Episode 26 - Jacob Beemer - Moving to the Next Level

Jacob Beemer (00:00):
An object in motion, you know, stays in motion. Don't stop. Just keep going. Like if you get sedentary or if you sit down or he's like in anything in life, he's like, if you just keep going hard, it'll stay easier to do that throughout your whole life. You will be challenged in ways that you couldn't possibly understand in the moment cuz you haven't had your kid yet. Just know that like it's nothing that you can't handle.

Young Han (00:29):
Hey guys, I'm young, a full-time dad and a full-time professional with the goal to become the best parent boss. The girl at show is my journey interviewing fellow working parents aspiring to be both good at work and parenting. I'm gonna do this by gathering and sharing unfiltered perspectives from my guest to join me as I research parenthood one interview at a time. Jacob, thank you so much for joining me on the girl at show.

Jacob Beemer (00:59):
Yeah. I'm, I'm pleased to be here.

Young Han (01:01):
It's been way too long since we've seen each other. I think it's been like three years. Maybe even no, maybe even four actually could, it could possibly be four.

Jacob Beemer (01:09):
I think three might be right. I have a hard time calculating time distance 2020, obviously for all of us felt way longer than it was. So it feels like it was 10 years ago.

Young Han (01:21):
It doesn't feel like it was 10 years ago. Yeah. I think the last time we talked was at that party. And yep. And, and we were we had just met actually, right. Or no, no, we had met we'd met. Nevermind, go ahead. Yeah.

Jacob Beemer (01:35):
Yeah. We had met we were doing something together for cafe X that right. The star, the, we were doing something together. And then sometime, maybe six months went by and then I think I saw you at craft ventures or something. I think that was maybe the timing.

Young Han (01:53):
That's right. Cause I think you were making our video for us when I was at cafe X and then I didn't get to, I, I barely crossed paths with you and then we, we kind of like did the handshake, Hey, nice to meet you and thanks for doing this. And then I kind of went on my way and then you, you, you, you know, obviously built a really great video for us and then yeah, we bumped into each other at the craft party. And, and I got to talk to you a little bit more more more like timely. Yeah. And I think that was the last time I've seen you.

Jacob Beemer (02:21):
Are you still in the bay area?

Young Han (02:23):
I'm not, I'm not. Oh, you're not. Yeah. So that's so wild that it's been that long. Yeah. So we can't even get together anymore and I can't even give you any Daly tips or advice. I can give you dad. I need everything I can take. Yeah. no, I moved to Austin, Texas about a year and a year and a week ago. So yeah, so it's been a little over a year ago that I moved here. I stayed at, stayed at an Airbnb for about a month or two while I waited for my house to get finished. And then, okay. I officially moved into this house right now that I'm in, in November 3rd. So technically Texan for a little over a year and then at this house for about like 10 months.

Jacob Beemer (03:03):
Okay. Yeah, kind of cool. Huh? What is it like to move with children? That is not haven't even that hasn't entered my thought process yet, but what is it like to move with kids?

Young Han (03:13):
Oh my gosh. I love that. You're a podcaster because I'm like getting questions asked. I ask question, you're asking a question. This is gonna be a great episode. I love it. So I originally came up with the idea of like, Hey, moving. And then we're obviously thinking about flying cuz like that's just something that we've always done and we're like, crap COVID how do we do that? Yeah. During COVID and I, I had a my girl was like my oldest was three and my youngest was one. And, and you're already seeing this early stages of this. Cause I know you just had a kid, but like, as they get older, it only gets worse until they're about three and they just basically touch everything. They're like the most grossest creatures in the world, they just literally like have to touch everything and almost everything gets in their mouth. Right. And so I'm just in mouth or like, how is that like on you? Right. And I'm like thinking about taking them on the airport. I'm like, like, like we will for sure get COVID like, that is just a reality with these kids. And so I'm like, Hey Amy, Amy's my wife. I'm like, we, we, we gotta think about a different way to do this. And so yeah, we decided to do a road trip over here. And so it was very challenging, but it took a lot of planning, but what we did we spent basically three to four weeks in each location. And so he did that's smart. Yeah. And so I could work, they can get acclimated, the kids can get normal sleep schedules and we did these kind of short sprints, right. These four to eight hour drives. Yeah. And the only eight hour drive we had was just Texas. I don't think. And you're, are you original talk about this, but are you originally from California?

Jacob Beemer (04:42):
I am not. I grew up in the Midwest. I'm a, I'm a Michigander. Yeah. I haven't lived there in over a decade, but spent a lot of time there in 2020 hanging out with my parents. But I've moved to California in 2010.

Young Han (05:01):
Yeah. So are you gonna try to move back or are your parents like, because just so

Jacob Beemer (05:06):
Yeah, I am a permanent resident of Miami, Florida now. What that's wild. So we, we moved here. Dorian was I think, 30 weeks pregnant. I wanna say somewhere around there. We, it was kind of between New York city, Brooklyn ish area or maybe Miami. My partner is French, so we kind of wanted to be close to an international airport. We do a lot of traveling to see her family back in France. And it was kind of like, we wanted to live closer and easy access to an airport and we work a lot with folks in France as well. So the shorter time change, like my Miami just made a lot of sense and we're like, okay, starting a family. Miami's probably a little bit easier to do it than like Manhattan

Young Han (05:57):
Totally. Or San Francisco where we, where you guys were originally at. Right. So yeah. I, I mean, there's, I mean, that's not true. Cause I mean, there are plenty of people that do it, but I definitely feel, I understand where your logic is coming from, but do you have family or friends in Miami, Miami, like,

Jacob Beemer (06:11):
No, we didn't know anyone.

Young Han (06:13):
Oh my gosh. You guys literally had you guys move there to have a kid during the pandemic just to be closer to an international airport

Jacob Beemer (06:19):
Well, that's not the only reason there's a, there's a tech scene here. We like the startup community. There's been some people that have moved here six hour time change difference from France, which is great. Yeah, much closer for collaborating and for traveling, getting my whole family is still in Michigan. So traveling up to Michigan, like I might Bo over there for just on Sunday, my grandpa's 80th birthday is on Sunday. It's a hundred bucks round trip to fly to Michigan from Miami. Yeah. Versus, you know, it's an eight hour, nine hour flight from SF and it costs me a grand to fly to that's to fly to Detroit from SF. So that's right. Miami just checked a lot of boxes. So, no, we don't know anybody here. Dorian's father lived here for work for like five years. And so any, any city that we've lived in in the last 10 years, there's like a little French mafia community that we can always kind of get in with cuz Dorian's French. So yeah, that really helps feel. We always know a couple people wherever we've moved.

Young Han (07:21):
That's awesome, man. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like those, those connections are so key. Right? Like I, I can always count on like leveraging my Korean background to, to integrate into some sort of community. That's awesome. You just, you just gotta find your subset if you, if all else fails. Right. But we haven't had to use that here. I mean, other than the fact that there's very little Asians in Texas. I, I mean, I we, I we've been able to make friends very quickly here. We don't have any friends or family here either and we just kind of did it because of like same similar to you. We're like, here are the things that we like about San Francisco bay area and both my wife and I are, are born and raised from the bay area, California. Right. Okay. And we just started saying, here are the things that we don't like can hear the things that we do want. And we started going down the list of places that we would be interested in moving, even if it was for a few years and neither one of us has ever been to Austin, Texas, and we just did it and we have no like family here. We have no, I mean, we ended up finding out that there were a ton of our friends that were already here, which was really funny. That's awesome. Yeah. But we didn't have any like like family driving us here, you know? And so we did it purely on like what kind of lifestyle we wanted and the pandemic had a huge forcing function for that.

Jacob Beemer (08:28):
Do you feel like there's a, my first father, I want to ask you so many parenting questions. Cause I'm like, I'm only five, literally five weeks into this tomorrow. Yeah. But like, is there a cutoff age to where feel like it's psychologically less traumatic for a child to move like to a new world, basically in, in all intensive purposes, do you feel like there's like, you know, is it to, and under, they don't really even notice that they're somewhere new or like, what do you say? Like they have friends, like, is there a cutoff in your opinion? Yeah. I love that.

Young Han (08:58):
You're asking me this. Cuz it makes me feel like I'm like a pro. Right. Cause most of my interviews, I'm the one asking questions. Cause they have like older children and here I'm like, yes, I have four years on you. All right. Let me convey my knowledge. That's amazing. No. Congratulations first and foremost, I thank you. So how happy for you? I'm so proud of you guys and I'm so happy for you guys. I can't even imagine how excited you guys are. Yeah.

Jacob Beemer (09:21):
Its pretty amazing. It is.

Young Han (09:22):
Right? Like it's the best like you, you think you love your startup and your business until you have a kid and then you're like what business?

Jacob Beemer (09:30):
Yeah, It's so true. I was like, oh, we'll, we'll do one kid. And now I'm like, we should have three kids. We should

Young Han (09:37):
Out. Boy. I love it. There you go. And so before I jump into the answer, can you share like did you have a girl or a boy? Like, like what's their name?

Jacob Beemer (09:46):
We had a girl, her name's Shiloh. And you know, the, the labor, everything was super easy. We were really blessed, really lucky that do didn't have any complications. She, the, the nurse offered her an ambient when, cuz she had to go get induced, she was a week overdue. And so we went in for like a scheduled time and we were like worried. You're like, is this baby getting too big? They offer Dorian and ambient the night before and they're like, okay, the doc, they were like timing every for when the doctor got into work that day, he was like, oh the doctor he gets in around 9:00 AM. So we're gonna kind of time the epidural here and we're gonna start giving you the Pitocin stuff to trigger labor. Awesome. We're gonna slowly introduce it through the night. Yeah. Yeah. And it was super smooth. Dorian slept through all of the dilation. They like woke her up and they're like, okay, the doctors at work and you're at 10 centimeters. So like you should start pushing soon. And we're like, we were like, what really?

Young Han (10:56):
So working nice. 

Jacob Beemer (10:58):
There was the doctor. So the doctor got into the room, Dorene had been pushing for maybe 10 minutes and then he puts on his gloves and he goes, all right, let's have a nice civilized delivery experience, and then she like pushed three more times and then she was here. I was like, that was like amazing.

Young Han (11:18):
That was that's so organized. That sounds like an unbelievably nice scheduled planned out event. It's like crazy to think that they took that chaos and, and structured it for you that way.

Jacob Beemer (11:28):
It completely spoiled us. Like cuz then we got home and got real, very fast. That's right. But it was a like how smooth everything went in that first like three or four days. I was like, oh this is easy. Like, no problem. That's right. This is this baby's perfect. And then we got home and I was like, oh, this is actually like a lot of work.

Young Han (11:52):
That's funny. Yeah. We, ours was chaos. I mean our, our, was it? Yeah, it was a little bit bad. Yeah. It was a little both of them. The second one was a lot easier because we inevitably had to do a C-section because the labor was taking too long. We went into like multiple days. Oh wow. And it started to get a little dangerous. And so we got a C-section and then the second one, although you have the choice to go natural or C-section we just chose to go C-section because of again, like different variations of choices that we had to make, but we went that route. So the second one was obviously more straightforward, you know? Because you could just schedule it and plan it. But yeah, it was like very very traumatic situation and just emotional journey for me, and really, really like taught me and impacted me more than I could possibly have ever imagined. Right. Like just the thoughts of like losing your wife, you know, like, like, oh my gosh. Just like random things that you never really have to think about. Like, yeah. I'm I'm I live pretty fearlessly, but like in that like compacted, like 36 hours, all these weird thoughts went in my mind and I, and I hated myself because I was like, why am I like, why? Like, it just sucks. Cuz you get exposed to having to think about these things. Right. And so that doesn't matter. I mean, it was totally fine. Right. And like we're all healthy. My wife's super healthy. She makes us eat healthy food. She works out every morning. She she's good. My kids are healthy. The everything turned out well. But I think these experiences really like change who you are and I think that's why parents become so much more empathetic. Yeah. like I talk to a lot of my pre parent friends and there's a lot of judgment, a lot of opinions and a lot of like what's right or what's wrong. And then you have a kid and then like almost instantaneously your empathy level skyrockets and your judgment level, just like completely goes down because you're like I'm too tired first and foremost to have any judgment. And two, like you just get a different perspective on like how hard or bad things could be and you have this other thing that you're trying to like make sure safe and sound and alive. And I don't know, you just like judge people a lot less in my opinion. Ha have you found that in the first five weeks?

Jacob Beemer (13:55):
Yeah. The judgment has, has gone down a lot and interestingly, the subject of empathy is an interesting one because I, I have found it like almost automatic to think about Dorian's needs. The kid feels like to pilot. Like it feels very instinctual, but like I feel more in tuned to and thinking about what Dorian needs. Yeah. Cause like the, the, the Shiloh, she feels like it requires some reading of the situation, but sometimes she's crying and we're like, I, why is she crying? But most of the time it's like sleep, eat. Yeah. Change my diaper. We're lucky she loves the bath. So all of that stuff feels good. And for me, the empathy increasing was like all in my relationship with Dorian and my partner. I think that's like trying to understand what she's going through from day to day. Cause that's such an insane, like I was trying to, and we, we were had a deep discussion about it and I was like, I don't think I ever will have like the ability to feel exactly what you feel cause I was like, you just had this person in you that's right for nine months and now she's not in you anymore, which is crazy. And I think that, you know, I'm trying to have as much empathy as I can, but I was like, I don't honestly think I can get all the way there short of putting her inside my stomach and carrying her around for nine months, which I cannot do.

Young Han (15:31):
You just have, have to be okay with the fact that you'll never fully understand it and all you can do is just be empathetic. And, and I mean, and that's just not like, I mean, I just stated the obvious, but I just wanted to express to you, like if this helps you anywhere anyway, in your journey over the next few years at the very least, but she's gonna go through a lot of chemical changes. Yeah. For sure. It's unbelievable, man. Like the, the, the what, what, like what the process is because like it's crazy, like think about it, right? Like you're literally building a little human in your body. <Laugh> it's wild. It's wild. Yeah. And so just, just expect that empathy the need for empathy to be even higher as you progress the next few years, because there's gonna be a lot of stuff that happens to our, her body that like she can't like mentally or emotionally control, and and so just, just have that in the back of your mind and remember this, this moment where I said, Hey, latch onto that empathy and just increase it, if anything, at least the next couple of years. Right. And definitely be understanding that this is not normal. This is just a blip in, in your big, bigger scheme of a life. For sure. Yeah. Like for example, if I can give you a and like an specific example of what I mean, like we had we're not having a third kid because by, by our second kid and there was a point, Amy's gonna be so mad. I told you the story and by default everybody. Right. But she like the second kid, like after the second kid, she was going through a lot of chemical reactions and, and she's a very kind, even, even keeled, she's very like Zen, right. She's a gardener by trade. And like, like she's just a very Zen and very even keeled. And, and she just looks over at me and just goes, I like, I really effing hate you right now. And I'm like, like, I'm just so angry with you. And I'm like looking, she would never even say those words. Right. Let alone like actually scare me dead in the eye and say it to my face. And I'm like, I'm not even doing anything. I'm like, am I chewing too loud? I'm not even eating anything. I'm like, am I breathing too loud? And I'm like, she's like, no, you're existence. And I'm like, should I just go exist in another room? And I'm like, she's like, you probably should go exist another room. And I'm like, okay. So I'm gonna go exist over here until this goes away. But it's just like, it's, it's might not sound like a big deal, but like it's a huge deal if you knew Amy, right. Like just that she couldn't control these emotions. And so it's just like the chemicals that kind of impact the body just do things to you that you just have to be empathetic to. Anyways, so I'm not saying that that's gonna happen, but I just just know that there are a lot of things that happen and, and different people have different effects on it.

Jacob Beemer (18:04):
I think it's the volume it's speaking of that specifically, Dorian's French. So like, I don't they're already a very direct people culturally. Yeah. So like, yeah. That's what, one of the things I love about her is that, like, I never have a question about what she's thinking or feeling, cuz she just tells me, which I love. Yeah. The volume on that has just been turned up. So empathy is, empathy is just super important. And also to just not take it personally also helps me a lot as well. Yeah. Like you should like we're sleeping like in three to four hour chunks in the first couple weeks, the last couple weeks have been amazing. We've been able to sneak in some like almost six hour sleep periods, nice at night, which is been awesome. But yeah, empathy is key before we move on. I still wanna know, is there a period of cutoff for age, for when you should move or not move? Cuz we're we're we like Miami, but I'm like, when is it like a big thing? Like pulling them out the school they're in and like I totally forgot the question.

Young Han (19:07):
I'm so sorry. You're it's yeah, let me answer the question. So I have a really good answer for this. I think from at least from my opinion, because I had Lilly before the pandemic and then I had grace after the pandemic. So you literally can see the nature and nurture of two different children. One that has been completely opened up and traveled like everywhere and one that has completely sheltered and locked inside a house <laugh> oh, that's fascinating. Yeah. Remember the first year, like we like nobody did anything. I mean, we would like, do you remember that first year? Like that first six months was like crazy, right?

Jacob Beemer (19:42):
It was so weird. I mean, I so weird. We went about it the right way. We actually like we left San Francisco right away. Nice. And then stopped paying rent and decreased our burn way down and then just literally stayed at my parents, renovated a couple rooms of their house and then went to France and stayed with her parents for several months and decided what we were gonna do with our lives got pregnant <laugh> and then were like, we're moving to Miami.

Young Han (20:11):
Great. I love it.

Jacob Beemer (20:12):
I think you guys, that's almost an interesting episode. I would love to your two daughter's differences being on each side of it. That's super, that's an interesting thing right there.

Young Han (20:22):
So, so just to answer, to make sure I answer the question cause I have a million questions too. We can go unpack that further, but like Lily, we always had this idea that my wife and I were like going to travel and live our life. We love to travel. We have this kind of map that we bought together. Right. It's like this world map and we're like, Hey, no matter what, what we're gonna do since we've been dating is like go to one domestic trip and one international trip every year. And then we've obviously exceeded that goal. We've gone like at least like we've travel at least once a quarter. And so we've actually exceeded that goal and like making this map, fill up with all these little pins. And when we started thinking about having kids, we said, we're gonna be those parents that even if it's like harder for us to do that, we're gonna basically just drag them along and like be those parents that makes it work and takes our kid it's with us and so Lily's probably been on more flights than most adults have, you know, in their lifetime. And she's been on at least four or five flights at least a year since she's been born. Right. Let alone like some years she's been on like eight or 10. Right. And long story short grace was the exact opposite. Like the pandemic hit and we basically just locked her in the house without even like socialization of other kids. Yeah. Cause we didn't even wanna see our families that first six to eight months, it was a weird time. Like we were hyper nervous and scared and so we didn't open up at all. Yeah. And so when you ask me like, does that, how soon can you do that? I think it really nurture in that sense because Lily is very flexible. She like, we moved to Texas. We well, so I'm sorry we did Palm Springs. And then we went to Arizona, then we did like New Mexico and then we did El Paso and then we like just moved her around through that whole road trip. Right. And like we stayed at a new place every month. Completely fine. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> completely fine. If anything, she was craving socializing. She would like look at the kids through the, you know, the window and wanna play with them. And like, and so now that we've started sending her to school, we've got a little more settled in and things are starting to open back up. I mean, she's so social, she's like feeding into all that need to like meet people and explore where grace is still to this day. Very, very shy. Very, very shy. Yeah. And so I genuinely think that there's a lot of nature that that has to do with this stuff. But if you want to move and you want your kids to be used to doing that, then you should do it and do it as soon as you possibly can because they will grow up thinking that that's normal.

Jacob Beemer (22:41):
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. That makes sense. I, I appreciate that answer. I mean, I feel like I, I know what her lifestyle is gonna be like, we're we, we are similar people in that we travel quite a bit. We're we go to France at least twice a year. Once in the once in the summer, we for sure go there in January every year. Yeah. So she's gonna be on planes a lot. We were actually just right before this call, I was texting with the pediatrician to see if we could take her on a plane this weekend. And he was like, no, you guys, it's not even, he's like, you haven't even got her. Yeah. You haven't even got her vaccines yet. And we're like, oh yeah, duh. <Laugh> like, we hadn't even thought about that. We were just so eager to like travel with her. Yeah. Because we just so far, we've been very lucky in that she does like to be outside. She likes noise, taking her to breakfast to couple times dinner a couple times and she does, she does great outside. So that'll, that'll be, it's nice to know that she will probably like being out and about. And you know, if we move in a couple years, she'll be used to being on the move. So that's good.

Young Han (23:43):
And my brother-in-law actually says something really interesting. And so this is my older sister's husband, but he basically said they're also, kids are also like incredibly like resilient. Right. And he didn't mean that physically. Cuz I think most parents say that like physically like, oh you don't have to coddle them. Right. Like, yeah, like they're gonna get bumps and scrapes, but that's what they meant. But like he was actually talking about it mentally because he was saying like, you can have really bad habits. Like you can basically like, like, oh like your grandparents feed them candy right before bed. And then they like pass 'em off to you. And then they get used to that for three days. And like he, he basically said like, he summed it up. And he said that like, like you basically give them new habits and it sucks for maybe one to three day, but they will literally wrap around that new habit if you enforce it and stay disciplined, like kids are insanely resilient and malleable. And so don't worry about like being the perfect dad, just do the best that you can and do what you think is right. And then if you make a mistake, just be disciplined and change it and they will, they will adapt to that new system and rule. And that was a really weird comment, but it was also very, very reassuring and, and yeah, I'm actually proving that he's right. It's, it's very, very accurate.

Jacob Beemer (24:55):
Wouldn't it be amazing if we could still be like that? I like watch her a as a baby. And I think I'm thinking about this conversation and I'm, you know, I'm trying to learn more French and become more convers. Yeah. And I'm like, man, if I just wish my brain was just more malleable and like less rigid, it gets harder as you get older to form new connections. And man, that would be nice if we could, we could take it back.

Young Han (25:19):
I agree. I agree. I mean, I, I turned 40 this last year and I don't think age matters of course. Right. And I get the whole like shtick and I'm, I'm totally cliche. And I believe in that, like you can do anything anytime you want, but there are some realities to aging. And I, I keep telling my wife, she's like, why are you so aggressive this year? And like, why are you amping up your aggressiveness in like your professional career? And like doing a podcast, doing this consulting business, doing this doing I'm like literally like doing more than I've ever done. And Jacob, if I can be very transparent with you, it's because I can feel myself getting older I could like feel my brain going like ticking a little slower. Like yeah. It takes a lot, a little bit longer to process what used to be. I'm like I used to be able to do that math equation very quickly in my head. And now it's like, I need to like take a breath. I need to stretch. Like I need to, like, I can like feel it. And so I'm like realizing that even though I'm getting wiser and I don't need to do all this stuff, but I'm realizing that it's harder for me to learn new skills. I'm not saying I can't learn. I, I don't want anyone to like comment and like censor my, my podcast. That's not what I'm saying. I'm just saying that the speed at which I used to be able to work and operate is diminishing its ability to learn new things, which isn't a bad thing. Right. Because I think that I come with experience now and I come with knowledge that, you know, I can employ in different and better strategic ways. And I don't necessarily have to be the one that learns and does, but I can definitely feel it. And so I'm trying really hard to learn and try as many things as I possibly can. The next five or 10 years before my brain starts to like crystallize too much.

Jacob Beemer (26:54):
Oh my gosh. So dramatic.

Young Han (26:56):
So dramatic. I know, I know. I know that's funny. It is really funny, but I haven't really articulated that out loud. Now I'm telling a bunch of people on this podcast. My, my deep dark secret and vulnerability here

Jacob Beemer (27:09):
I think it's important for physically as well. Like an object in motion, you know, stays in motion. My grandfather, who's turning 80 this weekend. Still runs two of his own businesses has run business his whole life. And every home he's ever lived in has a place on his carpet that he has worn out from pacing while he is on the phone. And that man is just like a machine. He's a machine, he's an unstoppable force. Like when he wakes up in the morning, he's moving, he's playing around a golf or he's going out and, you know, invoicing clients or whatever. Like, and he's, he's always telling me just like, don't stop. Just keep going. Like if you get sedentary or if you sit down or he's like in anything in life, he's like, if you just keep going hard, it'll stay easier to do that throughout your whole life. And like, that's great advice even. I mean, he, he, he had open heart surgery two, three, how many years ago was that? Actually it was five years ago now. So he is had some things knock him down, but like he's the kind of person that had his open heart surgery was tossing away his pain meds so that he could drive his car. Wild man. Wow. He's a wild man.

Young Han (28:25):
Yeah, that's wild. But I, I agree. I mean, my grandpa was very similar. He you know, very, very driven and motivated and, and, and kind of a workaholic. And then when he retired, you could see his health just like start dissipating because his mind and heart weren't in motion. Yeah. And so inevitably I think he, like, he massage that, you know, that, that, that that degradation through starting a nonprofit. And so he created work for himself. That's great. He created purpose in some sort of like tasks for himself to like stimulate his brain. But I think you're right. So I, I probably don't need to be so dramatic and and just enjoy it for what it is

Jacob Beemer (29:04):
Just keep going hard. I like season, season 10 of the girl dad show, you're still gonna be, you're gonna look exactly the same, not an, even a new wrinkle on your face.

Young Han (29:15):
I love it. That's the way to go, man. So I do have to ask, like, how has your business been impacted now that you guys have a kid

Jacob Beemer (29:24):
We are lucky and enough that we introduced some new features on the software platform that enabled us to become even more of a traditional, just SaaS platform. Nice. And so we were able to offload a ton of the administrative stuff to third party agencies in our marketplace. This feature that we had been working on for like a year and 20, 20, 20, just like slowed it way down. But we shipped it like a month before we had Shiloh. So that say of our butts quite a bit. And we actually had like our biggest revenue months since post pandemic, like two months before Shiloh was born. And like the platform was absolutely ripping and going super well. Now that she's here, I would say, you know, we can be very flex flexible in that. Like, I feel like having this newborn, like things have to happen in like three to four hour chunks of time. Right. And you, you have to be extremely flexible to, to that. And so like Dorian and I, we share our calendars. And so I had this call on the calendar. She was booked as busy. So her, we are big believers in the calendar app, you know, where you can send people. Some people hate that thing, but it's absolutely essential to how we run our lives because we don't have time to like, do the math of our calendars. We just need to be able to send a link and be like, you can talk to us here if it's not, that's it, you know, we just have to run it that way. That's been very key to the whole thing, now that we're five weeks into it. I will say that it's extremely obvious that in order to operate at the level of efficiency that we want to, as like founders, we do need a nanny. It would be ideal to have a nanny between like the hours of 10:00 AM and like 3:00 PM, even just that short window of time is like very key for us, even though our whole business is remote. Our whole team is remote. Everything is very flexible and we run our schedules the way I just described, even with all of that, I think we still need that like focused time. So the moment that I think maybe in month three or something, we'll, we'll activate the nanny. We'll press the nanny button. Yeah. In like month three or something, cuz we're, we're already seeing that. It's just like the afternoons, like the feedings and the nap and the little bit of fussiness that happens. We can handle it just fine, but I think there's, I bring 'em yeah, yeah. I'm hesitating because I'm like, is the, is like the newborn charm gonna wear off and like being very honest, like, am I, are either of us going to resent her, needing us when we really need to get something done? Because I think that's like before she was born, that was a concern of ours. And like right now I'm like, she can interrupt whatever she wants. She could start crying during this podcast. And I just walk up and go take care of her. That's right. But like, not knowing for sure if that's gonna always be the case, you know what I mean? 

Young Han (32:36):
Yeah. Yeah. I mean one after this, we should definitely explain what it is you do to the listeners. Cause I'd love to plug your business and make sure everyone understands. 

Jacob Beemer (32:43):
Oh cool. You're building something really cool. I, well, that's horrible. Yeah. I'm the horrible founder I should have done that I should have done at the beginning. That's okay. But I'm not, I'm not in sales. It's very important to stress the fact that I am horrible at sales. 

Young Han (32:56):
So, well, luckily, luckily I definitely want you to share because I definitely think it's really important that people understand that you're building something really unique and cool. And I, I don't know if you remember this or not, but I also asked if I could invest. So if you do end up going for a round, you better include me in your next round of funding.

Jacob Beemer (33:11):
Hey man. Okay. Don't worry that. Well, you'll be our first email. Okay, perfect.

Young Han (33:15):
So this, the, before we get into that though, I do wanna say that if you can afford it and it sounds like you can, you should just enjoy it. And that's me just giving you my personal opinion because it is so shortlived. Yeah, it is. So shortlived like within a year or two, maybe even three, I don't know, but like that's a drop in the bucket in their life and your life. Right. We're gonna live to like what the average now lifespans like 90 or something. So we'll live to like a hundred, like dude, just like a drop in the bucket. Yeah. In my point of view and you're never gonna get it back. It's true. I ended up working at a startup and I took like four, I think I took like four weeks because I couldn't afford it on one, on the first one, and then the second one for some other reason or another, like cuz it, the startup was so stressful and it needed kind of more attention and I regret it completely regret it cuz at the end of the day, like in hindsight, like I look back to it. I'm like, who cares? <Laugh> like, oh yeah. So what, it could have made more money or I could have learned a new skill or I could've got a new title, but like I could have done that now. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> who cares? It's so it's very true. It's so like it fleeting, it's like literally a year of your life. Like if you can do it and you have the luxury, you owe it to the people that can't do that. Yeah. Do you know what I mean? Like

Jacob Beemer (34:30):
It's I appreciate you saying that that's I am less aware of it and I need, I need reminders that of what you just said. And I feel like Dore is also very good at reminding me. Yeah. Just like, you know, we're okay. Everything's fine. That's right. We're not, we're not starving to death. You live in, live in the moment, live in the moment that's, you know, live in the

Young Han (34:51):
Moment, especially this moment because like you just like, you just wanna enjoy it for what it is because you won't get it back. And I think that if you have the luxury of being able to afford it, you and the like I, I say that almost like as like a, as like a, a challenge or as a barometer, like you do need to take advantage of it. If you have that privilege, like not everyone can do that. Not everyone can say that and you should take advantage of it.

Jacob Beemer (35:15):
Yeah.

Young Han (35:17):
Okay. I don't, I don't no pressure if you don't, but I I will judge you a little bit on the inside.

Jacob Beemer (35:24):
I, I was thinking about, I'm just thinking in my head, I'm like, yeah, I'll enjoy it. But I'm also like sometimes just awake at night, staring at the ceiling, like how much does French school cost in the us?

Young Han (35:37):
It is expensive.

Jacob Beemer (35:38):
Yeah. Yeah. I'm just thinking, I'm just doing those calculations in my head. I'm like, okay, I need that. Like in the first, like when I realized that I was gonna be a dad, it was like the simple calculations of like, okay, diapers, baby formula. Yeah. Like calculating those monthly expenses. And now I'm like, okay, in two or three years, the French school start and I'm gonna need that much, dude. That's how my brain that's how much, so much worse.

Young Han (36:03):
I know. I, I did the mint.com thing. Like like in started when I first became a dad and I started like plugging in all my information and like, and like I started like calculating the, the college and like what they expected to appreciate too. The, the cost is supposed to like grow astronomically and, and like at the end, it's like, you should have been saving, you know, a thousand dollars a month, like seven years ago for you to make this. Like, and I'm like, what? I mean, obviously I'm exaggerating, but like basically is what it was saying is that I was already so behind to basically create a college fund for my kid. And I'm like, I guess she's getting a loan because like, there's no way that I'm gonna be able to make this, you know, in the timeframe that I have.

Jacob Beemer (36:42):
I'm just hoping that she does something that doesn't require like traditional collegiate education. I'm like, maybe she'll just want to code and then she can learn that for free

Young Han (36:51):
I'm I'm yeah. With the rising, please don't wanna be a doctor, the rising cost of college. Like I, as long as it's not some sort of yeah, exactly. Function specialty. I'm not like, as, as adamant about it as my parents were like, yeah, I don't feel like it's as necessary. And I don't feel like colleges has, has sufficed me any benefits in my professional career. And I've noticed that people that I hire, I don't even ask about college anymore, especially in the last five years. Like it really is irrelevant to me. It's more about like web, have you done in your experiences? And so I don't know. I think, I think our generation is new in that, right? Like I think there's a lot of external factors that have changed our mindset about college. But we can talk about that. Let's talk about gravita real quick, cuz I we're, I could talk to you about everything I might have to have you back on. Cause

Jacob Beemer (37:36):
That's fine. I can chat for a while. Yeah.

Young Han (37:39):
This is really fun. But I do wanna talk about grater and then I wanna get to couple of questions because I do wanna make sure we get some parenting things in here. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. So what is grater share, share with our listeners? What, what kind of business you started and what it is that you're trying to do here?

Jacob Beemer (37:55):
Yeah. So gravity is essentially your marketing department on demand. So a really easy, quick way to frame it is if you're familiar with existing websites like Upwork or fiber or freelancer.com, there's many, many more of them. There's dozens of startups doing this in different verticals. We're your marketing department on demand? So we focus on marketing services and products and fiber has a competing product. Now they just started working on it. But we're in, in the way that we're different is we have a third side of our marketplace. So Upwork and fiber is freelancers on one side and customers on the other side that need something from the freelancers and they use this platform to find that person, yada yada yada on our platform, we have a third side of the marketplace, which is the, what we call our agency side of the marketplace where smaller specialized boutique CS can use grater to access our freelancer pool of creatives all over the world and then work with the customers. So this feature that the way that looks right now is this feature that we're just launching in a week or so I think the beta's maybe already out is an, a request for pro tool. So an RFP is a common thing in marketing. So customers go on grater, they fill out this RFP form about a marketing goal that they have. And then grater sends that out to our third party agencies that we have. And they, they submit bids based on the RFP that the customer did. And then they've got this pool of pre-vetted freelancers that they can access to execute on the campaigns. And so you know, Upwork fiber has anybody can join those platforms. One of our big selling points is that we have a curated group of creatives. So it's invite only, we only bring in freelancers as we need them as our demand grows. We just onboard and search for more. And every freelancer we onboard goes through a form and a survey. And then I do video interviews with every single one of them establishing like a really cool community of creatives. That's really tight-knit so that the service is really high end. And everything is productized in the platform. So it's kind of like checking out on Amazon. So if you want to build a blog post on gravity, you pay for a set number of words. If you wanna build a video, you pay per minute. So yeah, that's, that's pretty much the somewhat longer elevator pitch of, of what we do. We've been working on it. We've been working on it for a couple years. Went through a startup accelerator in San Francisco called the launch accelerator raised a little bit of precede money at that moment. Went through that 12 week program, everything was going awesome. Getting ready to do like a hundred, 2 million seed. We were optimistically maybe two weeks away from closing that, and then the first COVID lockdowns happened. And in the, in the us, I think it was San Francisco. It was the first city. Yeah. San F like two months before everybody else. Yeah. And so one of our, I don't think you'd call him a lead check. One of the checks that we were getting was from a VC that was in Italy where Italy was like the worst country at the time. So we like completely lost contact with him. Had all of that stuff happened. Like you said, we were all just scared inside of our apartments and our houses, like literally washing our groceries with like Clorox wipes. Like what the hell is going on? Yeah. Like peak fear that's right. And we just decided, you know what we don't wanna try to raise right now. Like we had kind of two options put the startup into survival mode make it unkillable or just like go Oak, spend the rest of the money that we raised and like, see what happens in a month basically. And we decided to go the route of just surviving and bringing our burn down. We actually operated cashflow positive all through 2020 with our small little five person team. And then mean 21 hits. And our revenue has just been creeping back up 10 to 10 to 10 to 30% a month ever since the beginning of the year. So it's really helped our business that peop like the us and the world is opening back up. It's really helped. Like how do you even market a company? Like how do you use our in, in a fear environment like that? I think that was a big part of it. And now that there's last fear, the second that this year hit, we just started to grow again. And it's been going really awesome. It's been, it's been an interesting last month of being like a startup founder with my partner and having a baby with her. Like it's a lot, I can't imagine it's a lot a at once, but honestly the going steering the conversation back to the baby, like it's easier so far to have a newborn baby than it is to have a like software startup idea and like build that from zero and get it to be this thing that can live without, without you, you know, versus a human so far, the human feels easier. That's probably also just like our experience of going through the process. Like it, we haven't been an overnight Silicon valley success case. We've had to fight for every inch that we've gotten. Whereas the baby is just like, she's just awesome. Like she's a lot of work or it's like, okay, we're waking up three times a night, but like, she's awesome. She's awesome. Like she's so she doesn't like, she's starting to smile now, which is like the best thing in the world. Like, oh my gosh, like it's so, whereas this, this, this startup, it's like, you know, something breaks and there's people can, and then you have to like fix this thing or like be on a call with your engineers for a while. And then like at the end of the day, it just like works again. There's not like this cute little smiling newborn

Young Han (44:07):
And it's so complicated. Right? Like all the levers are so complicated and somewhat like intertwined when it comes to the work side where this baby it's like, so straight forward. It's so wholesome. It's it's so clean right?

Jacob Beemer (44:19):
I like that analogy all there's so many levers. I like that analogy. There, there are, there's so many levers. Whereas like the baby it's like, I feel like I have maybe like five or six levers in front of me that I need to like, know when to pull each one. Yeah. As a dad, it's like much harder for me. And sometimes frustrating, cuz like Dorian has this like unspoken line of communication with her where she can like, know what she needs. Yeah. And I'm getting there. But like sometimes I'm like, how did you know that her diaper was like, she didn't smell bad? Like how did you know? Like, oh, she needs her diaper changed. 

Young Han (44:55):
Got it. I don't know if that'll ever get better, man. I think that's gonna yeah. I think that'll be the something that you're gonna have to just learn to deal with.

Jacob Beemer (45:03):
That's fine. Yeah. I'll I'll deal with it. I'll swallow my pride. There you go. There

Young Han (45:07):
You go. You're gonna connect it different ways. I mean like my girls, my girls like, like, like of partying with me, I mean, I'm the fun parent, right? Like I'm the one that they like, let's go dad's here. Let's go swimming. Or let dad's, let's go ride her bikes. Like, like I'm, I'm that parent, right? I'm like the one that connects with them on a kind of a more active level and, and, and yeah, to this day, I don't think my, my wife has ever left that, you know, like she like knows when they're sick. She knows 'em they're hungry. She like, even before they can even articulate these frustrations themselves, like she's not actually mad young, calm down. Like she's just frustrated cuz she's hungry. Or like, Hey, because she's not embarrassed because of that. And I'm like, how, what, how do you know that? you know, but like, yeah. There's I don't think that'll ever go away. Right.

Jacob Beemer (45:48):
Okay. All right. That's good to know.

Young Han (45:50):
Yeah. very, very cool. And I, I will say that I'm a I know you try to bring it back to the kids, but I just wanna make one more comment on Graber cuz what actually made me interested in the company and I thought was your competitive advantage, which you may not see it or because you're so in it is that you guys took a stab at articulating what success is within those nodes of marketing. So marketing is very ubiquitous. It's very ambiguous. It's very ambivalent. It's very ambidextrous.

Jacob Beemer (46:20):
 I don't, whatever word you want to use to explain. I know, I know exactly what you mean

Young Han (46:22):
You know what I'm saying? Right. Like everyone thinks marketing is something different and it's so effing annoying.

Jacob Beemer (46:27):
it's a Fugazi, it's a Fugazi. It's a, w it's a wizzy.

Young Han (46:30):
Thats right. That's right. And you guys took a sta at saying, no copywriting is this in our platform. Yeah. And this is how we're gonna charge for it. And this is how you measure quality video. Is this and like, even if you're wrong, even if people disagree with you, it's so nice to just basically go in there and go someone quantified and qualified it. Yeah. And so I know what I'm gonna sign up for. I know what I'm gonna get and for whatever that's worth, that's worth a lot more than you think it is.

Jacob Beemer (46:55):
Yeah. And I re reiterate, I'm not a sales guy and we, to, to be fair too, we launched this agency feature. Like I was saying at the beginning of this conversation that helped us, it, we realized how bad we are at selling our own product. Yeah. When we other agencies on the platform and they were just like firing off these like $30,000 invoices in our platform, like destroying our personal records on first day sales. And we were like, we were like, okay, we're horrible at selling this product to people. Like we should not do that anymore. And we should just let these agencies sell everything because we don't even know what we have. 

Young Han (47:39):
That's right. It sounds like you're missing the, the actual like meat potatoes of what you think you have, you know, like what you guys are like solving for may be what like the agency problem is. But anyways, we can go into a whole nother topic about that. I definitely love the idea of the business. I think you guys are onto something very unique and I just don't want you to overlook that one facet that really caught my eye. I've never stopped. Like it was one of the things that made me interested, you know, during that, during that party,

Jacob Beemer (48:05):
I'm gonna pass that along to Dorian. That's a really interesting, that's a really good insight. It's gonna help us with sales.

Young Han (48:10):
That's right. It will. Because the reality is the buyers of people like me, right? Yep. Like people that are like needing a specific service and whether you, I, I agree with you or not. It's very clear how you articulate it. Yeah. So I know what I'm getting, you know, and that's not normal when you're vetting marketing subcontractors or agencies. So it's very, very nice. Yeah. Yeah. Hey, can I switch gear is real quick and I, I wanna make sure I ask you my rapid fire questions. I have five that I wanna ask. Let's do it. Every guest let's. So let's some standardization to this podcast. Okay. I love it. All right, here we go. What advice do you have for other parents and soon to be parents now that you're a veteran five week dad, right? We gotta What, what advice do you have

Jacob Beemer (48:51):
You're gonna feel anxious before the baby is here, but do what you can to stay relaxed and like don't deprive yourself of sleep in the two months leading up to the birth. It's a very basic thing, but super, super important. Especially for dad, for dad you know, know if you, if possible with your lifestyle, like don't drink, eat healthy, get eight hours of sleep and like string that together for several weeks so that you feel really super charged for what inevitably inevitably will be at the very least like a week worth of like just physical demand. You'll have to step up a lot. I found, and I got that advice from my younger brother. Who's already had a kid he's like, just log some sleep hours because you know, she's gonna have just given birth and put her body under a certain amount of stress that she'll need to recover from on her own, let alone the baby's gonna want to eat and, and want attention and all that. So that was not a very rapid fire answer, but sleep

Young Han (49:59):
That's a great answer. I couldn't, I couldn't agree more. So I love that you gave that advice. If you can go back and tell yourself one thing before having kids, what would it be?

Jacob Beemer (50:08):
Six weeks ago? I would've told myself that at emotionally, you will be challenged in ways that you couldn't possibly understand in this moment cuz you haven't had your kid yet. Just know that like it's nothing that you can't handle. Nice. So don't lose sleep over thinking, thinking about the unknown.

Young Han (50:35):
I love it. Great answer. What is the most surprising thing that you learned about yourself after becoming a parent?

Jacob Beemer (50:41):
The most surprising thing is that I don't mind cleaning diapers at all. Yeah. Doesn't bother me. That's also, I wouldn't say that I get pleasure out of it, but I'm also like massive dump in your diaper at four in the morning. Like, okay, like what am I gonna do? Like, it doesn't upset me. It doesn't phase me at all. Like, yeah, that's great. I've heard when they started eating cell food, like, you know, it starts to smell and be even more, even more know, even more gnarly. But right now I'm like, yeah, I doesn't doesn't phase me, which is kind of surprising cuz I was leading up to it. I was like, Hmm, I'm not gonna like that. But so far I'm fine. 

Young Han (51:23):
That's great. What's your all time favorite business book?

Jacob Beemer (51:27):
All and favorite business book. So the first one that comes to mind is one that I read like three or four years ago. Ray Dalio's principles. I really liked his writing style. And there was a lot, it was kind of one of those books that kind of like connected stages in my arre with a lot of information that I feel like I didn't have. And he has like a process for thinking through problems that I really like quite a bit. And I hadn't even gotten into it. He's an, an investor prolific investor, but just the principles of ways to think through a problem with it was really, it was, it was a good book and then not really a business book, but I tell everybody this, but I'm a creative, I have a creative background and a filmmaking background, the war of art by Steven Pressfield. That's a must read I think for anybody. Yeah, I guess. Yeah. Anybody not just girl, not just girl, dad, but like any, literally everyone needs to read that book. So I'm always mentioning that one

Young Han (52:35):
Yeah. I gotta check it out. I've never even heard of it. So the war of art?

Jacob Beemer (52:38):
Yeah. The war of art by Steven Pressfield.

Young Han (52:42):
The inverted inverted, the art of war

Jacob Beemer (52:44):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's all about artistic resistance and just doing the work.

Young Han (52:51):
Yeah. That's awesome. My final question for you, Jacob, when you're not being a, a new dad or trying to figure out what the next stage of your awesome startup is, what do you do for fun?

Jacob Beemer (53:04):
Dorene and I are avid snowboarders. She grew up, she grew up in a ski resort in the Alps, in the French Alps called valley. Is there so she's an exceptionally good snowboarder. And I grew up going to Colorado and was a big snowboarder. So I can hang with her. So we really like that. That's why we're in France. Every January we go to her hometown and spend a few weeks there now that we live in Miami. We're like considering some new hobbies and the fun stuff. What, what should those things be? That are also like newborn friendly. I'm definitely open to your advice. I was like, oh, stand up, paddle boarding. But I was like, that's not really it great for newborns. So you know, honestly hobbies, what we do for fun. We get a lot of joy out of the startup and building things together. It takes up most of our time, but one thing we do every single week, at least once is go out to breakfast and in like two or three hours at the cafe drinking cappuccinos, eating some good croissants, taking our time. We've always done that. We've been together for seven years. That's, that'll always be a hobby. We get a lot of joy out of that is just sitting at a breakfast table for a very long period of time is a, a very fun thing for us. 

Young Han (54:27):
That's kind of a French thing to do, right? Oh yeah. Okay. Okay. Yeah. I'm like, I feel like that's very French

Jacob Beemer (54:31):
It wasn't in my to-do list before I met Dorian's just, I, I adopted it since meeting her and it's, it's a fantastic use of time in my opinion. That's great.

Young Han (54:42):
I love it, man. Hey Jacob, thank you so much for taking the time to talk with me on this podcast. I had a terrific time. I haven't had this much fun in a really long time talking about parenting and, and in your journey and startups. And so this was a really, really, really fun Episode

Jacob Beemer (54:58):
It was great to be on. Thank you so much.

Young Han (55:02):
Thanks for tuning in to another episode of the girl dad show. We really hope you enjoyed that. He interview and as always, please take a moment to review, rate and subscribe. We'll see you next time.