The Day My Dad Drowned in My Arms: The Letter that Keeps on Giving with Blake Brewer: An EOFire Classic from 2021

0:01Boom! Shake the room, Fire Nation. JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire. brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals with great shows like Side Hustle Pro. Today, we're pulling a timeless EO Fire episode from the archives, so the giveaway may not be active, and we'll be breaking down the day my dad drowned. In my arms, the letter that keeps on giving. To drop these value bombs, I have brought Blake Brewer into EO Fire Studios. Blake is on a mission to help one million dads write at least one well-written, a meaningful, lasting legacy letter to their children.

0:38He has three amazing children with his beautiful wife, Amanda, and he wants to talk about how a legacy letter could be influential in any child's life and how the process of writing your child a letter can make you a better person and so much more. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Blake and our sponsors. The Gold Digger Podcast, hosted by Jenna Kuchar, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. The Gold Digger podcast helps you discover your dream career with productivity tips, social strategies, business hacks, inspirational stories, and so much more.

1:11One of my favorite recent episodes is titled, How I've Built an Unmatched Team Culture, an insanely important topic for all business owners to dive into. Listen to Gold Digger wherever you get your podcasts. Blake, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something interesting about yourself that most people don't know. What is up Fire Nation and what is up JLD? I just want to say what an honor it is to be here today. JLD, I listen to your show almost daily and I have been impacted by your show so much. I listen to so many great people, guys like Aaron Walker, Pete Vargas, Amy Porterfield. I'm in Aaron Walker's mastermind.

1:51Iron sharpens irons, baby. Yes, man. I appreciate what you're doing so much. But the thing that is interesting about me, and it's really going to be about my wife, but my wife gives birth to huge babies, like monster children. So when my four-year-old daughter came out a few years ago, she was nine pounds, 12 ounces. We were like, oh my gosh. And then a couple years later, my son comes out and he's 11 pounds and three ounces, like literally off the charts, 24 inches long. And then two weeks ago, my third child, my second son was born and we took him 10 days early. My wife was like, we're not going to full term with this one.

2:34I can't do another 11 pounds. And he was 9 '12". And if we hadn't taken him early, he was on his way to 11. Unreal. How big of a guy are you? So I'm like 6 '2", 200. But so I was 10 '8 when I was born. So my wife does blame my genes and she has legitimately at times been mad at me about it. And I'm like, I can't help that. It's not my fault. Well, don't tell your wife because she'll be jealous. But I was seven pounds, six ounces when I was born. Oh my gosh. My mother didn't have that hard of a job. Yeah, that's her dream weight right there. Amazing. So Fire Nation, as I shared at the beginning of this episode, you know, Blake has an amazing story, an amazing journey.

3:17And I think that this can be something very valuable. This is actually really, honestly, it's going to be the first episode I've ever recorded where as soon as I'm done, I'm literally going to be exporting the MP3, sending it to my father and saying, dad, listen to this. And if you listen to the intro, you'll know why I'm about to do this. And I hope a lot of you that are listening to this are going to send it to your father or your son or your grandfather or whoever it might be. I mean, this works on all sides of the table and equations, of course, but I think this is a super unique and important and valuable conversation we're about to have today.

3:50So as I mentioned, Fire Nation, This is all about the day that Blake's dad drowned in his arms and the letter that keeps on giving. So Blake, let's just kind of create some context around this. I want to hear about the mission that you are on. Well, JLD, I'm on a mission to help a million dads write a well-written, meaningful, lasting legacy letter to their children. And so as I think about a father, and especially the father that's an entrepreneur, we spend so much time thinking through our customers, how we're going to connect with them, the right copy on our sales funnel. But really at the core of why we're working and we're doing all that is because as fathers, we want to provide for our family.

4:34But unfortunately, there's a lot of us dads who we end up not connecting with the people that we love the most, our family, our children. And so that is why I'm on this mission, because I want to help dads connect with their children at the level that they need. So I love this because, you know, my father's father actually died when he was around 21 years old, like that range. And it was very unexpected. You know, he was living on a boat and an accident happened and he was gone. And it was kind of just like that. And, you know, I've actually never had this conversation with my dad, but maybe I will now that, you know, we're talking about this is, you know, didn't my dad, would he have just, how much would he have treasured, you know, a letter from his father?

5:16You know, maybe a lot, maybe a little. I don't know, maybe somewhere between, I'm imagining it would have been pretty meaningful for him. And I know it'd be meaningful for by far the vast majority of sons who have that situation like my dad had. I mean, he was 21. His younger brother was 17. His youngest brother was like 13. So, you know, imagine if his father had created three of those letters and instead of like this just abrupt end of like, oh my God, I'm never going to have a conversation or hear my father's voice again, hear, wow, I have something this magical and it's right here and I can go back to it.

5:52You know, anytime I just feel the need, if that's once a month, once a year, once a decade, you know, it's there at least. So talk about the fact that your dad wrote his first legacy letter. I want to hear the story around that and what it meant to you. Yeah, absolutely. And so it's centered around probably the worst day of my life. And it really was a tragic day and I hope that nobody has to go through what I went through that day. I was 19 years old. My family had planned a trip. My mom actually had planned a trip to Hawaii and we had gone on a lot of vacations before to Florida, to Colorado, but this was like the pinnacle vacation.

6:35And I remember the first morning that we were there, it was my mom, my dad, my sister and my brother and we were trying to decide what we were going to go do in Hawaii and I remember seeing this little we're looking at all these brochures and there was a brochure for riding mopeds around the island and I just I'll never forget this moment because my dad who wasn't necessarily the funny guy started to mock himself on a moped and the reason this that this was so funny is because he was a huge guy. He was like 6 '3", 230. He was a tight end in college. He was actually Terry Bradshaw's tight end at Louisiana Tech.

7:14Caught Terry Bradshaw's first touchdown pass. I have this amazing picture of my dad, Terry Bradshaw, and President Nixon in the Oval Office. And so my dad ended up getting drafted by the Falcons and got hurt in spring training, but never got to play. So when my dad was saying, imagine myself on a moped, we were just all laughing. And so we ended up not doing the mopeds, but said, hey, let's go to the beach. And we decided to go to Hanamaa Bay. If you've ever been there, you know, it's absolutely beautiful. And as soon as we got to the water, we went out snorkeling, which is what we normally did when we went to the beach and JLD, it was just, I'll, I'll never forget it because it was just so beautiful.

8:02It was so neat seeing all the, the fish and the sea turtles. And I just, I'll never forget just thinking, this is so neat. I've been away at college for a year and now I'm just hanging with my dad. And so it was so cool to hang with my dad. And we just kept swimming further and further out. And my head was underneath the water. I just knew that we were just swimming, looking at things. And all of a sudden I put my head out of the water and I did not see my dad. And I thought, man, where is my dad? And the water had gotten really treacherous at this point. And now I know that we are in an area of this bay called Witch's Brew.

8:41And so as the waves were coming, when I kind of got to the top of a wave, I look out and I saw my dad. And my dad was climbing on this rock trying to get out of the water and I remember thinking why is he trying to get out of the rock or out of the water right now on at that rock this is not a good place because the waves were just crashing against it and sure enough as he was about halfway out of the water a wave crashed against my dad and knocking back down in the water and I thought gosh, I need to get over there and see if my dad's okay and see if I can help. And so I just started swimming towards my dad.

9:27And as I was swimming towards my dad, I couldn't see him very well because of all the waves. But I remember my dad yelling for help. And the reason I remember it because my dad had this deep, booming voice. But when he was yelling for help, it was, you could tell that he was not doing well. It was really soft. And as I continued to swim to my dad, I got closer and I realized that my dad at this point was underneath the water. Um, and he was unconscious. And so at that moment I was thinking, oh man, like this really is serious. And I've got to get my dad to shore as soon as I can. The only way to really get out was to go around that rock that my dad tried to climb up and get to the other side.

10:18And so I just put my arms around my dad and just started swimming to the best that I could. And I was not doing well. And by the grace of God, a snorkeler that had been in the area saw my dad and I struggling, and he showed up and he took over swimming with my dad while I went to the shore. and as I went to the shore, I passed the lifeguard. The lifeguard had seen us out there, and he was on a surfboard, and he got out to my dad, got my dad on the surfboard, brought him in, and they just started doing CPR to my dad on the beach. And I just remember laying next or getting on a knee next to my dad and praying, God, would you please spare my dad's life?

11:14and at that moment my mom and sister were on the beach and they looked over and they saw all this commotion and they said to each other that's where dad and Blake were and so they ran over and I just remember my mom's face as she ran up to us and I through tears I told my mom I I don't think he's going to make it mom this is not good and they loaded my dad up into the ambulance and took him to the hospital where they pronounced my dad dead. And JLD, it was one of the worst, it was the worst day of my life. And it was in a matter of moments, it had gone from the best day of my life to the worst day of my life.

12:02And I remember going to the hospital and I remember just looking at my dad. He still had his swim trunks on, no shirt on, and just laying there. And it looked like he was asleep, but I knew that he wasn't. And I remember just thinking, what in the world happened here? And so as I look back on that time in my life, the next few days in Hawaii, as we had to come back home to Oklahoma and get my dad's body home. It was absolutely horrible for the next year of my life. You know, I was mourning my dad. I had never cried so much in my life. But I think about what could have happened. I could have, as I was feeling so much pain, tried to run from it and could have gotten caught up in a lot of different things and bad things for me, but the exact opposite happened.

13:05I ended up having, through all my mourning and sadness, I ended up doing really well. And I leaned into my relationship with God more than I ever had in my life. And all of that, I can attribute to what happened later that day after my dad drowned. I was back in the condo and I was on the bed and I was mourning and weeping. And my mom comes into the room and she says, Hey, I just got this out of your dad's suitcase. I didn't know what it was. And she handed it to me. And she said, this is a letter that your dad has been working on for a couple months and he just finished it and was going to give it to you on this trip.

13:54And so I began reading this letter. My dad had no idea that he was about to die. And I was reading this letter and it was a letter of encouragement. He was encouraging me to persevere in life, knowing that there were going to be trials. This letter encouraged me to stand strong in my faith. And so it was that letter that gave me assurance of where my dad was, but also it gave me a purpose in my life. And so it was because of that letter that I was able to not only get through this horrible time in my life, that letter 18 years later is still guiding me. My dad's words are still there. My dad's voice is still in my life guiding me.

14:47So obviously, I'm incredibly thankful for that letter. I wouldn't be here today if it wasn't for my dad writing that letter. Now, a question that I have is, how did your dad have the foresight to write this letter? and kind of like transition that as well as to what you found because of that that makes a legacy letter so impactful? That's the million dollar question. I have no idea what spurred my dad on to write that letter. I would say it was of God. And I know that my dad, whatever my dad gave up time-wise to write that letter, there's nothing more valuable that he could have been doing with his time than writing that letter.

15:29But the reason that a legacy letter was like this, the reason it was so powerful in my life, the reason that a letter like this from a father could be so powerful in any child's life, number one is because dad's voices are the most powerful on the planet. I'll put it like this. If we were going to get into a sailboat, JLD, and we were going to head from, let's say, Florida to Puerto Rico to come see you, we could make it there even if the wind was not in our direction. Even if the wind was coming against us, we could zigzag across and we could figure out, we could finally make it, take a lot of work, but we could make it to Puerto Rico.

16:20But if we had direct wind, we could make it there so much faster. Well, it's the same way when a father speaks into a child's life. If a person doesn't have a father, man, can they make it through life? Yes, they can figure out a way to do it. It's going to be a little bit harder, but they can make it. But when a father speaks into a child's life, it is like the perfect wind blowing in the sails and they can make it through life so much faster and so much easier. So that's number one. Dad's voice is just so powerful. Number two, when a father hands a child a letter and says that he has been working on this thing for a month or so, you know, this isn't something like, you know, what I do for Valentine's Day for my wife.

17:14where I go buy a Valentine's Day card and then out in the car, I scribble something and I try to make it sound really good. And then I go hand it to my wife. No, that's not the type of letter that we're talking about. We're talking about a letter that you work on for a while and you really get your thoughts and the things that you want to share with your child. And you hand that to your child and say, have been working on this for a month. Like the weight that that letter carries is so powerful. Number three, a letter is, as you know, it's forever. When you write your words down, it's forever.

17:50And so as you mentioned earlier, I can go back when I have doubts in my life, when I'm wondering, okay, what am I really here for? I go back to my dad's letter and I can read it again, you know, all the time, every year and every phase of my life. the letter has taken on new meaning from when I got married to now that I have children. And so it has a new meaning to it. And then I would say fourth, the reason that a legacy letter is so impactful is the times that we're, that we're living in right now. This is needed more than ever because it is harder than ever to get through to our children because our children, there's so much competition for a father's voice i'll put it like this um there's a famous play famous pass from terry bradshaw to my dad that we talked a lot about in my family it was 1968 um i'm about to i verified this story with terry bradshaw i'm telling it correctly uh it was the first ever bowl game for louisiana tech first time they were ever on tv they were playing Akron.

18:59They were beating Akron, but Akron scored two touchdowns in a row. They were making a comeback, and it was the fourth quarter, and Terry Bradshaw marched the team down the field, and then at the six-yard line, he bootlegs right. He dodges a defender. Then three defenders basically jump on him and are just hanging on him, and Terry Bradshaw, he stands tall. He doesn't let the defenders bring him down and he finds my dad in the end zone for the touchdown. It sealed the victory. And so in the same way as fathers, we are getting attacked at all sides. The culture tells us that our voices aren't that important.

19:42We're trying to reach our children, but our children are distracted. We're distracted ourselves. I find myself all the time wanting to spend time with my children and then my phone vibrates and I'm on my phone and now I'm distracted from spending time with my children. There's other things that are being accessed like never before in history, like pornography. And so as a father is trying to connect with his children, there's all these distractions, but we absolutely cannot throw our hands in there as a father and say, okay, it's too hard. I can't do it. No, we've got to step up to the plate. And as Terry Bradshaw threw that touchdown past and connected with my dad, we have to step up and say, okay, despite all the all of this i'm going to connect with my children and that's as a dad that's basically what we're trying to do is score a bunch of touchdowns with our our children doing a lot of different things but in my opinion writing a legacy letter is the touchdown in the fourth quarter that seals the deal that man you've won the game and every father i you know sometimes i'll i'll tell fathers If you could give your child only one gift their entire life, write them a legacy letter.

20:56This is powerful stuff, Fire Nation. And I love where Blake started. I want to kind of go back to it because it's been a little while, which is a dad's voice. It's kind of like your North Star. It cuts out all the flack and just guide you in the direction like a straight line, like that beautiful analogy he shared about having the wind at your back and just pushing you straight from Florida all the way to Puerto Rico without having to do all that zigzag crap. And a letter is forever. It's forever. So Fire Nation, we have a lot more to talk about as soon as we get back from thanking our sponsors.

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22:12and with four weeks of your time back, you could be enjoying a lot more pool time, hiking and pickleball. So what are you waiting for? Learn more and get started today at hubspot.com. So Blake, we're back and something that you're doing, which I think is super cool, is you're taking your experiences, you're taking your personal life experiences and you're helping other dads write their letter. Talk to us about this. Well, as we mentioned earlier on, I'm on a mission to help a million dads write their legacy letter. And I realized pretty quickly that it was not going to be enough for me just to inspire dads to write the letter because I've been telling the story now for about 18 years.

22:54And I never meet a dad who says, oh, that's a bad idea. No, every dad sees the value in writing this letter. But when I check back in with dads, most of them have not actually written the letter. And I think there's a lot of reasons why reasons why, you know, you get busy, maybe you get overwhelmed. Like, you know, what am I going to put in this letter? And so I realized if I'm going to help a million dads write a legacy letter to their children, I'm going to have to kind of hold their hand, create a course, create a challenge and help them actually get this letter done. And I know what a lot of dads are thinking, man, I don't need help.

23:32I don't need help. I can do this myself. And here's what the Legacy Letter Challenge, here's what we offer is number one, it just provides the accountability. JLD, as you know, if we want to accomplish things in life, then we have to have accountability to accomplish the things that we really want to accomplish. We have to have people around us to help us achieve those things. And so that's the number one thing is the Legacy Letter Challenge actually helps you get the letter written. But the second thing is, is that we help dads actually write a good letter and connect with their children in a way that their children need to connect with their father.

24:12And so I've had several friends who have actually received a letter from their dad over the years, and it didn't quite have the same punch to it because their dads, That's, you know, kudos to them for writing a letter, but they didn't quite have the elements in the letter that were really needed. I have another friend who got a letter from his dad and his dad totally whiffed because as he tried to apologize for something, his his apology was totally off. And so his his son, my friend, could not even get past that and then hear the rest of his dad's heart. I knew that I needed to put together something to help dads write a good letter.

24:57And so we help dads think through the three things that every child needs to hear that I love you. I'm proud of you and I believe in you. So we make sure that that is in the letter for the dads that have things to apologize for. We make sure that that gets in the letter and it gets written in a way that will be received well. I'm helping some dads right now that are adult, like grandparent dads. They have adult kids in JLD. It's amazing as these dads are writing this letter and they're thinking through maybe some of the things that they came up short in as a father. And they are writing some apologies.

25:41And I just know that when their children receive this letter and they read the paragraph where their dad apologizes and shares regrets, man, I don't even know if they're going to be able to make make it through it and get to the rest of it because there's going to be so many tears coming down their face. And so it's amazing as these dads are sharing with their children some rules to live by. You know, here's some things that I've learned that I think will help you in life. Another dad that I'm helping write a letter, he's writing a letter to his unborn son. And so how amazing is this, that this son will have a letter for the rest of his life that his dad wrote to him before he was even born?

26:26Will he ever wonder if his dad loved him? He's like, heck no. He's like, I know my dad loves me. He spent the time to write this before I was even born. And hopefully nothing tragic ever happens to this dad. But could you imagine how important this letter is going to be to this child who maybe never got to speak to his dad and hear his dad's voice and hear words from his dad? But he has this letter that his dad wrote him and words speaking into his life. I have another dad who I'm helping write the letter. And he just says, man, I love my children. Um, but I, this letter process is helping me to organize my thoughts and my feelings and kind of my vision for my family.

27:16And so that's what I share with dads. Hey, this, this letter is going to be amazing. Like your children are going to cherish this letter for the rest of their life, even after you're long gone. but the process of you writing this letter is going to be unbelievable for you and it's going to make you a better person a better father a better business owner and so that is another reason that I'm so excited and JLD can you imagine because we know that one letter from a father can change a person's life I experienced this but JLD can you imagine when a million dads do it I mean, the ripple effect is going to be incredible because think of every person that receives that letter.

28:07Is there a chance in the world that they're not going to write a letter to their son, to their daughter, to whomever? Of course, of course not. They're going to. And it's going to start this ripple effect that's going to be incredible. And circling back to what Blake was saying at the beginning, accountability, unbelievably important. And that's what Blake's going to be giving you. And I love those three things you shared. I love you. I'm proud of you. I believe in you. These things have to be part of this letter fire nation. And I'm going to give you a really quick story, not to throw my parents under the bus, but I think it's just kind of a more of a, more of a funny story than anything is we had this family.

28:41They were family friends growing up and we spent a lot of time with them. In fact, my best friend is the oldest son in their family. I'm the oldest son of my family and I was the best man at his wedding. And we're great friends. We just spent time with them a few weeks ago in Maine at the middle brother's wedding. So, I mean, we're still super tight. The families are super close. And we always used to spend New Year's together. And so, unbeknownst to us, one New Year's, when we were like six or eight or something like that, they, as they were sitting around getting ready for New Year's, decided to write a time capsule of, hey, what are our kids going to do and be when they grow up?

29:18And they did this letter and then they sealed it in a time capsule. They put it in like a bank vault or something. And guess what? They didn't forget about it. they talked about it for years and years and years. Like it was this some, like, just this unbelievable artifact that they created. And the expectations for this time capsule were so high. So fast forward almost 30 years to the day. This is like within a year ago. We're all hanging out down at my home in Puerto Rico and they brought down the time capsule. You know, I'm 40, my buddy's 40. You know, the younger brothers and sisters are like in their mid thirties.