Matt Smith has created an alternative to college, a four-year, 16-cycle curriculum designed to shape participants into renaissance men, skilled, self-reliant, and grounded in character. Matt co-authored The Preparation with his son, Maxim, who is currently working his way through the program. In the first half of our conversation, Matt shares what kickstarted this idea and what's lacking in the education model for young men today. We then turn to the nuts and bolts of the preparation, and Matt walks us through several of the program s hands-on cycles.
00:10:16.300What is this renaissance man model that you're trying to create with the preparation?
00:10:19.320So fundamentally, instead of the focus being on what kind of job do you want to have?
00:10:25.240You know, the question that confronts young men at this stage in life, it's like, what kind of job you want to have?
00:10:29.360Or, you know, the three main choices, of course, a college, military, or a trade school.
00:10:34.160Nothing really wrong with, and necessarily with any of them, but all of them are simply designed to get you a job that gets you economic viability
00:10:41.280so that you can be hopefully reasonably prosperous, you know, and have some economic security.
00:10:46.520But none of them address the most important question, which is, what kind of man do you want to become?
00:10:52.420And what we try and do is get them to think about that early in the book.
00:10:56.480And we focus on this, the idea of the renaissance man, essentially, as a person who's able to, who not only knows a lot about broad range of topics,
00:11:05.820like, you know, from music to art, to building a house, and milking a cow, I mean, whatever, anything you imagine.
00:11:12.640Like, just a broad range of knowledge, but also knows how to shape the world around him, knows how to put it into action, knows how to create with it.
00:11:19.800And that's, you know, the difference between like a polymath and a real renaissance man, is a polymath knows a lot,
00:11:26.320but a renaissance man uses that knowledge to create, to shape the world around them.
00:11:30.340Yeah, I think we have this kind of, I mean, a distorted idea of what a renaissance man is.
00:11:35.300When we think of like, oh, he's a renaissance man, it's like, well, he just knows a lot.
00:11:38.960Basically, we're describing a polymath.
00:11:40.920The actual renaissance men from the renaissance era, as you said, they not only knew a lot of stuff,
00:11:46.280but they could do a lot of stuff, and they were actively engaged in trying to shape the public sphere.
00:11:52.040So you use the example of Leon Battista Alberti.
00:11:56.980He was a badass, obviously, a guy who lived in the 15th century in Italy.
00:12:02.080And, you know, he's one of the central figures, really, of that renaissance period.
00:12:05.880He was a painter, an architect, a cryptographer, a philosopher, a mathematician.
00:12:11.220And, you know, he was also like quite an athlete.
00:12:13.300He was a great horseman, apparently, too, and a mountaineer.
00:12:16.140I mean, he was quite accomplished in every walk of life.
00:12:19.440And he thought that the only thing that limited what you could do was your will.
00:12:23.020You know, this renaissance area, what it did is it combined these classical virtues that were sort of rediscovered in the renaissance from ancient Greece and Rome.
00:12:31.900And, you know, with this new, like, life that was sort of fed into the period once.
00:12:36.680Actually, the renaissance period fundamentally was about a revitalization by a rediscovery of these ancient virtues,
00:12:43.280where a man could shape themselves and ought to shape themselves.
00:12:46.060So that's, like, that's what life's about, is that pursuit of shaping yourself into something great.
00:12:51.340And so he's kind of the iconic figure of that period, really, who really proved it true.
00:12:56.760And, yeah, going back, one of their goals was, like, they wanted to not only shape themselves,
00:13:00.220but they wanted to shape themselves so they could shape the world, like, have an impact on the world.
00:17:39.200I think, you know, they were able to, in all of those cases, I think they were able to devote their time and energy to the things that drew them in more.
00:17:46.760Because they had this broad exposure to many things and broad exposure to lots of different people and different things,
00:17:53.200it just increases their total decision set.
00:17:55.860It's like their optionality in life increases dramatically the more, like the way I guess you would put it, surface area they touch.
00:18:02.680But I have to include people they touch within that as well.
00:18:06.000Because you build these weird networks that connect you with weird people if you do unusual things.
00:18:11.060And if you just go to college, like, well, you go to college and you might learn some interesting things,
00:18:15.460but your experiences aren't going to be as varied as these guys.
00:18:18.980And today, you can learn anything you can learn in college without going to college.
00:22:07.240Where you can, a young person, anybody can build from a real self, from that just a little bit of self-control around, I'm not going to do the things that make me feel small.
00:24:23.140But if the person is not a good person, I mean, if they don't have virtue, if they aren't pursuing virtue, they're not people I want to be around.
00:24:31.480And certainly, I don't want to be someone like that.
00:24:34.340So, it's a constant barometer for me as well.
00:24:36.620And I just think it's never discussed with young men.
00:26:21.760So, every cycle has academic courses as a component to it.
00:26:25.400As much as possible, we try and make it so that they're related to the subject matter that they're actually, their anchor course that they're actually going through at the time.
00:27:45.500You know, that's one of your activities.
00:27:46.960But there are required things in there, too, you know, that we have.
00:27:50.280But we're assuming 40 hours a week, which is definitely prepares somebody that in and of itself more for the real world, frankly, than, you know, a heavy course load would.
00:27:58.420Okay, so, each cycle has an anchor course and this is the more intensive, hands-on component of a cycle.
00:28:05.360Then there's some related academics that you're going to do.
00:28:08.020And then there's some activities you can choose from.
00:28:10.440And then you're supposed to do a written reflection at the end of a cycle.
00:28:14.380And, you know, as you said, you're pitching this as an alternative college.
00:28:18.300And as we talked about earlier, college is just really expensive these days.
00:28:22.700I think doing four years at an in-state university is something like, you know, $100,000 in total.
00:28:31.280You know, so, the academics with the preparation, you know, that's like online courses you can take for free.
00:28:36.040But, you know, stuff like the anchor courses cost money.
00:28:39.080So, how much does the preparation cost to do all together?
00:28:43.480Yeah, so, if you did the exact 16 ones that we have, and there are two that are really expensive in here, the total cost of that over four years is about $70,000.
00:30:02.420The reason that he started with it, and I think the reason why a lot of people should start with it, or why we placed it, the first one, is simply because it's the most accessible.
00:30:11.180It requires wherever you are, wherever you live, somewhere around you, there is an EMT school not too far away that you can attend.
00:30:21.420I mean, some $1,200, sometimes maybe up to $2,000.
00:30:25.160Depends upon exactly where you are in the country.
00:30:27.060But basically, what it does, it qualifies you to work on it like an ambulance, obviously, and that pays basically minimum wage.
00:30:34.260It's not a great job, you know, but it does give you some economic viability.
00:30:38.100I mean, it does qualify you for a job that, you know, you couldn't have if you didn't have it.
00:30:42.980But it also is an amazingly useful skill that actually can be parlayed into quite a bit more, as Maxim did.
00:30:49.980And, like, specifically, Maxim, because of his part of this is that weekly reflection and accountability we talked about earlier as part of it.
00:30:57.040So he published, he started publishing a sub stack.
00:30:59.660Just basically, at first, he was simply listing what he'd done that week.
00:31:03.800It was like a way to hold himself accountable.
00:31:05.900Just, you know, they had to put it out there.
00:31:07.880And, you know, no one reading it didn't matter.
00:31:10.360Over time, you know, there's a few thousand people that have read it now that are subscribed to it.
00:31:13.820But, so, it's a little harder for him.
00:31:16.500But, I mean, it's a little harder in that he knows that there's an audience.
00:31:20.280But, through that, someone reached out to him and said, hey, you've got this.
00:31:24.000Working on an ambulance isn't any fun.
00:31:26.480Iona was a wildfire fighting business, basically, where he contracts with the western states during the summers when they have these terrible fires.
00:31:33.360And as an EMT, so he spent one of his cycles, the work cycle, he spent one summer, last summer, fighting fires in Oregon, making $600 a day.
00:31:45.740It's, which, for me, when I was 18, I know money isn't worth what it once was worth.
00:31:51.100But I think that was roughly my take-home pay for a month in the Army was $600.
00:31:55.600So, through things like that, you know, unique opportunities show up for you.
00:31:58.560And, you know, there's different ways to leverage it.
00:32:00.340But for him, ultimately, you know, if there is an emergency trauma-type situation, he is qualified and skilled to be able to be the person who can step up and do something about it.
00:32:13.200To know how to handle the situation, to assess what's going on, and to take action.
00:32:17.860And that skill gives you a, you walk into the world differently.
00:32:24.140You encounter the world differently when you know that if something like that happens, you will know what to do.
00:33:27.940There's this awesome place in Maine called the Shelter Institute, where over three weeks, if you do the three-week version, there's a two-week version and a three-week version.
00:33:35.660The three-week version, you design and build a home.
00:33:40.180And you don't build it to completion, but you actually just, you put up the timber frame structure in the third week.
00:33:45.960But the first two weeks are really the most important ones.
00:33:48.660Because they really, you go through the entire process of exactly understanding, how do you handle plumbing and electrical?
00:33:54.760And, you know, how do I choose the site?
00:33:56.740And how do I, you know, how do I begin to even start with this?
00:34:00.540So, you basically, you learn to design a home.
00:34:02.620Now, you know, you don't necessarily want to be a home builder, but you can understand the benefit of this, and they're mostly the people that go to this are adults, by the way.
00:34:10.020They're not, you know, children that go.
00:34:11.620They're people like you and I are like, hey, this would be cool to know.
00:34:14.740But when you have this skill, it's just, you see the world differently.
00:34:19.840It also could expose you to creative outlets that might draw you in deeper.
00:34:25.620But the whole point of all of this, and there are lots of the 16 we picked, we could have picked another 16 that I think would have been just as valuable.
00:34:33.720But the key thing is that they all build upon one another, helping the being, helping this person have a list of accomplishments that impresses them, that is impressive to others, and that makes them see the world from like what they could do instead of what they can't do.
00:36:07.900But on an individual basis, what it does to us is bad.
00:36:11.220It has a real negative effect where our basic understanding of how basic things around us function are totally outside of our awareness or understanding.
00:36:20.460And if you think back, maybe our parents' age, and if not, absolutely their parents' age, they knew all of this stuff.
00:36:28.860I mean, not necessarily all of these different things, but they basically understood the world around them way better than people do today.
00:36:34.740The academic component, I imagine it's a lot of architecture.
00:38:21.840I don't know if you spend a lot of time around horses, but they're beautiful, amazing.
00:38:24.700And so in that time, we spend a lot of time focusing on the academics and the academic portion of this cycle.
00:38:32.160It's a lot of U.S. history, Western history, Western literature to give them cultural context, including, of course, the Sackett series.
00:38:40.600We encourage them to start reading, get into that, because I think virtues are present in the characters of the Old West and certainly in all of Louis L'Amour's books, but also learning about Kit Carson.
00:38:53.320I mean, his life was, like, you just can't imagine things he accomplished in his life.
00:38:58.300So you read this biography of him as well during that cycle.
00:39:02.100And I think these do give these models for, like, when you look at what's possible, if you're like a 17, 18, 20-year-old, if you're even 50 years old.
00:39:10.180And you look at these examples of what people, you know, these people who totally break the Overton window of possibility of what you can do with your life.
00:39:52.900But, you know, most of it's just basic physical training, basic sparring.
00:39:56.860Of course, at the end of it, the hope to actually do a real bite.
00:40:01.320And it's not required, of course, but it's the hope that they would do that, I think is good.
00:40:06.420And, you know, that one fundamentally, the truth is, is that we encourage like the study of martial arts anyway.
00:40:14.640So the question is whether or not you make a cycle out of it, because a lot of the activities we talk about could have, honestly, many of them could be turned into cycles that are worth it.
00:40:21.720Like, so like my son was doing BJJ, that's Brazilian Jesus, who, almost wherever he was, there's almost always a place he could go to do that.
00:40:30.560So we encourage it anyway, but we decided to make it part of his cycle because that hero's journey arc in a way.
00:40:36.080Going somewhere totally different, where the world functions in a totally different way, where everything is exotic to you, gives you a better sense of the entire, you know, how the, I mean, most Americans don't really see, you know, how the rest of the world functions.
00:40:50.440So we want them to get out and see the world a bit.
00:40:53.400And this gives them a way to do that in a environment where they're not just traveling for the sake of traveling, but they're traveling with a sense of purpose and learning.
00:41:03.100And where they're going to walk away a different person, they will come out of that not being the same person.
00:41:07.260I mean, in the academic portion, is it, are you doing like Asian studies?
00:42:06.060I've started many businesses and some have succeeded, some have failed.
00:42:09.720But the things you learn along that process is quite good.
00:42:12.780And, you know, it starts off very, the cycles start off very, you know, hands-on, like very specific and structured.
00:42:19.580And then it gets more into the abstract things like entrepreneurship, investing, you know, the things that I think are very important, but don't give you a sense of self in the same way that these like hands-on, like hardcore recognized skills do.
00:42:34.360And, you know, the four we've gone through, basically, imagine just if someone just took a gap year before college, just did those four in the gap year, different person they would be going into college if they still chose to go that route.
00:42:45.500They'd go there knowing a sense of self and a sense of where they want to take their life.
00:42:50.020I mean, so other ones you talk about, and we won't talk about them in detail, but there's like survivalist cycle where you go to a primitive living intensive school for two weeks.
00:42:58.660You mentioned the pilot cycle where you get your pilot's license.
00:43:01.320There's a sailor cycle where you're going to learn how to, you're going to go to South America and learn how to sail, which would be awesome.
00:43:25.420I've got a friend who started a farm after selling his business and he had to learn how to weld.
00:43:30.780He went to, had to go to trade school, learn how to weld.
00:43:32.600There's a lot of welding you do as a farmer, surprisingly.
00:43:35.040The heavy equipment operator, obviously.
00:43:37.300And I mean, I think that your big takeaway, all these things you're going to learn, these skills you're going to develop, that contributes to the do of character.
00:43:47.780And then that leads to the being of character.
00:43:51.060So it just gives you this sense of self that you'll carry with you for the rest of your life.
00:44:06.820And I think you can make the case that with this diversity of real experience, I mean, I can give you the confidence and the capacity to pursue a variety of paths, more so than college.
00:44:19.460But I can imagine that there are people out there listening, you know, dads who are listening that are thinking, okay, well, now what?
00:44:27.400I think that's, again, the wrong question.
00:44:29.040I mean, I get the question, but when have we known for sure where anything we did was going to take us in reality?
00:44:37.800Like maybe we had a general direction to like move toward, but we never really knew exactly what the then what is.
00:44:44.300The question basically cancels out like because of the uncertainty of it.
00:44:49.720It can cancel out the desire to strive to become because it seems impractical because you want to know the practical answer.
00:44:57.000The truth is I can't imagine what he's going to be doing after two more years.
00:45:03.680I mean, the changes, as a father, seeing where he started with this kid who had a lot of, you know, anxiety, he was basically super like, like I'm an introvert.
00:45:11.540I trained my kids maybe to be introverts.
00:45:20.000Like he is, you know, he would never feel comfortable, like, you know, going and interacting with a lot of people, but it's no issue for him whatsoever.
00:45:30.080I don't know if he manages it or if it's dissolved away, but he's gone from being basically a boy into being already after two years, every qualification, I would say, of being a man, except for the fact he's not yet a father.
00:46:03.860Like I mentioned earlier, I think doing all this stuff increases your surface area of opportunities.
00:46:09.600And I think your son's a testament to that.
00:46:11.040I mean, he got that job offer to work wildfires and I'm sure he'll have other opportunities that pop up because he's just exposing himself to different people in different situations.
00:46:59.840And that's what he's done along the way.
00:47:01.120I just don't want people to be scared off by that because, and the fact that he can work his way through doing this, he is at a level of economic survivability already.
00:47:10.500It's like somehow he's making it work.
00:47:12.080You know, of course he's sleeping with like extra bedrooms of family or friends when he's in different places.
00:47:16.040You know, he's really thrifty with his money, but it works.
00:47:21.380It does produce somebody who is independent and not just financially independent, but independent and they make sound decisions.
00:47:28.580I mentioned earlier, as I was reading through this book, I was thinking, man, I want to do some of this stuff.
00:47:35.040Do you know any middle-aged men who are doing some of these cycles for themselves?
00:47:40.220Well, you know, the book just came out two and a half weeks ago.
00:47:43.820So the formal structure of these, you know, has not been out there, but I could definitely tell you a lot of these anchor courses are not done by kids.
00:48:02.380Yeah, I would say the same thing with the Shelter Institute.
00:48:06.020I mean, that is not young people that are doing that.
00:48:09.180So certainly these are all things that draw in people like our age to do and older.
00:48:13.660And, you know, one of the most of the readers of the book so far, they're parents, they're parents like you and I, who want to help make sure their kids are pointed in the right direction.
00:48:22.740And they have the same response that you did, which is like, this is stuff I want to do.
00:48:27.460And I have to tell you, to be honest, writing the book was a challenge to do and to construct it so that it tells people exactly what to do.
00:48:35.720But, I mean, I was just looking for things that sounded like that I wanted to do also, you know, things that I knew would inspire my son and other boys around the world, you know.
00:48:47.020And it tends, I guess it's true of men my age and older.
00:48:51.320I mean, we had a 71-year-old write to us the other day and said, I'm starting, I'm going to start doing this.
00:48:56.960So, well, I don't have any examples yet of them doing it, but I have a lot of, if you read the reviews on Amazon, you'll see a lot of parents saying the same.
00:49:05.320They're echoing the same thing they want to do.
00:49:07.420Well, Matt, this has been a great conversation.
00:49:08.760Where can people go to learn more about the book and your work?
00:49:11.060Well, you go to Amazon to buy the book.
00:49:13.560And there's currently, there's an audio version coming out, but this is a very physical thing.
00:49:18.820So, even the audio book comes with a PDF that you'll need or do it because it's kind of like a workbook in many ways.
00:49:25.280And there's a hardcover edition, which if you're trying to persuade a teen that maybe is unlikely to, sounds like your boy would read a book, said, this is good for you.
00:49:34.320And luckily, my son is at that stage too.
00:49:37.600But if you have one who might be a little more reluctant or something like that, the hardcover is designed to be as beautiful as possible within Amazon's limitations.
00:50:14.080And then you can go to thepreparation.com, which is a sub stack that we set up about the book.
00:50:18.940But also, as people go through it, young people start doing it.
00:50:22.200We encourage them to, again, for this reflection and accountability to publish it, like my son did, and then kind of amplify and connect the people who are doing it.
00:50:30.860So, that and I have to talk about my son's sub stack, too, just so you see it.
00:50:36.940It's at MaximSmith.com, M-A-X-I-M-Smith.com.
00:50:40.860Because you can see the stuff that he's done for the last two years as kind of a proof of work.
00:50:56.000You can find more information about The Preparation at ThePreparation.com.
00:50:59.340Also, check out our show notes at AOM.IS slash ThePreparation, where you can find links to resources where you delve deeper into this topic.
00:51:12.680Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM Podcast.
00:51:15.400Make sure to check out our website at ArtofManus.com, where you can find our podcast archives.
00:51:19.120And make sure to sign up for a new newsletter.