Building a MAG: Finding Good People Before You Need Them

Building a MAG: Finding Good People Before You Need Them

Building a Mutual Assistance Group (MAG) is one of the most important—and often overlooked—parts of preparedness. Food, water, gear, and supplies are important, but no one can do everything alone. In this episode, Forrest Garvin explains why building relationships before a disaster is far more valuable than trying to find help afterward.

You'll learn what a MAG is, how to identify trustworthy people, where to find like-minded individuals, and the common mistakes that can weaken a preparedness group. Forrest also shares practical advice on growing your local network, building trust over time, and creating a community of people with different skills who can help one another during emergencies or everyday challenges.

Whether you're just getting started in preparedness or you've been prepping for years, this episode will help you understand why your greatest preparedness asset isn't something you can buy—it's the people you know. If you're serious about self-reliance, emergency preparedness, homesteading, or building a stronger local community, this episode is for you.

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Announcer 0:54

Survive, thrive, stay alive. It's time to get ripped with the Prepping Academy podcast.

SPEAKER_01 1:11

Welcome to the Prepping Academy. I am Forrest. I hope you're doing well. Today we're gonna talk about a subject that's near and dear to me. It's building a mag group, finding good people before you need them. This is absolutely my entire platform. Has been for 12-13 years in the prepping community. Is that your most important prep is by far a community, a tribe, a survival group, a mag group, call it what you want. That is your most important prep. I've been doing this speech around the United States. It events saying you need to be in a group, you need to be in a group. It's the hardest thing. Everyone wants to do it, but they don't know how to do it. And so that's why I've been trying to help. That's why I created an organization called Prepper Net so you can meet people in your own community with like-minded. And that is key. And people go, Well, why do you say it's your most important prep? Let me ask you a question. Let's say if you had 25 years of freeze-dried food just for you and your family, or you could be in a group of Navy SIELS. You're like, Well, I want to be in a group of Navy SILs. They're trained, they got all these skills that I don't have. My family's gonna get on my nerves. But being in that group, because you can't you know stay awake the whole time, you can't, you know, grow a garden, do communications, do security, all you can't do everything. You've got to have a tribe of people. One of the biggest mistakes I see in the preparedness community is people believing they can do it all themselves. And that is far from the truth. And history backs me up on this. They'll spend thousands of dollars on food and guns and ammo, they'll buy generators, radios, guns, water filters, I mean, medical supplies, the things they need, but they never spend time in building relationships and finding people to be on their team. They think that they can just do it with their family, and it takes more than a family. Reality is almost no one ever survives on their own. You ever watch the show alone? These are some of the best survival experts out there, and it's not the supply, it's not the physical, a lot of times. It is they don't have community, they don't have other people to talk to, they're doing everything themselves, from you know, watching out for bears or fishing or building their camp, they're doing everything, and it's miserable. I know several people that were on the show. I know one, the one the person individual that won the first season, and the thing is you gotta have people, you can't do everything. So today I want to talk about building a mag, a mutual assistance group, which you've if you've heard prepping academy, you've heard me talk about this before, and why people around you may become your most valuable preparedness asset. So, hey, I mean, that's why you need to join Prepper Net too. We got meetings throughout the United States, everywhere. Go to prepper net.com, you'll see the map, and then you can go online to our secret private group that you only know about. The link is there on prepper net.com, and you can meet people in your community. There's meetings, meetups every month throughout the United States. So, um, so no one has every skill. You might think you do, but you don't. Let's be honest, you don't know everything. I don't know everything. These people in the loan don't know everything. I mean, they're they know a lot, they just don't know everything, and they can't do everything. You may be good at gardening, you may be good at you know, you know, toting around an AR-15 or ham radio. Can you operate? Can you can you rebuild a car? Can or you're a carpenter? Do you have military experience? Have a law enforcement experience. A family can't have all these skills. I mean, you gotta have 10 people minimum. And I say 10 men. Why 10 men for a group? Because skills like a lot of guys like to do, like the security skills, women don't really tend to like to do that. And if you're gonna rotate people on and off and watch all corners or that you have in your group, you need more than just a few men. Preparedness isn't always about buying supplies. Now, it could be, I guess, if you're on you can look it up on the internet, it's called Frying Pan Handle or Frying Pan Towers. It's 32 miles off the coast of North Carolina. It's an old coast guard. I don't know, it's a it's just a big old house on top of stilts out in the middle of the ocean. And it's called Frying Pan Tower. I guess you can have enough supplies, go out there and just stay by yourself. Again, the problem is you're gonna go nuts. You're gonna go crazy. Do you? I mean, can you cook fires? How are you gonna grow food out there? You can't, actually. I guess you could have well, they get blown off the top if you put them on the top of the platform. Wing can go get up to 180 and 90 miles an hour up there. It's all about people. And guess what? We have time right now to meet people, vet people, train with people right now. When the poop hits the fan, it's that's not a good time. You can one of my interviews I did was Selko, a Bosnia war survivor, and he said his biggest regret and the mistake he the biggest mistake he made, surviving like two years off the land in the city, dodging death every other day. He said the biggest mistake he made was not having an organized group before all that happened. He made groups on the fly just so he could sleep. And he goes, Sometimes you sleep one eye open because you you just met these guys, you know, the that day or that you know, a couple days before. He goes, but the group, the people that had groups or families, extended families, and they got together, that they survived a lot easier. Life was easier and better for them than those like himself that had to literally every week, every month, he may have been in a different group, different people, people getting killed, shot around him, trust no one. He said that that took a toll. That interview, I've interviewed him like three times or so. I think it made five or six podcasts. You can go back. His name is Selko. You can look up that. But history proves what I'm talking about. It literally looked back in history. Let's look at pioneers. They survived together in little communities. You know, some didn't. I guess the lost colony didn't do so well, but it was their first time. Farming communities share equipment, churches help families after disasters, neighbors rebuild homes, people protect one another. Humans have always survived through cooperation. They have when they come together. Lone wolves don't make it. They, I mean, in the movies, it's great. Someone surviving. That is not the norm, that's not the standard. That's that life sucks. It doesn't make for a good long-term survival plan going, you know, lone wolf. It just doesn't. It's yeah. You show me someone that's actually done that, and I'll show you someone that's nuts, literally, mentally got issues. You show me someone that in the movie, and I'll show you a dumb movie. So, what is a mag? A lot of people call it mag. I call it a tribe, I call it a community as well. What is it? So, mag itself stands for mutual assistant group. It's where a group of people come together and they kind of pledge to protect and and survive together. They just they're gonna help one another during during before, during, and after emergencies. Notice I didn't say militia. We're not putting a militia here. We're not trying to overthrow a government or anything like that. I didn't say political organization. I didn't say secret society where you have a secret handshake shake. A mag is just a simply people trusting each other working together to survive. So the the question is this is the I mean, I'm gonna ask the question. Well, how how often do survival groups and mad groups literally succeed? Very few. I'm just telling you, I've worked with over 70 mad groups, putting them together, consulting with them. They don't they don't survive very well. People got attitudes, people got opinions, and they it's just it's the hardest thing you're gonna do in walking and being a prepper or being in the prepare. It's the hardest thing, period. Now, I'm gonna tell you right now, you may ask, well, Forrest, how are you an expert at this? Well, I have the longest known survival group in America right now. I don't say that. A guy named Charlie Hogwood and Jonathan Hollerman, which are two are the the biggest people that I know of that have worked with survival groups. And Charlie has been working with survival groups since you know early 2000s. Jonathan started around, I think, 2010, 11. These pe these guys between the three of us, we've worked with over two, like 2,000 groups. It's crazy. And they tell me, like, gosh, Forrest, you we don't know of any group that has lasted that long. If you go to prepanacademy.com, actually, no, no, excuse me. If you go to prepernet.com, you'll see a photo with me and Jonathan Hollerman and Charlie Hogwood there. It pops up. That's that's us that we took that because we knew the three of us have probably you know help more mad groups or tribes get together than any other threesome in the world. Really? I mean, I didn't say that, it's what Pete they were saying. So, and I've done, I guess to this point, it's close to a hundred myself. Some of them didn't work out. That's why I only count like like around 75 because some of them we we formed, and after months, they're like, Yeah, this ain't gonna work. But you know, about 75 of them worked, and and we're we're we're hanging on. Now, though they're not all still together now, you know, as soon as the poop hits the fan or something happens, you know, people get back together. So you know, every um successful preparedness group has one thing in common. And okay, they do trust each other, but it's also if they're family-based, that works great. That's one of the best ones, family-based. If they're church-based, that one works good. If they're military-based, yeah, that doesn't work so good. Unless they're good old boys and they're just they lie up, they love to hang out. If they're just military coming together to put together a mag group, yeah. Too many, everyone, everyone knows everything. But if it's just good old boys that like to get just shoot and hang out and they hang out every weekend, that one is a much better, has a much better chance. Without trust, nothing else matters in a mag group, and families already trust you, you know, each other. And then you know, and from the church as well, people are more trusting and and humble in a sense as well. This is probably the most important podcast you're gonna ever listen to when it comes to prepping. You need a group, you need a mag. That's the most important thing I can teach you driving to you to your little brain. I didn't say little brain, I wanted to say that, but I know that's the most important thing is being in a group. It's hard to build trust after a disaster. Again, listen to that Selco podcast. You'll he goes, dude, you couldn't trust anyone at all. You must build trust with people before the disaster. Think about your closest friends. Trust wasn't built overnight, it happens through years of conversation, helping each other, solving problems together, seeing how each one of you will react under pressure, do some training with some pressure things. The same is true for a Mac group. You just don't want that. Willy-nilly it put it together at the last minute. Everyone in this cul-de-sac, we're gonna work together. That you better have a better plan than that. But if you're if you're waiting till the power goes out, it's that's that's a bad thing to do. Do it now at times are easy. While you have money, while you have a job, while you can do things, don't wait until the power goes out, and all crap hits the fan. So also more people equals more skills. Now I've been saying this, and you may hate it. I I don't care. The mo the best survival groups have some of the most people in the survival group, and and people just hate that. Or what? Yeah, what do you mean? So my survival group has 15 families, and you're thinking, hey, that's 30 people. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. 15 families, and we have like three single people. So 15 families and three single people. That's not 33 people. That's a hundred and nine people, is what that is. You got brothers, you got sisters, you got parents, you've got kids. That's 109 people. You're like, well, that's way too many people. No. Everyone has a job, everyone has responsibility. You you what are you gonna go to a you're gonna join a group and leave your mom and dad to die? Are you gonna go and leave your your you know your single sister to die by herself? Is that what you're gonna do? You're gonna go and not take your kids or your grandkids? If you said yes to any of them, I'm so glad you're not in my group. I'm just saying. Because here's the deal the number, and you're like, well, that's a lot of mouths to feed. Well, yeah, but there's a lot. If I bring nine people to the retreat because I got kids and grandkids, and you know, a mother-in-law, and a you know, I have time right now to put that food aside. I have time, I can go to them and say, hey, I need a thousand dollars a year so we can get some food for you. Pay up. I'm gonna this is your insurance policy. That's what you gotta think. Don't think, oh, 109 people. That's just too many. No, it's not too many. It's not too many. A platoon has a hundred soldiers. A hundred. I believe. I was in the air force, so I don't really know, but I think that's true. Maybe, uh yeah. Don't correct me on that. I could be wrong. I made that up. I don't think I did. So, so you need to go now and find people. How do you find people? That's why I created prepper now so people can go meet people in their own neighborhood, their own community, and start the conversation. So you need to treat this. Well, before we get there, so you gotta have skills too. You gotta make yourself valuable. Don't just say, hey, let's start a group. I'm valuable because I'm the one that said, let's start a group. No, you gotta have skills. Skills can be learned. Trust can't be, but skills you can learn, mindset you can learn, and knowledge can be learned. So you need to find trustworthy people that maybe they already have skills, maybe they don't. But just being able to trust people is usually more important than you know, than gun skills. Now, and I'm gonna say another thing. I don't say this out loud enough, but if you have gun skills, I wouldn't even say sniper skills, you have no value in my group. Let me repeat that for all you military people out there, because I'm former military, I'm a special ops. If you have gun skills and you have you have gun skills and you have sniper skills, you have no value to me and my group. And you're like, what? What do you mean that's important? Oh, it is important, but everyone in my group has them skills now. Do you understand? That's a everyone in my group, we've been together for 25 years. Everyone has them skills. I have I have ladies that can shoot a hundred and eight hundred and fifty-yard target with AR-15. You're like, well, that's not even a sniper. No, it's not. But we have a a range we go to is 100 and 850 yards and they can hit the the target. So don't think gun skills, don't think that you know, shooting someone at 200 yards, don't think that that's a skill. That's a baseline skill everyone has. So you might go, huh? So what skills do I need? Well, everyone needs calm skills. There's there's you know, medical skills, there's all kinds of skills that you need to obtain. And again, people, many people come up to me all the time saying, hey, you know, I you know, I'm I was a sniper in the military. I'm like, yeah, big deal. Not gonna need you. We're we're not gonna need someone that can shoot someone a mile away. But you know, I was I was tier one, man. I could, I was a I was a door kicker. I'm like, yeah, that's not a skill in my in my group. I literally have teenagers that can outshoot, I would say, 80% of most military people. Military people, you know, there's a lot of just pulling the trigger, spraying and praying. I mean, these kids are doing three gun, you know, competitions, they're doing, you know, lever rifle competitions, they're doing all kinds of things. And and yeah. So anyway, so I just wanted to get that across that gun skills, first aid skills, everyone in my group has first aid skills, CPR skills. You gotta have a communication skills, tough. You know, a nurse, you know, medical skills, that's a good one. So you gotta have real skills, project management skills. Seriously, everyone has that. Well, I'm I I'm really good at managing people. Well, no, you're not in my group, you're not. So you gotta think about your skills, and and skills can be learned. So you need to start small. So here's how You start a group. This is the secret sauce in starting a group. You need to find one other like-minded person, not four, not three, not five, one other person, and you go out and have coffee with them and say, Hey, John, man, I know you're into preparedness. I've seen you at these places. I've I've met I met your wife. Y'all seem like very nice people. I'm thinking about putting a group together, and I would like to see if you'd be interested. It's like dating, it starts with two people only. I'm telling you this from experience talking to Jonathan Hollerman and Charlie Hogwood. This is the way it works. Don't try another way. Don't go, well, we got seven people in my Sunday school class. I'm gonna ask them all. No, I did that. It sucked. It was terrible. Everyone has opinions and stuff. So what you get, you get two people, you form a group. If you like it, you date and you go, okay, this is John, you're the guy. We let's do this. You two sit down, start hammering out some rules. Here's some rules. How here's how we're gonna meet people. Here's how we're gonna intake them. Here's how we're gonna vote on them. Here's some rules we're gonna have once we're we're already operational. And you hammer out all the rules you can. You write them down. Then you meet a guy, you know, named Ted. And you two talk about it. You and John go, hey John, what do you think of Ted? He goes, Yeah, I think he's he he could be, I mean, I've met his family. He's a great family. And yeah, and so well, let's three of us go have coffee. So the three of us go to have coffee and you go, hey Ted, we have a group already. We already have a group. We are entertaining asking you to be invited, you know, come to our group. Is that something you're interested in? Yeah, man, I've been looking for a group. That's all, yeah. Well, so well, let's let's just go out this weekend and shoot some, or let's go camping, let's go fishing, and you go out and hang out with them, and you finally you go and you hang out, and you go, and both you and John are like, Yeah, man, this is this is working out. I like Ted. I like Ted too. Well, let's show him the rules we have. Hey Ted, here's the rules we've put together. Right now, these are in stone, they can't be changed. You're not gonna change them, no one's gonna change them. This is the right direction we're going. Can you live with these rules? If you can't, then you know, and Ted goes, yeah, man, that's they're you know kind of basic, but yeah, I like the rule. Yeah, I can live with that. Well, this is a you know, and then you bring Ted in, and of course you can bring the wives in and that kind of stuff as well. So now you got three people. Still, you and John are the leaders, always the leaders until this thing is you max this thing out, and then you go Ted and John, you know, Ralph over there, I think, and then that's how you grow the the group. One family, one person, one couple at a time. You already have the rules laid out, and if they can't abide by them rules, you know there are already gonna be a maybe an there's gonna be some issues. Not that you, you know, if they have question about one, you go, well, that's actually a good question. We didn't think about that. Not that you can't change them, but what you don't want to do is get three people trying to make the rules up because opinions are like you know, Heine's. Everyone's got one. And to get three people to agree on something is just crazy stupid. Don't do that. Just get two people and move on like that. That's how you start a group. That's how the most successful groups are formed. And then as you build your group, you build your skills. Ted, man, you said you were interested in communications. Why don't you get your ham license and start learning that? Okay, yeah, yeah. Or beekeeping or whatever it is. Just remember it starts with tool two. It's like dating. And sometimes people are very enthusiastic in the beginning, and you that's why a longer dating period is better. And you're like, well, gosh, the world's gonna end in two months. I gotta meet all these people. No, you don't. But you start noticing things, you know, is it is there are they coming to the meetings? Are they enthusiastic? Are they you know spending some stuff, you know, time? Are they are they learning the skills? Are they spending the money on things that they need to buy? Just look for warning signs. And so that first person, Ted, man, you you bring him in, but you don't maybe fully bring them in yet. Maybe you have another level, like, okay, you're kind of in trial period, and then after six months, we're gonna, you know, you could become a full member and you and John vote on it, kind of thing. And you know, get the wines involved, like I said. But that's the kind of that's that's the way a group should start. And then you have your different roles in the groups. You know, the way my group is ran is we have three people on leadership that could that literally they run the entire group. Three people, they meet together, they agree, they make rules. There is one person that's ultimately in charge, and that person, then the other two will, if they, you know, but if the other two go against that one, you know, you got a problem. But so we work very well together, and we've never had really issues where we disagreed. Maybe one disagreed, the other two were on board, and the other one goes, yep, I okay. If that's what you guys think, let's go with it. And that that's how you compromise and you lead. And you lead by communicating to the people. And then you got to talk about operational security, make sure no one else knows about this, no one else can talk about this at all. And you put rules in there. That's the rules you put together before again you start bringing people in. But this this all this whole process could take a year or more, and you just keep building your group, and don't you will never have enough people. I'm now you I guess you will if you get to you know 150, 200 people, but it takes people to run a group, and you're like, where are we gonna go? We got to get land and all that. Well, there, you know, get the group going first, and then you'd be amazed once you get five or six families, you'll find out that you know the Smiths, you know, have some property out in some farmland, an old farmhouse, that might be best. And so don't just go looking for property day one. I mean, just don't do that, just look for team members you can trust. They're learning the skills. If they're not learning the skills, you're gonna have to kick them out or somehow motivate them. But operational security, even with kids, and and I, you know, I'm I'm literally writing a book on all this, and I do consulting. I do a lot of consulting with groups every month. I usually limit my calls to like 10 hours a month on consulting calls, and usually they're booked. Literally, every month I have a minimum of 10. Well, that's my max too, but I always have 10. And, you know, people pay me because I've done this, I put many groups together. I do have a website, I don't even know what that is. Let me see if I can find it real quick. And just in case you're interested, you may not be. If you're not interested, I don't care. You don't have to call me. It's called preppersconsulting.com. Preppers with the S. Consulting with ing, just kidding.com, preppersconsulting.com. That's my website. You can go in there and book time, send me a message, and I consult with groups and the paperwork and the rules and every aspect of a group. The land, setting up a new house. All I've done all, all of it. If you buy land, want to put a retreat. I have experts. We can come in, we can do everything to build your house with safe rooms, with a bunker, everything. Been doing that for about eight years. So again, this is the reason I started PrepperNet, prepperNet.com. Go there and you can, you know, search for people in your community. There's probably groups meeting in your community right now. But too many preppers are isolated, they're on their own, they they don't have people to talk to. And that's why you need community. There's two types of community. One, just the community of preppers. That's kind of prepper net.com. And you'll find a secret website there. But then you need people in your community where you're going to be, you know, in your group or in your tribe. But families can't do this alone. Don't put your family in that situation. You love your family? Protect them. Get a group of people that you can trust and form a tribe, a a mag group, a community. Do that before the poop hits the fan. Do that before you lose your job. Do that before anything else happens. Do that now. Why there's peace and safety around the world right now. And I mean, we're not in we're in war, but we're not sending people in war really. It's very calm right now. Now is the time to do it. You know, so other, I mean, people are sleeping. They don't think that something can happen. And something can literally turn a switch. What I mean, literally, something could happen at any time. I mean, we got hurricane season coming up. That could throw a family in imagine if you have a community of people and a hurricane comes. You get through it much better. There's so many reasons why you should do this now and not wait. Again, I'm going to just share preppers consulting. Preppers with an S, consulting.com is my consulting website. We have comms people, we have, you know, retreat. We have people. Well, I do a lot of retreat, but I have solar experts, I have underground bunker experts. I work with people, their rules, the reg, you know, and and all that, putting together a policy. I do all that. Been doing it for nine plus years. And I've done that with my group, which has been around for 25 years. And you can check out PrepperNet as well and try to find a community. If you don't know anyone around you, you can go there and find people. That's it. You gotta have a group. It's your most important prep. It's your hardest prep. But because it's difficult, don't stay away from it. You need it. That's your your your lifeline to survive a situation is by having a community. Don't rely on your cul-de-sac. That gets ugly quick. So, but if you need to talk, reach out, preppersconsulting.com. Join prepper net, find other people. I'll have I'll have them links in the in the uh description if I remember. Hopefully I will. And you guys, thank you for joining Prepping Academy. And we'll see you guys next time. God bless. Take care.

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Thanks for listening to the Prepping Academy Podcast. Preppers United at www.prepping academy.com.