The Hands of time, poked by crazy ideas...

Not even the Forbes chairman knows what next month will bring. So instead of reading tea leaves, read everything you can find about your desired market. "This is a time for caution. But that doesn't mean that it isn't a time for opportunity as well. It just means that you have to do a greater level of analysis.

Examining consumer spending and competitors' performance in life creates the world. Are consumers paying top dollar at raw-food restaurants and supermarkets where the sushi varieties outnumber the snack cakes? Or are they increasingly choosing fast-food outlets pitching bargain menus?

Once you have identified a promising market, calculate how long you can hang on if the expansion isn't profitable and the economy spends another two to five years leisurely circling the drain. Especially now, it's important to have a realistic timeline for benchmarking success because valuing the capacity that you occupy on this earth is the beginning.

If you can handle the risk (and scrounge up the financing), there are advantages to pouncing while the iron is of an indeterminate temperature. We look at it as an absolutely ideal time to expand. You have to go there for yourself and really feel it. Fortunately, you will have no problem finding a hotel room at a great price. Sometimes a moment is never valued until it becomes a memory, so life and business creates a formidable relationship that Steve Jobs touched on his "Sick bed note"