E417 | What My Friend Learned From Dying For 4 Minutes

On this Thursday episode of The P.T. Entrepreneur Podcast, I have a crazy story to share with you all. 

It's about a friend of mine who I used to Crossfit with and what happened to him after literally dying for four minutes!  I think this story will give some perspective on life, your relationships, and how you view what you are doing.  Enjoy!

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Podcast Transcript

Danny: Hey, I've got a question for you. Do you know if you're tracking the right data, the right metrics to the right key performance indicators in your practice? This is something that's huge for us and really helps us make solid decisions within our business, but the prior software that we're using to run our practice made it really, really challenging.

To actually get that data out and use it in reports. Since we've switched to PPG everywhere, this has actually become way, way easier for us to be able to have the right data. We have a dashboard of all the things that we actually want to see, the metrics that we want to pull, and it makes our life a lot easier to pull the information that we need to make the right decisions within our business.

So if you're running blind and you're not tracking the right things, or you're. Hard time actually pulling everything together. I highly recommend you check out our friends at PT Everywhere and see what they've got going on with their software platform. It's what we use for our practice. It's been a game changer for us.

You can check 'em [email protected]. I think you really like it. So here's the question. How do physical therapists like us who don't wanna see 30 patients a day, who don't want to work home health and have real student loans create a career and life for ourselves that we've always dreamed about?

This is the question, and this podcast is the answer. My name's Danny Mate, and welcome to the PT Entrepreneur Podcast.

What's up guys? Doc Danny here with the PT Entrepreneur podcast, and man, I've got a crazy story for you today. Um, one of my friends who actually met at a CrossFit gym that I trained at whenever I, uh, I moved to Atlanta, um, we became pretty good friends. We, um, were in the same business networking group for a while.

Um, and I would work out together quite a. Um, he, he eventually, uh, moved to Charleston. He, he is a kinda the home service business and, um, that, that was uh, about I guess two years ago, moved, moved to Charleston and I keep up with him kind of. As much as we, we would when we live in different cities. Right.

We talk occasionally. But, um, recently, uh, he had a serious health, uh, issue that popped up and I, I give you the backstory in this guy real quick and I'll tell you the story of what happened with him and what I talked to him about. Cause I had dinner with him last night, uh, talking about, you know, just the crazy shit that happened to him.

So he's in his mid forties, um, very, very healthy individual to put in perspective. He. He just did a 50 k, so this was, uh, three months ago. Just did a 50 k. And he plays second overall. So, um, he's fit and he started noticing that he was having some pain in his neck and in his chest. Um, when he would train like really hard, like high intensity or, uh, run, um, over 10 miles, like it would start to kind of kick in.

But for him, like he's, he's, he runs really far, so it's not like a max effort by any means. So he goes, he gets tested, he gets all these tests done, and, uh, they don't find anything. So they, bo doc basically tells him like, Hey, just don't do these things, right? So that's a common answer. We, we hear, you know, quite a bit.

But, um, he feels pretty confident that this is just, you know, okay, it's just a, you know, a, a side effect of a stressful workouts or, um, or long endurance, uh, training. So, Saturday morning he's at a CrossFit gym with a 16 year old son. He's three kids, three boys between the ages 12 and 16. So he was at the CrossFit gym with his son doing a partner.

And he's in the middle of doing a set of wall balls and he starts getting this pain in his neck, uh, again. And so he takes a knee and it's getting worse, and it's getting worse, and he sits down and, you know, stop stops working out. And within a few seconds he's out cold. No heartbeat, not breath. He's dead on the ground and the CrossFit gym, no one really knows what to do.

Uh, and they, they're kind of freaking out. They get his son out of there, they lay him down. One of the coaches goes over and rightfully so, Gets an a e d machine, they hook 'em up to the a e D and reads them nothing. They have to start chest compressions. They get a slight heartbeat back. The a e d reads it and they, they shock him.

N n still out, you know, still, no, not breathing. Still, still not back normal. They start chest compressions again. Reads him again, shocks him one more time, and he's back four and a half minutes. No heartbeat, no breathing. Four and a half minutes. Second, a e d shock, and he's, he's back Heart rate's at like 300.

So he gets taken to an ambulance, uh, or taken by ambulance to a hospital, and he's there for a couple days. And turns out it was just like a abnormality in, in the, um, function of the heart in terms of like the electrical, uh, impulse. And it just essentially short circuited, right? Like it just stopped working and he had to have a defill.

Implant implanted in his lap, directly connected to his heart. Um, and he is no longer allowed to, uh, really get his laid, his heart rate over like 120 for, for a period of time. I'm not sure what he's ever gonna be able to get back to as far as that stuff goes. You know, he went from placing second in a 50 k to having to like, walk, run to keep his heart rate under, I think it's like 120.

Per minute. And, uh, you know, so it, it's been a very big adjustment for him, a huge change. And I sat down at dinner with him and I just like, Was listening to his story and it was just so crazy, uh, and unexpected. And I think that's the, the thing that, you know, the, like, the perspective of this, the reason I wanna share this with you guys is the perspective that he has and the question that I asked him that I was so interested to ask him.

Cause I didn't actually know the backstory of what actually happened and, and I said, dude, would you do anyth? Is there anything that you wish that you would've done differently? Like, let's say you didn't wake back up and that was it, right? Is there anything you wish you would've done differently? And, you know, his answer was, was interesting cuz he said, honestly no.

Like, he's like, I like my life. I think that, you know, I, I, I do the things that I like with the people. I like when I want to do 'em. And I feel like I, you know, find a lot of enjoyment in what I, you know, what I do for a living. And I have a good relationship with my kids and my spouse, my family, and, you know, he's like, I don't think I would do really anything differently.

Obviously, there's some things that he would, he wants to do with his family that he hasn't had a chance to do yet, and places he wants to go and things he wants to experience, whatever. I was like, for the most part, no. I, I feel like, you know, I wouldn't really change anything. And I think that's pretty rare.

I think most people, they would change a lot. They would change a ton of things. And his backstory is, is uh, very similar, you know, to a lot of the entrepreneurs that we work with. He worked in a, you know, bigger company, super easy job, good pay, um, easy for him to stay there. And he decided that he was gonna open this.

It's a, basically, it's a, um, home inspection. Um, and he did so, and like, like right before the housing bubble collapsed, it was like 2006, 2007 timeframe. Gets through that cuz he's, he's smart. He worked his butt off how to downsize his company. Tough industry to be in during that time. But I mean, he's, he's a very successful entrepreneur in his own right and, you know, he really just likes what he does and he has a lot of time to, you know, do things that, that he likes outside of work as well, and spend time with people that he wants to spend time with.

And, you know, the fact that he said he wouldn't really change anything is pretty rare. And it's, you know, to, to the. I think to him of building a life that, uh, is supported by his business, not letting his business become his life. And for most people, they have very little say over what they do. They have very little fulfillment in who they work with, and it's you just, and, and you just don't know.

You could be a healthy 45 year old and just drop dead on the ground and a CrossFit gym. You know, for, for somewhat unknown reasons. Uh, and it happens, it happens to people all the time. And, you know, the perspective of this, I think is important to have because the decisions we make, and hopefully it's very unlikely first of all, but hopefully it never happens to any of us.

Um, hopefully we live long, healthy lives, but the reality is not everybody does and stuff like this happens all the time. I had a, I had a baseball coach when I was in college. The guy that was there before I got there, the head coach was there before I got. Very healthy, late thirties. Um, really good runner.

They would do this three mile run with the pitchers and if, if any of the pitchers beat the coach on this three mile run, they didn't have to go to morning workouts at like 6:00 AM for the, the next week. They didn't have to do any of that, but nobody ever beat him cause he was such a good runner. And, uh, one day.

He was finishing the run, the run, finished at the baseball field, um, at like our west campus, and he just collapsed on the field. Same thing that happened to Jeff, happens to this guy. Um, you know, and, uh, and he died on the field. He, he didn't make it, you know, there wasn't somebody around. Uh, and if this had happened to my friend while he was running his 50 k and he is in the middle of the woods, He wouldn't be here today.

You know, it just so happened he was in a populated area whenever this ha this happened to him. So, you know, I I, I would ask you this, you know, and, and I'll tell you the story, not necessarily just to freak anybody out, but I think it's an interesting, um, perspective that he has. So I would ask yourself this, like, if that same situation happened to you, would you change anything?

What your life looks like, the things you're doing, the amount of time you're spending with your family. You know, the, the mission that you're on, the, just the, the predictability, the say over you have. What happens in your life? Would you change anything? You know? And if you would start working on it, have perspective for it.

Don't just forget what I'm saying, cuz it's very easy to do that. Don't just, all right, listen to this podcast. You're driving, you're cutting your grass, you're working out, whatever. On to the next one, consume more content. Listen to what I'm fucking telling you. If you do not like the life that you have, you need to change it because we don't have any guarantees in terms of how long we're gonna be here.

You know what happens to us? Unexpected things happen to people all the time, everybody. I guarantee you, if you look at your network of people, there's some loose connection or direct connection of somebody that you know and something very unfortunate happened to them. When. Healthy, you know, young and I don't know how many times we have to see things like that before we start making changes in what we do for a living and start realizing that what we do for a living should, we should get some personal gratification from that.

It should. It should support our life. It should not become our life. It should allow us to spend as much time with the people that we like doing what we like, wherever we like it. For as much as, uh, for as much as we can while we're here and develop meaningful relationships and connections with the people that we really care the most about.

And if you go to work every day and you hate what you do and it drains you, it affects your personal relationships at, uh, at home. It affects the relationships you have with your friends. Uh, your energy levels, your ability to be present, it affects so much and it's what we spend so much of our time doing.

I, I talk with so many people that are unhappy, and yet they just don't have that push yet to actually just change something and take a chance on themself. So I hope that this story, hope this or unfortunate event. You know, at least gives you some perspective. And if you don't like what you're doing, if you don't like what, where your career is headed, where your life is headed, you've got to be able to create a career, a life, a business, if that's what it needs to be for you.

That helps support the life that you want and really move towards that and not necessarily just have the life that was dealt to you based on the decisions you made when you were younger, because you never know when you might maybe drop dead at a CrossFit.

Hey, real quick before you go, I just wanna say thank you so much for listening to this podcast, and I would love it if you got involved in the conversation. So this is a one-way channel. I'd love to hear back from you. I'd love to get you into the group that we have formed on Facebook. Our PT Entrepreneurs Facebook group has about 4,000 clinicians in there that are literally changing the face.

Profession. I'd love for you to join the conversation, get connected with other clinicians all over the country. I do live trainings in there with Eve Gigi every single week, and we share resources that we don't share anywhere else outside that group.

So if you're serious about being a PT entrepreneur, a clinical rainmaker, head to that group. Get signed up. Go to facebook.com/groups/ptentrepreneur, or go to Facebook and just search for PT Entrepreneur. And we're gonna be the only group that pops up under that.