The other night I was at the gym struggling to complete my sets on one of the leg machines that kicks my ass especially hard when I noticed two people doing “super sets.”  Super sets, if you don’t know, are exercises that people do in between weight lifting sets — push ups, jumping jacks, etc.

That’s right, people are doing exercises between their exercises.

That night as I was struggling to reach my goals on the weight lifting machines, these two people were not just lifting more weight on the same machines as I was. They were also doing aerobic exercises in between — time I reserve for panting and cursing under my breath.

Luckily I didn’t let myself compare myself to these way more fit people, who have clearly been working out for more than a few weeks.

See I often go to the gym with my friend Andy. He shows me what to do, and then does it with way more weight. I’m just getting back into exercising, so I’m learning from him, and doing what I can.

Focusing on how much more he can lift than me is stupid. Focusing on how he does it, taking his feedback on how I’m doing it wrong and how to improving my breathing is how I’m going to get my ass in shape.

Inspiration or Comparison?

Or why Josh woke up in a shit mood today and how he turned his day around…

The WordPress community is gifted by people who have had success and then share the lessons they learned along the way. It’s pretty amazing that when I’m starting a business that is in many ways similar to iThemes, I can hear their founder Corey Miller speak at WordCamps, get really awesome advice from him, read their awesome WPProsper newsletter…

Corey isn’t the only example. I had the pleasure of meeting James Laws from Ninja Forms, a business even more similar to my own at WordCamp Atlanta. I spoke with several members of his team then and have  talked to him a few times online about running a business in the add-on model since then.

This is awesome, if you want to be in the WordPress ecosystem, and you’re not taking advantage of this, then you are doing it wrong.

But that’s the easy part. The tricky part is not looking at their success, trying to emulate and then beating yourself up for not being where they are.

I started a WordPress product business of my own about six months ago that is going pretty well so far. Are we as big as iThemes or Ninja Forms? Nope. Are we years behind them in experience, building a brand, and nurturing our user base? Yep.

The support the WordPress ecosystem provides is awesome, but it does not make it easy. You can and should emulate those who are more successful than you. But it takes time and lots of hard work.

The real doing it wrong, a trap I find myself in, is comparing my self to people who are years ahead of me in terms of their revenue numbers, active install counts on WordPress.org, how mature their products are and how much everyone loves their products.

I believe in what we are doing at CalderaWP, the products are awesome, and the response from people who have used them is very positive. We will not be an overnight success, and neither were any of those I look up to.

So yes, it’s a trap. But it is an easy trap to get out off.

Those who are more successful then you, are great inspiration and when they share how they got there, that’s awesome. When you get out of the comparison trap, you can not only move forward. When you learn from them, instead of comparing yourself to them, instead of getting dragged down by jealously, you find your own unique path.

That unique path, in time is either going to work, or not. I have no idea. But only by moving forward on it, am I ever going to find out. I hope y’all will keep watching and find out.

Y’all Are Awesome

I should put that on a t-shirt 🙂

Thank you to everyone single one of you in this wonderful community for inspiring me to keep at it. It means the world to me, and I look forward to seeing y’all at upcoming WordCamps — I’m speaking at Las Vegas, Tampa and New York and planning on getting to Orlando and US as well — to say thanks in person.

In the meantime, we’re going to keep making Caldera Forms more awesome and spinning up other cool plugins. I hope you will try them and let us know what you think.