Guy Reams (00:00.878)
Today is day 158, the near -death experience. You know, there's an entire industry on NDEs, near -death experiences. There's foundations, there's research, there's books. I mean, there are probably over, there's probably 500 books a year generated on near -death experiences.
Guy Reams (00:25.838)
So.
Near -death experiences are important to me because I had one. I had an NDE. Now, I didn't have the glorious vision of the afterlife that some of the NDE's describe, but I actually did have one. So today I want to talk about the impact of NDE's on people. And I'm going to make a connection to a mentality that I think is helpful to adopt in life and in business.
So when I was a young man in college, I was at a debate tournament in Newport Beach and a couple of my friends from college decided to come down and visit me. And they came out on early Saturday morning and we wanted to go surfing. Now, one of the young men that was visiting was an exchange student from Germany. So me and my other friend wanted to really impress him. So we decided to take our surfboards to this very difficult area of the Newport Beach area.
Some people call it the wedge. Anyway, so we thought we would show off by demonstrating our surfing prowess. Well, the German exchange student was smart. He decided to stay on the shore and just observe. And as it turned out, I was very lucky that he did so. So while we were surfing, there was a set of waves that came in that and so this area of Newport is very dangerous because there's this.
rock outcropping that causes the wave to break early. And secondly, it's really deep right there after the break. And so if you're not careful, you can get caught up underneath this thing and it's dangerous. So anyway, we were there and a couple of waves came in rapid succession and one of them ended up breaking over the top of my head.
Guy Reams (02:25.325)
And right at that moment, I got this really severe leg cramp. And I was in a lot of pain. You know, those kind of cramps where your quad muscle just turns into a knot. Well, that's what happened to me. And I was grasping my leg. I lost my surfboard and I started sinking. And I remember as I was sinking, I looked up and I could see the crash of the wave above me.
and I could see the sunlight coming through the water. And I thought to myself, man, if I don't get to the top, I'm going to take a breath full of water. Well, the next thing I remember, I'm on the beach with a lifeguard performing CPR and pumping seawater out of my lungs. And I remember taking a breath and the pain from the breath because, you know, once you ingest salt water, it's kind of harsh. So I'm like,
in a lot of pain. Now what had happened is the German exchange dude, his name was Mark, saw me go under. And luckily for me, he was a really, he was really in shape. He was a great soccer player. So he was able to jump in the water, come out, find me and pull me to shore. And as he was pulling me to shore, the lifeguard noticed and came to my rescue. So.
Now of course my friends left me there on a towel and I got the worst sunburn I've ever had in my life because I basically passed out for like four hours.
So it wasn't too much longer after that experience that I went through some major life changes. Something about being faced with the mortality causes you really to question what you're doing and why you're doing it. So I did make some pretty significant changes that summer. And I was able to, I met my wife. I mean, a lot of big things happened to me that summer.
Guy Reams (04:29.197)
So anyway, one of the, I've had more than one near -death experience, but they've not all come in the same flavor. During the financial crisis a few years back, my company that I owned at the time ran into what its own near -death experience. I remember coming into the office one particular day when we had a customer tell us that they weren't gonna be able to pay us. Now we had bought,
a ton of equipment for this customer to use for a job. And now they were informing us that they were not gonna be able to pay us, right? So that was pretty bad. I also had been forestalling tax payments to pay my people and the tax bill was now due. Right? So, and then,
To make matters worse, the financial crunch in the markets caused one of our big credit lines to basically say they were no longer going to extend credit. All of that was just crippling. And then that particular Friday morning when I walked in the office, I knew that I was not going to be able to make payroll for the first time. So I had to notify all the employees that we weren't going to be able to make payroll. And for a business owner, that's the worst.
So anyway, this was the near death experience. The body of the company was on the operating table and flatlining. That's basically what was happening. Now luckily for me, I had some great people working with me and we were able to carve our way out of this and slowly inch our way back. But we had to make some changes. We had to think about things differently. We had to have an eye towards profitability. So.
Luckily, we crawled our way out of that. I was eventually able to pay the tax bill. But nonetheless, that was a near -death experience. Well, and I, by the way, even though that was a rough time, I highly value some of the lessons that I learned during that period of time. It impacts the way I run a business today. It really does.
Guy Reams (06:47.342)
But it's impractical for us to manufacture or force a near -death experience. They just happen. You can't really create the environment. It would be dangerous. So how do you deal, how do you have this type of life change or business change in your life without experiencing an NDE?
Well, I think there is a power to awareness, to be consciously aware of the fragility of the human nature, but also to be aware that what you've been blessed with in your business may be taken away and may be taken away rather quickly. I mean, you have no idea in business how tomorrow a new invention, a new technology, a new competitor can suddenly come up and your biggest customers,
your most profitable lines of service or product could be taken away from you. I mean, you are on the edge. You are on the precarious edge all the time. So I would urge figuring out how you can bring that to your mind as frequently and often as possible. Have that reckoning in your mind that this could be the last. Now it may not be the last, but it could be the last. So I do believe we should live our lives with an
urgency, the same type of urgency that those that experience a near -death experience would have. So how would you live your life if you knew that your mortality was in question? Or how would you run your business if you knew that tomorrow it could all be over? So this is an important, transformative way of thinking about life and business. Now,
I don't want you to have a near -death experience because unfortunately sometimes NDE's turn to actual death, so we don't want that. But I do think it's important to consider how can I get myself into that mindset. So if you have any thoughts or comments, please share, and thank you very much.