Refuge-Ready Enrollment
Finally get your family’s preparedness handled
In The Ready Life Academy, you’ll make your personal preparedness plan, focus on the next steps, skip the overwhelm, get our help whenever you need it, and make your home the refuge your family can flee to.
Your login arrives by email a few minutes after checkout, and your first step is already waiting inside.
The Refuge-Ready Enrollment is open now and closes Monday, October 5 at 11:59 PM Pacific.
Includes a seat in the Your Next Steps Workshop on Sunday, October 18. I build your family’s plan before the call, then walk you through it live. Capped at 10 families.
You’ve been researching this for a while now. Maybe years.
You’ve watched the videos (maybe even a bunch of ours), and you’ve read the reviews. You’ve priced generators and water filters and solar kits, and somehow you’re less sure than when you started. One fellow says you need a generator, the next says you need a battery pack. One says to store water in buckets, the next says you need some specialty containers.
And the whole time, that quiet list of things we really should get to keeps sitting there.
Which advice fits your home?
There’s more free information out there than you’d get through in 10 lifetimes. The hard part is knowing which of it fits YOUR home, YOUR budget, and YOUR winter. Search results don’t know any of those things, and that’s what can keep you circling at the research stage for years.
Stop the research loop
Every answer turns up 3 new questions. After a while, the research takes over and the projects never get started. In the Academy, you’ll end the paralysis of analysis and be able to take action.
Sort out contradictory advice
40 open browser tabs, and half of them disagree with the other half. None of them know your situation. In our weekly Q&A calls and in the Community, we sort out fact from fiction, and you’ll get an informed opinion.
Skip the expensive-mistakes
A wrong generator or an oversized battery bank is real money down the drain. When you can’t afford to get it wrong, you wait, and the problem keeps sitting there.
You’re not doing it alone anymore
Your neighbors think you’re overreacting. Maybe your own family does too. Carrying this by yourself is the heaviest part. Now you’ll have friends walking along side of you.
Why we’re the ones teaching this
In 1999, my family and I carved out an off-grid homestead deep in the mountains of north Idaho. That first winter meant hauling water in 55-gallon drums to an RV. 27 years (and a couple of homesteads) later, our home gets it’s power from the sun, our water comes from a mountain spring, and we heat with wood & cool with a solar-powered air conditioner. The lessons we learned in between came the expensive way, so yours don’t have to.
About 20 years ago, folks started asking us to teach what we had learned. Since then we’ve taught hundreds of classes across the nation and online, helping untold thousands of families skip the pitfalls we hit ourselves. We learned it all in a home where this stuff has to work every single day, because there’s no utility company to call.
And underneath it all is the line on our masthead: God provides. We prepare. Preparedness done right is stewardship of the family He gave you.
That’s what we built The Ready Life Academy for: to give you the confidence to make a real plan and finally take action, with real humans in your corner when you get stuck.
1999
the winter we went off the grid
27
years of living it
21
years teaching families
Who this is for
This is for serious families who want real progress: folks who’d rather get the answer right the first time and are tired of doing this alone.
Also, if you feel overwhelmed and don’t even know where to get started, this is for you!
We’ll shoot straight with you, though. This isn’t for everyone. If you’ve already got everything dialed in, you may not need us. Or if you are looking only to learn and you don’t want to take any action right now, the Academy may not be a great fit. We encourage everyone to take some action and do the things they can do now.
What’s inside, in the order it’ll actually help you
People first, because that’s what you’re paying for. The library backs them up.
Your Next Step
The Ready Roundtable
Jumpstart
Smart Search
The Skills Library
1. Your Next Step Assessment + Workshop
The assessment that kills the overwhelm. Within 30 minutes of joining, you’ll know your family’s single biggest vulnerability and your exact first project.
And because you are joining as part of this class, you’ll get the Your Next Steps Workshop which gets Nick’s eyes on your specific situation. You’ll end up with his proposed plan of action to help you get your highest priority item squared away.
2. The Ready Roundtable
A live call with me most weeks. It happens on Zoom where you can type in the chat or talk with us or even go on camera and ask about YOUR well, YOUR generator, YOUR situation. We’ll answer from 27 years of living it. Between calls, post your question in the community and get help there too. Can’t make Tuesday? Send your question in ahead of time and I’ll work through it on the call, and the replay is yours afterward.
3. The Jumpstart Course
Water, food, heat and power, step by step, in the right order.
4. Smart Search
Get your questions answered in 30 seconds when you’re standing in the hardware store or in bed.
5. The Skills Library is the deep bench for every rung of the ladder, as you climb it.
Can’t I find all this on YouTube?
A lot of it, yes, including on our own channel, and we hope you keep watching. What you won’t find free is an answer that knows your well depth, your winter and your budget. On YouTube we’re talking to 80,000 people at once. Inside the Academy we’re talking to you.
“The land had nothing when we bought it, and with the knowledge I gained from your classes, I was confident making decisions in drilling and setting up the water well, the solar system, and many other aspects of starting from nothing and no knowledge of the subject.”
Fran, Texas
“We are not very technical, as Nick is aware, but have managed to figure most things out and with his help do some pretty major troubleshooting. What I’m saying is, if we can do it, anyone can!”
Roger, Kentucky
“Throughout the process, whether you knew it or not, you had a tremendous impact on our final path, totally off the grid and totally sustainable. I think I went through the Boot Camp totally four times and in parts another three or four times.”
Mike, North Carolina
“The off-Grid Boot Camp saved us at least 50% of the professional estimates for our current system that we installed ourselves.”
Preston, Oregon
Question: what would it be worth to you?
Peace of mind
What’s it worth to know that your family is not dependent upon the government or huge corporations for their most basic necessities? That they wouldn’t be thirsty / hungry / cold if the power went off or other interruptions occurred?
And what about the peace of mind from knowing that, when you get stuck, you’re part of a community that has experience and has your back?
Potentially $1,000s saved
Even with only one project, such as a solar power system, the strategies you’ll learn could easily shave thousands off the cost of your system, just from energy efficiency tips alone.
That’s without even looking at the money saved by buying the right equipment the first time (which is a frequent problem for newbies).
Potentially months of time saved
By having proven methods that work, in one place at your fingertips, rather than having to search all over creation to find the best option.
Also, by implementing time-tested strategies the first time, rather than being someone’s guinea pig.
Having systems in place that actually work
How do you put a value on this? What’s it worth to have experienced folks helping you set things up the right way and troubleshoot them if needed?
Only with this enrollment
Your Next Steps Workshop
I build a plan for your family before the call, then walk you through it live on Zoom.
Sunday, October 18 · 4 to 6 PM Pacific · live on Zoom
We get emails all the time that just say, “Could I talk to you about my situation?” This is that. It’s one of the most useful things we do, and the seats go to families who join through this enrollment.
You send in your intake form
Tell me about your family, your house, your water, heat, food and power, your budget and your roster. Bring your “how do I…” questions too. We send the form after you join, and it’s due Wednesday, October 14.
I build your plan by hand
Before the call I sit down with your form and work out your highest-priority system right now, and what your most important next steps should be.
I walk you through it live
On Sunday, October 18, each family gets time with me directly. Ask your questions and tell me what I missed, and we’ll adjust the plan together right there.
You keep it in writing
Everybody gets the recording and a PDF of their plan by email, ready to print and keep in a drawer where the family can find it.
We look at all 4 systems (water, food, heat and power), and you walk away knowing which one matters most for your family right now, and what to do about it first.
What Roger found
Roger, a member out in California, followed the plan I laid out for him at our September workshop. One of his next steps was to test his generator, and it wouldn’t run. A seal was leaking on the propane tank he’d hooked it to, and in an outage that would have left him with no electricity. He got a new tank, and now he’s ready to roll and can keep his family powered through a blackout. As he told me, if he’d waited for an emergency, he’d have been in a mess.
$97
value
If we offered this workshop on its own, it would go for at least $97. Right now the only way to get a seat is to join the Academy through this enrollment.
The workshop is capped at 10 families so I can give each one real time. Seats go in the order people join and send in their intake form, and there’s no other workshop on the calendar.
The seats come down with the special on Monday, October 5 at 11:59 PM Pacific.
What it costs, and what comes with it through Monday, October 5
The Ready Life Academy is $490 a year, every day of the year. Through the Refuge-Ready Enrollment, your price is $297 for the year, and it stays $297 at renewal for as long as you stay a member.
And here’s the part that’s new this year. A handful of our best trainings are coming out of the everyday membership and becoming standalone products, sold one at a time. There are 2 ways to get them: buy them separately at full price, or come in through a class special like this one, where every one of them is included.
The Refuge-Ready Enrollment stack
NA seat in the Your Next Steps Workshop, a $97 value. You’ll know your family’s most important next steps, with a plan I build for you and walk you through live on Zoom, Sunday, October 18. Capped at 10 families.
NLive weekly Q&A calls with me. Bring your questions about your own place, and I’ll answer them live. Can’t make it? Send your question in ahead and catch the replay.
NThe Community. Friends walking alongside you, so you’re not carrying this by yourself. Between calls, post a question and get help from folks on the same road.
NEvery course in the Academy. Water, food, heat and power step by step, on up to off-grid solar and spring development, so the next rung is there when you’re ready to climb it. That includes the trainings we now sell on their own.
NThe Ready Life Planning Library. All 8 printable workbooks plus every new one we release, so your plan is on paper when the power’s out. That’s $72 of workbooks at $9 apiece.
The Ready Life Academy
Everyday price: $490 a year
$297
for the year. It stays $297 at renewal for as long as you stay a member.
Plus a seat in the October 18 Your Next Steps Workshop ($97 value), capped at 10 families.
The Refuge-Ready Enrollment closes Monday, October 5 at 11:59 PM Pacific.
“There’s something about being able to ask questions and get a real, human answer, that makes the modest yearly fee more than worth it, in my mind. And the step-by-step intensives are a real blessing!”
Kathy, Academy member
“We are members… most definitely worth it! It would take you FOREVER to find all this info! If you can afford it, do it!”
Roseann, Academy member
Our guarantee
You can’t know from the outside whether the Academy fits your family. So come inside and find out. Join, run Your Next Step, sit in on one Roundtable call. If it’s not for you, cancel in the portal and send one support ticket within 30 days of joining, and you get a full refund. No questions asked.
Your questions, answered straight
Is this only for off-grid people?
No. Many of our members are in town, in the suburbs, or still planning a move. Your Next Step meets you where you are. An apartment pantry and a backup power station count as real progress, and we treat them that way.
What if I’m not technical?
Roger in Kentucky put it best: “if we can do it anyone can.” The step-by-step is built for regular families, and when you hit a wall, you ask a human.
I’m 68. Is it too late to start?
A good many of the folks we hear from are in their 60s and 70s. At that stage the hard part is knowing which 3 things actually matter, so your money and effort go to the right place. That’s exactly what we help you decide.
We’re on a fixed income. What if we can’t afford a mistake?
That’s the best reason to have someone in your corner before you buy anything. One avoided wrong purchase, a mis-sized generator or the wrong filter for your well, can cover the membership several times over.
When are the live calls?
Most weeks, Tuesdays at 5 PM Pacific. If you can’t make one, send your question in ahead of time and I’ll work through it on the call. The calls are recorded, so the replay is waiting for you either way.
What if I can’t make the workshop live on October 18?
You’re still covered. I build your plan from your intake form either way, and everybody gets the recording and a PDF of their plan by email. Coming live means you can ask questions and we can adjust the plan together on the spot.
I’ve bought courses before and never finished them.
So have we. That’s why the Academy starts with an assessment that hands you 1 next step to start on, and why the live calls give you a place to say when you’re stuck.
I’m not ready yet. Should I wait until we move, get land, have more money?
The Academy is built for the not-yet-ready person. Waiting has a way of turning into 5 years with nothing done. We help you use this season, wherever you are right now, to learn the right things, prioritize what matters, get the basics handled, and prepare for the far more common emergencies that hit families every single year.
What exactly happens after I click the button?
You check out securely, then an email with your login link arrives within a few minutes (check spam if you don’t see it). Click it, run Your Next Step, and you’ll know your first project today.
My spouse thinks I’m overreacting.
You’re far from alone in that, and we’d never tell you to steamroll them. Start with things that both agree are useful, whether a disaster happens or not. For instance, a full pantry is useful on an ordinary Tuesday too and saves you money, while a huge stash of emergency freeze dried food is expensive and probably won’t do you any good until the big one happens. We prefer the pantry. Apply that principle to each of these items and work on the common sense items that make sense. Don’t push them, but do pray for them. And be respectful of their opinion. Building bridges is far more effective than being offensive. With much patience and prayer, we’ve seen many couples come into greater harmony on this after starting out with very different perspectives.
Can I get a workshop seat without joining the Academy?
No. Seats only come with an Academy membership through this enrollment, which ends Monday, October 5. They go in the order people join and send in their intake form, and once the 10 are filled, you still get the full Academy and everything else in the stack.
When does the special end?
Monday, October 5 at 11:59 PM Pacific. After that the price returns to $490, the workshop seats go with it, and the standalone products go back to being sold one at a time.
If you’ve been meaning to deal with this for a while and you’re tired of it sitting on the list, this is a good time to pull the trigger. If you’ve already spent money on something that turned out to be the wrong fit, we’d be glad to help you get it right this time.
A year from now, when you look back on this week, would you rather be the family with a real plan in place, or the family still meaning to get to it?
The Refuge-Ready Enrollment closes Monday, October 5 at 11:59 PM Pacific, and the workshop seats go with it.
Nick & Lisa Meissner | TheReadyLife.com