Can Comparison Actually GROW Your Business? The Surprising Upside You Haven’t Considered with Amy Traugh
- Amy Traugh
- Oct 29
- 9 min read
🎧 The Metrics Maven: Data Driven Business Growth Strategy for Solopreneurs is streaming on all platforms. Listen here. Also streaming on YouTube.
Can Comparison Actually Grow Your Business? The Surprising Upside You Haven’t Considered
Ever find yourself scrolling social media and thinking, “Shouldn’t I be further along by now?”That quiet little voice that creeps in after seeing another coach celebrating a sold-out launch or hitting a big milestone—it stings.
We’ve been told that comparison is the thief of joy. But what if comparison isn’t the enemy at all? What if you could use it as a tool to grow your business with clarity, confidence, and ease?
Let’s talk about how to shift comparison from something that drains you into something that actually drives your growth.
Why Comparison Isn’t the Problem—It’s the Direction
Here’s what’s fascinating: comparison is actually hardwired into your brain. Your prefrontal cortex and anterior cingulate cortex are constantly scanning your environment, evaluating how you stack up against others. It’s your brain’s way of assessing: Am I safe? Am I successful? Do I fit in?
So, when you see another entrepreneur hit a milestone, your brain instantly starts measuring your own progress. The problem isn’t comparison itself—it’s how you interpret it.
When you compare yourself to others, you’re working from an external dataset you don’t have full access to. You’re comparing your behind-the-scenes to their highlight reel. You don’t see their missed goals, failed launches, or the messy middle that got them there.
That kind of comparison leaves you feeling defeated and distracted. It pulls your focus away from the one thing that actually matters—your own data.
How Productive Comparison Fuels Real Growth
When you shift from comparing yourself to others to comparing yourself to yourself, you start using data that’s accurate, relevant, and actionable. This is what I call productive comparison.
Productive comparison shifts your question from“Why am I not where they are?”to“How am I growing compared to where I was?”
And that subtle mindset shift changes everything.
Why? Because when you engage in self-comparison, your brain activates its dopamine reward system—the same system that motivates you to keep scrolling or chasing goals. But this time, it’s triggered by your progress. You’re giving your brain evidence that what you’re doing is working, and that builds confidence and consistency.
This is why tracking your metrics isn’t just a business task—it’s a psychological advantage. It’s the proof your brain needs to stay motivated and make strategic decisions instead of emotional ones.
Without data, your brain fills the gaps with self-doubt. With data, you fuel belief and direction.
Three Steps to Shift from Destructive to Productive Comparison
Step 1: Define Your Personal Baseline
Before you can measure growth, you need a starting point.Pull up your analytics—revenue, conversion rates, client retention, or lead generation metrics. This gives you your personal baseline.
Think of it like setting your GPS. You need to know where you are now before you can chart the best route forward.
Step 2: Track the Right Metrics Over Time
Don’t overwhelm yourself tracking every possible number. Simple is sustainable. Start with 3–5 metrics that align directly with your business goals.
If your goal is consistent revenue, track:
Leads generated
Conversion rate
Revenue per client
Review them monthly or quarterly to spot trends. This pattern recognition helps you make intentional adjustments instead of reactive guesses.
Step 3: Celebrate the Micro Wins
Your brain craves reward. So when you recognize progress—like improving your conversion rate from 10% to 15%—you’re strengthening your motivation and confidence.
Micro wins build momentum, and momentum is the secret ingredient to sustainable growth.
Turning Comparison Into Clarity
When you compare yourself to yourself, everything changes.You stop chasing someone else’s results and start optimizing your own.You stop guessing what’s working and start seeing it clearly through your data.
Maybe you didn’t hit your goal this month, but compared to this time last year, your revenue per client doubled. Or maybe your follower count hasn’t grown, but your engagement rate increased by 30%.
Those shifts matter. That’s progress.
Comparison isn’t the thief of joy—it’s the opportunity for clarity when used strategically. Your metrics tell your story, one month, one metric, and one win at a time.
Final Thought
Your growth isn’t defined by someone else’s success or timeline. It’s defined by the data that tells your story.
So, the next time that little voice whispers “you should be further along,” pause. Pull up your metrics and ask:“How am I growing compared to last month, last quarter, or last year?”
Because that’s the only comparison that truly matters.
If you're ready to finally ditch the data drama and create a simple, repeatable process for growth, this is exactly what we do inside Metrics Mastery.
Get started for free at amytraugh.com and let’s build a business that’s backed by strategy, not stress.
Until next time, stop guessing and start growing.
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Transcript for Episode 441. Can Comparison Actually GROW Your Business? The Surprising Upside You Haven’t Considered
@0:07 - Amy Traugh (Amy Traugh)
How many times have you found yourself scrolling, seeing another coach or service provider celebrating a sold-out program or hitting a huge milestone, and suddenly that quiet little voice in your head whispers, shouldn't you be further along by now?
It really stings. And for so long, we have been sold this idea that comparison is bad, that it is the thief of joy, that it's something we just need to learn how to rise above.
But what if I told you that comparison isn't actually the enemy? It's just been misdirected. Because when you stop comparing yourself to others and start comparing yourself to yourself, something absolutely magical happens.
Here's what's really fascinating. Comparison. Fathom actually hardwired into your brain. It is not weakness, it's biology. Our brains have something called the social comparison system.
It's the part of your brain, mainly your prefrontal cortex, the decision-making part, and the anterior cingulate cortex. And this part of your brain is constantly evaluating how you stack up against others.
It's literally there to keep you alive, to help you assess, am I safe, am I successful, and am I fitting in?
So when you see other entrepreneurs hitting these milestones, what happens is your brain is instantly measuring where you stand in comparison.
It's not about jealousy. It's simply your brain collecting data so that it can interpret your place in the world.
But here's where it gets really. When comparison turns into self-criticism, it triggers the amygdala, the fight-or-flight center of your brain.
That's when you start feeling so anxious, inadequate, unmotivated, because now your brain thinks that you're failing instead of learning.
So comparison really isn't the problem here. It's the direction of the comparison that determines whether it drains you or drives you.
When you're comparing yourself to others, you're actually using an external data set that you don't actually have full access to.
You're literally comparing your behind-the-scenes day-to-day to someone else's highlight reel. You don't see their struggles, the failed launches, the missed goals, the messy middle that they had to go through to get to where they are.
You don't know how many hours that person is working. How much they're spending on ads, what resources they have behind them, or how long they've been actually building that business behind the scenes.
This kind of comparison leaves you feeling so defeated and so distracted. And what it does is it pulls your focus away from what actually matters, your data, your progress, your growth.
So yes, comparison can absolutely hurt your business when it's directed outward. But when you compare yourself to yourself, you're actually using data that's accurate, relevant, and actionable.
And this is what I like to call productive comparison. Productive comparison really shifts the question from why am I not where they are?
To how am I growing? Compared to where I was. And this subtle little mindset shift, it really does change everything.
Because here's the really cool part. When you engage in self-comparison, your brain activates the dopamine reward system. Why does this matter?
Because dopamine is what motivates you to keep going. This is the same reason that we can all get sucked into scrolling on social media for hours on end.
But when you learn to see your own progress, even the small wins, what happens is your brain goes, oh, this is actually working.
Let's do more of that. So you literally start building momentum and confidence through evidence instead of emotion. This is why tracking your metrics isn't just a business task or something else on your list of things to do.
It is a psychological. advantage. Why? Because now you're giving your brain the proof that it has been craving in order to stay motivated, confident, and consistent.
Because without that data, your brain fills the gaps with self-doubt. But with it, you fuel belief and strategic decision-making.
So how can you shift from this destructive comparison cycle that we've all been caught in to productive comparison? Here are three actionable steps that I want you to write down because you can start using them today.
Step number one, define your personal baseline. Before you can even measure growth, you need a starting point. I want you to pull up your data.
Even if you haven't been tracking things, open your analytics and look at where you are right now. Now, look at your revenue, look at your conversion rates, look at your retention rates, whatever metrics that you have, start looking at them.
Because just like when we are using our GPS to drive somewhere, it needs to know where we are right now in order to calculate the most effective route to get to where we want to be.
So this is your personal baseline. From here on out, you're only comparing you to you. You're finally comparing apples to apples, not apples to oranges with someone else.
Step two, track the right metrics over time. Please, please, please, whatever you do, do not overwhelm yourself by tracking 27 different numbers if you haven't been tracking anything at all.
Remember, simple is sustainable. Three to five metrics. That's it. Metrics that tie.-bye.-bye.-bye. So if your goal is consistent revenue, start tracking things like how many leads are you generating?
What is your conversion rate? What is your revenue per client? And then review them on a regular basis, monthly or quarterly, to start to see trends because the goal isn't perfection here.
It is literally just pattern recognition. Because when you see what's working, what's plateaued, and what's not working, you can make intentional adjustments instead of reactive guesses.
And then step three, celebrate the micro wins. And this matters so much more than so many people realize. Your brain is wired to respond to reward.
So when you intentionally acknowledge the progress you've made, you're strengthening your confidence. For example, if your conversion rate increased from 10% to 15%, celebrate that.
That's literally a 50% improvement, even if your total numbers still feel small. These micro wins lead to momentum. And my friend, momentum is the secret ingredient to sustainable business growth.
When you zoom out and use comparison as a data-driven tool, everything changes. Maybe you didn't hit your goal this month, but compared to this time last year, your average revenue per client has doubled.
Maybe your follower count hasn't changed much, but your engagement rate is up 30%. Maybe fewer people are booking discovery calls, but your conversion rate is significantly higher than it was because now you're actually getting calls with people that are turning into clients.
Comparison to yourself is so powerful because it takes out the emotional noise. It gives you clarity. Instead of guessing what's working, you know.
And instead of feeling like nothing's working, you see the change happening. You stop chasing someone else's results and start optimizing your own.
You stop relying on emotion to tell you whether things are working and start letting your metrics show you what's working.
And most importantly, you start playing the long game. You build that belief because your business does not grow by guessing or comparison.
It is built through intentional self-comparison fueled by your metrics. I recently worked with a client who used to panic every single time that her monthly revenue dipped.
She would instantly panic and assume that there was something wrong with her offer or her marketing. So she'd burn it all down, start from scratch, rebuild.
But when we started to look for the patterns in her data, we really began to see a clear pattern.
Her audience engaged. And new clients always dipped in June and December, not because of her business or her offers, but because her audience was simply less active during those months.
They weren't buying during those months. Maybe it was the holidays. Maybe it was school. But once she was able to see that pattern, she stopped panicking.
She adjusted her launch schedule and suddenly her income stabilized. This is the power of data-driven self-comparison. It doesn't just calm your emotions.
It gives you that clarity, direction, and confidence that you need. So I want you to really take a minute and pause and realize the comparison itself isn't the enemy.
Uninformed comparison is. So when you use comparison strategically through your own metrics, your own growth, and your own progress, it becomes your biggest growth.
So the next time that little voice starts to creep in, reminding you where you should be, I want you to pause, pull up your metrics, and ask yourself, how am I doing compared to myself last month, last quarter, or last year?
Because that is the only comparison that matters. Your growth is not defined by someone else's success, timeline, or results.
It is defined by the data that tells your story, one month, one metric, and one win at a time.
If this episode resonated with you, this is exactly what I love helping clients with inside my signature program, Metrics Mastery and One-on-One.
You can get started for free at amytraugh.com. And until next time, stop guessing and start growing.
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