Episode Transcript: Welcome to Find Your Grit's first podcast episode. My name is Grant Taylor, and I'll be sharing with you a little bit of my background. What trauma took place in June, 2021, and what turned into triumph to the point that I am in now. This is for anybody out there going through something similar, that you're not alone. That once you find your reason why, and what grit means to you, you will be able to be the best you. Thank you for tuning in. I had a job. 00:29 right out of COVID to set me up to climb the corporate ladder. I worked for a small business as a business coordinator and event planner, and I loved it. I was very loved in the industry. I loved my job. I loved hospitality. It was easy to be able to balance my love for exercise science and my ability to compete in MMA. 00:57 and then wrestling while being able to continue a job, life seemed pretty good. I felt pretty stable at the time. I felt like I was doing good to be able to create more of myself for the years to come. Like I was building upon something. I was up 5 a.m. every day going to the gym, every day before work, eating cans of tuna. Still do now. 01:27 My net worth could be two million and I still will be eating cans of tuna. That's for sure. I felt young though at the time. And I was able to kind of create more of what I loved through that job and find success, but not fully. But it was ideal at the time. I still felt so young. I felt like I was learning. 01:50 so much about myself, but I was able to neglect a lot of the things that I really needed to bring up to surface about who I was, but I didn't need to in that job. It was a nine to five, you know? On June 23rd, I got a phone call while we were living in Frederick at the time, and it was of my mom, and she called me, so I picked up the phone like usual. 02:18 and she was screaming. I had no idea what she was saying. She was just yelling and I could hear so much back noise to what was going on. I had no idea. I was just white in the face. And I remember the feeling of just complete disorientment to the situation at the time. And then she hung up. And I had no idea what the hell was going on. 02:48 Maybe two minutes later I get a call from a bystander and he said, hey, you know, my name is Ken. Your dad just got in a motorcycle accident and I was the first on scene. I don't think he's going to make it. You didn't need to come get your mom though. She's hysterical. And then after calling my mom back, she didn't answer. And so I called the man back who was Ken and I told him, I said, well, she's not answering her phone. What's going on? And he said, look, a helicopter is coming down right now to come pick him up. 03:18 But I believe that she is just absolutely losing her mind at this moment. He advised the police to escort my mom, but my mom had too much pride and she said, no, I can drive. And that drive that she had from 67 to our place in Frederick was around a 35-minute drive, which was the most stressful 35 minutes I've ever experienced in my life at that time. And I remember calling her and she would hang up. 03:48 She was just gasping on the phone. She could not catch her breath. She had no idea what the fuck was going on. She was more disoriented than I was, and by far. And I had no idea how to be able to continue. When I hopped into that car and we were driving to the UMCC where he was at, that's when it all began. That's when the, you know. 04:16 real life kind of took into place and reality kind of set in. Ken, the guy who called me, within the first 16 hours of the accident, I remember us getting back to a hotel room and this is already, we just got to the UMCC and he had sent me pictures and videos that he had taken before the medics had showed up. And they were a list, it took forever to download. And he had told me, he said, hey look son, these are really graphic. 04:45 I wouldn't show them to your mom ever. He goes, I wouldn't even look at them yourself at this point. But if the police need to know what happened, here are some pictures for it. So immediately I went into it. I looked at every single picture, every single video, and it just absolutely killed me. I didn't really know the realness of what it... It didn't seem real the first 24 hours. For sure it did not seem real. 05:15 In the sense that it simply just did not feel real. I mean, I could tell you right now, it still doesn't feel real. But there is more of a comprehension behind what actually is real and what isn't because of the physical action and the mental capacity that I was able to have to endure to be able to be in this position right now. But at that moment, it seemed like a dream. It seemed like I was living in a lucid dream. There was no grief. There was no feeling upon, I just need some time to get over it. Nothing other than survival mode. 05:45 But at that moment, he sent me all those pictures and I looked at all of them. I couldn't believe it. It was real at that moment. Pictures and those videos scarred me for the rest of my life. His injuries were that he had a complete separation between his T11 to T12 and his spinal cord that caused paralysis from the waist down. They amputated his left leg. His stomach went up into his diaphragm. His pelvis completely... 06:15 was shattered. His arm was completely shattered. I don't even know how they were able to recuperate his arm. And his lungs collapsed. He suffered injuries, nothing short than a miracle for even him to survive. He was projected 70 feet from his motorcycle on a head-on collision of a negligent driver. And I believe that him just being alive in the first place was 06:44 a bless from God himself. There was nothing short than that. But he had catastrophic injuries that led him to get resuscitated twice on the helicopter ride and his first initial entrance into the UMCC. I remember them saying to us that the blood that was lost were two, three liters at a time, that that was what was gonna cause his death. 07:12 on that second day when they called and they said, that leg needs to go, you need to make a decision right now. I remember just making sure my mom was eating and sleeping and showering. So making that call with her was very much more on myself to say, you know what, if this doesn't cause him to survive, at least I know that if he were to have, and he knew that we took his leg and missed of trying to keep his life, it would be worth something. 07:40 But those days were tough and I couldn't go in those hospital rooms or to see him for a close month. When I was first able to see him, I remember it was like a third world experience. It was a lucid dream come to life. When I walked into that room and I had to get that wristband on to go up there, I was directed very specific, direct actions of what I had to do to go up there. 08:07 And upon me going up there, my very first visit, I was shaking. I was just out of breath. I had no idea what the hell I was walking into, but going up to that fifth floor, oh man, you're walking past kids on their last breath upon being shot. You're walking past people with a harmony getting played, people on their last verge of dying on here. This wasn't a recovery process by any means. This was like a hospice care when you don't have a week to live. 08:37 I mean that's exactly what it felt like. When I walked in there, the psychological team had told me to say, do not cry. I remember them saying word for word, do not show emotion, do not cry. He was out of it. He was under dialysis at the time, and his eyes weren't focused, he could barely open up, and he was just pulsing, he was just pulsing. And that number and that sound of boop, boop, boop, of him going was just repetitively going on in my head. 09:07 So at the beginning, he wasn't there, he was not awake. So when I sat down and I talked to him, I grabbed his effortless hand, and I sat down and I tried my best not to cry or anything, and I just told him everything that I wish I would have told him before this accident. And I really wish that I didn't take a lot of those things for granted. The amount of times that I would help him around the house or do things when he was fully capable of having two legs and physically able to do things around the house, that moment was... 09:37 medial it. I was immediate. I knew exactly at that time everything I took for granted. And I looked at him and I told him that I was sorry. I told him that I loved him. I told him that would be okay. We'd make it out. I told him that I loved him. That he was strong. If anybody could do it, he could do it. All he has to do is believe in himself. He has it. 10:07 And all of it was okay. And we would be okay. I repeatedly told him so many times during that first conversation of him that I would take care of mom. I would take care of his mom or grandma. I would take care of the house. He had nothing to worry about. And during this time, I had no idea if he was actually understanding what I was saying and what I wasn't. But I really hoped that he would. 10:36 When he woke up from that conversation, man, he looked at me straight in my eyes and he told me. And that was the first moment that we ever locked eyes throughout this whole entire conversation. Still at this point, not knowing if he was gonna survive. So knowing that no matter what I said, it had to be important. I had to not show emotion. I had to give everything I had to just show him that I loved him. Something to show him my gratitude toward what he showed me growing up. And... 11:04 I looked at him, before I could even get a word out, he looked at me and he locked onto my eyes. So I knew I had his concentration and he looked at me and he said, I love you. And I said, I love you too. And he goes, man, he's like, we got grit. And grit is all you need. And I said, yeah, you know, grit, you're right. Grit is all we need. We're going to be back out, hon. Before I could even get rid of that sentence, his eyes separated. And he was back on. That was it. And I left that day. 11:34 And I remember taking that walk back to the hotel. And I just remember that I had complete delusion over the situation. And I knew that I had no idea what the hell he just said. But I picked out grit. After he told me that word grit, that same day, I was taking trips back and forth to Baltimore. And after he told me grit, I drove down straight to my tattoo artist and I told him, I said, I need grit tattooed right in my heart. I need it today. I don't care about your. 12:04 stuff and I'll pay you triple. I don't need it. I just need it right now. He's like, all right, come on in. So I got a tattoo of grit right in my heart. And I knew that the second that that tattoo was placed on my heart, man, I remember coming home and I was just going, blood was dripping down. I mean, my God, it was like a tattoo done three seconds. I mean, he just had to get it done. 12:26 And I knew that the importance of that word had no importance at the time, but it meant everything because of what he said. So when I showed him that tattoo, after he got out of that coma, I knew it was going to be worth something. And every other time that I saw him, I kept every blue band, green band, pink band that they gave me to have to do that. I stuffed it in my wallet every single time with the date written on it. And it's still in my wallet now. And at times that I kind of lose track of the reality of things. 12:56 And knowing that this was really just the beginning to a whole world of shit, I keep those as a reminder of every visit that I had. And it shaped who I am today. 13:23 something strong, like it's something like you were born with. It's like a kid's born with grit. He's born with the resilience to be able to get through adversity. You know, like that's all I knew of the word being, which holds a lot of purpose to what that word is. And, but finding your reason why was a lot more of that definition to grit to me as I started to figure out. And, and as I started to go forward into life and started to... 13:52 You know, I had that grit tattoo to my heart. I knew that I was beginning onto a journey, not only for him, but I had to find it myself. 14:01 So I mean, I spent countless days afterwards going back home knowing that he was a little bit more out of the woods. He was gonna survive. So I went back home and I started digging holes. I started, you know, creating a ramp, creating everything ADA approved. I ripped down the drywall into our garage and I put up insulation, re-dry walled it. I tried to, I re-demo'd the bathroom. I did everything that I possibly could. In the midst of that, I was still working at the job that I had five years. 14:31 You know, so I told him, I picked up the phone, and I'll never forget that I picked up that phone and I told them, I said, I quit, I can't do this. And they would always tell me, no, no, it's fine, just give yourself some time, and this, this, and that. And it wasn't it. I just told them, I said, I can't, I have more of a responsibility to myself at this moment. And I have to be able to be there for my mom and for my family and for my stepdad. 14:56 Felt pretty unsure about my future. I had no idea. I just knew that I was waking up every day at 6 a.m., going to sleep at midnight, working my ass off and knowing that for the rest of my life, if that was gonna be my outcome, then I was okay with it. That's how in it I was. That's how much in deep water I was at that moment. And I was okay with it. 16 days after the accident, I got a phone call from my mother-in-law that said that she was at the hospital. She just got done doing chest compressions on my father-in-law, and that he had passed away. 15:24 At that moment, I started packing up my own clothes and my wife's clothes, and at the moment, she completely said fuck the world, like anybody else would in that moment of grief. I mean, it was completely random. There was nothing leading up to it. The doctors couldn't even diagnose what had happened till months later, and it was still something of one in a million chance of it happening. More of a one in a million chance of being able to resuscitate someone in that position. But yet, it was just so out of the ordinary, very healthy. 15:54 knew a lot of my life and you know eight, nine years has gone by and that was just completely random. It just happened. So when I went there down to Fairfax, I had to take care of not only my family here in the position that I was at that moment, but 16 days after this happens, after quitting my job, after taking on this new responsibility, I had to take on a responsibility of being the rock for my wife, for my wife's family, for my family. 16:22 I knew that it was not my time to grieve. I had to do whatever I had to do to numb out the pain at times, to be able to be capable of doing what I had to do every single day. And my God, through the funeral, through grabbing my hand on the casket, to saying a speech, no matter what it was, I had to do what I had to do to be able to help support the family. So after I get back from Fairfax, and after we just got done with the funeral, 16 days after the death, right? 16:50 I get back home and I realize that the dog that I had grown up with my whole entire life had started to decline. Well, the decline of her life wasn't up to her. It was actually the responsibility of someone else at the time. And the death of her was a lot of death of me. It was the death of an innocent child that loved the dog. It was kind of putting everything together under an umbrella and that killed me. To have to take the life of an animal. 17:19 that I loved so much so shortly after all this happened. PTSD had not hit in at the time, nothing had hit in at the time other than just being numb and survival mode. That was really what hit me. And that continued for a long time until I started to understand what PTSD actually was and how it affected me. So after I started rehabilitating Scott as he got home, my stepdad, he got home and we started... 17:45 taking turns throughout the night, you know, rotating them back and forth for a bed sword that he had and he had a catheter in and and a UTI to him could have been, you know, death threatening. It was, it was very fragile throughout all of it. So we all had to be up on our toes constantly. So that already put me on that survival mode aspect alone and it kind of kept re-emphasizing what I was doing was just moving. It was just surviving. So... 18:14 I started working on him through PT and what I knew from my past history of exercise science and what it was to me competing in mixed martial arts and wrestling all my life and playing sports and going through three ACL recoveries myself, you know, and a rotator cuff surgery. I mean, multiple, you know, rap sheet of injuries myself. So when I started helping him, one day came along and I told him and I said, man, he was down low in his mindset. And I told him and I said, 18:44 Look, right now to get your mindset up, to get your momentum back up high, all we got to do is just move that leg. I know the doctor said that you're paralyzed from the waist down. You will never be able to walk again. But one day we will. So what I did was at that moment, I told him to pick up that leg. And damn if he did not, he looked at me straight in the eyes, his tears started to roll down, he got red in the face, and that leg started to pick up. At that moment, we did not see it as anything other than just a miracle. We sat there and bowled. 19:14 I mean, I'm talking about, I mean, just crying of joy and of pain and of trauma that we've been through for him to go back to the UMCC shock trauma for them to diagnose him now as a not incomplete, that he is not paralyzed from the waist down, but that the residual limb that was moving and that contraction of those muscle groups of his hamstring and quadriceps specifically were able to actually start to fire off. That could be it. 19:43 just right there, but he was able to get past something that the top surgeons in the world had said that he could never do. And at that moment, it fired me up to wanna do more of what my passion was. And first, my passion was to help people. Secondly, I knew how to help people, so that was my purpose. Simply, I relate a lot of that to what I went through, but also it was because when people asked me, I want this, I want that, I want weight loss, I want this, I asked them, what was the reason why you showed up in the first place? 20:12 So it gave them a deeper meaning to show up. So it wasn't just leg day, it wasn't just getting that full hip body workout in, it was you striving because you just had a kid. You wanna be able to support that kid. You wanna be able to keep up with a child. You wanna be able to pick up the child with ease. And I have clients ranging from 16 to 87 with a stroke or a Down syndrome or a performance athlete that professionally fights in MMA now. It's like I have a whole different spectrum of clients, but yet, 20:41 the mental and the physical matter so much. That was where I was able to help myself through helping others. We were on the Today Show to try to capture what I was at my home with my stepdad and being able to recuperate and recover him and rehabilitate him to be what he is today and do what I have to do and correlate that with what I did with clients and understand the mental and the physical was everything. And at that moment I realized that 21:07 I didn't want to get stopped by these corporate rules. This gym was, it was just numbers. So I said screw that. I want to do it on my own terms. So I created a company called Find Your Grit. Find Your Reason Why. All going back to what he told me right when he came out of his coma. So I knew that I was able to take on clients of who I pick and choose to take on to invest my time and effort to them because all I give a shit about is making sure that they are the best them so I can be the best me. 21:35 So I was able to figure out a lot about myself throughout these clients and be able to turn people that were coming into me with a broken wing and depressed or overwhelmed, anxious, to turn them around, to show them that it isn't the scale that does the numbers, it's your mentality upon what you do when you show up with me. So everything that you build upon isn't just fitness. Fitness is just a tool. You're able now to create a lifestyle around it. 22:03 I realized that finding grit for myself was finding my own reason why. My own reason why was going after my purpose and my passion, which was helping others and fitness being a tool. I knew a lot about it, so I got certified to knowing more about it. So then I was able to help people through their goals, but still give them something more than what they asked for. And that more of what they asked for was something deeper to themselves than it was to me. It was deeper than me. And I didn't know what I was doing at the time either. 22:33 other than being a successful personal trainer. But I look at myself as a life coach. I look at myself as someone that is able to take functional movement on as the primary, not just something temporary to give temporary results. I wanted to be able to give someone the tools to be able to build a longevity of a lifestyle to be able to uphold, to give them the quality to say, well, I can be the best parent because I'm the best me. I can be the best husband, the best wife, the best son, the best daughter, because I was able to dedicate. 23:02 some time out of the day to make the rest easier. If you don't create those difficult times yourself, then life will do it for you. So understanding that as long as you show up 110% and you give yourself everything you've got, leave your blood, sweat, and tears out on that mat with me and I will guide you and be your GPS as long as you are sitting behind that driver's seat, pedal to the metal. 23:27 That is, to me, what Find Your Grit is. Find Your Grit is finding your reason why and helping you have the tools to be able to create a structured foundation to build an empire upon. This is your life. Take advantage of it. You're not promised tomorrow. Celebrate every day for the day, and that's all we ought to do. So smile, because there's a lot of positives out of this. And I gained a lot of the traumas because I turned it into triumph. 23:55 And I knew that those dark times were going to be light times. They were going to give me brightness. At the end of the tunnel, it was going to be light. I was going to be able to do what I was loving to do and be able to create such an impact for everybody else around me. So once you start growing. 24:14 No one's going to stop you.