Max Small describes how he turned his everyday farm life into an international rural fantasy brand.
By day, Max Small is spraying crops, mowing paddocks and tinkering with tractors on his family’s South Island farm. By night, and often in the same golden rural light, he’s building a global audience across Instagram, X and OnlyFans, selling the kind of rugged Kiwi fantasy that people all over the world can’t get enough of.
“It’s the same person, just different roles, I guess,” Max shrugs when I ask if it ever feels like he’s living a double life. The farmer and the online persona aren’t separate identities. The “rural fantasy” that’s become his signature is scattered throughout everything he does.
That fantasy, broad shoulders, country air, a man who looks like he could fix your fence and then sweep you off your feet, has become, as he puts it, “the identity that separates me from everyone else that’s creating content.”
Born to a Kiwi dad and American mum, a former model who suggested Max apply when she saw an ad for topless waiters, Max grew up between worlds. His parents met while his father was living in the United States, but returned to New Zealand to raise Max and his twin sister on the family farm. After his parents separated, his mum moved back to the States, and Max now heads over about once a year, usually adding a detour to somewhere that excites him. He’s a big country music fan, so Nashville has featured. So has New York, where he once connected with Bravo’s Andy Cohen and ended up at his apartment.
“He’s quite small in real life,” Max laughs. “I picked him up and carried him up the stairs!”
Despite dabbling in Sydney apartment life, he moved over initially to help his twin sister settle, but the city never quite fit. “That kind of life really separated me from who I am,” he says. “When I moved back to the farm, I got back into the real side of me, that loves the outdoors and space and nature.”
What the farm gives him is perspective and a view. “Our apartment just looked at another apartment. On the farm, I get up in the morning, and you’ve got the whole landscape to look at.” Within 50 minutes, he can be in the mountains. He can go off-roading. There’s space to breathe.
There are trade-offs. Fewer events. Less nightlife. But for Max, authenticity trumps access.
OnlyFans, once simply a business move, is becoming something more creative. “It’s not as easy to get ahead as it used to be,” he says. “You have to put a lot more effort into having something that’s different.”
His difference is simple: it’s authenticity. Between snowboarding trips, gym sessions, working on his classic Dodge Challenger and the daily grind of farm life, Max Small isn’t manufacturing a fantasy. He’s just leaning into one that already exists, a South Island farmer with global appeal, and enough strength to literally carry you upstairs.
Follow Max at _maxsmall on Instagram, YouTube, X and OnlyFans. mxmnstore.com for more details.
