← The Art of Manliness
The Art of Manliness
The Preparation — An Adventure-Driven, Skill-Building Alternative to College for Young Men
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- [00:00]
A
Starting your own business means figuring out a lot of things you've probably never done before. Especially in the early days. When I launched the Art of Manliness store, I suddenly had to learn how to manage orders, track inventory, fulfill shipments, and make the whole operation look professional. It was a lot. That's why I've been using Shopify for years. It takes the chaos out of running an online store. Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses and 10% of all E commerce in the US from big brands like Gymshark to solo creators just starting out, it scales with you. You can launch a sharp looking site using their templates, use AI tools to help write product descriptions, or clean up photos and run marketing emails and campaigns all from the same dashboard. Shopify also handles payments, inventory analytics, shipping, everything you need to run and grow. Turn your big business idea into real sales with Shopify. Sign up for your $1 a month trial and start selling today at shopify.com manliness that's shopify.com manliness and S-H-O-P-I-F-Y.com manliness check it out today. Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness Podcast. 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, competence and concrete know how. My guest today, Matt Smith, has created an alternative to College, a 4 year 16 cycle curriculum designed to shape participants into Renaissance men. Skilled, self reliant and grounded in character. Matt co authored the preparation with his son Maxim, which is currently working his way through the program. In the first half of our conversation, Matt shares what kickstarted this idea and what's lacking in the education model for young men today.
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We then turn to the nuts and.
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Bolts of the preparation and Matt walks.
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Us through several of the program's hands.
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On cycles including earning EMT certification, building a house and training as a fighter in Thailand, and how gaining these real world skills prepares a young man for whatever is next in life. After the show's over, check out our show notes at AWIM is thepreparation.
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C
All.
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B
Right, Matt Smith, welcome to the show.
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C
Thank you very much. Real pleasure to be here.
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B
So you co authored a book with your son Maxim and then also Doug Casey. It's called the Preparation, in which you lay out a curriculum as an alternative to college for young men. And it's kind of an alternative to college as a rite of passage for young men. What was the impetus behind the development of the Preparation?
- [02:55]
C
Well, my other co author, Doug Casey, was. He actually has been trying to get me to write this book for 12 years with him. But he called it Renaissance man is what he called it. He's been trying over various times to get me to do it with him. And it never made sense because he's written a number of books and he always said they're total brain damage to write. You don't make any money doing him. And then he's trying to sell me at the same time to write this book with him, you know, like. But when my son turned 17, or my son was in his 17th year, so he's almost turning 18, and I could see in him like this consternation, this anxiety about the future. And, you know, we. I'm college dropout and I've been an entrepreneur my whole life. So he didn't grow up in an environment where I was propagandizing him one way or the other, like, you should go to college or you should not go to college. But he, I guess, always assumed that he wouldn't because I didn't. And I think that I even made the path feel more uncertain to him than normal. But I think all 17 year olds probably feel this way. So I could see this anxiety in him and I had a lot of worry. And also, this is all in the COVID era too. So thinking about what would make sense. And then I thought back about the book that Doug had talked to me about many years before and over and over again about writing with him. And I said, maybe we can make something like that work. I wouldn't, I didn't really think about writing a book at that stage. I was really just thinking of, see if we can turn this into a program that he could follow.
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B
Yeah, to help your son.
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C
That was the only motivation. There's no way I would have done it without that.
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B
Yeah. And you talk about in the book that college these days. There was a time when college was a great way to segue into adult life. You learned knowledge that you could apply to a career that would last your entire life. Why do you think that model doesn't work anymore for so many young men?
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C
Well, there's a whole bunch of reasons, but I mean, you could argue on one side of it, economy is Changing dramatically. So, you know, with AI and automation, we've already started to see a lot of job cuts around that. We've seen people that have specialized in the fields they were told to go into, like computer science come out and not be able to find a job when they get out of school. There's just like two weeks ago in the New York Times there was a long article about this. Somebody applied to 5,000 jobs, had 13 interviews, I think, and no offers computer science. So there's a question of what that future looks like without the problems of college. But so one thing is the future AI in the future that might cause. And the other thing is just, it's extremely expensive and it's no longer rare. Now 53% of people who graduate high school go to college. So you know, you're not among the, of course you can go to more elite schools. And then the track is different, of course, but people are graduating with this huge debt around their, you know, this burden that they're carrying around with them and it totally, if they find out that, that job that they'd specialized in, they really, they feel it's like totally soul crushing. They now no longer have options because they have to service that debt from college, they have to pay their rent. And you know, so they're kind of trapped and they find themselves, I think, totally different than when, even 20 years ago, when costs were so much lower than now.
- [06:03]
B
You're going back to that idea of how AI is changing the career landscape. I had this conversation with my son a couple months ago. He's 14, he'll be 15 next month. And we were on a walk and he said something pretty incisive for a 14 year old. I was surprised he caught onto this. He said, you know, Dad, I think what worked for you and mom and even my grandparents as far as transitioning adulthood like college, he says, I don't think that's going to work for me. And I said, you know, I think you're right, it's, it's a completely different world. And he said, like, what do I, what do I do then? What should I major in? What should my career be? And I said, you know, but I don't really know, to be honest.
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C
It's amazing a 14 year old is asking these questions.
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B
Yeah, yeah. And I, I think a lot of young people have that anxiety like your son did, like what am I supposed to do? Because it used to be you could pick out your career even if you worked in a factory, like say 60 years ago, you knew you'd have a job for 60 years because nothing really changed all that much. Or you went to college and you decided to become an accountant or an attorney. Not much changed. Like you knew what the game would look like for your career. That's no longer the case. And I can see that just causing so much stress and anxiety for young people.
- [07:20]
C
Yeah, I think so. Even if we were wrong when we went to college, like I said, I'm a dropout, but I did go. I did go for 18 months. Anyway, even if we were wrong, but we believed that that accounting job would be available for us, even if we were wrong, you know, it still gave us some. Something to pursue, some clarity. Today, it's clear to everybody that the future is going to be vastly different. So knowing that just increases people's uncertainty so dramatically. And, yeah, it's a tough position for these kids. They've been through the ringer with know, with all the COVID stuff. And then it's uncertain future. You know, it's a really tough time to be a teenager.
- [07:57]
B
This book is geared towards young men. We'll talk about the curriculum in the preparation. I think a young woman could do it and it'd be awesome for them, but it's geared more towards young men. But you talk about one of the things that young men, they have this anxiety. They don't know what to do. And so what they typically do is they just default to drifting and looking at what their peers are doing, whether in person or online. And you talk about the role mimetic desire plays in this drift. So we've had Luke Burgess on the podcast before, who's written about mimetic desire. But for those who aren't familiar with it, can you briefly describe it? And then how does this mimetic desire contribute to dissatisfaction in a young man's life?
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C
Happy to. I mean, Luke does a great job, I think. The book's called Wanting. I think the name of it is. But it's based upon Rene Girard's work, which essentially he says that humans are unusual animals and that basically our drives are shaped by those around us. And this doesn't just apply to young men or young women. It applies to you and I. You know, we're subject to. We. We can be subject to things if we're not aware of them. And it's just. This is why you see things become really popular. You know, whether it be a fashion trend or something, how they just take off. You know, you guys like, why do humans follow these trends like that? It's kind of programmed into us. And so we. We look to others for what they appear to want, and then it becomes our own want. It feels legitimate. It feels like we really, truly desire that thing too, because we're taking the cues from the people around us, but it's not genuine. It's not really authentic. And I really believe, again, this is not a young person problem. This is a. This is a every person problem. You have to be aware of it. The effect of others on you and what they desire. I mean, it's like keeping up with the Joneses idea. That's that concept in a nutshell.
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B
Yeah. And I think for a lot of young men, they don't really have, like, good models anymore. I mean, so mimetic desire can be a positive force if your model is noble and good and positive. But a lot of young men don't have that.
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C
Well, I would say, if anything, the great role models that have might even exist even in literature, like, are taken out of the classroom, you know, for young men.
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B
Yeah, especially.
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C
So I think, yeah, I think they're gone. And, you know, there's been an attack on masculinity in the culture, and that's certainly made it worse. And then the counter reaction to that, you know, the, like, the, the bros, you know, is also negative. You know, it's not really the right thing either. It's not real masculinity. So there aren't heroic figures for them to look up to except, I guess, superheroes, which is nonsense, you know, so it's. Yeah, I think it's a real struggle for young people to have good models and to then know where to go and what to do.
- [10:45]
B
So what you do, let's talk about the preparation. So the goal of the preparation is the original idea was to help young men turn into Renaissance men who are competent, confident, and dangerous. Basically turn him into the most interesting man in the world from those Dos Equis commercials. Tell us more about this Renaissance man model that you're trying to follow. So basically, the Renaissance man ideal is the model that you're hoping young men will use their mimetic desire to become like, so tell us about that. What is this Renaissance man model that you're trying to create with the preparation?
- [11:21]
C
So fundamentally, instead of the focus being on what kind of job do you want to have? You know, the question that confronts young men at this stage in life, it's like, what kind of job you want to have? Or, you know, the three main choices, of course, college, military, or a trade school. Nothing really wrong with Necessarily with any of them, but all of them are simply designed to get you a job that gets you economic viability so that you can be, hopefully, reasonably prosperous, you know, and have some economic security. But none of them address the most important question, which is, what kind of man do you want to become? And what we try and do is get them to think about that early in the book, and we focus on this. The idea of the Renaissance man essentially is a person who's able to. Who not only knows a lot about broad range of topics like, you know, from music to art to building a house and milking a cow. I mean, what. Building anything you can imagine, like just a broad range of knowledge, but also knows how to shape the world around him, knows how to put it into action, knows how to create with it. And that's, you know, the difference between, like, a polymath and a real Renaissance man is a polymath knows a lot, but a Renaissance man uses that knowledge to create, to shape the world around them.
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B
Yeah, I think we have this kind of. I mean, a distorted idea of what a Renaissance man is. When we think of, like, oh, he's a Renaissance man. It's like, well, he just knows a lot. Basically, we're describing a polymath, the actual Renaissance man from the Renaissance era. As you said, they not only knew a lot of stuff, but they could do a lot of stuff, and they were actively engaged in trying to shape the public sphere. So uses the example of Leon Batista Alberti, who was this guy.
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C
He was a badass, honestly, guy. He lived in the 15th century in Italy. And, you know, he's one of the central figures really, of that Renaissance period. He was a painter, an architect, a cryptographer, a philosopher, mathematician. And, you know, but he was also, like, quite an athlete. He was a great horseman apparently, too, and a mountaineer. I mean, he was quite accomplished in every walk of life. And he thought that the only thing that limited what you could do was, was your will. You know, this Renaissance area, what it did is it combined these classical virtues that were sort of rediscovered in the Renaissance from ancient Greece and Rome, and, you know, with this new, like, life that was sort of fed into the period once actually, the Renaissance period fundamentally was about revitalization by a rediscovery of these ancient virtues where a man could shape themselves and ought to shape themselves. So that's like, that's. That's what life's about, is that pursuit of shaping yourself into something great. And so he is kind of the iconic figure of that Period. Really, who really proved it true.
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B
And, yeah, going back, one of their goals was like, they wanted not only shape themselves, but they wanted to shape themselves so they could shape the world, like, have an impact on the world. And I think. I think all humans crave that. We crave that desire to mold our outside environment. Nietzsche said, joy is the feeling of power increasing. And for Nietzsche, power was like creativity. It's like, yeah, you had an impact. I think all humans have that desire, but I think, particularly in young men, young men really want to feel like their actions have an impact on the world around them. I think that's one of the reasons why video games are so seductive, because it gives you the feeling that you're doing something, but you're really not. So I really love this idea of the Renaissance model of someone who acquires knowledge and skills to act in the world.
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C
Yeah. I mean, and these are. I think with young men, what they really want is they want to be somebody. So they have this, like, angst to do something meaningful. They know that by doing something meaningful, they'll become something meaningful, but they just. There's so little that they can do. You know, they're so restrained. There's. It's like, so little freedom on. On kids today. They're the most surveilled, you know, group of people that have ever existed on the face of the earth. You know, know, everything's scheduled and organized for them and almost infantilized because of it.
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B
Any other fictional or historical characters besides Alberti that you think are examples of this Renaissance man who not only knows a lot, but can do a lot and have an impact on the world?
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C
You can look at a lot of the Founding Fathers, frankly, like Ben Franklin. That man knew a lot and did a lot. It's actually quite impressive of his accomplishments. If you go through the Founding Fathers, you'll find at least half a dozen that I think would qualify as Renaissance man amongst them. You know, I'll say for my son, what was particularly motivating, for whatever reason? And you never know why certain characters connect with you or don't. But he really loved Edmund Dante's from the Count of Monte Cristo. I really made him watch one of the versions of the movie with me when he was younger, and I said, you'll like it, trust me. Because he never really liked movies, believe it or not, and he loved it. He loved that idea. And then. And then he read the book, and then he read the unabridged book, and he's now read it a couple times and this idea, this guy's like a good virtuous guy, but really innocent and got basically everything that mattered to him completely taken away from him all of a sudden, and was, like, at the total bottom of a well, essentially in prison and really couldn't get any lower, but built himself up and to become quite a remarkable man who absolutely did have the ability to shape the world around him.
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B
Another one, as I was reading the curriculum for the preparation, which we're gonna talk about here in a bit, another person that reminded me of this sort of Renaissance man ideal that's more modern. Louis Lamour, the Western author, 100.
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C
Do you like him?
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B
Oh, I love Louis Lamour.
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C
Oh, good. That's good. That's a good sign. Yeah. No, he's great.
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B
Yeah. We've had his son on the podcast to talk about his work, but also his book, Education of a Wandering man, which is basically an education of a. Of a Renaissance man.
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C
Yeah, My son has read that book three times.
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B
It's a really good book.
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Going through this process has been. He's been. He said it's been interesting going back, and my son has been the beta tester for this program for the book. What ended up being the book, he's been doing it in real life for the last two years. And so as he goes through different stages of. He's like, read it at different points, and he's like, I see different things at each stage. So it's quite an inspiration for him as well. Yeah. And Louis Lamour absolutely was a Renaissance man.
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B
And I would even say a lot of actors from, like, the golden age of Hollywood, I'm talking, you know, Steve McQueen, even writers, you know, like Jack London, Ralph Ellison. If you look at their lives, they didn't follow. Like, they didn't. A lot of them, like, didn't go to college, or if they did go to college, they dropped out and they just did, like, weird stuff. Like Steve McQueen, he was, like, in the Marines, and then he labored on a chain gang in the Deep south because he got arrested for vagrancy. He was a lumberjack. He joined the circus, I think Ralph Ellison, before he became a writer, he tried to become a professional trumpet player in New York City. And he was living in a YMCA trying to be a trumpet player. And that's where he met Langston Hughes. And he got kind of brought into that circle of the Harlem Renaissance there in New York City. Sean Connery, I mean, he served in the Royal Navy, was a milkman. He was a lifeguard. He was like a bodybuilder for a little while. And what stands out to all these guys? They were just doing stuff. They're just trying different stuff, increasing their surface area of luck. And they just. These opportunities came up where they found something they really were good at and passionate about, and the rest was history.
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C
They did it their own way too. I think, you know, they were able to, in all those cases, I think they were able to devote their time and energy to the things that drew them in more because they had this broad exposure to many things and broad exposure to lots of different people and different things, it just increases their total decision set. Like their optionality in life increases dramatically the more, like the way I guess you put it, surface area they touch. But I have to include people they touch within that as well. Because you build this weird networks that connect you with weird people. If you do unusual things.
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A
And if you just go to college.
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B
Like, well, you go to college and you might learn some interesting things, but your experiences aren't going to be as varied as these guys.
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C
And today you can learn anything you can learn in college without going to college. That's the thing. It's available to us now in a way that it was not before. You know, there is some advantage if you happen to have a great professor, you know, who can like take whatever the matter, subject matter you're studying, and they can bring it to life in a way that you would not catch, you know, without them there. Like there are those rare instances, but most of it is not like that, at least in my experience.
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B
So before we. You talk about the specific skills a young man should develop that your son Maxim is developing with the preparation. You spend a lot of time in the beginning of the book talking about developing a personal code. Why start with that?
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C
I think it's because it's the only thing that matters in the end. And so you got to start at the end, I guess. Doug, when he originally pitched me on the book 12 years ago, he was very vague about it. He said, I want to write a book about becoming a Renaissance man. And I said, tell me more. And he said, well, the three most important verbs in the English or nearly any language are be, do, and have. And I didn't get it. It took me a long time to really understand what he meant by that. But essentially, if you think about it, have is what everyone is oriented to generally. It's certainly a part of this mimetic desire that people have. You know, they look around, they see what other people want. They want to have things they Want to have a, know a beautiful wife, or they want to have a new car, or they want to have a travel experience. They basically are oriented almost only toward have. And in our consumer culture, this has been amplified. Like the dial's been turned up to 11. It's really intense and it's almost hard to avoid it if you don't understand this framework. So the problem with focusing on have is that have is a byproduct. You don't get it directly, you get it indirectly by doing so. Do is the operative do is what matters. What you do will determine what you have. But the only thing that actually matters is B. And you know, B is like who you are, like what is your substance? What is the thing that differentiates you from the other 10,000 people, you know, standing in line? I mean, what, what's. Like, what is the difference? And this is the thing that, this essence of B is the thing that I, I find is very motivating to young men. Actually, it's motivating to men of any age. This because the B, the substance, the thing that makes you solid. And so we had to focus on that. So what is the B? The way we think of it is that with this personal code, we ask them to go through this exercise. It seems kind of trivial. I understand at first it can seem trivial. The first part of it is, is to define a set of rules for yourself that you don't expect anyone else to follow, but they're just rules for your own conduct. And that requires a little self reflection. And it's like when you do things that make you feel small or that make you feel a little ashamed. Just one example, like if a friend invites me out to dinner on Friday, I could say, I'm busy, little white lie. Or I could say, you know, I don't really feel like it this Friday. Maybe we could do another time. The path of least resistance is simply to just actually say, oh, I'm busy, I just can't do it. But every time, personally, when I would do something like that, it made me feel small, made me feel not good, you know, and I know and it's like it's not really, it's not real deception, like a really bad lie, but it's like, still not good. It didn't make people feel feel good. And so we ask, we ask them to look at those things that they do that make them feel small and write them down and just decide not to do those things anymore. Just set up these rules for yourself. It might sound again, trivial, but this is the formation of self esteem. This is the formation of the self itself. Because this is how you are separating yourself from the going with the flow, from the just doing what everyone else is doing. Because you're deciding, no, I'm not going to do these things. It's only a negative thing first. I'm not going to do these things under these conditions. And that's where it starts, though. It's like you develop this beachhead where you can. A young person, anybody can build from a real self, from that just a little bit of self control around. I'm not going to do the things that make me feel small. That's the first part. The second part is things to aspire to. And this goes back to the virtues. So we introduce them to the same virtues that inspired the Renaissance from Greece and Rome. And we just basically share a list with them and say, which ones do these speak to you? Like pick five or whatever, six that feel good to you? You know, like. Like, that'd be awesome. Courage. That's cool. Yeah. I would like to be somebody who's known as courageous. Or, you know, maybe it's that you've got what they call the gravitas, which is actually just dignity. I mean, virtue. The core of the word is veer, which means man. So the pursuit of virtues is like the pursuit of being a man in general. So anyway, we tell them to identify those virtues that they choose that they voluntarily decide to aspire to. And unlike the rules, which are binary, it's like, oh, I messed that up, I failed, or I did the right thing by my own standards. Virtue is something you never. You never get there. It's always just something you're trying harder to get. You can always be more courageous. You could always be more disciplined. If that's a virtue you choose, you know, you could always be more steadfast. So it's something you pursue constantly. And this is inspiring to people to. Because they wanted. What kind of man do you want to be? What kind of man do you want to be known as? So that's the second part. The third part is where we tell them to start to list their stack of accomplishments which. Which will grow as they get into the book because we actually later on tell them exactly what they should do.
- [24:49]
B
So it sounds like it's all about helping these young men develop a sense of self.
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C
It is the most important thing. B is the thing. And this is what. When you see people who are even gainfully employed, having gone to college, feeling quite lost. Why? Because they still don't know who they are. They still don't know what differentiates them specifically. Is it like what, what makes. So the beginning of that starts with this. I think it's totally core to. To. I mean, I would much rather spend time, you know, I like people who have done a lot of stuff. They're very interesting and I like people who have a lot of stuff. I have a lot of stuff. Stuff is nice. But if the person is not a good person, I mean, if they don't have virtue, if they aren't pursuing virtue, they're not people I want to be around. And it's certainly I don't want to be someone like that. So it's a constant barometer for me as well. And I just think it's. It's never discussed with young men. They never hear it. They never even hear this. So I think it had to be there first because most of the book is about what to do, but doing for what reason. Because some of these things are hard and when you're doing them, they, you know, you don't like Louis Morris running around doing a lot of weird stuff. You know, everybody's doing these weird things. They looked weird and so to everyone around them might have looked like they're failing, you know, so. So in that you have to be able to come back to something like a higher purpose than that. And that is the being. That is, what kind of man do you want to become?
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A
We're going to take a quick break.
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B
For a word from our sponsors.
- [26:18]
A
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- [26:20]
B
Evenings start to roll in, I've been.
- [26:21]
A
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- [29:24]
B
And now back to the show. All right, so let's get into the brass tacks of the curriculum of the preparation I think this is what everyone's probably like, okay, what's, what's in this thing? What is my young son going to be doing? So you break the curriculum into cycles. How long do the cycles last and what are the components of a cycle?
- [29:41]
C
All right, so again, we're competing with college is the way we think about it. And so we, we imagine four years. My son is through two of them. Now each year is broken up into four quarters. Obviously we call each quarter a cycle. So there's 16 cycles. And each cycle basically has a few key components. The most important one we call the anchor course. That's the main event. Sometimes they'll be a couple weeks long, sometimes they can be a couple months long of that entire cycle. Three month cycle, but that's the main thing. And everything else is built around that because these are hard to schedule. So you have to plan everything around it. So you plant, you know, the big rock, you put the big rocks in first right in the jar. That kind of idea. It starts with that and then related to it. Doug, you know, especially is a strong advocate for academics. He thinks they're super important. So every cycle has academic courses as a component to it as much as possible. We try and make it so that they're related to the subject matter, that they're actually their anchor course, that they're actually going through at the time as much as possible. So there's the academic portion. There's a set of activities that we encourage people to do. Now they could choose the things that are interesting to them, but we encourage diversity, like trying a lot of different things. And they could be from, you know, learning a musical instrument and it's a good thing for sure. Definitely. Learning to play chess is a good thing for sure. But like scuba diving and skydiving and. Well, we have a whole list, a whole bunch of them in there of different activities and there's some time that's set aside each week for those kinds of things. And other than that, there's a reading list of course too. So we have books that we recommend and then it's reflection. So in total we actually. Unlike college, which you can be considered a full time student if you're taking 12 credit hours now, supposedly there's a lot more outside of that than that. But, you know, I came from the army because I had to pay for my college. I had to go to join the National Guard. So I came from the army to college and I couldn't believe how much free time everybody had. It was so shocking to me. You know, so even if the difference between high school and college, you know, it's a huge difference. You're so much free time. This basically assumes you're putting 40 productive hours in every week. Now these can be like some of these hours are you at the gym, that counts. Lifting weights, that's good for you, you know, that's one of your activities. But there are required things in there too, you know, that we have. But we're assuming 40 hours a week, which is, which is definitely prepares somebody that in and of itself more for the real world frankly than you know, a heavy course load would.
- [32:04]
B
Okay, so each cycle has an anchor course and this is the more intensive hands on component of, of a cycle. Then there's some related academics that you're going to do and then there's some activities you can choose from and then you're supposed to do a written reflection at the end of a cycle. And you know, as you said there this, you're pitching this as an alternative college. And as we talked about earlier, college is just really expensive these days. I think doing four years at an in state university is something like, you know, $100,000 in total and then it just goes up from there, you know, so the academics with the preparation, you know, that's like online courses you can take for free. But you know, stuff like the anchor courses cost money. So how much does the preparation cost to do altogether?
- [32:50]
C
Yeah, so if you did the exact 16 ones that we have, and there are two that are really expensive in here, the total cost of that over four years is about $70,000. About $70,000. Basically that's one year to prestigious college in the US today. But it's a lot of money, 70,000 even. That I understand. But the difference, the thing is, is that you can work your way through it. And I have some evidence, I'll share with you. There are two. I don't know if we want me to get into the anchor courses now, but there are two that are really expensive. You don't have to do those and saves a lot of money. One of them is becoming a private pilot. That's, you know, you don't have to do that one, but it is, my son went through it. Very interesting. It's a good skill for him to have. And the other one is learning to operate heavy machinery. But you get certified in it and that could be, you know, you could always fall back on that and do that for work that pays pretty well. But those two things are pretty expensive courses. Yeah.
- [33:39]
B
Okay, well, let's talk about some of these specific cycles. This is a lot of fun. The first one that you talk about, I think this is the first one your son did, is the medic. Let's talk about the medic. Like, what's the anchor course of this cycle? And then why did you even pick this? Like, why'd you set this out for your son?
- [33:55]
C
So basically, the anchor course is just getting your EMT certification. So, you know, if you ever, unfortunately, are in an ambulance, you'll be there with probably one paramedic and one emt. EMT is like the. The base level. The reason that he started with it, and I think the reason why a lot of people should start with it or why we placed it, the first one, is simply because it's the most accessible. That requires wherever you are, wherever you live, somewhere around you, there is an EMT school not too far away that you can attend. And it's very low cost. I mean, some of them, $1,200, sometimes maybe up to $2,000, depends upon exactly where you are in the country. But basically what it does, it qualifies you to work on, like, an ambulance, obviously, and that pays basically minimum wage. It's not a great job, you know, but it does give you some economic viability. I mean, it does qualify you for a job that, you know, you couldn't have if you didn't have it. But it also is an amazingly useful skill that actually can be parlayed into quite a bit more as Maxim did. Like specifically Maxim, because of his part of this is that weekly reflection and accountability we talked about earlier as part of it. So he published. He started publishing a substack, just basically at first he was simply listing what he'd done that week. It was like a way to hold himself accountable. Just had to put it out there and no one reading it. Didn't matter. Over time, there's a few thousand people that have read it now that are subscribed to it. So it's a little harder for him. But I mean, it's a little harder in that he knows that there's an audience. But through that, someone reached out to him and said, hey, you've got this. Working on an ambulance isn't any fun. You don't want to do that. I own a wildfire fighting business, basically, where the contracts with the Western states during the summers when they have these terrible fires and. And as an emt. So he spent one of his cycles, the work cycle, he spent one summer last summer fighting fires in Oregon making $600 a day, no expenses, which for me, when I was 18, I know money isn't worth what it once was worth, but I think that was roughly my take home pay for a month in the army was $600. So through things like that, unique opportunities show up for you and there's different ways to leverage it. But for him, ultimately, you know, if there is a emergency trauma type situation, he is qualified and skilled to be able to be the person who can step up and do something about it, to know how to handle the situation, to assess what's going on and to take action. And that skill gives you a. You walk into the world differently, you encounter the world differently when you know that if something like that happens, you will know what to do.
- [36:35]
B
Yeah, it's a big confidence booster. I think it's really powerful. And I was, after I read that section, like, man, I'm gonna have my son. He needs to get EMT certified. I want to get any EMT certified after reading about it. And so along with the EMT certification, there's an academic component. And as you said, you try to keep the academics related to the anchor course. Like, what kind of academic stuff was your son doing?
- [36:56]
C
I mean, this one, it's like anatomy, biology and there's some practical chemistry. And then there too actually, which is kind of fun. But yeah, it's as much as possible related to it. And then, you know, there's part of it that is just like in college, you know, there's like required and then there's room for electives. We have this whole, in the back of the book, there's basically they could choose, they could fill in electives or things that they're just curious about. So there's plenty of options beyond, you know, for the elective section. But in the required, it's anatomy, biology and practical chemistry.
- [37:25]
B
Another cycle that really piqued my interest. I was like, I wish I could have done this. The builder. Walk us through the builder cycle.
- [37:33]
C
There's this awesome place in Maine called the Shelter Institute where over three weeks, if you do the three week version, there's a two week version and a three week version. The three week version, you design and build a home and you don't build it to completion, but you actually just, you put up the timber frame structure in the third week. But the first two weeks are really the most important one because they really, you go through the entire process of exactly understanding how do you handle plumbing and electrical and you know, how do I choose the site and how do I, you know, how do I begin to even start with this? So you basically learn to design a home now. You know, you don't necessarily want to be a home builder, but you gotta understand the benefit of this. And they're mostly. The people that go to this are adults, by the way. They're not, you know, children that go. They're people like you and I are like, hey, this would be cool to know, but when you have this skill, it just, you see the world differently, you encounter it differently. It also could expose you to creative outlets that might draw you in deeper. But the whole point of all of this, and there are lots of the 16 we picked, we could have picked another 16 that I think would have been just as valuable. But the key thing is that they all build upon one another. Helping the being, helping this person have a list of accomplishments that impresses them, that is impressive to others, and that makes them see the world from like a. What they could do instead of what they can't do. Because things are a mystery to them. They don't understand how anything works. So, you know, my disorder, food on Uber eats, That's how I eat. You know, milk comes from a carton. I don't know. You know, you want to expose them as much as possible to as many of these things as you can. And then so their framework and understanding of how the world works and how they can effectively create and it becomes clear to them.
- [39:21]
B
Yeah. After I read about the builder and I learned about this school you could go to, I was like, I'm doing like a two week vacation where I'm gonna go to this thing. Because I think every. A lot of guys have that dream of like, I'm gonna buy some property somewhere. I'm gonna build myself a little. A frame cabin. I couldn't do that. I had no clue what I. It would look awful and I wouldn't even know where to start. So I'd love to have that skill. I also think it's just a useful skill like know how to. Knowing how to build a house just as a homeowner.
- [39:49]
A
Yeah.
- [39:49]
B
There's so many times where I've had something broken into my house and it needs a repair. And I bring a contractor and he's explaining it to me and I'm like.
- [39:58]
A
Is this guy ripping?
- [39:59]
B
Is this actually a problem? Maybe this isn't a problem. And he's just saying it is, but I don't know exactly.
- [40:05]
C
This is the problem with specialization, you know, and it's been allowed us to become a prosperous society. Like this specialization it's been good in that way. But on an individual basis, what it does to us is bad. It has a real negative effect where our basic understanding of how bad basic things around us function are totally outside of our awareness or understanding. And if you think back, maybe our parents age, and if not, absolutely their parents age, they knew all of this stuff. I mean, not necessarily all of these different things, but they basically understood the world around them way better than people do today.
- [40:40]
B
The academic component, I imagine it's a lot of architecture. Yeah.
- [40:44]
C
History. There's some literature in there. That one too. Yeah. Yeah.
- [40:46]
B
Another one that intrigued me. The cowboy again.
- [40:49]
C
This.
- [40:49]
B
I think this reminded me of Louis Lamour. That's why I liked it. What's the cowboy cycle?
- [40:53]
C
Maybe it's because I'm such a Louis Lamour fan, too. There's a lot of benefits. Well, there's two parts to it, actually. For this one, there's basically this place called this cowboy academy you go to and they teach you all the basics of working with horses and on a ranch. And it's a pretty short course. I believe it's five days. That's a pretty short one. And then there's a longer one where you actually go on, or you do horse and mule packing in Idaho. But learning to, like, deal with these animals and to feel comfortable around them is really important, I think. Like, it teaches. It's humbling in some ways. I mean, for an adult, even if you haven't been around horses that could absolutely destroy you if they wanted to, and learn how to work them well and work cooperatively with them. And plus, it's a. It's so much fun. And I think it taps into the. Some of these things will absolutely tap into this wonderlust side of the, you know, the hero's journey, the rite of passage. These things that I really think are totally missing from our culture today, that we kind of have to. You know, if you're a really involved parent, you know, you try and construct these things if you can, for them, but they're limited in that they don't get to experience it on their own fully. And through these cycles, they do. They do do some things that don't make sense. You know, there's no rational reason to do it because there's no obvious benefit you're going to get out of it. It's just journey. And this is definitely one of those, I think, that comes out of that. I mean, handling a horse teaches patience and discipline, even leadership, believe it or not. It's weird. I don't know if you spend lots of time around horses, but they're beautiful, amazing. So in that time we spend a lot of time focusing on the academics and the academic portion of this cycle. It's a lot of US history, Western history, Western literature to give them like cultural context, including of course, the Sackett series. We encourage them to start reading, get into that, because I think virtues are present in the characters of the Old west and you know, certainly in all of Louis l' Amour's books. But also learning about Kit Carson, I mean his life was. Isn't like you just can't things he accomplished in his life. So you read this biography of him as well during that cycle. And I think these do give these models for like when you look at what's possible if you're like a 17, 18, even 20 year old, if, hell, if you're even 50 years old. And you look at these examples of what people, you know, these people who totally break the Overton window of possibility of what you can do with your life. It helps motivate you, inspire you. And so there's a lot of focus on that in this cycle. Lot of wonder, lust in this cycle.
- [43:31]
B
So another cycle, the fighter cycle. I think your son's about to start this one. Is that correct or is he doing.
- [43:36]
C
It January, he starts that. Yeah, he's in the entrepreneurship cycle right now.
- [43:39]
B
Okay, so tell us about the fighter cycle.
- [43:41]
C
All right, so fighter cycle, basically you. You go to Thailand and you. There's several different schools, but we recommend one in particular. It's got two locations where you basically enroll in Muay Thai camp. And it's pretty intense. It's pretty intense. But, you know, most of it's just basic physical training, basic sparring. Of course, at the end of it, the hope to actually do a real fight. And it's not required, of course, but it's the hope that they would do that I think is good. And that one fundamentally, the truth is, is that we encourage like the study of martial arts anyway. So the question is whether or not you make a cycle out of it. Because a lot of the activities we talk about could have honestly, many of them can be turned into cycles that are worth it. So like my son was doing bjj, that's Brzen Jiu jitsu, almost wherever he was, there's almost always a place he could go to do that. So we encourage it anyway. But we decided to make it part of his cycle because that hero's journey arc in a way, going somewhere totally different where the world Functions in totally different way where everything is exotic to you, gives you a better sense of the entire, you know, how the, I mean most Americans don't really see, you know, how the rest of the world functions. So we want them to get out and see the world a bit. And this gives them a way to do that in a environment where they're not just traveling for the sake of traveling, but they're traveling with a sense of purpose and learning and where they're going to walk away a different person. They will come out of that not being the same person.
- [45:13]
B
Oh, and the academic portion, is it. Are you doing like Asian studies?
- [45:17]
C
Yeah, pretty much. I mean a lot of like, let's say martial history, you know, part of it too. You know, philosophy of combat, you know, we have Musashi's Book of Five Rings for instance is one of the things they read during that. But yeah, it's, it's mostly oriented toward while they're there to learn about the history of the rant.
- [45:35]
B
I mean if you did just these cycles we've talked about, so the medic, the cowboy, the builder and the fighter, if a young man did just that, he would be head and shoulders above his peers like one of the most interesting young men out there. He would have, he would have, as my son would say, aura. He'd have infinite aura if he did these things. And these, you know, are just for the possible cycles. I mean there's other ones like we've talked about. So your son's doing an entrepreneur one right now. He basically has to start a business in three months and make money.
- [46:07]
C
Well, he doesn't have to make money, you know, okay, fail. I mean I'm not an entrepreneur. I've started many businesses and some succeeded, some have failed. But the things you learn along that process is quite good. And you know, it starts off very. The cycles start off very hands on, like very specific and structured. And then it gets more into the abstract things like entrepreneurship, investing, you know, the things that I think are very important but don't give you a sense of self in the same way that these like hands on like hardcore recognized skills do. And you know, before we've gone through basically imagine just if someone just took a gap year before college, just did those four in the gap year, different person, they would be going into college. If they still chose to go that route, they'd go there knowing a sense of self and a sense of where they want to take their life.
- [46:55]
B
Yeah, I mean, so other ones you talk about and we won't talk about them in detail. But there's like survivalist cycle where you go to a primitive living intensive school for two weeks. You mentioned the pilot cycle, where you get your pilot's license. There's a sailor cycle where you're going to learn how to. We're going to go to South America and learn how to sail, which would be awesome.
- [47:15]
C
My son did that. He's through the. Basically around the Falkland Islands and then through the Strait of Magellan.
- [47:20]
B
Yeah.
- [47:20]
C
And he learned how. He's a certified crewman on a sailboat. And so he can. That's also an economically viable job, actually.
- [47:26]
B
For sure.
- [47:27]
A
Yeah.
- [47:27]
B
The welder cycle, that's another economically viable job and it comes in handy. I've got a friend who started a farm after selling his business and he had to learn how to weld. He went to. Had to go to trade school, learn how to. Well, there's a lot of welding you do as a farmer, surprisingly, the heavy equipment operator, obviously. And I mean, I think that your big takeaway, all these things you're going to learn, these skills you're going to develop, that contributes to the do of character, and then that leads to the being of character. So it just gives you this sense of self that you'll carry with you for the rest of your life.
- [48:02]
A
But what's after the preparation, like, after.
- [48:04]
B
Your son finishes all these things, what do you think is going to happen? What do you think he's going to do with himself? So he's got this awesome resume. He's a Renaissance man. I think you can make the case that with this diversity of real experience that, you know, I can give you the confidence and the capacity to pursue a variety of paths, more so than college. But I can imagine that there are people out there listening, you know, dads who are listening that are thinking, okay, well, now what?
- [48:33]
C
I think that's again, the wrong question. I mean, I get the question, but did. When have we known for sure where anything we did was going to take us in reality? Like, maybe we had a general direction to, like, move toward, but we never really knew exactly what the. Then what is the question basically cancels out, like, because of the uncertainty of it. It can cancel out the desire to strive to become because it seems impractical. Because you want to know the practical answer. The truth is I can't imagine what he's going to be doing after two more years. I really can't. I mean, the changes as a father, seeing where he started with this kid who had a lot of, you know, anxiety, he Was basically super. Like, I'm an introvert. I trained my kids maybe to be introverts. I don't know. My daughter's not so much, but my son certainly reflects that. He did. He's completely gotten over that. Like, he is. You know, he would never feel comfortable like, you know, going and interacting with a lot of people, but it's no issue for him whatsoever. He's totally got that under control. I don't know if he manages it or if it's dissolved away, but he's gone from being basically a boy into being already after two years. Every qualification, I would say, of being a man, except for the fact he's not yet a father, shouldn't be a father yet. You know, I don't want to be a father yet, but, I mean, that's the last step where I would differentiate between a boy and a man. And after two years there, he's already there. He's. The world is full of opportunity for him already. He says no to things, opportunities all the time. So I can't imagine. I really can't imagine what he'll be doing.
- [50:09]
B
Yeah, Like I mentioned earlier, I think doing all this stuff increases your surface area of opportunities, and I think your son's a testament to that. I mean, he got that job offer to work wildfires. And I'm sure he'll have other opportunities that pop up because he's just exposing himself to different. Different people and different situations.
- [50:27]
C
Yeah. And let me explain one more thing, because I forgot to say earlier about how expensive this is. And I said, you can finance your way through it. Now, I saved for him because a lot of people might be thinking, again, it's not economically possible for me, so I can't do it. I grew up very poor. My son did not. Okay. But I saved an irresponsibly low amount of money in his Vanguard account. Like, not enough for that one year at a prestigious university, that's for sure. And he started with that two years ago, and he's never asked me for money. Today he's got a little bit more money than he did when he started after two years, so you can work your way through it. And that's what he's done along the way. I just don't want people to be scared off by that because. And the fact that he can work his way through doing this, he is at a level of economic survivability already. It's like somehow he's making it work, you know, of course he's sleeping with, like, extra bedrooms of family or friends, when he's in different places, you know, he's really thrifty with his money. But it works, it works. It does produce somebody who is independent and not just financially independent, but independent and they make sound decisions.
- [51:34]
B
I mentioned earlier, as I was reading through this book, I was thinking, man, I want to do some of this stuff. Do you know any middle aged men who are doing some of these cycles for themselves?
- [51:46]
C
Well, you know, the book just came out two and a half weeks ago. So the formal structure of these, you know, has not been out there. But I could definitely tell you a lot of these anchor courses are not done by kids. I mean, they're done by adults. I mean, on this sailing thing that Max did through the Strait of Magellan, he was by far the youngest person there. By far. Yeah, I would say same thing with the Shelter Institute. I mean that is not young people that are doing that. So certainly this, these are all things that draw in people like our age to do and older. And you know, one of the most of the readers of the book so far, they're parents. They're parents like you and I who want to help make sure their kids are pointed in the right direction. And they have the same response that you did, which is like, this is stuff I want to do. And I have to tell you, to be honest, writing the book was a challenge to do and to construct it so that it tells people exactly what to do. It took a lot out of me to do it, but I mean, I was just looking for things that sounded like that I wanted to do also, you know, things that I knew would inspire my son and other boys around the world, you know, and it tends, I guess it's true of men my age and older. I mean, we had a 71 year old write to us the other day, said, I'm starting, I'm going to start doing this. So while I don't have any examples yet of them doing, but I have a lot of. There's. If you read the reviews on Amazon, you'll see a lot of parents saying the same, echoing the same thing they want to do.
- [53:13]
B
Well, Matt, this has been a great conversation. Where can people go to learn more about the book and your work?
- [53:16]
C
Well, you go to Amazon to buy the book and there's currently there's an audio version coming out. But this is a very physical thing. So even the audiobook comes with a PDF that you'll need or do it because it's kind of like a workbook in many ways. And there's a hardcover edition, which if you're trying to persuade a teen that maybe is unlikely to sounds like your boy would read a book, said this is good for you. And luckily my son is at that stage too. But if you have one who might be a little more reluctant or something like that, the hardcover is designed to be as beautiful as possible within Amazon's limitations. Okay. So it's full color. And when they hold it in their hands, just open the book a little bit, they'll know that they've not held a book like that before, that there's something different about it right away. And I think that it's designed to be lure, you know, for the, for the young man to get him to pay attention a little bit differently to it. So the hardcover is $99. It's way more expensive than the paperback is just 29. But if you're looking for good lure, I would definitely get the hardback that's on Amazon. And then you can go to the preparation.com which is a substack that we set up about the book. But also as people go through it, young people start doing, we encourage them to again put this reflection and accountability to publish it like my son did and then kind of amplify and connect the people who are doing it. So that. And I would have to talk about my son's substack too. Just so you see, it's maximsmith.com M A X I M smith.com because you can see the stuff that he's done for the last two years. This kind of proof of work.
- [54:52]
B
This is awesome. Well, Matt Smith, thanks so much for your time. It's been a pleasure.
- [54:54]
C
Oh yeah, thank you very much, Brad.
- [54:57]
A
My guest today was Matt Smith. He's the co author of the book the Preparation. It's available on Amazon.com you can find more information about the preparation at ThePreparation.com also check out our show notes at AOM. Is ThePreparation where you find links to resources. We delve deeper into this topic. Well, that wraps up another edition of the AWIM podcast. Make sure to check out our website at architect of manless.com where you find our podcast archives and make sure to sign up for a new newsletter. It's called Dying Breed. You can sign up@dying breed.net It's a great way to support the show directly. As always, thank you for the continued support. Until next time is Brett McKay remind listen Amon podcast but put what you've heard into action.