We’ve all seen the promise: “You’re just one course away from cracking the code.” The offer that will finally unlock a consistent stream of clients. The content system that will set you free. The secret sauce always suspected you were missing. It’s the classic setup for shiny object syndrome in business.
And if you’re an entrepreneur in the online business world, I bet you’ve felt that pull. Maybe even more than once. The pull of emotional business spending is strong when we’re in survival mode.
I know I have. And I’ve fallen prey to it more times than I wish I had, most recently two times almost back-to-back, which is what prompted me to reflect on what had happened and write about it. What I realized is that both times, I was caught in a spiral of shiny object syndrome in business—convinced that the next solution would be the one.
My shiny object moments
Recently I succumbed to the shiny object phenomenon, not once, but twice in one month.
The first time was a $1300 day-long AI training. I bought it because I believed it would help me make better use of AI in my business. Specifically I hoped to use it to reduce overwhelm and streamline backend operations.
It turned out to be a beginner-level course on using AI to become familiar with my work and my voice in order to use it for content creation. That is valuable for someone just starting out, but not for someone like me who already uses AI in various ways to support content creation. This purchase was classic shiny object syndrome: seeing the promise, missing what was truly going on with me.
The course was great for AI newbies. I’d totally recommend it. It just wasn’t what I needed. Had I known it was an introductory-level training, I wouldn’t have signed up. But I wanted to believe it would move the needle. I hoped it would be the thing that made things easier, that gave me breathing room, that helped me feel less behind. That’s the grip of shiny object syndrome in business: the hope that the next thing will fix everything. I took cash I didn’t really have in my business at the time and a day out of my vacation to do this. What was I thinking???
The truth is, in that moment, I wasn’t thinking. I couldn’t “think” because I was feeling overwhelmed and discouraged. Along came the sales sequence. The first time I dismissed the training because it was more than I wanted to use my cash for at the time, and it was being held in person, during my vacation.
But each email weakened my resolve because of the promises: AI can be my secret weapon. AI can give me more free time. I’d had small wins with AI (this was true) but I was “missing the real goldmine.” (Was I? Is that why I was so stressed out?) This is how shiny object syndrome in business overlaps with survival fear: rational thinking takes a back seat to desperation and hope.
Had I stopped to care for my nervous system and be with my distress at the time, I wouldn’t have registered for the training.
Shiny object: not once but twice
The second time, I bought an under-$50 micro-course on how to create a tiny digital product that sells on autopilot.
What drew me in was the promise: learn how to build a valuable product that would sell without the grind of free content or exhausting launches. (In an hour? For only $50-ish dollars?? I know, right? I’m shaking my head, too. It sounds too good to be true. What was I thinking???)
FOMO and impulse business purchases go hand in hand here. What was I thinking? I was thinking: if I don’t learn this thing, I won’t be able to generate the revenue that would be possible if I did. I’d be missing out.
What I got was a 90-minute sales funnel. The course walked through high-level concepts, pressed on my pain points, and directed me to buy the creator’s high-ticket coaching if I wanted real results.
I had taken an afternoon out of my vacation (face palm… again) to do this program because I was excited and hopeful about getting relief. That’s the emotional arc that makes shiny object syndrome in business so tricky.
In this case, the expenditure was negligible, but the emotional impact was harder to shake. I was saying to myself, “What were you thinking?? How could you have fallen for these sales tactics again??” Most painfully, I was right back in that old place of thinking: Maybe I really don’t know what I’m doing.
Let’s look deeper at what’s actually driving buying decisions like these, how our nervous systems get hijacked in the name of business success, and why the emotional undercurrent of survival is the pain point–AKA purchase motivator–that most marketers are pressing on. Shiny object syndrome in business isn’t really about lack of discipline. It’s about nervous system dysregulation meeting high-stakes uncertainty.
The Closed Loop of Online Business that Feeds FOMO and Shiny Object Syndrome
There’s something uniquely intense about the online business space. It’s intimate, persuasive, and—if we’re being honest—MLM-adjacent. They’re not MLMs in the literal sense, but in the dynamics: a relatively closed system where we’re mostly selling to each other, using the same language, and often appealing to the same fears. Fear-driven marketing is the soil in which shiny object syndrome grows.
In this echo chamber, offers aren’t just about skills or strategy. They carry the weight of salvation. This is the thing that will solve all my problems, give me peace of mind and freedom from stress, and ensure that I have the revenue needed for my business (and me) to survive).
But then there are the fears. If this is my salvation, and I don’t buy it, will I be left behind? Will I fail? Will everyone else figure it out without me?
That’s the siren song of FOMO. But FOMO isn’t just or only fear of missing out. It’s fear. Fear about money. Fear about not being able to make this work. Fear that everyone else has the map and we’re just wandering in circles. Business FOMO is often a mask for shiny object syndrome in business—it looks like ambition, but it’s really anxiety in disguise.
Pain Points in Marketing Activate Survival Responses
There’s a reason those “Are you struggling to get clients?” emails land so hard. Because many of us are, not just in a this-quarter-was-slower-than-I’d-like kind of way, but in a this-is-how-I-feed-my-family kind of way.
For entrepreneurs—especially solopreneurs—the line between business revenue and basic survival is thin. When a coach or course creator presses on our pain point about lead generation or sales conversion, they’re not just poking at a marketing inefficiency. They’re poking at the part of our nervous system that holds our survival fears. It’s in this emotional terrain that so-called shiny object syndrome in business takes hold most fiercely.
When our nervous system is activated, when we’re in a stress or fear state, we’re not thinking clearly. We’re not evaluating offers based on usefulness or alignment. We’re looking for the next shiny thing, the next solution that will solve the problem so we don’t have to be fearful any more.
That’s where buying becomes compulsive, or at least impulsive. Impulse business purchases are nervous system coping strategies, not moral failings.
I’m a big fan of Chani Nicholas (yes, the astrologer) and I’m participating in the Breakthrough course on the Chani app using it to work on my money “mindset.” I’m doing this because I have to practice what I preach but also because it’s the right thing to do for me and my business to have a variety of ways of checking in on my relationship with money.
In my journalling for that course, I noticed something about how spending was showing up in my business at the time when I was feeling overwhelmed and discouraged: inadequacy (not knowing the magic “thing” that would save me) and fear (that if I didn’t find the magic “thing,” my business wouldn’t survive.
Fear + Inadequacy = The Perfect Sales Funnel
There’s a particular cocktail that drives me—and you—to spend money on courses and trainings for business: fear and inadequacy.
Fear: If I don’t buy this, I won’t get clients. I won’t make money. My business will fail.
Inadequacy: I don’t know enough. I’m doing it wrong. Everyone else knows something I don’t.
Mix these together and you get a near-irresistible buying impulse, especially when the offer promises a clear path out. It’s the textbook setup for shiny object syndrome in business.
And of course the pull is worse when there are fewer clients and less money in the bank… which is exactly what was what happening with me at the time when I fell right into the marketing trap.
I wanted to believe there’s a secret. That there’s something I’m just missing. That with the right formula, everything will click into place. Because someone packaged that secret in a shiny sales page, with testimonials and urgency and a sense of belonging to an inner circle, I clicked Buy Now not just because I wanted the result, but because I wanted relief. That’s how shiny object syndrome in business works: it sells hope in moments when we feel hopeless.
Two Purchases, No Transformation: This Is Not Just About Buyer’s Remorse
I’m not writing this to say, “Be more careful when you’re making buying decisions.” These purchases weren’t logical decisions. They were nervous system responses to stress. So it wasn’t about being careful.
When I bought those courses, I was attempting to soothe my nervous system. I wanted to quiet the part of me that said, You’re not doing enough. You’re not getting it right. You’re not going to generate the revenue you need. You’re not going to survive.
In the moment, both of these purchases felt like relief. They gave me hope in the midst of this world of not VUCA but BANI. A world in which there are brittle systems that appear strong and even work well, until they suddenly collapse; in which there is anxiety-provoking chaos, where change is nonlinear because cause and effect are seemingly disconnected or disproportionate, and where everything is incomprehensible because we try to find answers but the answers don’t make sense.
Is it any wonder that these days, I—and you—act in impulsive ways to attempt to manage it all?
How to care for survival fears and FOMO
This isn’t a tidy “just trust yourself more” story. The reason these offers work is that they tap into something real. We do need clients. We do need money. Those aren’t made-up concerns. They are legitimate, urgent, and emotionally loaded.
That’s why we need a new way to relate to those concerns that doesn’t exploit our vulnerability or funnel our fear into purchases that don’t serve us.
Here are the strategies I’m re-learning.
1. Pause When It Feels Urgent
If an offer feels like something I need right this second, that’s my first clue to slow down. Urgency is almost always a nervous system red flag.
2. Get Clear on the Pain Point (and Who Owns It)
What is the real need I’m trying to meet?
- Do I need clarity on my business direction?
- Do I need regulation for my nervous system?
- Do I need operational support?
Then I ask: Is this course actually offering that? Or just naming my pain and selling me a fantasy of relief?
This is often where I need to get out of my own head and check with friends. When my nervous system is activated about survival, I often can convince myself that the nervous-system-based action is the right one. Asking a bestie to sit with me and my discomfort is the way out for me.
3. Use the 24-Hour Rule
I usually give myself 24 hours before buying any course, even low-ticket ones. If it still feels aligned after a good night’s sleep, I’ll revisit it. Most of the time, the urgency passes. And if it doesn’t, that tells me something too.
In the cases above, I did wait 24 hours, and because I was dysregulated overall, that wasn’t enough. I needed more support.
4. Strengthen Your Own Inner Reference Point
This might be the hardest and most important part.
These recent purchases were driven by the fact that my sense of internal authority had been shaken by the economic circumstances. Then, because I didn’t feel confident, I trusted someone else to tell me what to do.
As I said above, it makes complete sense given the circumstances. I used the best strategy available to me in the moment.
And as I also said, this is where support comes in. Your inner reference point can be gently strengthened. Through therapy, nervous system work, somatic awareness, and peer support, you can reconnect with what you do know, and how that can serve you.
You’re not the only one who buys from fear or FOMO
If you’ve spent money on courses that didn’t deliver, welcome to the club. As you just read, I recently did (and that’s not the first time—although it has been a while, which is why the whole thing caught me off guard). When I polled the mastermind group I belong to right now, most of them had too.
You’re running a business in a system that is designed to capitalize on—IOW make money from—your fears.
On the emotional side, the trick is to be proactive. Had I sought support when I was overwhelmed, I wouldn’t have been so vulnerable to the offers. Here’s where someone like me could be helpful.
On the business side, the trick is to have a strategy and hang in there with that strategy. This is where a business coach or fractional marketing office can make all the difference.
I hope you can use some of the tips above when your survival and FOMO fears are activated so you can get resourced and make only purchases that will serve you and your business.
If you want support for strengthening your own inner reference point, or implementing any of the strategies I’ve mentioned above, book a free call with me here.
