In BigSpeak’s EVP Ken Sterling‘s long career, he’s seen plenty of highs and lows in his quest to make it big. Fortunately, he’s also been coached and mentored by some business greats who imparted him with their knowledge.

In a recent article for Forbes, Sterling provides some know-how himself, sharing a piece of advice that has stayed with him since boyhood: revenue equals vanity, and profit equals sanity.

He argues that businesses too excited over big revenues and fast growth are missing the point, often losing sight of their core values and ending up in unsustainable situations, spending outside their means in displays of greed and excess that come back to bite them when their profits flag.

To Sterling, revenue is an example of a vanity metric; any number that looks incredible in a braggy social media post but does not reflect the actual health of the company. Profit, on the other hand, is a sanity metric, and often measured in much less impressive percentages. A 1% increase in productivity isn’t the sort of thing people boast about, but it does mean the company’s lights will stay on.

For the full breakdown, see the original article.