You know that feeling when you have an idea and, for a few minutes, it feels really good? You can see it and you’re SO excited about it! Maybe you even grab a notebook and start scribbling things down. “This could actually be something!”, you think to yourself. And then you do what any reasonable person with a brand-new idea does. You get on Instagram “just to do a little research.” Forty-five minutes later, you’ve found someone already doing something similar. Except she has 184,000 followers, a podcast, a course, a team, an awesome website and an office that looks like it came straight from a Pinterest board. And just like that, the idea you were soooo excited about an hour ago suddenly doesn’t feel quite good enough.
Funny how fast that happens, isn’t it? We tell ourselves we’re researching. We’re looking for inspiration. We’re seeing what’s already out there. And sometimes we really are. But there’s a very thin line between being inspired by what someone else has created and accidentally using their success as evidence that we’re already behind. I’ve certainly been guilty of that myself.
You start noticing how often they post. What their website looks like. How many followers they have. What they’re selling. How much they charge. Whether they have a podcast, a newsletter, a YouTube channel, a membership, a course or all of the above. And somewhere along the way, the way you see your idea that you were so excited about, starts to change.
What started as: What would I love to create?
Becomes: What am I supposed to create if I want this to work?
And here’s where comparison enters the room. It doesn’t just make you feel behind. It can completely change the thing you were trying to build. Maybe you started with a simple idea of helping a handful of people one-on-one. Then you see someone with an online course and think you should create a course.
Someone else has a membership. Maybe you need a membership. Everyone seems to have an email funnel. Better figure out what the heck a funnel is. Someone posts twice a day. Should you be posting twice a day?
But wait…did you even want any of those things? There seems to be this unspoken idea online that every business is supposed to keep getting bigger. More followers, more clients, more offers, more revenue, more employees, more everything.
But what if you don’t want more of everything? What if your dream is to have four clients you really enjoy working with? What if you want to teach one workshop a month? What if you want to sell something online that brings in an extra $1,000 every month and that’s enough? What if you want to keep your regular job while building something creative on the side? What if you want a six-figure business but absolutely do not want employees? What if you want to work three days a week instead of building something that requires you to be available seven?
None of those dreams are better than another. A business does not have to become an empire to be successful. It has to work for the person building it. It is imperative that you keep YOUR dream in the forefront. I once heard Steve Harvey say this and it hit home for me:
“When you imagine things or get a big idea, it is actually God showing you a preview of a coming attraction he has planned for you.”
Well of course this makes sense! For me, I will keep getting nudges of the same idea over and over. So much so to the point that I’ll even have dreams while I sleep of me doing the thing. I don’t ignore, it doesn’t really seem like I can to be honest lol, it never seems to go away until I take some sort of action on it. And who ignores God?
When you look at someone who is ten years into building something and compare it to the idea you wrote down last Tuesday, of course you’re going to feel behind. You’re comparing your beginning to something that has had years to evolve. But even more importantly, you might be comparing yourself to a destination you don’t actually want. Seriously, really ask yourself the question if you really want the same results and explore what that would look like for you and what you would have to change/become/let go of in order to make that happen. Is it really what you want?
That’s the part worth paying attention to. Because it’s easy to admire someone’s success without stopping to ask whether you’d enjoy the life required to maintain it. Maybe she has a huge audience, but you would rather know the names of the people you work with and not be on your phone all the time. Maybe she travels every week, but you love being home. Maybe she manages a large team, while the thought of managing twelve employees makes you want to crawl under your desk.
You can admire what someone else built without making it the blueprint for what YOU have to build. There’s nothing wrong with looking at what other people are doing. Sometimes seeing someone else doing something successfully is exactly the proof we need that something is possible. But I think we need to spend a little more time with our own ideas before letting everyone else’s into the room.
So, before you search Instagram. Before you look at competitors. Before you ask ChatGPT what your business model should be. And before you start researching what everyone in your industry is doing. Ask yourself:
What do I actually want this to look like?
Not what would impress people. Not what would make the best Instagram bio. Not what some business coach says you should eventually scale into. What would actually fit your life?
Try this simple exercise. Grab a piece of paper and finish these three sentences:
I want to spend more of my time…
Maybe it’s creating. Teaching. Working with people. Being outside. Traveling. Making things. Having conversations. Taking pictures. Writing. Solving problems.
I want to spend less of my time…
Maybe it’s sitting behind a computer. Managing people. Answering emails. Working nights. Being on social media. Driving. Doing administrative work.
And finally:
If this idea worked so smoothly for me, my life would look like…
Don’t worry about making the answer sound ambitious enough. That’s the whole point. Maybe smoothly looks like making an extra $500 a month. Maybe it looks like leaving your job. Maybe it’s having Wednesdays off. Maybe it’s working from a coffee shop in the morning and being done by three. Maybe it’s creating something that allows you to travel. Maybe it’s simply getting paid to do something you genuinely enjoy. Write down what YOU want before you spend too much time looking at what everyone else has. Because the internet will happily hand you a thousand different definitions of success. You don’t have to choose any of them.
Your business doesn’t need to look like everyone else’s. It needs to look like a life you actually want to live.
