Opportunity is everywhere. We know it, we see it, we want it. It’s addictive. Wait… what? You got that right. Opportunity, unqualified, is addictive. It’s everywhere we look. It’s under that rock, beyond that tree, and hanging out with that new TikTok content marketing strategy.
You might be thinking, what’s this Rob guy getting at? Opportunity is great. Life is full of opportunities. Adversity is an opportunity. I get opportunities sent to my email inbox all the time. My cousin said that this no-refund time-share for the fourth Thursday in November is a great opportunity! I have to believe him, right?
Well yes! And definitely no.
What is Shiny Object Syndrome?
Likely, you shouldn’t buy that Thanksgiving-day time-share, which illustrates my point. Not every “opportunity” is in-fact an opportunity. It’s up to you to use discernment to judge whether or not what’s been put in front of you is in fact good for your small business.
Not every idea is right for your business. Many, unfortunately, will distract you from the real money-makers that are going to drive your business forward. In fact, it’s much more likely that you already know what’s going to grow you business. The addiction, rather, the internal impulsive need to jump on every new business idea, tactic, or strategy is what I, and many others, like to call “Shiny Object Syndrome” (I’ll aptly abbreviate it as SOS going forward).
Entrepreneurs and small businesses owners are understandably susceptible to “Shiny Object Syndrome” because, to be frank, building a business is hard. When we hit friction, it’s easy to fall into SOS and look for the quick fix. Or, on the flip side, it’s an entrepreneur’s job to look for areas of exponential growth, wherever it may be hiding. While it is understandable, business leaders need to recognize where SOS may be lurking in their business. It’s their job to find it, kill it, and lead the team in the direction that will most impact your growth objectives.
What A Small Business With “Shiny Object Syndrome” Looks Like
What does SOS look like in your small business? It could look like:
- Constantly changing strategies, prioritizing sales channels like Facebook Ads and then changing to TikTok Ads within a short time period. “Felt cute, might delete later” isn’t a growth strategy.
- Over-investing in new technologies. Having a strong tech stack is necessary for your business, but you can quickly reach a point of diminishing returns. Are you there yet?
- Too many started but unfinished projects. This one was a big hurdle for me to fix in my business. It’s better to keep the to-do list short, simple, and impactful.
- The big one: company staff are unsure of company direction, disengaged, or reactive to spinning up whatever initiative is leadership’s current “pet project”.
Take a moment to reflect on the four indicators above. Is this your business? If one of these symptoms is evident in your business, you may also be experiencing SOS side effects of wasted capital, diluted focus, poor ROI on employee time, strategic inconsistency, lost opportunity cost, negative reputation damage, inefficient resource allocation, and ultimately burnout.
This reads pharmaceutical infomercial. But wait, there’s more!
How “Shiny Object Syndrome” Kills Small Businesses Growth
To drive the point home, here’s an example of how SOS can destroy a business:
I once had a client that followed this SOS pattern. At first, our engagement was phenomenal. They had been sold a poorly designed ecommerce site by a previous vendor and they needed help getting it off the ground. So my team designed a plan that included both website revamp and a focused marketing plan for growing traffic and conversions.
The first half of the project, the website piece, went through without issue. Beautiful. Converted traffic like a dream. Once that was finished, we turned our sights on getting the site the traffic it needed to start generating revenue. This is where we hit a few speed bumps.
Now the owner of this business considered themselves a “creative entrepreneur”. That means they excelled at the first half of the ideation process, but often couldn’t follow through when it came to creating an implementation plan. That’s typically not an issue, where SOS arises is how they wanted our team to fill in the gaps.
What resulted was our team being responsible for each initiative that the entrepreneur thought up. While we were trying to get the owner to focus on driving traffic through the strategy that was data-tested and mutually agreed on, they had other ideas, specifically, a new idea everyday. They ping-ponged between organic social content, paid ads, emails, direct sales, and event collateral. We couldn’t get the business owner to stay consistent and focus their energy on the strategy that was working. As a result, growth stagnated.
Now this isn’t a story to point a finger at a bad client. We love them, and they know it, but at the end of the day, we eventually had to terminate our working relationship and cheer for them on the sidelines. While this is a bummer, it happens.
The reason I share this story is because whether you work with a consultant, an agency, or with an internal team, this is a real, looming threat to your business. So stay vigilant! It’s your job as the business’s leader to make sure that SOS stays far, far away from your team.
How To Focus Your Small Business Growth Strategy
So if we should be careful of moving forward with the new “shiny” tactic or idea what should we be doing instead? It comes down to one word: consistency. Why? What’s so sexy about doing the same thing again, again, and again?
There’s magic in consistency.
When we move from tactic to tactic we cut ourselves off from our action’s compounding returns. Think: a mile wide and an inch deep. But you don’t have to take it from me.
“I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.” — Bruce Lee
So what does this look like in the world of business? As most things, it’s simple but not easy.
Set Clear, Long-Term Goals
While it doesn’t have to be in a formal business plan, you do need to commit to what your goals are. Thankfully, that’s a pretty straight forward process. Ask yourself, what is the change that would drive the greatest impact for my business’s bottom line?
If you have unlimited capacity to fulfill orders, your goal could be web traffic, on site conversions, or more leads for your sales team.
If fulfillment is your issue, your big goal could be to recruit a talented, operations director. Or it could be that you need to focus your energy on qualifying incoming customers better to grow your average customer lifetime value.
No matter what it is, you have to stick to it. Half-way completed, forgotten projects don’t move anyone forward. The key is to focus until the results locked in and irreversible.
If It Causes You To Sin, Cut It Off
Low-ROI projects are a luxury. Now don’t get me wrong, not every project can be the best return on investment. Some things just have to get done. Whether its low hanging fruit, “what you’ve always done”, what have you, I get it. That’s fine.
I encourage you though to look at the majority. Do a personal inventory on how your time is spent. Is the majority of your projects high-ROI? Or do they look more like distractions? If they look more like distractions, those are the tasks that you need to prune immediately. Don’t worry, they’ll still be there for you once your focus time on high-ROI projects is over.
Putting this into practice, this means you’ll probably be saying no to new initiatives and ideas more than you’ll be saying yes. Trust me, it’s not a bad thing to say no. Saying no to one thing means you’re saying yes to something else that you value more. So what do you value most?
There’s a season for everything, and if you’re reading this there’s a good chance you’re searching for a season of growth. Remember, you reap what you sow.
“To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up… What profit hath he that worketh in that wherein he laboureth?” — Ecclesiastes 3:1-3, 9
At the end of the day, it’s on you to prune distractions in your organization. You might as well be nicknamed the “Chief Focus Officer”. Where your team spends their time is your responsibility.
Prioritize High-ROI Projects (And Only Those Projects)
So what makes a goal high-ROI? If it contributes to your goals. Plain and simple. It’ll be up to you and your leadership team to decide how you grade your projects as low or high ROI. There are plenty of projects a company can focus on that may not be high-ROI in the short-term but will create huge returns for your company in the long-term.
Prioritizing, and acting on, only high-ROI projects for a short period of time can have a drastic effect on your small business growth. For those looking for an example of what this could look like for them, here’s a few potential frameworks on how to schedule your season(s):
- 1 whole week out of every month
- 1 whole month out of every quarter
- 1 whole quarter out of every year
In these above formats, your team is going to need some hand holding to break their current patterns. There will be push back. If you set the precedent though, they’ll be sure to follow suit as long as they know its okay to put down their established pattern of low-ROI projects for a week or more. This is what leadership is all about: getting people to act in a way they wouldn’t normally in order to grow a company and positively impact a community.
For those that like to go “all in” you could enter a whole year or multi-year season of growth. I won’t stop you. At a certain point, it becomes your company culture. Then it will be less about a “season” and more about a “way of being”, which is much, much more potent.
Choose Your Hard & Cast A Vision
If you’ve gotten this far, you know I’ve made it clear that a business owner is responsible for their organization. If your organization has “Shiny Object Syndrome”, you may need to take a step back and prune some of your less effective projects.
That’s okay! It’s your job to focus on getting job everyday, but pulling your eyes up now and again to see the road in front of you will help you guide your team to where you want to go. If you don’t, you’ll end up with whatever pattern is currently programed into your team.
It’s hard to want to change. But not growing when you need to is hard too. At the end of the day it’s your responsibility to “choose your hard” and help your team evolve into the best version of themselves. That’s what leading is all about.
If you need help refining your projects to decide what’s high-ROI and what’s best left undone, we may be able to help. Check out our First Engagement Session to learn more about how we forge new consulting relationships.
