I’m a karate parent and the other day, while I was sitting on the benches at the dojo, I was watching the kids doing their warm up routine. When we started going there, my kid couldn’t do a single sit up. But every week, twice a week, she did her small crunches. Now she can do sit ups with the best of them.

We see this metaphor in the fitness industry allthetime: start where you are.

BUT…

We don’t often talk about it in business.

The other day I was on an IG Live with my friend, Erika Tebbens, and we were speaking about comparisonitis and how damaging it can be for entrepreneurs.

Without going deeply into the ethics behind the marketing of many of these massive launches, it can still be deflating to watch people talk about their hundreds of participants or their huge revenue goals. It can be hard to scroll past the heavily curated success.

SO HANG ON…

If you’re comparing yourself to someone with a much much larger audience, you are doing yourself a huge disservice. Think about it: if they say they’ve enrolled 500 people in their new online program but you only have that many in your audience, it would be a statistical miracle if you enrolled the same number of participants.

AND – this is only part of the formula – if you knew all of their numbers, you may actually be doing just as well as these folk (or better) in terms of conversion rate. The point is, you don’t know the entirety (conversion rate, affiliate payouts, expenses, etc) so it isn’t a fair comparison.

Going back to those sit ups.

It’s not helpful to watch the other kids in the class powering through their warm up. We don’t know their behind the scenes: how often they practice at home, how long they’ve been doing it, what their previous fitness experience is, their natural physiology, or what kind of pressure they’re under to perform.

All you can do is your one crunch at a time. As you progress, you’ll get better.

If you want to progress faster, you can work on your form, make sure you’re positioning yourself in the way that works best for your body, practice, and persist.

See where I’m going here? It’s the same for your business.

Your form and your positioning are your Foundations, your practice and persist are your Sparks. Lay a good solid base for success then make the plan, work the plan, and iterate.

Whether you do this solo or with help, you must start where you are, keep your eye on your goal, and…if you find yourself caught up in comparisonitis, you must notice and reprioritize.

You don’t need the distraction; you’ve got better things to do in the world.

I gotchu.