How to Overcome Shiny Object Syndrome

Summary

• Saying yes to new opportunities without focus can destroy businesses, which is often due to "shiny object syndrome."
• It's essential to stay focused on planned initiatives to see tangible growth in a business.
• We worked with a company that aimed to triple by creating a back-end offer and building out their executive team.
• Despite a clear initial plan and excitement, the company suggested new ideas every two weeks, distracting from the goal.
• They proposed scrapping a $50 million product line, changing their back-end offer, and becoming a software company.
• After focusing on our two original suggestions, the company was able to 10x their business in about 18 months.
• Shiny object syndrome is defined as being continually distracted by new pursuits, which stems from beliefs and behaviors.
• Entrepreneurs often develop shiny object syndrome when current projects become boring or reach the stage of informed pessimism around 6 to 12 months into the venture.
• To make shiny object syndrome worse, surround yourself with passive individuals, constantly compare yourself to others, and set unrealistic short-term success measures.
• To overcome shiny object syndrome, surround yourself with people who hold you accountable, reduce comparisons with others, commit to a long-term plan with rewards for sticking to it, and expect but don't give in to self-doubt or impatience.
• Recognize that feelings of impatience, distraction, or self-doubt are normal but shouldn't dictate a change in course; action should align with a committed long-term vision.
• Building a strong foundation for a business that can grow to a billion requires resisting the lure of shiny objects and maintaining focus on a long-term plan.
• Consistently shifting focus to new opportunities generally results in a spread of mediocre efforts across various projects, diluting the potential for success in any single endeavor.

Video

How To Take Action

I would suggest starting by identifying clear goals for your business. Make a plan with the steps you need to take to reach those goals. Like the company I worked with, you should focus on a few important things that will help your business grow. For example, you might need to create a new product or hire more people to help you.

A good way of staying on track is to meet with your team regularly. At these meetings, talk about your goals and the plan. If you start to think of new ideas, ask yourself if they really help with your plan. It's okay to have new ideas, but don't let them take you away from your goals.

To beat "shiny object syndrome," you should be around people who tell you the truth and help you focus. Don't spend too much time looking at what others are doing on social media or feeling bad if your business isn't like theirs. Set up rewards for when you stick to your plan.

It's also important to know that feeling bored or unsure is normal. But don't let these feelings make you start something new and forget your main goals. Stay with your plan, and with time, you will see your business grow. Remember, staying focused is the key to making your business a big success!

Quotes by Leila Hormozi

"Saying yes destroys more businesses than saying no"

– Leila Hormozi

"Shiny Object Syndrome… is a belief paired with a behavior"

– Leila Hormozi

"Every time you spread your attention, you're not going to be as good at solving either properly"

– Leila Hormozi

"You can't solve the current business because you don't have enough energy to think about it"

– Leila Hormozi

"If you want to build anything worth building, you want to build something big, it's going to take longer"

– Leila Hormozi

Full Transcript

[Music] saying yes destroys more businesses than saying no today I want to share with you how to overcome shiny object syndrome or essentially saying yes to all these new opportunities so you can stay focused grow your business and give yourself the best chance of success so there's a company that we started working with about two and a half years ago and when we brought that company on it was very clear that there were two things that need to happen for that company to basically triple and it was first create a back end offer and then second is build out the executive team so yeah we did what we do we did diligence the business we analyzed the business we come up with like the top constraints and then we met with the business they flew in in person we built out their three-year their one year and then break down by quarterly plan to get to where we needed to be and it really consisted of doing just those two super simple things and when we're at the kickoff day which is what we call it a kickoff day it felt like it was really clear it felt like they were excited they were like yes this is amazing this is what we need this feels completely online and leaving that kickoff day everyone felt great they were excited there was high energy it was like everyone was super excited until we had our meeting two weeks later and then our meeting two weeks after that and then our meeting two weeks after that every time we met with them they came to us saying I don't think what we set off on kickoff day is what we need to do I think we need to do this thing and I think we need to do this thing I think we need to do this thing the first time it was hey we need to completely redo our front-end program and we need to do something completely different right we need to scrap this entire product line that we have that's making us you know almost 50 million dollars a year and then the second time it was actually you know what we need a different back end offer than the one that we talked about on kickoff day we need this completely different back end offer and we're like how about we don't do that because people actually surveyed and said they wanted the first one more so we should ignore the one that you just came up with because only a small amount of your customers want that one and they're like okay yeah yeah we'll just keep doing what we're doing and then the third time it was hey guys you know I know that we've got this going and what we're going to do but I think we actually need to become a software company and we were like that's amazing software is great we love software not today and so as you can see every time we met with the company it was like a new shiny object had popped up and it had completely enmeshed them in it it was like everything else got put to the side no progress was being made on the initiatives that we set out and it was just like all all we were doing was every time we got on the phone we were convincing them to stick with the original plan so what they were doing is they were just exhibiting what many first-time entrepreneurs do which is what we call shiny object syndrome luckily they trusted us enough to not do those things and instead focus on the two big things that we did to find and that alone a period about 18 months 10x their business and so they now ignore pineapple syndrome however it took them a while to get there it took them a lot of trust in us and not everybody hasn't us to rely on and to tell them hey go focus on the thing you already set out to do and listen ignoring shiny object syndrome alone is not going to 10x your business that's a very like Edge case scenario but I'm showing you the power of focus so what is shiny object syndrome everyone talks about all the time but I'd like to Define terms it's defined as the continual state of distraction brought on by an ongoing belief that there is something new worth pursuing over the current thing and it often comes at the expense of the thing that has already been planned or is already underway to happen what I don't agree with is the term syndrome because I think it makes it sound like some condition that you suffer from in fact it is a belief paired with a behavior that's all shiny objects underments and you've gotten really good at practicing you believe there's something better out there therefore you behave in a way that is distracted and you tend to stray away from the plan and then you do it over and over and over again and that's when people call shiny object syndrome we have learned to be really good at it and so we can learn to be bad at it what is being bad at shiny object syndrome being focused and so if we can learn to be unfocused we can also learn to be focused but if we want to do that we need to think why does it exist in the first place why do people get shiny object syndrome what is it that leads us to this point and so what I've noticed is that oftentimes shiny object syndrome just happens to come up at the same time as the current thing you're doing just gets like a little bit boring maybe a little bit monotonous maybe it's doing the same thing every day maybe it's the thing is actually starting to work because you're doing the hard work and the boring work and the things that are required to make something work and so often what happens is that when we enter a new opportunity we're in an uninformed optimism right we're like this is amazing it's great I love this thing this is the best I love this business I love this person I love this whatever and we're super excited about it and then what happens is as we get a little further into it in a business it might be a matter of I want to say it's around the 6 to 12 month Mark definitely at the 12 month Mark you're going to hit it which is then wearing an informed pessimism which is oh in the beginning all I see is upside but now I've been around long enough I can realize the downside of The Upside right I start to see what pieces of this business are going to be issues or problems and so then what happens especially with inexperienced entrepreneurs is they think oh there's something wrong with this this is not good this is going to be harder than I thought this is definitely not as easy as I thought it was going to be this was easy and now it's not easy anymore I should do something different oh that thing that that guy there Johnny online Johnny on Instagram he's doing so much better so much more money so much easier I should do what Tommy's doing why am I doing what Johnny's doing and so really it's the first thing becomes hard or boring or it is not meeting our expectations therefore we look at something else and think that thing will meet my expectations faster better and I'll make more money and so the question is people always say themselves especially people that do this all the time they say I don't know know why I keep doing this later well we do things that reward us in some way and so often what shiny object syndrome does is in the short term it solves your boredom it solves your frustration it solves the short-term emotions that you don't want to feel because what happens is you're in this current thing and it's taking time it's boring it's monotonous then you get distracted and you look at the other shiny object and you think oh I should start investigating that I need to start looking into that and you start talking to make some phone calls you need to network with some people and that's exciting it's like oh there's all this opportunity this is how much money I can make to solve this and you start to feel good though it doesn't reward you in the long run because typically all you're going to do is build another business 12 months in a million dollars in whatever it is and then say oh this one sucks I should go start a different one however what it does do is it makes you feel better and so people can often do what they're rewarded for in this case you're rewarded with excitement with stimulation with feeling better in the short term it solves for the boredom and the frustration you're feeling in the long term it actually creates more of it so here's how it typically goes into business when an entrepreneur false prey to shiny object syndrome when a new idea that you bought gains even like the tiniest bit of traction you and typically the immediate team like completely divert your attention to that thing you assess its viability you look at what could do you look at how you could do it you look at the resources you would need and usually it's in a very biased manner so right now at this point in time nobody sees the downside you especially and the team is too afraid to tell you anything for the most part everyone's saying like this is so great this thing looks amazing we should continue to investigate this looks like a great allocation of resources for Sharp and then what happens is that the team actually starts to doubt the current opportunity so when we start to pursue something new the team sees the founder or the CEO's behavior and their behavior is they divert their attention from the thing that's working and they divert it over here and what that shows through how that Founder's behaving is that this thing is more important this thing is better and therefore this thing is unimportant and who on a team wants to be focused on the unimportant thing or the thing that the founder doesn't want to focus on not many people and so then what people do is they Reserve their efforts from the old thing they say oh it's not worth anymore because there's this new thing and so they're not even putting their full effort to the new thing yet because maybe there's no opportunity but what they are doing is withholding effort from the current thing and so what happens is you divert resources two in two ways one you divert certain resources from the old thing by pulling them to the new thing and saying go look at this and then they're distracted and then their output from the old thing goes down for the rest of the people they withhold their efforts because they're concerned with good evidence that the old thing is no longer what we're going to be doing therefore they withhold their effort even if the new thing isn't worth pursuing now the old thing doesn't look as appealing why well because people don't give as many people aren't trying as hard nor you nor the team are even if the new thing's not worth pursuing it actually starts to unjustly look better because the whole thing starts to typically Decline and so what does that look like in terms of outcomes in a business I can name a few the first is you get tons of product lines okay so there is a lot of businesses that I've looked at I've done diligence on and they have six to ten different products and they're not even at 3 million yet why do they have all these products because they literally get shiny objects they think their perfect product is good then they see the downside of that product after they've had it out in the market long enough and then they say instead of fixing the problems on the current one I'm just going to start a new one and then they end up with this like weird product lines that don't really match and when customers are buying they actually don't even know what to buy and so then their close rate goes down because there's too many options the second thing they get is they get a culture full of mediocre why do they get mediocre because everyone's attention is split it's not on the old thing because that is apparently like dying and unjust and the founder doesn't like it anymore and so nobody wants to pay attention to that and then it's not necessarily on the new thing because the new thing's not fully formed yet but instead they're just thinking about the two and so their attention is split between both of those just like you as the founder is and the last thing is that you really end up with a Frankenstein business I once met a guy who wanted to work with acquisition.com and he had seven businesses or products whatever you want to call it all doing a million dollars a year he couldn't figure out why he couldn't grow past a million dollars a year in any product line I wonder why it was him and a team of maybe 10 people all trying to balance this like web of these weird products and I asked him why he started them he said he felt like it was months he gets bored with things easily and so the cycle continues and it feeds and that's why a lot of people's businesses don't grow so if this sounds like you or it sounds like something that you consistently fight with right something where you waste your attention because what happens is shiny object syndrome steals more attention from entrepreneurs than anything else I've ever seen it takes all their creative Juju from figuring out how to solve the problem in the first product or business and it takes it to the new one and the reality is that every time you spread your attention you're not going to be as good at solving either properly it's like you can't solve the current business because you don't have enough energy to think about it you don't have enough constraints and the thing is that it's often because of opportunity because they can start another business they think they should and they don't stop themselves and so often if you look at the people who are the most disciplined the reason that their businesses grow is because they don't allow themselves to say oh the solution is to start something new they say I must fix the current thing but if you feel like you're stuck in this cycle of continuously starting something new whether it be a product or a business then listen to what you can do to decrease it how do you overcome shiny objects first if we want to figure out how to stop something let's talk about how to make it worse okay so how would I increase shiny object syndrome one I would surround myself with people who were afraid to contradict me and say no right so I would have surround myself with people who all felt like they were dumber than me I was telling myself people were very passive I always found myself people who weren't smarter than me I would hire people who didn't know what they were doing who didn't have experience so that if I had an idea they would feel afraid to say no the second thing I would do is I would constantly look at everybody around me I'd be comparing myself to everybody else and in my mind my measuring stick of success would be Johnny on Instagrams they are on Instagram you know Jeff that I went to school with that's now like making hundreds of thousands of dollars with this new thing and I'd be constantly looking at all of them and then beating myself up if I wasn't where they were if my business wasn't as good as their business if I wasn't making as much money as them the third thing I would do is I would measure my success on a short time Horizon right so if I want to increase shiny object syndrome I would say if this business doesn't make me three million dollars a year in the next 12 months I'm out this thing's a piece of rather than thinking on longer time Horizons giving ourselves realistic goals and then I would allow myself to indulge in the thoughts that come up in my brain about my current situation thoughts like maybe this won't work as well as you thought maybe you're not actually good at this maybe you're not suited for this business or if I had the business that Jeff had over there my life would be so much easier I'd make so much money it'd go so much faster this business is so shitty that one's so much better I would believe those thoughts that's how we would increase shiny object syndrome now how do we decrease it first is we want to surround ourselves with people who hold us accountable people who don't tolerate that kind of immature behavior of always sacrificing the long term for the short term I would hire people who would find that to be immature I would hire people who wouldn't tolerate it with Lee I would surround myself with friends who would remind me of my commitments and then I would publicly commit to the things worth doing notice that acquisition.com we talk about how we're going to hit a billion dollars how embarrassing would it be if a year from saying that I changed my mind and start some tech company and everyone's like wait I thought you said you were going to hit a billion dollar that'd be embarrassing public accumulation is a strong incentive to keep you to stay the course the second thing I would do is I would stop deliberately following stalking and consuming content from people that I constantly beat myself up when I consume their content and the reason for that is comparison by itself is not bad comparison is actually very productive and good but if you can't look at someone's page without thinking I need to start their business so I can beat his ass then stop looking at his continuously following their content looking at their page and watching what they're doing it's not going to help you they're more likely to beat you the more you obsess over them and then I would get crystal clear on my long-term plan and set rewards for sticking to the plan if you can reward yourself for sticking to a plan you will get further than rewarding yourself for an outcome and so if I can set a long-term vision and then reward myself for sticking with that plan that's going to get me to that long-term Vision that I'm more likely to do that and not be derailed by these shiny objects that come around and the last piece is I would expect myself to doubt myself I would expect myself to find other opportunities incentivizing I would expect myself to feel impatient I would expect myself to feel distracted but I wouldn't make that mean that I needed to change my behavior I can feel distracted I can feel impatient it doesn't mean I need to start a new business I can feel frustrated I can feel bored in my current business it doesn't mean I need to change direction I can feel like there's something wrong with the current product line that doesn't mean I need to start a new one it means I might need to fix the old one and so oftentimes we believe that I hear entrepreneurs say like I'm so impatient I'm so distracted I'm so this Mike I feel all those things as well I just don't act upon them I expect myself that I'm going to feel impatient I'm going to want things to go faster I'm going to want to make more money faster but the reality is is that if you want to build anything worth building if you want to build something big actually it's going to take you longer because building the foundation of a billion dollar business might take you seven years whereas building the foundation for a million dollar business might take you six months but what happens is that the fact that you built the foundation this way and you get to the million faster it actually behooves you because then you you can't get to 10 billion you have to rebuild a foundation again which instead of rebuilding a foundation guess what you're going to do you're going to go start a new business because when you build something with a short-term in mind you continuously cap yourself and it is harder to grow that thing but if you can set yourself and you commit yourself to a long-term Vision you can commit to building the foundation and you can stick through the times where it feels shitty it feels boring it feels monotonous feels frustrating and you will get there so much faster because what happens is that if you compare yourself to the entrepreneurs you've got entrepreneur a and entrepreneur B entrepreneur a sets a 10-year vision and he's like all right year one I might not make much money year two I'll make a little bit of money your three I'll make some money but by year 10 I'm gonna make more money than gosh I'm gonna know what to do with I'm going to be making 300 million dollars and then you've got entrepreneur B entrepreneur B sets his plan so that year one he makes a million dollars and after that he has no plan so in year one he will make a million dollars you can make a million dollars in year one however after that the way that he built his company and such to make a million dollars in year one prevent him from making anything more in year two year three year four so we stay stagnant and the only way for him to make more money is to start a new business and so in the end entrepreneur a will be entrepreneur B because they are working on building the foundation they are keeping themselves focused they're committed to the long-term plan and they expect the feelings to arise of wanting to do something different and they ignore them anyways now listen ignoring shiny object syndrome alone is not going to 10x your business but pursuing shiny abstract syndrome is much more likely to destroy your business than not