If your an entrepreneur, new ideas and change most likely excite the snot of you.  These ideas are what got you to launch your company.   But these ideas could also keep you from the success that you truly desire.

We live in a world surrounded by instant gratification. We complain about our Amazon one-day shipping being late, our drive-through food taking forever, and our airplane trip from coast to coast lasting so long. We also want our business to be an overnight success. We want it to be easy and to make millions in the first year.  So we look around to see what others are doing and try to  mimic it. We hire more employees, we buy that cool software, we spend tons of money on marketing, or we come up with yet another business idea!

For some organizations, this may work. But for most, it could be their demise.  They are spread too thin operationally and financially while trying to be all things to all people.

So how do we combat shiny object syndrome?  Below are a few tips that I have learned while working with small businesses.

1)  Stop the comparison trap and know your uniqueness.  We all have companies, brands, or even competition we admire.  While it is good to look at those for inspiration, don’t fall into comparison. Just because you see something shiny that another company is doing or selling doesn’t mean it is necessarily working for them. Know what makes you unique and run with it.

2)   Find someone in your life that will call BS on your ideas.  No, not a “Negative Ned or Nancy” but and a “Wise Wallace or Wendy” – one of those people that when you give them an idea they may not give you a lot of feedback at first. They will ask a ton of questions, then brew on it and finally come back and give you a straight up, no-qualms answer and will either be “ahhh no you can’t polish a turd” or “hmm you might be on to something, let’s talk more.”

3)   Dig into your own business! This means really taking a deep dive into your numbers and analyzing what is working and what is not.  Any business can find some gold nuggets and some real duds.  The gold could be: where am I saving money? where am I making money? or where is my highest profit margin? What am I making the most money from while expending (either product or time) the least on?   The duds: what am I spending the most on – and is it really benefiting the business? What am I overspending on? What is my worst profit margin? what am I spending so much time or cost on that is not gaining any real profit?   It’s important to ask yourself these challenging questions.

4) Pivot! from your dig into your business.  Find those issues and make changes and that will be your true shiny object.

KPI Bookkeeping and Consulting help small businesses avoid the “dig.” We keep you updated with your income and expenses so you can continually focus on the gold nuggets of your business and help you know when to quickly pivot to avoid the duds of your business.