Notice who sticks around when you’ve got no ride, no money and no clout. They came for you, not the perks.

Hard stretches run a filter you would never have designed on purpose. With nothing to gain from being near you, whoever is still around is there for a reason that has nothing to do with what you provide, and there is no other way to get that information. It is a painful test and an unusually accurate one. Plenty of people never find out this clearly.

Write down who stayed. Then keep the list when things turn around, because they will, and the crowd will come back bigger than before. Treat the names on it differently from the crowd, permanently.