The philosophy behind the whole thing really comes back to that be, do, have idea.
This is where it gets to where I think that the book really does apply to people
who are interested in becoming who they ought to be, really at whatever age you are.
As we think about educating our kids, what I want them to do
is have such a broad range of perspectives.
For them to watch a documentary on a particular subject,
and that's the mainstream narrative.
Okay, let's come to your own conclusion.
Do a little bit more research.
Look at young people today and they'll think that they're really aimless
and they're not, you know, they're lost.
People look at them and say, they're lost.
And they are.
The best thing I can do is say,
how can I just equip my kids to be prepared for anything?
They have an understanding.
They can connect with people of any background
because they know enough about how the world works.
And so getting out there and doing stuff
is the key to critical thinking.
It's not thinking is not the key to critical thinking.
It's doing that's the key to critical thinking.
hey everyone michael here with the bitcoin way podcast thank you for tuning in today on the show
i have matt smith matt is a serial entrepreneur and author of a book called the preparation that
he wrote with doug casey he's an austrian economist he is also a hardcore bitcoiner he is a sound money
advocate the book is very interesting it's written for young people it's sort of a college alternative
specifically for young men but it would apply to young women as well but stick around stay
tuned. I am taking this to heart and is something I'm going to use to improve myself and better my
life as well. You will love this conversation. Hey, everyone. Like I said in the intro, I have
Matt here with me. Matt, welcome to the Bitcoin Way podcast. Thank you very much. I'm super happy
to be here with you. Yeah, I told you offline. I'm very excited for this conversation. I think
you have written one of the most important books. Honestly, I think of the 21st century for anyone
certainly raising kids. But even as people begin to step back and evaluate, what do I want to do
with my time? How do I want to improve my life, my skill set? This is like ultimate low time
preference reading in my view. So before we start and jump into all of that, why don't you give a
bit of a background, tell people who you are, maybe give a little bit of an intro for Doug Casey,
how you met him and who he is, because I heard him first on Ron Paul's podcast. And I think that'll
set the stage for everything else we're discussing. Sure. Sure. Yeah. I'm because we're going to talk
about education a little bit. I mean, I'm a college dropout. I dropped out and what basically
was a serial entrepreneur. I mean, it might not be as obvious right now because I'm basically a
cattle rancher because, you know, life goes in weird directions here in Uruguay. But yeah,
I've started a whole bunch of different businesses, virtually anything you can imagine, actually,
probably more than, I guess if you count the cattle ranch, like 19 businesses, some successful,
some not successful. I'd say the last sort of significant thing I did was a business called
Royalty Exchange. It's a marketplace for music royalties. So basically artists, songwriters,
you know, they have these, every time their music gets played on Spotify, you know, they earn a
little bit of money and we make it so that if they're interested in selling all or a portion
of their royalties, they can sell it directly in a public auction to investors. So they get,
you know, they get real market value versus getting screwed over by music industry people.
So, uh, so I've done a whole bunch of different things like that. Um, but you know, the, the,
the most important thing to me over my adult life has been to not screw up my kids of all things.
It really has. I, you know, it was almost, uh, I've had almost a do no harm first approach to
kids, you know, uh, when I, you know, when they were first born, I think, oh yeah, I'm going to
turn you into a much better version of me. And, you know, I have all these ambitions. Uh, but
ultimately I realized, and I think they are better versions of me, but I think ultimately what I
realized was that I should just not cause problems with them because, you know, most parents do screw
up their kids. All parents have an effect on their children. Some of it might be positive, but
certainly some of it's going to be negative. And so for the last, the reason I tell you this,
because for the last year or so, or really the last two years, I've been trying to continue that
with my son as he's been sort of launched into adulthood and entering the world in a very
uncertain time, I think, perilous time, one might think for young people.
I think it's much harder for him and my daughter, too, who's 18 now to enter the world than it was
for me. I'm 50. So I think I had it a lot easier than they do, frankly. So trying to make sure
that that happened as best as possible, my son and I did this experiment, and this goes to the
Doug Casey part, um, that was based upon an idea that Doug had, and he, he approached me about
writing a book with him maybe a dozen years ago that he was calling Renaissance Man. And,
you know, he wanted me to write it with him. And he also told me he's written many books and he,
but he, when he wanted me to write it with him, he told me how terrible writing books were. He said,
it's a lot of brain damage. You don't make any money, but I'd like you to write this book with
me. I wasn't interested. But when my son got to the point where I felt like he really needed
something like that, where that kind of became clear to me, I reached out to Doug and I said,
let's talk about this in more detail and see what we can do with it. And the biggest thing he told
me about it was, well, if you don't know who Doug is, by the way, how do I explain Doug? Doug is a
Renaissance man. Doug has basically been everywhere, done everything. Some people call him the
uh, international man. Um, I mean, he, if you ever, he really is like a living embodiment of those,
uh, that guy in those Stasekis commercials. I don't know if you remember those from your back,
yours back at the most interesting man in the world. I mean, he's really done
wild stuff everywhere. You know, he's 79 now, but he's a total badass. Anyway, he's, I met him
coincidentally, you know, I was a fan of his work, but I actually met him on the streets in Buenos
Saris in 2007, just totally accidentally, you know, but then over the years we've built a
relationship. But yeah, he's an economist, an author, speculator. I mean, a philosopher really
is what he really is. And so when I asked him what this book was about, what he really wanted
to do, and he said, well, Matt, he gave me a very vague answer. He said, you know, I want the book
to be about the three most important verbs in every language, be, do, and have. Honestly, I
didn't know what he was talking about when he said that. So, um, but in the book we do just,
we do, we do get into and explain what it really is all about. Yeah. So let's, uh, so let's warm
you up to the audience a little bit. I think that's a great background, but one of the things
that people, I think anyone listening to this will appreciate is my impression at least is you,
you and Doug are sound money advocates. You're, you tend to lean toward the Austrian school of
economics. Uh, a lot of no nonsense. You're not, you're not a bunch of communists, Keynesians,
anything like that um maybe could you share sort of your maybe i guess sort of broadly your
worldview philosophy when it comes to to that and then we'll we'll jump into the book yeah i think
austrian economics probably pretty much sums it up better than anything i don't really like the
label libertarian for some reason i think maybe mostly because that it's that term is discredited
uh unfortunately but basically those are my ideas i believe in the individual i love people
I believe in individuals. I think that the power of the individual is all that matters,
and the rights of the individual are all that matters. I think that our system is completely
screwed because of the money system. It's all fraud. At the end of the day, the entire system,
I have to understand, when you take the monetary unit and you commit fraud with it, it causes
crazy amounts of fraud all throughout the system in ways that we don't even recognize as fraud now
because we're so accustomed to it.
We're swimming in it.
So yeah, I have a big problem with the money system.
I obviously am a, well, maybe I'm not, maybe it's not obvious.
I certainly am a big believer in gold in particular.
I first bought my first Bitcoin probably in early 2012.
Lost that Bitcoin, by the way.
But I bought more in, I guess, 2015, which I also lost.
and uh but i didn't take it seriously where i bought any real serious amount until late 2016
when it was you know around the 700 mark but then i understood it finally and so i i bought a lot
more of it um way more of it then in 2016 and early 2017 than i ever did before that before
that i was just trying to understand it and you know by like 20 of course that 20 now would be
quite a bit but you know it wasn't really it wasn't a big it wasn't a serious investment for
me. I like it started to be in 2016. Yeah. I think, well, I think you're, I'm sure that message
is going to resonate well with anyone listening. So let's jump into the book. So this book is,
and I just want to say for anyone who's listening and you hear this book is like a curriculum,
it's for young men, you know, a college alternative. I think all of that's true.
That's how you would frame it. For me, this has been much more influential than that. I,
I'm not only thinking about my five-year-old son, even my, my two daughters, uh, but even for myself,
Like, you know, I'm I have time and I I want to be the interesting type of person and learn all the things that I wish I had learned in the first, you know, 22 years of my life that I simply didn't.
I went through a very traditional education experience, you know, public school for most of my time, private school for most of high school, went on to college, did the whole thing.
And so it wasn't until several years later, really, until I went down the Bitcoin rabbit hole that I realized how little I had actually learned and accomplished and how few skills I had actually emerged with as a result of many, many, many hundreds, thousands of hours of sitting in a classroom.
So you wrote this book about, in particular, molding, I think, a young man, giving them an alternative, an opt-out of college.
Can you explain what inspired, so the B2 have, what inspired sort of the approach, the narrowness that you took to this book specifically as a curriculum for people?
Yeah, well, you have to understand the number one problem I had in my mind.
Now, Doug wanted us to write a book.
what I wanted to do was solve a very specific problem for my son. So in a way, this book
literally is the book that I, uh, for a father to a son, my best effort to give him whatever
information I thought he needed now, not all the information he'll need, but the information he
needed at this stage in life. Um, so that, that, that's the narrow note. So it comes down to exactly
what he should do. And my son has been a great sport about it because he's been our guinea pig
for the last two years.
And, you know, he didn't have the book to start off with,
with this highly structured approach.
You know, he started off with something way looser
where we're kind of grasping at straws to put it together.
So he's been a great sport about it.
And he's really risen to the occasion in ways I didn't expect, honestly.
It's been fantastic.
But the philosophy behind the whole thing really comes back to that be-do-have idea.
And this is where it gets to where I think that the book really does apply
to people who are interested in becoming who they ought to be really at whatever age you are.
You know, everyone in our society today, and there's partly this fiat money system as part of it,
is everyone is only concerned with have. I mean, that's what we think about. It's our reference
point. I'd like to have these things. I'd like to, you know, whether it be the new iPhone or,
you know, a beautiful spouse, it's all about acquisition of stuff. And not there's anything
wrong with it. I like stuff. I have a lot of stuff. You know, I'm not, I'm not saying there's
anything wrong with it, but what it's not mentioned to people is that, uh, you know, that have is a
consequence of do. I mean, you know, it is, you don't get have by, by seeking have you get have
by doing. And the thing that's so important about that, especially for young people, and I really
think for anybody, but for a young man, for them to understand that if they were willing to do
things, to do a lot, to do, like to really put themselves out there and do things, then the have
is all possible. The have can be done, but you have to do it by focusing on doing. So what we do
is show young people, we show anyone really, there's a huge leverage point. I mean, you know,
my son, who's 20, has unlimited amounts of energy. I do not. You know, it just changes over time.
And so when you have that, it's your greatest asset. I mean, you have this greatest strength,
essentially, is that you have so much energy. It can be, you can actually channel in a way that
can give you all the have you can imagine and probably a lot more, quite frankly. So the have
or the be, do and have. So the last one is be. And really, truly, this is the only one that
actually matters. This is the one you're going to think about. This is if you're dissatisfied with
your life. And I know a lot of people who have a lot of stuff who are very dissatisfied with their
life. It's because they never resolve this be aspect. They are not the man they want to become.
And, you know, a lot of people, you know, look at young people today and they'll think that they're really aimless and they're not, you know, they're lost.
People look at them and say they're lost.
And they are.
And why is it?
Because the reason that they're lost is because they're focused on the wrong things.
They're not focused on trying to become the man they want to become.
Instead, they're focusing on having things.
And so the book is fundamentally about the question of what we try and reorient it, reorient for a person is to get them to focus on the B first of all. Like this should be your guiding star. This should be the, and for my son, I have to say, and for young men who are also following the program who I've spoken with, it's super motivating to them.
that is very motivating for them to try and, you know, for my son, it's like the Edmund,
Edmund Dante is in the Count of Monte Cristo was at first his original motivation. He just loved
the character. Um, but it was, that's really motivating for him, especially when he's going
through things that are pretty difficult because a lot of stuff in the book is, can be pretty
challenging. Right. I think that's an interesting way of framing it. And as I think about sort of a
microcosm in my life, the days that I go to bed feeling most fulfilled and, uh, like a day I can
hang my hat on are never the days I got a new car. I acquired a new thing, but the days that I,
I got up early, I read, I got my workout in, I spent time with my family. I got a lot of work
done. Like it's all, it's all of the being and doing and be the self-improvement and like the,
the self-actualization, maybe that feels a little cliche, but all of those things really has a lot
less to do with that. Yeah. And the doing naturally, it's like, it's a virtuous cycle,
right? The doing makes you be, the being helps you do, and it creates this virtual cycle and
all of a sudden have starts to show up. So you, you talk about having a personal code in the book.
I can't remember if that was, if it was you or Doug who wrote that chapter. So talk a little
bit about that because it actually, I was thinking I was about to open it, get sort of an introduction
and it was going to go into this curriculum and the curriculum is really only maybe the back half,
back third of the book. Um, it's, it is detailed. There's a lot in there. I'm, I'm literally at
best I can with the limited time I have, I'm going to start just kind of working my way through the
courses. I'll eventually get to like the, the anchor, uh, courses that we'll talk about, but,
um, talk a little bit about what you put into the front of the book, the personal code, some of the
other things and why you spent the time you spent setting it up before you got to sort of the tactical
elements of everything. Yeah. Well, I mean, again, thinking about it with a young person,
they grow up and I would say probably anyone who's listening to this, if you're under 40,
this is probably true for you too, is that, you know, you've grown up in the most scheduled,
surveilled, tracked, planned, institutionalized way of any population in human history. I mean,
and when the problem with that is, is that you don't really even know what you want.
You don't really even know what's important to you, mostly because you've had to follow the rules of
everyone else around you. I mean, just growing up, right? And now your son, your kids, they live
under house rules, right? I mean, you create the reality for them. They haven't, they haven't
decided yet what's important to them. And the trouble is that most people never decide what's
important to them. They never decide what their own rules are. And so with the personal code,
what we try and do, and I'll explain the problem with that in a second, but with the personal code,
what we do is we ask it, we ask the person to, um, three stages to it. The first one is just
develop a set of rules for themselves. And this is the reason this is important. I'll just explain
now, I guess, is that, um, up until then, all the rules are created for them, uh, the, whether they
make sense or not, they just, or they're going with the crowd. And, uh, by deciding for themselves
some rules, they're actually establishing their self-esteem, their actual self-esteem for the
first time, you know, place where they're deciding, no, this is who I am. These are the things that I
do. These are the things that I will not do and deciding them for themselves. And we asked,
so how do you come up with these rules? Well, you shouldn't rely on anyone else around you.
You should just think to yourself, when you do something that makes you feel small or causes you
shame, decide you're not going to do those things anymore. Now the whole world might not know you do
them, but you do. And when you do them, they make you feel small. Like for me, it's like lying makes
me feel terrible, makes me feel like pathetic. It really does. It makes me feel very small.
even a white lie but it's so easy and you know just a normal convention do a white lie like you
invited me out for dinner on friday and i didn't want to go you know i can't this friday i'm busy
you know that a natural it so natural that little white lie but every time i do that makes me feel like crap it so much easier just to say hey man i not really up to it for the I not I it doesn sound very good for me this Friday but maybe sometime in the future you know just being honest about it makes it easy for me So for me that a rule
That's a rule. I just don't lie. I will not lie. Even a white lie. I'll say, I don't really want
to talk about it. I might not answer the question, but, um, you know, I, I'm just not going to lie.
And so for, for, for when a person starts to decide those, I will not cross this line. This
is what's important to me. And they start following it. They start to, they build a little beachhead
of little personal identity, a place where they can stand on that is that actually where they,
for the first time are differentiated as an individual separate from their parents' doctrine
or the school's expectations, or what your friends are all doing and it's yours, you own it. And so
I think that's the basis of it. It starts there. Then what we do is we expose people to the ancient
virtues, you know, things like courage. And these are things that are not, you know, sort of a past
file rule, past failed rule. These are things that you aspire to. These are things that you can never
have. You can never be courageous, you know, enough. I mean, you can always be more courageous.
So, you know, these things are aspirations. So we ask the person to go through it and pick,
you know, half a dozen that really speak to them. And it's different for everybody. I mean,
they don't, they aren't, they aren't universal for everybody where they really call to you.
And we ask them to then write those down and try to emulate those, try to strive toward
those things as much as you can.
And then finally, we ask them to start documenting skills, like just writing it down, the things
that you can do.
And in the preparation, they stack up super fast.
There's the skills stack up really fast, actually.
And so over time, you start to like, you could see yourself, you know, where you're going,
the direction, what matters to you.
And I think it's a great basis to sort of engage the world with deciding in advance the man you want to become.
And the personal code is the start to it.
I think it's such an important thing.
What I've learned about myself is that I'm actually very good at setting rules for myself.
Most people just want to be completely – any libertarian, classical, liberal type of person wants self-sovereignty to do what they want.
But I think with that responsibility – or with that becomes a lot of responsibility.
And for me, and this is sort of an aside because it's not character based, but I have, you know, certain foods I won't eat because it's just I've just made that rule.
And I think to have a young person, you know, a kid basically who is growing up defining what those rules are for themselves as they make a determination to your point about what just, you know, doesn't feel right to them.
And to begin ingraining that into reminding themselves of it daily to where when they reach, you know, an age where they have to go off into the world, it's not because you've harped on the same things over and over, which I think is important as parents is to, you know, instill discipline and instill a sense of character and virtues, but for them to have made that determination themselves.
And then as we get into now the curriculum, it, the way that they go about engaging in, you know, some very interesting, uh, some might say risky courses and ventures that they have instilled in themselves, a sense of character, a sense of courage, a sense of, um, patience, all of the things required to go do everything else that, you know, you write about in the book well and competently.
And I think it was a great way to sort of tee anyone up who's going to be reading this and taking it seriously.
So before we jump into the curriculum specifically, could you maybe talk a little bit about why is everyone funneled like cattle into college?
And why is it that it doesn't work?
It demonstrably does not work for most people who go to college, even if they are smart, get good grades, pass all the tests.
They're coming out, in my view, completely unequipped for real life.
They might get a job and many don't.
But even if they do get a job, it's it's unfulfilling.
They don't have any other skills outside of just complete, you know, being a task doer for a big company.
what is like what led us down this path that forced you into a position where you felt like
you needed to write this sort of content for your your kids yeah i think you know it's um
it's just well what what really has made it so big and so dominant is just the economic
setup of it i'm big into economics so i mean the economic drivers behind it there's so much money
to be made there's so much money to be made and and encouraging kids to do it and bilking them for
the rest of their lives with these student loans afterwards. So there's just a giant machine
that has every incentive in the world to associate status with going to college and, you know,
talk about as a, you know, the college experience. What the hell is that? I'm not really sure. I mean,
I was there for two years. I didn't notice anything that was, I would say it was really
great. I didn't finish. So maybe, maybe I missed it. But, but, you know, the thing is, is that
I think there is, you know, as our economy shifted to a services-based economy, you know, then it's these then white collar essentially replaced blue collar jobs as in a services economy.
And that ends up being training people for generalist type of paper shuffling or, you know, computers, a spreadsheet jockeying type work.
And that's our economy has just been funneled and optimized in that direction really for the last 30 years.
The problem is we're seeing the ends of that now. And it did, you know, it did work for a lot of people. It really did work in terms of it made them able to earn an income.
But, you know, what we challenge in the book, I think, is this idea is that is that is that
a worthwhile pursuit is the ability to pay to pay your rent.
And now that's important.
But is that what you should devote your life to a pursuit that actually makes you now able,
hopefully, to be so you can economically support yourself?
Now, of course, those things are important.
Being able to economically support yourself is important.
But like, what are the precursors of that generally?
I mean, there's a lot of independence beyond that that occurs.
There's a lot of skill development that occurs.
And that's what we try and achieve with preparation.
Again, Doug's idea of Renaissance man.
It's, you know, we didn't name it Renaissance man, frankly, because if you ask my son what
that is, he has no idea or had no idea.
It didn't, it didn't make it, it didn't have any association with it.
But essentially, in a modern terms, the way I would see is a real Renaissance man today
would be somebody who understands how the world works across a breadth of understanding, you know,
in the, in the real world, how things actually work, they understand it and they know how to
successfully engage with the world to create stuff. So whether that be knowing how to build a house
or understanding physics, you know, or, you know, uh, learning to sail, I mean, whatever, I mean,
like, but really understanding about wide a range of things, being able to speak a foreign language,
We like all these things, playing, playing guitar.
I mean, all, all, all the Hawaii, the wide range of understanding so that whereas now
when most people come out of college or when people are now trained for a job, they have
very little understanding of reality at all.
I mean, they're not equipped to deal with reality in any way because they don't even
have any understanding of it.
Yeah.
You know how to order things on an app or you know how to, you know, maybe you know how
to show up to an office maybe, but they don't.
And I mean, you go to college, it's 12 credit hours is considered full time, right?
So that doesn't really prepare you for a 40-hour job if that's what you wanted.
Anyway, so a lot of people have like this crazy realization too late when they finish
college, they've taken on students that the entire time everyone has looked at them and
told them they're doing the right thing, like they're succeeding.
And then they end up three months into their job wondering, you know, not like, understand
With the job not being what they expected, with the hours being worse than they expected, with the life balance nowhere near what they ever imagined it would be like, not earning enough money to cover their student loans and pay their rent, and then realizing that they're stuck now.
They're stuck.
They're trapped in this place because now they have this obligation that they have to pay every month.
They got to go to the work just to be able to get the money to be able to pay the student loan and the rent and hopefully have enough to eat.
So, you know, that's this pressure, this pushing everybody on this funnel is now kind of it's hitting its ultimate decline at this stage.
And with AI, it's just making the situation fantastically worse and way more uncertain for people who are trying to get launched in the world.
Yeah. If I were to maybe something you're hitting on here, the breadth of skills and the breadth of knowledge, courses, books that you guys describe here. One of the things I take away from it that I would have never thought about growing up, going to school is you hear about critical thinking.
and people say critical thinking is the most important skill and honest i'm 36 years old it
wasn't until i went down the bitcoin rabbit hole and started to realize all the things i've been
lied to about that i really began to appreciate what it means to think critically and so i'll give
you a quick example you grew up in school learning about in the u.s learning about the civil war
and you know lincoln freed the slaves and here's here's what happened in the civil war
i'm reading a book called the problem with lincoln right now and it's a book that was
recommended to me by the same guy who recommended I listened to Doug's podcast with Ron Paul.
And the long story short is this book describes Lincoln as a tyrant. No slaves were freed by the
Emancipation Proclamation. The First Amendment, habeas corpus, were suspended under his administration.
Every other country who had slavery ended it, except Haiti, ended it peacefully. No civil war
required. And basically you were lied to about the civil war. I told my wife, I'm reading this book
and I'm like asking chat GPT, which has a very mainstream narrative about the world. Everything's
very mainstream in chat GPT is confirming many of the things that this guy is saying in his book.
And I told her, I said, look, I wasn't there. I can't know for sure what the answer was,
what exactly happened during the civil war. I have my hunch based on, you know, new findings.
And the fact that we were told this means that we were probably lied to because we were lied to
about everything else. But as we think about educating our kids, what I want them to do
is have such a broad range of perspectives for them to watch, you know, a documentary on a
particular subject. And that's the mainstream narrative. Okay, let's find the tinfoil hat or
the alternative perspective and come to your own conclusion, do a little bit more research. And
like, that's the critical thinking. The problem is most people don't have like these, these nodes
of information to pull from across a diverse range of perspectives. And what I love about your book
and your approach to this is they get that. The amount of reading, the amount of online coursework,
the cycles that they go through with these anchor courses, it's almost impossible for you to just
follow the preparation all the way through and not be really good at thinking through how do I solve
particular problem, which of these potential, you know, narratives makes the most sense.
I just can't see that happening for anyone. So explain the structure of the cycles,
the curriculum in general, and then we can dig into a bit more of the detail.
Yeah. I mean, we're modeling the, assuming the typical reader would be like my son,
who's basically choosing maybe to go to college or something else. You know, and today the only
options someone has that's actually laid out for you clearly. You could go to trade school,
you know, you could get a, you could become a plumber or something like that. And there's
nothing wrong, honorable professions as far as I'm concerned, uh, and a lot more lucrative than
a lot of the white collar jobs today. So you could do that. You could join the military. That's what
I did. Um, well, national guard, but to pay for my college, um, you know, or go to college and
those are it. There's nothing else that's clear and laid out. If you do any of those three things,
most people will say, okay, you're succeeding. If you try anything other than that, anything that's
not that, you'll look like a failure to everybody. And it's really unclear. It's an uncharted
territory as far as what exactly to do. So what we attempted to do is lay out exactly what you
ought to do, like a different option, something that is equivalent in terms of the basic timeframe
that it requires of you and essentially the basic structure of college. So for that reason,
And we broke it into four years.
And each of those, each year has four quarters.
We call each quarter a cycle.
And each cycle has a theme.
And at the base of each cycle is what we call an anchor course.
An anchor course.
So, you know, like for one cycle, my son did sailing.
And which, you know, it doesn't sound that intense.
I don't really like those myself.
But it was pretty intense.
the actual what you do, at least what he did, and certainly was recommended in the book,
is he was sailing around the Falkland Islands and, you know, across the Atlantic and through
the Strait of Magellan into Chile.
And it was actually his first experience on a boat, to be honest.
And it was rough.
I mean, it was hard-ass work.
And it was probably, it was a gigantic rite of passage for him is what it ended up being.
He learned a lot.
He's a competent crewman now, so he can work on a sailboat if he wants to.
and um and and this is essentially this way how a lot of them are structured is that this
incorrectivity is something where you learn a very discrete skill something very specific
that also in most cases has a real economic value as well meaning you could if you wanted to
do something with it and earn income from it not to say we're even recommending it
but you know true useful skills should have some economic value like someone would pay for someone
who can do those things. So the first one my son did, and the first one I actually recommend
everyone do if you're going to do it, is the EMT, the medic cycle. And the medic cycle has an
anchor course of getting your EMT certification. And that's legitimately valuable. You can work
on an ambulance or something like that, of course, but you literally learn how to save a life. I mean,
it's not just the CPR training. It's really intense. Certainly the knowledge that my son
has after going through this far exceeds any medical knowledge and i'll tell you you feel
better having him around like he knows what to do if there's a problem uh and uh so in addition to
the anchor course there's there's online courses that you take you know academics and uh you know
today you can get i mean mit course catalog is all available for free um yale's catalog is mostly
available for free. A lot of Stanfords. I mean, most of what really anything you might want to
know is available for free or nearly free online. And so we outline specifically what courses you
should take. And, you know, there's a room for electives too, but we have, we have some,
what we consider required courses in there and a free or an extra free all online. And they're good.
They're very good. And in addition to that, there's a lot of reading. There's also, we encourage
people to do lots of activities so you know like from i'll just talk about my son's experience so
yeah he's he learned to play guitar he's you know learned to speak spanish um brazilian jiu-jitsu
i mean a whole bunch of different activities we when we list a whole bunch to do but the idea is
that you fill in some of your week with some of these other activities too just to get a sample
just so even see what it's what's what is it like to just try these things out skydiving scuba diving
I mean, he's done quite a bit. And so you do that. And the last part of each cycle is an accountability piece to it. Essentially, every week, you're just basically documenting what you got done that week.
you know so you could basically show your work because this you know essentially you're driving
the process yourself uh if you're hopefully you're lucky and you have parent parental support meaning
encouragement and you have somebody to share this with like here's what i got done this week
but um but it makes a gigantic difference and it builds in this i think it's super good for
character and it builds this basic uh it builds in the basic mechanisms for success in life when
you can hold yourself accountable to delivering results each and every week. I mean, that's the
key to success where you just do it on your own. And that's kind of built in there. So all this in
total, it equates to about 40 productive hours a week. Now, I've had a lot of employees in my life,
and I can tell you that the average employee works for about 40 hours, but they're not even
40 hours productive in a week. It's probably more like 28, 32, I think people estimate in.
And so it's intense.
Unlike college, where it would be 12 credit hours, you know, it's 12 hours in the classroom
a week.
I mean, this is 40 a week, but, you know, you count things like your gym time or, you know,
if you have a part-time job in there, that can count your working because we encourage
people to work through the program as well.
And you do learn a lot of stuff, even working totally, you know, bullshit jobs.
I mean, delivering pizzas or working at Office Depot.
I mean, those things.
And they can fund doing really cool shit at the same time.
Yeah, I think that's awesome. I think I think back to my college years, my high school years, and my brother and I are a few years apart, but we're we were sort of inseparable to the extent we could be. And I told him, I said, can you imagine knowing what we know now and sort of the men we want to be if we had just not played video games, not cared about all the other bullshit that you basically experience as part of college, especially as a guy.
I mean I sure women are wasting their time in their own ways but I can think very tangibly about things I would do differently And I been dedicating all of that time that we were just you know messing around to learning to taking courses like this
I actually did.
I started my working toward my becoming a private pilot and flew solo and just I was
in school and didn't have the when I went back to school, I didn't have a place to go
continue it.
So it didn't work very well.
However, what I'll say is in addition to gaining competency through these anchor courses, what I love about them is all of them are all or most of them are intense in some form or fashion.
And if nothing else, I've been in a cockpit by myself, you know, several thousand feet above ground.
And it instills this understanding that you can do things.
Most people don't.
I don't think most people think they can do things.
and once you have an expert show you and then take let go of the reins and now it's it's on you
you realize very quickly that people are way more competent than they they're they're more capable
than they could ever possibly realize uh it it's like a very freeing feeling knowing that you're
you're able to to figure things out when you've never probably given yourself that liberty yeah
100 i totally agree a couple comments about that i think that the reason that young men in particular
there look you know waste time this is how it feels looking back on it playing video games
or whatever it's because there's not any there's nothing else to do i mean no there's not it's not
obvious what else to do i mean because listen you know there are some like uh people might frown on
the things like you know we're just watching netflix all the time or or or whatever playing
video games but the truth is that's one of the society's approved activities nobody complains
You know, I mean, go do it.
I mean, your parents might complain.
And when I hear parents complain about that to young people, I say, well, give the kids
some better options.
Because if they had a better option, they would do it.
Something that's exciting that challenges them, that, you know, motivates them.
People want to do, most people, most, I can say for young men, for sure, they want to be
somebody.
They want to be somebody.
But, and they realize that to be somebody, you got to do something worthy, but nobody
is even presenting them with anything that's worth doing.
so what do they do? They squander their time because they don't know. They don't know.
And so the whole point of this is we stack these cycles so that you get exposed to a whole bunch
of stuff and you, and that, and which the part of the beauty of the program, why it works as well
as it does is because one of the cycles, like you might be getting your, getting your pilot's
license, for instance. And, um, I mean, that's an intense experience. I, you know, I've, I've never
got my license actually, but I, you know, I, you know, I only flew like 15 hours and everyone did
the solo. This was a long time ago for I had kids. And, um, it was, you know, I mean, it's an intense
experience in and of itself now. Okay. Now take that. And then you go after the three months,
you're done, which means you're going to find a place you can really cram it in.
And, uh, and you're onto something totally new, totally, completely new. And whether it's the
EMT cycle or it's the sailing cycle or, you know, these things start off in the very
foundational or very physical and they get into the abstract over time. So there's 16 in total.
The last four start to get pretty abstract. You know, there's investor, entrepreneur, maker,
for instance. So these things, they get a lot, they're a lot, we don't recommend people start
with these things, but they work better once you've built the skill set. And the way they stack
on top of each other is pretty amazing when you see it in real life.
And, you know, and you're learning along the way.
Not that you can make any money really getting your private pilots,
but it does teach you a level of seriousness, situational awareness,
technical detail, you know, that you're just not,
you're going to get in very other, it's rare you'll get that
in any other form of training that's really out there.
And by the way, you can get your pilot's license when you're 15 years old.
like you don't it's just kind of outrageous really but uh yeah but it's but it's like it's
like weather uh the nato phonetic alphabet communication like all of these things that
like are just little skills it's sort of like sailing i'm sure your son learned how to tie knots
oh yeah and it's like okay it's just it's like that little stuff that you can then use in other
applications in life and you know i remember i mean this is more personal but i remember when i
was 18, all you want to do is impress a girl. And I think about if my son could grow up knowing these
things and I just, you know, it's just sort of natural. Like he's going to be an impressive
person worthy of someone who is equally impressive. And, uh, it's, it's just a matter of like stacking
skills, having experiences, uh, and staying humble throughout. Uh, you know, knowing that
the great thing about these experiences is that they humble you every time. So every three months
you get humbled now you build yourself up but you're you know you because you start off as an
idiot you know nothing you know you're showing up and you have to you have to go through that
you know newbie process over and over again and it really um it forces you to uh to realize how
little you know uh even as you start to learn so much more about reality especially like the
fighting you know isn't my thai in thailand one of the uh one of the anchor courses it is that's uh
So, so Max's last cycle was the entrepreneurship cycle.
Um, he finished that at the end of the year and he's right now in Japan on his way to
Thailand and he is going to spend two months in Chiang Mai at a Muay Thai camp.
Okay.
Is he, does he, is he a fighting experience or is this like, uh, he's got BJJ experience.
He's got a little bit of, uh, like kickboxing, uh, striking experience, but no, this will
be, this is, he's never had anything this intense.
I mean, this is like, uh, you know, you have two training sessions a day and, you know,
it's intense.
It's a, it's a camp.
Yeah.
So cool.
So explain how the, so you've got the anchor course that's for everyone who's, you know,
trying to keep everyone up.
So that's the, the fighting, the EMT, the flying, sailing, and then you have all of
these other courses that you recommend, uh, books.
Talk to me a little bit about the courses, because I know to the, it it's, it's not all
a perfect one-to-one, but to the extent that you've been able, those courses generally coincide
to some degree with that theme of the cycle. Yeah, this is one of the problems with normal
school is that you wonder why you don't, I mean, I always felt like, one, what's the point of the
stuff they're teaching me? Like, I didn't understand what the use of it would be. And,
you know, and second of all, it's all so disconnected from each other that you don't
get the advantages of making any connections because when you're learning, you know, when
you're really learning something, you start to put together like this sort of web of understanding,
you know, and it makes it easier to remember.
It makes it things you will, you, uh, you, you discover knowledge basically in the information
as it, as it ties together.
So as much as possible, we try and keep the academics and the reading is associated as
much associated with the theme of the cycle as anything could be like the, you know, we
have a cowboy cycle or you know for this one for my son he will uh i apprenticed him to our gaucho
actually uh which is like an uruguayan cowboy um but you know there's a couple schools we recommend
that people go to in the u.s and so like the reading that goes wrong with it it's like the
history of the american west you know you're learning about that uh like some of the leisure
reading is these i don't know if you've ever read any louis lemore but he's like this pulp um western
fiction books and they're great actually great for in terms of character because they the you
know the the hero in it is always it's just a normal guy in the western right who's just
that character makes the right decision does the hard thing all that so you get to see examples
because one we don't have many i think this is intentional there's very few good male or female
for that matter role models for young people like who do they who should they aspire to be is it the
The only examples out there are people who have stuff, have money, you know, maybe an Andrew Tate, who's, you know, not of great character, but he's got money and girls.
So, you know, and he says stuff that's true.
So, like, that's what they've got.
Yeah, it's it's a tragedy.
I think about that.
My wife actually told me she she said, you have no idea how proud I am and how proud you should be that our seven year old daughter does not know who Taylor Swift is.
I said, I said, thank you.
because I don't want to listen to that music as we drive around anyway,
much less do I want my daughter thinking that that's someone that they need to look up to.
The books, so my sense, I sort of flip through the books because there's a lot of content for everyone listening.
If you're going to go look at this, there really is a lot.
The books also tend to align with the cycles, but part of it is, I've got the book here,
Is it recommended reading at the end where it's a lot of the classics,
they're Austrian economic books.
What was sort of the design of that?
And is that just supplemental to it all?
Some of it goes into the curriculum specifically, but some of it's external.
Well, what we have is we have just like with the courses,
we've got like a kind of a course catalog for these online courses.
And we've, in some cases, we've put them in to the cycle and say,
this is like required,
but there's hours left over to get your total of you know what you're trying to get for the for the
cycle there's hours where you can fill in other ones whatever's of interest to you and it's the
same is true for books so there's some books where you go no no you really should read this one and
you know uh we wouldn't give you a history book that told you the the fake narrative of the civil
war by the way you would you wouldn't you would know it wasn't about freeing the slaves um but uh
But there's some specific ones we might recommend, but for the most part, you know, so you want to get that foundation.
You should be exposed to these things, but you would become a good reader in doing this because there is a lot of reading.
I think Max read 56 books last year.
Wow.
You know, which sounds like a lot, but just a little bit every day.
You'd be surprised, you know, you go through it pretty quickly.
And, you know, what you want a lot of reading, you want it to be people following their curiosity.
so you know we have some required and then there's electives and we give you some options if you don't
know what might be worth reading here are some things that we can recommend okay so who who is
uh the proponent of putting classical music in this was an interesting one for me okay doug he's
a big classical music guy oh he painstakingly put together that list actually i mean every
every every concerto on there like is a hundred percent dug okay okay to me though it's interesting
though because i've never studied classical music at all like and i've never listened to it i imagine
it's something if you can dig in and begin to appreciate exactly like i'll tell you the one
time i've appreciated classical music was my wife and i did a trip to europe we went to salzburg
austria and we ended up at the salzburg fortress watching a mozart you know themed can't get better
than that yeah it was unbelievable and you realize the like the technical ability required to play
that today much less to compose that you know hundreds of years ago and uh and people are still
listening to it and appreciating it for what it is you know so so many years later um but i think
it's one of those things it just like it adds a new dimension of of interest about you is a part
it's just like there shouldn't be things that are that are just off limits to you um and i
art is a hard thing because uh the truth is is that all art requires appreciation to appreciate
it it really does i mean it requires the more you and this is true about it i think everything in
life the more you know about it the more interesting it becomes you know is the more you know like you
can go down crazy rabbit holes of of weird you know interest and it's just in random stuff that
people that feels very like very much like a niche but uh but as you get to know more you find you
get really really into it and and so what Doug thinks it's I grew up actually listening to
classical music all the time but uh that's I was the weird guy who only listened to classical music
in high school yeah um i don't know why uh but i did and i think and i like now just have his
background music you know uh but i think that his idea is that this this is a form of high art
high culture and that you should be exposed to it at least not to say you could be like hey you know
not my thing that's totally fine it doesn't really matter but you should be exposed to it
and there's a there's like just like there's art appreciation uh courses in here to teach you about
about the visual arts well i mean because again this is something a renaissance man would know
something about these things not to say they'd be an expert but they'd know something about it
and uh you know so but yeah that list is his he was i think you're i think you're hitting on it is
it's and especially in a world where we're we're moving into a world of ai whether people like it
or not and it is like as i think about that it is completely unclear to me precisely what skill
sets, I need to, you know, 15 years ago, I would have said, I'm going to my kids need to learn how
to code, you know, they need to have pretty strong technical skills. And now that's not going to be
very helpful. I mean, you're going to have 1% of the best in the world are going to continue to
operate in some capacity doing that or controlling the machines maybe, but that those things are going
away. And so in light of that uncertainty, the best thing I can do is say, how can I just equip
my kids to be prepared for anything. They just, they have an understanding. They can connect with
people of any background because they know enough about how the world works,
art, music, they can do things. And I think that's going to set them up for the financial
success that you described as not necessarily being the preeminent driver behind all of this,
but obviously a practically, you know, very important function of, you know, becoming a
You got to pay the rent one way or another.
But I'll tell you, the way these things roll into it, I cannot creating.
I mean, the way you get or you have is by doing.
But in doing things that are valuable to others is how you start to, you know, really can take off for you financially.
And the best position to be in for that is being an entrepreneur.
And of course, you know, if I had, I would encourage everyone to be an entrepreneur, but everybody.
But I think that most people are not equipped to do it because they just don't, they have, they don't have enough understanding of how anything works, you know, to do it. And really being an entrepreneur is being able to make connections and things and understand how you can create value in a space.
but the way these things compound in the preparation so you know my son got the emt thing
and then uh he got offered a job by and people this is another thing people are very surprised
once you start doing stuff and you put yourself out there kind of publicly where he was just
you know writing down what he did that week you start to get people that show up out of the
woodwork like that encourage you i want you to be successful and if they can help and it makes sense
they offer it. And so he had a guy who basically owns a contract wildfire EMS company. And they
basically, where they contract with the government to offer, you know, EMS services on wildfires.
And so my son did that for a summer. And by the way, one of the cycles is a work cycle.
So we're like, hey, you know, use a cycle to do something now, you know, to go make some money,
focus on making money, but still do some other things. But, you know, your focus primary,
your anchor activity is making money and so he did that for working on wildfires and he as a emt
doing that he made six hundred dollars a day which you know i find still extraordinary that seems like
i mean i think my take-home pay i know you know inflation all that but i think my take-home pay
from the army was probably close to six hundred dollars a month right you know i mean so six
hundred dollars a day and then you i mean you're you're out in the middle of nowhere you have no
expenses all the expenses are taken care of but you know so that so it can you so you want to
compound things so parlay it into stuff and um you know and i think when you stack up these different
skills they start to work in really interesting ways i mean one of the one of the cycles is a
hacker cycle so you're talking about ai i agree you should knowing to code obviously that's not
going to be the thing but you should know how to build things in the virtual sphere too because
just like you one of the cycles is you go to the shelter institute in maine and in three weeks you
design and build a house like uh that's a useful skill so you just basically you're one after
another you're just removing these things that are otherwise totally un not understandable to you
like what exactly does it mean where do you even begin if you want to design a house you know how
how does the plumbing work you know you have no idea where to begin so these things like if i want
to build a website how do i do that um you know these things shouldn't be inaccessible to you
and the book basically strips those away one by one so they're not yeah the other benefit is it's
sort of a point we've raised but with something like my kids are going to learn to code we have
a place nearby actually that will teach them you know basics of coding i don't think any of them
are going to be developers because i think that job is effectively going away certainly by the time
they're going to be of age to, to be, you know, building anything. However, it helps, it will help
them understand how these things work, which I think is just useful. It will help them understand
problem solving, more critical thinking skills. Like it'll begin to, there are all of these
positive externalities to just doing things that extend way beyond the thing that you doing Right And that what many people miss And even even something like you talked about taking on menial jobs I wish I had I had a couple of summers painting fences out in the heat It was like it was
miserable. It was hard. But of course, looking back, I'm like, those were some of the best.
You just smiled when you said it. Isn't that funny? Yeah. Like I, I, I learned how to, how to do a
thing. I learned the value of hard work. I spent time with my friends who were, you know, who were
pitching in and helping. And, um, gosh, I mean, you learn how to show up on time. You learn how
to take, you know, take orders, do a particular thing. He learned that you should never eat the
food at a fast food restaurant. A lot, a lot of, a lot of beneficial things you can take away from
even the dumbest sounding, you know, role. And, uh, I think most people just take that for granted.
I wish I hadn't when I was that age. And I hope to impart that, you know, sentiment on my kids as
they get older and they think about how am I going to, you know, afford to get a car and how
am I going to afford to put gas in it? And, uh, you just got, you just do things, you know,
it's not always going to be fun. There's always a takeaway. Well, the thing is you say not fun,
but, but the, just like you smiled when you're like, you know, remembering the suck of painting
fences in the heat. The truth is, is that all of your memories are like that. All of the suck parts
are basically the part you know the parts that you look back with fondness on you're like tell
like when you think about playing video games you just think oh i play video games there's literally
you know there's not there might have been a moment i don't know uh you know playing video
games where you like really remember maybe but like but probably not by comparison to anything
that you do that really actually just if it sucks i mean max and i talk about this all the time like
the suck is where it's at like that's what you love later that's the thing you look back and go
I did something, you know, and those things do add up.
And when you talk about getting out there and doing it, I think you're right.
And you brought up critical thinking.
And the reason why people are such bad critical thinkers now is because they don't do anything
in the real world.
So they don't get feedback that, you know, just like you're talking about with writing
code.
So if I'm writing Python script, it doesn't work.
Now, you know, I said, you know, it forces me to go and think deeply about what I did
and trying to understand the problem so I can fix my error. If I'm working on a house or a remodel
job or something like that, same thing. I get immediate feedback. I tried to do something. It
didn't work. What did I do wrong? How do I fix it? And so getting out there and doing stuff is the
key to critical thinking. It's not thinking is not the key to critical thinking. It's doing that's
the key to critical thinking. Yes. Yes, I agree. I think the other trap we fall into is sort of an
aside i have a friend who i was talking about like everything the charlie kirk situation everything
going on and they're a huge candace owens fan love tucker carlson like those are sure their go-to
and i'm like i think some of the things they say i probably agree with i think um there's a case to
be made by a number of people about different things and they were like yeah but like why
why because i was like what if they're controlled opposition hypothetically i don't know but like
what, what if, and they're like, well, they don't seem to be, cause here's why I was like, listen,
here's the problem. This is why people aren't thinking critically anymore is they're finding
one or two people who they basically night as a saint. And they say, that's my, that person is
going to do the work for me. And I trust them. I like a couple of things they say. So anything
moving forward, I just trust. I said, for me, Candace, Tucker, Joe Rogan, uh, Bill Maher,
anyone, they're a node in my network of, of information and they're all far enough out
there that I assume probably they're wrong about something. But if I pull all this information
together, I look at what independent journalists are saying. I read what normal people are just
sort of how they're processing this information. Well, now I can begin to make a more informed
decision. But as long as you worship the Republican party, you worship the Democrat
party, you worship Candace, you worship Bill Maher, you worship anyone. You're always going
to have incomplete information and your thinking is going to be pre-completed for you. And it's,
it's sort of what you were describing with, you know, we don't have these people for young,
we don't have, um, uh, role models for young people to look up to. It's the same thing. If
Taylor Swift is your role model, if Justin B I'm probably standing data mentioning some of these
people, but you know, I'm dated. What are you talking about? You know? Yeah. Yeah. You're, uh,
yeah, you probably have other references you'd make, but I'm sure I'm a couple of years behind.
but that's, that's the enemy of critical thinking is when someone else becomes the, um, like your
North star, when one or two people become your North star and you can just shut off your brain
as soon as they tell you what you're supposed to think. Yeah. And especially if it's somebody who
you don't actually know. Okay. This is a, it's a, it's someone who shows up in your feed that
you're fed and is very successful in the algorithm for some reason, maybe by design, who knows, but,
But yeah, anything you can find in an individual who could act as that North Star for you.
But it's someone you know.
It's not someone who's presented to you.
For you, I assume someone like Doug, who you've gotten to know, trust, love, respect.
He's done a lot.
Great experience.
He's been wrong, but you've seen him wrong before.
And he's been right most of the time.
Someone like that makes a hell of a lot of sense for you to say, if Doug is saying something,
I'm going to at least consider that very seriously and take it, you know, much more seriously than any number of talking heads on Fox or CNN.
Yeah.
But again, the biggest reason for me is because I have a personal relationship with him.
So I know his strengths and his limits.
You know, like, yeah.
You can rely on people.
You might find a North Star who's through the media.
Maybe you can rely on for from a for a philosophical view.
But as far as like facts or narrative, I would stay away in general, just relying on anybody.
Yeah, no, I don't blame you.
Okay, so I want to round this out for us.
So first of all, I want to get an update on Max, but can you first explain why are you
in Uruguay and what led you to, because you're an American, correct?
Yeah, I'm also Uruguayan though.
I just got my citizenship.
Oh, congratulations.
So what led you there?
And is that like a permanent place that you're going to be or what are you thinking?
Yeah. Well, we came down here. I had lived internationally before. I lived in Argentina for a couple of years in 2007.
But yeah, during the COVID nonsense, you could see the trend of things.
I didn't like the way the trend of things were trending and they're still trending in the same direction, by the way.
And you just see you could see the end game with it all, at least with the economy, which is, you know.
probably other things too. And I just, and I, and I just, I didn't like it. So what I, by going,
by coming to Uruguay, I am essentially going back in time about 25 years in a lot of respects.
And, uh, like a nice place to be there. Yeah. And well, especially, you know,
just, you know, we've been here since I guess we, you know, we got here and, you know, uh,
four and a half years ago. So, you know, especially for the last few years I had with
my kids still i just you know i did that i wanted a good environment for them a healthy environment
um you know i didn't know if people weren't going to allow me to go to the grocery store
um and during the covid nonsense but you know here i don't need to go to a grocery store i have a
cattle ranch and we have everything we need honestly so uh yeah and i don't know i always
wanted to own a ranch also i had looked all over the u.s for ranches to buy and i couldn't find
anything that I liked that was like, that really felt like it was right for me. And this place that
we have here is honestly, it's, uh, it's, it's, it's Eden in many ways. It really is pretty perfect.
So we love it. I don't, I still have some stuff in the U S I've got cars, motorcycles in an RV,
but no real estate. And, um, you know, I still have some family there obviously, but
yeah, I don't see myself moving back. Like we like it. Perfect. Well, I'm glad to hear that.
Okay. So Max is well on his way through this. He's the guinea pig. Could you just really quickly tell me how, like how you've seen him change, what his feedback to you has been, you know, are there parts that he, he feels like, I don't know if I do that again, or maybe change things or in general, who's he just adopted. This is sort of a mindset, something he's going to accomplish and, uh, and is enjoying.
yeah let's see where to start with it i'd say the most important thing to me as a father is just
simply the fact that sometime i think it was actually on the on the on the sailing thing
believe it or not but uh he went from being a boy to a man in all respects except for
the final one which is having kids i don't actually think i think there's something missing
until you have kids um but you know in other respects i mean every other respect uh you'd
consider him a man and that that change from here where you know when he was when we started this
whole thing he was anxious and pissed off you know not competent at anything but also just lost
uh to being where he is confident he's uh extremely capable experienced wiser um
it's just totally like he from boy to man in two years i don't know how to describe it he's
totally independent i mean in every way you can imagine totally independent and uh yeah i'm quite
proud of him so so to me the the book is a success because of that and because of that experience but
the what max's experience has been and i'd say the difficulties he had is that you know uh the
reason why Max is a co-author on the book is because he is completely a co-creator of the
system because we were co-creating. I mean, he was doing all the work and we were just talking
about it going, okay, well, like let's problem solve. And, you know, and I, you know, and I could
work through some things early on with him and then come up with like, what is the right structure
to be using? So I think his biggest thing would be, I wish, you know, I had this structure when
I started because, you know, it feels like he wasted a lot of time or went down some, maybe some
uh roads that he wouldn't have gone down or maybe he would have taken but overall i don't think he
has any regrets from it at all because um would he do some of those things again i don't think so
but that's the whole point you that's the whole point of the cycles it's like you do it and you're
done like i don't want to go through basic training in the army again i'm glad i did you know but i
definitely don't want to do it again so i think that's those experiences like that are great for
you so yeah i i'm sure there are some things he i sure know these things he likes more than other
things that he did but um he's doing great so he's like a little over two years into it now
so like two in a two years in one cycle i guess and he's doing great where is it going to end up
for him i you know you don't know i don't know i mean his last cycle he did was this entrepreneurship
cycle and he did he did well with it and i think it opened his eyes to the possibilities there
and um yeah i don't know i mean obviously i hope he's an entrepreneur of one form or another
ultimately so he's not a wage slave which is the alternative well it's gonna be a good feeling to
see that as a father i think uh i think you can be be proud and happy with the with the product
you've produced here with this book uh last question for you what is an unpopular opinion
that you hold and you get bonus points if you offend i'll say bitcoiners and sound money advocates
with it um you should sell bitcoin sometimes okay not all your bitcoin yeah but here's the thing
yeah listen so i've been through a lot of the cycles you know but i was never a uh i was never
religious about bitcoin okay like i saw i saw early on what it could potentially be um but
But because especially since 2016, I've been willing to sell as it started to go up.
I didn't care if when it went down, I made so much money off of every time that every
upcycle taking some profits that then when it went down, the bulk of my holdings could
remain and I didn't care at all.
It made no difference to me whatsoever.
So, and I think that when people don't sell, when they, when they, when they had this big
gain and it wouldn't pushed up at the top of the cycle and you didn't take any profits it makes it
really hard to hold it when it gets in the doldrums and maybe the cycle is broken now and it's not
doing what it has done repeatedly over the past but that in the past that volatility was a gigantic
opportunity i mean think about it it took me my third try buying bitcoin for it to really work out
for me thank god that had some cycles now yes i did buy it for a lot more but i knew enough by the
third time to buy a lot of it when it was cheap and, you know, rode that all the way up. And,
but I, but you should sell, you should take some profits. So don't sell your Bitcoin, but sell some.
I think, I think it depends what you're saying makes sense. It depends on your thesis though.
So my thesis of Bitcoin is that eventually it's going to be the world that the money that the
world migrates to, because it's the only thing that everyone can opt into permissionlessly.
and while i agree that you can you can sell you could potentially end up with more bitcoin i also
know that there's a risk of people don't know what they're doing to end up with less bitcoin
and so what i find prudent for for my bitcoin stack is just to i earn in bitcoin i accumulate
it and i know that i could have more if i sold at certain times and repurchased at certain times
for me it's not worth timing it i'm not a trader i'm not a like a experienced investor of any kind
And so, but I, I, I hear your thought process.
Yeah.
Let me explain one more thing.
The reason my concern is the same as yours is, is that you end up getting out of it.
And I'm saying that sometimes if, especially if you've been through some of these crazy
cycles and you know, the down, when it's down, it's like, like there's a lot of hopelessness
out there.
You know, I know, you know, it's, it's, it's performed well recently, obviously.
um but uh you know in the last well in the last couple years it's done well um but i guess it's
easy for me to say because my conviction is so high that there's there's not a bear market that
shakes me you know yeah you're right there are a lot of people who are they come in they buy at
the top and then they sell at the bottom and never look at it again yeah yeah that's that's a fair
that's a fair point. So if I guess if that's what people need to, as, as they build their
conviction, I think maybe my guidance would be for those folks, continue to build your conviction,
read the books, do the study and put in the time because once you see it, once that switch is truly
flipped, I think it's a lot harder for people to be shaken out of their stack. That's the key. You
don't want to be shaken out. And your own psychology is your worst enemy when it comes to investing.
It really is. It messes with you. You are, you're at war with your own psychology when it comes to
investing. Absolutely. Well, Matt, thank you so much for your time again. Thank you for this book.
I mean that this is my son is going to be a different man at age 18, 22, then he, he's going
to be a different man at age 10 than if you had not written this book and I hadn't found it. So
thank you so much. Any place you want to send people to, to find the book, to find out more
about you, if you want to pass them along to Doug anywhere. I can give you a whole bunch of things.
uh number one you can get the book on amazon is the easiest way to get it um number two if you
want to see what the results end up being like it with it you can see maxim's blog it's at my son's
maximsmith.com uh and then the last one is that i do the podcast with doug doug casey's take is
what it's called uh we're taking a hiatus until for the last six weeks until we're starting after
january 15th again but it's good because doug is uh doug as doug says he's old he's rich and he just
doesn't give a fuck and so you get you get a you get a different view from somebody who has like
him who has nothing to gain and really it doesn't care he's not trying to build his uh social media
profile or anything like that and so the conversations are good and honest i love it
I love it. Well, thank you, Matt. I really appreciate it. We'll link to all of that in
the show notes, but until next time, I hope we can stay in touch, but take care, have a great day,
and we'll talk soon. Absolutely. Thank you very much. I appreciate it.
And that's a wrap again. Hope you enjoyed my conversation with Matt. I know I had a blast
talking to him again, one of the most important books I've ever read, at least for the future of
my own children, but go support him. Go buy the book. If this sounds at all interesting to you,
if you're homeschooling your kids, if you have college age kids, certainly this is a perfect
book to start reading. And of course, you can go follow along with the podcast he does with Doug
Casey. And if you enjoyed this show, do me a huge favor, give us a like, subscribe, comment, share
it with someone who you think might be interested to do us do anything for us to feed the algorithm,
we would really, really appreciate that. And of course, if you need help taking proper 100%
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you can schedule a free 30 minute consult with a member of our team can also help you with
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And we have a plan B residency option as well that you'll want to hear about as the world goes crazy.
Again, that's thebitcoinway.com slash podcast.
Until next time, stay safe, stay sovereign, and remember the yield on Bitcoin is freedom.