5 Reasons Why Comparison Is Killing Your Business

You want to know the fastest way to kill something special? Just try comparing it to something else.

In the latest episode of More Coffee. Less Drama, we talked about comparison and if you want to listen to that episode, Click Here.

Look, this is free advice, you can obviously take it with a pinch of salt. But, I really believe in what I’m talking about here today.

One of the main reasons why I really wanted to bring this up is because I have so many people that come to me, and especially recently. They are say things to me like, “Kayla, I’m so frustrated that I’m just now finding out about this, I should have been applying that to my business, I feel like I should be here, I should be doing this, I should be doing that…” And they just are constantly saying to me, “I see what this person is doing over here and I’m not doing enough, I should be doing this.”

Or they kind of plug into those programs by like Amy Porterfield or they listen to podcasts non-stop. There’s this influx of information and they feel like because they’re not doing all of it that they’re failing, because they’re comparing themselves to somebody who already has a $600,000 plus business online who’s telling them all of these things that they did to be successful. Because they’re not doing it, or doing it within a timeframe they have in their mind, they feel like they’re failing.

I want to kind of stop that noise today for a second, and I want us to just sit with a few things here. Some of this might make you uncomfortable. So, make your coffee a little extra strong today!

That was me being totally unapologetic for what I’m about to put you through.

We’re going to talk through five main points today. And all of these points point revolve around the idea that if you let these things into your business, it will not only slowly drain the life out of your business, but out of you as a person.

#1. Comparison kills your business when you make assumptions.

A lot of times these assumptions are unfair. Like when you see what other people are doing online, and you’re say: “Oh, she has her life together! What am I doing?!” Guys, you don’t know what people are dealing with behind the scenes. Maybe they have a family crisis, maybe they’re going through something really difficult. Maybe their husbands are deployed! HI! (that’s me right here). Maybe they are just dealing with things that you can’t see.

And because you’re making assumptions, you think, “they’re just, they’re just amazing, and they really have their act together. I wish I could be exactly like them.”

Honestly, this type of thinking makes you a lot less empathetic as a person, especially online. Goodness gracious the online world right now is so anti-empathetic towards other people. It’s crazy. And comparison is totally contributing to that. we need to watch out for that not only as business owners, but as people.

#2. Comparison Kills Your Business Because it Keeps You From Regular Self Evaluation.

If you’re constantly comparing, you don’t have the time to sit back and look back and say, “what have I really accomplished? What do I really want to accomplish?” You’re listening to pretty much everything and anything except what you need to be listening to.

What you should be listening to is your own intuition, your own goals, and your own thoughts.

Maplewild marketing

Do you ever just sit with those and really, really ask yourself introspective questions about “where do I want to be in the next week, the next month?” Or do you look and say, “Well, this is where she says I need to be. So that’s where I need to be.” When you listen to all of those things and let them filter through to the core of your business? It’s really a toxic situation for you because that regular self evaluation is where you really grow as a business owner and ultimately as a person – just like the first point.

#3. Comparison Kills Your Business Because It Paralyzes You.

Why? It turns you into a perfectionist. Most of the people that I’ve worked with have this problem with comparison and perfectionism. And because they become this perfectionist about everything. They become paralyzed.

The only thing that you should fear is not actually taking action.

Maplewild Marketing

A lot of the business owners that I know who have this comparison, that turns into perfectionism, they get stuck in a rut. They can’t think of new ideas, and they’re afraid to move forward, because they’re afraid they’re going to do the wrong thing. If you take small, consistent baby steps towards goals, then you’re going to be much better off as a person.

#4. Comparison Kills Your Business When You Create Unrealistic Goals.

Here’s something you need to hear as we go into goal setting: The comparison aspect can keep you from creating realistic goals. I’m totally picking on Amy Porterfield here, but I’m just using it as an example. She has this course about email marketing. Maybe an unrealistic goal would look like: “I want to have 2000 followers on my email list by the end of the month.” (And you’re saying this on the 15th of the month. Y’all – that’s not realistic!

You, you need to say, “Okay, well, I need to add 100 people to my email list in the next three to six months. Take a more bite-sized, realistic approach to what you’re doing. Because if you don’t, you’re going to constantly put yourself back in that vicious cycle of comparing.

We have to be very, very careful that we tow this line of having realistic expectations, and goals for ourselves. One of the goals I have, for example, was to update my website by February 1, ding, ding, I completed that, but I’m not totally done with it. Because one of the sub goals of that is updating all of the things on my dubsado platform, which by the way, if you don’t know what dubsado, they’re amazing. (It’s my client management platform.) And I have to go through there and update all of my pricing there.

Realistic goals are goals you can accomplish and not feel like a failure. When you set realistic goals, you no longer need to look to other businesses to define where your business needs to be.

#5. Comparison Kills Your Business Because It Keeps You From Setting Healthy Boundaries.

You cannot set healthy boundaries when you are constantly playing this comparison game. Setting healthy boundaries might look like: getting off of social media – if you heard that “such and so” interacts with her followers for 3+ hours a day, maybe that’s not what you should do!

I presented my business and talked about kind of what I was struggling with and what I was going through in front of a panel of like 20 other business owners, and it was intimidating for me. I was excited for it though, because I think it’s a really good idea to do this with people to get feedback and helpful insight. One of the struggles I was talking with them about last year was the fact that I felt really overwhelmed as one person trying to juggle everything in my business. I wanted to hire somebody, but I didn’t really know what that would look like yet.

People were like “well, you can’t expect to succeed if you’re not willing to put forth the effort to do that and to hire someone, and you should have hired someone already. And I hired someone, and this is what she’s done for me. And you need X, Y, and Z.”

While I appreciated where they were coming from, what they were suggesting just wouldn’t work for me, but I kind of felt like, they were not understanding where I was coming from and where I was in my business at that moment. And that’s me just having the business maturity, which is something I’ve really, I’m still working on, I’m going to be working on forever, probably, but just having the business maturity to say, no, that might work for you.

I actually went out of that meeting feeling incredibly discouraged and like I was doing something wrong, because I was comparing myself to where they were at. And I was thinking, gosh, “if I only did that, then maybe I really would be ahead.” But really in thinking about it, you know, in the in the following week, and month or so after that meeting, I thought to myself, “no, I’m right where I need to be. Yes, I’m uncomfortable right now. But I’m really allowing myself to grow in the thought process of like the direction I want my company to go, how I want it to feel to my clients, and what will actually make sense for me, not just for the short term to kind of alleviate what I’m feeling, but in the long term.”

I put up a healthy boundary for myself by allowing self evaluation, and growing some duck feathers in that week, to just continue staying in my lane, taking their advice with a grain of salt and taking bits and pieces of what they said to heart, and that’s the full circle of what’s possible when you don’t allow comparison to control you.

I think you kind of have to do that kind of approach to everything that you have in your business. Whether it’s content, whether it’s hiring someone, whether it’s the amount of time you’re spending on social media, the types of people that you are following on social media, and just wrapping your own brain and business maturity around the fact that comparison is just just very, very toxic for your business, and for your overall mindset as a business owner.

It’s something that we all kind of need to strive against and run away from. And I want to leave you with just with this quote here.

Comparison will strip you of power, of grace and of influence. Each person is unique. How then can you possibly compare unique to unique? You can’t. And when you try, you will annihilate your own brilliance.

Amy Larson

That’s a wrap for this week! Next week, I’m super excited to announce that we are going to be discussing Instagram stories. It’s part one of a two part series. I’m so excited to share all things Instagram stories with you. You know I love Instagram stories. I was on them before it was cool to be on them, and it will be so fun to share that with you. Can’t wait!