Is A Growth Mindset Bad?! | Dan Beck (Dad of 9, 401GO)

Dan Beck is a newly remarried father of nine: five biological children and four “bonus” children, ranging from seven to 23. He and his wife, Jess, still maintain two households, with Dan sometimes staying with his wife and sometimes with his children while they work out what their combined family will look like. He describes the arrangement as chaotic but fun, and says family no longer has to mean the traditional nuclear household. Their first full-family gathering happened on a Lake Powell houseboat rather than at either home, giving both sets of children an exciting environment in which to meet without feeling trapped or forced into instant sibling roles.

Dan’s annual Lake Powell trip provided a houseboat large enough for 20 to 30 people and became the setting for bringing the two groups of children together. The boat, beach, basketball hoop, swimming, music, and sunset gave everyone separate activities while they gradually mixed. Dan remembers looking around and seeing children playing on the sand and others swimming, with no visible “my kids versus her kids” divide. He says those moments—when everyone is happy and playing together—are what parents hope for. The following holiday season was more complicated because the family had to merge gift-giving customs, traditions, extended-family obligations, hiring, and 401GO’s strongest sales month.

Dan has worked with his brother Nate, 401GO’s CTO, for about 15 years across multiple businesses. Their skills complement each other: Nate is a full-stack engineer with business judgment and customer empathy, while Dan focuses on business development, marketing, and storytelling. Early on, they explicitly discussed what a breakup would look like and agreed that preserving their family relationship came before preserving a business. They still argue intensely over product and technology decisions, sometimes making newer executives lean back during meetings, but trust, low ego, and the knowledge that criticism comes from love let them resolve disagreements without making them personal.

When Dan moved his attention to 401GO, he retained several direct-to-consumer brands and eventually considered selling Forseti Cutlery because it was close to no longer being cash-flow positive. After the manager left, Dan asked his 17-year-old son Lincoln to ship orders for the summer. Lincoln began proposing changes, contacted previous customers for custom orders, and reversed the decline despite summer normally being slow. He then asked to leave high school, earn a GED, and run the brand full time. Dan was surprised that Lincoln independently applied customer empathy, mission, and purpose—principles he had absorbed simply by growing up around business conversations.

Dan reflected on the contrast between entrepreneurial conviction and what marriage requires. Founders are rewarded for seeing the future, pushing through resistance, deciding quickly, and fixing problems; relationships often require curiosity, surrendering certainty, accepting influence, slowing down, and allowing another person’s experience to be valid even when Dan interprets events differently. He believes his habit of treating every problem like an entrepreneurial challenge contributed to the breakdown of his first marriage and affected his children, especially the older ones. His “growth mindset,” once viewed as entirely positive, could also feel exhausting and suffocating to people who preferred contentment.

Dan says surrendering the impulse to fix is still his hardest work, particularly with his 13-year-old son Sawyer. When Sawyer describes loneliness or other frightening feelings, Dan immediately wants to remove the pain and find a solution. Instead, he is trying to sit with the feeling, ask what else Sawyer is experiencing, and say that it sounds difficult. Dan admits he does not always know what “being present” means, but understands that immediate solutions can rob children of the chance to understand and grow through their own emotions. His executive coach has also helped him practice switching between founder and father modes.

Dan does not believe work and family must operate as completely separate systems. At 401GO, the value that “people matter most” applies to whoever needs priority at a particular stage—customers, employees, or family. During his divorce, his executive team knew family was his priority; colleagues even stopped an offsite to hug him and ask how he was doing. He tries to protect weekends, vacations, and family time, and pauses in his truck before entering the house to remind himself that he is now in “dad mode.” In return, employees respect those boundaries. He believes trust, vulnerability, and care strengthen both workplaces and families.

Raised in Utah in an LDS cultural environment where divorce represented failure, Dan held tightly to an ideal of a family that endured everything. Like an entrepreneur projecting a beautiful future company, he projected a beautiful future marriage and family and allowed that vision to obscure the chaotic, unsafe, and emotionally neglectful environment his children were experiencing while he and his first wife tried to repair their relationship. He does not regret the lessons learned, but acknowledges that holding on too long imposed real costs. With his bonus children, he now offers guidance as a “cafeteria”: they can take what he is good at, but he does not assume parental authority over them.

Dan wants to help his children become capable of engineering their own lives rather than engineering their outcomes for them. He gives them a modest allowance and has them track spending in spreadsheets so they learn money management rather than simply receive money for purchases. When Lincoln’s car engine failed shortly after he bought it, Dan did not simply pay the $6,000 replacement estimate. Using YouTube, ChatGPT, and research, father and son replaced the engine themselves, despite the time pressure and many curse words. The experience taught Lincoln to check his oil and gave him confidence that he could diagnose and repair a business too.

Dan deliberately located his warehouse near home so his children could bike there and remain part of his work. After hours—and sometimes during business hours—they rode scooters and hoverboards through the aisles, built forts from recycled cardboard, and slept in hammocks suspended between pallet racks. Dan also let them use the wood shop, 3D printers, CO2 lasers, CNC equipment, and Autodesk Fusion to design and make things. The warehouse represented adventure and creativity during the divorce years and kept the children off screens. He connects this approach to management: young children, new employees, and inexperienced executives should be given responsibilities and expectations suited to their stage of development.