He asked me how to grow his audience.
I asked him who he wanted to be in his audience.
He said he wanted THIS type of people, but that his current audience had a lot of THAT type of people.
He’s worried he’ll lose a lot of his audience if he goes in the direction he wants to with his creations.
An existing audience is a trap if it doesn’t match where you ultimately want to go.
Optimize for the audience you want, not the audience you have.
(You’re not going to succeed trying to serve an audience you don’t want to serve anyway.)