Stop Chasing Shiny Objects in Your Business: 5 Questions Before You Buy
That dopamine hit when you find a new app or course that promises to fix everything? Yeah… it's not your next big breakthrough—it's shiny object syndrome. If you've been bouncing from one "this will fix it" purchase to the next, this episode is your reality check and reset.
In this episode of Ditch the Chaos, I'm sharing five brutally honest questions to ask yourself before you buy that next tool, planner, or program—questions that keep your focus on what actually grows your business instead of what distracts you from it. You'll hear my most expensive business lessons (like the ActiveCampaign email disaster that cost me a third of my list) and how to tell the difference between a real upgrade and a shiny distraction.
These lessons come straight from what I teach inside Chaos Detox—because sustainable business growth requires implementation, not another purchase.
In this episode, you'll learn:
- The five questions that reveal whether a new tool is worth your time or just another distraction
- How to spot the difference between progress and avoidance
- Why your "future self" test is the best filter for new ideas
- How to stop planning and start doing without burning out
- Why the problem isn't the tools—it's you (00:01:00)
- My costly mistakes: ActiveCampaign, planners, and projects I abandoned (00:01:38)
- Question 1: Do I already have a solution available? (00:03:26)
- Question 2: Am I avoiding something? (00:04:22)
- Question 3: Would my future self or business be doing this? (00:06:34)
- Question 4: Will this actually save me time or money? (00:07:33)
- Question 5: Am I spending more time planning than doing? (00:08:35)
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Want to read the original blog post that inspired this episode?
CLICK HERE → How to Avoid Shiny Object Syndrome: 5 Questions To Ask Yourself Before You Buy
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Full Episode Transcript
(32) Stop Chasing Shiny Objects in Your Business: 5 Questions Before You Buy
[00:00:00] You know that little dopamine rush you get when you discover a new tool app or course that promises to finally fix your problem? Yeah, that's shiny object syndrome and it's sneakier than you think.
[00:00:13] Welcome to Ditch the Chaos, a podcast for women who are tired of holding their life in business together with duct tape and coffee.
[00:00:20] I'm Cara Chace, entrepreneur mom, and recovering people pleaser who's learned the hard way that most productivity advice assumes your day goes according to plan, which we know never happens. On this podcast. We're figuring out how to run your business without running yourself into the ground. Let's get to it.
[00:00:37] As an online entrepreneur, you're probably overwhelmed with the amount of tools, software, courses, and programs available to you all claiming to be the secret to your success. How often have you thought that signing up for a program or using the latest app or completely redoing your website would solve all your problems?
[00:00:55] There's a harsh reality we need to get comfortable with if we're going to be able to [00:01:00] purposefully and intentionally complete projects that make a difference in our business. And the problem isn't the tools you're using, it's you. Ouch. Before we dive into how to reel ourselves back from pushing that buy button, I want to be clear that I'm not just saying this to be patronizing or on my high horse.
[00:01:19] I say this because it's an uncomfortable realization that I've been through in my entrepreneurial journey since 2015. I've wasted so much money on programs that were not a good fit and hiring contractors to fix trouble spots in my business that I should have known how to fix before I hired out for it.
[00:01:38] I've lost untold money because instead of marketing an amazing product consistently, I just moved on to the next product creation I thought would fly off the shelves. I've bought tons of pretty and functional planners more on that in a bit that I loved filling out and prepping to use, only to stop using them after a few weeks.
[00:01:58] One of my most [00:02:00] expensive lessons was switching from ConvertKit, now kit to ActiveCampaign because I was lured in by the shiny object of their visual automations before Kit had them. ActiveCampaign sent my emails from a bad IP address for six months before I figured out what was happening and five emails to get them to admit it, and I lost one third of my email list.
[00:02:23] Plus the money I had spent hiring someone to migrate everything from Kit over to ActiveCampaign. I ended up switching back to Kit with less money, a smaller list, and lost time that I could have been using to market more effectively. So I give advice about shiny objects as distractions from your best work, from a place of painful, hard-earned, and expensive lessons.
[00:02:46] Take the gift of learning from my mistakes. A quick note on shiny objects in your personal life. This can show up here too. How many times have you searched for a better app for your calendar, grocery list, or habit [00:03:00] tracker? This is the same thing my friend.
[00:03:03] My journey to becoming more distraction free now involves pausing before I get sucked into a shiny object and asking myself a few key questions. So without further ado, here are the five questions to ask yourself before you decide on buying the next shiny object. Question one, do I already have a solution available?
[00:03:26] I have yet to find the perfect planner, the perfect project management system, or the perfect website host. What I do have are a bunch of tools for my business that work just fine to get the job done. And what I find is that if I take the time to actually use those tools and create habits and systems around them, they do in fact provide the solution to the problem I'm trying to solve.
[00:03:50] I'll admit there are instances where the tool simply isn't a right fit for me, or the way my brain works like Trello makes no sense to me, but Notion does.
[00:03:59] And I [00:04:00] test out different planners all the time, mostly for fun and curiosity. And I know within a month whether it's a good fit. But truth be told. Most of the time the this isn't a good fit. Excuse is just that it's an excuse. I bet with a little more conscious effort. Most of the tools you use in your personal and business life work just fine if you actually use them.
[00:04:22] Getting distracted by a new tool with good marketing and pain point copy is a big time suck. Question two, am I avoiding something? When I was in college, my apartment was never so clean as during exam time. Avoiding the hard meaning important work is something we can all relate to.
[00:04:42] The same tendency to get distracted by shiny objects shows up in our businesses too. One of the surefire ways I can tell if I'm avoiding something is when I want to do tedious busy work.
[00:04:53] Here's an example. What I really should do is finalize the evergreen marketing plan for my products, but instead, I'll [00:05:00] spend a month updating my opt-in graphics on my blog.
[00:05:03] Mm-hmm. Does that sound familiar? Or I'm just gonna take some time to organize that folder because I don't wanna send out the client proposal. If you feel drawn to tedious, busy work in your business, take a minute and question whether you're avoiding more important work. But what about when your brain just needs a break from deep work and you still want to feel productive?
[00:05:25] I feel you. That's when you've spent an hour doing something, requiring a lot of creative or analytical thinking, and sometimes that I'm just gonna engage on Instagram. Instant gratification is just irresistible. There are two ways you can go with this scenario. If you need to do a brain break thing with a busy work task, schedule it in between focused work blocks so you know when you need to stop and move on, or step away, get up and stretch and go for a walk.
[00:05:55] Drink another glass of water while staring out the window. Take a 15 minute power [00:06:00] nap. You'll come back refreshed and ready to focus again instead of leaking out more energy with tedious busy work. I actually do one or both of these on any given day.
[00:06:11] On low energy days I tend to go for the power nap option. On days where I'm energetic and firing on all cylinders, I go for a walk. You decide what feels best, but make it by choice, not by default. Question three, would my future self or future business be doing this? Our businesses go through evolutions and changes just like we do.
[00:06:34] If you're in the messy middle of growth, meaning you've decided against the old, but you're still figuring out the new, then you might find yourself distracted by updating or reworking the old, why do we do this? Well, it's pretty simple. It's our comfort zone. You've probably spent a lot of time in the old version of your business and you know it inside out.
[00:06:54] So when you're feeling into that uncomfortable middle of what's next, you might try to soothe yourself with [00:07:00] work that serves the old instead of the new. The question I ask myself when I think I might be getting distracted with projects that don't serve me is, would the business I'm running a year from now be doing this?
[00:07:12] If the answer's no, then you know it's just a distraction and you'll have to be uncomfortable just letting it go. Question four, will this actually save me time or money? There are a few busy work scenarios that might seem like distractions on the surface, but are actually important long term to leverage time and money in your business.
[00:07:33] Here's some examples. Setting up an automation like an email sequence or Zapier flow switching payment providers to get cheaper merchant fees. Upgrading to a paid version of your project management app to streamline workflows and lower billable hours if you use a VA. In each of these scenarios, you can clearly draw a line between making the effort now for long-term benefit.
[00:07:59] And while those [00:08:00] examples are common, don't be fooled into thinking every time a money decision is an easy yes and not in fact a distraction. Question five. Am I spending more time planning than doing? I'm a planner too. I get it. I spent 10 years as a special agent conducting criminal investigations and putting together operational plans where people's lives were quite literally on the line planning and preparation or skills that are not only good to have as a functional adult, but essential for the business owner who wants to grow.
[00:08:35] But here's where you can get stuck. You spend so much time planning that you fail to execute. There's one big sneaky reason this happens. If you stay in planning mode and you don't move into action, then you can't fail. Planning is fun, it's comfortable, it's dreaming about the future. It's not the reality of whether your plan actually worked.
[00:08:57] Here are some common failure to launch [00:09:00] scenarios that indicate you're stuck in planning mode. You spend more time meal planning and searching for recipes than cooking. You spend more time crafting the perfect bullet journal layout with stickers and doodles than doing the tasks you're planning. You spend more time researching marketing strategies and downloading freebies than picking one and executing it consistently.
[00:09:21] When we're talking about shiny object syndrome, ask yourself if you're being sucked into planning mode as a distraction from executing your plans. The other planning shiny object that falls into this category is education. This is what happens when you think you need to take a CSS course before you can launch your website or a YouTube course before you can launch your channel.
[00:09:43] While some preparation and education are important, don't let them keep you from launching your next big thing. Here's your reset and reclaim action step for the week before you buy. Pause. Ask yourself these five questions out loud, it'll take less than two minutes and could save you hundreds of [00:10:00] dollars and hours of distraction.
[00:10:02] Do I already have a solution? Am I avoiding something? Would my future self or business be doing this? Will this save time or money? Am I spending more time planning than doing? If even one answer feels off, don't buy it. Or at least bookmark it for later and move on to what actually matters right now.
[00:10:25] If you're realizing that you don't need another app planner or productivity hack, but what you need is a system that works for you. That's exactly what I teach. Side Chaos Detox. And before you side eye me for mentioning a course in an episode about shiny objects.
[00:10:41] That's fair. The irony isn't lost on me, but the difference is chaos. Detox isn't another, buy this and everything changes. Promise. Or a rigid time management course that expects you to squeeze your life into someone else's perfect templates. It's designed to help you create your own systems and boundaries [00:11:00] for how you show up in your business and spend your time so you can create more white space in your calendar and breathing room in your brain.
[00:11:07] Thanks for tuning in. If this episode helped you hit follow and share it with a friend who's tempted by a shiny new app this week. And if you want real time help figuring out what actually moves the needle in your business, join the Productivity Rebellion. It's a free monthly guide for women entrepreneurs, and you'll get to ask me your questions.
[00:11:25] That'll answer right here on the show. You can sign up@CaraChace.com. Until next time, I'm Cara Chace reminding you to keep questioning the rules and making your own.
