People do NOT stop spending money.

Even in the toughest of economic times, people do NOT stop spending money.

So it makes sense that if people do NOT stop spending money, businesses do NOT have to stop making money.

Though it could be deduced that the United States – both the public and private sectors – failed to learn enough from past recessions in order to prevent the current one the country is facing, so much can be learned from history. As it turns out, Darwin’s “survival of the fittest” theory is not confined to the nature of biology books. Some of the most valuable lessons can be learned from the companies that made the endangered species list during past times of economic strife in America. Ultimately, weak companies that made weak decisions went extinct.

Smart companies, however, adapted to the current climate, they evolved, and they continued to grow for generations. They prepared properly by making wise but difficult decisions – where to focus, what to sacrifice, who to empower, how to leverage what they had, and why to maintain a winning mindset during a period increasingly characterized by failure.

In facing the question of when it is time to toughen up their business for a tough economy, smart companies know only one answer – NOW.