What do you get when a legally blind and partially deaf woman launches a nutrition company in the 1980s?
You get my mom.
Back then, there weren’t many women starting businesses. Especially not ones bootstrapped from kitchen tables, with no funding, no internet, and no roadmap.
But she saw a problem: Kids, including / especially her own, weren’t eating properly.
So she built a product for a target audience of just me and my brother.
She designed this giant magnetic chart to help my brother and me track our meals (by following FDA standards of the day). It made nutrition fun. Just put color coded magents on the board when you had a serving. We used to race to see who would complete it (and rat out our sibling if he didn’t!)
It made nutrition visible. And it made it stick.
She was ahead of her time.
Mom Intuitively Used Design for Six Sigma
This playbook looks like something out of Silicon Valley:
1. Start with the voice of the customer.
2. Prototype fast.
3. Deliver something that actually gets used.
After proving it worked at home, she expanded to her friend’s family who became her business partner.
The audience grew from N=1 to N=2 to N= IDK, a dozen?
This is classic DFSS: starting with the customer, iterating, and building what works. Learn more about Design for Six Sigma here.
They refined the idea locally and took it to market. Pitched it. Sold it.
No, it didn’t become a million-dollar exit. I’d be surprised if they broke even!
But you know what it did become?
A lifelong habit.
A foundation of health.
And a legacy of hustle I still carry today.
So on this Mother’s Day, here’s to all the moms:
• Who build without recognition
• Who fight invisible battles
• And who leave behind lessons that outlast any paycheck
Thanks, Mom. You taught me to be nuts about nutrition… and relentless about execution.