Fitness Business School – Business Mistake #4 – Comparison Syndrome

Full Transcript

Hey, Pat Rigsby here. And in today’s episode, I want to talk with you about another common business challenge and how to overcome it. Comparison syndrome seems to really drag a lot of business owners down, but we’re going to talk about how you can break through it. Let’s get started.

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All right, let’s talk about comparison syndrome. You know, I think we all deal with this and this is not exclusive to business owners. We see people on social media, which is where this has really become magnified. We see their, what I call the highlight reel. We see what people want to put forward. They’re always going to put, you know, their successes forward, their wins, the, you know, the pictures of people on vacation, the, the highlights of the client successes or the business growth or the expansion. But the problem that we face is we see that in maybe we fall, fall prey to becoming envious of that, but we don’t know what’s actually happening behind the scenes.

And that’s not to say that people aren’t achieving the things that they’re putting forward in social media, maybe they are. But what we’re not seeing is what’s happened for them to get there. We’re not seeing the journey that somebody followed the trials, the tribulations, the challenges that they’ve overcome to get to the point that they’re at. We don’t see the inner workings of the business. So, you know, when somebody talks about how having a business doing 30, 40, 50, maybe even a hundred thousand dollars a month in gross revenue, we don’t know their profit margin. When somebody talks about having a second, a third, a fourth location, we don’t know how healthy that first location was. We don’t know how much debt that they accrued. Nobody’s showing their balance in their retirement account. Nobody’s showing what their profit margins are. Nobody’s showing what their retention rate is, right? All of these metrics that could probably give us a little bit better understanding of what’s going on behind the scenes. And then the, the other side of this is we see people saying, okay, Hey, I launched this new corporate fitness program or this supplement profit center into my business or this new nutrition coaching segment of my business, or I just got five new online clients. And we see people doing these other things, and maybe it pulls us off track or using a different tactic. They’re trying this new funnel. And again, we allow it to pull us off track instead of staying our course and pursuing what our vision is.

So here’s the way that I would tell you to navigate using this kind of comparison thing to our advantage, whether that’s looking at businesses and business owners that you may admire, that you aspire to to, to learn from, to achieve similar results to, you know, we can look at that or we can compare to our competitors. So how do we actually use this to our advantage? And it not be an anchor that drags us down? Well, the first thing that we need to do is understand that all of us are running our own race. Each of us are really only pursuing our own vision. And what other people are doing is always going to be kind of apples to oranges, right? Because you bring your own things to the table, your own goals, your own background, your own education experience expertise. We also bring our own kind of, I guess, biases, interests, strengths, just to give you an idea of how this works for me, because I’ve, I’ve fallen prey to this so many times, right? I would see other people that I felt like, Hey, you know what? I bring as much to the table as that person does. Why is that person, you know, flying around in private jets or, or living in big mansions, you know ocean, front villas, all these wonderful things that people show on social media, but the more I kind of trace things back, I understood, okay, here’s what my values are. I want to have a family, family focused business, something that allows me to put my family first. I want to work with a certain type of client, a type of client that you know, is really service minded and cares about the results that they’re delivering to the people that they serve. I want to work kind of within my own guardrails, my own schedule. You know, taking the time off that I want really kind of doing things the way that I want to do them.

So when I think about, okay, I’m crafting a business to serve my goals and to serve the people that I want to serve. Now, anything that I’m trying to compare to, you know, it’s going to be a really different set of goals that each other person has, right? They’re going to have their own vision. Maybe it’s gross revenue, maybe it’s, you know, a number of clients, maybe it’s just, you know, so they can present a certain image online. Well, what’s happened. Establish what my vision is. And really where I’m trying to go, everything that I should be doing should be moving incrementally closer to that target, moving towards where I want to be, or maybe away from where I began. And sure I can use those other things to learn from to maybe even get some inspiration or motivation from, because see somebody else’s success doesn’t prohibit me. It can only help me understand that, Hey, maybe the things I want to achieve are even more attainable than I originally thought, because here’s one other person over, you know across the country, doing what I want to do. They’re pursuing their own vision. They’re pursuing their own dreams. So don’t let somebody else’s success be an anchor, use it as an inspiration.

Don’t let somebody else’s path pull you off yours. The comparison thing is a losing battle, right? Because we’re never going to know everything that’s happening. We’re never going to get a 100% transparent view of somebody else’s situation, but other people’s successes or other people’s path can certainly give us some insight to improve our own. So my recommendation to you is very simple. Figure out where you want to go figure out the things that you feel are important to get there. The values that you want to adhere to the, the strengths that you want to play to the people that you want to work with, the things you want to spend your time on. And when you do that, now we can craft an actual plan, a roadmap. If you will, to go from where we are to where we aspire to be, then the only thing you need to compare to is where you were yesterday. And did you make progress? So you’re a little bit further along that path today, if you did, you’re winning this comparison game instead of falling prey to it.

Thanks for listening. I’m giving away a bundle of my bestselling books, the ideal business formula, the fitness entrepreneur handbook in the path. All you have to do is go to patrigsby.com/podgift to get it. Also, make sure to subscribe to The Fitness Business School with Pat Rigsby so you don’t miss an episode and you get yourself on the fast track to creating your ideal business.