The Battle You Can't See:
Preston Eliason on Trades, Fatherhood & Fighting What Nobody Else Knows About
War For Men Podcast | Episode 9 | Hosted by Mitchell Shepherd
Some men carry their weight where everyone can see it. Preston Eliason carries his quietly — in the sawdust, in the early mornings, in the space between who he is and who he's still fighting to become. That's exactly why this conversation needed to happen.
From Idaho to Utah: Building a Foundation Before He Knew He Needed One
Preston Eliason didn't grow up with a straight path. His family moved with his father's career — Idaho to Virginia at age five, Virginia to Utah around twelve. Different states, different schools, different social maps to learn each time.
What that kind of upbringing produces in most boys is one of two things: instability or adaptability. Preston got the second one.
By the time he landed in Utah for good, he was already the guy in the room who figured things out. His father — a mechanical engineer — saw it early and put it to use. While most teenagers were staring at screens, Preston was learning to wire a basement, pull apart what broke, and put it back together better than before.
He didn't know it then, but he was training.
A Welding Rod, an Agmech Class, and a Career That Started at 17
Preston saw a welding class on his high school schedule and signed up. What he got was mostly fertilizer theory — not exactly what a Utah teenager itching to make sparks was hoping for. But half the class was real welding, and that was enough.
He was hooked.
Senior year, Preston enrolled in a 900-hour welding course at EMTECH. Three hours every day, start of senior year through two months past graduation. Total cost? Around two thousand dollars. That's not a typo.
For men considering the trades — or fathers raising sons who might — that number matters. The skilled trades don't require six figures in debt. They require showing up, grinding the hours, and earning certifications that actually hold value in the real world.
Companies will often cover your schooling if you're willing to work for it. Preston confirmed it: pass the class, get reimbursed. It's that simple, and that few people know it.
He went from welding to trim carpentry — a lateral move that most people would hesitate to make. New tools to buy out of pocket. New muscle memory. New job sites, new bosses, new rhythms. The hardest part wasn't the skill gap. It was the dust. With the health history Mitchell carries into every job site, the dust conversation hit different. But for Preston, it was just another adjustment. Mask up. Keep building.
When Mitchell asked what one skill carries across every trade, Preston didn't say technique. He said imagination — the ability to look at a problem, extrapolate what's actually happening behind the wall or under the surface, and figure out a path forward before you've touched a single tool.
That's not a tradesman skill. That's a man skill.
He Met Her in High School. He Married Her After One Week of Dating.
The kind of love story nobody writes movies about anymore, because it's too straightforward.
Preston met his wife when they were teenagers — mutual best friends, overlapping social circles, both clearly into each other, neither willing to act on it through high school. He dated her best friend for a stretch. She noticed. Neither said anything.
Then he went on a mission. Came back. They started dating. One week in, he proposed. A few months later, they were married.
It sounds reckless to people who need five years and a shared lease to commit. To Preston, it was simple. He knew. She knew. The foundation had been building for years before either of them acknowledged it.
Now they're parents. His first kid and Mitchell's youngest were born four days apart — which makes for a different kind of brotherhood on a podcast where every conversation eventually circles back to what it means to raise sons right.
What He Wants to Pass Down
Preston was clear on this: his father showed up. Not perfectly, not without exhaustion — but present. Home by six. On the floor with his kids. Camping trips. Father-son outings. The kind of deliberate presence that a boy registers even when he can't name it.
Preston wants to replicate that. He's already thinking about it with a newborn at home.
Camping is the vehicle. Not glamping, not resort weekends — real camping, the kind where kids learn that discomfort is survivable and the morning after a hard night in a tent is worth it. That's the tradition he's carrying forward.
What he's building for his son isn't a set of skills or a bank account. It's a model. A picture of what a man looks like when he loves his wife in front of his kids, shows up tired and stays anyway, and leads without needing applause.
That's what IronhideUSA keeps coming back to — ordinary men doing the hard invisible work that forms the next generation.
The Battle You Can't See
This is the part of the conversation most podcasts skip. Mitchell asked Preston what he's currently struggling with that nobody around him can see. Preston didn't deflect. He said one word: addictions. Not heroin. Not the dramatic kind that becomes a headline. The everyday kind — the thing that triggers in the back of your brain, the pattern you fall into even when you know better, the habit that destroys you in small doses and becomes a bigger weight every time you pick it back up.
Preston was honest about what that feels like: you tell someone, and they either wave it off ("you're fine, man") or they quietly start judging you. Neither response is useful. Neither is the point.
His point was simpler: every man is carrying something. Ninety percent of the room — at minimum — is fighting something major that nobody else knows about. The sooner men stop pretending otherwise, the sooner the actual work can start. He said something worth writing down: "I don't care what your problems are. I just care who you are." That's brotherhood. That's the thing that's disappearing from men's lives and the thing IronhideUSA exists to rebuild.
Faith, the Trades, and Why Church Is a Hospital
Preston is LDS and unambiguous about it. His faith isn't background noise — it's the operating system. Everything he does runs through it.
But what came out in this conversation wasn't a sermon. It was one of the most grounded takes on faith and community that's appeared on the War For Men Podcast yet.
He described walking into church and smelling cigarette smoke. And loving it. Because someone who smells like cigarettes in a church pew is someone who showed up anyway. Someone who's trying, even imperfectly, even with the habit still on them.
His framing: church isn't for perfect people. It's a hospital. You go because something is wrong and you need it — not because you've already figured it out.
That framing applies well beyond Sunday mornings. It applies to men's spaces, to friendships, to this podcast. The goal was never to gather men who have it together. It's to gather men who are fighting.
Being a Man Isn't What The Internet Tells You It Is
Near the close of the episode, the conversation landed on masculinity — what it actually means, stripped of the noise.
Preston's definition wasn't about strength or stoicism or any of the performance metrics the internet sells as manhood. It was about chivalry. Caring for people around you. Holding doors not because someone is watching but because it's the right thing to do.
He told a story about getting in trouble in high school because he was kind to women around his girlfriends — and they misread it as flirting. His take: that's not a problem with chivalry. That's a problem with how rare it's become.
When basic decency gets mistaken for a romantic move, that's a signal about the culture — not about the behavior.
Be the man who holds the door. Be the man who shows up tired. Be the man who admits he's fighting something and doesn't disappear into shame about it.
That's what Preston Eliason is building toward. One job site, one morning, one honest conversation at a time.
Watch the Full Episode
Preston's full conversation with Mitchell Shepherd is live now on the War For Men Podcast YouTube channel.
Subscribe, leave a comment, and share this with a man who needs to hear it — whether he's thinking about the trades, just became a father, or is quietly carrying something he hasn't said out loud yet.
The Book Behind the Movement
If this conversation hit something in you, the next step is Ironhide: War For Men — now available on Audible. It's the foundation everything at IronhideUSA is built on: a hard, direct call for men to forge resilience, lead with purpose, and stop outsourcing their identity.
This is the audiobook for men who are done drifting.
More stories at ironhideusa.com/stories
