Oooh. Shiny balls. I like chasing them much as the next gal. It’s so easy to get distracted as a mom and COO. Especially when everyone loves your MVP (Minimum Viable Product) and has great ideas of how it can be used in the market. This is the third from Startup Scalability Lessons Learned from Being a Militia Mom. This week my new title is the Shoe Lady. Not because I own more than three pairs of shoes, but because my six kids and inability to make the Forbes under 40 list qualify me for Old Woman in the Shoe status.

When we were in our accelerator in Austin, one of our advisors helped us interview a potential CMO. He described our founder team as people who are constantly chasing shiny balls and then asked the candidate, “are you capable of (a) interpreting their directions yelled over their shoulder while they’re in the chase (b) reigning them in and (c) not throwing more balls at them?”

With a startup, there’s a real danger when everyone is in love with your MVP. You do your customer discovery and discover that everyone would pay for your product… if only. Or they have a great biz dev idea for you… if only. Their if-only’s require “a few tweaks” to your messaging and website. Then there’s the extra testing in the marketplace. And the problem is that all of their ideas really are great. It’s too much.

So, here’s what I learned in my shoe closet. You really do have to reign things in and gain traction for your MVP, unless a pivot truly is necessary. In parenting terms, this is actually very easy to apply. We have six kids. If each of them were in the culturally accepted, 4 to 5 activities per kid, we would be out of our minds. Or even if one or two of them were in a travel sport requiring a commitment of 10 to 20 hours per week including travel.

When multiplying everything by 6, it’s easy to see what needs to be cut out. Playdates become impossible as few people want to house our shoe collection. Luckily they have built in playdates with friends who look eerily similar to themselves. Hmmm, that frees up more time in my schedule.

Lessons and classes that are beyond walking distance and cost more than $20/season/kid are also out of the question. Oh wait, I’m not spending time getting them ready, driving them to activities, and volunteering at the acitivities. Hmmm, this is looking good.

So, after proving out my model on my MVP, I can replicate across other platforms. In parenting terms, the younger kids have the privilege of doing whatever activities the MVP (eldest) picked out. Otherwise known as “Marcia, Marcia Marcia” syndrome. It increases efficiency both at work and home, with the side benefit that it legitimizes my kids’ claims of unfair parenting. 🙂