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You’ve probably heard of the saying FOMO before. It’s the fear of missing out on experiences when you see other people doing them. FOMO can happen in your personal life, and it’s a real phenomenon in business as well. It seems like every day there’s a new business fad that’s being touted as the next big thing to make you a gazillion dollars.
Pivoting, growing, and experimenting is good for business. Pursuing every fad haphazardly because you don’t want to miss out on the fun can be terrible for business. A business grows out of consistency and switching your approach to keep up with trends will pull you in all different directions. Here are some ways I’m working on overcoming business FOMO:
Take Social Media Fasts
I take social media breaks for my personal life and business life. Social media fasts can be helpful if you’re working on a big project or idea. It limits how much outside influence you’re getting that can impact your work.
Looking at competitors for market research at the beginning is necessary. But afterward, you want complete tunnel vision when you’re working on a project like a book, coaching program, or course.
Create With the Customer in Mind
Listen to your customer and shut everything else out when you feel pressure to follow the crowd. What is working for some business owners may not work for you. You can miss out on opportunities to best serve your customer when you’re looking at other business owners for direction.
For example, if your audience loves reading your blog and they tell you they’re interested in a book from you, you should write a book. But you could hop online and see that business owners are having huge success with courses and decide to do a course instead.
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Would that make sense for your business? Would it be well received by your audience? Maybe or maybe not. Don’t create something because of FOMO. Create it because it’s right for your customer.
Commit to Seeing Things Through
Recognize if you have problems with seeing things through because you’re always jumping from one fad to another. This is something I’ve struggled with for a while in my business. When it comes to client work, I’m always committed to producing and being consistent. When it comes to creating my own products, I can jump on and off the bandwagon of consistency.
Now I commit to seeing a strategy through before throwing my hands up and moving on to the next thing. Hopping around from idea to idea because you don’t want to miss out on a trend isn’t helpful to anyone. It means that you’re never giving one thing your full attention. With this approach, it’s much harder to see results and your customers get confused.
I see this a lot with new bloggers. When things don’t work out within the first few weeks, they’re on to the next thing. This is perfectly fine if you decide blogging is not for you. But you do have to understand that it takes time and consistency to master blogging.
Final Word
It can be pretty tough to overcome business FOMO when you join the entrepreneurial community. There are so many new ways of doing things and technologies that are coming out to help us do our job. If checking out what other business owners are doing is monopolizing your time, unfollow on social media and recommit that energy to your business.