Connect with Michael and Bob

The Climb on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-climb-podcast/
Bob Wierema: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robert-wierema/
Michael Moore: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelpmoore/

Connect with Keaton Turner

Website: https://turnermining.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/keaton-turner-b400a34b/

[00:00:00] Keaton Turner: Behavior is a super tough thing to change as businesses grow, right? Because when you're small, you're scrappy, you fight for every dollar you get big and you make some money people first spending money like crazy, right. Everyone's got platinum Amex cards and they're, you know, there's just behaviors, really tough to change.

And so I'm, I'm looking at like, okay, I'm coming in as an outsider. What are the things I'm changing? It was just clear. It was super clear. And, and when it's that clear that that are some people changes that need to be made, regardless of if three of your buddies are not like. We're not running a nonprofit, like we're not running a church mission.

Like this is a business and I have stakeholders that I'm going to make a return for. I'm going to make a return for myself. I'm going to treat the clients the way they should be treated. And. If there are people that are in the way of that, as much as you love them, you just got to make those tough changes 

Bob Wierema: today on the climb.

Michael and I had the pleasure of sitting down with Eaton Turner. Keaton is the founder and CEO of Turner mining and is, is out there to make mining sexy. Again, we had an. Awesome conversation with Keaton. He has an absolutely infectious personality and unbelievable passion, not just for life, but for his business.

He's gracious, humble. And I think you guys are gonna really enjoy this one. You're going to hear it throughout the, uh, the podcast, but Keaton is definitely on fire. Thanks for joining us today.

welcome to the climb. We appreciate you joining Michael and I today. 

Keaton Turner: Absolutely guys, thanks so much for having me looking forward to it 

Bob Wierema: is we reached out to you. We actually reached out to Tracy. And she connected with us phrase sees what, she's your head of [00:02:00] marketing, 

Keaton Turner: correct? Yep. Yep. She's our chief marketing officer and she's phenomenal.

It's been great. 

Bob Wierema: And you know, the reason the emphasis behind us reaching out was, you know, we've seen amazing social media presence from you guys on LinkedIn, Instagram, and a few others and said, man, we got to talk to this guy. He's doing some really cool things. So looking forward to, we want to dive into that a little bit more, but maybe first let's start with.

You know, who is, who is Keaton Turner, and maybe bring us back a little bit and bring us up to when Turner mining started and then we can kind of go down that path. 

Keaton Turner: Yeah, absolutely. So when you ask, who is Tina Turner? I tell everyone I'm a normal guy. I'm just like you guys. You know, I love football. I love drinking beers with buddies and hunting and fishing and all that.

I happen to be a guy that, you know, when I was 27, I realized how short life is. I would just woke up one day getting close to my 27th birthday. And I'm like, man, you know, the stats show my life's a third of the way over. So I took the leap and I was with a family company at the time. And we can get into that later.

But, you know, I took the leap of faith to start a company and start a business. I had a couple of small young kids, but you know, I talked to people all the time about. Life is short. And I just don't. I just had a conversation with a kid the other day. I just don't think people really grasp, you know, how short it is and how much you're going to regret, not doing crazy things.

So I do crazy things. I was in a hot air balloon the other day. That was like, I took my wife out for her 31st birthday and I just, I love living life up. You know, I know this has been a weird year with COVID and everyone's. You know, emotionally razzled I get that, especially the stay-at-home moms, but man, I just like enjoying life.

I like living it up. 

Bob Wierema: That's awesome. 

Well, 

I've never been in a hot air balloon, but you're talking to the right guys. When you talk about hunting and fishing [00:04:00] and drinking beer in college football. So, you know, this will be a good conversation, 

Michael Moore: checking all the boxes, Keaton and all the boxes 

Keaton Turner: last week was some clients, uh, night vision machine began is it was like, These are the right kind of clients.

If you can take them shooting hogs. 

Bob Wierema: Well, I'm sure we can. We can talk after this. We can get that all set up with Michael Dan outside of Fort worth. Absolutely. 

Michael Moore: No, just keep coming back and eradicating this problem that we have down here, because I mean, the hogs are not going 

Keaton Turner: away. We made a, we made a small dent in that last weekend.

Michael Moore: Thank you. 

Bob Wierema: Well, and so did you, you're Indiana 

Keaton Turner: born and raised. Born and raised Bloomington Indiana. 

Bob Wierema: Okay. So you who's here then? No, you went to Indiana state. I saw it, right? 

Keaton Turner: Yeah. You know, it's funny everyone that grows up in Bloomington, most of the people either go to ICU or they're the they're, they're like the weird theater kids that move off to LA and do the whole loss, you know, Los Angeles thing.

So I, I was one that was kind of in between. I wanted to get a little bit further away from home. Uh, my dad played basketball, Indiana state with Larry Bird way back in. Wow. Yeah. And, and you fortunately, or unfortunately they didn't have any construction programs back then. And so Indiana state did, I went to Indiana state.

It was an awesome, had a blast there. 

Bob Wierema: What drew you to the construction space? 

Keaton Turner: Uh, like I said, I'm one of those guys. I'm like, I'm a guys guy. Like I love being outside. I'm not that smart of a guy. I'm not a numbers guy. I just kind of wing it. I'm not super organized. I think of something and I want to go do it and I want to see some results.

And so I've, I really wanted to be in commercial construction. You know, I wanted to build buildings. Uh, I thought real estate was cool. I worked for a real estate mogul, so to speak in high school, a big developer. And I thought that was really cool. And then I, [00:06:00] you know, I got to, I got to college and went through a bunch of estimating classes on how to cost projects, how to manage projects.

I did some business stuff. And so,...