So if you have an idea in your mind, a good idea about something that, you know, people would want, and we don't want technology to be the barrier to keep you from accomplishing it. So there's an entire cycle devoted to that as well. And one last cycle I'll mention is that there's a, is the maker cycle. And this is, there's these amazing things that I didn't even know existed called Fab labs. And a Fab lab, it comes out of mit, but they're all over the world at this point. There's even one in here in Uruguay, in Montevideo. And a Fab lab has nine machines in it. And with these nine machines you can make bespoke. I mean, this is not mass scale manufacturing, but you can make virtually anything from circuit boards to furniture with these nine different machines. And so one cycle is devoted to making something of your own within these Fab labs. And you know, once you have the capability of understanding, you know, once you have all these things under your belt, you start to look at the world with totally different eyes. Not the eyes of a consumer, the eyes of what I can buy, what I can acquire, but what I can do in the world, how I can shape the world around me, you know, and I think that's that. And, and I think that's key to the whole thing. And so anyway, on the cycles, any other thoughts on the cycles before I talk about a couple of other important.
- [51:52]
B
Yeah, there's all kinds of ancillary things that. Because as you pointed out, most of these courses last a couple of weeks or maybe a month at a time. But in addition to your academic studies, which are spelled out also, you'll have time to, for instance, take a course to learn to be an actor. Everybody. I often say, if I come back next lifetime, I want to come back as somebody important like an actor. And so you can take classes. It's a skill very worthwhile learning. You should learn to scuba dive. Max has already got his C card and at that point go Go diving all over the world as you travel around the world and broaden your experience there, along with, along with learning to fly. It's fun to skydive. I mean, look, you don't need to join the SEALs to learn all the things that the SEALs learn, frankly. You can learn all this yourself and save yourself the aggravation and the harassment and the boredom that comes with being part of the military. And frankly, the danger. You don't want to have to kill anybody or have other people try to kill you. If you can avoid it.
- [53:22]
A
Yeah, if you can avoid it. I totally agree. I mean, having been in the army, I can tell you it's 99% boredom.
- [53:28]
B
Yeah.
- [53:29]
A
As 1% thrilling.
- [53:32]
B
And of course, what we're trying to do is encourage people to learn to do things that are practical, fun things that will last through their lives, like learn to play tennis, the basics, and then improve as much as you can. Learn to play golf. I could never get into golf myself. I took lessons. But you should learn to be able to do those two things. Those are the two kind of upper class recreational sports. So we're trying to put the bug in kids ears to go out and do these things and learn the basics and. And then pursue them or not, depending on what you like and what you find you're good at.
- [54:17]
A
Exactly. It's really important because the key is doing. We've already established that. And that is accomplished by engaging in novel action in things they have not done before, doing things they've never done before, trying them out, trying to develop a certain level of competency in them. Because in what's amazing about novel action, when you just do things that you've never done before, you go places you haven't been before, there's serendipity of some sort that takes effect. It's really hard to explain. But, you know, I've told this story on the podcast before about how I met you. You know, I was a huge fan of yours, but just by, I don't know, by some cosmic miracle, I'm walking out of my hotel one day when I'm in Buenos Aires. And as I walk out of the hotel, if I hadn't been looking, I would have physically run into you as you were walking across the sidewalk in front of me on your way back from dinner or something. I mean, that's how I met you. And like, these things happen in weird ways like that that are hard to explain. Opportunities open up to you in ways that you would. You can't imagine. You have to get out of your routine and in college it's like a, it's a. It doesn't happen at all. In trade school. It won't happen.
- [55:43]
B
No.
- [55:44]
A
You know, it's.
- [55:46]
B
But if you, if you go to weird and exotic places, you're going to meet exotic and interesting people who are probably the kind that you want to meet as opposed to just run of the mill drones if you just stay where you're planted.
- [56:02]
A
Right. So we really instill, it's. We push doing really hard and we push novel action really hard here and we give them exactly what to do so that they don't have to. I mean there's certainly choices they can make about the activities. You know, they can, they might have preferences for one things over another, but in the cycles themselves, you know, outside of the activities, it's prescribed exactly what they should be doing so they have the direction. Because most young men, you might look, if you have a child and you see and they're just sitting there in front of their phone all day and they're not doing anything, it's not because they don't have motivation. I'm telling you, it's because they don't know what else to do.
- [56:53]
B
Yeah.
- [56:53]
A
They cannot think of something else that they can do. The kids today are the most controlled, restricted, monitored kids that have ever existed on the face of the earth. I mean, if they go play outside, you know, they might cause trouble with your neighbor. I mean, my kids walked five blocks down the road when I lived in Denver and the police got called on them for being to the park. They called the police because of abandoned children. I mean, how bizarre is that? I mean, this is, this is the world these kids grow up in. So they only know their like permissible activity is to sit in a room behind a monitor. That's what they get. That's what they're allowed to do. And so, so it's not that they're not motivated, it's that they don't know what to do. And this book tells them exactly what to do. And it, and it should connect with them that internal part of them that wants that hero's journey.
- [57:54]
B
Yeah. I think it will motivate them. And if because they don't have the experience to know what to do, it gives them some guidance, some direction that they can follow.
- [58:09]
A
Right. They don't even know what's possible.
- [58:11]
B
They don't even. Exactly. They don't even know what's possible. And things that they think might be possible. Well, it's not possible for me. And what we're trying to do is yes, it is possible for you.
- [58:23]
A
Yeah, exactly, exactly. And then one of the other things that we talk about in here is the importance of intergenerational relationships. And I put this in the, in the context of a mentor and you know, obviously we're of different generations and I'd say the most important relationships in my life are intergenerational relationships. And I think that young people today, because of the way our whole system is set up, are set aside with their peer group forever from when they're little kids all the way up through university. And really, even when they enter their career, they're with their peers. And their peer group, frankly, is not necessarily the healthiest group for them to be influenced by the most. I mean, they're as dumb as they are, they know as little as they know. And they are going to probably reinforce not the best possible habits, but the worst. So peer group separation I think is very damaging to our society and it's not something that's always been. I mean, this is a relatively new phenomenon and mentors are super important and we talk about getting mentors, but we use a different methodology for that, you know.
- [59:42]
B
And yeah, that was a very good point that you made in the book about the difference between a client and a patron that are at different stages of life and therefore each brings something to each other's party to mutual benefit.
- [60:00]
A
That's right. I mean, a mentor relationship as it's traditionally thought of is a one way street. It's somebody who has something, maybe more career experience advising, you know, a younger person on. And it's usually limited to career because a lot of times they have formal programs at major, you know, large corporations for these mentorship roles, try and pair people up and. But the mentor, there is sincerely some satisfaction in seeing young people be successful. And so, you know, you do get something out of that. But really it's a one way street. The mentee benefits and the mentor, it's a big opportunity cost for them for the most part. And the better relationship, I think is the one that they had that was very formalized and well established in ancient Rome and I think was a binding force of society. And it was what they called the patron client relationship. And it was exactly that. It was a. It would someone of an older generation that had, maybe they had more means, maybe they had more power, maybe they had just simply had more knowledge like Socrates and. And they would basically enter into a semi formal relationship with a client, the mentee and the client took on a huge Burden doing it too, just like the patron did. The patron said, I'll vouch for you in society, essentially, I'll open some doors for you and I'll share with you what I know. And in return, the client said, I will be loyal to you. I will take on your interests as my own in a way, like, I will work to help you. And I would describe. And I have described our relationship, although we're friends, and I think this ultimately ends up that way as a patron client relationship. It's not like, you know, and it's not somebody giving somebody money or anything like that. It's. I respect and admired you so much that anything that you were interested in doing, I thought was probably a worthwhile pursuit, you know, So I. So not being, you know, at the stage of life when I met you, I'd made enough money and I didn't really, you know, I didn't really have anything to do. And so, you know, you. You threw out things that you were interested in, like, let's go to Palau and let's try and convince them to totally reform their government and, you know, put the president on the COVID of Time magazine and, you know, and make all the people in Palau wealthy. And I'm like, sign me up. What do I gotta do? How can I help?
- [62:42]
B
Well, but not only that. This. This book was a result of that. And I wouldn't have done it by myself, Matt, because I was, you know, frankly, have just become too lazy and too cynical about the way the world is going. So it's only done because of you and actually Max as well. Yeah, so.
- [63:07]
A
But it was your idea. But it wouldn't have happened at all if it were not your idea. And this is how patron client relationships work. And. And as a young man, what you're looking for is you're looking for a patron. And we talk a lot about that and how you actually find a patron and find a patron that's worthy, you know, of really putting yourself kind of at their service in a way, not their servant, but at their service and really take a sincere interest in what they want to see happen and how huge of an advantage that can be in opening doors for you and skipping past the lines and ladders in life entirely and be open to a whole new world of opportunities.
- [63:47]
B
Yeah. Yeah. It's just good karma, I think, doing this book. I mean, the world has a life of its own and it'll do what it wants. But I sincerely feel that the thoughts and actions that we put forth in this book can really improve the world. And like I said, I'm not a world improver. The world's got a life of its own. But I think this is a good thing and a necessary thing.
- [64:17]
A
So, yeah, I'm quite proud of what we've done. And I can say that I don't know if I would. If we'd done this without having Max as our beta tester, I wouldn't have so much confidence, you know, but having seen, having had the ability to use him as our guinea pig, to learn what worked, what didn't work, where there needed to be more structure, where there needed to be room for them to follow their own curiosity and see where they take it, it's been remarkable. I mean, Max was a lost, anxious 17 year old when we started this process.
- [65:03]
B
A typical 17 year old.
- [65:06]
A
And today he's a man. I don't know when it happened exactly, but he's a man. He's independent, he makes his own decisions, he has a good judgment, he's totally self motivated, he's ambitious. And frankly, it's, it's legitimately inspires me to try and do better, to try harder because, because he's kicking ass. And all I gotta say is if you, if I don't know if it'll, you know, I do think that if enough young men had this in their hands, I do think it would change things quite a bit for all of us. But I, but I know for sure that if it got in the hands of a young man who's in the state that Max was, which is most young men today, that I absolutely have no doubt that it can make all the difference in the world for them. Yeah, well, so that's our, that's our pitch on the book.
- [66:05]
B
That kind of sums it, kind of sums it up. Yeah, I agree. And.
- [66:11]
A
Yeah, let me just, let me actually add one more thing. It's available on Amazon. I'm going to do an audio version that'll be available. It'll have to have a PDF because partial part of it's a workbook you'll download. It's available on Kindle now, which is. That's $19.99, I think. And that too has a little QR code in it. You scan and it'll, it'll give you the ability to download the workbook portion of it. It's. There's a soft cover here, black and white, it's 29.99. And there's the hardcover, and the hardcover is 100 bucks. And I guess, Doug, that on the hardcover. We make $10 each, you and I. When someone buys a hardcover for $99, Max also gets $10. So it's $30 we make on it, which is more than we make on the soft cover, but not that much. But the difference between the hardcover and the soft cover is that this book is actually beautiful. And when you put this book in the hands of the young man that you might have in mind, they will know that they have not held a book like this before simply by its physical appearance. They will be encouraged to open it up and flip through it. It will catch their eye. There will be things that stand out to them right away, and I think the odds of them reading it are substantially higher than anything else. So I know 100 bucks is a lot of money for a book these days, although one single textbook costs, when I was in college years and years ago, sometimes 150 or $200 for one single textbook. This is all the textbooks for 100. So in that perspective, it's not expensive.
- [67:57]
B
But that's so true. It really is a scam, the way they make the kids buy these textbooks, which are outrageously priced. It's just one more. One more part of the scam that is that college has become.
- [68:11]
A
Yeah, so true. So anyway, it's available on Amazon.com if you have a young man in your life, I would definitely encourage you to get it for them. And a lot of people asked me a couple questions, I guess that I'll answer about this. They say, well, what about the girls? And I'll say, this book is written for boys, and it's written for young men. Why? Because I intuitively understand the hopes, the insecurities, the fears, and the motivations of young men. So I could write it in a way. We could write it in a way that could connect with them directly. Now, those are different for girls. Maybe not always, but I think almost. I think most of the time they are. I have a daughter who's, you know, almost 18, and it's different. So it's quite likely there will be a girl's version of this. Whether it actually gets published or not, I don't know. But there certainly my daughter will be following the same process. Adapted to her. Adapted, you know, adapted to her to some degree. And so there's that about the boy question. The other thing is, well, what about people that aren't, that are already. That are out of college and still have now found themselves in that same, you know, it wasn't the panacea they hoped it would be. They find themselves lost today. I think this is the answer for them, too. And they should know better than they will know that college wasn't the answer because it didn't work for them. It didn't get them what they hoped. So I don't think it's strictly limited by age to these college age kids, I guess.
- [69:50]
B
No. I think it might be excellent for people that are experiencing a midlife crisis or people that have just lost a job or are sick of what they're doing in addition to that. And of course, if there's an addition for young men and another addition for young women, there's going to be some moron out there that's going to say, well, well, what about trannies? What about transgender people? We'll probably give that a pass.
- [70:18]
A
We will pass on that one for sure. Yeah. All right. Well, that's it for today, Doug. Thank you very much. We'll be back on Friday with questions from subscribers. If you're a subscriber to Crisis Investing, there's a link at the top now where it says ask Doug question and you'll be able to ask it there to make it easier for everybody. So thanks very much, Doug. We'll talk to you on Friday.
- [70:40]
B
Thanks, Matt.