October 2026 at MAKE Wellness: The Alchemist, a New Skincare Line, and What The Compound Effect Teaches

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October's book is The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho, a short novel about Santiago, a shepherd who leaves everything familiar behind to follow a recurring dream of treasure at the Egyptian pyramids. MAKE named it Book of the Month on October 1, and the whole community reads it together this month.

Coelho was born in Rio de Janeiro in 1947 and wrote the book in Portuguese, as O Alquimista, in 1988. Of the 26 books the company has picked since the program began in September 2024, it is the only one by a Brazilian author and the only one not first written in English, so for the first time I get to read the pick in my own language. MAKE opened the month with a line from it: "And, when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it." I'm starting it this month with everyone else.

Key Takeaways

What October looks like at MAKE

MAKE launched its first beauty category, Precision Skincare, on September 28 as a three-step stack, and since October 1 each step is also sold on its own. RENEWED is a daily hibiscus-berry drink with peptides, the one step of the three that you drink. REVIVED is a peptide serum for skin that looks smoother and firmer. REPLENISHED is a peptide emulsion that goes on after the serum, for skin that looks softer and more hydrated.

The science is what excites me most. MAKE builds the line on what it calls Bioactive Precision Peptides™ and a three-part SPA Method™: Signal, Preserve, Amplify. REVIVED carries Sacha Inchi peptides, from the star-shaped seed of a vine in the Peruvian Amazon, with goji berry exosomes, niacinamide and multi-level hyaluronic acid. REPLENISHED pairs pea and teff seed peptides with three ceramides, bakuchiol and squalane. RENEWED adds 240 mg of vitamin C to collagen peptides and is designed to help support the body's natural collagen-signaling process. MAKE's Chief Science Officer, Dr. Mark Bartlett, puts the idea this way: "When we understand skin as a living communication network, peptides become more than ingredients. They become precision skincare ingredients designed to support visibly healthy-looking skin."

Skincare has always been a favourite of mine. Movie nights with friends would turn, in random moments of spontaneity, into clay masks, sheet masks and at-home facials. These days I mostly use The Ordinary, so a peptide skincare line from the company I build with made me very happy. I ordered the Precision Skincare Stack on launch day, and it is on its way to me now. Early customers on MAKE's product pages write lines like "I feel like I have a glow all day" (Brandy M.) and "My face feels and looks so much smoother" (Brittany M.). Individual results vary.

In USD, RENEWED and REPLENISHED are $99.99 each and REVIVED is $119.99. The Precision Skincare Stack brings all three together for $249.99, which saves $69.98 against $319.97 bought one by one. On Subscribe and Save the Stack is $224.99 a month, and the Subscribe and Save discount goes from 10% to 20% from the fourth consecutive month. Those are MAKE's US prices as of October 2026 and may change. If you want to try the line, the Stack is the simplest way in, because it is the whole ritual in one box for less than the three bought separately.

MAKE's product page also lists a welcome gift: first-time purchasers receive a complimentary branded water bottle and collection box on their first order, at the time of writing and while supplies last. And I share $10 with every new customer: through my link, first-time customers get $10 off a first order of $99 or more.

MAKE has announced ENERGIZED+ for October 14, in two new flavours, Power Punch and Peach, in a new 15-count box that is also sold as a 2-pack for a full month. And if you don't know where to start, the MAKE Wellness Assessment asks four quick questions, takes under a minute, and gives you a personal Wellness Profile with a recommended stack.

The Compound Effect, a month later

I finished The Compound Effect. September's post covered Darren Hardy's arithmetic, the penny that looks like the wrong choice until the last days of the month. The rest of the book takes on the question that arithmetic leaves open: if the results stay invisible for most of the run, how do you keep going through the middle?

Hardy starts with choices. "Your biggest challenge isn't that you've intentionally been making bad choices. Heck, that would be easy to fix. Your biggest challenge is that you've been sleepwalking through your choices." His answer is to take full responsibility for your life, including the parts other people did, because responsibility is where the power to change things sits. I read that as ownership, and it carries straight into business. A slow month is something to study and own. Blaming the market or the algorithm leaves me nothing to work on.

In the habits chapter he writes, "Forget about willpower. It's time for why-power." Willpower runs out. A reason you care about keeps making the same choice on the days you are tired, so before touching any habit, Hardy has you name what you value and why the goal matters to you. One sentence on paper is enough to start. To retire a bad habit, find its trigger, clean up the environment that feeds it, and put a better behaviour in its place so you are not left with a gap. To install a good one, think addition rather than subtraction. At home that can be as small as a walk added before the phone comes out. In a business, it can be one protected hour a week for the work that has not paid anything yet.

Momentum he calls Big Mo, and he gives it a playground picture: a merry-go-round. Getting it moving from a standstill takes a hard, slow, ugly push. Once it spins, a light touch keeps it going. Hardy credits rhythm and routine with building that spin, and he warns that breaking the rhythm puts you back at a standstill, pushing again. His formula says it outright: Small, Smart Choices + Consistency + Time = Radical Difference, which explains why results lag but promises nothing about when they arrive. The wheel turns the other way too. Brad, one of the three fictional friends in the book, makes small negative choices, a bigger TV and more evenings in front of it, a little more dessert, and each one makes the next easier. If you build anything on the side, pick a rhythm small enough to survive a bad week.

Hardy's last chapter adds that every effort reaches a wall where it gets hard, and that most people stop right there. He calls the moments when stopping would be easy "what it takes" moments, and he says a little extra right then is where results speed up.

Two earlier picks fit inside that frame. July's book, The Go-Giver, says what to repeat: give more in value than you take in payment, one exchange at a time. Hardy says why the repetition matters, because each of those exchanges looks like nothing on its own. August's, The Richest Man in Babylon, works the same way with money: keeping a tenth of what you earn shows nothing for years, and that quiet stretch is the wall where Hardy says most people stop.

The Influences chapter covers three inputs you can audit on purpose: what you feed your mind, who you spend time with, and the environment around you. On input, Hardy casts you as the guard at the door of your own mind, and his example is as ordinary as whatever plays in the car on the way to work. On people, he leans on his mentor Jim Rohn's idea that you become like the people you spend the most time with, and he asks you to decide where to spend less time and where to spend more, including with people further along than you. On environment, set up the room so the good choice is the easy one: the book on the nightstand, the phone charging in the kitchen.

Why a company reads together

Read that influences chapter next to MAKE's October calendar and the calendar makes sense. A company that hands its whole community the same book every month is choosing everyone's input on purpose. There is a book for the mind, a new peptide skincare line that pairs a daily drink with a serum and an emulsion, the wellness products the company started with, and weekly calls where people talk about all of it.

That is what belonging to this company means to me: a group of people getting a little better physically, emotionally, intellectually and financially, taking care of ourselves inside and out. The financial part, for us, is about skills and ownership: learning to run something small, and buying the products we already use through a small affiliate business of our own.

Join for free

You can come in as a customer or as an affiliate.

As a customer, shop through my link and $10 comes off a first order of $99 or more (first-time customers). If you would like a starting point picked for you, MAKE's Assessment does that in under a minute.

As an affiliate, you buy the products you already use through a small business of your own, and you become part of the group itself: the book every month, the calls, the people. MAKE charges no fee to become an affiliate, and this is how I work with people who start.

The book is open to anyone either way. Get a copy of The Alchemist and read it with us this month.