Imagine that you could start your business or personal life over again today. What would you get into and what would you get out of? What would you start up and what would you let go?

If ever you would downsize, discontinue, or eliminate anything or anyone to save your business, you would do it immediately. Don’t delay. Cut off all nonessential expenses and eliminate all nonessential activities.

Get back to basics. Focus on the 20 percent of your products, services, and people that account for most of your results.

“Is there anything that I am doing today that, knowing what I now know, I wouldn’t get into again if I was starting it up again today?”

Discipline yourself to ask and answer this question honestly on a regular basis. It takes tremendous courage to confront the reality of your current situation by asking the “Knowing what I know now …” question about everything you are doing.

The most important quality for business success in the twenty-first century is flexibility. With the explosion in knowledge and technology, combined with the rapid growth of determined competition, both nationally and internationally, products, processes, services, markets, and customers are changing at a more rapid rate today than every before.

You have to be flexible in the face of this rapid and ceaseless change to maintain your mental health, much less survive and thrive.