Shaun Newman Podcast - #919 - Matt Smith

Episode Date: September 24, 2025

Matt Smith, an American entrepreneur and economic commentator, co-authored The Preparation: How to Become Competent, Confident, and Dangerous with Doug Casey and his son, Maxim Smith. A Gen X innovator with ventures in tech, marketing, publishing, and regenerative ranching in Uruguay, Smith critiques traditional education as debt-heavy and ineffective. The book outlines a four-year, 16-cycle alternative to college for young men, tested by Maxim, emphasizing real-world skills like EMT training, welding, piloting, and entrepreneurship to forge versatile, self-reliant "universal men." To watch the Full Cornerstone Forum: https://open.substack.com/pub/shaunnewmanpodcastGet your voice heard: Text Shaun 587-217-8500Silver Gold Bull Links:Website: https://silvergoldbull.ca/Email: [e-mail] Grahame: [phone]Bow Valley Credit UnionBitcoin: www.bowvalleycu.com/en/personal/investing-wealth/bitcoin-gatewayEmail: [e-mail] Use the code “SNP” on all ordersProphet River Links:Website: store.prophetriver.com/Email: [e-mail] Money SummitWebsite: ExpatMoneySummit.com

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This is Tammy Peterson. This is Danielle Smith. This is James Lindsay. Hey, this is Brett Kessel, and you're listening to the Sean Newman podcast. Welcome to the podcast, folks. Happy Wednesday. How's everybody doing today? Man, I'm going to be very curious your thoughts on today's episode.

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So the Mash Spiel is coming January 17th to Kalmar, Alberta. So that is something to pay attention for folks. That's January 17th, Saturday to January 17th. We're having a bond spiel for the mashup. We had all the details almost ironed out, and then, of course, we changed the date because of the UCPA-GM. So pay attention for more details coming on that.

The Cornerstone 4. Well, actually, no, before I get there, Quick Dick McDick is live in Lashburn, November 22nd. You can get tickets for that at showpass.com backslash-lashburn. So Quick-Dick is helping raise money, coming in to help raise money for a new school playground for the J.H. Moore Elementary School in Lashburn. So that is November 22nd.

And I'll be in attendance for that. Looking forward to running into Quick Dick. And if you've ever seen him live, he is, you know, he's pretty electric. That should be a fun night and hopefully raise some money for a good cause. And then the Cornerstone Forum is coming back. March 28, 26 in Calgary, Alberta. Yes, more details are coming, but for now, mark your calendars. March 28, 2026 in Calgary, Alberta.

If you're listening or watching on Spotify, Apple, YouTube, Rumble, make sure to subscribe. Make sure to leave a review. If you're on Axit, retweet. If you like the show, share with a friend. All right. Now, let's get on to that tale of the tape. Today's guest is an American entrepreneur and economic commentator who co-authored

the preparation, how to become competent, confident, and dangerous. I'm talking about Matt Smith. So buckle up. Here we go. Welcome to the Sean Newman podcast. Today I'm joined by Matt Smith. Thank you for doing this. Real pleasure, Sean.

Thank you for having me. I was saying, you know, before we got started, like I got to have your son on and he was in the middle of the preparation. And it was my brother who had started following him. And that's where it came into my light. And, you know, I've had Doug on before. And so, you know, I started reading his writings. I'm like, this is super interesting. So it had him on.

And I was telling you, and I'll say it live on air, I feel like he'll be a cornerstone guest. at some point for those who don't know, I put on an annual event called the Cornerstone Forum. And, you know, you look for, I do five podcasts a week. So, you know, you extrapolate that over a year. And that's, you know, 200 and some. And depending on holidays and a couple other things,

but over 200. And then, you know, I try and pull out some of the minds that I'm like, holy man, more people need to interact with this person. And I, with Maxim, I remember thinking and I still think it. I'm like, he's a few years away from being on the state. I just think what he's doing with his life is very unusual compared to most young kids. And so that is where this conversation, you know, is going because of your book, The Preparation, which now is written and it's out.

And so regardless, that is my intro statement, I guess. Matt, you've never been on the show before. So before we get into the preparation and the book, how will you tell the audience a little bit about yourself? And yeah, I'd just love to hear, you know, a little bit more. about who you are. Sure. Well, I'm a serial entrepreneur. I mean, everything I've done in my entire life is start businesses, build them, some succeed, some failed, sold a couple, still have a couple. But currently I live in Uruguay on a cattle ranch, and I guess if I, I've always

preferred to stay in the background my entire life, except for where I stepped out of that in the last few years is with doing this podcast with Doug Casey, Doug who's kind of my personal hero and a long time friend of mine. You know, I met him first, I think, at 2007. And we've done a lot of interesting things together for sure over the years. But during COVID, I just, you know, we're all kind of locked down. Wasn't anything to do. And I thought, hey, Doug, maybe we should just start doing a podcast where I'll just have the same conversation with you. I normally would alone, but we'll just record it and we won't know nothing fancy we'll do it on zoom it'll be super easy for you and i'm just going to ask you questions and um and so people could because i think Doug's like a

fountain of wisdom and uh it's really important to i think Doug has a lot of wisdom to share with the world so basically that was my whole goal with those podcasts it's called Doug Casey's take so i do that and we've got a substack called crisis investing where we basically we basically Doug is known for being a legendary speculator. And we're in this big resource boom right now. And so we're trying to help investors position themselves accordingly. But right now these days, I do the podcast with Doug. We have the newsletter.

And I'm a cattle rancher. Yeah. With the relationship, that's how I stumbled on you as I listened to a bunch of guys' podcasts, which I found fascinating. That's, you know, like I've been fortunate enough to get to sit with Doug. on several occasions and pick his thoughts and pick his brain. You get to do it a heck of a lot more often than I do. You know, for where I want to take today's conversation,

I interviewed a lady named Tanya Abbey. Now this is, folks, this is like we're on episode 900 and change. We're going back to episode like 100 and some. And she was a lady at the time was the youngest lady to circumnavigate the world solo. and the story read that her father dropped her off in the New York Harbor. She'd sailed one summer before with him. They weren't like this avid sailing family. And he basically kicked her out on this boat and said,

come back in a year or come back when you're done type thing. And I was like, I can't imagine being a father and doing that. You know, I see danger in the open sea. And I know for sailors, there's certainly there's danger there. But there's a lot more calm waters at times as well. and I just don't fully understand that because I'm not a seafarer.

So when I talk to Maxim, and now the book's finally out, I'm like, I'm curious. You know, as a father who said, you know, son,

don't take the path where you go to college and you go on all these things, try and be something different. Here's what I think would work. And together we'll put together, you know, what becomes the preparation. I was just curious, father to father,

like, you know, like was that an easy thing was it you know maybe i i see danger differently than you you know living in uruguay and being a well-traveled guy talking to dug casey all the time who's traveled immensely um was this uh i don't know walk me through it i guess well i think it goes back to basically parenting in general um you know where your kids are you notice that you constantly have to readjust your strategy with your kids so that they still grow right i mean you go from the point where they literally can't crawl yet and you can just put them on the floor and you know

it's safe you don't have to worry about anything to the point where they start crawling around and grabbing onto stuff and then they become a danger to themselves and others you know but you constantly have to adapt adapt your strategy to like what what is what allows them to grow and a big part of that is you have to create vacuums for them to step into you know as they as they you know but they can dress them they get to a point where they can dress themselves but you know it's easier and faster maybe if you do it for them, right? But like, it's not a good idea. Like they need to, you need them to do it themselves. And so you have to create space for them to do it. And the whole parenting road is like that. You got to create vacuums of space so that they can develop further.

Otherwise, you stunt their growth. And I think broadly, our society is infantilized people and made it so that they don't grow because we don't create vacuums for the kids to become adults. And a big part of the preparation, it definitely is, creates a very important. It creates a vacuums for them, you know, but I think it's not, it's not out of proportion at all with, you know, what's traditionally been done. And so this is, this infantilization is very new where we tell people they shouldn't, they shouldn't do it. Basically, our society today, our kids today are the most surveilled, tracked, scheduled, basically, uh, imprisoned generation effort to exist. I mean, they can't go play outside without being hassled oftentimes. I mean,

I had the police called on me for my kids walking when I lived in Denver, walking to the park together when they were, I don't know, let's say 10 and 12, you know, the park just on the street, like like a quarter mile away, you know, but some neighbors saw them walking alone thought, oh my God, this must be dangerous, a very safe neighborhood. So this infantilization is a big problem and it basically keeps kids from growing up and it makes them so they're certainly not prepared for the world at large. So I think you have to manage the danger.

I mean, there is real risk in some of the ones. Absolutely. But I don't think with anything that, I mean, listen, Max did the sailing thing, part of one of his, what, for one of his cycles and get into the preparation, how it's structured. But basically for one of the cycles, he did do sailing and he started and he did it in the Falkland Islands, which is basically being thrown in the deep end. And then through the Strait of Magellan. So that was quite an adventure for him and quite, I guess, dangerous, but definitely exciting for him. And like a real right of passage. So it was really good for him.

But I knew he was one of the best high latitude captains on Earth. Like it's as safe as he could be in that situation. But he was definitely learned, he learned sailing the hard way, the fast way, the deep water way, I guess. Yeah, I am going to, you know, like when I read this book, and I don't want to put it up on screen because a, there we go, folks, okay, I could see it. A, I was saying to my brothers, A, like, I don't know why. I just, I'm like, I really, it came in the mail. Thank you for sending it. My pleasure.

I got it. And I'm like, this is like a beautiful book. Like, it just, it is. I don't, there's lots, I get sent lots of different things. It's just, I just like it. And then as I started to read it, you know, as a man closing in on 40, three young kids, it just speaks to things I wish I would have read at a younger, age. Now, I mean, I can wish I'd play, you know, go back in time and have this book sitting there so I could read it and think about some things. But who knows if I even would have picked it up in the first place. Now as an older man, certainly having to do things a little differently because I, you know, I can't just go off and do a cycle. I got kids and everything going on. But like reading it, especially, you know, when you're starting with the opening philosophies, it's like, oh, this is this is something young men should read. And I just had a

guest on yesterday that talked about young men are what was the word you use folks hopeless or and they're looking for things to grasp onto to navigate a troubling world and I'm like wow let me tell you the get well you know in my brain I'm like I know who I got coming on the next day and I'm already reading it and I'm like the you know like my hope is my son when I give this to him when he comes of a certain age he'll want to read it and it'll spur on some ideas because as a young guy I had older brothers. They went and off and traveled the world. And that forced a conversation when I was like 18 that, you know,

maybe some get, maybe some don't. And we ended up biking across Canada together. And I just see that as like one of those cycles, right? One of those anchor moments that teach you an invaluable lesson. And that for me was nothing is impossible. You can, you know, don't get me wrong. It's hard. And there's lots of difficulties in learning something new

and not having a clue and all the things and how people look at you for doing something completely out of the norm. But then that allowed me to create this, which is why you're on the show, right? Like, I mean, all these things start to stack on each other. And this book explains that extremely well, I'm out. I'm not trying to pump anyone's tires here. I guess I am. It's just like I started reading.

I'm like, holy crap. You know, when we're talking about men, young men, specifically not knowing what to do with life, they can't afford a home, all these different things. I'm like, well, pick this up. Give it a read. I mean, there's other books I would add in, and this book tells you to do that. But like- Oh, yeah, we tell, we point on a lot of books that went on to read in this book.

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, you know, the thing is, is young men want to be somebody. So when I feel hopeless, it's because they don't see a path to becoming somebody. So the book is 90% about what exactly to do. But we recognize that the do isn't really what matters. It's the B. And actually, I should explain the kind of the origin of the book. Sure. Yes. Doug first pitched me on it maybe 12 years ago. You know, Doug's written a lot of books. This is the first one I'd ever done maybe the last. I don't know. But he said, he pitched me on it. He said he wanted to call it Renaissance Man. And I was, and it was on a car ride with him. He was pitching me on this. And I said, well, what's it about? And he said, well, I wanted to be about the three most important verbs in every language, be do and have. And I asked him, I'm like, well, I didn't get it. So I'm like, what does that mean?

And he said, well, I don't really know. I don't really know. Like, okay. And he'd bring it up every couple years with me. But he really wanted to write this book, this Renaissance man thing. And at other times, he'd tell me that writing a book is a lot of brain damage and you don't make any money doing it. So then he's trying to sell me on doing it still.

And I'm like, nah, yeah, I'm not really interested. Until my son was 17, approaching 18. And I could see in him this anxiety he had about the future, this uncertainty about what he should be doing this yearning to be something, to be somebody, you know, but having no clear path for it. And it's part of it. I made it worse because I'm a college dropout. So he didn't grow up in this household where there was this path that was expected, you know, like some people in some families, you might grow up where they'd say college is the key

to success. So at least whether that's true or not, and I would argue it's not true. But at least the anxiety on the kids level is much lower because at least they think they know what they ought to be doing. Whereas my son, maybe because he wasn't propagandized in that way, felt really completely lost. He was unsure about what he should do, totally. And so I became very interested in the idea then. And I got, you know, I got back with Doug and I said, let's flush this out a little bit more. Like, what exactly, what exactly is this all about and what exactly should one do? And so the B do have thing. Let me explain that. Most people are motivated by have today. We live in a

mass consumer culture and it's all about stuff, you know, um, you know, I want to have a nice car. I want to have a, you know, a nice house. I want to have a beautiful mate. I want to, you know, have, have, have, that's just what it is. And that's what we see to be motivated by, but the truth is is that, uh, what you have is, um, determined by what you do. Like have is a byproduct. It's just, it's like it's, it's not the cause, right? It's not the, it's not the do is what matters. Do is the operative. And the thing is young men, especially, have so much energy and so much, they're free of liabilities still at this, at the college age. There's so many things that they could do. You know, they have so, they have so much energy to do things, but they don't, it's not pointed in

any useful direction for them. And what we try and do is that in this book, as we point out, and we say exactly what they ought to do. But, so there's B do have. The B, though, is the most important part. The B is all that really matters. And, um, And nobody ever asks a young man or any, really anyone anymore. You know, you know, you know, when your kids are little, you play this game like, you know, where are you going to be when you grow up? And it's always like, you know, what their world of understanding is. It's fireman or astronaut or something, you know, something like that sounds cool, right?

Well, that question gets a lot harsher. It doesn't go away, but it gets a lot harsher as the kids get older. You know, in their college age, it's like, who is going to be your boss? you know what what's your job going to be is really what the question is and that's a really stupid question it really is first of all it's not a very good desirable like goal is to be in you know to say i want to be an accountant for the rest of my life when you're 18 years old i mean how the hell could you even know that that's something a worthwhile pursuit just like your kids would think astronauts a great idea when they're four you know or spider-man you know i mean it's

like they don't even understand anything about the world yet but we're expecting them to choose the occupation they want and the occupations they want and the occupations occupation really doesn't matter that much. There's lots of ways to make money. There's lots of jobs that one could have. The question we should ask young men especially is what kind of man do you want to become? What kind of man? What are the character traits of the man you want to be? You know, what substance is really there? And that is way more motivating. And the same way for your little kids, like being Spider-Man might be like sound really cool. Well, you know, if you get a young man thinking about what kind of man they want to be, like that does motivate them

in a very interesting way. And so we, We basically plant the seed of B very strongly in the beginning of the book or the first part of the book so that and actually have helped them go through kind of where they develop their own personal code. And I can explain more of that later if you want. But. Well, just on that, Matt, one of the things that I really enjoy about that train of thinking is, you know, I think at some point and, you know, does it happen at 13? Does it happen at 25? You take your pick.

Does it happen later? But that question is what eventually we all fall on, I feel like, where it's like, who the heck do I want to be? You know, like, who what, you know, and you do a very good job of pointing to historical figures. And at what age, they take on extreme responsibility. And that, you know, in our society, you know, we, we live under mom and dad's wing and it just keeps getting later and later. You know, it used to be younger and younger. I come from a settler community. And when you read the old stories by like 14, 12, like there's some stories out there

where you're like, wow, they were like, what do we do with our 12 year olds? You know, like, and this is something for a young man to pick up and contemplate some very deep questions. But if you solve that and realize, you know, if I march to my own beat, if I become who I'm okay with and people don't like that, who cares? It doesn't matter to you. It doesn't matter. I think it's a very, very, very good chapters in the very beginning. Sorry.

Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. No, I think the B thing is, it is all that really matters. It is the thing that motivates you. And it is at the thing at the end of the day that you can stand fast on. And I think that, you know, all the problems that we see manifested in the world in recent years wouldn't exist if more people, if more men, at least had a firm understanding

of themselves. and had actually had really knew who they wanted to be and were behaving in the way that they want, you know, of the man that they wanted to be would behave. They would have drawn a line in the sand for some of this nonsense that we've had to experience. But most of them instead, what they do is if you don't define this for yourself, you end up just going with a flow, you know, because you don't have anything, you don't have any moral basis for yourself to stand on to say, no, no, this is a line I will not cross. I don't do these kinds of things. So I'm not going to do this. And the reason that young people and historically young men were able to do these seem like extraordinary things to us now is simply because they are that potential exists. But we unnecessarily infantilize them. We feel like, you know, child labor is a bad thing and, you know, make it harder and harder for kids to get even the silly jobs that probably you had, I had when I was a kid, you know, delivering newspapers starting at nine.

I mean, like that kind of thing. I mean, I would even feel weird about my kids doing that when they were nine years old, you know, going, getting up every morning and, you know, 5 a.m. or, well, the paper said to be delivered by seven for me, you know, every day. And no matter where the weather was, you know, but I think I would have felt a little weird about that even when my kids were nine. My kids doing that, even though I did that. But that's crazy. It's a crazy thought to think that they're not capable of it. Well, they certainly are capable than more we give them up. My son at, is that nine? Yeah, well, he's nine now. So his old babysitter need to clean up poop in the backyard. And she asked if she'd be interested in the job. And I said, oh, I'll ask him. You know, I'm not going to say he has to go do this if he wants to do it.

He's like, well, do I get to make money? I'm like, well, yeah, that's what's implied. And so he went. And I picked up dog poop a lot. And his technique at nine, Matt, was impressive. I was like, I would have never thought to have done it like that. I was actually thoroughly impressed. I'm like, you know, don't get me wrong.

He needs a little bit of guidance on on making sure he gets everything and all that stuff. So I went there to just be a, you know, a comforting presence, if you would. But watching him pick up dog poop, I know is a silly job, but somebody was paying him for it. And I was thoroughly impressed at how he did it. Like, I was like, you know, just watching a younger mind look at it and go, no, I'm not touching that. How do I solve this problem? How do I solve this problem? And he solved it quite well.

He had a technique that I was like. Like, man, I just learned something. Isn't that a wild thought that a nine-year-old could teach you something so simple as dog poop cleanup? Yeah, man, give them a job. Give them responsibility. I'm just, I'm very pro responsibility, personal responsibility. And like, your kids thrive under that. And young men especially thrive under responsibility.

And we just, for some reason, there's a tendency not to not to hand it over. I don't really know what it is. Certainly the institutions make it very difficult. You know, school does that. College makes it worse, I think. But, but yeah, they love responsibility, actually. It thrive under responsibility. No, I have, so I come from a family of five.

There's, or like five, four other siblings, sorry. And, you know, when I look at this, I go, I have one brother who knew exactly what they wanted to do. At a young age, off he went, became an engineer. And I look at my wife. When I met her in college, she knew exactly what you want to do. And I always admired it. I was just like, how do you know?

Like, how do you know what you want to do? Like, I just can't, I want to do everything. And yet I know that's not a great path, or at least at the time, I didn't think that was a great path because I'm like, I don't know how that's going to pay the bills, you know, because I can't like just, oh, this is what I want to do. And, you know, as an older guy, or I guess late in my 20s, I picked up a book, maybe I was early 30s now.

It might have been early 30s, if I'm honest with myself. I picked up a book, 12 Rules to Life by Jordan Peterson. and it started to put together puzzle pieces. And, you know, this book, I'm like, it's kind of obliter Jordan Peterson of like, you know, some things you really need to think about. But then the thing I really enjoy about it, I mean, I enjoyed the entire thing,

but towards the end, and maybe even through the middle of it, it gives you like things you could actually just go do and like a little bit of outline. Does it give you all the answers? Certainly not. but it gives you some things to think on with the philosophical, if you would. The philosophical is really important, and that's what Jordan Peterson did.

It gave you some very practical things, like, clean your room. Oh, yeah, that makes sense if I started doing that and just see what happens. This is more of a hands-on, I think. And I don't know if you would agree with that thought. Yeah, yeah, that's the idea. I mean, and I would say that when I remember when Maxim read or actually listened to the audiobook of Jordan Peterson's book, 12 Rules for Life. It was, it was amazing to watch the effect it had on him. Like, he just started just cleaning up everywhere, you know. You just, because,

why? Because the idea of responsibility makes you feel powerful, you know, and so like that just called to you. Like, it says, no, no, there's, you can change this. Like, you can do something about this situation. You don't like it. That's your fault. You can fix it. And that is, that's empowering to people who basically find themselves, you know, teenage angst or frustration is so common. So, you know, especially at that age, they, they, you know, there's all kinds of things that they don't like about what's happening around them, but the idea that, no, no, that's your fault. You can do something about it, too. Let me show you. Like, that's pretty exciting, actually. The, like, personal agency is empowering. So, yeah, I think, so what our goal with the book was,

specifically was to say, because under Doug's core thesis was that college for him, he went, unlike me, he is not a college dropout. He's highly educated. He went to Georgetown. You know, back when, you know, college was still seen, everyone would have said it was definitely the way to go. And even then he says it was a misallocation of his time and his parents' money, you know, as a way he said it back then. And now it's so much worse because it's so much more expensive. And it's the value you drive from it is so much lower and the certainty it provides about the future, especially in the era of AI, is so much lower. It's definitely not the bargain it was during his day. But the question is, what do you do instead? And so what we do specifically is we break it down,

again, competing with college. We break it down over four years into four cycles, each is a quarter. We call them a cycle. And each cycle has an anchor activity, which is kind of an adventurous hands-on, you know, really do something to learn as a very specific skill that has, in many cases, some economic value. So you could just go with that one thing and you could get a job afterwards. Not that we encourage you to do that, but each of these core skills, mostly, most of them provide real economic value. So you can really, so you could do that if you wanted to. And then, but we don't want to skip on academics. The fortunate thing is that most of the almost everything you can get online now i mean most of many of yales classes are

online the entire mit catalog is online uh stanford has a bunch online there's all kinds of free if you whatever education you want you can get it today you can get exactly the same thing and so the academics it's very structured what you should take and when you should take it some reading assignments in there too um and there's other components of other activities and things that we want people do the goal is that we tell you exactly what to do and instead of going to college. And so we take that uncertainty away. When Max started it, and my son has been our guinea pig, really, for the first two years

as we were putting this thing together. We started off with basically what you could put on a napkin as far as like the really the games, activities and occupations that Doug thought every man should be able to do these things or have some skill in these few categories. Started with that. That's what Maxim started with. And then ultimately we came out with a pretty structured thing that's a that really details everything exactly you should do. And that was a huge pain they asked to put together,

by the way. Uh, has to that detail. But, but I think that that makes it way more useful for people because it doesn't just fill you with good ideas. It does, it actually empowers a young person to know what to do and do is what the thing is in their power, like do changes them. So we want them to, they should devote most of their energy to doing. Yeah. Well, that's why. I bring up, it reminded me a bit of Jordan Peterson because it gives you a lot of things to go stew on. But then it gives you the practical application of, no, you should actually go do. And you're probably going to be parallel.

Well, how do I do it? And then it just lays it out. It's like, well, this is how it worked for Maxim. This is what we did. This is how you could start. This is relatively the cost of what you're going to incur. You know, so you got to add that in as well. And, you know, I just hope I'm not gushing over it too much.

I watched an interview. I forget who you did it with. And the guy was saying, I was like, man, he really likes the book. I wonder what was in the, you know, and then of course, I started reading it. I'm like, I get it. I'm like, you know, as a guy who went to college. Now, I was, I didn't want to go to college at when I first graduated. I don't know where that train of thought would ever got me.

But unfortunately, or fortunately for me, not unfortunately. Fortunately for me, a coach that I played hockey for reached out and set me off on a different path. And that led me to playing hockey in college and all the different things. In this, I go back to my siblings. There was five of us. One knew at least, and I guess I can't speak for dust, but I felt like he knew exactly what he wanted to do. And he went and did it. Whereas I went to college and I remember being in like my, you know, sitting with the advisor.

And she's like, what do you want to do? And I'm like, I have no idea. Okay, well then just take a whole bunch of courses and see what you like. I'm like, all right. That sounds good to me, you know. And so I slowly found a path. And then I graduated. And I, you know, it's almost a disheartening thing to go, I don't know if I ever, you know, like I have a degree in history.

Now, I really like history and there's nothing wrong with that. But that degree has translated to zero when it comes to my working life, you know. And so you think of all the money in time. Now, I had a different reason for going. It was hockey. and so that's certainly there's going to be that that case study for a lot of people that sports takes into different places but like I look at my other siblings and they're business owners they they do a lot of great stuff but the story is kind of similar there's a whole bunch

of young men who don't know what they want to do and this book when you start reading it I feel like it's not going to tell you what it's not like here you should go be an astronaut but it's going to give you something to think on and then to go do for a course of time, it might be like, no, I actually want to be an engineer and I'm going to go off and do that. And that is okay. Actually, I could be wrong. Maybe you'll correct me on this. At the start, it talks about basically, there's a lot of useless things in college. It doesn't mean that all of college is useless, because there are some certain occupations that if you go do it and that's what you want to do, that's that's cool but you should really give some thought to who you want to be and then here's some

things that you could go do to try in what's the word I'm looking for develop who you want to be maybe is it is the way to put it I think the the key thing is we're trying to shift the orientation from figuring out what you want to do to be able to pay the rent when you grow up to what kind of man you want to be and you know the other thing that young men don't have today and this is a a huge negative for our society, I think, is that they don't have, there's no right of passage, there's no hero's journey, there's no, none of that. And so there's always this lack of self that, you know, that people, young men emerge into adulthood without like a clear understanding that they're ready for it, you know, that they're, that they're worthy of it,

that they know what to do with it. I mean, so, so, so well, this solves that. I mean, And it's also very exciting to young men. I mean, they want that hero's journey. They want that right of passage. I still want that hero's journey. I don't think you lose that. I don't think it's just a young man thing. I think we all have that.

Yeah, I think we do. But I think if you've done, if you, there's a calling to you, until you feel like you've done it, you know, that you've gone, you've gone away and you've come back and renewed or new, something else, something other than what you started with until you have done something like that. I feel like, yeah, that's going to be an aching empty hole in every young man's heart. Yeah, I would agree.

You know, you, I, I, I wasn't going to write in the book because my goal was, you know, eventually I'm just going to hand this off to my oldest and then hopefully, you know, my other kids as well. But I'm like, ah, I'm going to forget all these things that I'm enjoying. One of the things on the podcast that I've tried to do, is I know I ask stupid question. There is no stupid question, but I just, like, I don't know what I don't know.

So I have to, you have a line in here, you quote a Pictus a lot, and I hope I'm saying that. It's epictetus. Of course I get that wrong. It's all right. That's all right. He says, if you want to improve,

be content to be thought foolish and stupid. And I'm like, yeah, right? If you want to learn, you got to ask questions. You got to be curious. You've got to find out how things actually work. And you can't act like you know it. Because how the heck on earth would you know it if you've never done it? And there's just, once again, a ton of that in here that I'm like,

this is brilliant for young men, specifically young men in the way my brain thinks to, to wrestle with and to be okay with and developed who they are. You know, one of the ironic thing is when you're a kid, like everything you do when you start, you try and do. Like, for example, I was just teaching last week, my daughter, who's 17, to drive. drive a manual transmission. Okay. So because to pass to get a driver's license here in Uruguay, you can't get until you're 18 and it's done with a manual transmission. So that's just how she has to be able to do that. She can drive an automatic. But so you know how that experience

can be. And she and so we were practicing starting going uphill, right? Which is the that you learn that basically you do it pretty much anything. And of course, you know, she'd messed up as everyone would. you know, like the first time you did it. I remember learning. I screwed it up. But you feel so embarrassed when you did it. You feel like, oh, I can't believe I should be, I should do better. And there's this weird thing. When you're young, you feel like, you know, you feel embarrassed by these things.

Like it takes a lot. I don't know if I could feel embarrassed by anything at this point. I'm 50 now. Like, I don't get embarrassed anymore. It's just weird. It goes away. But like when you're young, you're so afraid of it. You're so, so it keeps you, it holds you back from throwing yourself into these new

experiences because you expect you're going to look stupid because you don't because you're not competent. Well, listen, the way you get competent is you, you just have to be foolish at first. I mean, that's just how you learn things. And whether it's, you know, ideas or actually doing physical things, you're going to be, you're going to feel stupid along the way. And that's fine. That's just part of the process. And so for Max is, Max is now with two years into it, he's had to do so many new things. Like, he's very good, very good at throwing himself. in situations where he feels like an idiot at first and to get to get skilled up in it. And that's just, I wish I had been that.

I wish I'd had that rapid iteration like he's had when I was younger because it would have gotten me over that foolish feeling much earlier. And I would have been better served by it for sure. Yeah, well, I just go back to biking Canada. We went, we were not cyclists. We'd never done anything like that. We bought all the kits, you know, that they told us to buy. and in the first mile we popped the tire and what are we going to do?

Well, there's nobody here to help us. Well, we better fix the tire. Well, how do we fix the tire? We're going to learn because there's nothing we can do. Nobody we could call. And so you fix the tire. And then you're like, oh, that wasn't so bad. And then you fix probably no less than 100 tires across Canada, right?

And things happen. And those little skills teach you more than just fixing a tire. And so when you enter into anything you don't know home, a lot about and you go into that uncomfortable position it's not that long until you start to feel comfortable and then it's not that long after you start to learn a ton and it teaches you just as much about the skill as it does about yourself on the way to approach so much more and like i was thinking you know when my nephew graduated i think we got them a piece of silver i want to say a knife and there was something else. And the reason I bring it up is I'm like a graduation gift, it might be a day late

because they might already decided their path ahead. But this book, I was thinking about it, you know, like probably something I'm going to give to a lot of young men. If they, you know, because I always thought a piece of silver will give them something to think about. Why didn't he give me a chunk of something? What does that even mean? You know, it does, it does raise questions. questions, but doesn't provide answers. Right. And this, if they're willing to pick it up and spent, you know, like, is it a, is a thousand page book?

No, it's, it's, you know, quite easy to read. You can enforce you to confront a few things about yourself and maybe get their brain ticking in a different way than anything in the world, not anything in the world. I'm sure there's other literature, but anything has come across my desk other than Jordan Peterson. And that's a, that's a, that's a thick read. you know, this is a little more hands-on. I think, man, this would be a great graduation gift. Yeah, I mean, a lot of, I know a lot of people that have done exactly what you're suggesting, they just give it to the young men that they know in their lives, whether they be children,

nephews, neighbor kids, you know, so I've heard a lot of that from people, and that's really gratifying to hear because, you know, the goal, the goal with it, because there's no money in books. So that's not the motivation. And, you know, Doug and I have enough. That's, that's not the motivation. The motivation primarily for me was my son's particular problem, you know, and trying to solve that. But that, you know, once I saw that the effect it was having, it became very clear that if we could codify it, if we could structure it clear enough and make it accessible enough, then, you know, it could be really useful to a lot of people. So that that's the goal with it. And I mean, most parents who have read it, I mean, the buyers of it, let's be honest, are parents. They're not grand parents.

You know, they're not the, what? There's one practical reason for that. I mean, what 17-year-old even has a credit card that they can go and buy it, you know? I mean, and are they looking? Do they even understand what the world of possibilities is? Probably not. So, yeah, so most of our parents, I know, and it gives it to their, those are obviously parents who are concerned about, you know, their kids and want to make sure that they have

the awareness of all the options that are out there. So they get it and they try to get them to read it. And the question was, will it work, though? we actually get him to read it. And I remember there was one father who was emailing me. And he was really trying to get his son to read it. Really, really trying. And he said, but the kid didn't immediately bite on it.

And so he was like, I don't know, maybe I can schedule a call with Maxim and maybe if Maxim talks to him because, you know, people don't listen to their parents always. But a couple days later, he sent me a text message that he got the night before from his son. And I wish I could, I wish I had it right in front of me. He said, he said, it was from his son, thanking his dad for getting him the book. Actually, I might be able to find it. You give me a second. Yeah, for sure.

He said this. This is what the father said this to me. This is a text message from his son the night before. He said, thank you for buying me the preparation. I started reading it, and it's really powerful. I honestly couldn't put the book down. So he didn't need to talk to Maxim. And we did try to make the physical, the hardcover.

and it's so expensive. I understand this, but this is how much it costs to print. The vast majority of all the money goes to Amazon because we self-publish this thing, and they print it. But we tried to make the hardcover, like lure. Tried to make it beautiful. No, it is beautiful. But it got in someone's hands, they'd be like, well, I haven't held anything like this before. And then maybe you would create enough curiosity. They'd open it and look at it. And they'd say, this is different.

I mean, where are all these QR codes about, you know, just if nothing else, it would just be different. stand out as different and it would draw them in slowly. That was the goal. But as we thought, if you're trying to get a young person to read it, you know, you need, you know, sometimes the person they want advice from least is their parents, you know, so they tell them they read a book. The last thing they want to do is read that book. So we tried to make it as lure, and it does seem to work.

Well, it is a beautiful book. You know, the thing you said there was, will it work? and so on this side you know living through COVID in Canada was an experience you know and it taught me a lot about myself you know and so then you you go like how can we ensure that things get better in society and I don't know where where other people got to but my summarization of it is like well the individual needs to get better they need to clean up their room they to they need to get to where they have a line in the sand no we're not doing that but if only one does that then society just basically walks over them and but what happened if there's a thousand

what happens if there's a million what what what right and when i read this i'm like well this is going to create a bunch of young men that have like no this is what i'm about and and they're not dictated to by what society says. And if it's five, I don't know in your life, but in my life, when five people start doing something, then others are watching it and seeing the good things that are happening in their life, let's say. Like, huh, well, that's interesting. What did they do?

Well, it's simple. They read a book. Or they, you know, where did they get those ideas from? And I can see how that could spread very rapidly. You know, to me, that's Jordan Peterson. You know, he wrote a book that had a lot of meaning in it, and it spread like wildfire. So when I, when I see the book and you go, oh, it's, you know, it costs a lot and all these different things. I'm like, well, it isn't a thousand dollar book.

It's like, it's not that expensive, folks. It's not that expensive, Matt. To be honest. The hardcover for a book is $100. But I will say the Kindle, if you get on Kindle for free, if you are a Kindle unlimited subscriber. So it is available in free and cheaper version. But you're right. The hardcover, that more version, it's $99.

Yeah. But the thing is, I'm like, look at what we spend money on these days. And if you think about that, it's like $100. Don't get me wrong. I'm dropping $100 on every book. Well, no. But when I look at this, I go, I'll probably drop $100 on this a few times because I got nieces and nephews and my own kids.

and to have one of their own, I'm like, I think it would be very interesting to see what happens. I just, to me, there's enough in the pages that I'm like, yeah, this makes sense. And I want to give them some value. And I think there's a lot of value in that $100. I just, that's just my own personal opinion. I'll let other people who pick it up and go on to spend the $100, they can yell at me or go, no, you're right. But I look at it and I go, in our world, in the value of money these days, $100, dollars, you know, are you going to drop that on every book? No, probably not. But this book,

the hardcover specifically, am I? Yeah, this makes a lot of sense, especially for a father with young kids. And, you know, one of the, one of the things I wanted to ask you about, because this has been talked to me immensely about finding a mentor, right? You need to find mentors. And so my brain's always, well, you know, like, what's a mentor? Okay. And you have a chapter on it. Forget mentors find a patron. Would you mind? explaining that to the audience? Yeah, there's two things I'm trying to accomplish with this chapter, and the first thing is that the younger generation has been set up against the older generations. I mean, you see all this conflict between boomers and millennials and definitely Gen Z,

where, you know, I think the boomers think that the kids are dumb and the kids blame the boomers for the world, you know, not being so easy for them. And I think it's all nonsense. I mean, there are some structural issues and everyone, every generation looks at the younger generations like, what's wrong with these kids, you know? Like, that's a, these are normal tendencies. But I think this younger generation has been, is less comfortable with older people than other generations have been. I mean, they spend less, they've been more isolated from them than has ever happened before. So they don't feel comfortable interacting with them and they don't see benefit in interacting with them. So I'm trying to dispel this myth that you should stay in your generation or that your generation is going to be where the great value comes to in your life.

I mean, best, the most important relationships in my life have been intergenerational, you know, like Doug with me. Doug was my like personal hero long before I ever got to meet him in person, you know, that was just because he changed the way I thought about stuff that was very important to me. And, you know, it couldn't have come from somebody in my generation. It couldn't have come. And, you know, likewise, I have most of my employees are millennials, you know. And I, like, I think they're great. People would shit on millennials all the time.

And I say, I don't have that opinion of them. To me, they're like a weird, they're like boomers, but with experiences instead of Cadillacs, you know. I mean, it's like the same thing. So I understand them. And I respect them and I think they're good people on both sides of it. So I'm trying to dispel this. I'm trying to help people understand that the older generation can be of huge value for them in creating helping them understand the world around them and opening doors for them

and helping them see, recognize opportunities and actually even providing them with opportunities potentially. And so that's number one. I'm trying to basically deal with the generation. rational problem where they're not so isolated. I think that's a huge, huge negative. And the second thing is that the way that people look at mentorship is wrong. Like you say, people say, people tell you, you need a mentor, you need a mentor. Well, the idea of a mentor, as it's set up in corporate America, at least, is that you kind of get assigned, you know, somebody who is basically, you know, not your

boss, but, you know, supposed to kind of guide you through the corporate world more or less. And it's assigned and it's it's a totally one-way street where the mentor is expected to kind of coach you and give you career advice and you know kind of maybe maybe if they like you maybe help you with future promotions stuff like that but it's a one-way street like the mentee receives and the mentor gives and that's not it's not like what are the relationship actual relationship in the world works like that where one party gives the other one receives and there's nothing you know at all like that relationships don't do not work like that so I just use the example of what was very common and part of the really civic structure in ancient

Rome and that's this patron client relationship. This can put the wrong ideas in people's heads about exactly just calling it a patron. But this was a very common part of civil society, as I said, in ancient Rome. And it was where usually somebody is more successful, certainly older, who had status in society, would see some young and up in incoming persons that had a lot of potential but did not have you know did not come from the right families to be part of the aristocracy or whatever and would take a particular interest in that person and say hey you know what i will provide you and this was a very very formal thing you know i would provide you basically my veil of protection more or less like people know that you're with me

now and so they're not going to mess with you and in exchange i expect you to to take my interests as your own. Like you should be concerned about the things that I'm concerned about. You should try and if I, if there's a problem, you see I have, I would expect you're trying to help me solve that problem. And there was just really, like I said, it was kind of a formal thing, but it was different in every case, exactly the way it manifested. But what it did is it glued the society together. Like intergenerational stuff does that, you know, so that the young had a buy-in with the system that made sense for them to succeed. They saw value from the system, you know, continuing on because, hey, if my, you know, if I'm on this guy's team, you know,

when he succeeds, I win too. You know, I'm on the, I'm on the right side of things, I guess. So, and so it's called a patron client relationship. And I would really describe, I used to call Doug my mentor forever. That's what I would call it. Because this is kind of the default. But in reality, when you think about it, when I, once I understood this Roman concept, it's a lot, it was a lot more like that. Um, I like, um, I like, to think that Doug's gotten more out of our relationship than I've gotten out of it, you know, because I've tried to, I've, because the value has flowed in two directions. Doug has introduced me to people I never would have known without Doug. I've definitely, he's, he's given me experiences. I definitely wouldn't have had. He's put me in rooms where I'm like, how the hell I'm, why am I here? You know, I don't know, I'm just something to get from Iowa. What am I doing with the president of this country? It's really weird. And, you know, so he put me in those, situations. But I was there because I was trying to help Doug with what Doug was interested in doing. And in fact, really this book is really, like I said, something Doug wanted me to do with him

12 years ago. It took a long time. But ultimately it happened because like my interests, you know, where the, because I'm trying to create value constantly for Doug. So, so basically what this does fundamentally for a younger person is the idea that, yes, you know you need mentors. You know older people can open doors for you. Older people have an abundance of opportunity. and a scarcity of like the energy and time to take advantage of those opportunities. If they had reliable, intelligent, resourceful, young people around them, they would expose those. They naturally end up like saying, hey, you know, I've got this thing. I don't know.

Is there something you could do with it? You know, maybe you take advantage of it. I don't know. It would happen. It happens organically. And but the idea is to put it on the burden on the young person and say, you have to of service to these people, to these patrons, and then it comes back to you. But it's not the responsibility, like someone should have to show up like a Gandalf,

you know, in the hero's journey and tell you, no, this is the way, you know. It's not like that's not real where you're as a mentee, you just receive all of the goodness of some, you know, wiser elder on your journey. It doesn't work like that. Like the idea is that you look for the people, you admire in the world and you think, how How could I be of service to them? Like, how could I make their life easier? And when you go about it that way, it's amazing, the opportunities that open up for you.

And, you know, like I said, my relationship with Doug, it's definitely that way. I talk about that in the book. And the guy who runs the last company I started in the U.S., I mean, he's, I would say he's my client. I mean, it's the exact opposite. I'm his patron. But I'm super invested in his family and his success. Like, I want him to thrive. And like, it makes me happy when I heard he was, his wife was pregnant.

get. I'm like super happy for him. You know what I mean? Like as if I was having a kid, I want him to succeed. And that's the way these like any relationship, that's the way it's a two way street. That's they evolve through like constant value creation between the parties. And that's how you get the best mentors and they can be lifelong. I agree. I I just the chapter stuck out stuck out to me because all anyone ever talks about is mentors. And you kind of, it's like a very, very not easy concept, I guess, accepted concept in today's world. This patron idea is been used in today's world. You pay for access, right? Yeah. That's that's kind of. So when you, when you go mentor or the idea of selling on a patron, it's like, what do you mean by that?

That's why I appreciate you explaining it to me because and to the audience, because when I first hear patron, I'm like, so I should sign up for Mats, whatever. Yeah. And just try, right? This is a more win-win scenario where you're benefiting each other. Yeah, I'm trying to get the, the instead of somebody looking for somebody to, you know, support them financially, although that could be an outcome of having a good patron, certainly, you know, I'm certainly the greats and the great artists of the Renaissance periods. certainly had patrons who allowed them to do their work. Da Vinci is famous for that. But the idea is to be a good client.

Like how do you be worthy of the patronage of somebody who you admire? Like what do you have to do? How do you be of service to them to make the, to get them so that they want to support you and support you in whatever way you might need, which could be advice, it could be the introductions. It could be, again, a lot of times they are full,

Like Doug has an abundance of opportunities around him, which he can't possibly take advantage of all of them. And just doesn't have the energy. He's 79 now. He doesn't have the energy to do all that. He doesn't. But he still wants to do stuff in the world. So there's a lot of people like this. I mean, you probably find yourself the more successful you become, the more ideas you have.

And you go, oh, this way. I could do this. This would work. But you can't take advantage of all the opportunities. Right. I mean, this is how it works. You get older and you're successful and you get more resources and more opportunities to get thrown your way.

you understand how the world works better, and it's easy to see paths to success. But for a young person, they just need direction, usually. They need, and they need, if they're good enough of a client, then they will be rewarded with opportunities that are basically, that are like the leftovers of what these patrons have that they just can't take advantage of. Cycles. There's a big chunk in the book talking about cycles. walk everybody through the thought process on this.

Yeah, so there's 16 cycles, like I said, mirroring a four-year education. And each cycle has an anchor activity. An anchor activity is, like I was saying earlier, it's an experience. So, like one of them is becoming an EMT, which is a, like it's a low-level paramedic in the U.S. And EMT is. If you, you know, if you ever, unfortunately, I have to ride an ambulance, you probably have a paramedic and an EMT there.

Now, it's not a great gig. riding on ambulance it's not a it's not a great gig but the skills that you have are quite valuable i mean you live if there's if you ever encounter you find yourself in a bad situation i mean having someone there who really knows how to save a life is actually very useful and this goes way beyond you know your basic you know right across uh cpr sessions or whatever you know i mean this is it's it's pretty in depth but it's a real skill that you have and it's it's a real marketable skill and max did so max did this it's very inexpensive to do doesn't take much time and he parlayed it into a summer gig you know where he's where he was fighting wildfires

as an EMT i mean he was working on an ambulance on a wildfire uh firefighting crew and he made six hundred dollars a day doing that which is an extraordinary i think an extraordinary amount of money um i think i might have made that in a month my take home pay when i was in the army when i was 18 so i know i know the money's not the same now i understand but still six hundred a day seems crazy to me but anyway so that those kinds of things are what the preparation, the anchor activities are. So EMT is one. Then there's specific courses to take that we choose,

that are free or almost free. We outline exactly like just like college you have required and then electives. So we give you to take these and then there's plenty of room hours to do other things. And, you know, then there's definitely reading that goes along with that, specific books we recommend that they read. And, you know, then there's other activities we encourage them to fill like,

that really could be anchor courses into themselves, but they're just trying to get them broad exposure to doing all kinds of interesting things, I think. And then there's a reflection piece to it. But the whole idea is that each cycle has a theme, as a theme. And we try and make it so that the educational component to it, you know, the theoretical, the academic stuff is as related to the real experience in the real world as possible. Now, it's not as completely possible.

But we want to make it so that it is connected in some way. Does that make sense? Yeah, it does. And it's, I guess when I look at it, if done right, it maximizes the amount of hours you have in any given cycle to accomplish a whole lot, have some experience, probably make a little bit of money if you go about it the right way. Yeah, I mean. And you come out of it with. like you've pushed yourself, you have a ton of new knowledge because you've been reading and learning practical skills, you're going to acquire a bunch in a short period of time.

But then instead of sticking on with that for four years, then you go on to the next cycle, which is going to be a mirror of the first cycle, but obviously in a completely different realm. Totally different realm. So like like I said, back to the EMT, he's done, you know, he learned to fly. he's you know sailing is another one yeah he was we here we apprenticed him to our gaucho which is like an urguine form of a cowboy where he was working for him for three months and had to do you know from everything from shoeing horses to raising and treating cattle and everything at fixing fences and all the other you know random things you end up doing on a cattle ranch um so it is it's a wide

ranging in terms of the the things you get exposed to but like for example right now he's going through with the entrepreneurship cycle. So they start off as more physical, I should say, like more practical, like EMT. There's another one where, you know, there's this great school in Maine where they teach you to design and build a home in three weeks. So the design part is the hardest part. That's the first two weeks of it, the building it. They just put up a timber frame.

But, I mean, the practical knowledge from that is really valuable. It's a great. I mean, it's an amazing place, actually. And so that's an example of one of the cycle. So stuff like that, there's a welding cycle. There's like really hands-on stuff, you know, but then it gets into the more abstract stuff as well. And so he's in the entrepreneurship cycle right now. There's an investor cycle as well.

Right now he's operating his agriculture drones right now, as we speak, basically doing, you know, trying to get a precision agriculture or drone business going. You know, so there's three months devoted to that. He's in the middle of that right now. Not the middle. He's in the beginning of that right now in this cycle. His next cycle, he's going to Thailand. going to do train muay Thai for a couple months in Thailand and uh so again that's that what's the economic utility of that probably nothing on that side actually of the fighter uh but well i

if i may no having the confidence to be able to handle yourself as a man in dangerous situations i feel i i see immense value in that like yeah i just mean you can't get a job i just mean you can't get a job like there's not a job that's going to come from that whereas a lot of the other ones there are very specifically ways to make sure sure yeah i always go i always go back to to biking can that no job what's coming from that but what it taught me on how to be you know about myself and then going into uncomfortable situations and a bunch of other things becoming resourceful right like how do you solve this particular problem that happened today right i mean that's that's a hard thing having somebody uh try and knock your head off and then learn

how to defend that and on and on. I know, I got too many people listening to show. They know who they are that are into Jiu-Jitsu and have been begun to start choking me out all over again. So that's been a fun thing. But starting to understand how to defend yourself is, well, it makes you a dangerous man. It just does.

And there is need for that more and more in our society. It's never gone away. We've just forgotten about it. Yeah, I totally agree. I mean, the subtitle of the book is how to become competent, confident, and dangerous. And by dangerous, we definitely mean your ability to defend yourself. I mean, one of the activities that we encourage people to do throughout is martial arts as something you're doing on the side to the major cycles. But there is one cycle where there's a fighting cycle, basically, where you just devote a few months to it.

And Max has been doing Brazilian jiu-jitsu and kickboxing along the way for the last couple of years. But, you know, this is an intense camp, essentially, in Thailand. And you can do it for almost nothing. It's so cheap there. And also it gets the taste of the exotic. Like I've been fortunate enough to take backs in a lot of the world anyway. We've even been to, he's been in Africa, been a couple countries in Africa even.

But I've never, never been to Asia. So it'll be a totally new experience for him. And I think it'll open his eyes just as things operate totally differently there. And it'll change, like that experience in of itself is useful. but layered on to like a lot of the young people want to travel and I get it you know like when I was people may want to do a gap year and when I was at that age where they'd want to go backpack for the summer or whatever in in Europe you know that was kind of the thing then the problem is is and I think that's all fine there's nothing really wrong with it exactly but you're you're kind of traveling without a

purpose you know without a whatever thing you're trying to accomplish along the way and I think that that's so much better if you can layer in some real hardcore learning into it. So you walk away with something, I mean, you walk away a different person. I mean, that cycling thing is an example of that. Like you could have, a lot of ways you could have toured across Canada, right? But that way, that specific way creates all kinds of built-in challenges that force you to kind of learn a lot about yourself and develop skills. Yeah, I, um, yes, I agree.

having a fixed point of where you're trying to get to once you identify that you'll be amazed at what you can accomplish and so i think the cycles define a point of where you're trying to get to and then you know you get to quickly in my opinion three months is in a long time from where i sit and you come out of it forcing yourself to change because you're acquiring so much and so it's a short period of time Whereas, you know, traveling, I, you know, I have two brothers who went and did it and did that change them? Absolutely. And I'd be curious their thoughts on, you know, just traveling, you know, just that in itself. Is that enough? Because it's going to teach you a ton about yourself, right? Different languages, different customs, countries, all the things. But if your purpose, if that's your intended journey, if you add a little bit of, you. bit more purpose into it, what else can you accomplish? And once again, the cycles just seem to point that out to me over and over again. No, you're going to do this and then you're going to do that and you're going to do that. And when you start to aim at something like that,

it's pretty incredible what can happen in a very short period of time. So no, is there anything else that I haven't covered on the book? You know, I guess where can people find it? Amazon, I assume. Amazon is really the only place to get it. Yeah, because we self-publish and Amazon is the, the printer and, you know, they're the ones who make all the money on everything, but they make it really easy to get it out there. Accessibility. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Anything else that you want to make sure people know about the book, Matt, or anything else we haven't covered. I think the big thing is just, well, two things. One thing on the cycles, they are structured so that there's 40 productive hours a week. That's what's expected of the young man who's doing it. And

It's so compared to college, it seems really intense because you can basically take 12 credit hours and that's considered a full-time student, you know, and that that's not much. That also doesn't prepare them for the real world where they're expected to actually work, you know, and you find a lot. I mean, millennials came up with a term adulting to describe the things after college. Adulting. Paying bills, you know, they have to show up at work every day, you know, a certain time. Like it was like, so they came up with this word for it because they were so unprepared for it from college. So this sets it up. So there is a, there is a 40 hours of productive work.

Now, some of that productive work is like time you spend in the gym, but that counts, you know, or time you spend reading. That counts. But there are 40 hours a week that you're devoting toward it. So it is, I think in that alone, it better prepares them for the future. The other thing is just the advantage of this cycle stacking, like Scott Adams, you know, the Dilbert guy, came up with the term, skill stacking. And he says the idea is you take all these weird skills and you pile them together. Like he's, you know, trained hypnotist. He talks about all the time, you know, plus a cartoonist, plus blah, blah, blah, blah, all these things together. They, they produce powers in you that are

different than what you would have. And like if you're just focused on one thing. So stacking them together creates opportunities and creates new powers in a way you can't really imagine. Well, we, our version of that is just a cycle stacking. So you put all of these things together and they create, they shape an individual that is so fundamentally different, so unique from others that their opportunities become apparent to them. And so Max is only halfway through the program, really now two years in, he's got two years left. I have to say, you know, where he was two years ago, anxious, unsure, didn't know, no confidence, no self-esteem really, you know, he was a good kid, for sure, but he was like most young men are today in that way. It wasn't,

And today, I don't know where it happened, but I can't pinpoint exactly when. But at some point along the line, he became, in my mind, as his dad, a man in every way, except for the last real benchmark, I think, is when you have your own kids. So, and I was saying, like him to wait a little longer on that. But I mean, you know, so he went from boy to a man in two years through the experience. So I think it really is like the proof. thank God he was our beta tester or our guinea pig because we wouldn't have you know I wouldn't had any confidence whatsoever to put the book out if we hadn't if it hadn't been tested if I hadn't

seen it for myself and he's an incredible young man I'd say he still doesn't have a lot of room like you I mean the male brain doesn't even fully develop until you're 25 I mean that's just the way it is you know so he has room still to grow absolutely but he is on a far better track than I was and then Doug was and if we had it all do over again both of us would do this. Yeah, the room to grow or needs to grow more. I sit here and I go, I'm still growing. And I hope to grow until I'm 78 or 92 or whatever date the big man comes to grab me.

Like, that's what I love about podcasting, if I'm being completely honest. You know, I told the wife last night, I am excited for tomorrow. She's like, oh, why? Who you got on? I'm like, I got yourself. I got one other later today. And I'm like, this is going to be. two really interesting conversations because, you know, there's a lot of times on this show,

we talk about what is going on in the world and it needs to be done. There needs to be conversations of, you know, some of the things happening specifically in Canada for me that I just like, these need to be talked about. People need to know this is going on. But then I'm constantly looking for there are solutions to these problems. It's not as simple as, you know, waving a magic wand and they all go away. That doesn't happen. You hit it on it earlier. The solutions ultimately boil down to individual responsibility. Yes.

And well, and how do you get more young men in particular to start to wrestle with those ideas and start to develop themselves so that they don't have to wait until they're, and once again, I'm still growing, but I just feel like at 39, I'm slowly starting to, I've slowly started to build out the puzzle,

if you would, of life. And I'm like, yeah, no, no, I'm not doing that or I'm not doing this. or I am going to go do that or what have you.

And I look at this and I'm like, this is a way to get young men in a time where they're trying to find a way forward to give them just a bit of direction. And whether they take it all, they take a bit of it, they grab the book and they run with it. I'm like, you get four or five more maxims running around my area.

I'm like, that's a good. That is a net benefit to society. 100% agree with that. And I'm telling you, these young men want a worthy pursuit. want it bad they're craving it then there's nothing presented to them so you'd be surprised for the young men who you think are like lost a little bit or don't have self-esteem or or uncertain about

the future or or themselves like the fact is they have this burning desire for a worthy pursuit and just give them one give them something worth doing and you'd be amazed who they can turn into if you if they have that i appreciate you coming on matt and doing this i uh once again i appreciate you send me in the hardcover too because, you know, like, I'm not a great reader of PDFs online. I don't know. Right. So when this came in the mail, I was like, oh, my goodness. Like, I just love a hardcover book.

It's something that, you know, my audience can take it or leave it. I just see a lot of value in the pages that I've, you know, in going through it. And I think others will as well. I'm already thinking of, you know, at what point do I introduce this book to my son? but he's nine. So there's a few years to go. But I will say probably earlier than you think, one of the biggest things I've learned from this is that I was gearing it specifically toward maximum the age he was.

Listen, ever since COVID, I have a homeschooled him. Like there's, you know, you can become a private pilot when you're 15 years old. That's sooner that you can get a driver's license. Like,

why wouldn't, you know, there's so many things that you can do at a younger age. So you certainly could do it earlier rather than later. And at the same time, I got, I've gotten three emails from people in their 70s that are, retired, they're like, I'm going to do this. I'm not kidding. So, yeah, it's, it kind of crosses the

generational span, I think, more than I thought it would. Well, I appreciate you coming on. And, well, you've got a guy who is excited about the book. I assume there will be others, but appreciate you coming on and giving me some time today. Well, thank you. And I really appreciate your endorsement of the book. It means a lot to me. Thanks a lot.