August 5, 2025 • 42 mins
In this episode, Keaton Turner navigates listener feedback, including humorous criticism, while sharing a weekend recap focused on family time. He addresses the tragic loss of an employee and the challenges it presents to the company. Keaton discusses maintaining company values amid accusations and emphasizes the importance of constructive feedback and perseverance. The episode explores managing a growing company, addressing employee concerns, and dealing with criticism while staying true to the mission. Keaton reflects on podcast consistency, content creation, and the concept of replaceability. He examines social media judgment, handling haters, and concludes with gratitude.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
What's up, guys?
This is Josh Delkamp from Nebraska.
I just wanted to say I love the Per podcast.
Keaton, we've talked on the phone a couple oftimes.
Just wanna say I love what you're doing withthe Perdeaum Podcast.
I'm so thankful it's a podcast, though, buddy,because every time I see your face, I just
(00:23):
wanna punch you right in the face hole.
Don't laugh.
It's true.
And I couldn't figure it out for the longesttime, but every time I saw a picture of you, I
just wanted to punch you straight in the suckhole.
And I finally figured it out.
You remind me of a guy that used to pick on usrelentlessly when I was, like, in third or
(00:47):
fourth grade.
We'd go down to the city park and playbasketball, and these guys were in, like,
seniors juniors or seniors in high school.
And sometimes they'd let us play basketballwith them, they would pick on us.
And you I I just couldn't figure it out, butevery time I looked at you, I I was glad you're
(01:08):
on the podcast because I had no problems whenyou were talking on the podcast, and then I'd
see a picture of you on the show.
I just wanted to hit you.
But it just I couldn't think of it for thelongest time.
And the other day, it just popped in my head, Iwas like, man, he looks like that guy.
And I don't even remember that guy's name.
It's been thirty years ago, forty years ago.
(01:33):
But I love what you're doing.
Every time I listen to the podcast, I getsomething out of it.
But, yeah, every time I see you and as handsomeas you are, I just wanna punch you right in the
suck hole.
So, anyway, you're doing awesome things.
I know it's a grind every day putting contentout.
(01:55):
I don't know how you do it, but keep doing itbecause it's changing a lot of people's life,
changing a lot of people's perspective on whatthey're doing, and I love it.
I'm from Northern Indiana originally, ElkhartSouth Bend area, and, I love what you're doing.
Take care.
Bye.
(02:17):
54305.
Welcome back to the Princeton
(02:39):
limits.
Well, I think I just got called handsome and,wanted to get punched in the face in the same
video.
That might be that might be a new one for me.
I get called handsome, of course, all the time.
(03:00):
You guys know that.
I, that's that's a normal day.
And I've had people that have wanted to punchme in the suck hole, as Josh says.
I actually there's a lot of people that wannapunch me every day.
Some days, it's my wife.
Some days, it's Patton sitting next to me.
Some day, it's just a homeless dude walkingacross the office.
(03:21):
You know, there are people that want to punchme every day, and there are other people that
walk by and say, hey.
Handsome every day.
I've never had someone say both at the sametime.
So that's a new one.
Thank you for the video.
Josh Delcam.
Awesome dude.
I got to talk to him a couple times here awhile back.
He's another dude out there bellying up everyday to the buffet of ball kickings in business
(03:46):
trying to build something, and been buildingsomething for a long time.
Enjoyed our convo, and enjoyed the video.
Thank you, brother.
I am back in the saddle.
Man, what a what a week.
What a weekend.
Kind of a whirlwind of a weekend, and and I'llget into it a little bit.
I I've got a little bit of a spicy topic,somewhat of a it's gonna be a soft rant.
(04:12):
I'm out getting fuel.
You know, we just got back into town.
My wife and kids and I, we've been at the lake,Lake Culver or Lake Maxinckucky for the last
last few days up in Northern Indiana with mymom, with my dad, my brother and his wife, and
then my sister and her husband, and of course,the kids.
(04:34):
It was a lot of us.
And and we had a great time.
Amazing weather.
It was just perfect.
Seems like lately when we've gotten togetherwith my mom on trips or events or or just
things to get her mind off of her situation,the weather's just been perfect.
So God's been answering some prayers.
I know you guys have been praying for her.
We had a great time.
(04:55):
Water skied.
I am sore as can be.
You know, I can tell age is is catching up tome.
36 years old, I still feel like I'm 18.
But, man, I'm out there on water skis, and andI'm one of those dudes I I always wanna push
the envelope a little bit.
I don't wanna just go out there and water ski alittle bit and putt around the lake.
Like, I wanna I wanna go hard.
(05:17):
I wanna go between the buoys.
I wanna yell at other boats.
I kicked a ski off and slalom skied for awhile, which those of you that are not into
water sports, slalom skiing is just skiingwater skiing on one ski.
I am not my body type, I'm not built like asuper athletic person.
(05:37):
So slalom skiing, the best way I could describeit for someone my shape and size, I'm I'm about
six two, two hundred and fifteen pounds.
Slalom skiing is like a all out battle to thedeath with a boat.
Like, you're on one end of the rope doingeverything you can not to be pulled by the
(06:00):
boat.
The boat's on the other end of the rope doingeverything it can to rip you out of the water.
And the only thing separating you from theboat's this little bitty piece of fiberglass
about six inches wide that you're skimmingacross the water.
It's fun, but oh my goodness.
I'm sore.
My brother broke his hand.
My brother broke his hand.
(06:21):
So, yeah, we had a great time.
It was a great weekend.
Fun to reset.
Tried to get some of the kids to water ski.
A couple of the older kids tried.
Andrew was the oldest.
He's 10.
And a couple of them got up a little bit, justcouldn't quite get the hang of it, we got more
work to do there.
But had a blast.
Had an absolute blast.
(06:41):
Back into town now, though.
Just unloaded the truck.
Got all the crap taken out, making the kidsclean all the stuff up and unpack all the
groceries and stuff we didn't eat and clothesand everything else.
I am I'm headed down the road to get some fuelfor the mower because I've gotta mow my place
and my dad's place tonight at Port Raines.
(07:03):
The topic today, this one I I I've sat on thisone.
I wasn't gonna really talk about this onebecause I don't wanna be one of those guys that
that preaches all these things, but I'm alsogonna be transparent.
Right?
I I preach all these things about, you know,not caring what other people say and and not
doing you and not worrying about the haters andall that.
(07:24):
Josh, your video, you know, you said I'mchanging people's lives.
I, you know, appreciate me doing the podcastevery day.
And how do I do it?
I'm gonna tell you how I do it.
I do it, even when I don't want to.
There were several days this weekend when wewere at the lake where I just didn't make time
for it.
(07:44):
I got terrible news the second day we were atthe lake that one of our employees, a young
employee, 25 year old kid, had gotten killedtragically in a car accident.
And it just kinda rocked me for a for about aday, half a day, whatever it was.
You know, I'm sitting around talking to myparents and and my siblings, and, you know, we
(08:07):
have between our two companies, we have about500 employees.
So there's all the time something going on.
There's all the time someone disgruntled orsome sort of investigation into something.
You know, we have had people die.
Fortunately, no one's ever died on-site.
No tragic accidents like that.
But we've had several employees over the yearsthat have passed away just due to health things
(08:31):
or what whatever.
But, man, when this when I got the news that a25 year old kid with five young kids passed
away, I think he was on his way to do schoolshopping that day for his kindergartner, and
and I I think one of his kids was going intofirst grade.
And, of course, I've got one going intokindergarten and and and fifth grade and third
(08:56):
grade, and it's just man, it hits home.
And so I didn't out of respect for him and thefamily, I didn't drop an episode.
It was the first one in basically eighty daysthat I hadn't dropped an episode.
And we had employees in our Slack channeltalking about his character and him being an
(09:16):
awesome employee.
So it's just it was just real it kinda bummedme out.
Obviously, something like that really bums youout.
I didn't know him personally.
And then later that day, I don't know why, butI checked my phone.
I got some messages from an old employee whonow works for a competitor.
(09:36):
And I guess he felt like that was the right dayand time to give me all of his feedback as an
ex employee.
And and he starts he starts saying all thesecrazy things.
Like like, Keaton talks a big game on thepodcast, but your company is nothing but a
fraud.
Your people are racist.
(09:57):
Your leaders and your organization are racist.
You know, all these crazy things.
I I don't have my phone up to to, to read itall to you, and I don't know that I would read
any of it anyway.
But for some reason, I don't know if it was thethe beautiful weather.
I don't know if it was the glass of cold wine Ihad in my for some reason, I start engaging
(10:21):
back with this guy, swapping in messages.
And I'm like, hey.
Tell me more.
It's the first I'm ever hearing of thiscomplaint.
You know, I you know, normally, if we get a asevere or, like, a real complaint via HR, I
will hear about it or, you know, at leastsomeone will debrief me on what's going on.
I never heard about these complaints.
And I'm like, you're you're making some boldclaims here that, like, several of these really
(10:45):
good guys who I know their character well, I'mlike, you're you're calling them racist.
Like like, going out of their way in their jobto be racist.
And I just know these guys are not that.
And so we go back and forth.
I asked him.
I said, hey.
Did you ever did you ever file a claim with HRor file a complaint or any no.
(11:08):
No.
No.
I didn't wanna do that because I didn't wannabe retaliated against.
And so I, you know, at this point, I'm like,okay.
One of these guys.
Right?
He he's no longer employed.
I don't know if he quit or got fired.
He he made it sound like he quit.
I'm starting to believe now maybe he got fired.
And he listens to the podcast, by the way.
And he's like, yeah.
(11:28):
No.
I work for a different company now.
I couldn't deal with all the racism.
And and and, you know, I wanted a shot in adifferent piece of equipment.
I never got my shot.
I got lied to.
There was nepotism.
There was friendships.
There was, you know, favorites going around thecrew, and so I never got my shot and other
people got their shot.
(11:50):
And so I could tell it felt like this guywanted to wanted to enjoy his experience at
Turner Mining Group.
And maybe we screwed up.
Maybe we did do something wrong.
I know for a fact the guys he was accusing ofbeing racist absolutely aren't racist.
(12:13):
They might have given him some feedback that hedidn't like or something.
I don't know.
But it felt like with his comments and hismessages back and forth, he, like, he wanted to
work for us.
He wanted to enjoy it.
But for whatever reason, it didn't work outthat way.
And, and then when he said he never filed acomplaint because he was afraid of retaliation,
(12:39):
and then he goes on to say, man, you preach abig game on the podcast, but none of it's true,
so on and so forth.
I I kinda he kinda lost me.
And because I'm always one to take constructivecriticism.
I'm always one to take feedback.
I mean, if we've got a bad apple working forus, I'd love to know.
If we've got bad leadership or people thataren't getting communicated with clearly or
(13:02):
don't have a clear career path lined out, ifthat's what they're into, I'd love to know
that.
But this guy seemed like he just wanted tothrow rocks at something that didn't work out
for him.
And this is why people like me don't do a dailypodcast because they get all this crap all the
(13:30):
time.
All it's and it's not even disgruntled exemployees.
It's cynicism is really what it comes down to.
It's people that say, oh, well, you know, heyou know, they they they portray themselves as
one thing, but then in reality, I don'tactually get the shot, and I'm one of the best
on the crew.
(13:51):
And he says young guys should get the shot.
And so he's just he's just full of it.
He just says it for the money.
A, I'm not making any money doing a podcast.
He said he says it for the clout.
B, I don't I don't really do anything with theclout.
I don't have any clout.
We're in the dirt business.
It's not like they're making movies about this.
And c, people don't actually understand thatall the things that I'm talking about, all the
(14:20):
things that I mention on the podcast are thingsthat I have lived through and are currently
living through.
And and by the way, we are a company thatscrews up.
And so if I've ever made it sound like we don'tscrew up or we don't have bad actors or we
don't have people that represent our valuesdifferently than what I hope we represent our
(14:43):
values, if we if we have people that work inour operations that are just totally different
than Keaton Turner, that's part of it.
The the toughest part one of the toughest partsof doing this podcast every day is knowing that
people that listen, my own guys, my ownemployees, friends, whoever, acquaintances in
(15:05):
the industry, they feel like they get to knowme through the podcast.
They feel like, oh, this is Keaton Turner'sstyle.
This is his personality.
This is his humor.
This is where he has an ego, and this is wherehe's humble.
You feel like you get to know me a little bit.
And then the second they interact with someonein our company who is not like me or doesn't
(15:28):
live up to the hype or has a difference ofopinion or difference of theory or whatever,
they automatically default to, oh, well, that'snot what I heard on the podcast.
That's not what you guys show on social media.
It's really hard.
It's really hard to hear feedback from people.
(15:50):
And, you know me.
I love feedback.
It's really hard to hear feedback from peoplewho who hold us to so much higher regard.
And this guy's working for a competitor.
I know the competitor.
I'm not gonna bash people on the podcast.
This this employee is now working for acompetitor.
He wouldn't tell me where, but I I know wherehe's working.
(16:11):
For some reason, they hold Turner Mining Groupto way higher regard than than all the other
places he went to work.
Is that fair just because we got a guy on apodcast talking about leadership and life
things and marriage thing?
I don't know.
I mean, in one hand, yeah, it's cool.
I I think maybe, you know, we hold ourselves toa pretty high regard.
But on the other hand, when we screw up and theother company screws up, it's easier to go DM
(16:39):
the guy with the podcast and say, well, yeah,but he's talking a big game on the podcast, and
it's not playing out in real life because Ididn't get the shot in the dozer, or I didn't
get the PM role that they promised me, or Ididn't get x y z, or some other person on the
crew made a racist comment, and now, therefore,that company's racist.
(17:02):
Like, dude, I I am the farthest thing fromracist.
I believe in full meritocracy regardless ofyour age, your sex, your race, your religion,
your political beliefs.
And so it's really it it I'll tell you what itis.
It's demoralizing when I do all I can to putnot only myself out there, but the company out
(17:29):
there.
And people exploit it.
They take advantage of it.
They throw shade when it doesn't work out theirway.
And and they they look at me as the scapegoat,the guy that is, you know, the root of all
their problems.
It it couldn't be them.
Couldn't be the it couldn't be their issue asan employee.
(17:52):
It couldn't be their problem to fix if if thecompany had a representative maybe may I mean,
here's a wild thought.
With 500 employees, maybe one of them isracist, and they snuck through the system and
were not aware of it.
How how can you help our organization if youquit on us and go work somewhere else and then
(18:15):
blame us for being what am I supposed to dowith that?
And, by the way, you didn't report anything.
What am I supposed to do with that?
Do I believe you?
Do I not believe you?
Were you actually mad that you didn't get ashot on the dozer, but then you say, well, I
quit because it's just a really odd thing.
And so when people say, man, I don't know howyou do the podcast every day.
(18:38):
It's part of it is just my life.
I I kinda throw caution to the wind a littlebit and jump and do things that I think are
going to be fulfilling to me and I think willbring value to others.
That's part of it.
The other part of it is no one else is doingit.
So I wanna be one of those guys that doesthings a little differently than everyone else.
(19:01):
But, man, when days like this happen where Ihave a really tough employee situation, young
guy, hard worker, good character, loses hislife, and then that afternoon, I get someone
sending comments to me about how terrible ourcompany is and how and how phony I am, and how
(19:23):
all the things that I talk about never cometrue.
It it of course, I'm human.
It makes me wanna say, you know what?
Why am I not sitting here on the lake pouring atequila enjoying my life?
Why am I trying to be transparent to peoplewho, at the end of the day, are are just still
(19:43):
gonna be that way?
Employees who are still gonna tell themselveswhatever story they wanna tell themselves, it
ruins it for the good ones.
That's the problem, is the bad one, the badapples, the bad actors, the people who just
wanna complain, the people who have no hope orpurpose in life and they lost themselves, and
(20:07):
they wanna go work for a competitor and thenthrow it back in your face.
Oh, I'm working for your competitor.
Do do you think I care?
I mean, again, I didn't want this to turn intoa full blown rant.
It ruins it for all the guys who do enjoy it,who do get value, who are trying to build
something, who do take responsibility for theirown shortcomings.
(20:31):
Like like, bro, guess what?
When I jumped on the school bus in third gradefor the first time, there were people who used
bad language.
There were people who were racist.
There were people who made bad decisions, whodid drugs, who like, that's the story of life.
(20:52):
Now I don't condone it.
I'm not advocating for drug use.
I'm not advocating for racist.
I'm not even advocating for poor language.
I don't curse.
But you can't be one of these people who looksfor every chance to throw shade at your
(21:12):
employer.
Your current employer, your past employer, youlook to throw shade at them and complain and
talk about all the ways it's screwed up, andyou never wanna stop to think, how can I help
make it better?
You're the problem.
Keaton Turner only has so much impact in anorganization.
(21:34):
Our our leadership team only has so much impactin an organization.
Our leadership team has not met every employee.
We got people all over the country.
It's really hard to do.
A lot of people think, well, the CEO shouldknow everybody's everybody's first name, or the
director of this or the president of thatshould know every single person.
It's hard.
It's really hard, especially in our industrywhere there's turnover and everything else.
(21:56):
It's I don't know everyone.
So one way I reach scale is through a dailypodcast to get out of my mind into the airwaves
so people can consume it.
Another way is by urging employees to help usbuild the thing I talk about wanting to build.
(22:18):
Help us.
I can't build it by myself.
Our leadership team can't build it.
The project manager can't build it all.
If there are things that are screwed up, helpus.
Help us address them.
Help in a constructive way.
Don't instead of complaining about it, say,hey, man.
This is this is something we're seeing.
(22:39):
This is something I've heard.
I think you've got a couple bad apples.
You've got a couple bad actors who are pullingthe wool over the eyes of leadership, whatever
the case may be.
But quitting on your current employer and thengoing about and complaining about how terrible
you're part of the problem.
There's not one employer out there, at leastthat I know, who wakes up and is excited to go
(23:02):
screw up people's lives.
There's not one employer who wakes up and isexcited to go screw up his employees' lives.
Now there are more selfish owners than others.
There are people who naturally are little moregreedy than others.
But I think even the greedy owners, in someweird way, actually does want his employees to
(23:24):
be happy.
You have to be willing to shut out the noise nomatter what kind of noise there is in your
current role.
Everyone's got BS.
Everyone's got noise.
I got more BS to deal with than I ever thoughtpossible.
You have to be willing to shut out the BS, shutout the noise, shut out the haters, shut out
(23:47):
the people who are racist or the people who aresexist or the people who are ageist.
You have to be willing to shut them out andbring value.
And I was gonna drop some long, meaty, longwinded podcast episode today around the topic,
(24:07):
hug your haters, because I got a bunch ofhaters here recently.
I got one guy I had to block, and I haven'tblocked anybody for a long time.
And I was I'm I'm actually anti blocking.
I don't like to block people.
I actually don't believe in blocking people.
I'll dive into that topic maybe tomorrow.
But, man, when I think about why do I keepdoing episode after episode every day of this
(24:31):
podcast when I got people who just ruin it forme, who who who, like, who I just wanna you
ever seen the thing in Billy Madison?
I think it's Billy Madison.
He's on the school bus, and he and there's thisreally chubby kid.
And this chubby kid's like, you know, Billy, Iwanna grow old like you because Billy Madison,
(24:52):
if you've not seen the movie, you gotta gowatch it.
He's older, and he's going back to school.
His dad's making him go back to school.
He's like in you know, he's probably 30.
And the kid on the bus, this chubby kid's like,Billy, I wanna go I wanna get older like you.
I wanna grow up.
And Billy Madison grabs his face and startsshaking him and says, don't ever say that.
(25:12):
You don't wanna grow up.
Don't ever wish to grow up.
There are some people that I just wanna grabtheir face and shake and, like, dude, I get you
wanna complain as an employee.
I get there there are things that are not theway you would do them or or not where were not
where we wanna be.
(25:33):
Or Keaton said something on the podcast sinceand and it never came true.
A heart for people.
And there's one guy out there that's got a theopposite of a heart for people.
You can't help us by quitting on us.
You can't help Keaton Turner.
(25:54):
You can't help our organization.
You can't help your coworkers.
You can't help the industry by quitting on acompany that wants to do good.
It'd be different if you never heard from me,and I was in a, you know, on a beach somewhere,
and our leadership team were a bunch of jerks.
Our leadership team are some of the nicest,kindest human beings I can find who are
(26:20):
actually competent at their jobs.
It'd be different if, like, we didn't have corevalues that we talk about.
I didn't put everything out on social media, mywins, my losses.
It'd be different.
I get it.
I wouldn't hang around that company either whenthey screw up.
But we are openly admitting when we screw up,how we screw up, how frequently we will screw
(26:41):
up.
I mean, I I talk about buffet of ball kickings.
As a CEO, you don't make a difference byquitting.
If you're on a project I'm I'm talkingeverybody else tune out for a second.
I'm talking to my own employees for one minute.
(27:03):
If you're on a project for us and the culture'sbad, the leadership's bad, Keaton Turner says
something on a podcast, but it never comes trueout in the field.
If that is the case, I'm gonna give you a phonenumber you can call, and we wanna hear from
you.
(27:24):
If this is like, if there are a bunch of peoplethat feel this way, I'm guessing I'll get zero
phone calls.
But if if this is really how you feel, ifyou're listening to the podcast, you're like,
man, he says all these things, but I go towork, and then this one guy's a jerk every day.
This one leader's a jerk every day.
(27:44):
This one dude doesn't care about the company,doesn't care about the employees, doesn't care
about the customer.
I will pay you a finder's fee if you can helpme find out who that person is.
I'll pay you.
If you can tell me who it is, why they don'tcare about our values, our customer, our
(28:07):
employees, why they're I will pay you if youcan help me and our team figure out who those
people are and get them out.
I'm gonna give you a phone number.
It's (812) 277-9077.
You'll have to probably hit a couple numbersonce the automated thing answers.
You'll talk to a human if it's during businesshours.
(28:29):
Once you hit one of the numbers, I don't havethe I don't have the directory memorized.
Talk to someone.
Say, hey.
I just listened to this on the podcast.
I've got a person.
I want my finder's fee.
I'd love to eradicate those people from theorganization.
But if we don't know, how are we supposed to doanything about it if we don't know?
(28:55):
This is tough.
This is a tough one to live out.
This is a tough one at scale because the morepeople we employ, the more problems there will
be, the more bad actors that will slip in, themore apparent racism that will exist.
It's a game of numbers.
It's a game of, like, pure statistics.
(29:17):
The more incidents there will be, the more nearmisses there will be.
Like like a company, if you think about it, weone of our customers has a 120,000 employees
globally.
120,000 people.
How much racism do you think exists in thatcompany?
(29:40):
How much, like, drug use or people drinking onthe job or hatred and fist fights do you think
happens in that company every single day?
A lot.
And and I'll be honest with you, the CEOprobably hears none of it.
(30:02):
The executive team probably hears none of it,and it's left to all the people running
facilities as general managers, as vicepresidents, as directors, as regional managers.
It's left to them to run those facilities astheir own little business.
Some of them are gonna do a really good job.
(30:24):
Some of them are gonna do a decent job.
And some of them are going to do a really poorjob for a period of time.
And then the company realizes we got a managerdoing a really poor job.
We gotta get rid of him.
This is business.
This is how it works.
There are bad actors.
(30:45):
When we were a 10 person team, we had noracism.
We had no fist fights in the parking lot.
We had no drug use.
I knew all 10 guys by name, by first name, bylast name.
I knew their brother.
I knew their mom or dad.
They weren't drinking on the job.
Like, I knew them.
At 10 people, it works.
It's pretty easy.
(31:06):
Like, you know, I know when Billy walks in.
I'm like, dude, I can tell in your eyes, Billy,you had a rough night.
At 500 people, you don't know.
You don't know them.
And so you have to rely on the layers ofmanagement.
You have to rely on the system.
You have to rely on the process.
You have to rely on the tip line that we haveset up so that you can call in a tip.
(31:31):
Hey, there's there's drug use.
This is business, and this is how businessesscale.
And when they scale, the problems also scale.
Problems are small when the business is small.
Problems are big, not only in size, but involume when the business is big.
(31:51):
And so I'm not gonna let one, you know,disgruntled ex employee with claims of racism
derail what I'm doing.
But but I I thought about this, and I'm like,well, this is exactly why CEOs don't expose
themselves in a daily podcast.
They don't wanna expose themselves to all thiscynicism, to employees, to customers, to you
(32:16):
know, my because I could talk about the exemployees who have something negative to say.
I could also talk about the vendors.
I could talk about the customers.
We are a business.
We screw up every day.
We have people mad at us every day on on theinside and on the outside, every single day.
(32:37):
This is business.
And if you're in business, this is what youwill have.
If you go into business for yourself, you'llhave someone upset with you every day on the
inside in your own team and on the outside,vendor, customer, stakeholder, investor, a
banker.
(32:58):
This is part of it.
Can you shut out the noise, stay true to whoyou are, stay true to what you believe, stay
true to what you're trying to build, and keepmarching.
That's the question.
Not many people can do it.
The ones that can do it, my buddy, Aaron Witt,he does this like crazy.
(33:19):
He gets I mean, shoot.
He's obviously very well known, not only herein The US, but globally, in the dirt world.
He gets crap all the time.
He gets hate all the time.
He gets a lot of love, but he gets a lot ofhate.
He stays tried and true on his mission everyday.
(33:39):
He's marching forward.
For him, one of the things he does is he runs.
He runs, bikes, exercises.
He exercises every day.
He stays on his mission.
He shuts out the noise.
He knows what he's he knows what mission he'sworking towards.
This is what separates, in my opinion, one ofthe things that separates people who actually
(34:03):
go on to achieve something and people who letothers pull them down, drag them down, derail
them from their plans, derail them from theirdreams, you listen to the noise.
You let the haters win.
You let the naysayers win.
You let the people in the cheap seats with anopinion win, and they never they've never done
(34:26):
anything.
These people hop from one company to the nextcomplaining all the way through.
They if they're gonna complain about us at mycompany and the racism, I can't wait to hear
the complaints in the competitor they'reworking for now.
I can't wait to hear them.
If we're a racist organization, I have no clue.
(34:46):
Maybe maybe the competitor are a bunch of demonworshipers.
I I don't know what they're gonna say next.
But this is business.
And for those of you guys that take this stuffsuper personally, you lay down, you lay your
head down the pillow at night, you're like,man, I can't believe we got a negative review.
I can't believe somebody quit and then bashedus on Facebook.
(35:10):
I can't believe they said this about us.
I can't believe my family member would havetalked like, this is this is the way it is.
And it only gets it it only grows in volume themore you grow in business.
So I I had to get that one up.
(35:30):
Micro rant.
No.
That was a soft rant.
But but, obviously, to Josh's audio when hestarted, like, how do you do one every day?
How do you do an episode every day?
You just do it.
You just click record.
You talk about the things that are on yourmind.
I got a whole phone.
I haven't checked this per diem phone the lastfew days.
(35:51):
A whole phone full of messages and videos andall kinds of fun topics and inspirational
things and educational things.
Talk about cash flow, marketing, sales, all thefun topics.
I'm stuck talking about this Delbert who wantsto complain that we're racist.
Like, I I I don't even And he never filed acomplaint.
(36:13):
No one knows about it.
No one knows if this is even a real thing.
But anyway, I had to get this out because Iknow other people deal with this.
I know guys deal with you when you firesomeone, the firestorm that comes with it.
When someone quits I had one of our guys it's abummer.
I'm not gonna go I'm not gonna go into detail.
Hold on.
Drink break.
I'm gonna get fired up now.
(36:35):
One of our guys, love him to death.
Love him.
He's moving on.
He's going to greener pastures somewhere elsefor another opportunity.
And, you know, I I wanna believe that I wannabelieve that he's taking a lot of good with him
when he leaves our company.
I wanna believe that he's taking a lot of goodexperience, a lot of good memories.
(37:00):
I wanna believe that he's leaving on a highnote and not a low note.
But either way, whether it's all positive in myeyes and it's all negative in his eyes, I'm not
sure.
At the end of the day, we are all replaceable.
All of us, me included.
We're all replaceable.
(37:20):
The owner of the company is replaceable.
Because if the owner sucks, the company sucks,the customers, who, by the way, are the owner's
boss, the customers will replace your company.
We're all replaceable.
And people that forget that you're replaceableor you leave and you and you leave, like, on
(37:44):
your high horse and, you know, I'll screw them.
The company you know, someone else fills theseat tomorrow.
It's crazy.
When I left my uncle's company, I thought,well, there's no way they get along without me.
There's no way they they keep it going.
I look at look at all the things I've done.
I was 27 years old.
I had no freaking clue.
(38:05):
Guess what?
Replaceable.
They moved right on without me like nothingever happened.
Eight years later, there there they are.
Like, we're all replaceable.
Doesn't matter how much impact you make, youwill be replaced and forgotten.
And I hate to say that because I got a lot ofreally good people that I would hate to think
about replacing.
(38:25):
I would hate to ever think about forgetting.
But the truth in business, we're all here for apurpose, and the truth is we are replaceable.
And so, you know, I don't know how to tie thatall together, but I know the guys that lay down
at night, that deal with this hate, that dealwith this drama, that don't wanna put them I
(38:51):
see I've seen some of you guys start thirtydays of posting and stop.
Why did you stop?
Well, you stopped for a couple reasons.
One, you stopped because you didn't get enoughlikes or comments, and so you thought nobody
likes your stuff.
You're not relevant.
So you stopped.
Two, someone said something mean or negativecomment or the thumbs down or they left a
(39:14):
snarky remark, so you stopped.
Three, you got judged.
Maybe it wasn't a negative comment.
Maybe it wasn't snarky.
Maybe you didn't have a ton of engagement, butsomebody somewhere in the office is like, oh,
see big time social media guy posting now.
Could be an influencer next.
You got judged, and so you just stopped.
(39:36):
I'm not gonna call you guys out by name, but Iwatch this stuff.
I've seen you post on LinkedIn day one ofthirty, thirty days of posting.
You do it for three or four or five days, youstop.
You gotta shut out the noise.
You gotta stay committed.
You gotta do it for a long period of time.
Then you wake up one day, and you're like, man,this this this this thing works.
(40:00):
I've never met a hater, and I'm gonna do awhole hater episode sometime.
I wanna say this because I hope this will landfor some of you guys that are dealing with
this.
I've never met a hater, someone who's left anegative comment, someone who has bashed me
online or bashed our company.
I have never met a hater doing better than me.
(40:23):
And when I say better, it doesn't have to meanfinancially better.
I've never met a hater who's more fulfilled.
I've never met a hater who has a better groupof people surrounding them.
I've never met a hater that enjoys what they dofor a living more than me.
And when I do meet a hater someday who is doingway better than me, is more fulfilled, making
more of an impact, stacking up cash, when Ifinally do meet them, I can't wait to learn
(40:49):
from them because they're hating on me for areason.
They're hating on me for something I've done,I've said, something that's not accurate.
But if they're doing better than me, I wannalearn.
I've never met a hater doing better.
And so for those of you guys that deal withhate, you deal with the criticism and none of
it's constructive, you deal with thedisgruntled employees that leave terrible
(41:11):
feedbacks and bash your company, you gotta shutout the noise.
You gotta keep marching.
You gotta keep doing your thing.
Those of you guys that listen, if you work forour teams, if you're if you're on our team, if
you have feedback, I would love to hear it.
You can DM me on social media.
You can reach out to our anonymous tip hotline,the company hotline.
(41:36):
I'm gonna give that number out publicly.
You can go literally online and find my emailaddress.
You can find HR's email address.
You can call the main office, (812) 277-9077.
We'd love to hear from you.
We are not too proud to think we've got it allfigured out.
I'm not too proud as a CEO to take constructivecriticism from the people who are actually
(41:59):
doing the work.
I'd love it.
I'd love it.
I'd love it.
So that's what I got.
I'm gonna go try to earn my per diem, get acouple yards mowed here with my 10 year old.
He's sitting here looking at me through thetruck window, breathing on my windows, fogging
him up.
Thank you for listening.
Thank you for tuning back in.
And you know what?
(42:19):
We're gonna do it one more day.
What's up, guys?
This is Josh Delkamp from Nebraska.
I just wanted to say I love the Per podcast.
Keaton, we've talked on the phone a couple oftimes.
Just wanna say I love what you're doing withthe Perdeaum Podcast.
I'm so thankful it's a podcast, though, buddy,because every time I see your face, I just
(00:23):
wanna punch you right in the face hole.
Don't laugh.
It's true.
And I couldn't figure it out for the longesttime, but every time I saw a picture of you, I
just wanted to punch you straight in the suckhole.
And I finally figured it out.
You remind me of a guy that used to pick on usrelentlessly when I was, like, in third or
(00:47):
fourth grade.
We'd go down to the city park and playbasketball, and these guys were in, like,
seniors juniors or seniors in high school.
And sometimes they'd let us play basketballwith them, they would pick on us.
And you I I just couldn't figure it out, butevery time I looked at you, I I was glad you're
(01:08):
on the podcast because I had no problems whenyou were talking on the podcast, and then I'd
see a picture of you on the show.
I just wanted to hit you.
But it just I couldn't think of it for thelongest time.
And the other day, it just popped in my head, Iwas like, man, he looks like that guy.
And I don't even remember that guy's name.
It's been thirty years ago, forty years ago.
(01:33):
But I love what you're doing.
Every time I listen to the podcast, I getsomething out of it.
But, yeah, every time I see you and as handsomeas you are, I just wanna punch you right in the
suck hole.
So, anyway, you're doing awesome things.
I know it's a grind every day putting contentout.
(01:55):
I don't know how you do it, but keep doing itbecause it's changing a lot of people's life,
changing a lot of people's perspective on whatthey're doing, and I love it.
I'm from Northern Indiana originally, ElkhartSouth Bend area, and, I love what you're doing.
Take care.
Bye.
(02:17):
54305.
Welcome back to the Princeton
(02:39):
limits.
Well, I think I just got called handsome and,wanted to get punched in the face in the same
video.
That might be that might be a new one for me.
I get called handsome, of course, all the time.
(03:00):
You guys know that.
I, that's that's a normal day.
And I've had people that have wanted to punchme in the suck hole, as Josh says.
I actually there's a lot of people that wannapunch me every day.
Some days, it's my wife.
Some days, it's Patton sitting next to me.
Some day, it's just a homeless dude walkingacross the office.
(03:21):
You know, there are people that want to punchme every day, and there are other people that
walk by and say, hey.
Handsome every day.
I've never had someone say both at the sametime.
So that's a new one.
Thank you for the video.
Josh Delcam.
Awesome dude.
I got to talk to him a couple times here awhile back.
He's another dude out there bellying up everyday to the buffet of ball kickings in business
(03:46):
trying to build something, and been buildingsomething for a long time.
Enjoyed our convo, and enjoyed the video.
Thank you, brother.
I am back in the saddle.
Man, what a what a week.
What a weekend.
Kind of a whirlwind of a weekend, and and I'llget into it a little bit.
I I've got a little bit of a spicy topic,somewhat of a it's gonna be a soft rant.
(04:12):
I'm out getting fuel.
You know, we just got back into town.
My wife and kids and I, we've been at the lake,Lake Culver or Lake Maxinckucky for the last
last few days up in Northern Indiana with mymom, with my dad, my brother and his wife, and
then my sister and her husband, and of course,the kids.
(04:34):
It was a lot of us.
And and we had a great time.
Amazing weather.
It was just perfect.
Seems like lately when we've gotten togetherwith my mom on trips or events or or just
things to get her mind off of her situation,the weather's just been perfect.
So God's been answering some prayers.
I know you guys have been praying for her.
We had a great time.
(04:55):
Water skied.
I am sore as can be.
You know, I can tell age is is catching up tome.
36 years old, I still feel like I'm 18.
But, man, I'm out there on water skis, and andI'm one of those dudes I I always wanna push
the envelope a little bit.
I don't wanna just go out there and water ski alittle bit and putt around the lake.
Like, I wanna I wanna go hard.
(05:17):
I wanna go between the buoys.
I wanna yell at other boats.
I kicked a ski off and slalom skied for awhile, which those of you that are not into
water sports, slalom skiing is just skiingwater skiing on one ski.
I am not my body type, I'm not built like asuper athletic person.
(05:37):
So slalom skiing, the best way I could describeit for someone my shape and size, I'm I'm about
six two, two hundred and fifteen pounds.
Slalom skiing is like a all out battle to thedeath with a boat.
Like, you're on one end of the rope doingeverything you can not to be pulled by the
(06:00):
boat.
The boat's on the other end of the rope doingeverything it can to rip you out of the water.
And the only thing separating you from theboat's this little bitty piece of fiberglass
about six inches wide that you're skimmingacross the water.
It's fun, but oh my goodness.
I'm sore.
My brother broke his hand.
My brother broke his hand.
(06:21):
So, yeah, we had a great time.
It was a great weekend.
Fun to reset.
Tried to get some of the kids to water ski.
A couple of the older kids tried.
Andrew was the oldest.
He's 10.
And a couple of them got up a little bit, justcouldn't quite get the hang of it, we got more
work to do there.
But had a blast.
Had an absolute blast.
(06:41):
Back into town now, though.
Just unloaded the truck.
Got all the crap taken out, making the kidsclean all the stuff up and unpack all the
groceries and stuff we didn't eat and clothesand everything else.
I am I'm headed down the road to get some fuelfor the mower because I've gotta mow my place
and my dad's place tonight at Port Raines.
(07:03):
The topic today, this one I I I've sat on thisone.
I wasn't gonna really talk about this onebecause I don't wanna be one of those guys that
that preaches all these things, but I'm alsogonna be transparent.
Right?
I I preach all these things about, you know,not caring what other people say and and not
doing you and not worrying about the haters andall that.
(07:24):
Josh, your video, you know, you said I'mchanging people's lives.
I, you know, appreciate me doing the podcastevery day.
And how do I do it?
I'm gonna tell you how I do it.
I do it, even when I don't want to.
There were several days this weekend when wewere at the lake where I just didn't make time
for it.
(07:44):
I got terrible news the second day we were atthe lake that one of our employees, a young
employee, 25 year old kid, had gotten killedtragically in a car accident.
And it just kinda rocked me for a for about aday, half a day, whatever it was.
You know, I'm sitting around talking to myparents and and my siblings, and, you know, we
(08:07):
have between our two companies, we have about500 employees.
So there's all the time something going on.
There's all the time someone disgruntled orsome sort of investigation into something.
You know, we have had people die.
Fortunately, no one's ever died on-site.
No tragic accidents like that.
But we've had several employees over the yearsthat have passed away just due to health things
(08:31):
or what whatever.
But, man, when this when I got the news that a25 year old kid with five young kids passed
away, I think he was on his way to do schoolshopping that day for his kindergartner, and
and I I think one of his kids was going intofirst grade.
And, of course, I've got one going intokindergarten and and and fifth grade and third
(08:56):
grade, and it's just man, it hits home.
And so I didn't out of respect for him and thefamily, I didn't drop an episode.
It was the first one in basically eighty daysthat I hadn't dropped an episode.
And we had employees in our Slack channeltalking about his character and him being an
(09:16):
awesome employee.
So it's just it was just real it kinda bummedme out.
Obviously, something like that really bums youout.
I didn't know him personally.
And then later that day, I don't know why, butI checked my phone.
I got some messages from an old employee whonow works for a competitor.
(09:36):
And I guess he felt like that was the right dayand time to give me all of his feedback as an
ex employee.
And and he starts he starts saying all thesecrazy things.
Like like, Keaton talks a big game on thepodcast, but your company is nothing but a
fraud.
Your people are racist.
(09:57):
Your leaders and your organization are racist.
You know, all these crazy things.
I I don't have my phone up to to, to read itall to you, and I don't know that I would read
any of it anyway.
But for some reason, I don't know if it was thethe beautiful weather.
I don't know if it was the glass of cold wine Ihad in my for some reason, I start engaging
(10:21):
back with this guy, swapping in messages.
And I'm like, hey.
Tell me more.
It's the first I'm ever hearing of thiscomplaint.
You know, I you know, normally, if we get a asevere or, like, a real complaint via HR, I
will hear about it or, you know, at leastsomeone will debrief me on what's going on.
I never heard about these complaints.
And I'm like, you're you're making some boldclaims here that, like, several of these really
(10:45):
good guys who I know their character well, I'mlike, you're you're calling them racist.
Like like, going out of their way in their jobto be racist.
And I just know these guys are not that.
And so we go back and forth.
I asked him.
I said, hey.
Did you ever did you ever file a claim with HRor file a complaint or any no.
(11:08):
No.
No.
I didn't wanna do that because I didn't wannabe retaliated against.
And so I, you know, at this point, I'm like,okay.
One of these guys.
Right?
He he's no longer employed.
I don't know if he quit or got fired.
He he made it sound like he quit.
I'm starting to believe now maybe he got fired.
And he listens to the podcast, by the way.
And he's like, yeah.
(11:28):
No.
I work for a different company now.
I couldn't deal with all the racism.
And and and, you know, I wanted a shot in adifferent piece of equipment.
I never got my shot.
I got lied to.
There was nepotism.
There was friendships.
There was, you know, favorites going around thecrew, and so I never got my shot and other
people got their shot.
(11:50):
And so I could tell it felt like this guywanted to wanted to enjoy his experience at
Turner Mining Group.
And maybe we screwed up.
Maybe we did do something wrong.
I know for a fact the guys he was accusing ofbeing racist absolutely aren't racist.
(12:13):
They might have given him some feedback that hedidn't like or something.
I don't know.
But it felt like with his comments and hismessages back and forth, he, like, he wanted to
work for us.
He wanted to enjoy it.
But for whatever reason, it didn't work outthat way.
And, and then when he said he never filed acomplaint because he was afraid of retaliation,
(12:39):
and then he goes on to say, man, you preach abig game on the podcast, but none of it's true,
so on and so forth.
I I kinda he kinda lost me.
And because I'm always one to take constructivecriticism.
I'm always one to take feedback.
I mean, if we've got a bad apple working forus, I'd love to know.
If we've got bad leadership or people thataren't getting communicated with clearly or
(13:02):
don't have a clear career path lined out, ifthat's what they're into, I'd love to know
that.
But this guy seemed like he just wanted tothrow rocks at something that didn't work out
for him.
And this is why people like me don't do a dailypodcast because they get all this crap all the
(13:30):
time.
All it's and it's not even disgruntled exemployees.
It's cynicism is really what it comes down to.
It's people that say, oh, well, you know, heyou know, they they they portray themselves as
one thing, but then in reality, I don'tactually get the shot, and I'm one of the best
on the crew.
(13:51):
And he says young guys should get the shot.
And so he's just he's just full of it.
He just says it for the money.
A, I'm not making any money doing a podcast.
He said he says it for the clout.
B, I don't I don't really do anything with theclout.
I don't have any clout.
We're in the dirt business.
It's not like they're making movies about this.
And c, people don't actually understand thatall the things that I'm talking about, all the
(14:20):
things that I mention on the podcast are thingsthat I have lived through and are currently
living through.
And and by the way, we are a company thatscrews up.
And so if I've ever made it sound like we don'tscrew up or we don't have bad actors or we
don't have people that represent our valuesdifferently than what I hope we represent our
(14:43):
values, if we if we have people that work inour operations that are just totally different
than Keaton Turner, that's part of it.
The the toughest part one of the toughest partsof doing this podcast every day is knowing that
people that listen, my own guys, my ownemployees, friends, whoever, acquaintances in
(15:05):
the industry, they feel like they get to knowme through the podcast.
They feel like, oh, this is Keaton Turner'sstyle.
This is his personality.
This is his humor.
This is where he has an ego, and this is wherehe's humble.
You feel like you get to know me a little bit.
And then the second they interact with someonein our company who is not like me or doesn't
(15:28):
live up to the hype or has a difference ofopinion or difference of theory or whatever,
they automatically default to, oh, well, that'snot what I heard on the podcast.
That's not what you guys show on social media.
It's really hard.
It's really hard to hear feedback from people.
(15:50):
And, you know me.
I love feedback.
It's really hard to hear feedback from peoplewho who hold us to so much higher regard.
And this guy's working for a competitor.
I know the competitor.
I'm not gonna bash people on the podcast.
This this employee is now working for acompetitor.
He wouldn't tell me where, but I I know wherehe's working.
(16:11):
For some reason, they hold Turner Mining Groupto way higher regard than than all the other
places he went to work.
Is that fair just because we got a guy on apodcast talking about leadership and life
things and marriage thing?
I don't know.
I mean, in one hand, yeah, it's cool.
I I think maybe, you know, we hold ourselves toa pretty high regard.
But on the other hand, when we screw up and theother company screws up, it's easier to go DM
(16:39):
the guy with the podcast and say, well, yeah,but he's talking a big game on the podcast, and
it's not playing out in real life because Ididn't get the shot in the dozer, or I didn't
get the PM role that they promised me, or Ididn't get x y z, or some other person on the
crew made a racist comment, and now, therefore,that company's racist.
(17:02):
Like, dude, I I am the farthest thing fromracist.
I believe in full meritocracy regardless ofyour age, your sex, your race, your religion,
your political beliefs.
And so it's really it it I'll tell you what itis.
It's demoralizing when I do all I can to putnot only myself out there, but the company out
(17:29):
there.
And people exploit it.
They take advantage of it.
They throw shade when it doesn't work out theirway.
And and they they look at me as the scapegoat,the guy that is, you know, the root of all
their problems.
It it couldn't be them.
Couldn't be the it couldn't be their issue asan employee.
(17:52):
It couldn't be their problem to fix if if thecompany had a representative maybe may I mean,
here's a wild thought.
With 500 employees, maybe one of them isracist, and they snuck through the system and
were not aware of it.
How how can you help our organization if youquit on us and go work somewhere else and then
(18:15):
blame us for being what am I supposed to dowith that?
And, by the way, you didn't report anything.
What am I supposed to do with that?
Do I believe you?
Do I not believe you?
Were you actually mad that you didn't get ashot on the dozer, but then you say, well, I
quit because it's just a really odd thing.
And so when people say, man, I don't know howyou do the podcast every day.
(18:38):
It's part of it is just my life.
I I kinda throw caution to the wind a littlebit and jump and do things that I think are
going to be fulfilling to me and I think willbring value to others.
That's part of it.
The other part of it is no one else is doingit.
So I wanna be one of those guys that doesthings a little differently than everyone else.
(19:01):
But, man, when days like this happen where Ihave a really tough employee situation, young
guy, hard worker, good character, loses hislife, and then that afternoon, I get someone
sending comments to me about how terrible ourcompany is and how and how phony I am, and how
(19:23):
all the things that I talk about never cometrue.
It it of course, I'm human.
It makes me wanna say, you know what?
Why am I not sitting here on the lake pouring atequila enjoying my life?
Why am I trying to be transparent to peoplewho, at the end of the day, are are just still
(19:43):
gonna be that way?
Employees who are still gonna tell themselveswhatever story they wanna tell themselves, it
ruins it for the good ones.
That's the problem, is the bad one, the badapples, the bad actors, the people who just
wanna complain, the people who have no hope orpurpose in life and they lost themselves, and
(20:07):
they wanna go work for a competitor and thenthrow it back in your face.
Oh, I'm working for your competitor.
Do do you think I care?
I mean, again, I didn't want this to turn intoa full blown rant.
It ruins it for all the guys who do enjoy it,who do get value, who are trying to build
something, who do take responsibility for theirown shortcomings.
(20:31):
Like like, bro, guess what?
When I jumped on the school bus in third gradefor the first time, there were people who used
bad language.
There were people who were racist.
There were people who made bad decisions, whodid drugs, who like, that's the story of life.
(20:52):
Now I don't condone it.
I'm not advocating for drug use.
I'm not advocating for racist.
I'm not even advocating for poor language.
I don't curse.
But you can't be one of these people who looksfor every chance to throw shade at your
(21:12):
employer.
Your current employer, your past employer, youlook to throw shade at them and complain and
talk about all the ways it's screwed up, andyou never wanna stop to think, how can I help
make it better?
You're the problem.
Keaton Turner only has so much impact in anorganization.
(21:34):
Our our leadership team only has so much impactin an organization.
Our leadership team has not met every employee.
We got people all over the country.
It's really hard to do.
A lot of people think, well, the CEO shouldknow everybody's everybody's first name, or the
director of this or the president of thatshould know every single person.
It's hard.
It's really hard, especially in our industrywhere there's turnover and everything else.
(21:56):
It's I don't know everyone.
So one way I reach scale is through a dailypodcast to get out of my mind into the airwaves
so people can consume it.
Another way is by urging employees to help usbuild the thing I talk about wanting to build.
(22:18):
Help us.
I can't build it by myself.
Our leadership team can't build it.
The project manager can't build it all.
If there are things that are screwed up, helpus.
Help us address them.
Help in a constructive way.
Don't instead of complaining about it, say,hey, man.
This is this is something we're seeing.
(22:39):
This is something I've heard.
I think you've got a couple bad apples.
You've got a couple bad actors who are pullingthe wool over the eyes of leadership, whatever
the case may be.
But quitting on your current employer and thengoing about and complaining about how terrible
you're part of the problem.
There's not one employer out there, at leastthat I know, who wakes up and is excited to go
(23:02):
screw up people's lives.
There's not one employer who wakes up and isexcited to go screw up his employees' lives.
Now there are more selfish owners than others.
There are people who naturally are little moregreedy than others.
But I think even the greedy owners, in someweird way, actually does want his employees to
(23:24):
be happy.
You have to be willing to shut out the noise nomatter what kind of noise there is in your
current role.
Everyone's got BS.
Everyone's got noise.
I got more BS to deal with than I ever thoughtpossible.
You have to be willing to shut out the BS, shutout the noise, shut out the haters, shut out
(23:47):
the people who are racist or the people who aresexist or the people who are ageist.
You have to be willing to shut them out andbring value.
And I was gonna drop some long, meaty, longwinded podcast episode today around the topic,
(24:07):
hug your haters, because I got a bunch ofhaters here recently.
I got one guy I had to block, and I haven'tblocked anybody for a long time.
And I was I'm I'm actually anti blocking.
I don't like to block people.
I actually don't believe in blocking people.
I'll dive into that topic maybe tomorrow.
But, man, when I think about why do I keepdoing episode after episode every day of this
(24:31):
podcast when I got people who just ruin it forme, who who who, like, who I just wanna you
ever seen the thing in Billy Madison?
I think it's Billy Madison.
He's on the school bus, and he and there's thisreally chubby kid.
And this chubby kid's like, you know, Billy, Iwanna grow old like you because Billy Madison,
(24:52):
if you've not seen the movie, you gotta gowatch it.
He's older, and he's going back to school.
His dad's making him go back to school.
He's like in you know, he's probably 30.
And the kid on the bus, this chubby kid's like,Billy, I wanna go I wanna get older like you.
I wanna grow up.
And Billy Madison grabs his face and startsshaking him and says, don't ever say that.
(25:12):
You don't wanna grow up.
Don't ever wish to grow up.
There are some people that I just wanna grabtheir face and shake and, like, dude, I get you
wanna complain as an employee.
I get there there are things that are not theway you would do them or or not where were not
where we wanna be.
(25:33):
Or Keaton said something on the podcast sinceand and it never came true.
A heart for people.
And there's one guy out there that's got a theopposite of a heart for people.
You can't help us by quitting on us.
You can't help Keaton Turner.
(25:54):
You can't help our organization.
You can't help your coworkers.
You can't help the industry by quitting on acompany that wants to do good.
It'd be different if you never heard from me,and I was in a, you know, on a beach somewhere,
and our leadership team were a bunch of jerks.
Our leadership team are some of the nicest,kindest human beings I can find who are
(26:20):
actually competent at their jobs.
It'd be different if, like, we didn't have corevalues that we talk about.
I didn't put everything out on social media, mywins, my losses.
It'd be different.
I get it.
I wouldn't hang around that company either whenthey screw up.
But we are openly admitting when we screw up,how we screw up, how frequently we will screw
(26:41):
up.
I mean, I I talk about buffet of ball kickings.
As a CEO, you don't make a difference byquitting.
If you're on a project I'm I'm talkingeverybody else tune out for a second.
I'm talking to my own employees for one minute.
(27:03):
If you're on a project for us and the culture'sbad, the leadership's bad, Keaton Turner says
something on a podcast, but it never comes trueout in the field.
If that is the case, I'm gonna give you a phonenumber you can call, and we wanna hear from
you.
(27:24):
If this is like, if there are a bunch of peoplethat feel this way, I'm guessing I'll get zero
phone calls.
But if if this is really how you feel, ifyou're listening to the podcast, you're like,
man, he says all these things, but I go towork, and then this one guy's a jerk every day.
This one leader's a jerk every day.
(27:44):
This one dude doesn't care about the company,doesn't care about the employees, doesn't care
about the customer.
I will pay you a finder's fee if you can helpme find out who that person is.
I'll pay you.
If you can tell me who it is, why they don'tcare about our values, our customer, our
(28:07):
employees, why they're I will pay you if youcan help me and our team figure out who those
people are and get them out.
I'm gonna give you a phone number.
It's (812) 277-9077.
You'll have to probably hit a couple numbersonce the automated thing answers.
You'll talk to a human if it's during businesshours.
(28:29):
Once you hit one of the numbers, I don't havethe I don't have the directory memorized.
Talk to someone.
Say, hey.
I just listened to this on the podcast.
I've got a person.
I want my finder's fee.
I'd love to eradicate those people from theorganization.
But if we don't know, how are we supposed to doanything about it if we don't know?
(28:55):
This is tough.
This is a tough one to live out.
This is a tough one at scale because the morepeople we employ, the more problems there will
be, the more bad actors that will slip in, themore apparent racism that will exist.
It's a game of numbers.
It's a game of, like, pure statistics.
(29:17):
The more incidents there will be, the more nearmisses there will be.
Like like a company, if you think about it, weone of our customers has a 120,000 employees
globally.
120,000 people.
How much racism do you think exists in thatcompany?
(29:40):
How much, like, drug use or people drinking onthe job or hatred and fist fights do you think
happens in that company every single day?
A lot.
And and I'll be honest with you, the CEOprobably hears none of it.
(30:02):
The executive team probably hears none of it,and it's left to all the people running
facilities as general managers, as vicepresidents, as directors, as regional managers.
It's left to them to run those facilities astheir own little business.
Some of them are gonna do a really good job.
(30:24):
Some of them are gonna do a decent job.
And some of them are going to do a really poorjob for a period of time.
And then the company realizes we got a managerdoing a really poor job.
We gotta get rid of him.
This is business.
This is how it works.
There are bad actors.
(30:45):
When we were a 10 person team, we had noracism.
We had no fist fights in the parking lot.
We had no drug use.
I knew all 10 guys by name, by first name, bylast name.
I knew their brother.
I knew their mom or dad.
They weren't drinking on the job.
Like, I knew them.
At 10 people, it works.
It's pretty easy.
(31:06):
Like, you know, I know when Billy walks in.
I'm like, dude, I can tell in your eyes, Billy,you had a rough night.
At 500 people, you don't know.
You don't know them.
And so you have to rely on the layers ofmanagement.
You have to rely on the system.
You have to rely on the process.
You have to rely on the tip line that we haveset up so that you can call in a tip.
(31:31):
Hey, there's there's drug use.
This is business, and this is how businessesscale.
And when they scale, the problems also scale.
Problems are small when the business is small.
Problems are big, not only in size, but involume when the business is big.
(31:51):
And so I'm not gonna let one, you know,disgruntled ex employee with claims of racism
derail what I'm doing.
But but I I thought about this, and I'm like,well, this is exactly why CEOs don't expose
themselves in a daily podcast.
They don't wanna expose themselves to all thiscynicism, to employees, to customers, to you
(32:16):
know, my because I could talk about the exemployees who have something negative to say.
I could also talk about the vendors.
I could talk about the customers.
We are a business.
We screw up every day.
We have people mad at us every day on on theinside and on the outside, every single day.
(32:37):
This is business.
And if you're in business, this is what youwill have.
If you go into business for yourself, you'llhave someone upset with you every day on the
inside in your own team and on the outside,vendor, customer, stakeholder, investor, a
banker.
(32:58):
This is part of it.
Can you shut out the noise, stay true to whoyou are, stay true to what you believe, stay
true to what you're trying to build, and keepmarching.
That's the question.
Not many people can do it.
The ones that can do it, my buddy, Aaron Witt,he does this like crazy.
(33:19):
He gets I mean, shoot.
He's obviously very well known, not only herein The US, but globally, in the dirt world.
He gets crap all the time.
He gets hate all the time.
He gets a lot of love, but he gets a lot ofhate.
He stays tried and true on his mission everyday.
(33:39):
He's marching forward.
For him, one of the things he does is he runs.
He runs, bikes, exercises.
He exercises every day.
He stays on his mission.
He shuts out the noise.
He knows what he's he knows what mission he'sworking towards.
This is what separates, in my opinion, one ofthe things that separates people who actually
(34:03):
go on to achieve something and people who letothers pull them down, drag them down, derail
them from their plans, derail them from theirdreams, you listen to the noise.
You let the haters win.
You let the naysayers win.
You let the people in the cheap seats with anopinion win, and they never they've never done
(34:26):
anything.
These people hop from one company to the nextcomplaining all the way through.
They if they're gonna complain about us at mycompany and the racism, I can't wait to hear
the complaints in the competitor they'reworking for now.
I can't wait to hear them.
If we're a racist organization, I have no clue.
(34:46):
Maybe maybe the competitor are a bunch of demonworshipers.
I I don't know what they're gonna say next.
But this is business.
And for those of you guys that take this stuffsuper personally, you lay down, you lay your
head down the pillow at night, you're like,man, I can't believe we got a negative review.
I can't believe somebody quit and then bashedus on Facebook.
(35:10):
I can't believe they said this about us.
I can't believe my family member would havetalked like, this is this is the way it is.
And it only gets it it only grows in volume themore you grow in business.
So I I had to get that one up.
(35:30):
Micro rant.
No.
That was a soft rant.
But but, obviously, to Josh's audio when hestarted, like, how do you do one every day?
How do you do an episode every day?
You just do it.
You just click record.
You talk about the things that are on yourmind.
I got a whole phone.
I haven't checked this per diem phone the lastfew days.
(35:51):
A whole phone full of messages and videos andall kinds of fun topics and inspirational
things and educational things.
Talk about cash flow, marketing, sales, all thefun topics.
I'm stuck talking about this Delbert who wantsto complain that we're racist.
Like, I I I don't even And he never filed acomplaint.
(36:13):
No one knows about it.
No one knows if this is even a real thing.
But anyway, I had to get this out because Iknow other people deal with this.
I know guys deal with you when you firesomeone, the firestorm that comes with it.
When someone quits I had one of our guys it's abummer.
I'm not gonna go I'm not gonna go into detail.
Hold on.
Drink break.
I'm gonna get fired up now.
(36:35):
One of our guys, love him to death.
Love him.
He's moving on.
He's going to greener pastures somewhere elsefor another opportunity.
And, you know, I I wanna believe that I wannabelieve that he's taking a lot of good with him
when he leaves our company.
I wanna believe that he's taking a lot of goodexperience, a lot of good memories.
(37:00):
I wanna believe that he's leaving on a highnote and not a low note.
But either way, whether it's all positive in myeyes and it's all negative in his eyes, I'm not
sure.
At the end of the day, we are all replaceable.
All of us, me included.
We're all replaceable.
(37:20):
The owner of the company is replaceable.
Because if the owner sucks, the company sucks,the customers, who, by the way, are the owner's
boss, the customers will replace your company.
We're all replaceable.
And people that forget that you're replaceableor you leave and you and you leave, like, on
(37:44):
your high horse and, you know, I'll screw them.
The company you know, someone else fills theseat tomorrow.
It's crazy.
When I left my uncle's company, I thought,well, there's no way they get along without me.
There's no way they they keep it going.
I look at look at all the things I've done.
I was 27 years old.
I had no freaking clue.
(38:05):
Guess what?
Replaceable.
They moved right on without me like nothingever happened.
Eight years later, there there they are.
Like, we're all replaceable.
Doesn't matter how much impact you make, youwill be replaced and forgotten.
And I hate to say that because I got a lot ofreally good people that I would hate to think
about replacing.
(38:25):
I would hate to ever think about forgetting.
But the truth in business, we're all here for apurpose, and the truth is we are replaceable.
And so, you know, I don't know how to tie thatall together, but I know the guys that lay down
at night, that deal with this hate, that dealwith this drama, that don't wanna put them I
(38:51):
see I've seen some of you guys start thirtydays of posting and stop.
Why did you stop?
Well, you stopped for a couple reasons.
One, you stopped because you didn't get enoughlikes or comments, and so you thought nobody
likes your stuff.
You're not relevant.
So you stopped.
Two, someone said something mean or negativecomment or the thumbs down or they left a
(39:14):
snarky remark, so you stopped.
Three, you got judged.
Maybe it wasn't a negative comment.
Maybe it wasn't snarky.
Maybe you didn't have a ton of engagement, butsomebody somewhere in the office is like, oh,
see big time social media guy posting now.
Could be an influencer next.
You got judged, and so you just stopped.
(39:36):
I'm not gonna call you guys out by name, but Iwatch this stuff.
I've seen you post on LinkedIn day one ofthirty, thirty days of posting.
You do it for three or four or five days, youstop.
You gotta shut out the noise.
You gotta stay committed.
You gotta do it for a long period of time.
Then you wake up one day, and you're like, man,this this this this thing works.
(40:00):
I've never met a hater, and I'm gonna do awhole hater episode sometime.
I wanna say this because I hope this will landfor some of you guys that are dealing with
this.
I've never met a hater, someone who's left anegative comment, someone who has bashed me
online or bashed our company.
I have never met a hater doing better than me.
(40:23):
And when I say better, it doesn't have to meanfinancially better.
I've never met a hater who's more fulfilled.
I've never met a hater who has a better groupof people surrounding them.
I've never met a hater that enjoys what they dofor a living more than me.
And when I do meet a hater someday who is doingway better than me, is more fulfilled, making
more of an impact, stacking up cash, when Ifinally do meet them, I can't wait to learn
(40:49):
from them because they're hating on me for areason.
They're hating on me for something I've done,I've said, something that's not accurate.
But if they're doing better than me, I wannalearn.
I've never met a hater doing better.
And so for those of you guys that deal withhate, you deal with the criticism and none of
it's constructive, you deal with thedisgruntled employees that leave terrible
(41:11):
feedbacks and bash your company, you gotta shutout the noise.
You gotta keep marching.
You gotta keep doing your thing.
Those of you guys that listen, if you work forour teams, if you're if you're on our team, if
you have feedback, I would love to hear it.
You can DM me on social media.
You can reach out to our anonymous tip hotline,the company hotline.
(41:36):
I'm gonna give that number out publicly.
You can go literally online and find my emailaddress.
You can find HR's email address.
You can call the main office, (812) 277-9077.
We'd love to hear from you.
We are not too proud to think we've got it allfigured out.
I'm not too proud as a CEO to take constructivecriticism from the people who are actually
(41:59):
doing the work.
I'd love it.
I'd love it.
I'd love it.
So that's what I got.
I'm gonna go try to earn my per diem, get acouple yards mowed here with my 10 year old.
He's sitting here looking at me through thetruck window, breathing on my windows, fogging
him up.
Thank you for listening.
Thank you for tuning back in.
And you know what?
(42:19):
We're gonna do it one more day.
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