April 2, 2025 • 31 mins
Keaton Turner opens with a candid discussion on confronting personal demons, highlighting the importance of self-awareness. An unexpected interruption from Jeffrey Turner adds an engaging twist. Keaton observes others' struggles and emphasizes the consequences of ignoring inner battles. He stresses the need to address small issues early to prevent larger problems. Reflecting on a recent Rise community call, he acknowledges the vulnerability of blue-collar workers. Keaton shares insights on battling procrastination and demons, closing with a message of daily motivation and encouragement for listeners to face their own challenges head-on.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
I'm Keaton Turner, and this is the PerdianPodcast.
(00:29):
your demons.
We all have them.
We all have them.
But do you know them?
You ever confronted your demons?
(00:51):
Man.
Welcome back to the Purdium Podcast.
I'm Keaton Turner.
Thanks for joining me for yet again one moreday of Purdium.
And this one is, this one's not so fun.
(01:11):
I like to have fun.
You guys know I like to have fun.
I like to add in different different audio.
I had some really dark art audio I was gonnaadd to this one, and I thought, you know what?
This one's dark enough.
I don't need to add any audio to make it worse.
(01:34):
Do you know your demons?
Like, if if someone were to come up to you andjust ask you, hey, you're human.
You have demons.
We all have demons.
You have dark, pockets of your life, darkcorners.
You got skeletons in your closet.
(01:55):
You got you we're human.
We all have sins.
We all have the things we struggle with, but doyou do you really know what those demons are in
your life, or do you just kinda ignore them ortry to ignore them, and then all of a sudden,
they come creeping up one day?
(02:15):
Man, you do this dirt business long enough.
I would argue you do any business long enough.
The demons find a way to come out.
They find you at your weak spots.
They find you when you're vulnerable.
I've told you guys multiple times, I'm mostvulnerable to my demons when I'm on the
(02:40):
mountaintop, not, when I'm in the valley.
And, and I've seen it in so many other people,good people, talented people, people that are
legit, people that people that have a realfuture, but they get bogged down by their
(03:05):
demons.
It's super unfortunate and super frustrating towatch somebody go through this.
If you guys have had this in your life, whetherit be drug use or, you know, alcohol abuse, any
(03:30):
sort of addiction, like that obviously can be ademon.
Relationships, different kinds of relationshipscan be a demon.
You know, shoot, your own pride, your own ego,definitely a demon of mine, for sure.
It's super unfortunate to watch someone losethe battle to their demons.
(03:57):
I've watched it unfold several times over myadult life, and it's, you know, it's it's kinda
wild when you're a kid, you don't know thesethings.
Right?
You don't notice them.
You can have people in your life as a kid thatmaybe have some demons and they do a decent
enough job at hiding them or not letting them,come out into the open.
(04:20):
And so you don't really start to understandthis until you get older in life, right?
High school, college, after college, you becomean adult and you start to face some demons of
your own, it's easier to recognize demons inother people.
It's other it's easier to recognize like thesins, the skeletons in the closet, the things
(04:41):
that people don't talk about.
But man, I've as I've kind of lived through mybusiness career, some of the most talented,
biggest hearted people couldn't beat thesebattles with their demons.
(05:02):
And it it's it it's so unfortunate to be a partof and watch.
Uh-oh.
Jeffrey's calling me.
Hold on.
Pause.
My gosh.
Here I am talking about demons, and Jeffreyfreaking Turner calls me and asks if I wanted
(05:25):
to go in on some expensive wine.
Is that is that God playing tricks on me,playing a joke, or what?
But of course, the answer was yes.
I do want to go in on some nice wine.
Rutherford, Oh, man.
Jeffrey, can't believe you did that to me rightas I was right as I was recording this.
(05:48):
It's super frustrating to watch people that arehigh potential lose the battle to their demons.
And so why this is a topic for me right now,obviously, I have had many, many examples of
this in my own life.
(06:09):
But I've also watched it from some of my someof my employees, some of my close friends, and
even some, you know, ironically, some familymembers.
And here's what I would say.
Typically, the people that lose the battle totheir demons, to their vices, to their sins, to
(06:32):
the skeletons in their closet are the peoplethat do not face their demons.
They don't bring them out into the open.
They don't talk about them.
They don't acknowledge them.
They don't acknowledge their power over theirlife.
They just downplay them.
They act like it's no big deal.
(06:54):
They act like it's not important.
They shut off that portion of their past ortheir life, and they just act like they're not
real.
And and I can promise you, the one thing ademon wants you to believe is that it's not
(07:15):
real.
I've learned this.
And I, and I've learned this so many differenttimes, both, both personally and then watching
it with other people.
If you don't acknowledge you have a demon, thedemon has won.
And so I think, you know, for me, again, youknow, working on humility, working on
(07:43):
transparency, working on dropping ego, for meis something that I've, you know, kind of
always worked on since I discovered I had anego.
You know, who knew I had an ego?
I didn't know.
And then one day you learn of it, then it'slike, okay, how do you beat it?
Well, you beat it by acknowledging it.
Some people with addiction, some people withrelationship challenges, whatever your demon
(08:05):
is, you know it.
You I think that's the interesting thing ispeople know they have them.
People can hear that that thing talking to themevery so often.
They know what they struggle with.
If you don't acknowledge it, it will get yousomeday.
(08:27):
You're living on borrowed time.
Maybe it's never gotten you yet.
I can almost guarantee you though, it's gonnaget you someday.
You can't outrun it forever.
And the beauty is you take all the power awayfrom these kind of skeletons in your closet,
(08:50):
these demons, these vices, these sins, whateverthey are, however you wanna frame it up, you
take their power away by acknowledging they'rethere.
You take their power away by talking about it,by admitting a lot of times that you can't do
it by yourself, admitting that you need somesort of, whether it's salvation if you believe
(09:13):
in the Gospel, or whether you don't believe inthe Gospel, you just need some coaching, you
need a mentor, whatever, you take all theirpower away when you admit that they're there.
What gives them power is not admitting they'rethere and just pretending they'll go away on
(09:33):
their own, and they just never do.
I've sat down with some guys that are fullgrown men in tears, right?
These are talented dudes.
This has happened I can't tell you how manydifferent times over the course of my career,
and I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna name names.
I'm not gonna give examples because it's, it'stheir story, not mine.
But I can't tell you how many times I've satwith a guy, and he's literally been in tears
(10:00):
for the choices that he's made because he didnot face his own challenges, his own struggles,
his own demons, his own sins.
He just didn't face them.
He just pretended they would go away.
Several years ago, I was dealing with this witha guy, and I was like, dude, you're you're
(10:23):
like, love this guy to death.
Talented guy.
Could do any this guy could could have doneanything, could have gone anywhere, and he had
some challenges in his life, one particularchallenge.
But instead of swallowing his pride, admittinghe was human like the rest of us, admitting
(10:49):
that he had some demons he needed to goconfront, he just pretended they weren't there.
Never confronted them.
These and these things these demons existedfrom, like, a young age.
Never confronted them.
Never talked about it with anybody.
He's a tough guy.
What's he gonna talk about?
(11:09):
He's not gonna talk about this with anybody.
He's macho.
He's you know, he doesn't need anybody.
Phone lines blown phone lines have been blowingup every time I push record lately.
What is the deal?
Right in the right in the heat of a good storyjust kills my vibe.
(11:30):
Another demon knocking on the door.
This guy was not about to was not about to talkabout the skeletons in his closet, was not
about to talk about all the nooks and cranniesof his life that he was trying to ignore, and
then one little bitty thing happened.
(11:51):
That's usually how it works, right?
The the demon in your life finds one littlebitty opening, one little bitty chink in the
armor, one little bitty crack in the door, andthey bust it wide open.
And then life, before you know it, unravels.
You've lost control.
You don't know who you are.
(12:12):
You don't know what you're doing.
You don't even know how you got there.
Like, I I literally remember asking him, like,how how did you get to this point?
He didn't even know.
Had no clue.
Had no clue how his life got to the point itwas.
He just knew he had struggled with this thing,and this thing turned into that thing, and then
(12:32):
he woke up one day and life was out of control.
Fell right all these opportunities fell rightthrough his fingertips, and he couldn't put the
pieces back together.
It was too late.
There were, you know, relationships damagedbeyond repair.
There was reputation damaged beyond repair.
If he just would have addressed his demons,confronted him head on, admitted that, you know
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what?
This is, I need some like, I need a heartchange.
I need a mindset change.
I need a culture change.
I need to change the people I'm hanging around.
He could have prevented all of it.
Now the demons probably don't go away, allright?
I don't, I don't I'm not old enough.
(13:22):
I don't know if the demons ever really go away.
I think you just get different styles of demonsas you get older.
Different challenges in life pop up, and it's anew demon.
You know, I've beat I've beat a lot of demons.
I've beat these freaking things to death, a lotof different times over my career.
But every once in while, a new one will pop up,and it's like, oh, hey, remember me?
(13:48):
If you don't confront them, they win.
Eventually, they win.
Every single person I've dealt with this who'swho's, you know, kind of had a big life moment
where things just collapsed, they neveraddressed it.
It was always there.
Like in all the conversations I've had, andI've had some really hard ones, they never
(14:11):
addressed it.
They never sought help.
They never admitted to the struggle.
They had just enough pride to keep it a secretand hope it would go away.
And, and then something funny happens when awhen a, you know, when one of these life
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moments happens, when the demon actually doesget ahold of you and win, at least win the
battle, then people are ready to confront them.
But you've lost everything.
At that point, right, you've lost the marriage.
You've lost the family.
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You've lost your finances.
You've lost your reputation.
Now you can build a lot of it back.
You can never build it back to the way it was,but you've confronted the issue too late.
You had the chance.
Like, this audio, there's a reason I don't knowwhy they're I don't I don't know why I even
(15:17):
picked this topic.
I was thinking about a guy who's been in mypast a long time ago, and it made me just run
with this topic today, but you're hearing thisaudio for a reason.
It's not by accident.
And if you have one of these demons at play inyour life, maybe it's time to do something
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about it.
Because if you just put it off forever,eventually, it's too late.
I'm I'm a big believer in doing these littlethings that prevent big issues, just in life,
right?
I'll give you a dumb example.
(15:58):
I let my garage get out of hand, right?
I had some projects in.
We had some expensive equipment, a bunch offire extinguishers, all kinds of random stuff.
And I just stacked it in my garage instead of,you know, doing the proper thing and
reassigning it to another project or taking itdown to the shop or leaving it in some
trailers.
I've just kind of accumulated some randomstuff.
(16:20):
Then you add on kids' stuff on top of that.
My garage the last few months has become adisaster, a war zone.
It would have been very easy for me over thecourse of time to make this small but hard
decision to clean things up as I go, right?
(16:40):
Don't let stuff pile up.
If you just put it in the right place the firsttime, you never have to worry about it.
Well, I don't do the small things, right?
In this instance, with this garage, I don't dothe small things.
I let things pile up.
Well, all of a sudden, we're having a party,and I need to go out to the garage because we
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got a refrigerator out there.
I need to put some stuff in the garage or takesomething out of the garage, whatever it was.
And as I take something out of the garage, Iget my hands full.
I've got glasses.
I think it was like a bottle of champagne orwhatever it was.
I got a bunch of stuff in my hands.
I close the garage or I close the fridge door,and I start to walk back inside.
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I trip over one of these million piles of junkin my garage.
I think I tripped over fire extinguisher.
And boom, there goes a bottle of wine or bottleof champagne.
Right?
Hundred dollar bottle, nice bottle.
Could have all been prevented.
I'm giving a really stupid, dumb, smallexample, but could have easily been prevented
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had I just done the small things that wouldhave prevented leading up to a big, a big
accident, a big issue.
Nice hundred dollar bottle of wine across theground.
I've got so many examples of this.
I had a, I had a little bitty spot.
We've got a, kind of a flat roof over our porchwith a rubber membrane.
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Had a little bitty pinhole leak, And I noticedsome water was dripping.
I'm like, Dang, I gotta get, I gotta get tothat eventually.
And it was no big deal, right?
It just a little bitty pinhole, few drips hereand there.
Well, by the time I got around to it, nextspring, it had rotted tons of the wood
underneath it.
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It had rotted part of the columns, and and itturned into a what what should have been a $250
to $300 repair to fix a little bitty spot onour flat roof, instead cost me $5 to rip the
whole part of the roof off, replace all therotted wood, add new supports.
And so I'm a huge believer in the little bittythings we do every day add up to avoiding or
(19:01):
creating a big issue.
If we do the little bitty things right, weavoid a big issue.
If we ignore the little bitty things, itcreates a big issue.
One more dumb example.
I was sitting, I I walked into our bathroomtoday at the office.
My guys have probably listened to this podcastand heard me complain about doing the little
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things right and us running out of toilet paperon the toilet paper holders in our bathroom
stalls, in the men's bathroom stall at theoffice.
We got two stalls plus a urinal.
So I go into the bathroom stall today, someonewas peeing in the urinal, so I walk into one of
(19:45):
those stalls.
No lie, there are I counted.
There are seven rolls of toilet paper laying onthe handrail of this bathroom stall.
And I know somebody was doing it.
I don't know.
I'm gonna find out who.
It was probably Jake, if I had to guess, ormaybe Patton.
(20:06):
One of these guys has listened to my words onthis podcast and said, Oh, okay.
Keaton wants more toilet paper in thebathrooms.
I'm gonna show him.
I'm gonna go overboard.
And they've, they've literally put seven rollsof toilet we don't need seven rolls of toilet
paper.
We need two.
But I'm just a big believer in these littlebitty things, right?
I'd rather have seven rolls of toilet paperthere than be using the restroom, the stall as
(20:31):
it was designed, and run out of toilet paperbecause no one refilled the rolls.
Now I have a catastrophe on my hands.
Okay?
The little things help us prevent bigger issueslater in life, and I'm just because I've lived
through this and talked to guys that have livedthrough this, facing your demons, admitting
(20:55):
your issues, acknowledging they're real, andthen doing something about it, I just believe
helps us avoid big issues later in life.
Everybody, you guys have heard people talk somany different times about midlife crisis, or,
Man, they were married thirty two years.
(21:16):
How'd they get divorced?
Or, Man, dude, I thought that business waskilling it.
How'd they go out of business?
Or one day, Johnny loses his job.
Man, that guy's been killing it.
He got a promotion last year.
He's been doing great.
How did all of sudden he just get fired?
We've all heard these stories, right?
You get surprised.
You're like, I would have never seen thatcoming.
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You know what's at the root of every single oneof those surprises?
Are some demons that went unchecked.
Some little bitty nooks and crannies in theirlife that they didn't address, they didn't
confront, they didn't get coaching on, theydidn't get mentor mentorship on, and they wake
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up one day and they're surprised that a demonhas a stronghold over their life.
I, I sat through a Rise call today.
It was awesome.
I'm recording this on Monday, by the way.
I don't know when I'm actually dropping it.
I'm trying to build up a little bit of aninventory of podcasts here, so I might drop
this on a Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday.
(22:19):
Who knows?
But I was on the Rise call today, which Rise isa community.
You guys have heard me talk about it.
Go look it up, Rise Community.
It's a community full of men, leaders.
Most most most of the guys are are God fearingor religious guys, but they're they're leaders
in business.
And I was on this call today, and the and theguest speaker had his 21 year old son on there.
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This guy, Joe, he basically lives to teachother men about how to raise men.
You know, and he was talking about a rite ofpassage he did with his 13 year old son.
His 13 year old son is now 21 years old and hewas on this call.
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Really cool.
Awesome to hear their testimony and theirexample of this rite of passage that he took
his son on.
And so as Joe's talking, his son's name is Ben.
As Joe's talking, he then introduces Ben, says,This is my 21 year old son.
Ben's in his dorm room giving this speech to abunch of old grown men on what it was like to
(23:31):
have a dad who was intentional.
And Joe, the dad, did not have any men in hislife that were intentional.
Didn't have a dad, had a couple stepdads thatsound like were deadbeats, and so Joe's giving
his recollection of his childhood and said, Ididn't want that for my kids.
And so what Joe did, starting at the age of 10,11, something like that, 12 years old, he
(23:55):
started intentionally investing in his son Ben,and his he had another son.
And when you hear this 21 year old man, boy,he's really a boy, he's still literally in
college.
He was filming this from his dorm room, takingthis Zoom call from his dorm room.
(24:16):
When you hear this 21 year old talk about hisfaith, openly admit to some of the demons he's
faced as a young man, like he told us some deepstuff on this call, was like, Woah, dude, I
would never have said the things this kid justsaid in a room And I'm a pretty transparent,
open guy.
I would never have just said I struggle withthis, that this kid just said.
(24:40):
This kid's aware.
This kid's self confident.
This kid is, like, well put together for beinga 21 year old kid.
The kid's got it figured out.
But it's because his dad has done all theselittle bitty things, little bitty tips, tricks,
tactics intentionally to set his son up tobattle these demons.
(25:05):
And his son has demons, right?
Just like every other man, every other 21 yearold kid, he's like, Look, I got college
roommates.
I got buddies.
I got people wanting to go out and drinkin'.
I got women.
I got all these there's drugs around me.
I got all these things around me in college.
I'm able to battle them because I was taughthow to address them by my dad.
(25:31):
And so again, it's just a really cool reminderto me.
If the dad just shoved all that in the closetand didn't talk about it, didn't admit his own
wrongdoing to his son, didn't embrace that weall have demons and here's how you suit up to
battle him, if he hadn't have done that, I'mguessing this 21 year old kid named Ben
(25:54):
wouldn't be anywhere close to the caliber ofkid he is today.
If he had just pretended the demons don'texist, I'm not gonna deal with them.
I'm just gonna figure my way out through life.
Like, there's no way he would be on a call infront of a bunch of business owners,
(26:16):
executives, managers in his dorm room giving anaccount for his life and his his his
challenges.
There's no way.
I wouldn't have done that at 21 years old, andI had an amazing set of parents.
And so, again, I think when I look back at thepeople that have stumbled the hardest, the
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people that have tripped and fallen flat ontheir face and really screwed up their life,
some of them to the extent they never didrecover.
I know some guys that aren't even alive anymorebecause of some of the things that, that were
going on in their lives.
If, if I look at every single one of those, thecommon theme is they did not address their
(27:01):
demons.
They ran away from them and they thought theywould outrun them.
And believe it or not, the demons are tricky.
The demons are fast.
The faster you run, the easier it is to tripand make you fall.
And, and so this one, I think, was importantfor me to talk about because I see it all the
(27:25):
time, especially in blue collar guys.
Guys that left home early or left home young ordidn't have the right influences or still don't
have the right influences in their life, don'thave a mentor, don't have a coach.
Like, you guys are the ones that are mostacceptable.
Guys like me are the ones that are mostacceptable, especially if you've experienced
(27:48):
some some success.
If you got a few dollars in the bank, if you'rebuilding a company, if you're leading teams,
those are the people, in my opinion, with thebiggest targets for some of these demons, and
they're crafty.
So again, I don't want get too preachy.
It's not gospely.
This is just fact of life.
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I call it demon, you can call it whatever youwant.
You can call it addiction, you can call itpersonality, you can call it skeletons in your
closet, sins, whatever you want to call it.
If you can face it, if you can find acommunity, guys, that you can talk about it
with, if you can get a coach that helps coachyou on how to deal with it, all these little
(28:32):
things are going to help you suit up forbattle.
If you don't suit up for battle, I just don'tthink you have a chance.
I think eventually they're going get to you.
You're going to have a thirty year marriagethat ends in divorce.
You're going to have a business that fails.
You're gonna have a relationship that fallsflat.
(28:52):
You're gonna lose to addiction.
Whatever the whatever the thing is you'refacing.
But if you suit up for battle, if you're aroundthe right environment, if you're putting the
right things into you, in your brain, in youreyes, if you're watching the right things, if
you're hearing the right things, I think yougot a fighting chance.
So I don't know.
(29:13):
I know that's deep.
I told you guys it was dark.
Some of these some of these are gonna be fun.
Some of them are gonna be dark.
But that's what's going on in my life andthat's what happened to me today.
I love the rise call.
I love being able to sit through that andthink.
Because now I'm like, Well, My son's 10 yearsold.
(29:36):
What have I how have I been suiting him up tobattle these demons?
You know, the funny thing is on this call, Joesaid, dude, ten years old, it's time.
It is time.
The world is coming after these kids.
The world is coming after our young men.
They're coming after our young women.
(29:57):
How are we suiting them up to battle the demonsof the world?
Super convicting.
Again, it's another little free, nod to theRise community.
I love it to death.
I always I'm I'm always like, dude, it's noonon a Monday.
I got a million things to do.
(30:17):
I can't jump on.
I jumped on five minutes late today.
It was the best fifty five minutes of my day,hands down.
Best fifty five minutes of my day, worth everypenny, and and I don't get paid to tell you
guys that.
So that's what I'm going through.
I hope you guys got some value out of it.
I hope you are earning your per diem, and Ihope you are smashing those demons.
(30:41):
And if you're not, I hope you're at leastsuiting up to go to battle.
Suiting up, putting on some armor, sharpeningyour sword, sharpening your axe, loading your m
16, whatever whatever whatever you can do tosuit up for battle, I think puts you at least
(31:02):
in position to fight and hopefully win longterm.
If you've never thought about this concept, ifyou all you know, if you're one of these guys
like me that have just kinda stuck things inthe corner, no.
I don't know.
I'm fine.
I'll get to it someday.
It's no big deal.
It's not a problem today.
Maybe maybe it will be someday.
Don't know.
I don't know.
(31:23):
Maybe someday is too late.
Maybe you lose the battle.
Maybe you look back and life is in disarray.
Hope not, but kill it.
Pray you're getting your per diem.
Pray tune back in tomorrow.
Hope I didn't scare you off.
Thanks, guys.
I'm Keaton Turner, and this is the PerdianPodcast.
(00:29):
your demons.
We all have them.
We all have them.
But do you know them?
You ever confronted your demons?
(00:51):
Man.
Welcome back to the Purdium Podcast.
I'm Keaton Turner.
Thanks for joining me for yet again one moreday of Purdium.
And this one is, this one's not so fun.
(01:11):
I like to have fun.
You guys know I like to have fun.
I like to add in different different audio.
I had some really dark art audio I was gonnaadd to this one, and I thought, you know what?
This one's dark enough.
I don't need to add any audio to make it worse.
(01:34):
Do you know your demons?
Like, if if someone were to come up to you andjust ask you, hey, you're human.
You have demons.
We all have demons.
You have dark, pockets of your life, darkcorners.
You got skeletons in your closet.
(01:55):
You got you we're human.
We all have sins.
We all have the things we struggle with, but doyou do you really know what those demons are in
your life, or do you just kinda ignore them ortry to ignore them, and then all of a sudden,
they come creeping up one day?
(02:15):
Man, you do this dirt business long enough.
I would argue you do any business long enough.
The demons find a way to come out.
They find you at your weak spots.
They find you when you're vulnerable.
I've told you guys multiple times, I'm mostvulnerable to my demons when I'm on the
(02:40):
mountaintop, not, when I'm in the valley.
And, and I've seen it in so many other people,good people, talented people, people that are
legit, people that people that have a realfuture, but they get bogged down by their
(03:05):
demons.
It's super unfortunate and super frustrating towatch somebody go through this.
If you guys have had this in your life, whetherit be drug use or, you know, alcohol abuse, any
(03:30):
sort of addiction, like that obviously can be ademon.
Relationships, different kinds of relationshipscan be a demon.
You know, shoot, your own pride, your own ego,definitely a demon of mine, for sure.
It's super unfortunate to watch someone losethe battle to their demons.
(03:57):
I've watched it unfold several times over myadult life, and it's, you know, it's it's kinda
wild when you're a kid, you don't know thesethings.
Right?
You don't notice them.
You can have people in your life as a kid thatmaybe have some demons and they do a decent
enough job at hiding them or not letting them,come out into the open.
(04:20):
And so you don't really start to understandthis until you get older in life, right?
High school, college, after college, you becomean adult and you start to face some demons of
your own, it's easier to recognize demons inother people.
It's other it's easier to recognize like thesins, the skeletons in the closet, the things
(04:41):
that people don't talk about.
But man, I've as I've kind of lived through mybusiness career, some of the most talented,
biggest hearted people couldn't beat thesebattles with their demons.
(05:02):
And it it's it it's so unfortunate to be a partof and watch.
Uh-oh.
Jeffrey's calling me.
Hold on.
Pause.
My gosh.
Here I am talking about demons, and Jeffreyfreaking Turner calls me and asks if I wanted
(05:25):
to go in on some expensive wine.
Is that is that God playing tricks on me,playing a joke, or what?
But of course, the answer was yes.
I do want to go in on some nice wine.
Rutherford, Oh, man.
Jeffrey, can't believe you did that to me rightas I was right as I was recording this.
(05:48):
It's super frustrating to watch people that arehigh potential lose the battle to their demons.
And so why this is a topic for me right now,obviously, I have had many, many examples of
this in my own life.
(06:09):
But I've also watched it from some of my someof my employees, some of my close friends, and
even some, you know, ironically, some familymembers.
And here's what I would say.
Typically, the people that lose the battle totheir demons, to their vices, to their sins, to
(06:32):
the skeletons in their closet are the peoplethat do not face their demons.
They don't bring them out into the open.
They don't talk about them.
They don't acknowledge them.
They don't acknowledge their power over theirlife.
They just downplay them.
They act like it's no big deal.
(06:54):
They act like it's not important.
They shut off that portion of their past ortheir life, and they just act like they're not
real.
And and I can promise you, the one thing ademon wants you to believe is that it's not
(07:15):
real.
I've learned this.
And I, and I've learned this so many differenttimes, both, both personally and then watching
it with other people.
If you don't acknowledge you have a demon, thedemon has won.
And so I think, you know, for me, again, youknow, working on humility, working on
(07:43):
transparency, working on dropping ego, for meis something that I've, you know, kind of
always worked on since I discovered I had anego.
You know, who knew I had an ego?
I didn't know.
And then one day you learn of it, then it'slike, okay, how do you beat it?
Well, you beat it by acknowledging it.
Some people with addiction, some people withrelationship challenges, whatever your demon
(08:05):
is, you know it.
You I think that's the interesting thing ispeople know they have them.
People can hear that that thing talking to themevery so often.
They know what they struggle with.
If you don't acknowledge it, it will get yousomeday.
(08:27):
You're living on borrowed time.
Maybe it's never gotten you yet.
I can almost guarantee you though, it's gonnaget you someday.
You can't outrun it forever.
And the beauty is you take all the power awayfrom these kind of skeletons in your closet,
(08:50):
these demons, these vices, these sins, whateverthey are, however you wanna frame it up, you
take their power away by acknowledging they'rethere.
You take their power away by talking about it,by admitting a lot of times that you can't do
it by yourself, admitting that you need somesort of, whether it's salvation if you believe
(09:13):
in the Gospel, or whether you don't believe inthe Gospel, you just need some coaching, you
need a mentor, whatever, you take all theirpower away when you admit that they're there.
What gives them power is not admitting they'rethere and just pretending they'll go away on
(09:33):
their own, and they just never do.
I've sat down with some guys that are fullgrown men in tears, right?
These are talented dudes.
This has happened I can't tell you how manydifferent times over the course of my career,
and I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna name names.
I'm not gonna give examples because it's, it'stheir story, not mine.
But I can't tell you how many times I've satwith a guy, and he's literally been in tears
(10:00):
for the choices that he's made because he didnot face his own challenges, his own struggles,
his own demons, his own sins.
He just didn't face them.
He just pretended they would go away.
Several years ago, I was dealing with this witha guy, and I was like, dude, you're you're
(10:23):
like, love this guy to death.
Talented guy.
Could do any this guy could could have doneanything, could have gone anywhere, and he had
some challenges in his life, one particularchallenge.
But instead of swallowing his pride, admittinghe was human like the rest of us, admitting
(10:49):
that he had some demons he needed to goconfront, he just pretended they weren't there.
Never confronted them.
These and these things these demons existedfrom, like, a young age.
Never confronted them.
Never talked about it with anybody.
He's a tough guy.
What's he gonna talk about?
(11:09):
He's not gonna talk about this with anybody.
He's macho.
He's you know, he doesn't need anybody.
Phone lines blown phone lines have been blowingup every time I push record lately.
What is the deal?
Right in the right in the heat of a good storyjust kills my vibe.
(11:30):
Another demon knocking on the door.
This guy was not about to was not about to talkabout the skeletons in his closet, was not
about to talk about all the nooks and cranniesof his life that he was trying to ignore, and
then one little bitty thing happened.
(11:51):
That's usually how it works, right?
The the demon in your life finds one littlebitty opening, one little bitty chink in the
armor, one little bitty crack in the door, andthey bust it wide open.
And then life, before you know it, unravels.
You've lost control.
You don't know who you are.
(12:12):
You don't know what you're doing.
You don't even know how you got there.
Like, I I literally remember asking him, like,how how did you get to this point?
He didn't even know.
Had no clue.
Had no clue how his life got to the point itwas.
He just knew he had struggled with this thing,and this thing turned into that thing, and then
(12:32):
he woke up one day and life was out of control.
Fell right all these opportunities fell rightthrough his fingertips, and he couldn't put the
pieces back together.
It was too late.
There were, you know, relationships damagedbeyond repair.
There was reputation damaged beyond repair.
If he just would have addressed his demons,confronted him head on, admitted that, you know
(13:01):
what?
This is, I need some like, I need a heartchange.
I need a mindset change.
I need a culture change.
I need to change the people I'm hanging around.
He could have prevented all of it.
Now the demons probably don't go away, allright?
I don't, I don't I'm not old enough.
(13:22):
I don't know if the demons ever really go away.
I think you just get different styles of demonsas you get older.
Different challenges in life pop up, and it's anew demon.
You know, I've beat I've beat a lot of demons.
I've beat these freaking things to death, a lotof different times over my career.
But every once in while, a new one will pop up,and it's like, oh, hey, remember me?
(13:48):
If you don't confront them, they win.
Eventually, they win.
Every single person I've dealt with this who'swho's, you know, kind of had a big life moment
where things just collapsed, they neveraddressed it.
It was always there.
Like in all the conversations I've had, andI've had some really hard ones, they never
(14:11):
addressed it.
They never sought help.
They never admitted to the struggle.
They had just enough pride to keep it a secretand hope it would go away.
And, and then something funny happens when awhen a, you know, when one of these life
(14:34):
moments happens, when the demon actually doesget ahold of you and win, at least win the
battle, then people are ready to confront them.
But you've lost everything.
At that point, right, you've lost the marriage.
You've lost the family.
(14:55):
You've lost your finances.
You've lost your reputation.
Now you can build a lot of it back.
You can never build it back to the way it was,but you've confronted the issue too late.
You had the chance.
Like, this audio, there's a reason I don't knowwhy they're I don't I don't know why I even
(15:17):
picked this topic.
I was thinking about a guy who's been in mypast a long time ago, and it made me just run
with this topic today, but you're hearing thisaudio for a reason.
It's not by accident.
And if you have one of these demons at play inyour life, maybe it's time to do something
(15:38):
about it.
Because if you just put it off forever,eventually, it's too late.
I'm I'm a big believer in doing these littlethings that prevent big issues, just in life,
right?
I'll give you a dumb example.
(15:58):
I let my garage get out of hand, right?
I had some projects in.
We had some expensive equipment, a bunch offire extinguishers, all kinds of random stuff.
And I just stacked it in my garage instead of,you know, doing the proper thing and
reassigning it to another project or taking itdown to the shop or leaving it in some
trailers.
I've just kind of accumulated some randomstuff.
(16:20):
Then you add on kids' stuff on top of that.
My garage the last few months has become adisaster, a war zone.
It would have been very easy for me over thecourse of time to make this small but hard
decision to clean things up as I go, right?
(16:40):
Don't let stuff pile up.
If you just put it in the right place the firsttime, you never have to worry about it.
Well, I don't do the small things, right?
In this instance, with this garage, I don't dothe small things.
I let things pile up.
Well, all of a sudden, we're having a party,and I need to go out to the garage because we
(17:03):
got a refrigerator out there.
I need to put some stuff in the garage or takesomething out of the garage, whatever it was.
And as I take something out of the garage, Iget my hands full.
I've got glasses.
I think it was like a bottle of champagne orwhatever it was.
I got a bunch of stuff in my hands.
I close the garage or I close the fridge door,and I start to walk back inside.
(17:25):
I trip over one of these million piles of junkin my garage.
I think I tripped over fire extinguisher.
And boom, there goes a bottle of wine or bottleof champagne.
Right?
Hundred dollar bottle, nice bottle.
Could have all been prevented.
I'm giving a really stupid, dumb, smallexample, but could have easily been prevented
(17:48):
had I just done the small things that wouldhave prevented leading up to a big, a big
accident, a big issue.
Nice hundred dollar bottle of wine across theground.
I've got so many examples of this.
I had a, I had a little bitty spot.
We've got a, kind of a flat roof over our porchwith a rubber membrane.
(18:10):
Had a little bitty pinhole leak, And I noticedsome water was dripping.
I'm like, Dang, I gotta get, I gotta get tothat eventually.
And it was no big deal, right?
It just a little bitty pinhole, few drips hereand there.
Well, by the time I got around to it, nextspring, it had rotted tons of the wood
underneath it.
(18:31):
It had rotted part of the columns, and and itturned into a what what should have been a $250
to $300 repair to fix a little bitty spot onour flat roof, instead cost me $5 to rip the
whole part of the roof off, replace all therotted wood, add new supports.
And so I'm a huge believer in the little bittythings we do every day add up to avoiding or
(19:01):
creating a big issue.
If we do the little bitty things right, weavoid a big issue.
If we ignore the little bitty things, itcreates a big issue.
One more dumb example.
I was sitting, I I walked into our bathroomtoday at the office.
My guys have probably listened to this podcastand heard me complain about doing the little
(19:25):
things right and us running out of toilet paperon the toilet paper holders in our bathroom
stalls, in the men's bathroom stall at theoffice.
We got two stalls plus a urinal.
So I go into the bathroom stall today, someonewas peeing in the urinal, so I walk into one of
(19:45):
those stalls.
No lie, there are I counted.
There are seven rolls of toilet paper laying onthe handrail of this bathroom stall.
And I know somebody was doing it.
I don't know.
I'm gonna find out who.
It was probably Jake, if I had to guess, ormaybe Patton.
(20:06):
One of these guys has listened to my words onthis podcast and said, Oh, okay.
Keaton wants more toilet paper in thebathrooms.
I'm gonna show him.
I'm gonna go overboard.
And they've, they've literally put seven rollsof toilet we don't need seven rolls of toilet
paper.
We need two.
But I'm just a big believer in these littlebitty things, right?
I'd rather have seven rolls of toilet paperthere than be using the restroom, the stall as
(20:31):
it was designed, and run out of toilet paperbecause no one refilled the rolls.
Now I have a catastrophe on my hands.
Okay?
The little things help us prevent bigger issueslater in life, and I'm just because I've lived
through this and talked to guys that have livedthrough this, facing your demons, admitting
(20:55):
your issues, acknowledging they're real, andthen doing something about it, I just believe
helps us avoid big issues later in life.
Everybody, you guys have heard people talk somany different times about midlife crisis, or,
Man, they were married thirty two years.
(21:16):
How'd they get divorced?
Or, Man, dude, I thought that business waskilling it.
How'd they go out of business?
Or one day, Johnny loses his job.
Man, that guy's been killing it.
He got a promotion last year.
He's been doing great.
How did all of sudden he just get fired?
We've all heard these stories, right?
You get surprised.
You're like, I would have never seen thatcoming.
(21:38):
You know what's at the root of every single oneof those surprises?
Are some demons that went unchecked.
Some little bitty nooks and crannies in theirlife that they didn't address, they didn't
confront, they didn't get coaching on, theydidn't get mentor mentorship on, and they wake
(21:58):
up one day and they're surprised that a demonhas a stronghold over their life.
I, I sat through a Rise call today.
It was awesome.
I'm recording this on Monday, by the way.
I don't know when I'm actually dropping it.
I'm trying to build up a little bit of aninventory of podcasts here, so I might drop
this on a Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday.
(22:19):
Who knows?
But I was on the Rise call today, which Rise isa community.
You guys have heard me talk about it.
Go look it up, Rise Community.
It's a community full of men, leaders.
Most most most of the guys are are God fearingor religious guys, but they're they're leaders
in business.
And I was on this call today, and the and theguest speaker had his 21 year old son on there.
(22:45):
This guy, Joe, he basically lives to teachother men about how to raise men.
You know, and he was talking about a rite ofpassage he did with his 13 year old son.
His 13 year old son is now 21 years old and hewas on this call.
(23:06):
Really cool.
Awesome to hear their testimony and theirexample of this rite of passage that he took
his son on.
And so as Joe's talking, his son's name is Ben.
As Joe's talking, he then introduces Ben, says,This is my 21 year old son.
Ben's in his dorm room giving this speech to abunch of old grown men on what it was like to
(23:31):
have a dad who was intentional.
And Joe, the dad, did not have any men in hislife that were intentional.
Didn't have a dad, had a couple stepdads thatsound like were deadbeats, and so Joe's giving
his recollection of his childhood and said, Ididn't want that for my kids.
And so what Joe did, starting at the age of 10,11, something like that, 12 years old, he
(23:55):
started intentionally investing in his son Ben,and his he had another son.
And when you hear this 21 year old man, boy,he's really a boy, he's still literally in
college.
He was filming this from his dorm room, takingthis Zoom call from his dorm room.
(24:16):
When you hear this 21 year old talk about hisfaith, openly admit to some of the demons he's
faced as a young man, like he told us some deepstuff on this call, was like, Woah, dude, I
would never have said the things this kid justsaid in a room And I'm a pretty transparent,
open guy.
I would never have just said I struggle withthis, that this kid just said.
(24:40):
This kid's aware.
This kid's self confident.
This kid is, like, well put together for beinga 21 year old kid.
The kid's got it figured out.
But it's because his dad has done all theselittle bitty things, little bitty tips, tricks,
tactics intentionally to set his son up tobattle these demons.
(25:05):
And his son has demons, right?
Just like every other man, every other 21 yearold kid, he's like, Look, I got college
roommates.
I got buddies.
I got people wanting to go out and drinkin'.
I got women.
I got all these there's drugs around me.
I got all these things around me in college.
I'm able to battle them because I was taughthow to address them by my dad.
(25:31):
And so again, it's just a really cool reminderto me.
If the dad just shoved all that in the closetand didn't talk about it, didn't admit his own
wrongdoing to his son, didn't embrace that weall have demons and here's how you suit up to
battle him, if he hadn't have done that, I'mguessing this 21 year old kid named Ben
(25:54):
wouldn't be anywhere close to the caliber ofkid he is today.
If he had just pretended the demons don'texist, I'm not gonna deal with them.
I'm just gonna figure my way out through life.
Like, there's no way he would be on a call infront of a bunch of business owners,
(26:16):
executives, managers in his dorm room giving anaccount for his life and his his his
challenges.
There's no way.
I wouldn't have done that at 21 years old, andI had an amazing set of parents.
And so, again, I think when I look back at thepeople that have stumbled the hardest, the
(26:37):
people that have tripped and fallen flat ontheir face and really screwed up their life,
some of them to the extent they never didrecover.
I know some guys that aren't even alive anymorebecause of some of the things that, that were
going on in their lives.
If, if I look at every single one of those, thecommon theme is they did not address their
(27:01):
demons.
They ran away from them and they thought theywould outrun them.
And believe it or not, the demons are tricky.
The demons are fast.
The faster you run, the easier it is to tripand make you fall.
And, and so this one, I think, was importantfor me to talk about because I see it all the
(27:25):
time, especially in blue collar guys.
Guys that left home early or left home young ordidn't have the right influences or still don't
have the right influences in their life, don'thave a mentor, don't have a coach.
Like, you guys are the ones that are mostacceptable.
Guys like me are the ones that are mostacceptable, especially if you've experienced
(27:48):
some some success.
If you got a few dollars in the bank, if you'rebuilding a company, if you're leading teams,
those are the people, in my opinion, with thebiggest targets for some of these demons, and
they're crafty.
So again, I don't want get too preachy.
It's not gospely.
This is just fact of life.
(28:09):
I call it demon, you can call it whatever youwant.
You can call it addiction, you can call itpersonality, you can call it skeletons in your
closet, sins, whatever you want to call it.
If you can face it, if you can find acommunity, guys, that you can talk about it
with, if you can get a coach that helps coachyou on how to deal with it, all these little
(28:32):
things are going to help you suit up forbattle.
If you don't suit up for battle, I just don'tthink you have a chance.
I think eventually they're going get to you.
You're going to have a thirty year marriagethat ends in divorce.
You're going to have a business that fails.
You're gonna have a relationship that fallsflat.
(28:52):
You're gonna lose to addiction.
Whatever the whatever the thing is you'refacing.
But if you suit up for battle, if you're aroundthe right environment, if you're putting the
right things into you, in your brain, in youreyes, if you're watching the right things, if
you're hearing the right things, I think yougot a fighting chance.
So I don't know.
(29:13):
I know that's deep.
I told you guys it was dark.
Some of these some of these are gonna be fun.
Some of them are gonna be dark.
But that's what's going on in my life andthat's what happened to me today.
I love the rise call.
I love being able to sit through that andthink.
Because now I'm like, Well, My son's 10 yearsold.
(29:36):
What have I how have I been suiting him up tobattle these demons?
You know, the funny thing is on this call, Joesaid, dude, ten years old, it's time.
It is time.
The world is coming after these kids.
The world is coming after our young men.
They're coming after our young women.
(29:57):
How are we suiting them up to battle the demonsof the world?
Super convicting.
Again, it's another little free, nod to theRise community.
I love it to death.
I always I'm I'm always like, dude, it's noonon a Monday.
I got a million things to do.
(30:17):
I can't jump on.
I jumped on five minutes late today.
It was the best fifty five minutes of my day,hands down.
Best fifty five minutes of my day, worth everypenny, and and I don't get paid to tell you
guys that.
So that's what I'm going through.
I hope you guys got some value out of it.
I hope you are earning your per diem, and Ihope you are smashing those demons.
(30:41):
And if you're not, I hope you're at leastsuiting up to go to battle.
Suiting up, putting on some armor, sharpeningyour sword, sharpening your axe, loading your m
16, whatever whatever whatever you can do tosuit up for battle, I think puts you at least
(31:02):
in position to fight and hopefully win longterm.
If you've never thought about this concept, ifyou all you know, if you're one of these guys
like me that have just kinda stuck things inthe corner, no.
I don't know.
I'm fine.
I'll get to it someday.
It's no big deal.
It's not a problem today.
Maybe maybe it will be someday.
Don't know.
I don't know.
(31:23):
Maybe someday is too late.
Maybe you lose the battle.
Maybe you look back and life is in disarray.
Hope not, but kill it.
Pray you're getting your per diem.
Pray tune back in tomorrow.
Hope I didn't scare you off.
Thanks, guys.
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