Why You Should Stop Comparing Yourself to Others in Your Niche

Comparing yourself to others. Yikes.

It happens to the best of us…

How many times a day do you log in to Instagram or Facebook, see a post from a competitor, click through to their blog or sales page…

…and keep on clickin’?

Before you know it, it’s two hours later and you forgot what you were supposed to be doing. Not only that, you feel completely overwhelmed and defeated! Your entire day unravels because you start trying to figure out what THEY’RE doing instead of focusing on what YOU’RE doing. 

That’s when the demon voices kick into overdrive:

• Why would anyone work with me over them?
• My business will never succeed the way I want!
• I’ll never catch up, what’s the point?
• I’m probably not even good at what I’m doing!

It’s a fast-track to spiraling out.

Now, I don’t think it’s a bad thing to pick your head up every now and then to take a look at your competitive landscape. You can learn a lot by following the strategies of other marketers, bloggers, and business owners.

But…

It can also mess with your head!

There always seems to be another “overnight success” who rolled out of bed, came up with an idea, and made a million dollars before breakfast. And they LOOVE to tell you what you need to do to mimic their success.

So there you are…trying to squeeze in a blog post, fix your website, craft an email, work a 9 to 5 job, and care for your family all at the same time…wondering, What am I doing wrong?

Don’t worry, it’s not you.

A lot of people only tell you the good stuff. And they make everything they do sound oh-so easy and awesome.

The truth is, there’s no cookie-cutter formula to success, even in online business.

It’s just like anything else: Keep your head down, focus on what’s in front of you, put in the time and hard work, and results will follow.

Today, I want to encourage you to stay the course! And whatever you do, don’t compare yourself to others.

When you feel like you want to jump ship, it’s likely because you’re spending too much eye-spying. So shut everything down! Log out of Instagram, leave your Facebook groups, unfollow your competitors, unsubscribe from their lists…

…and remember these four truths: 

1) There’s always something they’re not telling you.

Most likely, it’s the hustle muscle they had to stretch to get to where they are right now.

The years of trial and error…

The twist and turns they had to take…

The ads that lost money…

The thousands of times they felt like giving up…

Being an entrepreneur is not for the faint of heart.

If it were easy, you and I and everyone else would be overnight successes.

I’ll tell you what happens overnight:

You toss and turn trying to figure out what your sales funnels should look like, or why you can’t segment your list the way you want, or what kind of free resource you should create, or faster ways to build your email list.

Yep, THAT’s the definition of entrepreneurship. 

Before you start comparing yourself to others and their success stories, peel back the layers. You’ll likely find years of hard work and failure before the gold rush. No matter what business you’re in, you can’t bypass hard work. Creating something out of nothing. Takes. Time.

2) There’s more than one way to do EVERYTHING.

This one kills me!

Expert A says run Facebook ads. Expert B says focus on SEO and guest posting. Expert C says host giveaways.

And then there’s Expert D telling you the only way to launch is with webinars (or video sales letters, or free courses, or elaborate email campaigns, yada yada).

It’s EXHAUSTING, friend.

Truth is, there’s more than one way to skin an online marketing cat (did I just say “skin a cat”? I think I did ?)

And please keep this in mind with any latest, greatest strategy you come across:

What works for others may not work for you.

I’ve experienced this time and again. I’ll implement a strategy that’s been getting a lot of buzz, and it totally flops.

For example:

I recently decided to explore JV webinars, and all I can say is What a disaster! I would never recommend them to anyone. First of all, they’re quite complex. And second, the technology isn’t there yet (or the tech that WAS there is gone, or whatever). All I know is, they’re not for me.

And here’s the thing:

It doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with YOU or what you’re doing.

So if you apply a strategy that fails you, please don’t take it to heart or fall back into the trap of comparing yourself to others again. You’re not “missing” some big secret or anything crazy like that.

Could be the strategy is too complicated for your needs. Or not a good fit for your business model. Or just plain not right for you at this juncture.

3) Some things are supposed to be confusing.

Not everything, for sure.

But as you grow, you’re going to experiment with new ideas, tactics, and strategies.

The first time you identify your target market, start using Instagram, create a course, host a webinar, plan your content strategy, create offers, build sales funnels, whatever it is…you’ll likely feel confused before you feel confident.

That’s how it’s supposed to be!

Most marketing strategies are complex systems with dozens of moving parts. It will take some time for you to sort through them all and experiment before you hit your “aha” moment where everything makes sense.

Here’s what I do when I feel overwhelmed by new information:

I let all that confusion sink in.

And I admit…it’s no picnic. It feels downright scary and uncomfortable. But feeling uncomfortable is (more than a little) okay, in my book. Confusion is a symptom of your brain processing new information and figuring out what to do with it.

Let it do its thing!

4) Focus on making stuff people want.

Sounds obvious, right?

Create stuff people want, and you can practically throw every expert strategy you ever read right out the window.

Problem is, so many of us make the fatal mistake in creating products WE want. Or products we THINK people should want.

That’s why “obvious” isn’t a direct path to easy. ?

It’s hard to figure out what people need…your unique selling proposition…how to stand out from others…which niche you should go after…and all the rest of it.

And sadly, there’s no framework, platform, or marketing tactic that will help you if you haven’t validated your business idea. Before any marketing play will work, you need to have something of value to deliver, and a group of people who raise their hand for it and say, Yes.

Most experts don’t spend much time talking about that because it’s not sexy. And that’s a shame because having something people want is critical to your success.

Who are you “in it” to help and serve? What do they need?

Make sure you focus on THEM and not you. If your people want peanut butter, give ’em the best peanut butter they ever had. You can always introduce your favorite jams and jellies later. ?

What do you think about these ideas?

If you want to put these into play for real, I’d love to work with you 1-ON-1. I’m still offering unbelievably low coaching packages – but that rate is increasing soon!