A new beginning

Where I came from, how I started playing music, how I started getting little breaks along the way, Where Earl Dibbles Junior came from, where Yee came from, How my brothers and I started ye apparel, How I got the record deal, how I got my first number one song, and that just kind of chronologically went through my life. And I feel like now I need to start kind of opening up to you guys a little bit more

on this podcast. And what I want to do is I want to answer some questions because of everything I do in my career, like including the Smiths, I can never answer questions fast enough or enough times because I get a lot of questions and Amber gets a lot of questions, and I don't have enough platforms to answer them in the way that I should in a long form answer, not like I'm on a radio interview and

I get to answer, you know, in fifteen seconds. I'm talking about go in depth and actually answer some of your questions. And oh my gosh. I asked on social media today this afternoon if you had any questions, and I got some good ones. Some of them are fun, some of them are super deep. And I want to try to answer some of these lighthearted ones, and I want to try to dive in to some of the

deeper ones. And I'm really nervous, and I was actually going through some of these questions and my heart started being faster, my my pull started rising because I just thought, oh God, I don't want to I don't want to mess this up because some of these some of these questions are actually from the heart, and I feel like I have some answers in my own opinion, and so I took some notes on my phone, I took some notes here on the computer, but I don't want to

mess them up. So that's that's what's making me a little bit anxious. I want to do this right and I also want to encourage you. If you asked a question, please know that I got a lot of them, and I scrolled through so many good ones and I kind of had to pick, you know, like six, seven, eight of them. And so if you asked a question that you're really interested in getting an answer from me, please ask it again. And here's the goal with this new

form of the of this podcast episode twenty. Starting with episode twenty, my goal is to put one out every week, once a week. I'm not sure exactly the pattern. I don't know if it's going to be like maybe Wednesday, because I put out the Smiths on my family vlog on Tuesdays and Thursdays on YouTube. And by the way, if you if you haven't seen that channel, please go and check that out and subscribe and you'll get those videos Tuesdays and Thursdays. And maybe I'll put up the

podcast on Wednesdays. So it's either going to be Mondays or Wednesdays. I'm assuming not a weekend because I'll be busy. I'm currently in Davenport, Iowa on the bus, and every time I do a podcast, I talk about where I am, but this is the first time I'm filming it so you could see this is my setup. It is snowing outside. It's really cold, twenty nine degrees, which is typical Iowa this time of year. And we were in Saint Louis yesterday.

And if you want to catch up on me and my tour, you go to grangersmith dot com Forward slash Tour and you could see where we're going to be and most likely we are coming close to you. That's probably including Europe and Canada and Australia. We will be close to you at some point and all fifty states

will be there within eighteen to twenty four months. I can guarantee that you could also at the same link gratersmith dot com Forward slash Tour, you could also see that every tour dight has right underneath it you could it has tickets, and then right next to that says meet Granger. I think that's what it says, Meet Granger or VIP experience. At some point it says that, So click on that and that'll get you to backstage and you come meet me and love that. Love love being

able to meet all of you guys hang out. You kind of get that personal connection which is so important to me as an artist, and yeah, speaking of I want to do a giveaway right now. I want to start this thing with a giveaway, and maybe I should do that every time too. And you can't see, but up here I have my hats that hang up on the bus and these are the ones that I grab before showtime. I'll kind of go through and grab a hat.

This one I'm wearing now is the original from the That's Why I Love Dirt Roads music video that I'm promising someone on another giveaway that I did on social media to go to that music video and comment Dirt Roads hat. So I haven't done that yet, but that's the one I'm wearing now. I'm gonna sign it. I'll pick somebody, and then right now i'll pick somebody for this podcast. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna get this is an exact replica of what I'm wearing.

And I've been wearing this one too, and we sell these now. But I'm gonna sign this right now under the under the brim and then I'll give this away for this podcast, and I'll do this once a week. Pick something different that's hanging in my little room here on the bus. And so let's see, go to go to social media whatever your favorite is, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and just comment and say I want the hat hashtag granger Smith podcast, and I'll send you with this one

that I just signed. Also speaking of this is how I found these questions today is I went to social media. I went to Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram and all three different platforms. I said, hey, I'm putting together information for a podcast today. Ask me a question hashtag Grangersmith podcast. So the reason that hashtag is important is because when I find the questions, I go on those different platforms and I just search for hashtag Grangersmith podcast and it

pops up your question. So you don't have to wait for me to ask for questions. You can go ahead at any point and go to social media hashtag ask that, and then I'll search. And this is probably how we'll build a podcast. I will have guests and I will talk about different things, but this is going to be the way that I can consistently give you guys a podcast.

Is you know, that's I don't have to think about what am I going to talk about today, or what's the latest story that I need to discuss, or what story from the past. I could still do that, but it takes no thinking to just get questions and then go through them. Well I say that, and then I've been sitting here for an hour going over these questions

and getting nervous about it. And eventually we will have some sponsors for this podcast, because I do have to send this off and get it, get it put together since there's video. Today's sponsor is ee ee Apparel, and it's funny because that's that's our company. But that's also a lot of questions kind of came around that, and I hope you guys understand that this is a very

much so a passion project, family run business. My brother Tyler manages me, and then our youngest brother, Parker, manages the brand ee Apparel, so he works there full time. And then his brand development manager is Hayden, who is Parker's best bud from back home in Clifton, Texas. So we run all this out of Georgetown. Actually, one of the questions was, and this was on Twitter, do you ever come up with apparel ideas for ee Apparel or

do you just leave it to your team? Well, that'd being said, See, my team is my boys, it's my brothers, and yes, we have meetings just about once a week and go over new shirt and hat and jacket and pants and you know, design new designs, and we're we're always working towards the next big release, so like spring, summer, fall, Black Friday, stuff like that. Those are those are the big ones. So we're usually about six weeks in advance.

And right now as I'm speaking, as I'm recording, it's February, so we have kind of our spring launch ready and we're working on summer. So absolutely love it. Love ye, love Ye apparel. You know, I never got into music thinking that I was gonna be a part of an apparel company. It was usually just like artists merch like

that was my thing. And as it evolved into Ee Apparel, I found out I had so much passion for it and loved creating the brand that people could show up you know, at our at our shows wearing it, or or get together with each other and sharing that lifestyle. And I always say that we strive for it to

be a lifestyle brand. And you know, like one of our competitors, Grunt Style is It's interesting because well I was talking about it with Hayden today, like I think the biggest difference between that and those guys are awesome and their apparels great, but you see our our people have yee tattoos, Like that's the dedication of the lifestyle brand. Like you don't see grunt style tattoos, but you see

yee tattoos. Another thing you need to know, you know, just kind of getting through some house cleaning here, I'm on the bus. The generator's running. So if you hear that low rumble, sorry, that just comes with recording a podcast on tour. I'm gonna do soundcheck here in a couple hours, so I figured this is the perfect time to knock this out. And I'm also gonna try my best to not cut this tape, so I'm not gonna

cut this audio or this video. So if I mess up, if I fumble, if I sneeze, that's all gonna be part of it. And I hope you guys are okay with that. So let's start. Let's get into some questions. I'm gonna start with Twitter, and I wrote some down

here and then I screenshot some on my phone. First first question from Twitter is about the Throwback Show and EEE Fest, and I mentioned this on many podcasts to go that I was trying to put together a throwback show for twenty nineteen, and we were going to start ee Fest, which is a festive music festival that we could put together and kind of brand it towards everything EEE,

including the bands, including the food and everything. And twenty nineteen took a huge turn for me in June and that all those things ee Fest throwback show really just got it just got put on the shelf. And so yes, I'm still thinking about it. Yes, I would love to do a throwback show where we play a bunch of old songs, but it's it's not the top of the

priority list right now, but we will. We will. Another question from Twitter says, what is one vacation that you would take with the family that you've never done before? And I like that question because I've actually been thinking about that lately. And so I have this crazy idea that a buddy from high school told me that you could actually go to the Bahamas and you could fly in, so basically, your your only expense is to flight and you can go to this town up on the north

side of one of these little islands. Don't even remember. I'd have to look it back up. But and then you could rent camping gear and some kayaks. And so I've been telling Amber that we should go do this, rent some camping gear, rent rent some kayaks and just take off and you just basically go off into the

next island. And there's these tiny islands everywhere. There's hundreds of them, and you could you can go to these completely uninhabited islands and some of them are probably no bigger than this bus, and you could set up a tent and you could fish, you could spearfish, make campfires, cook your food right there, stay in the tent, and it just sounds like a crazy adventure. It sounds like a really fun episode for the Smiths that we could film too. So that's been on my mind lately, and

that's why I think that's a good question. Okay, so Facebook, let's go to Facebook. Here's one that says, what do you do to not get bogged down in your songwriting process? And that is that is a question I think about all the time, and it's it's something that I I'm constantly tweaking in my life. And I think it doesn't only have to be the songwriting process. This this could apply to anyone that's just trying to focus, it's trying

to get some deep work done. And I think we all know on the surface, the first answer is this the phone, getting that thing to shut up and pulling away from that form of addiction that the phone brings. Because if you're trying to really focus and dig into whatever works, so it's minus songwriting, it's really hard to focus and kind of come up with on this creative level.

And then all of a sudden, you know, you get a text, or you get a call, or you get or you you kind of have a second downtime and you're like, I wonder how this new episode of The Smith is doing. You know, let me check out some comments on the new episode, or let me let me see what the music video is up to. I can't. I can't handle it. My willpower not strong enough to sit there for an hour and all these distractions are around me and I don't touch them. That's that's that's

too much for my willpower. And and that's the same thing with like if you're on a diet, you can't You can't go on a diet and say I'm gonna cut out sugar during the day or cut out sweets, and then right there in the kitchen on the counter, you got a big old bowl of chocolate chip cookies. You can't walk past that bowl every day, and you're craving sweets and not grab one. So the answer is get rid of the bowl of cookies. So same thing with the phone. I can't just throw this phone out

the window. But lately what I've been doing, and for instance, I have I have an iPhone I go to and I can pull it up right now. I go to settings, and I go to screen time, and then you set your downtime right here. So I have downtime set for nine pm to nine am, and then I have apps always allowed, So then I'll allow like our our touring app that tells us our schedule for touring. I will allow text so that I could still talk to Amber

and FaceTime so I could talk to the kids. And there's a few others like relaxing apps and like weather things like that that don't soak up my time. I could leave those on. But other than that, everything shuts down at nine thirty pm and starts back up at nine am. Because it's also important for me to get to kind of wind down at night and not just mindly sit there on mindlessly sit there on Instagram or whatever, or YouTube or whatever it might be. And so that's

that's important. And I could also so back to this question, I can say I'm gonna write songs from noon to one. I can go ahead and hit that downtime instantly and it shuts down my phone for an hour so that I could really concentrate and kind of dig in to that deep work. And so there's a lot more to that question, But that's a pretty good start, and I could on future episodes, I can dive into even more

of the unplugging process for me. All right. Another one from Facebook says how about some backstories on your bandmates? And that question stood out to me today because just yesterday there was a girl from our record label. She was at our show in Saint Louis, and she said, you know what I love about this band and crew? She said, every time I come to see you guys,

it's the same people. And that might not sound like that big a deal, but what she means is typically in the music business there's just a lot of turnover. And you guys probably know this when you see bands, is that like Oh, there's a new bass player, or there's a new drummer, or there's new tour manager. That lighting guy's new. There's a lot of turnover, a lot of hiring and firing, and you know, people get mad and cuss each other out and quit or get fired.

And I'm I'm I'm a firm believer in loyalty within the company. As long as you have as long as you believe that they're the right people. I believe that you got to you gotta keep them through thick and thin. We all go through, you know, bad weather. We all go through storms in our life. And there's no reason to constantly be firing people and hiring people or or watching people quit. You know, someone quits, that's that's your

fault as the leader. And so the backstory of my bandmates and my crew is, it's all the same guys. We all are from Texas. We've all been together a very long time. We're all in the the van and trailer days, you know, pulling into venue where nobody was there to see us. And as we all grew, we grew together, and so much of my success in the music business has come from them and their professionalism and their hunger and their passion and just watching them grow

has been so inspiring. And we lift each other up on good days and bad days, you know. And at the end of the day, when I'm out there on the stage, or you say it's a big arena and it's packed and the pressure's on, or say it's a and this has happened a festival, when a technical problem happens, you know, something really bad and it's embarrassing. At the end of the day, I'm very comfortable with my crew. You know. It's like if the ship's going to sink,

we're all going down with it. And I trust them and I love that about my guys, and so we all go way back. We go way back. All right, I'm gonna go to I'm gonna go to Instagram. Actually, you know what I also, I think I screenshotted to see Okay, this is another Twitter I screenshotted. It was too long to type, so it says, Hey, Granger. The question I would ask is about your success from authenticity and what you would tell someone who is inspiring aspiring

to be more. I think I'm on the right path, but I'm finding it's hard reaching for success. So first of all Lee, I would tell you, buddy that it's really gonna depend on how you define success, and that is that's such a huge, huge secret because people define success in many different ways, and it's really scary because if you're defining success on business alone, you're totally setting

yourself up for failure. Like there's probably when it comes to music, there's probably an equal number that look at me and say, man, that guy has succeeded big time, and there's another equal half to go, oh man, that guy, poor Granger, he just hasn't quite succeeded yet. I'm serious. There's probably equal that think that either way. And that's a perfect example of how if you haven't defined your success, then it's impossible to attain that. Let me show you

something real quick. Let me go to this is. This is such a great Of course, of course it's gonna be slow for me, but this is such a great deal. I lost my dad in twenty fourteen, and when we were kind of going through as things, we found like in his drawers some things that he had written down that he didn't tell us about, and one of them was this poem. And this is by Ralph Waldo Emerson.

And it's called success. And I read this and just cried be thinking about my dad right after he died, because he was a man, and he was a simple man of such integrity who really knew how to define success and knew exactly who he was and what he wanted to achieve. And to me, if I'm defining my success, I want to read you this poem and I could

just tell you this is it. It says to laugh often and love much, to win the respect of intelligent people, affirmation of children, to earn the approbation of honest critics, and to endure the betrayal of false friends. To appreciate beauty, To find the best in others. To give of oneself, to leave the world a little bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition. To know that even one life has breathed easier because

you have lived. This is to have succeeded. Man, Isn't that awesome? I love that. It's There's nothing in here that says to have attained ten number one songs. You know, you know I mean to have sold your company for millions.

You know that's not that's not success. I want to tell you, buddy that if you're trying to say you're just talking about yourself, say you're talking about your your own success and not society or your family, or say it's just yourself, which I also believe that everything has

to start with yourself. And it's kind of like I always think about on the airplane when they tell you, if the oxygen mask comes out, put it on yourself first, and then the child next to you, because if you're too busy worried about putting the oxygen mask on your child, then you're not going to make it in that situation, right, And that's life. Take it. Make sure you're okay first. But I wrote this down for you too when I was thinking about that question. Be better than you were yesterday,

not better than someone else's today. And how often have we gone to social media or seen someone else and thought, man, it must be nice, or man's he or she's really really killing it right now? And man, guys, that's how I feel too. I hope y'all know that's how I feel. Like I could look at something and go, oh, man, they really have it, they really got it going on. And there's probably some of y'all listen to this going. That's how I feel about you, Granger. Bro. We're humans,

that's what we do. We're constantly comparing, and you got to stop that. You gotta try strive to be better than you were yesterday, not better than someone else's today, because you don't know their path. You don't know where they came from. You don't know the steps it took to get there, or the luck that happened, or the blessing that was given to them for some reason that we don't understand. And you can never compare to anyone

besides your own reflection in the mirror. Right. The other thing I would say is take take your priorities as part of your success and make sure you have your priorities separated. And once again it goes back to business verse yourself or your family. And so look at it is. You're all always juggling, right, and that's what we do. We juggle. We juggle things in life. We try to multitask, we try to keep the balls in the air, and that's okay, but imagine you got two kinds of things

that you're juggling. You got you got your glass balls right that you're juggling, and then you got your unbreakable foam ones, and your family is your glass like that's fragive. You don't want to drop those now, your your business and everything else that's foam like. You could. You could accidentally fumble one, it falls on the ground. It's not going to break. You don't have to pick it up right now. You could pick it up in a year or two years or six months or whatever. Just don't

drop the glass ones. That's your family and that's yourself, Like, don't forget about yourself. Don't forget about your family. Don't don't drop those. That's important. And that Once again, I could probably say there's there's a lot more to be said about this subject, but I I feel like I kind of have to move on to with some of these other questions. But let me say one more thing. I wrote this down to Marcus Aurelius, just a great

ancient philosopher. He said, ambition means trying tying your well being to what other people say and do. Ambition means tying your well being to what other people say and do. Sanity means tying it to your own actions, and that awesome. So basically, don't don't compare yourself don't compare yourself. It ain't gonna work right Facebook, here's another question. I'm trying to give all the social media equal love. Then I'll go to Instagram. I screenshoted this one because it's interesting

to me. I don't totally understand this question, but I'm willing to try to interpret it. And by the way, I noticed the camera went off, So I'm sorry. If you're watching this, please bear with me because I still have some things to say and I don't want to break this rhythm. And I know now that my camera's gonna shoot for thirty minutes only, so in the future I'll try to keep these under thirty minutes. But I'm getting to some really, really deep stuff, so hang with

me and keep listening. Here's the next question. It says I've noticed a significant change in your stage performance. Not in a bad way, but I definitely see you being more conscious of what you allow yourself to do on stage and in the smiths. As a music fan, I was hoping to see more interaction on the crash my ply of vlogs, but have been following you long enough to know why you chose to stay low key. Did you get to hang with the other artist, did you

kind of keep to yourself? Do you feel those social things could make or break you in the business? And then it ends with saying, do you think that you and Amber will ever do a national interview promoting the River Kelly Fund and share your story and will Earle change because your life has changed? Interesting question that once again, I don't. I would have to sit down with you.

This is Carissa. I'd have to sit down with you, Chrissa and kind of kind of pick your brain on what you think has significantly changed in my stage performance. But yes, since River, I instantly became a little bit

more self conscious about how I represented myself. Earl is, naturally, you know, just kind of a polarizing redneck character that is, you know, like crashing beers together, stone cold, Steve Austin style in the stage, and I had to I had to start thinking about is this well, if there's people coming to the shows and they're wanting to see from me, how I'm handling the situation. That thought occurred to me that do I continue to portray this party animal Earl

Devils Junior? And I still don't know the answer to that. I do know part of it is I shouldn't worry about what anybody thinks, because I've definitely learned through this process that everyone handles it differently, that everyone grieves differently, that you could smile and be joyful at the same time they could coexist the same emotion. You could laugh, you could really laugh, like feel joy and be sad

at the exact same time. And so I have learned through me knowing I can't judge people on how they really feel. That's reflected in me saying, well, people, if I can't judge people, then people can't judge me. You never know what's going on with someone in their life, don't And isn't that a testament to why we should have just be kind all the time, because you don't know. You don't know if the gas station attendant just lost his dad that morning and he had to go to

work to pay for the casket. Seriously, and then they might have been a jerk to you, But would you blame him if you knew that was their story. It's interesting right diving into this crash my play. If you catch you guys didn't know I was on a Luke Bryan thing in Mexico, and I think you know as far as the music business is concerned. And me, you said, do you feel like these social things could make or

break you. I'm just kind of a shy person by nature, and I've never been I have never all the way back to high I've never been the one that's like, come on, man, let's stay a little bit later, let's do this. I'm always like the one that's like, man, where's the door. I would love to go to bed. That's just I can't help it. That's my personality. And so I've kind of taken that into the music business.

I'm never gonna be the guy that's like staying late just so that hopefully somebody sees me or so that I could have a conversation with somebody that's important and they'll like me even more. And I've struggled with that. I've struggled with that, like in the in the country radio game, because a lot of times you got to go and you got to be so nice to these

people in radio so that they like you enough. I say, they're deciding to play your song and someone else's song, and they're kind of on the fence on which one to play. So you hope that if you're nice enough to them, they'll play yours, which is fine, that's great, that's that's American business. I get it. But there's a fine line between being nice as someone so they play

your song and kissing. But you know, I don't know if I could say cuss words on here, but just totally kissing their butt because you don't really care about them, You just care that they play your song. There's a big difference in actually just being nice because you're respecting another human being, right. So that's me. And so when I went to crash my play, I didn't go to all the after parties. I didn't hang out with all the other artists all the time. And I legitimately like

those artists. I really do like their buddies of mine. We've been we've been at it for years together, a lot of these guys and girls, and and so I feel like they know me well enough and I know them well enough, or we're I'm I'm confident in myself enough to know that I don't have to hang out with my camera and take a picture with someone, you know, selfie backstage and then put it on Instagram so that I could hopefully get some likes. And be like, Oh,

I love that you're hanging out with famous people. It's just not me. I'm sorry. The second part of this question, do you think you and Amber will ever do a national interview promoting the River Kelly Fund and share your story? The answers, Yes, I have yet to talk about River outside of my own sources. So Amber and I have talked about it on our YouTube page, and I've talked about it on probably like Instagram posts the way I feel, but we have not let an outside source take control

of the interview yet. So if you've seen our story on National News, that wasn't because it was pitched that way. It's because they literally needed clickbait and went to our YouTube and cut out sections of things that we say, or went to my social media. And that's just that's the nature of news. That's just that's the way it's

always been. And they're just running a business. Remember that news is entertainment, right, so they're just trying to fill space so they can get advertising, not in a negative way, that's just their job. So we have not done that yet, but we will and the reason we will, and we're working it out right now. We're trying to find the best host. We think Amber and I think that the Today Show is are like, maybe Fox and Friends is probably a pretty good way to go first because they

will be respectful to our story. I'm talking about it as opposed to like TMZ, who we've had all you know, that's that's crazy. No, I'm not going to TMZ. But but the reason we do want to do it and want to let someone else drive the story for the first time is because we're really interested and I should say I should say we're really motivated and spreading awareness about water safety with children. It's the number one killer of children under the age of four, and it's there's

not a lot known about it. And this is, you know, the first time I've really even start talking about it, because when it first happened, I know some people were like, we need to hear about water safety, and me and Amber are like, we need to tell you. We need to preach about loving your child and being in the present moment and tomorrow is not guaranteed. That was the

first message we wanted to get out there. But yes, we do need to talk about water safety because of all the things we did not know, and this is there could be many episodes of the podcast about this. But you know, you think about water safety and think, oh, every human knows, I got it. If I go underwater for long enough, I'm going to stop breathing. Got it right? Done? Story over wrong. There's a lot of things that children do very differently from adults. One, it's silent. So many

stories we've heard it's absolutely silent. We've heard of this happening. Children dying in the water with adults standing right next to them. I'm talking. I'm not talking about someone's drinking or smoking weed. I'm talking about good attentive parents standing right next to them. But you don't realize what's happening. And there's been so many birthday parties where like the child,

it was his or her birthday party, usually three. That's like the age and I die at their own birthday party with adults and grandparents and aunts and uncles and other friends and other parents all there is. And it takes less than thirty seconds. It could take it could take ten to fifteen seconds for cardiac arrest. That means ten seconds, ten seconds. You notice your child's underwater, you pull them out, and their heart stopped. Now, if you don't know proper CPR, and you can't get their heart

back within four minutes. They're brain dead, so silent fifteen seconds underwater. Because another key thing is a child inhales water. They you know, an adult knows if you go underwater, you're just you don't You just kind of hold your breath and you got sixty to one hundred and twenty seconds. Right. Well, no, a child, they gasp it in, they fill their lungs

with it. That's why it takes fifteen seconds. This is a tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny sliver of a massive story that I need to tell that I from a lot of research. We're on the Board of Pediatrics right now for the Pediatrics of America. We've been on conference calls with them. There's so much misunderstanding about it. The first thought is you just think to yourself, well, I got it, watch your kid. No. No, I've heard too many stories

for that to be the answer. It's a multi layered problem, and so that in a long way is answering the question on Yes, we're going to get on some kind of national syndicate, but that's what we're going to talk about. We're going to talk about water safety, and we're going to have some pediatric doctors with us and probably some

other families that have been through similar events. And that is the goal behind all that is to raise awareness for someone that has a pool, or maybe their neighbors have a pool, or maybe they just don't they don't know enough about how dangerous it really really is. And if it saves I told Ambery yesterday, if it saves one child, then twenty twenty, If one child is saved because they learned something from this news, then that's a start. That is meaning. That is purpose, and meaning and purpose

are what offset suffering. Because life is suffering. We all suffer. We're all going to suffer. That's human nature. The only way you could offset that suffering and alleviate the dreaded life right has by finding meaning and purpose. And once we do that, it makes it worth living. I told you all this is going to get deep. Let me hit in a couple more here. Let's check my time, Okay. I told you at the beginning that I kind of got anxiety when I was just reading some of these.

My heart started beating. So this is why. Because I read one like this, what would be your advice for someone battling cancer at the age of thirty one by herself. And that's just heartbreaking reading that. And I don't know if the person that typed that, if that's them, or if it's a friend. And the reason I get a little nervous is because I think, you know that old mister, vulnerability comes out of me, and I think, who am I to speak to someone battling cancer at age of

thirty one by herself? The heck am I country singer? What would I know about this? But I feel obligated to try, and I'll try to give you something my advice if you're battling cancer at the age of thirty one by yourself, Off the top of my head with no notes. There's a book I read one time by Ryan Holiday called The Obstacle is the Way. And I believe that everything has everything happens for a reason. And it's really hard to stand by that thought when terrible

things happen. But I believe that all of our lives and all of this world and everything that happens in it is written by the same hand. And that's from another book called The Alchemist. But Ryan Holiday writes a book called The Obstacles the Way, And sometimes we we're forced into an obstacle, and we have to make the decision that this obstacle is going to be our demise, or this obstacle is the reason we're going to get better. It's the reason that we are going to become the

best version of ourselves. And so many times, you guys know this. So many times, it's the fight. It's the battle, it's the failure. It's falling down and getting back up. It's those moments when we rise and we push forward and we fight back. It's those moments that we grow. It's those moments we look back in our lives and we go It was this obstacle. It was this obstacle. It was losing my granddad. It was getting diagnosed with cancer,

it was getting laid off from my job. It was those moments that either broke me or It was those moments when I fought back and I stopped fighting the current and it said I went with the current, and I realized this was happening for a reason, to teach me something so that I could be better. We all love each other because of our vulnerabilities. That's why humans love each other. It's not we don't love each other

because we're perfect, and we don't grow. If life is perfect, if life is easy, if life is smooth, we don't. We just exist. There's nothing to that. And I love, I love thinking about the analogy of Superman. Right, the Superman comic comes out, and here's this guy who could go faster than a speeding bullet, He's stronger than a locomotive. He flies like whatever they say canaries. I don't know, but no one cared when that came out. No one

cared about Superman. Who cares about a man that's perfect and it just doesn't You could do anything he wants. He could shoot lasers out of his eyes and fly with his cape. What fun is that? Like? What's worse following that story? So, what the genius thing that those comic writers did was they gave him kryptonite. And it was kryptonite to change the story. It was kryptonite Superman's weakness.

When he found his weakness, Superman found his cancer, when something could take him down, something could really hurt him, something could kill him. And when he decided to fight back and win against something, this mortal fear, then he became the person everyone wanted to read about, everyone wanted

to look up to Superman. Everyone wanted to read the comics and watch the movies because although he's strong and powerful, there is obstacles they can take him down, and we all want as humans, we want to see how do you get past the obstacle, how do you fight through it? That's what defines you. The other side of that too. If I was thirty one and I had cancer. But man, this is it's hard. It's hard to deal with the subject and not and not sound like I'm mister know

it all over here. But please don't take this the wrong way. But I do believe with all my heart that you could if I was thirty one and I was battling cancer, I could very well look at that as a gift, a gift. And you're like, what a gift? You could look at that as a gift, like this is your chance to give you the ultimate perspective of life, to make you cherish every meal, to make you cherish

every actual good night's sleep. You have to make you cherish the next sunrise, because for the first time ever, maybe you don't know how many more sunrises you might have if you don't win, if you don't beat this, so you could be given a gift. If you look at it that way, you could you could look at cancer as a gift that provides you a divine insight above all other humans, that allows you to appreciate the present moment, to live in that moment, because life is

about moments, not minutes. You know, there's plenty of people that stay healthy and live ninety years, But out of those ninety years, did they ever really have the gift of appreciating the very moment, the little things, the smiles, the hugs, the sunrises, the sunsets, a good slice of Filet mignon. You know, I would think that this could be a gift for you, that you could you could enjoy every moment more than any other human on the planet with that kind of diagnosis. I hope that I

hope that is appropriate. I hope that's not overstepping any bounds. And I should probably uh, I should probably end with that one. There's so many, so many more questions that you guys had, and I was seriously scrolling through, and I want to answer them all, but I also want to make this podcast a normal length, and I want you guys to keep asking them. And if I didn't answer your question on this one, please ask it again, And like I said, you don't have to I will ask,

but you don't have to wait. On social media, you could just go and hashtag Grangersmith podcast and ask her question. And I do want to take this time to tell you, guys that I feel like this podcast is legitimately brought to you by all the men and women in our armed forces that volunteer, that sacrifice everything for the freedom

of speech. That I could sit here behind this microphone on a tour bus in Iowa and talk about whatever I want and that's that's a right granted to me by the men and women that allow me to do that. I also feel like the men and women in law enforcement, fire departments, e mts, all all the first responders for keeping us safe in this beautiful place and this earth that we only get so many times around. So thank you, guys for blessing me with this dream that I truly

love to live. And I hope you know that by me through the the experiences that Amber and I have had, we feel more blessed than ever to be able to talk and maybe help a little bit for anyone that might be looking for some help, because that like I said earlier, gives us meaning, that gives us purpose that offset suffering. So I have an option to sit in a dark corner and close my eyes and live out my days like that. But I don't think that's what

life's about. I don't think that's utilizing the hand that we're dealt things that we can't control, and it'll be an endless search for meaning, But this is part of it. For those of you that hung with this, that we're watching the video and you just hung with the audio, I'm sorry, thank you so much, but I figured you probably didn't want to keep seeing my face anyway that long. But I know now to time myself and keep these under thirty minutes so this doesn't happen. But you guys rock.

Love you guys, Thanks for listening. The new version of the Granger Smith podcast. Ye Ye