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The comparison trap is the habit of measuring your own business against other people's public wins like a "50K month" post on social media. Because solopreneurs work without colleagues, performance reviews, or external benchmarks, they often compare their real day-to-day life against someone else's curated highlight reel. It isn't an apples-to-apples comparison, and it leaves you feeling behind even when your business is doing well.
In this episode of The Life First Solopreneur, Carly Ries and Joe Rando explain why this happens and how to break the cycle.
Why are solopreneurs so vulnerable to comparison?
Solopreneurs lack the built-in benchmarks that employees have. Without a team or a manager, social media becomes the default measuring stick and algorithms are designed to surface only the highlight reels. On top of that, much of what gets posted is exaggerated or simply untrue. A revenue claim can't easily be fact-checked, so the numbers you're comparing yourself against may not be real.
The two traps hiding inside comparison
- Hustle culture: The belief that you're never working hard enough that you should be sending more emails, sleeping less, and grinding harder.
- The four-hour work week myth: The equally harmful idea that success should look effortless, with money rolling in while you sleep.
Both distort your expectations. A few "unicorns" genuinely live these extremes, but they're the exception and their trade-offs are often things you'd never want to give up.
Does buying nice things make you happier?
Joe shares a personal example: after years of driving a Lexus, he switched to a Hyundai and his happiness level didn't change at all. Material things provide a short-lived boost before you adapt right back to baseline. What actually improves your quality of life is having things serve your life defining what matters to you and optimizing for that instead of status.
How do you escape the comparison trap? A practical detox
- Audit your inputs. Notice who you follow and how you feel after scrolling. Unfollow, mute, and curate it's protective, not petty.
- Define your own normal. Before opening any app, write down what a genuinely good work week looks and feels like for you.
- Build a personal scorecard. Choose three to five metrics that reflect your life first goals, like family time, energy, and creative satisfaction not just revenue.
- Consume intentionally. Decide how to stay informed without being consumed.
- Find your comparison community. Connect with people optimizing for a similar life, not just similar income.
Key takeaways
- You are not behind you're on a different road.
- Don't benchmark your chapter 3 against someone else's chapter 10.
- Comparison is the thief of joy, cliché but true.
- Your business should be a vehicle for your life, not a competition entry.
Listen to the full episode for Carly and Joe's complete conversation, then leave a five-star review and share it with a fellow solopreneur. Subscribe to The Life First Solopreneur on your favorite podcast platform, including YouTube.
EpisodeTranscript
Carly Ries: You had a good week, happy clients, steady work, even time to walk the dog. And then you opened your phone and saw another solopreneur announcing their 50 k month with a new contractor and a four hour workday. And suddenly, your good week felt like a failure. In this episode, Joe and I unpack the comparison trap, why solopreneurs are especially vulnerable to it, how hustle culture and highlight reel flexing both distort your sense of normal, and why that dream car probably won't make you any happier. Then we get practical, how to audit your feed, define what a good week actually looks like for you, and build your own scorecard for success.
You're not behind. You're just on a different road. You're listening to the Life-First Solopreneur, the podcast for those in pursuit of a life first business. I'm Carly Ries and my cohost Joe Rando and I spend every episode with Solopreneurs who are proving there's a better way to run a one person business and experts who are helping make it happen. We like to say life first then business, so let's get right to it.
Okay. Joe, I want you to picture this. You're having a genuinely good week. Clients are happy. Customers are happy. Work is steady.
You took an afternoon off to walk the dog, And then you open Instagram, which I know you're not really on Instagram that much, but it's Facebook. And see another solopreneur announcing their 50 month and they have a new contractor that they hired and they only work four hours a day. And then suddenly, your good week feels like failure. Have you had that feeling? Oh, I mean, that, in many, many forms. Yeah. You know, back back in the days when I was trying to raise venture capital, and then you'd see these people just raise 12,000,000, And it's like and we never ever successfully raise venture capital, which honestly was the best thing that ever happened to us, but we didn't know it at the time. But, yeah, that all over the place. And I have some theories on that.
Okay. Well, we'll get to those. you know how we keep naming things the trap, like the ownership trap, the this, the that. So I am calling this the comparison trap. And I think a lot of people think of it as jealousy, and I don't.
I think it's just a distorted measuring stick. And I think solopreneurs are uniquely vulnerable to it because they don't have colleagues. They don't have performance reviews. They don't have that external benchmark. So they look at these social platforms, and I think people know in their personal life, platforms are designed to surface the highlight reels.
But that's true of the business world as well. That's how the algorithms work. And so it's not an apples to apples comparison ever. It's an apples to the highlight reel comparison, and I just really wanna remind people of that. I think hustle culture makes it worse.
And we are life first business focused. We are anti hustle culture, but I think people just have it in their brain of being like, I slept four hours and I sent 200 emails and hustle, hustle, hustle. And so if other people are still playing in a hustle culture and they're not, it can be really hard to differentiate your success metrics versus theirs. Is there anything you wanna add ?
Joe Rando: Yeah. You really talked about two separate things that are both kinda harmful. The hustle culture part, which is I'm not working hard enough. You know, I should be putting more hours in. I should be smarter about what I'm doing. I should be this.
I should be that. And then there's the other one that's like, yeah, I just wake up and make money and I don't even have to do anything. And, I've got this four hour work week thing going. And, you know, both of those are problematic for most people. I mean, yes, there are people that create businesses that work for them while they sleep.
They can be solopreneurs sometimes, or there are people that just, have such a presence and such a, personality that they can make money just by showing up. but most of us, it's not the case. you know, we're just working, we're working to build a life and to support a life. And you look at these things and they don't help, right? So first thing I want to say about that is , and this is true of lots of things on Instagram, and it's also now becoming true on LinkedIn as well. And that is that a lot of what you see or hear from these people that are posting these kinds of things is baloney.
Right? It's not factual. It's like, I've got this perfect life, and I've gotta make it look that way. And then, they go, and they have the same problems we have, but they don't show it, and they pretend that they're so great. And I mean, there is no problem with making stuff up when you're posting on social media in any form.
You can claim you had a 50 k month and you had a 5 k month. Nobody can fact check you easily. So keep that in mind, because I think there's a lot of baloney out there, and that's number one. Number two, the people that are doing it, good for them. But that's not you, right?
It's not you. The things that they're giving up for that are oftentimes things that you wouldn't be willing to give up for your life. If they happen to be magically gifted and they can just, make lots of money without having to work hard, God bless them. But for the most of us, that's just not gonna happen.
Carly Ries: And that's what I think. I think that those unicorns do exist and great for them, but don't use that as your benchmark. Like, that shouldn't be the goal. That should be well, that's great. Hope I get to that point someday.
Awesome. But don't use it as a metric to measure your own business against. And I think there are a lot of costs in living in this comparison mode. You have like, your decision making gets hijacked. You have chronic low grade dissatisfaction.
Even when things objectively are going pretty well, it's kind of like scope creep on your goals. I'm proud of my comparison trap. But there's also the lifestyle inflation trap. Like spending to signal success you don't actually feel. And I think a lot of people feel like they have to do that as well.
Like, keeping up with the Joneses, but with your own business. But, yeah, burnout again, it's just not an apples to apples comparison. I really want to drive that point home, but there are, I think, ways to kinda recalibrate and reset yourself. Do you mind if I dive into those, or is there anything you wanted to add?
Joe Rando: Yeah. Let me just say one more thing, and then we'll go on the solutions. But, there's one other aspect of this, which is the stuff. The material things that some people show off.
And you look and you go, oh, if I only, had that car or whatever it is, you know, the stuff. And, I've been, as we all know, in business for a long time. I've had some failures. I've had some really great successes. Here's an example of that I think is important.
I used to drive a Lexus. I've had various Lexus cars over the years. It's a luxury car. It's very nice. But, you know, recently decided, I'm gonna just go get something more practical and not practical, but, you know, just something that's less expensive, you know, I don't need to be driving fancy cars.
So I got Hyundai. My happiness level has not changed one bit driving a Hyundai versus driving a Lexus. I don't feel, shame or when I was driving Lexus, I didn't feel pride.
It was just a car. we look at these things and we're, oh, if I had that. If you got yourself your dream car, in a few months, it would be right back to where you were in terms of your happiness level. It's fun. You know, you're better off probably renting one for a week instead of buying one because it just doesn't impact your happiness.
The things that impact your happiness are having things serve your life. And that is really, really important to keep in mind is that if you can define the things that are important to you in terms of the quality of your life, that's gonna have long term impact on your happiness level, not stuff.
Carly Ries: Exactly. I'm so glad you said that. So in terms of the practical steps to recalibrate, it's kind of a detox. You need to audit your inputs. Who are you actually following?
And do they make you feel good after you scroll? You can unfollow, mute, curate. it's protective. It's not being petty. It's protecting your own mental well-being.
You need to define your own normal. I would say write down what a genuinely good work week looks like and feels like for you on paper before you open any app. Like, don't even look at technology for a second. Just think about that. And then create your own personal scorecard, like three to five metrics that actually reflect your life first goals, including family time, energy, creative satisfaction, and all that.
And then if you are gonna consume, consume intentionally. I've sworn off the news. I don't watch the same media outlets that I used to because like especially during COVID, I just, could not stop watching the news. And now I just, had to take a step back and be like, okay. how do I stay informed without being overly consumed?
And then if you want to find comparisons, find your comparison community. People who are optimizing for a similar life, not just similar revenue. Find people that share those Life-First goals and follow them, connect with them, communicate with them. So you're kind of sharing thoughts. It's like your peers, and it's just a win win across the board.
Do you have any other tactics you would add?
Joe Rando: No. I think that's great. I've actually done a lot of those in terms of curating. It's actually not too hard to curate your feed if you just make sure that you focus on, like, follow, subscribe the right things, you can actually turn what used to be kind of a toxic hellhole . I don't do x. I'm not on x because I think all of x is a toxic hellhole, so I don't know how to fix that.
But, things like LinkedIn and Facebook, I've managed to make them into really kind of positive experiences when I do open them up. So, it's not hard. you just have to focus on what you're watching, what you're liking, what you're following, and it'll come around pretty quickly.
Carly Ries: So to wrap up this episode, I asked Claude to give, a few words of wisdom as parting advice from this, and I actually really like what it came up with?
Joe Rando: Okay.
Carly Ries: So I wish I could take credit. This is not me, but it was interesting to see what it came back with. So these are our, like, rah rah points of inspiration brought to you by Claude. You are not behind. You're on a different road.
The danger of benchmarking your chapter three against someone else's chapter 10 is real. Comparison is the thief of joy, which is cliche, but true. And then your business should be a vehicle for your life, not a competition entry.
Joe Rando: Woo hoo. Not bad, Claude.
Carly Ries: I like those. I know. Good job, Well done. But it served as inspiration to me. Joe, do you have anything else before we wrap up the show?
Joe Rando: No. I think you nailed it.
Carly Ries: Alright, listeners. Well, thank you so much for tuning in. As always, please leave that five star review. It truly helps us spread the word to other life for solopreneurs. We've gotten so much good feedback about looking at everything through this lens.
So we're super pumped about it. So that five star review is really helpful. Share this episode with a friend or a fellow solopreneur who needs this kind of advice. And don't don't forget to subscribe on your favorite podcast platform, including YouTube. I will see you next week on the Life-First Solopreneur.
You may be going solo in business, but that doesn't mean you're alone. In fact, millions of people are in your shoes, running a one person business and figuring it out as they go. So why not connect with them and learn from each other's successes and failures? At LifeStarr, we're creating a one person business community where you can go to meet and get advice from other solopreneurs. Be sure to join in on the conversations at community.lifestarr.com.