How Fatherhood Became My Greatest Business Strategy

Jason Hsieh (00:00)
Welcome back to another episode of Toy Business Unboxed podcast. Today we sit down with Douglas, a father, entrepreneur, a professor, and a founder of Jumping High Five Games. With over 20 years of experience building businesses, mentoring youth, and also teaching the next generation of entrepreneurs, Douglas really show and share how he’s designing a life of purpose, play, and impact from launching global design platform like creating more than 20 different games with his game companies.

He really has a very diverse background in all walks of different businesses. So thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today,

Douglas Beech (00:33)
Thank you so much for having me, Jason.

Jason Hsieh (00:35)
So first off, let’s just start again on your journey so far in your entrepreneurship. I know you started many different businesses over your entrepreneurial career. And if you can share how you started the board game companies and how is that related to your teaching career.

Douglas Beech (00:50)
Yeah, we discussed this a little bit, but it was funny. I kind of had this epiphany where it was like I started my road to becoming an educator and started jumping high five in the same time. So back 10 years ago when I was doing my master’s degree, my goal was really to be an educator, to teach at the college level. And when I went into this program, it was through the University of Victoria. was sick. It was a super fun program. It was called the Masters of Global Business and

I got to do a semester in Victoria, a semester in the South of France and the semester in Seoul, Korea, which was, really fun. But then at the end of it, you’re supposed to do a six month work internship and I didn’t want to do a work internship. So one of the options was you could do an entrepreneurial project. And for me being like a little bit of a growth hacker, was like, perfect. I have a lot of businesses that I’ve started. I’ll just plug one of those in and I won’t have to do anything. I can just go back, you know, and, and become an educator and.

Jason Hsieh (01:21)
whoa, okay.

Douglas Beech (01:42)
and skip the internship. What was a little short sided of me was that I had given them my entire resume that all of my businesses and so it had to be a new business. ⁓ Yeah so I thought of a product I put it onto Kickstarter it was really the beginning of jumping high five games I didn’t think it was gonna be a business I really just thought it was a way to get me through the six month internship. The first product we had discussed a little bit was called language playing cards

Jason Hsieh (01:53)
Okay, yeah, okay.

Douglas Beech (02:09)
It was really, really simple. was a deck of normal playing cards. I think I paid about 30 cents a deck, but we designed the cards to have the 52 most useful Spanish phrases while you’re traveling. And so the idea was language playing cards, learn the most important phrases while you’re traveling or while playing your favorite card game. And so I kind of put that up onto Kickstarter, hoping that it would be the start and that it would get me past that internship. And then

I forgot about it. The course load at University of Victoria was actually more than I expected. And then close to Christmas, I had to travel to France and I got an email from Kickstarter saying, Hey, your project is backed. You have a couple thousand dollars in sales. And I was like, ⁓ man, I have to actually produce these cards. Like we had only produced a picture of cards. I had no idea of what the production process would look like. Shipping was a nightmare. There was so many.

things that I had to learn and that was the only two semesters before I went to school in the south of France. that’s where we started. Trying not to do too much work is how jumping high five.

Jason Hsieh (03:08)
I see, yeah that’s a very nice-

Kind of started, yeah. And you have created so many different games over the year as well. And out of all the multiple different businesses that you have, which one do you enjoy the most?

Douglas Beech (03:23)
⁓ it’s the jumping high five game business for sure, right? Like I used to play squash. I’m not playing squash anymore, but when I did play squash, there’s a daycare that’s right next to where my squash court is. And they call me dinosaur Doug. And it’s because I donate a lot of our children’s games to them. And one of them is dinosaur animal rescue. And one of my favorite things was to go play squash and then just to watch these kids.

completely make up their own rules. That was really interesting. We spent so much time playtesting rules, making sure the game won’t break, making sure it’s not ambiguous for parents. Playtest, playtest, playtest. And then they go and watch these kids play and they’re off on their own adventure that they’re making up. you know, kids are so creative. They don’t have judgment. Jumping high five games has been the best business I’ve ever worked on for sure.

Jason Hsieh (04:04)
fun.

I see, see, I see. And obviously with your teaching career, how does that also impact your design process as well?

Do you learn any feedback by talking to the students and getting feedback or getting idea about like different products of like doing your kind of careers and teaching all the different entrepreneurs as well?

Douglas Beech (04:31)
Yeah, well, I do bring the jumping high five game examples into the classroom. And I think that they enjoy the practicality. Like it’s a business that’s easy to understand. For example, like you were saying like before that it was so important to take action, right? When we were on the last live stream, right? And taking action is so important. And I have this great example where for one of our best sellers is again, it’s

I show the students my initial drawing, me taking action. I’m not an artist. I cannot create this level of graphic design. It’s not in me. And I show them this amazing drawing, which is chicken scratch. It doesn’t look like dinosaurs. The dinosaurs look like people, but I can tell the story. And then I show how I give that to my wife. My wife colors in a better version that makes it look like something actually.

competitive and then we pass it on to our actual designer that can make it look professional grade. And I think there’s lots of lessons and lots of feedback in the process, allowing students to see that it’s not waiting for everything to be perfect. It’s just writing down your ideas, taking action, learning as you go. And so like that was our founding story with language playing cards. And it’s also

great lessons to bring into the classroom. With the game that we’re going to be launching, Escape Comics, that’s their favorite because who doesn’t want to see an alien killing their teacher and coming up out this comic?

Jason Hsieh (05:51)
Okay, okay.

Douglas Beech (05:52)
So

there’s lots of ways to bring practical examples where I think it’s also important that for my students to see that work doesn’t have to be draining. It can be exciting. can be creative.

Jason Hsieh (06:05)
could be fun too. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Okay. I see. And like, I know like being a father is also a very important How does becoming a father for you shape the way that you approach work and your creativity and with your businesses?

Douglas Beech (06:19)
Yeah. So, you know, being very competitive, I play lots of sports. I love playing board games for the competition. I’m optimistic because I’m an entrepreneur. So in the past, I’ve always been thinking about the future. And I was saying that instead of, you know, chasing productivity, I really feel like as a father, I’m chasing presence. And so that’s like not thinking too much about the future, not thinking too much about the past, just being there with my family.

watching through the eyes of my son, this creative non-judgment voyage. I’m already re-experiencing so many things that I forgot about that I experienced as a child, which is fulfilling. And also your value system changes. Like I knew my value system changed as soon as he was born. I was like, this is a biological hack. There’s no way I should love this thing.

that is all gross and bloody and made my wife uncomfortable for nine months as much as I do right now. So fatherhood has reshaped my life in so many great ways. It’s just another, another challenging adventure that I’m enjoying, I’m trying to be more present in it. It’s a practice. I could say that I’m chasing presence. I really mean, I’m chasing it. Like I’m still thinking about the future and trying to leverage my opportunities now to

you know, do things that I want in the future, for sure. But the joy can be found in the present, I think.

Jason Hsieh (07:36)
That’s

very deep. And actually that’s something I continue to struggle with myself as an entrepreneur, because sometimes I’m physically there, but I’m thinking about the business. We’re thinking about different projects that I’m working on. So it’s hard to be, I guess, emotionally present sometimes, especially with as an entrepreneur with running so many different businesses, just like you, I run multiple different businesses as well. And the podcast and all the different things going on.

We need to constantly remind ourselves to make sure we’re actually present, not just physically, but also emotionally and also really actually be there for our families and for our loved ones as well.

Douglas Beech (08:11)
Yeah, if you enjoy doing difficult things and enjoy challenges, you can really build up a life of resiliency, which leads to a life of competence. And then once you have a life of competence, I believe you’re and you get a little bit of resources, I think your options open a lot. And so all that future thinking all that investment you made on doing difficult things, starts to leverage up. And so now you’re starting to be like, wow, the opportunities that I’m starting to have are the problems.

quality of problems are starting to increase a lot. And right now, like I don’t have the answers, Jason. I have no idea, but like my reflection is like, well, you can only leverage so much. Presence with your family isn’t always beautiful, happy time. There’s lessons to be learned. There’s difficult things to be done. And it’s really important that my son feels that love and that joy and that

discipline that’s going to make him a great person that can do great things, right? That’s kind of our responsibility. So I’m not trying to, rant about that I have any of the answers, but that’s, what I’m currently practicing. I’m trying to experience more joy right now and appreciate it.

Jason Hsieh (09:13)
Of course. And I know you have built businesses, create games, and now teaching entrepreneurship. What do you think most schools get wrong about preparing students for real life or like for entrepreneurship?

Douglas Beech (09:24)
That’s a great question.

Education gets crapped on a lot. And so there’s a lot of things that we do right in education. But that doesn’t mean that I haven’t thought about how I would redesign education. I actually think about it a lot. You asked a question in the pre-interview about like what industry you would change and immediately I was thinking about education.

When it comes to education, like…

It’s interesting because I’m a college professor. And so there’s a certain level of prestige that comes with it. It’s not like greatly prestigious, but if you compare like college professors with elementary school teachers, we get paid more. I think we have emotionally taxing less work by many factors, many, factors, right? If my students misbehave or don’t listen, I just ask them to leave class. They’re adults, right? At the same time.

Jason Hsieh (10:05)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Douglas Beech (10:08)
I think the value that we create as college professors is just minute compared to our elementary school teachers. And you know, the amount of change that you can actually affect in society by being an elementary school teacher. elementary school, that hasn’t changed in a long time. And it’s interesting because my kid is going right into kindergarten. And so I’m starting to see the initial lesson plans. We’re planning to travel a bit. So I’m going to do some homeschool teaching while we travel. And I need to understand like what he’s going to be missing.

And there’s just some things that I would find more important than what has been traditionally taught. So for me, like, I would rather have my son understand nutrition and his body, physical education and how to remain healthy. If my kid could be outside running in the forest for half the day and then somehow they fit in math and reading and stuff. And I get that to like grade four, grade five swimming.

How do we know if we’re going to teach skills that our children need, right? Nevermind about like finance and things as they grow up, like how to deal with money or how to leverage situations or emotional intelligence. I grew up on an island. I grew up on Vancouver Island, right? I still meet so many people that don’t know how to swim. Not saying that education should take those things over, but like I would reprioritize it. And then, well, how do you do that? Well,

I think that we have a lot of lessons to learn from people that are actually able to grab our attention. like, I think we should take a lot of inspiration from people that have gamified things properly, like video games. Why do I have to wait to learn my grade seven or eight math for grade seven or grade eight? Like, of course your parents are your ultimate teachers and they can teach you this, but like, why can’t I level up to my 47 level 47 math sword?

as fast as possible because I’m enjoying the storyline. I understand what the practical education is and why it’s important. And maybe that’s like if we flipped out of elementary school, I know I’m ranting a lot, there’s a lot of ideas here. But something that I bring to my educational institution is I live a lot more in the practical and explaining the why this is important. Not sticking to the textbook. I’m much

Practically oriented like I teach marketing and entrepreneurship. Yeah, how does it actually work? Mm-hmm. what’s a basic example of that?

Jason Hsieh (12:20)
Yeah, maybe you can take some example from your business for jumping high five. Like, what are some of the things or projects you have done that was very successful? Obviously, there’s always some project that doesn’t turn out to be the way you think that you should turn out. So maybe if you have any real case study of that, can feel free to share.

Douglas Beech (12:37)
Well, I had an example that I was thinking about in the classroom. Like The Baby Dinosaur one’s the one that we brought into the classroom. There’s lots of failures and successes from prototyping to the, not doing the proper research on like keywords. So we build a game that gets highly reviewed, but it’s never searchable, things like that. Well, when I was thinking about the example for, for practical education

and understanding the why something’s important. So why something’s important in business, we’re usually thinking in the business concept is that we can do anything. And so if we’re going to take action, really business becomes this idea of filtering down the ideas of action you’re going to do the least amount and get the most amount of leverage. In school, an example that maybe everybody can understand is that we always had teachers that said you should read your textbook before you come to class.

Jason Hsieh (13:13)
Yeah,

Douglas Beech (13:22)
I ask my college level students this question all the time and they’re like, yeah, we should read before class, but how many of them actually do? They laugh at me. But if I can, help like even three or four students understand that reading before class isn’t about doing more work, it’s about doing less work and getting higher results. And I walked them through the process step by step by step. And I’ve seen it. I’m not going to get, you know, if I have a class, of a hundred students,

You know, maybe five would read before class. Walking them through the why, maybe I get 10 or 15 and all of a sudden they’re starting to understand the value of leveraging your time. it’s just like, explain to them why I think is really important in education.

Jason Hsieh (14:02)
That’s true. true. And based on your experience the game companies so far, what are some of the big lessons that you have learned that you would also like to share with our audience as well?

Douglas Beech (14:12)
Yeah. So if I think about the growth of jumping high five, the biggest lessons are probably the recruitment is the hardest part. Having the right people surround you and building relationships. Cause it’s not just about my calendar and lining up my life. It’s also ligning up my employees life and my team’s life. you know, at Hire the World,

when we started that company, was venture backed. And so it was like, we had venture capitalist and there was a bunch of people just expecting us to like get every cent out of every dollar. And I remember going to work before it was light and leaving while it was dark, not seeing the sun. I would never advise that for anybody. And I don’t expect my employees to work like that anymore either. I promised myself that I would never work like that. And so one of the biggest lessons I learned was like really creating and giving agency.

Like creating space and giving agency to your team, which starts by finding the right people, right? You want to find proactive, creative people that are resilient. They’re not reactive and blaming you for why the problems are happening. and then milestoneing out, and, really aligning the incentives, right? To make sure that they align with the incentives of the company, so that everybody is incentivized to be doing the right things.

Recruiting somebody, it takes about a year to get them on boarded and understand your organization and what you stand for and how all the processes work. And so, you know, my designer that has done 99 % of our designs or 95 % of all of our designs, we’re great friends. We still play board games online. Yeah. Our CEO is great friends also plays board games online. Right. My designer actually, I knew she was the right person when she had a wedding.

Cause her wedding invitations were a board game where you had to go and solve the board game. So it’s, I guess it’s like cliche, but finding the right people was really, really important because when I first started, I was hacking with graphic designers. I was using in like sites, like Upwork and freelance. Trying to figure out who could possibly do this. And I didn’t have much money. So it was at a cheaper rate than what I do now, but it wasn’t the right people. wasn’t people that were at the top of their industry.

Jason Hsieh (16:15)
That’s definitely very important. How big is your team right now for jumping high fives?

Douglas Beech (16:19)
Yeah, so it’s not that big. It’s my my wife, myself, and then we have a CEO that runs the business. And then we have a full time designer, but she’s on contract. So she’s not an employee, she comes we have work. And so that’s usually pretty full time. It hasn’t been lately, because we’ve definitely taken foot off the gas pedal just because we just paid our first hundred and 145% tariff.

So like we are taking a bit more of a defensive position if you’re asking me like right now. We didn’t plan to pay 145% tariff. We missed it by three days on the landing date due to a shipping delay. But yeah.

Jason Hsieh (16:56)
I saw right now it’s 30 again, but anyway, it’s not changing.

Douglas Beech (16:59)
30.

We have an August 1st deadline, so we’ll see what ends up happening. Yeah, I think that I’m probably one of only a few companies that fell into that two and a half week window that paid 145 % or a month window. Just horrible luck. Horrible luck. were trying to get an inventory shipment in on zero tariff. Yeah. And we missed it by three days. Yeah, it’s not the date of departure. It’s the date on arrival. Yeah.

Jason Hsieh (17:19)
I see, I see.

What is your overall view of the tabletop industry of 2025? Do you still encourage people to get into this industry right now?

Douglas Beech (17:31)
Yes. ⁓ yeah. So like, it’s easy. If you’re watching the news, and depending who you hang out with to get a negative thought process. understand this. I see it in my students, right? In Canada, I’m based in Canada, we’re changing international student laws, we have a bunch of, you know, jobless rates, right? For young people is increasing. Yeah.

They’re having trouble finding work. And I really have to go and I create an entire slide deck on, especially my e-commerce class, just being like, we live in a world of abundance. If you watch the news, sure, we can position that everything is getting worse all the time. But if you go and look at the macros, if you back up, look at child mortality rates, the average income of people. We just got back from a vacation from Japan and Vietnam. Vietnam is where I got engaged eight years ago.

Jason Hsieh (18:18)
Mm-hmm.

Douglas Beech (18:21)
That country is doing fantastic. Ho Chi Minh has completely changed since I was there. It was all motorbikes, which was cool. And it was amazing when I was there eight years ago. There is money in that city. We went to the malls. We were like, we’re going to try to find some good deals. No, it’s the world’s flattening out. And with that comes great opportunities. And that’s no different for the board game industry. Yeah. Is there problems for sure? Does anybody want to pay a tariff? No, but with,

problems comes opportunity comes consolidation. You know, if you’re willing to take the jump now, right? Hey, I’ve never had an easier time getting my games manufactured because manufacturing is more slow. Manufacturing side, right? And if you can make a product that works today, when the business side gets better, you’re just going to have windfalls. So I think it’s great to start businesses when times are a little bit more difficult. And so like,

Jason Hsieh (19:00)
Yeah, they don’t have enough

Douglas Beech (19:14)
If you ask me what the field looks like, it’s a little bit more difficult right now, right? We don’t have perfect information, but we never had perfect information. It’s just a little bit less perfect on the daily these days.

Jason Hsieh (19:24)
Of course. I see. Yeah, thank you so much for sharing that. looking back into the future, some of the things that you have on the horizon, you mentioned about the Escape Comic as well, if you want to share a little bit about that game’s concept and what are some of the timelines.

Douglas Beech (19:37)
Yes. So our board games for jumping high five games are all basically kid games, cooperative games. They’re great. This game, I’ve been working on it for eight years. My best friend, Evan Duxbury. It is harder than any of my university education to create. Basically eight years ago, we went on a trip to Europe. We played our first exit escape game, which is an escape room board game. We were like, this is so much fun. We should try to create something like this.

And then we were like, played all the games. We played all the games that existed. You could do that, you know, eight years ago, but now there’s hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of them. And we were like, how can we make the escape game that we would absolutely want to play? Right? Like it makes sense. It follows a great story. The mechanics ladder together. And that’s what we built. We built a 27 page, people that love escape rooms, people that love difficult challenges.

Yes, you could finish this game in our play test. If you use the hints, you can finish it in like three or four hours. But the way that I would want to play it is by myself, maybe take two or three months, don’t use the hints and just kind of immerse yourself in the world. And this allows you to do it because it’s logical matters.

Jason Hsieh (20:45)
Very interesting, okay.

Douglas Beech (20:46)
If you want to check it out, it’s going to launch in February. We have a website built for it called escapecomics.org. And, and there’s a video. So the video I showed to my students with the alien that kills the teacher, and then it shows all the components on the inside, but it doesn’t give away any of the spoilers. Okay. And, we’re looking at launching February 3rd on Kickstarter.

Jason Hsieh (21:05)
okay, okay, okay. I see. That sounds like a very exciting project that you have been working on for eight years. That’s a long time for the game. It’s my biggest pride and my worst business decision of all time. 60,000 dollars

Douglas Beech (21:25)
We’ll see if we recoup it. I don’t know. one of those things where like, you get to be in the presence and you’re going to be in joy, besides my son, it’s the proudest thing I’ve ever built.

Jason Hsieh (21:33)
I see. Okay. Thank you so much for sharing that. And as we are wrapping up today’s interview, if you have to share one piece of advice with someone that’s about to getting started in the toys or game industry, what would that be?

Douglas Beech (21:44)
Yeah. I think we talked about taking action earlier, write down your ideas and then go and ask for help would be my biggest piece of advice. We’re blessed in Vancouver. We have Jay Cormier with, ⁓ with off the page games. He does a play test game with a bunch of other developers that are there. The board game industry is so friendly. So like, I was a little bit nervous when I first started getting into board games, trying to talk to manufacturing, trying to talk to distributors.

I was used to the venture capital world where they just are great at telling you no and getting the meeting is incredibly difficult. You have to be very strategic. The board game incredibly friendly. We just want more gamers to make it competitive so that we can have, you know, more Dungeons and Dragons, more Terraforming Mars or whatever board game your favorite game is into. So like, if you want to create a game, write it down on paper, prototype it.

Look at resources. There’s many, many resources out there that can help you learn to make sure the mechanics don’t break. Make sure that the game is fun. The easiest part of making a game is coming up with the concept. The hardest part of making a game in my experience is making sure it’s fun and it doesn’t break. And so to do that, you’ve got to get it in front of people. You’ve got to start playtesting it.

Jason Hsieh (22:51)
I see that’s a really good piece of advice as well. So for our listener is interested to learn more about all the different projects that you have going on, where would be the best place for people to find you online?

Douglas Beech (23:00)
Online, all of our kids’ game is at jumpinghighfive.com. And then if you want the adults game, we couldn’t put the adults game in the jumping high five brand because it’s got too much gore and blood and all that kind of stuff. But then that is at escapecomics.org.

Jason Hsieh (23:13)
Got it, got it, got I will make sure I put that in the show notes as well. And thank you so much for your time today, for being on our show and sharing your stories and your journey within the industry so far.

Douglas Beech (23:23)
it’s been a pleasure, Jason. Thank you so much for having me.

Jason Hsieh (23:25)
Yeah, same here. And thank you so much for our audience for tuning in to this episode of Toy Business Unboxed podcast. We hope you have enjoyed today’s conversation and find it insightful and inspiring. If you like what you have heard, be sure to subscribe to our podcast on your favorite platform so you never miss an episode. We really appreciate your support and would love it if you can leave us a review and share the podcast with your friend and colleague. For more resource tips and the latest update within the toys and game industry, visit our website at toy-launch.com.

Join the conversation and connect with us on social media using #toybusinessunboxed. We’d love to hear your feedback and suggestions for future episodes. Until next time, keep innovating, keep creating, keep bringing joy to toys. This is Jason Hsieh signing off on the Toy Business Unboxed podcast. We’ll see you in the next episode. Thank you so much, everyone.