Episode 38: Are you making Unhealthy Comparisons in Your Life and Business?
We're compared from the moment we're born — Apgar scores, playground rankings, report cards — and somewhere along the way we take over the job ourselves. In this episode, Vonda and Lori dig into how comparison shows up in your personal life, in how you see your competition, and in how you manage your flower shop team — and why unchecked, it can quietly damage all three. (Conflict, they decided, needs its own episode — there was too much material for one.)
Knowing your competition vs. obsessing over it
There's a difference between understanding where you sit among your competitors and fixating on them. Lori illustrates it with her three kids' sports: her daughter always knew exactly where she stood on the team and used that awareness to decide whether to work harder — a healthy comparison. Her boys, meanwhile, would fixate on the one star player and make excuses — "he was just born good" — an unhealthy one. The same split shows up on social media, where everyone posts the mountaintop and the Hawaii trip and nobody posts the bad days. Defining your self-worth against someone else's highlight reel is dangerous in your personal life and dangerous as a business owner — and some shop owners the hosts know have taken full social media breaks for their mental health because of it.
Four dangers of comparison
The hosts walk through four dangers, first personally, then through a business owner's eyes. One: it discourages individuality — everyone grows and learns on a different timeline. Two: it breeds unhealthy competition. Comparison can motivate, but it can also pull you off your own track — chasing someone else's strength instead of playing to your own, like a great shooter abandoning shooting to out-dribble a rival. Three: it prevents collaboration. If you're obsessed with your competition, you'll never brainstorm with them or grow together. Four: it damages your self-esteem — or inflates it, if you're choosing comparisons that make you feel superior. Either way is unhealthy.
Vonda makes it personal with a story from her Teleflora years. As a new unit president surrounded by education specialists she'd read about in magazines, her self-esteem was low — she didn't feel like a strong enough designer, didn't know her niche. Neil Caggiano, Teleflora's beloved liaison (husband of Carol Caggiano), sat her down more than once and told her: you just need to be yourself. Stop looking around and comparing, because it only makes you feel like someone you're not. Appreciate who you are as an individual first — then you can look at others and say "I'd like to grow in this area" from a healthy place.
The manager's trap: comparing employees
Now put on your shop owner hat, because comparing employees carries all four dangers at once. Your business needs individuality — not everyone should be an event designer; you also need the person who's great on the phone and the one who cleans buckets well. Constantly holding up one employee as the example teaches everyone else to abandon what they're good at and imitate the favorite — and it sets up resentment.
Lori learned this the hard way at her college job at a campus store at Oklahoma University. She loved the work, kept winning the sales contests — and her well-meaning manager kept announcing it. Her coworkers turned on her, and she faced a miserable choice: be herself and be disliked, or dim herself to fit in. She started joining the grumbling and being less kind to customers just to belong. The manager thought he was motivating the team; he was punishing his best employee.
The fix: find the good in each person and say it out loud. In Vonda's shop that meant naming Amy's fabulous wedding work, Diane's everyday designs, and Renee's knockout sympathy pieces — so nobody felt in competition with anyone else's lane. Even the bucket washer deserves it: "do you know those clean buckets make our flowers last so much longer?" It's okay to have a favorite — as long as nobody can tell, and the "favorite" rotates. And if you truly can't find something good in an employee, that tells you something too.
Five things to remember when comparison creeps in
The hosts close with five reminders for when your mind heads down the comparison road. Be where you are, not where you think you should be — stay in your lane; admire the wedding specialist without abandoning your everyday brick-and-mortar strengths. Tell yourself "I am cut from a different cloth, and they don't make that fabric anymore." Remember you're not running behind — you're on a different track, at your own pace. Take Theodore Roosevelt's word for it: comparison is the thief of joy — contentment gets a bad rap, and a day you end feeling content is a good day. And finally, move from competition to cooperation — the same "community over competition" spirit Renee Tucci brought to the show a couple of weeks ago.
Key takeaways
- Know where you stand against competitors, but don't obsess — awareness motivates, fixation derails.
- Social media is everyone's highlight reel; never measure your real life against it.
- Never publicly compare employees — praise each person's distinct strength so your team collaborates instead of competing.
- Even the least glamorous jobs deserve specific, spoken appreciation — it costs seconds and builds self-esteem.
- Stay in your lane, at your pace: comparison steals joy, and cooperation returns it.
Sponsored by:
Flower Clique
Flower Clique Prep School
Real Life Retail Florist