Daily Inspiration Quote by Stephen Cohen

Cohen’s line has the dry, calibrated feel of someone trying to puncture a lazy assumption: that “online” automatically means cheaper, easier, frictionless. The key move is the word “versus.” He’s not praising digital commerce; he’s staging a comparison that forces you to see customer acquisition and retention as ongoing operational burdens, not one-time wins. In the educator’s voice, it reads like a lesson aimed at founders, students, or administrators who treat the internet as a magic discount coupon on everything from marketing to loyalty.

The intent is partly corrective and partly strategic. “Acquiring new customers” signals the modern tax of attention: paid search, social ads, influencer budgets, platform fees, and constant optimization. “Maintaining those relationships” quietly widens the frame to customer support, personalization, content pipelines, email/SMS tooling, data compliance, and the churn problem. Online relationships aren’t maintained with a smile across a counter; they’re maintained with systems, automation, and relentless follow-up, which can become its own kind of rent.

The subtext is that bricks-and-mortar has hidden advantages we’ve stopped valuing because they’re not line items in a dashboard: foot traffic, locality, physical presence, habit. A storefront doesn’t just sell; it passively markets all day. Online, the meter runs continuously. Cohen’s “significant” is doing diplomatic work, too: a soft word that still warns of a hard reality - digital scale is real, but so is digital competition, and the cost curve can bite even the most “efficient” online operation.