Embrace Comparison: Unleashing Growth Instead of Stealing Joy

Phil Calandra: It’s simple. It’s just not easy. It’s complex, but it’s not that hard, especially if you can eliminate the mistakes along the way. Keep the positive mindset and never quit. Keep going. Use comparison as a tool 

Rob Brown: So that kind of unhealthy comparison can blow up a partnership again unless you prepare properly for it. And that’s where really making sure that you right-size, that, uh, type of comparison and setting benchmarks for yourself becomes so important.

Rob Brown: Welcome to the Truest Fan Blueprint, a, podcast for financial advisors and other professionals looking to get the most out of yourself and your business. I’m Rob Brown and my partner, Phil Calandra, and I promise to walk you through a journey that will allow you to take action in your business and your life so that you can be the best that you can possibly be. Thanks for listening.

Rob Brown: For the Truest Fan Blueprint, your hosts, Rob Brown and Phil Calandra, here. And today we’re going to jump right in. As we were preparing for this podcast, Phil and I got into a bit of a spirited debate, because one of my favorite quotes is comparison is the thief of joy. And I absolutely believe this. But as Phil and I were talking, he took a different take on it and said, well, it doesn’t have to be a thief of joy. And actually, comparison can be a good thing. So we want to work this out in a way that helps you understand how you can use comparison in your business as you’re seeking to achieve your big dreams, as you’re working towards the goals that you set out for yourself, how comparison can be a tool. So is that a fair way to set it up? Phil, I don’t want to, ah, put a damper on your argument.

Phil Calandra: No, this sounds good. This will be a free spirited. I don’t even think it’s a debate, Rob, because I agree with you in the sense that comparison is the thief of joy in a covetous perspective. The reason that I disagree, and I actually think that comparison can be a very good growth tool, is because you’ve got to start your frame of reference from someplace, and it’s very natural and probably prudent as a business leader to compare yourself to somebody else. The thing that people miss is we’re all at differing stages in the journey. And does the other person you’re comparing yourself to, do they have the same goals you have for the same reasons? Do they have the same habits you have? Do they have the same qualities that you have or skill sets or experiences? And what we end up doing is we compare ourselves and we use it in that feedback mechanism. I think we use it in the wrong way. So while I agree with the quote, the original quote of comparisons, of the ease of joy, I think I can also spin that and say it’s also a great growth tool for me. It has worked for me in my years in business.

Rob Brown: Yeah. And I think that’s where we definitely have common ground in my experience. One of the things that I have done is I’ve helped put a lot of partnerships together where I have partnered senior advisors, senior business leaders, with junior partners who want to become part of the team. And invariably, after relatively short periods of time, that the junior partner pairs up with the senior person. They begin to want what the senior person has. And if we haven’t prepared for that properly, it can become a real problem because the junior person, the newer person to the business, can think, well, I don’t have to do all of the things that my senior partner has done to get to where he is, even though there may be a gap of ten or 20 or 30 years in their experience, so they immediately want the same income, the same amount of days off. And it becomes this comparison of, uh, I’m working harder in the junior person’s mind than the senior person, so I should get what he has. So that kind of unhealthy comparison can blow up a partnership again unless you prepare properly for it. And that’s where really making sure that you. Right size, that type of comparison, and setting benchmarks for yourself becomes so important.

Phil Calandra: Yeah, you mentioned a great word there, right at the end, and that’s benchmark. Right? We benchmark our, uh, portfolios. We benchmark our little infant children. I remember when the twins were little. And your triplet girls, rob, right. You take them to the pediatrician and the pediatricians say, oh, good news. Kyle and Davis are on the 45th percentile of height and weight, and I’m thinking 45th percentile. These little jokers are little. They’re little peanuts. But again, we’re comparing benchmarks. But be very careful in that, as you’re saying, because what is the benchmark you begin to put in your head or you begin to reshape your mindset into this idea that you deserve something, maybe because the senior level partner or the more experienced, let me tell you, they have qualities and skill sets from sweat equity. Right? What’s the old saying? Experience is the greatest teacher. It’s just so damn expensive.

Rob Brown: Right?

Phil Calandra: And I see this in people that I’ve coached, is the younger junior advisor, junior partner, junior associate starts to feel there’s an inequality there. And be very careful of that, because that experience that they have, that garners, number one, your respect. But number two, that’s my point. Comparison as a growth tool, because that person is so much further along on the journey that’s earned them the right, perhaps, to have the corner office or the mahogany desk versus the Ikea desk.

Rob Brown: Yeah, those are all great thoughts around comparison, how it can be so dangerous. But maybe if we just continue to play off of this junior advisor, senior advisor relationship, we can show our audience how to make that comparison a good thing as opposed to a bad thing. Because there are going to be steps, right, that the junior person is going to have to take over the years to get to where the senior person is now. And, I don’t know, let’s just make it up. Say there are 25 steps, and you sit down with that senior person. He says, these are the 25 things that I did to get from where I was, when I was at the same point in my career as my junior partner to get to where I am today. And he’s going to say, these are the 25 steps. These are the ones that I took that I didn’t need to take because I made some mistakes along the way. And that could be a big piece of them. It could be half of them, but there might be ten or 15 steps left that that senior person knows are critical to really be able to create in that junior person the type of advisor that the senior person has already become. And then it becomes incumbent on that senior person or somebody who’s coaching that team to help the junior person know what those steps are and begin putting them into the business, and then also calibrating them, making sure that the goals that the junior person is shooting for are the same or similar to what the senior was. Because there could be some of those steps that we take away because maybe the senior person wanted to have a $10 million house and that was a big driver in what he or she did. But the junior is like, that’s not important to me, so I don’t need to do some of those things or, uh, make some of those sacrifices, take some of those same steps. So all of a sudden, those 25 steps shrink down to five or ten really important things to work on, and those become the points of comparison that are so important to use as tools.

Phil Calandra: I could just listen to you keep going, rob, because, in essence, what you summed up for our listeners is the essence of coaching, mentoring. The things that an advisor does with clients, it’s establishing goals, developing plans to achieve the goals, and then the actions, portfolios, habits, rituals, things that are going to feed all the way to the top. And what you just summed up was that, why do people need a coach? That’s why you do it, to eliminate the mistakes. If there’s 25 steps that the person you’re comparing yourself to, that they took to get to 100 million, 200 million, 1 billion in assets or whatever the income level was, and you could shrink that down understanding which steps were mistakes. I talk about that with my clients. I’ve been doing it for years. I call it the eight killer mistakes. The eight killer investing mistakes. If I can convince and show and educate my clients not to make those eight, ah, any one of those eight, or winding up to make a combination of any of those eight, if I can show them that their financial outcome, their financial freedom is much, much greater and it comes much, much sooner. Same thing for an advisor, an entrepreneur, somebody that’s stepping out. And you’re comparing yourself because like I said to me, that’s the growth tool, but you just nailed it. Why do you have a coach or a mentor? Check that one off, scratch that one, uh, out. Check that one off, scratch that one out. If that can help you get to your destination quicker, then, damn, isn’t that worth the price of admission or the course or the webinar or whatever? I’d say, yeah, it’s multiples of that. That’s the way I view it.

Rob Brown: No, absolutely. When I have a conversation sometimes with people about working with me as a coach, and they say, well, what do you do? I simply say, well, I try to understand where you are today. Your point a, and I help to try to draw out where you want to be in the future. Your point b. And then as we work together, create the steps that you’ll take to get from a to b so you can close that gap. And that’s where coaching is very simple. Or talking about your business can be very simple, but there’s work in the middle, which is where that comparison word becomes tricky again, because you can be covetous and say, I want to take a shortcut. I deserve to be further along just because of being a great person. Or you say, you know, now I see the path, I see the steps. How do I move up them at a pace that makes sense for the life that I want to live so I can do it with authenticity and with purpose?

Phil Calandra: Yeah, it’s amazing. You will be shocked if you’re listening to us today, you will be absolutely shocked at just how much progress you can actually make in your business, in your personal life, if you will just begin to allow your mindset to frame the steps and the process. And in a lot of cases, at least for me, there are a lot of advisors much smarter than me. They’ve all done it before me. I can pick apart and use and emulate some of the best of the best with the help of coaching, which was Rob Brown and others, and achieve the outcomes that I want. And I think what I was hoping you were going to cross and say Rob, was something you and I have chatted about. We might even do a podcast on this. It’s simple. It’s just not easy. It’s complex, but it’s not that hard, especially if you can eliminate the mistakes along the way. Keep the positive mindset and never quit. Keep going. Use comparison as a tool. Don’t use it as a thief of your joy. The last thing I would say is, as I’ve grown and I built my business and merged my practice in a multi seven figure deal, money isn’t the goal. When you’re starting out, you’re an entrepreneur, you’re a business owner, you’re building your assets. Yeah, money is a goal, but is it really? Because what begins to shift is money isn’t the goal. Freedom is the goal. Purpose is the goal. Passion for what you’re doing is the goal. And that’s the beauty part of the truest fan. That’s the beauty part of our, uh, roundtable. That’s the beauty part of the culmination. Know your first and your second book. For me, Rob, that’s where this becomes really important work. It’s not the money. It’s freedom. 

Rob Brown: Yeah, because, you know, and again, you make a great point. And this goes right back, this idea of comparison and doing comparison the right way versus the wrong way. When you are setting goals, you’re setting, uh, at point a. I want to get to point b, and maybe there is something financial attached to that, and there almost always is, because we are talking about not just the way people live, but also their businesses. And those businesses have to support families and teammates. But when you think about the financial piece, Phil, when you talk about that freedom, it’s what is the money for?

Phil Calandra: Right?

Rob Brown: So if you say, my purpose is to be able to make the single largest donation ever made to my favorite charity because they need a new facility, and I want to be the lead donor in that, then all of a sudden, the goal. The purpose that you’re working towards is that thing you’re going to build to be able to be the difference maker in that organization. And the money is a byproduct of it. You get the freedom to work towards something that’s really important. And so the steps that you’re taking, the way that you’re comparing what you’re doing to others, becomes almost incomparable in some ways because nobody else probably even has that goal. But you might see other people who have done similar things in their lives for different organizations, and you can say, you know, I want to learn how that person did that because it makes easy. And that’s where the coaching and the mentoring and understanding how other successful people work becomes so important. And the comparison is a tool. It’s not just being jealous about where somebody else is that you think you want to be.

Phil Calandra: That’s right. I love this topic. I think we’ve kind of nailed it.

Rob Brown: Yeah, absolutely. So let’s land the plane. And what I want to encourage listeners, uh, to do if you’re listening to this podcast, I want to offer you two suggestions. Number one, make sure you really know where you want to go and then create the steps for you to get there. And because this is kind of a quick exercise, don’t try to nail all the little itty bitty pieces. What are the two or three things that you know that you need to do that will get you from your point a to your point b? Um, the second thing that I want to recommend is, um, go to truestfancoaching.com. We’re offering a new roundtable. Um, it’s free for two weeks, and it allows you to begin getting some of the input that you might need to make that decision of going or of identifying those steps from point a to point b easier. And we’d like to help you with that process because we really believe, not just because we are coaches, but because we believe in coaching, that finding tools to help you get to where you want to go can make the journey so much smoother and more fruitful and more timely. So I think that’s a good wrap. Phil.

Phil Calandra: Yeah. The only thing I would add is, uh, please give us a like on your podcast player. If you have a chance, travel over to YouTube. Subscribe to the truest fan coaching channel. You can see our pretty faces. Deliver the message. Subscribe and like that, pass it along. We’re hopeful that this is helpful. And, Rob, you close it the same way every time, so I’ll let you do it.

Rob Brown: Yeah. And remember, we’re rooting for your success.

Rob Brown: Take care, everybody. Thanks for joining us for this episode of the Truest Fan Blueprint. If you want to learn more, head over to our website, truestfan.com. On the site, you’ll learn more about becoming a truest fan. You’ll also find today’s show notes and links to the other gifts and resources we talked about during this episode. Again, thanks for listening. And remember, we’re rooting for your success.