Before the regulars stop coming

A man runs an aquarium shop in Manama. Most of his business comes from regulars, people who keep a tank at home and come back every few weeks for food, a spare part, a new fish.

He could look after those regulars in two ways, both bad.

He could call every customer after every visit, ask how the new fish is settling, and send photographs of new arrivals to all of them every evening. He would be busy all day, nobody would buy more for it, and the shop would go unswept and half stocked while he talked.

Or he could do nothing until he noticed, one slow month, that half the faces had stopped coming. By then some had moved, some had given up the hobby after a tank went wrong, and some had found a shop nearer home. Winning them back costs far more than keeping them would have.

The useful place is in the middle, and the middle does not happen by mood. It happens because he decides in advance what will make him act. A regular he has not seen in six weeks gets one message. Someone who buys a new tank gets a quiet check at ten days, when trouble usually starts. Nobody else gets anything.

That is a steady state: small, regular, planned, and decided when things are calm rather than when they are falling apart.

The same is true of most of what a business tends. Stock, staff, suppliers, the cash in the account. Set the tripwire while the water is clear. Waiting for the alarm is the expensive way to learn where it should have been.