The Pandemic Of Shiny Object Syndrome

Welcome to Million Dollar Grit, the podcast that dives deep into the world of entrepreneurship, where tenacity meets strategy and dreams meet reality. My name is Julie, and I explore the raw, often overlooked truths of what it takes to succeed in business and in life. It's not just about the glossy success stories. It's about the grit it takes to get there. Hey everyone, this is Julie, and today I want to discuss something that I see happen over and over and over again in the internet marketing world. And it is. People come to me about, I don't know, $30,000, $40,000, $50,000 into their investment of gurus, courses, coaching programs, and they are still stuck. Why is this such a problem? Why is it so rampant? How do we avoid it? How do we make good investments that are going to actually further our business and not get us stuck in debt and feeling really disillusioned. So I wanna start this conversation by saying I wanna look at this from both the creator standpoint. So if you are listening and you are a coach or a course creator and you sell products in business or, or marketing, and also from the customer standpoint. And there's a lot of nuance here, and there's also a lot of layers to the whole problem. So let's start from the creator side first of all. Now, there's a lot of noise on the internet in general, but especially in business and marketing and money, you'll find that the loudest creator oftentimes dominates the market. It doesn't necessarily mean that they're the best, but if they are the loudest, they get attention, and attention is market share in our industry. So if you think about a, a program like a general business program and it's selling for, you know, a couple thousand dollars, well, the person who has the most affiliates, the most students, the most ad budget, you know, the most authority, they're going to get the bulk of the market share and they may not be the best in the industry. And in fact, I would argue that there are a lot of sleeper courses, sleeper gurus, sleeper creators. These are smaller people that aren't, you know, they don't have a million followers. They're not, you know, on Good Morning America and they're not necessarily, you know, known in the space quite as well. They're still pretty heavy hitting. These people are usually not as good at building that enormous audience, and they're not as good at speaking to the gen pop, right? The general population. So they don't get this like mass appeal. But that actually isn't a bad sign because those people are probably more dialed into a particular niche, a particular market. And they might actually be working on doing the thing instead of talking about the thing. And so I feel like as a creator, I fall in that second category. I've never been appealing to the general population. You know, I don't have any, any platform that's similar in size to some of the bigger names that we could throw around here. but I would argue that a lot of our content is very, very high quality and very effective because we've been focused head down working on it. So from a creator standpoint, you may be frustrated that when people finally come to you and they finally find out about your course or your program, they've already taken 3, 4, 5, 10 other programs. And they may say something like, oh, I, you know, I'm not sure I can invest right now. I'm doing this other thing. And you You can feel frustrated, right? Like, my goodness, like, how do I, what's wrong with me that I am not the first thing they think of? And part of this is just attention. So you as the creator can think about, all right, well, how do I get noisier, louder, more focused on my message so that at least in the little pond that I am dominating, I can get these folks' attention sooner so that they aren't coming to me already disillusioned. And if you're the actual customer, I would say that some of the biggest challenges, events that you see on the market now, we're talking the ones with, you know, 100,000 people, millions of followers. A lot of times the reason why those are so captivating is because there's a lot of time, energy, money, and resources going into event itself. But in order to appeal to all those people, you're probably going to get a pretty general product. So you want to sort of resist the, the FOMO, if you will. Now, the second issue that comes up a lot is that this is— and this is more from just like a human psychology standpoint— creators don't like to niche down. We get constrained. We don't like to say the same thing over and over again. We get bored with our audience. And so as creators, if you think of like musicians who are always testing new music and trying out new songs and the audience is like, yeah, we don't really want that song. We want the old, you know, the old one that we like that you're so tired of playing. This can create market confusion because as creators we're bouncing from idea to idea. We're not staying on task or we enter the market too general because we don't want to, we fear being too niched down. We fear like that somehow that's gonna mean less money. And so we water down our message. We start competing in, in too big of a pond and we can never get any traction. I was doing a, a coaching call with Launch Gorgeous students and someone said to me, well, I'm gonna start more general 'cause I don't really know who my customer is. And then once I find them, I'll get more specific. And I said, it's actually backwards. You wanna pick one specific type of customer, even if you're not sure you wanna serve them forever, and you wanna start really niche and expand out. And the famous example of this is that Amazon didn't start out as the world's marketplace. It started out as a website selling books. So there are a lot of companies that have that story, that history. So as a creator, even if you feel bored, even if you feel like, Oh, I'm not sure that I can make enough money talking to one specific person. This is actually, it, it's going to hurt you if you don't create that hyper-specific niche and then get as loud as you possibly can in that smaller pond. Now, if we look at that same psychological principle of boredom and shiny objects, and we look at it from the customer standpoint, We see what happens oftentimes is that we get excited about the planning stage of business, and then we are not excited on the execution side of business. That's where it's hard. That's where there's rejection and failure and all of those feelings pop up. And so we rush back to the planning or we, we don't actually follow through with our plan because We, I always say this to my clients when they make a plan and then they try to put their plan in action and then they panic, it's normal, or they have problems and then they start to doubt the plan. And I say to them, were you really that stupid when you made the plan? I mean, you made the plan like 30 days ago. Was the you 30 days ago so stupid that you shouldn't be trusted? And they usually laugh and I'm like, no, you weren't stupid 30 days ago. In fact, you and I worked on this plan together. So the tendency of, for us to get scared when things don't go right, or when things are harder than we first expect, we wanna run back and we wanna rework the plan. And because, you know, the internet is noisy and it's never quiet and it's 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, there are a plethora of shiny objects just waiting with a promise that their way is the way. And so that's what happens. And then people buy things and they think, okay, I just didn't know this 30 days ago, but now it's 30 days later and this new object in my peripheral vision here is actually the secret. So let me go grab that. And so we have a string of people who overbuy because they are reacting emotionally to their plan. And we have creators who are bored and who don't like to stay on task, and so they're either churning out constantly new messaging and new offers, and then we have this scene where it's very hard to figure out what you need and when. So how, as both the creator and the customer, do we get out of this hamster wheel? So I'm gonna just give you what I do because I think that I am a pretty a good example of someone who is not afraid to invest, but also I'm very good at ignoring shiny objects. So the first thing is that you want to focus on just-in-time learning. So you want to know what your problem is so that at least you can pick a generally relevant solution. Because if you are, you know, in your business and your business is not growing, and you don't know why it's not growing, maybe what you need is a strategist or a VIP day to help you figure out why you're not growing. So if you're listening to this and you're like, my business isn't growing and you don't really know what the solution is, you are better spent getting on a call with me and spending a couple thousand dollars for me to help you figure out what your problem is than for you to guess what your problem is. Oh, I haven't run a challenge, or oh, I haven't done workshops, or oh, I need a Facebook ads person, and then go shopping around for those things because they're all going to look shiny and like they are the solution to your problem. Now, if we take someone who, let's say they know what their problem is, they know that their offer strategy is, is not correct and they have no sales funnels, whether they got to that conclusion on their own or whether they got to that conclusion because they hired someone like me, doesn't matter. They know what the problem is. They know that their offer needs work and they need a sales funnel. So now they can go and look for a program, a course, a coach that's going to help them with that specific thing. And if their offer is, I don't know, let's say a membership or a mastermind, they're gonna go look for someone who has had success in those areas. Now they're gonna be able to purchase something just in time for that. Again, as the customer, you know, you don't necessarily wanna look for the biggest, loudest, most popular provider all the time, because again, that content is gonna be a little bit more general. You're gonna wanna search a little bit more deeply for maybe someone who is perfect on high-ticket memberships, let's say, or small peer-to-peer masterminds versus a coaching mastermind or, or what have you. You wanna look for that person. Then once you've done that, then you wanna go find something around sales funnels. So I do this, I do this a lot where I know that there's a gap in what I need. So I will look and I will say, okay, I am not on enough podcasts and I'm not on enough stages. I know this is part of my problem of why nobody knows I exist. So I'm gonna go hire someone specifically for that. The second thing that happens once you have decided on a program is you wanna actually stick with it and acknowledge that even if you don't stick with it, your role to play in that, right? And we've seen this problem in the course creator and coaching space where there are a lot of coaches that are not very good and then they blame you and they, there's sort of this gaslighting of like, well, if you were really invested, you would see a difference, but you're not, so it's all your fault. That's not what I'm talking about. That, those marketing techniques, those, um, really unsafe programs are not what I'm suggesting. But also looking at your level of personal responsibility and how seriously you are taking yourself and how much you are willing to actually do what the person says. So, you know, I had someone that I hired and one of their recommendations was that I get a website refresh. Now I didn't really think I needed one, but I had invested in this person and I thought, well, you know what, maybe, maybe I do. Maybe there's something I don't know. So I committed to it. Now I made a decision that if I was gonna do that, I was gonna hire the best people for the job. And it ended up taking me quite a bit longer than had I just gone and gotten it done quickly. And there are times when you wanna do things quickly and times when you wanna do things things more high quality. And for me, my website, I thought, I'm just going to focus on the high quality. But what did it mean? It meant that the delay would, would slow down my progress. But in that case, I was okay with that because I knew that I was still on the path. And so as you're shopping for people and courses and products, I want you to keep all of this in mind. And when you feel like you've made a commitment towards a particular program or a particular coach and you find yourself straying into shopping carts and funnels because you're not excited about your plan, remember that you weren't a stupid person 30 days ago when you made that plan and that the person that you were 30 days ago is still trustworthy today. And that can kind of help you stay on the straight and narrow. So I think that overall, a good combination of just-in-time learning, understanding whether or not you know what your problem is and shopping for the right thing at the right time, and also recognizing that sometimes the folks that are the loudest are not necessarily the best solution, they just happen to be the best at talking about their solution. Those things should help you make better purchases. And on the creator side, you can leverage this information to make sure that you are getting as loud as you can in a smaller pond and that you are committed to a niche, a market, and a message so that you don't let your boredom start to water down what you offer in the marketplace. Hopefully we'll have more More progress, less debt. And as always, if you are listening to this podcast and you're like, you know what, that's me. I have struggled to identify my problem. I have been distracted by shiny objects. I have tried tactics and kind of spun my wheels. It may be that what you need is actually someone to help you untangle that ball of yarn and help you figure out what your problem actually is so that you can then go and get the exact solution you need to get forward momentum. You can always hit me up at julie@juliechenell.com. It is one en and two els. You can visit me at my website at juliechenell.com. I'll talk to you soon. And there you have it, folks. Another dose of Million Dollar Grit. I hope today's episode has left you feeling inspired, equipped, and ready to face your own entrepreneurial journey with resolve. Remember, until next time, embrace the struggle, harness your grit, and keep pushing forward. You're stronger than any challenge you face. I'm Julie Chenell, and this has been Million Dollar Grit.