#458 Comparison Is The Thief Of Everything

42m 24s

This discussion between two trainers explores how comparison with other trainers harms personal training professionals. Trainers tend to absorb "shoulds" from hundreds of sources—social media, marketing, and peers—and apply them all to themselves without filtering, then berate themselves for falling short on admin, coaching, or marketing. Comparison never produces positive feelings; instead it activates fears of being a fraud and triggers imposter syndrome, which can paralyze trainers and stop them from moving their businesses forward. The speakers stress that comparison ignores context: different client bases, business models, and outcomes mean different businesses legitimately need different things. Much of the pressure comes from marketing that targets pain points, such as apps and systems, creating insecurities that were never real problems. Systems only help when matched to actual client numbers, and too many can add work rather than remove it. They recommend running every idea through a practical filter: what does this actually do for my business day to day, what are the costs in money and time, and what do my clients actually want? Actively collecting positive feedback, curating your environment, and asking clients directly all help. Confidence is not found but built through small steps toward what matters personally. Ultimately, trainers should ask what success means to them rather than following an externally imposed hierarchy, and remember that worrying about doing things wrong is itself a sign of being conscientious and ambitious.

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Speaker 1today maggie and i are going to be chatting about comparison with other trainers it's something that comes up a lot when talking to members in ltb and it's pretty much always combined with those kind of fears of things that they think they should be doing because they've seen other people doing things and i'm one of the biggest issues i think with this is that you collect all these shoulds from hundreds of other trainers and apply them all to yourself without any kind of filter and then beat yourself up because you're not doing like all of the tasks all of the tasks on all of the things and you're not good enough on the admin the back back end of the running a business and you're not good enough on the coaching and the stuff and all of that kind of thing and then it leaves you feeling unsure not good enough and can potentially stop you from then moving forward and doing anything in your business so it can be a real problem for a lot of trainers i think and it's i think worth kind of like delving into some of those bits in a little bit more more detail but as an overview where do you see this and kind of what comes across most to you around the comparison issues i mean

Speaker 2you've hit the nail on the head there because i think we all compare and we hear about comparison a lot through people talking to us um especially like in essentials in lift the bar um i see that the gym down the road are um i want to get more people but i'm very close to other gyms which are doing x y or z and and what it doesn't ever seem to produce is good feelings we don't look at that comparison and go oh aren't i doing well well done me uh we tend to frame it negatively instead and that is because it's a bias because actually what our brain is doing is seeking out very quick information to prove to us that we need to do more we're fake we're frauds we're not good enough this place is doing it really well but i'm not doing well enough and there's so many reasons within that but there's psychological reasons i think there's societal reasons and there's cultural reasons uh and it it all adds together to then create the situation where personally you start to doubt you start to worry you start to fear probably is a good word that you are not good enough and then that in itself then obviously starts to impact in what you are or are not necessarily doing that you could or might not be doing if you weren't in that frame and again it's never negative it's never positive behaviors that come out of this always tends to be pretty negative and i think what i talk to people the most around is how it kind of paralyzes them a lot of imagination a lot of paralyzing a lot of um just kind of overthinking i suppose is another way of looking at it um occurs as a result of that fear that what you're doing isn't good enough and when you track it back that's often because they're comparing themselves to either something tangible like that personal trainer on there or my friend or that gym down the road or something like that or something that actually isn't a thing but is perhaps um expectations they feel that are societally upon them because they're personal trainers and because our industry has those kind of unseen unconscious biases within them that people start to then look at themselves go well i'm not that so therefore i mustn't be a good personal trainer or whatever it is so yeah i think comparison can form in many different ways it's never good why is it never good i think i

Speaker 1mean there's that fear that if you looked at it and thought oh my god i'm so much better than that person then we start beating ourselves up because we're a bad person because we've been thinking that you know we've turned into some sort of egotistical monster because we've gone oh well i'm better than that so it it is always on the negative side and i think the issue is that it does it plays on our fears and then it stops the sort of logical part of our brain because the number of times you have these conversations and you can ask questions like what's your clients think about that or what's the situation here and you can pull out all the facts that you like and it the other person's yeah but this is i'm still not doing this thing and this thing is bad uh and i need to need to do this thing and that's that's the issue we get caught up and then it's sort of like everything else and all the context disappears and that's the problem right because when we compare and we have no compact context and the context is so important because we could be working with completely different client base we can be running a completely different business model uh we might be working with completely different client outcomes and all of those things mean that we would need to have something different about our business compared to somebody else and yet we just ignore all of that nice logic and go yeah but they're using these systems or they've got this number of clients and and there's no kind of place where we go yes but they are a gym and they have a hundred clients and i am in a one-to-one pt and i only need 20 because that's the only space i've got in my diary because i've got these other things going on or not as the case may be and i'm not going to be able to do that because i'm not sure what the case may be and yet we kind of ignore that uh in the same way as we ignore it when a recent conversation i had was about systems and somebody was saying well should i get an app should i have an app because everyone should have an app um i've kind of seen that everyone should have an app and i don't have an app so i'm i'm rubbish everyone that comes to me must be feeling like i'm rubbish and like well have they said they think you're rubbish have any of them asked for an app um what would they use an app for i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know uh you know the client base that this person has sees a roughly once a week is quite picky about what they'll do outside of that time uh is a slightly older population and have actively expressed that they're quite happy with the pieces of paper that they get why do we suddenly feel like we need an app and who are we comparing this to and this is the other thing is quite often it isn't one individual it is this sort of general idea that i need to have an app and uh or i need to do this thing or i need to put out marketing that looks in this particular way and all of that kind of stuff rather than going what do my current clients like uh my clients have been with me a long time my clients are happy and and even if our clients say they're happy number of people you speak to they go well they say they're happy but clearly they're lying um they wouldn't tell me if they weren't happy so therefore i've got to assume they're unhappy and they're just telling me they're happy and i it's we're fighting a losing battle sometimes i feel when i have these conversations with people

Speaker 2and and i think like as as i have to say the app thing really resonates right and not because i think i need an app i mean i kind of have one but um only for booking um but essentially because as a personal trainer as somebody who is actively training people right now in a business and has a website with her web address and email address on there uh i can't tell you the daily spam i get for why i need an app it's ridiculous and it's just constant and so the marketing that comes at you is all about your pain points and i actually think we can learn something from this too because i pain points myself back the other direction because of how it makes us feel because when we see that and we go i don't have that maybe i should have that and then you that even the booking system we do have likes to tell me on a daily basis that whatever percentage i can't even tell you don't pay attention to it uh of people who have a branded app do so much better than those without a branded app so even those people who have given me a blooming app now want me to pay more to brand it well that's the point isn't it a lot of this is coming at us because it is simply people trying to sell us products and so but that that is so frequent and and because when you just click on something once now it's in your facebook and your instagram and like if you're still on twitter or whatever it's called these days it's in there it's everywhere and now they're sending you more things and now they're sending you an email to go oh did you forget something we saw you stop by our website like oh my god so it just there's no escape in it and then when you look outside of that world where you're being marketed to with this pain point that has now become a pain point because now you don't have an app and maybe you do need the extra percentage of people who actually do well because they have an app or a branded app at that you're now looking out into the world going they've got apps or they use an app or they're using that for that or maybe i should get that app and then you're hanging around their apps to see what their apps are like and whether it's something you need and and it becomes a thing that was never a thing before because capitalism decided to market you something you didn't need and i always think therefore it's worth going back always when you have these thoughts especially about something tangible like that like i am comparing myself to other people or services or products that are out there that do this thing um do i need to do that thing like or is this just a sales tactic aimed at me that actually is making me feel bad because it's it's working uh because these marketing tactics are very psychologically sound um it's yeah and and i said and we can learn something from that when we're marketing back the other way how would we like people to feel when they come to us

Speaker 1yeah i think the systems thing is always really interesting as well because there's this idea that you get systems and that it reduces your workload and it can if you've got a significant client base you absolutely need systems you can't work with hundreds of people um with just you and your email without going completely insane but for the most part if you've got a smaller client base and if you're working on your own you mostly do then a lot of the time too many systems they change the work you have to do they don't remove it completely so you're then sort of checking that the systems are working and making sure that things are flowing through properly when it would be so much quicker to just send an email and go from there and i think that's one of the things that a lot of people overlook and i think i mean i was fortunate coming from a corporate background where you know accountancy background in in the corporate world where i dealt with loads of systems and tons and tons and tons of data in different formats but i i kind of made me go well yeah it's all very well having systems but you spent a lot of time making sure that they reconcile that things are flowing from one to the next one that people get through it correctly that stuff's working how you expect it to people manage to type their email address in right in the first place and all of that fun stuff and so it definitely made me go well do you know what if i've only got 20 clients i can manage that and they're not starting at the same time and ending at the same time either i can can deal with this and then you also looked at you know personal preference and stuff like that and was able to go well do that is it worth paying for it paying for an app where they can look at their program when they're in the gym for example or are they not going to look at it not going to go to the gym when they're not with me anyway or don't really care in which case why am i paying for that so i do think it's really important to run everything through a filter before you sort of start going well i need to do this and i need to do that and i'm not very good because of one of the ways you can kind of stop that a little bit is to run it through a series of questions almost that's in the real world in my business with my what use does this thing have and you do have to make sure you are looking at the kind of like the real life situation not some theoretical wonderland where this is going to magically make a difference but it's what does this actually do for my business on a day-to-day basis what are the the costs in monetary terms but also what are the impacts in terms of time in terms of where the sort of stress point is because it might move the stress point but it might not remove it completely you might just find it something different is annoying now the thing that was annoying you in the first place and that applies to all of it whether it's your coaching or whether you're doing a lot of work or you're doing a lot of work and you're you put a system in or whether you should be marketing in a particular way shape or form because as soon as you kind of bring it back to your clients and if you really think about individuals because then you'll be able to sort of work out responses a little bit better or you can even ask them and you don't have to guess what the response is because you can find out from them how do you feel about this thing did you do you feel like a check-in would be useful and a check-in in this particular format and would you actually use it in real life and all of that kind of stuff and and then delve into it rather than just using these things as a hypothetical stick to beat yourself with that the idea might be hypothetical but unfortunately the impact it has is very real and erodes the confidence that a lot of trainers have exactly and essentially

Speaker 2when you're making decisions about things recognizing whether you're making them because you think i have to do this or i should do this and hearing that language that you're using as you're thinking about it can help you determine whether you're making decisions based on the comparison to others by socially comparing yourself or whether you're making decisions because it's something that you've noticed as a whole in your business so when it is stuff like that like you know i i should have an app or i should uh be trained i should be training people more than once a week i remember thinking that when i first entered the industry and my clients have only ever really trained once a week i mean we'd offer classes here and stuff now but pt wise they would they still only there's one person still who does twice a week that is it and yet when i first entered this industry there would be so much noise generally from social media about people in the industry saying well what's the point there's no point in clients coming they're not going to achieve their goals this this is this so very easily i could one when i'm comparing myself i'm not comparing myself to the world right i'm looking out into this this void which is telling me from no particular good reason with people that i'm not personally training but it's saying to me you should be training people more than once a week because otherwise they're not going to hit their goals and i'm looking at my client base and i i'm i don't need to ask them at this point do you want to train more often because i'm looking at them going they like training once a week they don't have time to train more than once a week they're happy to train once a week because without training with me they wouldn't be doing it at all and that's what they see the benefits in it and i can look back into my own client base and go right why are you worrying about this is this something you need to consider or is this the noise from the outside world and a lot of the time it is just noise from the outside world because you know again i think it goes back to marketing of things that people use for stuff but then also just everybody does things differently and yes there probably is um you know a little bit of a industry standard in inverted commas but when you track that back that doesn't come from anywhere other than a sense again in the world of social media that this is how it's done because essentially there is no one way to do anything you get to choose how you do it and and i think the reason that we worry that we're not doing it the right way is because we're not good enough is not a sign that we're not good enough it's a sign that we're conscientious it's a sign we're potentially ambitious because we want to do well by our clients we want to do well and develop our business we wouldn't be worrying we're doing it wrong if we weren't conscientious and ambitious so actually just the fact you're worrying is a sign you are good enough because otherwise you wouldn't even be worrying because you just think well it's fine you know i don't say so what yeah i

Speaker 1that's the trouble when it comes to the training side of stuff i think it's so easy to get caught up into this idea of the optimal stuff isn't it it's well what's the optimal amount people should be training and what's the best exercise for this and what's the best thing to do there and how should i which exercise should i choose and what order should i put them in and which which program style should i use should i have one prime exercise that we're starting with or should i have a group of supersets that make up the program and all of that kind of stuff and we get caught up in this this optimal world and then beat ourselves up with because the real life human beings that we're we're working with don't do the optimal and we make it our fault somehow rather than going it's not their priority and that's fine they're allowed to they are grown-ups for most of us um obviously if you work with children that's different i don't never done that but you know for the most part we're working with grown-ups they get to choose the priorities in their life and there's loads of reasons why people choose once a week and particularly with pt and cost can be um a significant factor maybe they can only afford the once a week and they will do stuff outside of the sessions uh maybe once a week is literally all they're going to do. And that's fine too. They can do that. I think the only time when these things issues when there's that mismatch between what they can do and their expectations and that's fine that's where we help them sort of realize that the expectations that they have might be might be wrong and then they get to make informed decisions about what they're doing but it's not our fault that they're not choosing to come in three times a week or they're not choosing to train elsewhere a couple of times a week if they're only seeing us once a week and that kind of stuff but it's always that chase for the for the optimal and again it kind of trips up so many trainers and makes them sort of beat themselves up because they're exposed to all of these different things that are the best thing to do whether it's the best thing to do is to use kettlebells and to do this particular thing or the best thing to do is to do crossfit or high rocks or to do this thing or that thing and when most of us work with general population who just want to tick the exercise box and know that they've done something and yeah feel better as a result over time but aren't really planning on trying to get to some sort of peak position at any point then the optimal goes out the window and it does come back to are they enjoying it are they getting some kind of benefit from it and that benefit can be they enjoy the fact and they leave smiling every week it doesn't have to be a physical response that we can measure and and those are the important questions do they keep coming back are they happy and if they are then you're doing a great job and if they're not then you're doing a great job and if they're not then you're doing a great job because you're helping somebody enjoy exercise when let's face it there's an awful lot of people out there who don't and who see it as a necessary evil or you know at best yeah exactly

Speaker 2and this is it and i think i think the issue is you get bogged down because as soon as you start on this comparison journey and you fall into i mean essentially what we're talking about here is imposter syndrome right so that's it so you're a fake or you're a fraud or you're not good enough as soon as you fall into that you don't ask those questions you don't look outwards because you've become self-focused it essentially turns you in on yourself and then when that happens you get stuck in these negative emotions you get stuck in a fixed mindset of well there's nothing i can do about it i'm stuck with these people then you start almost like then pushing those negative emotions back out again well i can't do more than once a week because the people i train don't want to so now it starts to feel like there's a problem with them and actually it all began because this this self-comparison drew you inwards drew these negative emotions out self-focused you on things that are nothing really to do with you they're to do with the external and left you feeling this internal sense that you are not good enough and then you get stuck there because we do get stuck in these places right it's very hard to get out of them when we're in them and so i think it's a really important thing to do and i think it's a really important thing to do when we're in them and that cycle drives because the more you think in the negative the more you see the negative the more you feel the negative it feeds itself so it can be really really hard to then step outside of it because now you're not someone going oh but it's okay because my clients don't need that and you can just draw on that and and work it out you are looking at it going but i'm not good enough i'm not the right person for this my clients deserve better than me i don't do enough for them i'm not the right person for this i'm not the right person i'm not giving the right kinds of sessions they would do much better in sessions with other people i'm not funny i'm not this i'm not that like all of a sudden everything starts becoming negative and i think that is a very challenging place to come out of and if you are i'd say if you are experiencing that it is a self-perpetuating cycle it is a cycle you have to get out of it somehow and it has to be in action whether that is challenging one of those fixed thoughts that you've got because it will be a fixed mindset because it stops you trying stuff that's new or different as well because you're like well what's the point because also you become scared of failing because failing you know that reinforces the fact that you were bad right that you're not good enough well that didn't work that went wrong see i knew it i've even failed this that client didn't achieve what i want they wanted to this this this it feeds and it feeds into something so overwhelming and so big and so essentially what we've got to do then is we have to step out of it somehow whether that's thinking it's worth trying something whether it's talking to someone talking it through even then though that can be hard because if you're talking to someone they say yeah but look at all the great stuff you can very easily still be in that conversation going oh well you say that but because we're in the negative and so it's it has to take a conscious effort to get out of it you have to challenge the thoughts that are there the negative thoughts with questions you almost have to start to say but is that true but will that happen push yourself to try things just in case even if you're absolutely convinced by this point that it's not going to make anything better maybe it's worth trying um we know you know how i do like all my stats and things part of it is that i'm not part of that is because i can prove to myself the evidence that exists in the world that is not my emotions so i like research and stats for that but so i went looking for them before this and it's like 70 percent of um people across all walks of life experience imposter syndrome at least once in their professional lives 70 it's super super high but then what really got me was that actually within that 45 percent of workers avoid promotions as a result of it and 31 percent leave they leave their job or their industry or their profession and it's not because they weren't good enough it's because they got trapped in this comparison imposter cycle so it really is such a damaging place to be but also a really real place to be and if you are stuck in it it's not your fault but essentially you are going to have to do something a bit scary to get out of it you you you're probably going to have to talk to people or do something challenging or do something that feels like it's out of your control or your wheelhouse or like something you wouldn't normally do or maybe be prepared to do something and have it fail and then move on from it anyway like you will have to do something uncomfortable but then if you're living in that world it is uncomfortable already right so maybe taking steps to move out of it is a good uncomfortable place to be because i just think it's such a sad thing to know that this very normal feeling can cause people to leave jobs that they're actually really amazing at and that they never realized it before it was too late and then we lose amazing coaches and pts and trainers because they didn't realize that they were super good at what they did they just weren't x y and z on social media they weren't rising to the echelons of what marketing wanted them to achieve like that's all it was they were doing their own thing they were or they were too scared to do their own thing

Speaker 1yeah absolutely i mean there's just like two elements to this isn't there there's the side where it's you might not need to change anything you're doing you need to work on changing how you do things it's reframing stuff it's looking at the the facts uh it's it's looking at how your clients are and collecting that positive feedback from them and you know reminding yourself that you are kind of you do have x number of clients and you you're in a good position and all of that kind of stuff you don't need to make the changes and and then there's the flip side of it where it might need to be changes or you might be thinking about making changes and actually you shouldn't so i think it depends a little bit on what your what your comparison is telling you and what your kind of fears and thoughts around it are as to which way you'd go but there are a few different things that you can do and i think the key ones that i've written down are to collect and actively look for the positive so obviously the negative presents itself to us with flashing lights all around it really really easily the positive either hides or it can be right in front of us but we just ignore it and don't look at it even if it's waving at us so actively go out and find those positive things and and believe the positive rather than just dismissing it um looking of that kind of like media whatever the prompt is that's that's giving you that negative feeling and or removing that influence i mean there's a lot to be said for curating your environment whether that's a social media kind of a cull of not following or removing or blocking or um you know saying this isn't of interest to me or whatever depending on the platform and then what options you've got or whether it's um you know it's that combination it's getting rid of the ones that you don't like so much but also finding those ones that give you that positive influence where you get a feel good from being able to see them because we as with a lot of things i think just removing the negative doesn't always solve what we're looking for and there is a place to to find the positive and actively kind of make sure that's the right place to be and i think that's a really good that's what we're being exposed to both on sort of social media type stuff and in real life um i always think about the those kind of influences as i think if you can look at them as a bit like a pick and mix something like that where you can take inspiration you can get ideas you can see stuff and go oh that's a good idea i might have a play with that but you also then run it through those filters and go actually i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know that's not right for my clients or it's not right for me or i don't want to do that thing and i don't have to i think just always reminding yourself that there are all these different things you could do but you don't have to do any of them or all of them or whatever it is that you're thinking about it's it's kind of quite freeing when you can look at stuff as just well this is a selection of things i could do but actually what what's important to me right now what's important to my clients right now is that i'm not going to be able to do all of these things does any of this actually impact what it is that is my number one priority in my business and if it doesn't i can just let it go i'm a bit of a fan i know for me i'm a bit of a fan of having kind of like different lists so there's things where i start thinking oh that's good and i could really do with doing that um but it's not my number one priority at the moment then putting it somewhere on a list that to be honest i may never look at again is a good idea because then i can let it go because it's on a list i don't have to remember it i don't have to remember it i don't have to remind myself about it it's on a list and it's not an important thing to do so it doesn't matter if i never look at that list again so i you know can have my priorities that are this is the thing that's important to me right now and as long as you know that and kind of run it everything through that it does get a lot easier it's a lot easier to go actually the thing i need to focus on right now is getting in clients faffing around with this thing over here is somebody else knows i exist and how i can help them and that kind of filter will then go oh i don't need to worry about those things they're not important this is what's important to me i think the other place where people get caught sometimes is kind of when business is going well and it's all running how it should be we're kind of pre-programmed to start looking around going well what's next what should i be doing and that's another really common conversation i have so you have the ones with people who are kind of caught up in stuff and feeling like they're not good enough from comparison but you also get this sort of group of people who are everything's going really well but they feel like they should be doing something else and i think part of that is the nature of what's got them to that stage because when you start out with nothing you've had to go through a period of kind of hustle and building your client base and all of that kind of mindset from i need to be doing this i need to be getting more clients i need to be doing this next thing to things are really good and they're where i need them to be and now i'm a bit lost and i don't know what to do with myself and that kind of happens quite a lot i think plus on top of that you've got the societal influences you've got the stuff on social media telling everybody that they need to grind and they need to work harder and they need to get up at 5am or whatever it is um and it just leaves them going oh well i'm obviously not good enough because i'm not going up at 5am or if i am i'm not reading three books and meditating far enough before i do something else or i don't have some sort of special um routine that i need to work through and and so there's just having that pause sometimes why am i thinking this what is it that is the problem because again finding trainers who can recognize that things are good and be okay with that let stuff go is really really rare i think if you can kind of look i think my answer is normally it's never quite as straightforward as this but it's always like looking outside of the business sometimes and going well okay if business is going well and you're happy with that but you're feeling sort of unfulfilled and you're a bit lost what is it that you're you can do that's going to give you some joy outside of the business because normally by that stage you've committed an awful lot of time and energy over the years to getting yourself to that position there's definitely a place sometimes to go i'm happy with where things are and i'm going to go and learn piano or take up french or knitting or whatever it is the company else and that is quite a significant point i think and it stops the issue that we see sometimes where people kind of go to the next thing they feel like they should because they've created this kind of hierarchy in terms of what they have to do as a personal trainer because of what they've been influenced by so they might have everything sorted as a one-to-one trainer but they're not online so they must do that or they don't have their own gym so obviously they need to do that and for some people they might be the world's best online trainer and that's fine but they're not online so they need to do that and for some people they might be the thing that's going to suit them down to the ground or gym ownership might be important to them and that's the route they want to go there's so many trainers i think they end up in these places because they felt like it was what they needed to do next and then all of a sudden they're going okay i've got a gym i'm stressed all the time i'm not getting to do any coaching i spend more of my time trying to get staff who turn up on time and do what i want them to do and i'm no better off than when i was seeing my one-to-one clients and i didn't have to worry about vat and rent rates and whatever else it is because i had this set up right and i think if people kind of stopped and went what is it i want out of this what does success mean for me at the moment and that changes over time and because sometimes it's going to be actually i need more money and that's fine and sometimes it's i need more time or i need less of something else and i'm not going to be able to do that because i'm not going to be able to do else um getting to that point where you can go i need to practice saying no uh rather than trying to squeeze everybody in at any time and i'm last on the list in terms of priorities all of that kind of stuff so i think being able to question kind of why you're thinking this but also or why you're thinking about doing this thing or not doing this thing and being honest with yourself is really important and sometimes that's best done through chatting to somebody else

Speaker 2and i i think what you've highlighted there is actually really important because we actually live in a culture that doesn't prioritize what we need or want we live in a culture that it sells us constantly um this idea of meritocracy or to call it it's a little kind of viral name hustle culture you constantly strive for more because your your purpose in life in work well your purpose in life is to work and your purpose in work is to strive for more to achieve more to do better you are only a success if you are moving up the hierarchy of what things look like in your profession and in our profession that hierarchy is moving up to owning your own gym becoming a manager all this kind of thing right that is that is meritocracy that is this idea that success has a particular look and a particular way of achieving it what it doesn't do is ever go what do you want what do you want what matters to you personally and individually because that that is not that culture the culture is built around capitalism it's built around getting us to work hard to make money and to feed into an economy right and i know that sounds really kind of dull and all the rest of it but it's the reality and that's why we get left behind and start feeling a lot of confidence when we don't want to achieve those things because we're stepping back from an entire culture and saying i don't want that that takes a lot of confidence and you don't just start with confidence your confidence isn't found somewhere under a pillow or a cushion or something confidence is built so each time you take a step towards doing something you want and feels right for you in your life and works for you and your family that is a little bit of confidence that you've built that you don't have to do it that way you don't have to do it the way that our culture tells us you have to and each time you do something that's just a little bit different that speaks to your personal values or just the way you want to live your life you build a little bit more confidence and it's okay to do it that way and you see it's a little bit different to what we're being sold but also this works for me and the more you do it the more you take those steps and activate what you want respond to your needs prioritize those above anything else and by that I mean you know to bring into that your friends and your family the things that matter people that matter around you as well but when when you start prioritizing that you build more confidence you build more confidence you don't want to be a part of what that is over there in that culture it's trying to sell you and then you stop comparing yourself because you know that what you want is secure you have the confidence that it's secure and you don't need to look out at all what these people are doing because they're doing it for them they're doing what they want to do or maybe they're still stuck doing the things they think they should do but essentially you can be quietly confident that you are doing what's right for you so I think what you raise there about that your needs and your wants that is probably the most important part of this because when you understand those and you have the confidence to just take one tiny little step towards it you stop comparing yourself and then you stop reacting because you're comparing yourself to others then you're really doing what you want to do I think we're like we

Speaker 1should end it there I think that's a perfect summary of what what was the best starting point if you are in this kind of place it's to start with what's important to you and not in a work sense but just on a life sense and where does work fit into that and ultimately what we do is a job it can be an amazing job but it's a job and I think it if you put it in its place almost rather than it becoming your entire life it it can be a good way a good starting place to getting out of some of this comparison and the negative emotions that that often brings up absolutely

Podcast Summary

Key Points:

Trainers often collect "shoulds" from many other trainers and apply them all to themselves without any filter, leading to feelings of not being good enough.
Comparison is driven by psychological, societal, and cultural biases that frame information negatively and fuel fears of being a fraud or imposter.
Comparison ignores vital context such as different client bases, business models, and client outcomes, which means different businesses legitimately need different approaches.
Marketing and sales tactics, especially around apps and systems, deliberately target pain points and create new insecurities that were never real problems before.
Systems and tools only make sense when matched to actual client numbers and needs, and too many systems can change rather than remove workload.
Imposter syndrome affects around 70 percent of professionals, with 45 percent avoiding promotions and 31 percent leaving their jobs or industries because of it.
Practical strategies include actively collecting positive evidence, curating your environment, running ideas through a filter of real-life usefulness, and writing non-priority ideas on a list to let them go.
Confidence is built through small steps toward what matters personally, and understanding your own needs and wants is the best starting point for escaping comparison.

Summary:

The speakers stress that comparison ignores context: different client bases, business models, and outcomes mean different businesses legitimately need different things. Much of the pressure comes from marketing that targets pain points, such as apps and systems, creating insecurities that were never real problems. Systems only help when matched to actual client numbers, and too many can add work rather than remove it.

They recommend running every idea through a practical filter: what does this actually do for my business day to day, what are the costs in money and time, and what do my clients actually want? Actively collecting positive feedback, curating your environment, and asking clients directly all help. Confidence is not found but built through small steps toward what matters personally. Ultimately, trainers should ask what success means to them rather than following an externally imposed hierarchy, and remember that worrying about doing things wrong is itself a sign of being conscientious and ambitious.

FAQs

Why is comparing yourself to other trainers usually unhelpful?›

Comparison tends to be framed negatively and plays on fears, making you feel like a fraud or not good enough. It often paralyzes you and stops you taking action in your business.

Why is context so important when comparing your business to others?›

Other trainers may have different clients, business models, and outcomes, so their choices may not suit you. Ignoring context leads you to copy 'shoulds' that don't fit your situation.

Do I need an app or lots of systems for my personal training business?›

Not necessarily. With a small client base, too many systems can add work rather than remove it, so ask what real use it has for your clients and business.

How can I tell if a 'should' comes from comparison rather than my actual business needs?›

Listen to your language: phrases like 'I should have...' often signal outside pressure. Run each idea through questions about its real use, cost, time impact, and whether your clients actually want it.

Is it a problem if my clients only want to train once a week?›

No. Clients are adults who choose their own priorities, and cost or time can be factors. Your job is to help them make informed decisions, not force the 'optimal' frequency.

What can I do to break out of the comparison and imposter syndrome cycle?›

Actively collect positive feedback, curate your social media environment, and challenge negative thoughts with questions. Taking small, uncomfortable steps toward what you want builds confidence over time.

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