Do you know whose success you’re striving for today? There’s only one right answer if you run a business. The correct answer is “your customer.”

When you focus on your customer success first you ensure that your company is aligned and attuned to meeting their needs, solving their problems and making them successful. Putting the customer first isn’t a new idea by any stretch, but it’s important to refocus everyday we sit down at our desks to remember that first and foremost we’re in it to make them better off than they were without us. If we do that in a meaningful way each and every day we will find our own success.

It’s the companies and individuals who forget this golden rule that get into trouble. When you start thinking about your own success and that of your company you lose focus of the customers. Customer service becomes a cost center to trim down, products need to yield a precise margin in order to be shipped and policies like returns, warranties, etc. become down right hostile in tone and practice. This is where you begin to lose your customer, and eventually your job and eventually your market. History is a graveyard of companies that failed by putting themselves first.

Focusing on the success of the customer is the only sustainable way to grow a business. Sure, you can rip people off until they notice, fold up shop or relaunch the product and hope to get another wave of suckers; but that’s getting a lot harder with the Internet. Customers are more informed and more vocal. It’s a diminishing return market. Never a good one to be in.

When you focus your efforts on the success of your customer you create a sustainable, self-supporting power source that drives you towards your success. It’s the best recipe there is for success and always has been. As Sam Walton so famously said “There is only one boss: the customer. And he can fire everybody in the company, from the chairman on down…” We need to remember who our boss is.

So this morning when you sit down to work, don’t think about your commission or payday or how you don’t want to talk to the engineering team; instead sit down and think “What am I going to do today to make our customers more successful?” I bet you’ll find a more satisfying day a more productive day and a more successful day unfolds before you.