Someone else’s milestone can make you question plans you felt good about yesterday. A practical look at comparison, defining success for yourself and recognising the progress that matters to your business.
You can be having a perfectly good day in your business until you see what someone else is doing. A studio announces a new hire. Another founder launches a course. Someone shares a project for the kind of client you’ve been hoping to work with. You’re pleased for them, but somewhere between reading the caption and closing the app, your own progress starts to feel a little less impressive.
Nothing has changed in your business. The work is the same, your clients are the same and the plans you felt good about this morning are still there. Yet suddenly you’re wondering whether you should be doing more, moving faster or heading in a different direction altogether.
It’s a familiar feeling when you work for yourself. Without a clear career ladder or someone setting your next objective, it can be tempting to use other people’s milestones to work out how you’re doing. The difficulty is that you rarely know enough about their business, or what they want from it, to make that comparison useful.
Whose version of success are you working towards?
There are plenty of visible signs that a business is growing: a bigger team, a beautiful studio, recognisable clients, an impressive turnover. They’re easy to understand and easy to share. It’s harder to show that you’ve made your working week more manageable, improved your profit or built enough stability to stop checking your inbox every evening.
Those quieter changes can make an enormous difference to your life. But if you spend enough time looking at what other people celebrate, you can start to overlook the things you wanted when you began.
You might have built your business because you wanted more control over your time, then find yourself taking on work you don’t enjoy to keep pace with someone else’s growth. You might prefer a small, collaborative team but feel that you should be hiring because other studios are. A decision that looks sensible from the outside can still take you further from the business you actually want to run.
Ambition deserves a little examination. What would that next milestone give you? More income, more interesting work, greater freedom, recognition? Could it also bring responsibilities you don’t particularly want? Being honest about both sides helps you decide whether an opportunity is right for you.
Make the comparison more useful
Sometimes envy points towards something worth paying attention to. If the same kind of project keeps catching your eye, perhaps you’d like more of that work. If another founder’s schedule appeals to you, perhaps your own needs adjusting. The feeling can tell you something, provided you get specific about it.
Once you identify what appeals to you, you can consider a step that fits your own circumstances. That might mean developing a stronger case study, approaching a potential collaborator or testing a small workshop. You give yourself something concrete to explore instead of leaving the comparison as a vague feeling that you’re behind.
It also helps to notice when looking at other people’s work stops being useful. If you regularly leave an account feeling scattered or dissatisfied, take a break from it. You can admire someone’s work and still choose to see less of it while you find your own direction.
Choose measures that mean something to you
Defining success for yourself can sound abstract until you put it into the context of an ordinary week. What kind of work would you like to spend most of your time doing? How many days do you want to work? What income does the business need to provide? How involved do you want to be in managing other people?
Your answers give you a basis for making decisions. If you want more time for creative work, filling your diary with additional management responsibilities may need careful thought. If financial stability is the priority, a reliable ongoing client relationship might matter more than a high-profile project with a small budget.
Choose a few measures that reflect those priorities. Alongside revenue, you might look at profit, the proportion of work coming from clients you enjoy or how often you finish the week within the hours you intended to work. Keep them simple enough to review regularly.
There will be trade-offs. A new service may take time to become profitable. A busy period might help you build a financial buffer. The point is to understand why you’re making those choices and decide when to review them, rather than allowing every busy month to become your new normal.
Give your own progress some attention
When you’re focused on what comes next, it’s easy to forget how much has already changed. The proposal you can now write with confidence. The boundary you finally put in place. The client who came through a recommendation. Things that once felt difficult become part of your working day, and you stop counting them as progress.
Keep a simple record somewhere you’ll return to. At the end of the month, note what improved, what you’re proud of and what you’d like to change. Include the practical things as well as the visible achievements. You might still have a long way to go, but you’ll have a more accurate picture of where you are.
Other founders can be a source of ideas, encouragement and perspective. There’s real value in seeing what’s possible and learning how someone else approached a problem. You can take something from their experience while recognising that their next step may be completely different from yours.
I want &KO to make room for that variety. Businesses with different ambitions, founders at different stages and honest conversations about the choices behind the work. I’m interested in what people are building, but also whether they enjoy running it and what they’re learning along the way.
The next time someone else’s announcement makes you question your own progress, pause before adding another goal to your list. Ask yourself what you’re responding to and whether it belongs in the business you’re trying to build. You may find something worth pursuing. You may also realise that the plans you felt good about this morning still make sense.
