The most important customers (listeners, audience members and followers) are not the ones you gain, but the ones you keep. It’s all very well to measure how many people have signed up or walked through the door, quite another to understand who is really listening and what they care about. Numbers and foot traffic are nice to have and even nicer to talk about, but they mean nothing without engagement. Reach is not the same as thing at all as impact.

And the flip side is that the customers you keep are not just choosing you—you are also choosing them. The fact that you make this choice means you get to do your best work and not the watered down version for people who might care some day.

The foundation of your business is built on today, not some day and your work is too important to be diluted so that it appeals to everyone. So decide who for and who you for, be for them and not just for anyone.

Image by Nuria Fatych.