Anne and I (and many other people!) call it shiny object syndrome. It happens to everyone — creatives, non-creatives, and I guess people who fall somewhere on the creativity spectrum.

It happens when you’re in the muck. Working on a project that feels important but just won’t end.

Then you see a blog post about someone who put underwear on cats, videotaped them, then somehow made a million dollars in the process.

You start scheming.

“Okay, so I don’t have a cat, but that’s an easily solved problem. The humane society always has cats. There are cats in the neighborhood. Maybe I don’t have to have my own cats? Maybe I can see if my neighbors will let me use their cats.”

You brainstorm URLs.

Suddenly, you’re Googling for “cat photo release waivers” and you know.

You’re just avoiding doing the work in front of you.

Starting fresh is so appealing.

Endlessly appealing.

Even the phrase “a clean slate” is so satisfying.

Because, chances are, the project that you’re working on, the one where you’re just slogging through to get to the finish line?

That started out so shiny too.

I’m not writing this from a place of “I’ve never once chased a shiny object.” Quite the opposite, actually.

I’ve started a number of different websites and projects. Most of them don’t even get their URLs renewed after the first year.

But it’s funny, because I find myself drawn to the very same things I was drawn to when I first registered “Oprime Marketing LLC” in 2009, when I was working part-time selling brand new farmers market software.

If I hadn’t pursued the sales job on a full-time basis, and instead, did both — grew my marketing company and helped farmers market managers do less work — then, by today, I would have almost a decade of doing marketing work under my belt.

As it stands, marketing is what I read about when I read “business” books. Marketing is the backbone of everything I like on the internet.

It’s where I’m going to focus my energies in 2018. Marketing. For my business, and as my business.

Right now, on top of packing up my house and running 99 other errands, I’m building a webinar about marketing, and I’m really excited about it.

I’ve boiled marketing down to three simple steps that everyone should focus on if they want to grow their online businesses. I realize that doesn’t appeal to most people who are here reading this because you’re my friends who happened to click through from Instagram, even though they make that really hard to do, so thank you.

But I do find it interesting, and worth a bit of introspection, because if I had focused, really focused, then I wouldn’t have started a blog in 2011 because I would have gone a different direction.

It makes me think of The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho, only… less romantic.

Also less epic.

Okay fine, it’s nothing like The Alchemist except in the sense that I feel like I’ve come full circle.

And for the first time in a really long time, I am not affected by shiny objects.

I see them. But I am too interested in seeing where the momentum I feel can take me.

Plus, I know a lot about marketing at this point. I might as well lean into this!

[earnist ref=”the-alchemist” id=”4004″]