The fear of missing out can be detrimental if you focus on it too much when you’re developing a business from the ground up. Remember, you aren’t picking a favorite idea forever, just temporarily. Once you have your core business and brand established, you can and should expand accordingly. Banish FOMO with these tips to help nail your best business idea.
How to Pick Your Best Business Idea without Pesky FOMO
1. Relax, Breathe, and Don’t Think About Business for a Few Days.
Before you dive in head first, give yourself a few days to unplug and unwind. Make sure you feel calm, ready, and open-minded about whatever is going to come next. Disconnecting is vital to allow creativity to come out to play and marinade a few ideas until you find the one that feels like the best fit.
2. Let Your Mind Become a Stream of Consciousness That Pours out of You.
Write down every single idea and question that comes to your mind. If one question leads to another, write that down too. Just see where your thoughts take you. Then go back when you’ve had time to do a full brainstorm and group your ideas categorically. Spend some time going back through the topics and see if anything else flows from there.
3. Review, Refresh & Retarget
Review the lists you’ve compiled. What do you want to solve? Ask yourself open-ended but tough questions and force yourself to answer. By the end of the retargeting session, you should be laser-focused on what you want to accomplish so you can write your business plan.
4. Write a Targeted Business Plan That Solves One Major Problem.
Once you’ve worked out everything in your head, it’s time to get to the nitty-gritty details. Commit yourself and your plans to actions and success by putting them on paper. Write out your goals six to 12 months ahead (and make sure your business plan is a living document that you can always adjust as markets change) and drill down as specifically as you can how you will accomplish each goal. Set appropriate benchmarks to measure your results, and report out on the milestones on a regular cadence.
To ensure you don’t have FOMO with your business idea, you need to make sure you offer a solution to a problem for your target audience. Once you’ve solved this problem, you can go back to your list of original ideas, and figure out how to expand your brand and solve for new problems. That’s the beautiful thing about business, there are always new problems to solve, and it’s up to us to use our entrepreneurial detective skills to find new ways to put the puzzle pieces back together.
Have you suffered from FOMO in your business? What has been the hardest part about letting go? Tweet me @lorenridinger.
