What’s your ‘Baby Shusher’ of choice?
Let’s start with the not so obvious; what’s a Baby Shusher?
It’s a simple device that will relentlessly hush your baby with a soothing voice at 3am in the morning, when daddy has no energy left after the 30-minute bottle-feeding, gas-releasing, diaper-changing session, and needs some rest before getting up for his 8:30 meeting.
According to the manufacturer:
“[Baby Shusher is] a revolutionary new tool for parents using an ancient, but doctor-tested technique to help soothe your fussy baby.
· Uses a real human voice to lull your baby to sleep with a calming shush — freeing up your precious time for your own rest or activities.
· 15 to 30-minute timer and 10-hour battery life enables long shushing sessions to assure you can get even the most resistant sleepers to sleep.”
The other day, as I finished feeding my son and turned on the shusher, watching him fall asleep, an idea struck me; there are ‘shushers’ we as entrepreneurs tend to use to ‘fall and stay asleep’. They give us comfort for a while yet are detrimental in the long run…
Here are some, in no particular order
· Falling in love with the idea and not the problem you’re trying to solve with the idea
· Not sharing your ideas, being afraid of any feedback that will challenge or, god forbid, shatter your dream
· Under-analyzing — only focusing on KPIs that reinforce your thesis, ignoring those data points indicating you’re missing something
· Over-analyzing — delaying testing the idea in the real world
· Focusing on building, not selling… “the product is so damn good it will sell itself”
· Ignoring customer responses
· Refusing to pivot when necessary… “I’ve invested so much, can’t go back now”
· Underestimating your competition, thinking they are somehow inferior
· Overestimating your capabilities
· Trying to go it alone, without the help of a robust team
· Not hiring enough & hiring insufficient people
· Lack of communication among the founders; are your targets aligned?
· Ignoring financing — it needs to come from somewhere for any venture, and ideally from multiple sources…
· Ignoring your personal life/health — “I sacrifice therefore I will succeed…”
These are some that come to mind, can add many more.
Think about them… any sound familiar?
I personally used each one of them in different stages of my life. Some still come back to ‘comfort me’ and I go through the struggle to turn them off.
Sleeping is good, it allows you to avoid the noise and focus.
Yet too much of it is harmful.
Here you can see the Baby Shusher in action
