How To Avoid the Shiny Object Trap and Stay Focused
I’ve built and sold multiple eight-figure businesses, including my first company, which I sold for $28 million. One of the most important lessons I’ve learned in building a business is deceptively simple:
Keep executing the plan, no matter what.
This is the step most people underestimate. It’s easy to get excited in the early stages. It’s easy to pivot when something shiny comes along. But real growth comes from staying focused and executing, especially when it gets boring.
I call this the boring middle. It’s the part of the business where you’ve proven your model works, but you have to keep doing the same things, over and over, to scale. And that’s where so many entrepreneurs lose momentum.
The Shiny Object Trap
I’ve fallen into it myself.
Years ago, my staffing company specialized in placing title insurance, escrow, and mortgage professionals. We were doing well, but I decided to start a training school for escrow assistants. We rented space, hired staff, launched the program, and it flopped. Nobody wanted to pay for inexperienced staff, even if we trained them.
That distraction cost us time, money, and focus. Every time we chased a new idea that wasn’t aligned with our core business, like the time we tried healthcare staffing, we stalled. But when we doubled down on what we did best, we grew.
Discipline to Do Less, Better
As entrepreneurs, we’re wired for ideas. But you can’t do everything at once. One of my favorite books, Rework by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson, talks about the power of doing less. That lesson is critical: success comes from tightening your focus, not expanding it too soon.
In my own journey, the businesses that thrived were the ones where I stuck with the plan, refined it, and scaled it, without getting distracted. Even when the market shifted, we succeeded by staying true to our core and adapting within our niche.
Your Turn
Ask yourself:
- What shiny object have you chased recently?
- Did it move you closer or further from your vision?
- If you could start today, what’s the one product or service you’d put all your energy into?
Hi! I’m Diane Prince. I co-founded a company that we built from scratch to $50 million in six years and sold to a strategic buyer. I am a keynote speaker that talks and writes about building startups, founding businesses, and entrepreneurship. I share my perspective from my own experience from over 25 years building, scaling, and selling businesses.
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