- Umair Haque 

It is easy to care about what you sell. Because it is easy to measure. You know precisely how many units of your product you sell, from which stores, from which websites, on a daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, yearly basis.

When it is easy to measure, it is easy to set targets. To sell 10% more, 20% more year on year, quarter on quarter. 

It is not as easy to measure what you make. How useful is your product? How simple is it to use? How beautiful is it? How much will it delight your customers? When you don't know how to measure something, how do you set a target for it? 

As Umair Haque puts it, there needs to be an emphasis on taste. You need to be a connoisseur of what you are shipping in order to make a great product.

The numbers that you can measure in sales, RoI, market share are all symptoms. You can invest your time and energy in boosting the symptoms and not pay attention to the underlying cause. And you will end up trying to beat your competition on price, on features, on size. Which customers might be happy to settle for. Until someone else comes along and offers something cheaper, bigger.

Focus on the cause instead. Be a connoisseur of what you make. Don't settle. And customers will camp outside your store waiting for your product to hit the shelves.