The Tug of War

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the List Building Lifestyle Show hosted by the one and only Igor Kheifets. Now, let me clarify first this is not the real Tucker Carlson speaking. It’s an artificially generated voice, but we’re here for something special. Today Igor is diving into a fascinating topic that affects us all: the shiny object syndrome. What is that you may ask? It’s an irresistible urge to jump from one exciting thing to another without giving it much thought. In this episode, Igor will share his insights on how he deals with the constant flood of opportunities in his world. Imagine being in his shoes, getting bombarded with new ideas every day. It’s not always easy to stay on course. Now here’s the trick, you can avoid this shiny object syndrome completely. Instead, you need to manage it. It’s like having your cake and eating it too, but with a plan. So get ready for today’s List Building Lifestyle Show where we’re exploring the world of emails, opportunities, and handling those tempting distractions. Let’s kick things off.

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I’m Igor Kheifets and this is the List Building Lifestyle. The podcast for anyone who wants to build a wildly profitable email list working from home. If you’d like to make six figures, travel the world and help people improve their lives in the process, this podcast is for you. I also invite you to claim a free copy of my best selling book, the List Building Lifestyle Confessions of an Email Millionaire at igorsbook.com. Get the free book plus $3,000 bonus package that includes my best capture page templates, email swipe files, and traffic blueprints, visit www.igorsbook.com for details. And now it’s time to claim your list building lifestyle. 

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Shiny Object Syndrome is when your attention is automatically moving from one thing to the next. And it’s actually not just limited to chasing, you know, money making methods, which is how you and I do it, right? I mean, I’m actually not immune to Shiny Object Syndrome right now, you know, get exposed to so much stuff, I mean, a man in my position, if you will, a leader in the industry, you know, I get opportunities on my desk, my virtual desk, quite literally every single day by the dozens. And so now the Shiny Object Syndrome is being triggered because on one hand, I got this good thing going on and making a lot of money and it’s fun, and it gives me freedom. But then another new thing comes up. And before he could even evaluate whether this new thing is right for me. You know, just my brain goes gee, you know, ding, ding, ding Yes, opportunity. 

Take it, take it, take it. Now. It’s actually not a bad thing, if you think about it, because the fact that we are decisive, you can be decisive about other opportunities and to do so I’m extremely decisive. And being an entrepreneur is actually a requirement to be decisive. You can’t be a great entrepreneur, whether you have one business or several like I do, and be indecisive, it’s just not going to happen. And again, anyone you ask about me, who knows me personally, they’ll tell you that I’m an extremely decisive individual, meaning that I bring this attitude not only for my business, but also bring this out to me in my life. So like, if there’s a decision to be made, I’m the guy to make it. And because of that, it’s very easy for me to say yes to shiny objects. Now, the other reason that happens is because novelty is a crazy powerful concept. If you think about it, novelty drives everything. You look into any industry, let’s take car manufacturing, you’ve got any car company, you know, yellow one out, I know, Chevrolet, Bondi, Ferrari doesn’t matter. They produce new cars every year. 

Now, what’s really funny is that the new cars they produce, they’re pretty much the same cars, there might be a slightly different headlight, there might be an improvement on the electrical components, there might be a slightly better safety feature. But if you look at the cars, for the last 10-15 years, you’ll see the cars are pretty much the same. They’re just sort of relaunching it as new things, but they’re like, almost identical. And you know, the only time that you’re truly seeing new stuff is when they come up with a proper new car in the lineup. So what I mean is, let’s take Mercedes, Mercedes has a crazy lineup, right? There’s a Class B, Class C, class E, Class S, there’s vans, there’s trucks. So when they release, you know, let’s say, in 2035, they’ll release the Mercedes E Class. Now, in 2036, they’ll release a Mercedes E Class and it’s going to be almost exactly the same. Their dashboard will look the same. The electrical components look the same and Everything is the same besides maybe a few different lines on the outside, maybe headlines will be updated, maybe an extra feature added or removed. 

But it mostly will be the same. And you know, this, if you ever had a lease expire, and you know, had a short term lease and you go get a new car, it’s like almost it feels the same, drive the same, it’s the same thing. Now, a totally new car would mean that Mercedes releases something like a Mercedes X class or something, right, then it’s a new car. And yet, this is enough to trigger the market to want the new thing, right? So you’ve probably had that, like you’ve just bought a car. And then six months later, they announced the next generation of that car, and you’re like, Oh, I would love that car. Right. So the novelty of it is just the primary driver, and nobody’s at fault. So it will happen, it will keep happening. And it’s probably triggered on steroids, like on a whole other level when it comes to making money because the novelty of it is also paired with a desire to make money. 

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Now, in case you didn’t know this,the desire to make money actually, at this point in time in our brain triggers the same areas of the brain, as sex, I believe, and shelter or some kind of survival mechanism. So in other words, if you get, if you hook yourself up to an MRI, and you show yourself images of sex, images of like food, or some kind of vital survival thing, and images of money, or some like success, or yachts, or big mansions, etc, it’ll actually trigger the same area in the brain, it’s impossible to ignore. So that is why managing the shiny object syndrome is a very difficult thing to do. And it’s a very difficult thing to do not only for somebody who’s not successful, yet, we’re gonna build them themselves up for success, but also for very successful people. I know lots of successful people in this industry. And you wouldn’t believe how many of them walk away from perfectly good online businesses, making them multiple, six figures, low seven figures every single year, in favor of a new thing they wanted to do, you wouldn’t believe how many of them have a perfectly good thing going on, and then do to ruin it, they go and take on two or three or four other projects. And can you imagine how difficult it is for them. Now having the self confidence and the skill set that they’ve built to build these online businesses? Basically, if you think everything is super easy, and everything, you know, is within reach for them. So how do you manage it? 

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The real answer is, you don’t just allow yourself to indulge. But you indulge to an extent, meaning you kind of have your primary thing, right? And then you can have a few sight things, maybe one or two, but no more than that. But you also have to compartmentalize in your brain that your primary thing is your primary thing. And it gets the first few hours every single day. When I wake up in the morning, I clearly understand it’s a decision I make before I wake up, it’s a decision I make the day before, the week before, the month before, the quarter before, that my primary thing is this thing. And I wake up and I have to exert discipline and self control to invest time only into my primary thing until 11am. Or if you’re working at night, then you know, whatever the first few hours of your work time. So if you can do that, you will always be advancing in your primary thing. And then the remaining time you can put into those side things you’re interested in. Does that make sense? Meaning that it’s okay to indulge into the next shiny object. If you’re advancing in the primary thing that you set out to do. Okay, that’s how you manage it. You can’t avoid it. And then whatever the leftover time and attention is you can devote it to the side thing to get that dopamine rush right, but not before.

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Thank you for listening to the list building lifestyle. Get access to the previous episodes transcript of today’s show, as well as other exclusive content at listbuildinglifestyleshow.com. Also remember to claim your free copy of my best selling book at www.igorsbook.com. It explains how I made millions with list building starting from scratch. Plus, I’ll give you $3,000 worth of free bonuses, including my best landing page templates, email swipe files and traffic blueprints. Go to www.igorsbook.com Now to claim your free package.