Episode 68
Comparisonitis as an Intermediate Biz Owner
In this week's episode of "Val Full Volume," Val explores the concept of comparisonitis among intermediate business owners. She discusses how our perception of ourselves as intermediate entrepreneurs is not based on the number of years or knowledge we have, but rather on what our brains tell us. She shares personal experiences and thoughts on feeling like an intermediate business owner, including the belief that not having everything in place is what categorizes them as intermediate.
Val also addresses the tendency to compare oneself to more successful entrepreneurs and the misconception that having everything in place guarantees success. The episode touches on the feeling of overwhelm that comes from wanting to do it all and the importance of celebrating achievements along the way. This episode aims to shed light on the mindset of intermediate business owners and offers insights on appreciating personal growth and accomplishments.
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Transcript
Welcome, welcome. I am so happy
Speaker:you are here for another episode with me
Speaker:of bowelful volume
Speaker:and guess what we're talking about today.
Speaker:Now, I mean, obviously the title probably tells you, but if you were
Speaker:listening to last week, then you know that we're moving on to
Speaker:intermediate business owners today and
Speaker:comparisonitis. I have a secret.
Speaker:I have a secret. Okay. If you listen to the last
Speaker:episode, you know I asked you to
Speaker:associate what your mind told you of what you are
Speaker:in your business. So does your mind tell you that you're a newbie?
Speaker:Please check back in into last week's episode
Speaker:if your mind's telling you an intermediate, here you are.
Speaker:Hello, here we go. Today.
Speaker:I've been online since 2000 and
Speaker:a lot of learning curve from 2000
Speaker:to 2004. I did have some businesses up, but very big
Speaker:learning curve. As things really changed in
Speaker:the 2004, I stopped coding any of my sites anymore.
Speaker:So huge change secret.
Speaker:My mind tells me that I'm an intermediate business owner.
Speaker:So this is what I want to talk to you about. It's not a matter
Speaker:of how many years we've been on and how much information we have. It's
Speaker:what our brains tell us. And I get
Speaker:that for the newbies because you know what, you might still consider yourself a
Speaker:newbie. I did sit down and actually think, is my brain
Speaker:telling me that I am a newbie? In certain areas, yes,
Speaker:but for the most part, no. Okay, I can go intermediate. And then I'm
Speaker:like, is my brain telling me that I'm advanced?
Speaker:And it's like, oh, hell no. My brain is not telling me that I'm an
Speaker:advanced or a long time or any of that. And
Speaker:isn't that silly? Isn't that silly?
Speaker:So I'm not going to analyze that today. Oh,
Speaker:wait, we kind of are going to analyze that today because I'm sure
Speaker:comparisonitis comes into play of why
Speaker:I still feel and my brain tells
Speaker:me that I'm an intermediate business owner. I'm sure it
Speaker:comes into play. So let's watch it or watch it. How about we listen
Speaker:to how it comes into play because I'm sure my brain is going to go,
Speaker:oh ping, oh ping. Here it is.
Speaker:So intermediate business owner, just like a
Speaker:beginner business owner, has nothing to do with your
Speaker:years that you are online,
Speaker:has nothing to do with your knowledge. I'm not talking about
Speaker:any of that. Not talking about your qualifications, your certifications, your
Speaker:educations. There's a lot of issues.
Speaker:I am not talking about any of that. I'm not talking about
Speaker:anything paper or calendar. I am talking about does
Speaker:your brain consider yourself
Speaker:an intermediate entrepreneur,
Speaker:intermediate, that's your level. I'm intermediate
Speaker:right there in the middle with everyone.
Speaker:Not up there with those big people that I look to,
Speaker:not up there with them. I'm intermediate.
Speaker:And let's talk about that because believe me,
Speaker:I could talk about this one because I'm right in it. I'm in the middle
Speaker:of it. So I can share, share
Speaker:what my brain does.
Speaker:So let's go into a little bit of why my
Speaker:brain considers I'm intermediate.
Speaker:My brain looks at it and goes, you don't have your shit
Speaker:together. That's why you're intermediate. It's really
Speaker:that easy. It's really that simple. My
Speaker:brain tells me you don't have everything in place, and that's why you're
Speaker:intermediate. If you had everything in place,
Speaker:then you'd be like so and so. You'd be like
Speaker:so and so, and that's
Speaker:ridiculous. And I tell you
Speaker:that I understand it's ridiculous. I'm aware that
Speaker:that thought is ridiculous. I'm also telling you that that
Speaker:is the thought. That's the
Speaker:feelings and it doesn't matter that I know for a
Speaker:fact that it's ridiculous. Why do I know this for a
Speaker:fact? Because I deal and work with a lot of
Speaker:these high ticket
Speaker:big businesses. I work with a lot of them, and I've
Speaker:worked with a lot of them for many years now. And
Speaker:they don't have their shit together.
Speaker:They are still having
Speaker:launches that fail.
Speaker:They're still at times throwing spaghetti at the wall.
Speaker:They are still human and still
Speaker:entrepreneurs working to continually figure
Speaker:out what their community wants.
Speaker:Now, granted, in my brain, it's because they have a certain
Speaker:list size or they're making a certain amount of money. And let's talk about
Speaker:that. The only
Speaker:thing about the making money is my
Speaker:assumption of what they are making.
Speaker:I have no idea what they are making.
Speaker:There's very few
Speaker:clients I've worked with that I've been in their shopping cart, and I know what
Speaker:they're making. All the rest of
Speaker:them, which there's a lot, all of the rest
Speaker:of them, it's my assumption of what
Speaker:they are making. And yet I still
Speaker:have that in my brain of, well, I'm not making
Speaker:multiple six figures. I'm not making
Speaker:seven figures. So I'm
Speaker:intermediate and I'm not talking myself
Speaker:out of it today. Today, I'm just going to share all of the thoughts, okay?
Speaker:We're just going to process. We're just going to sit in it and process.
Speaker:And I know for me, at
Speaker:times that keeps me small, at times it does.
Speaker:At other times, I go into full overwhelm.
Speaker:And the full overwhelm
Speaker:is the hard part. And I know that the full overwhelm happens
Speaker:because of being a creative entrepreneur.
Speaker:So I know from working with so many of you out
Speaker:there that it's the same issue. It's
Speaker:wanting to do all of the things.
Speaker:And part of the wanting to do all of the
Speaker:things is comparing myself to some of these big names that
Speaker:I adore. Even if they don't even know me or know that I'm
Speaker:following them, I consider them a mentor, right? So I'm looking at
Speaker:everything that they have in place, and this is what we all do. This is
Speaker:even in the beginners that I was talking about, right? But as
Speaker:intermediate, even I'm looking at what they've got in place, and it's
Speaker:not just comparisonitis. It's also a jealousy. It's like,
Speaker:oh, my God, if I just had all of that in place,
Speaker:that would be so amazing and everything would work. Bullshit.
Speaker:Bullshit. It's not always working for them, so it's not
Speaker:always going to work for me. And there's never going to be a point
Speaker:that I have everything in place exactly as I want
Speaker:it. And then you just get to keep it forever
Speaker:in the same spot. Nothing stays in the same spot.
Speaker:So intermediate, one of the biggest things
Speaker:when considering yourself as an intermediate
Speaker:is how much are you paying attention to what is
Speaker:working? Okay, so you are no longer considering
Speaker:yourself a newbie or a brand new entrepreneur,
Speaker:which means you've moved up a level. Congrats. Yay. Your brain
Speaker:moved up. Awesome. We went up a stage. Celebrate
Speaker:the hell out of that, right? Let's celebrate that for a second.
Speaker:You don't think of yourself as a newbie anymore,
Speaker:which you might have thought that you would feel like forever. So did
Speaker:you celebrate that? And let's go beyond that.
Speaker:What's working in your business? And have you celebrated
Speaker:that? Have you celebrated the multiple things that are working in
Speaker:your business? Did you celebrate the fact that maybe go back
Speaker:and listen to last week's episode with the newbies, because
Speaker:thinking back to when you were a newbie and you're like, oh, my God, none
Speaker:of this is ever going to get together, and I have
Speaker:nothing in place. I don't even know where to start. And holy shit, it's
Speaker:so much. And two years down the road, you're like, damn,
Speaker:nothing's ever going to get together. And then all of a sudden, it
Speaker:did. And now you think that. Now you feel like you are
Speaker:an intermediate entrepreneur. Look
Speaker:back at what you created. Please
Speaker:look back at what you have
Speaker:created to get you to right
Speaker:now. We as
Speaker:entrepreneurs horrible about paying
Speaker:attention to what we have done because there's a million
Speaker:zillion trillion quadrillion bajillion
Speaker:things still left to be accomplished,
Speaker:and there always will be. We are the
Speaker:worst at sitting down and paying attention to,
Speaker:oh, look at that. I have
Speaker:three opt ins now. Oh, look at
Speaker:that. One of my opt ins has an upsell that's
Speaker:converting. Oh, look at that.
Speaker:I have a product that people are converting from my
Speaker:upsell to, holy shit, I have a
Speaker:funnel. Holy shit, I have
Speaker:a funnel. And all of a sudden, you understand what a funnel is.
Speaker:It's just a flow.
Speaker:It's not a this is my funnel, and it's forever.
Speaker:It's a flow
Speaker:from here to here to here to here. How do
Speaker:I want my community to go?
Speaker:Where do I want them to go?
Speaker:Where do you want them to
Speaker:go? And I bet now, feeling like you
Speaker:are an intermediate entrepreneur, you
Speaker:have a flow. You might not recognize it right
Speaker:now, which is why I want you to
Speaker:celebrate everything that you have done.
Speaker:You might need to go and open
Speaker:up your files and take a look.
Speaker:You might need to go open up your workshop platform
Speaker:or your website. You might need to take
Speaker:inventory. I know I did a few
Speaker:years ago, I was stuck in the whole funnel
Speaker:thing.
Speaker:I was so anti funnel because I was sick of the word. I'm still
Speaker:kind of sick of the word, but people
Speaker:understand it, so I want to use words that we can all understand together.
Speaker:I was so anti, and
Speaker:I just wanted to fight it, and I was so pissed off and just
Speaker:stop with the funnel that I couldn't even see how much stuff
Speaker:I had. Not. I was throwing spaghetti at the
Speaker:wall. 100%. Absolutely
Speaker:throwing spaghetti at the wall. I was going into events
Speaker:to grow my list, and they were not in my
Speaker:niche. They were not in anything. This is how bundle bash came to be, you
Speaker:guys. It was not in my niche. I was just trying to grow my
Speaker:list, and I did. I grew a really big list of people that didn't give
Speaker:a shit about me. And every time, I'd
Speaker:be like, oh, I want to be in this event, and I'd create a new
Speaker:product. And it really didn't have anything. It
Speaker:didn't always connect with the people that I wanted to connect with. I should
Speaker:say it was technically on Target,
Speaker:technically on theme, but it wasn't going to connect with who I wanted to
Speaker:bring in. But the good thing that came out of all of
Speaker:that was all of a sudden, after a year
Speaker:of driving myself bonkers and creating
Speaker:products willy nilly, I sat down finally,
Speaker:and I took an inventory. I don't even remember why I did it. I
Speaker:took an inventory, and I went, Holy shit. I've got
Speaker:five things I could use for an opt in, and they almost all
Speaker:have a workshop that could be an upsell.
Speaker:Mind exploded. I'm like
Speaker:what? Because I wasn't celebrating. I was so
Speaker:looking at, what's the next thing I have to do? What's the next thing I
Speaker:have to do? What's the next thing I have to do? Oh, my God. I
Speaker:got to get this done. I need to get this done. I'm already behind on
Speaker:this one. The deadline was yesterday. That's what I was constantly looking
Speaker:at. So I was not looking at all
Speaker:of the stuff that I had already built. Now, one of the main
Speaker:things is, when you start looking at the things that you have
Speaker:already built, you can go
Speaker:and rework them, make them better. What worked,
Speaker:what didn't work. If you're constantly moving on to the
Speaker:next one the second you've got it created
Speaker:or the second that that challenge closes,
Speaker:then you're not taking anything that you're learning from your community as they go through
Speaker:it, and you won't know what they want, what
Speaker:they need, because you're already looking ahead. You didn't
Speaker:listen to what was going on because
Speaker:in your brain, you're already five steps ahead going, okay, well, I'm already late on
Speaker:this one. I need to get it done. And the only reason that you're late
Speaker:on anything else is because you've set that up. You've put that in your head
Speaker:that you are late. We can't be late. We don't have
Speaker:to do anything. It's our businesses. We are
Speaker:the owners. And
Speaker:typically the only reason we're looking at
Speaker:that is because we've got this idea in our head that, oh my God,
Speaker:so and so has all of this like this. I need to do it as
Speaker:well, or I took this workshop and I have to build my
Speaker:funnel, and it says we have to do three workshops up
Speaker:above it and blah, blah, blah. And so now I'm behind because I have to
Speaker:get that shit in place. We don't
Speaker:you don't the only one telling
Speaker:you what the only one you can listen to is you.
Speaker:Other people can say what you should do,
Speaker:but that does not mean that it's going to work for you.
Speaker:And honestly, how many of
Speaker:those people actually did everything that they are
Speaker:teaching? How many?
Speaker:We have no idea. We have
Speaker:no idea. And one of the things
Speaker:with comparing ourselves to these people is they might
Speaker:have done it exactly the way that we are doing it. And
Speaker:this might be the hard way, and there might be an easier way to do
Speaker:it, but that doesn't make it the way
Speaker:that would have worked for them if they went back and took their
Speaker:own courses. Now, I don't want you to take this as I am
Speaker:knocking all of the mentors or big people that I know
Speaker:out there, because this is how we teach. We do teach. We want
Speaker:you to do less steps. Right? I mean, that's the part of hitting a new
Speaker:level is you can look back and go, oh, my God, I
Speaker:could have done this in a different way. I could have done this a little
Speaker:easier, a lot easier. Typically, it's what I
Speaker:look back on. Why do I always got to do everything the
Speaker:damn hard way? So I'm
Speaker:not knocking
Speaker:anyone that is teaching a
Speaker:different way from how they did it. I am not knocking that because
Speaker:there are plenty of people that did it a little
Speaker:bit different, and especially if they're in a service industry
Speaker:and they've helped people do it in different ways. And
Speaker:so they have tweaked and worked through a system so that
Speaker:it works better. It might not be the way that they did it
Speaker:to start off, so I'm not knocking that whatsoever.
Speaker:But I want you to remember that we're only seeing
Speaker:the outside of what they want to show
Speaker:us, and that is what we're comparing ourselves to.
Speaker:It's bullshit,
Speaker:right? That's also our human brains,
Speaker:and it's going to happen and it's going to happen over and over and
Speaker:over again. But we just need to be aware that we're comparing
Speaker:ourselves to other people. And they've
Speaker:had different circumstances. They've come from different backgrounds,
Speaker:business backgrounds. They've come from different education. They could have come
Speaker:from the corporate world. They could have had
Speaker:multiple entrepreneurs in their family already that
Speaker:have taught them so much stuff. We don't know. We
Speaker:don't know. And it's important
Speaker:that we figure out what our journey is in doing
Speaker:this because every single one of us is going to
Speaker:be screwing things up. And sometimes when you screw things
Speaker:up is when the magic happens. I'm
Speaker:waiting for some magic to happen. I've had some screw ups in the last few
Speaker:months that I'm like, why did I do this?
Speaker:So I think right there that's possibly one of the things
Speaker:that is keeping me thinking that I am an
Speaker:intermediate is at this point
Speaker:right now, I've just gone through a big few months
Speaker:of transition in my business. And
Speaker:this business is only gosh, I think we're 18 months
Speaker:old now, something like that. And I broke shit,
Speaker:and I was pissed. And I'm hoping by the time you hear
Speaker:this that everything is fixed, but I don't know if it's going to get
Speaker:fixed. And that's when I sit there and go, girl,
Speaker:you're not an intermediate. Because
Speaker:even at intermediate, I think
Speaker:I wouldn't be able to figure out stuff on my own. But
Speaker:I'm pulling myself back and reminding myself that I did all of
Speaker:this back before we had what I can
Speaker:consider now. Easy buttons. God bless the easy
Speaker:buttons. I absolutely love that. We do
Speaker:everything much easier than we did 23 years ago, right? 20 years
Speaker:ago. 15 years ago.
Speaker:However, I'm paying attention to the fact that, you know what,
Speaker:I did things old school. How about
Speaker:I bring some of that old school back when shit breaks, okay? I
Speaker:don't need all the bells and whistles. How do I just make things more
Speaker:functional and easy for me so that I can move forward and get
Speaker:things done off of my list? So I think that's why I'm
Speaker:intermediate right now, but maybe I'm going to stay intermediate. Oh, that's a good question.
Speaker:I wonder I should go hit up some people and ask them.
Speaker:That's a really good question. I should go hit some of my mentors
Speaker:up and ask them. I've
Speaker:got three classifications. What do you label yourself
Speaker:as? To see how many of them would actually label themselves
Speaker:as advanced? That would be interesting, would it
Speaker:not? Because does anybody
Speaker:consider themselves advanced? I don't know.
Speaker:Because as entrepreneurs, our businesses
Speaker:are never done. Our business is never perfect.
Speaker:Our website is never perfect. Shit, our lives are
Speaker:never perfect. Why would we consider that our businesses are going to be perfect?
Speaker:Life happens. Life happens in our biz ship
Speaker:breaks. It breaks for the big people, too.
Speaker:And sometimes that's even messier, because when it breaks for the big people,
Speaker:I mean, consider the mess that they have to clean up. Just
Speaker:consider it. I broke my site, I broke my shopping cart when
Speaker:I moved, and I lost a lot of members
Speaker:because of it. Because of breaking it.
Speaker:And it's deflating. So imagine that
Speaker:on a bigger scale, right? They've got a bigger mess to clean
Speaker:up. My mess was
Speaker:I'm in it as of recording right now. So my mess is every
Speaker:day an everyday mess, and I'm
Speaker:constantly contacting people and trying to clean up.
Speaker:And they have to do that on a larger scale when they've gotten bigger.
Speaker:And I don't know where I was going with that except for sharing.
Speaker:So intermediate, what is your brain
Speaker:telling you as intermediate? Just pay attention.
Speaker:We don't even have to talk our brain out of it. It can just be
Speaker:the thing that, hey, we consider ourselves intermediate. Maybe that's all
Speaker:right, maybe it's not all right.
Speaker:You know the answer to that. But
Speaker:celebrate, celebrate everything that you have
Speaker:done that leads you to thinking you
Speaker:are intermediate. Because I bet take that
Speaker:inventory, write everything down,
Speaker:start drawing lines to all of it to see how you connect
Speaker:it. And take a look at how your business can
Speaker:flow because you are an intermediate
Speaker:now. And know that you've got people that
Speaker:are new, that are already looking at you going, oh my
Speaker:God, she's already got her shit together. Look at I'm not
Speaker:ever going to have that happen. And see if you can be a mentor.
Speaker:See what you can pass down. Pay it forward. That's
Speaker:probably pay it back. I don't know what that is.
Speaker:Share. We'll just use share. All right, thanks
Speaker:for being here and I appreciate
Speaker:you. I will chat at you next week.
