It’s a terrible affliction that affects many, many studio owners. It’s called Studio Comparisonitis. And we’re going to address it head-on in today’s post.
One of our lovely members posted in our private Facebook group the other day that she had a call from a prospective parent. As they were talking, the parent started listing the pricing for classes at other studios in their area.
After she got off the phone, she was questioning herself, wondering if she should even have her prices listed on her website. She felt uncomfortable and conflicted because it was like the parent was implying that her studio was so expensive.
When we have Studio Comparisonitis, it’s all too easy to second guess ourselves as studio owners.
“They are doing that. Should I do that too? Or they started that program. Maybe we should do that. Or are we going to be left behind if we don’t do this?” All of these thoughts just run around our minds and give us complete anxiety.
That’s why I want to give you some clear advice on how to avoid the dread disease of Studio Comparisonitis so you can confidently run your own race and truly take back control of your studio.
I have two tips that I want to share with you. The first is something I want you to write down right now.
You can’t lead if you are following.
If you are watching all of the other studios in your area, following their Facebook page, getting their emails, or hunting down their website, by default, that quote says, “If you are following them, you can’t be the leader.”
And so, I want you to unfollow everything. I don’t want you to see their Facebook ads. Go to Facebook and hide ads like this. Unsubscribe from their email lists. Don’t even look at their website.
You must totally protect yourself and put blinkers on. The less you see of other studios in your area, the more you will embrace your own creativity, innovation, and passion for building the studio that you desire.
So your first step is to start leading. And to lead, we have to unfollow everything from everyone else.
Let your team keep an eye and an ear out for you.
My second tip to cure Studio Comparisonitis is to actually ask your team to help you with this.
For example, tell your admin members or your teachers, “Keep an eye out on what’s going on out there in the community of other studios, but I would really prefer if you don’t tell me. I’m really wanting to step into a place of creativity and leadership here the studio and it affects me too much and gives me too much anxiety. So I need you to protect me as a studio owner. I need you to only come to me and only if it’s something that I absolutely need to know. If you think the studio is truly a threat by another studio’s action or something, then let me know. But in the meantime, I just want to live in a little bubble.”
This is truly the best advice when it comes to comparisonitis: to eliminate the source of infection.
But I want you to not allow yourself to be contaminated mentally. I want you to protect your mental state, and that comes from not giving two hoots about what the studio down the road does.
Run your own race. Stay in your own little bubble and make your studio the best that it can be because truly, we cannot control what others do or say.
All that we can do is ensure that we offer the hands-down best student experience, the best educational provider of lessons that we can become in the area. If we can do that, truly you can sleep at night and your studio will thrive.
The energy you give comparing yourself to other studios is wasted energy. That time you’re spending thinking about whether you should put your prices up in relation to someone else’s studio could be spent creating a more enriching experience for your current students.
So I want you to unfollow so you can lead. Remember, you can’t lead if you are following.
I want you to protect yourself and give yourself the space to come to your marketing, to come to your leadership, to come to the decisions you need to make clean and not infiltrated by thinking about what others are doing.
That is the only true way I know to be a leader, is to come from absolutely within yourself. This is truly the strongest way you can take the studio to the next level.
So work out what your secret sauce is – what is it that makes your studio unique?
The more we can discover your secret sauce and then market it, the more your studio will truly step into the leadership position of the go-to destination in your area.
So let me ask you. Have you yourself felt the twinges of Studio Comparisonitis? Have you yourself been the subject of being envious or kind of concerned by what other studios in your area are doing?
How do you handle it? And if you have been in that funk, what did you to kind of turn yourself around and banish the studio comparisonitis?
