A member recently asked my advice about starting to promote budget eyewear in their practice because of a couple of comments from clients about their eyewear being too expensive. My advice was that he was in danger of designing his practice for the wrong client.

Every month at Jones And Co. we get the ‘too expensive’ feedback from a handful of people who don’t buy from us. That doesn’t mean I’m going to listen to them and start redesigning my practice based on what someone who is not my ideal client thinks. If I took their comments to heart and introduced a budget £150 range of frames and started promoting that change, all I would achieve would be confusing our best clients who are happy to spend £400+ on a frame, some would go elsewhere, and some would now spend £300 less on glasses that they enjoy less. The practice would struggle. I’d have to cut back in lots of areas. Probably would need to fire Gareth. It would be nothing but bad news.

Look, the people you need to keep in mind when making decisions in your practice are your ideal clients. What do they want? If someone isn’t a paying client, and a good client at that, then they simply don’t get a vote in how you run your practice. I had a client tell me recently that we focus too much on eyewear and that we should focus on the eye test side of the business far more because we wouldn’t have a business without doing eye tests. She should know. She’s a florist. Of course, she hasn’t bought glasses from us in years. I nodded politely and graded her as a D client and removed her from all communications. I would be insane to listen to D clients about how to run the business. They’re just not who my practice is for. We are not a match. Whenever you discover someone is not a match for your practice, break up with them. It’s them, not you.

I was watching Jerry Seinfeld the other day on ‘Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee.’ His guest on that particular episode said he has this thing where he always worries if all the people around him are having a good time. He asked Jerry if he suffered from the same affliction; ‘Take these cameramen, who are filming us, do you ever worry about how this is for them? And if they’re enjoying it?’

Jerry’s response was both brilliant and instructive. He said ‘Who? These guys?’

‘No! I don’t worry about these guys. Who cares about them? They are not the audience. Believe me, there is no money in those guys. But see through that little camera lens? Through there is my audience. That’s where the money is. There is tons of money through there. Screw the cameramen!’.

I couldn’t have said it better if I tried. Jerry Seinfeld loves being a comedian but he isn’t working for free. He expects to get paid. He expects to make maximum money. And he knows who his real audience is. He only cares what his paying audience thinks. No one else gets a second thought.