On a U.S. Marine Corps training exercise in 1998, Rene Bruer injured his back. Then 19, he figured he’d persevere through the pain.
The next morning, he couldn’t get out of his sleeping bag. At a nearby medical facility, a medic handed him a few Motrin and shooed him away. “We called it grunt candy,” says Bruer, now a certified financial planner in Tallahassee, Fla. “Everybody got Motrin” for an injury.
The pain intensified. A few months later, he saw a specialist who gave him sobering news. “We could have fixed your back within 72 hours,” he told a stunned Bruer. “But because you put up with it — and kept running, jumping and shooting all this time — you’ll be dealing with this for the rest of your life.”
Bruer remained in the Marines, completing active service as a 22-year-old Corporal. He worked as a consultant for General Dynamics before becoming a financial adviser in 2007.
Today, Bruer is co-CEO of Smith Bruer Advisors, a firm he and a partner launched in 2015. At 39, he still suffers from chronic back pain. Reflecting on two decades of constant pain and major back surgery, he sees a silver lining. He understands what it’s like to undergo hardship, and that enables him to forge stronger bonds with others.
“It gives me a level of empathy with clients,” he said. “You pick up on things when people hurt.”
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Two years ago, for example, Bruer learned that a client in his mid 70s sustained a serious injury on his farm when a tractor ran over his foot. The client fell and broke his hip. Visiting his distraught client in the hospital, Bruer drew on personal experience to offer support.
“Look, it’s normal to go through doubt and depression,” he told the man. “You’ll feel like you’re not the man you were. You can do certain things and not other things. But there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. It’s all part of the healing process.”
Today, the client has largely recovered. He enjoys hunting, and he and his wife travel. “It helped that we could compare notes,” Bruer said.
He has also counseled clients who have lost a spouse, sharing lessons from his military career. “When you’re on a 15-mile hike in intense heat after two weeks in the field, you don’t think how the finish line is in 10 miles,” he said. “You just want to make it to that next tree.”
He comforts a grieving spouse by urging similar coping skills. “It’s all about conserving your energy so that you deal with only what you have to focus on to heal yourself,” Bruer says. “You can defer long-term financial decisions until later. You don’t need to worry about those things now.”
From the Marines, Bruer also learned to “embrace the suck.” When he experiences acute pain, he shifts to positive thoughts. Says Bruer: “I’ll think, ‘As a business, look at all the cool things we can do’ or ‘As a family, look at all the cool things we can do.’ When you live with pain, it gives you more resilience.”
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Throughout his ordeal, Bruer has refused to take opioids. Instead, he takes other types of pain medication and sets mini-goals to fight off pain. On bad days, he’ll rally himself to “make it through to tomorrow” before he allows himself to take a day off work.
“The next day, I’ll say, ‘You have the right to take a day off.’ Then I go another day before I do that,” he said. “I could justify taking more time off, but I don’t want to get in that cycle of defeat.”