As an entrepreneur, it’s vitally important to focus most of your time with your eyes looking “down the road” – into the future. Day in and day out, as busy business owners, we spend much of our time meeting and hopefully exceeding our current customers’ expectations.

But it’s equally important that we spend time looking into the future, trying to anticipate the inevitable changes in the marketplace, so we can best determine not only what products and services our customers will want, but also how they will want to receive them.

You may have a successful, thriving business today, but failing to change and adapt your business to meet your clients’ new and ever-changing preferences is a sure recipe for failure.

However, it is also always good, especially at year’s end, to take a few minutes to look in the rearview mirror to take stock of where your business has been and what you’ve accomplished.

Take time to review what worked well, what didn’t, and perhaps why. But while it’s true that we can learn a lot from history (looking in the rearview mirror), don’t spend too much time there – because the future is going to unfold in front of you!