865: Taming Shiny Object Syndrome: Focus, Structure, and Scaling Strategies for Entrepreneurs

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2:01When I get really excited and when I have an idea, I commit to seeing it through all the way to completion. And one of the things that has been really helpful is, is once I get a rhythm down, I try to create systems, processes, just anything to lighten the load of that. I'm Jenna Kutcher, your host of the Gold Digger podcast. I escaped the corporate world at the age of 23 with nothing more than a$300 camera from Craigslist and a dream. Now I'm running a seven-figure online business that feels even better than it looks, all from my house in small town Minnesota with my family. Here we value time as our currency.

2:42We mix the woo and the work and we are in the pursuit of building businesses that give us the freedom to live lives that we love. I've always loved turning big goals into reality and I'm here to help you do the same. This isn't just a peek behind the curtain. Come along with me and my guests as we tear the whole curtain down. Every week we tackle practical, no fluff marketing strategies and host honest discussions on what works and what doesn't. Join me and my expert guests for actionable insights to help you grow your dream business with confidence. Pull up a seat and get ready to be challenged, inspired, and empowered.

3:19This is the Gold Digger Podcast. It's time for another Gold Digger coaching session. I'll tell you, one of the things I cherish the most about the Gold Digger Podcast is getting to connect with the brilliant, passionate entrepreneurs inside of this community who are chasing their dreams while navigating their own unique challenges. Today, I am so excited to welcome Diana Toronto to the show. Diana is a business and marketing coach with a heart for helping people build their dream businesses. But lately, she's been feeling stuck in a cycle that I know so many of us can relate to. Diana has been spinning her wheels for the past year, juggling too many ideas and unfinished projects.

3:59With her ADHD pulling her in a hundred directions, she struggles to stay focused long enough to actually see her ideas through. Her big question is this, how do entrepreneurs succeed without burning out? And how can she finally narrow her focus, finish what she starts and create momentum in her business? In this coaching session, Diana and I dive into the unique challenges of balancing creativity with focus. We explore practical ways she can move from feeling scattered to streamlined by focusing on what lights her up and how to create systems and processes around it. And we talk about simplifying her offers and breaking her big ideas into manageable, actionable steps.

4:39I share some of the systems and strategies that have worked for me, and together we map out a strategy to help Diana stay motivated and consistent, even when distractions arise. If you have ever felt like you are juggling too many projects, jumping from one idea to the next, or struggling to turn your big dreams into action, this episode is going to speak to your heart. Let's dig into Diana's journey and uncover strategies you can use to create clarity, focus, and momentum in your own business. Welcome back to another episode of the Gold Digger Podcast, where we are doing a coaching episode with one of our amazing listeners.

5:14So Diana, welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much, Jenna. I'm so excited to be here. I really appreciate it. Okay, so give us a little bit of the lay of the land of who you are and what you do and where you're at in your business journey. And then we'll dive into the questions that you've prepared. Perfect. So I'm Diana Toronto. I'm based near Salt Lake City, grew up in California, and I am an ADHD marketer and business coach. So I specifically help ADHD entrepreneurs that are looking to grow their business, looking to scale, need a little extra support, some accountability, and some marketing strategies to really support them.

5:59I'm a wife and mama. I have two boys. My oldest is 12 and my youngest is turning 10. So we're out of single digits. So that's going to be really weird. And I'm married, like I said, to a wonderful man, a physical therapist who's awesome, totally supportive of my business. So that's kind of me. And like I said, my business model is really, I currently am offering one-to-one VIP days, but I'm launching a group program coming up in the next six weeks. And so I'm hoping to get some support from you today on that. Awesome. Okay. How did you get into doing what you're doing? I'm just so curious before we dive in.

6:48Yeah. So I was in the MLM world for a few years as a stay-at-home mama and realized just burning out, needing something new, ADHD kicked in for me. And I started to think, okay, well, what could I do with all of this sales and social media skills that I have learned. And so I started looking into becoming a social media manager. Long story short, ended up taking a course, learning how to be an agency owner for Facebook ads management, and just really invested in my education all along the way. And finally got to this place where I was like, you know what, I know my stuff. And I'm finding that a lot of the entrepreneurs that are coming to me for ads have ADHD and are needing more support than I typically would give another ads management client.

7:48A little more backend support almost. And so long story short, that's how I've kind of ended up here. Wow. That's so cool. I love it. Okay. Let's dive on in. You prepared some questions. So let's dive on in. And as we go, you can interrupt or we can ask clarifying questions along the way. And I always remind every coaching client to put this through your own lens of what makes sense for you. I'll give my best advice, but also it takes team to make this happen. Awesome. Okay. So my first question, a lot of my questions today are almost about mindset. I know that for me personally, and for other of your listeners, perhaps there's a lot of mindset issues that come up when you our business owner.

8:33So the first question I have is, how do you make progress in your business without letting imposter syndrome and perfectionism get in the way of that progress? Yes. Okay. So this is such a common question and just a huge pain point. And I think it's really interesting because I often look back to the era of when I was starting with a lot of admiration because nobody had their crap together as they do now. And so for people that are in more of the earlier stages of business, they have a front row seat to successful companies. They get to see beautiful brands. They get to see things that they might consider perfect.

9:15Whereas I feel like when I was starting out, we were all very imperfectly showing up and figuring it out as we went. One of the things that has been a game changer for me, especially as somebody who feels very creative, I have a lot of ideas, I get excited about a lot of things, but I also want them to look a certain way, is I've really had to lean on Pareto's principle. Let me explain how this plays into this. So I did a whole episode about Pareto's principle, but it's essentially that idea of 80 % of our results come from 20 % of our effort. And what I think is a misconception when it comes to business is a lot of times when we focus on perfection, we miss the opportunity to focus on the impact, the impact that our work can make, the impact of showing up can make, the impact of starting the thing can make.

10:06And so when we can prioritize progress over perfection, I feel like it gets us out of our head. And so Pareto's principle to me has been extremely huge, especially since becoming a mom, where I feel like my time evaporated. I no longer had all the hours in the day to do all the things. And so really looking at Okay. What are the needle movers, whether it's the activities that I'm doing or the work that I'm creating, what's actually generating the results. And this is true in so many areas of business, whether it's your marketing efforts or the actual offers that you have available to the public.

10:41Oftentimes 20 % of our efforts are leading to 80 % of our results. And so one thing that has helped me so much when I've gotten prone to this idea of perfection or kind of held myself back because I want something to be perfect is like, what would this progress look like? And would it get me closer to the result? And so I love just getting things out into the world. Like sometimes people will message me and they'll be like, this email had a typo in it. And I'm like, I'm still an imperfect human over here. Like this is an actual human writing this. And so like, I would rather show up with imperfections than not show up at all.

11:20And And I think so many people are just waiting. They're waiting on the perfect brand or to lose 10 pounds or the perfect photo shoot or whatever. And we're so focused on what things look like that we're missing the impact that our work can make. So just to tie all of this up with a pretty bow, when we're focused on perfection, I think we're really missing the opportunity to progress. And I think that progress is what actually builds up the confidence that we need to keep showing up. And so it's just a pivot in your mindset, which you're 100 % right. You're like, I'm so stuck in the mindset area.

11:56And that's where I think a lot of us are. So just want to say you're not alone in that. Well, I knew that the challenge has always been, I've heard of Pareto's principle, I want to enact it in my business. And you're right, it's just a hesitation and switching to know the progress is more important, I think. Right. So that's just something I need to work on for sure. Yeah. This podcast is brought to you by Mercury, banking that helps entrepreneurs do more with their money. Okay. I remember in the early days of my entrepreneurship journey, clients would literally mail me checks and then I would have to drive all the way to the bank to deposit them.

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14:35What is your next question? So you talked a lot about having a bunch of ideas, right? And so for me, I really struggle with how am I going to choose just one? You know, I have shiny object syndrome, so I'm always jumping from thing to thing, offer to offer in my business. And the number one challenge that I'm really having is sticking with it, right? Because I have ADHD, so I get excited. I want to put all my energy into this SLO or into this mini course or into this lead magnet or into all the marketing pieces I get so excited about. And then there's a shiny new object before the first project is finished, right?

15:25So how can I focus in on just one idea, one offer, one space, when I have all of those ideas pulling me in a million directions? I see that you do this so successfully. And so I'm curious as to what you do to kind of stay focused? Yeah. Oh, I love this question so much. It's actually interesting. One of my listeners to this podcast recently had published a video and she was analyzing and deep diving a few different female leaders in the business space. And she was saying like, these are the things that you wouldn't know just from looking at them. And one of them was a trend across all of us was that we got really good at one thing before we moved on to the next.

16:11and I have seen this in so many areas of my business. And I think too, it's hard because we're multi-passionate, multi-hyphenate people. Nobody can put us in a box, right? Like that is just our MO in the most beautiful way, but also it can cause a lot of confusion both for ourselves and for our audiences. And so one of the things that has been so helpful for me is when I get really excited. And when I have an idea, I commit to seeing it through all the way to completion. And one of the things that has been really helpful is once I get a rhythm down, I try to create systems, processes, just anything to lighten the load of that.

16:56So for example, when I started the podcast, it was just one episode a week. It was a total experiment. And I said, okay, I'm not going to overcommit. I'm not going to say I'm going to do this until the end of time. I'm going to do this for the next 90 days and just see how it feels. And so two things here. One is, especially for people that are prone to shiny object syndrome, do not create offers, experiences, or projects that have no end date. Because to us, that is like the biggest killer of creativity. If you don't feel like you have an out, you're likely to start hating that thing right away.

17:28I had a friend who has shiny object syndrome and she told me she was launching a podcast. I said, how about this? How about you commit to 10 episodes and just do one quote season of the podcast before you decide if you want to do it ongoing? Or I had another friend who wanted to do a mastermind that was a year long. And I said, why don't you just do it for a quarter or six months before you commit to a year long so that you don't trap yourself into an offer that you don't actually want to deliver on? And so that would be the first piece of advice is to create opportunities for you to exit the things if they aren't in alignment or if they don't fit.

18:03I don't want you to hear that you can just walk away from every project half finished and never finish anything because I think that can also happen. And so to avoid that from happening, figure out ways to commit on just one thing and go really deep on it and get really good at it. Because a lot of times I think when we remove a lot of the complexity and we can see the easier systems within it, it's a lot easier for us to follow through. And for people like you and I, a lot of times we crave chaos. We like to throw chaos into the mix of things, even when it's unnecessary. And so I have learned to love having structure and systems when in the past that felt stifling to me.

18:43Now that unlocks my freedom, my creativity in ways that I never thought before. And so when I think of the different areas of my business, I didn't just start my business blogging every day, podcasting twice a week, showing up on social three times a day, being on LinkedIn. I did not do all of those things at once. I was very linear and doing one thing at a time until I had a system and a process in place that would either allow me to get help and support in it or make it a lot lighter of a lift. And so those would be the two pieces of advice that I have. Do you have any questions about that? Yeah.

19:19So I hear you talking about systems and getting those set in place. And for me, I hear that and probably just like you, when you started out, like my initial reaction is, you know, like I don't want to do that. And so how did you like, how did you make that transition, I guess, into, okay, I can follow these systems. I can follow through. What was the missing piece, I guess? What changed that for you? Okay. I felt the same way. So here's a funny story. So when I had my first daughter nearly six years ago, or I guess over six years ago, I finally hired someone who was really good at ops and just figuring out the business.

20:04She was my integrator. And I remember her asking, like, what project management system do you use? And I was like, we don't have one. And she's like, when do you do team calls? And I was like, I don't like calls. I don't like being roped into commitments. I don't know. And so she walked in to like, what in the heck, how is this business even running type vibes? I'm sure you see this on the back end of a lot of your clients and perhaps it might be the same for your business as well. And I felt the same way. Any sort of system and structure. It literally felt like I was being pinched into a box that I couldn't climb out of.

20:40It felt so stifling and paralyzing. And I've really had to work hard to reframe that. I think motherhood forced me a lot of ways to reframe that where I don't have all the time in the world to be doing this. And there are ways that these things are supporting me and getting the most impactful work done first. But I also have realized that you don't have to have your entire business systemized. You don't have to have standard operating procedures for every single thing. But in the areas where you might be resistant to do the work, or you might add unnecessary complexity, or you might have a hard time letting go of and letting someone step in, And when you build out those things, it allows you to have more space and time to be creative, which is honestly what I think is our superpower.

21:34And so a lot of times we can't even unlock our creativity because we're so busy chasing our tail, responding to the inbox, hitting up slacks and doing all these different things. And so the more structure I've added into my business, the more I felt like I've been able to be creative. And so it was actually the opposite impact that I was anticipating in terms of offering in some of those systems and structures. So now I love systems and structure. I love having, you know, this is the way that our brand does this. This is how we do it. This is the start to finish thing so that either I can hand off some of the things that I no longer want to do or I don't feel called to do to other people or so that I can do like the deep work and have the freedom to do it knowing what the terms are.

22:25I think boundaries are actually a huge blessing for people with ADHD because we know no limits and we can go, you know, balls to the wall on all the things. And so I feel like boundaries actually give us a safe container to create in. Yeah. Okay. So what I'm hearing is that there was a little bit of just like getting a little support and accountability maybe, and then recognizing how wonderful and how impactful it could be for your business and time-saving, et cetera. Yes. And it changed the way that I look at things as well because now everything is a rinse and repeat pattern. And so it doesn't feel so unpredictable and out of control, which I think is something that some of us secretly crave is that chaos.

23:15But I think that there is so much peace in being able to kind of know what's coming next and what that looks like. And so again, it's like reframing it from being like stifling to have it being freeing and like kind of changing the way that we look at some of those things. And again, you don't have to have structure and processes and systems in every area of your life, but if you can put it in to a certain few places, I think it will just unlock a lot of the reasons why you became an entrepreneur in the first place, which is to have the freedom to be creative, to try new things to explore. Yeah.

23:51Okay. I love that. Thank you. Okay. So my next question then would be jumping back just a little bit. I have so many ideas and passions. And so, like I said, I have shiny object syndrome. I'm jumping from thing to thing. Even if I can embrace that accountability and getting structured, how do you know when you've created an offer that is the one, the one offer you should focus on? You talked earlier about Pareto's principle and getting focused. So how do I know which one is the one to focus on if I'm kind of bent all over and I don't necessarily have a bunch of data necessarily to help me make those kinds of decisions?

24:37Yes. Okay. So I have a challenge for you. So I recently started doing private coaching for a few different clients who are friends of mine who I know their businesses inside and out. And one of the trends that I noticed is that there is this deep desire that if I am not creating something new, I am no longer relevant or I am no, this isn't exciting. And so I have been teaching people how to dig for gold in the business that is currently standing today without any new offers. And I think there are so many people just like you, Diana, who are literally sitting on gold mines and beautiful offers that were created with so much energy and excitement that never really got the full attention it deserved in order to make the impact that it was intended to make.

25:25And so what I would do is if I were you, I would make a little inventory, like a forensic style inventory of what offers you have. And then I would sit down and make a little promotional calendar and figure out like, okay, because what's so fascinating to me is that we spend like 90 % of our time creating these offers and 10 % of our time marketing them. And again, we could flip it in Pareto's principle and be like, what if we spent 80 % of our time marketing these offers and just 20 % of our time creating them? How would that change the outcome and the results. And I think that is like where the gold lies.

26:04And so something that's so interesting about me, who is also shiny object syndrome, who is also easily excitable, is that I've had to one, get really clear on what ideas are meant for me. And this was something I had to learn basically diving off the deep end when I started attending masterminds where one person over here has a super amazing membership site. And then this person does in-person events. And then this person has a$100 ,000 mastermind and like all these things. And it's like, okay, I could do any of those things, but like what is actually in alignment with what I say matters the most and what I truly want for my life and business.

26:41So one is getting really clear at filtering. And something I would maybe consider is if you have a lot of different voices in your brain as to what is the way to run the business. Like you said, you have like the mini course and then you could do the group coaching and then you could do X, Y, and Z is like, one, how do we kind of quiet those voices a little bit so that you can hear your own voice again? But then two, how do we look at what is already created and give it the time and attention it deserves to make the impact that it was intended to make? And so for me, what is interesting is that since I became a mom, my business has been rinse and repeat for the last six years.