As founders, creators, and leaders, we are conditioned to ask a standard set of questions about our work:

What do we sell? Who are our customers? How are we different from our competitors?

These are all essential. But they orbit around a much more powerful, more fundamental question that is often left unanswered. It’s a question that, once answered, provides the clarity and gravity for everything else you do.

The single most important question is: "Why should anyone care?"

I’m not asking this to be cynical. I’m asking it because your audience, consciously or not, is asking it every single day. In a crowded market, "what you do" is simply not enough to capture attention, let alone loyalty.

The answer to "Why should anyone care?" is the beginning of your true brand narrative. It moves you from describing what you sell to defining what you stand for.