Blogging is good for business and this is what most companies are turning towards to today. It isn't just some crap about putting together stored ideas and using keywords in the process. It is about building identity and this is something that has helped in the marketing and promotions of most companies today.

Most people who jump ship do so because they just cannot stay one moment longer at their place of work and honor their own deeply held business or career values at the same time.

People might be able to happily get by with less money, but they cannot work for long in a situation that violates a deeply held core value.

Values go beyond beliefs. They are the core philosophies we hold sacred. People often report feeling as though they were born with these values.

Every individual has a core set of personal values he or she brings to work; every business has a core set of business values. The optimum business situation is when these sets of personal and business values overlap, blend and morph into what I call shared values.

Whether you are consciously aware of them or not,your personal values constitute your ideals, and shape your being - indeed they are your being. And whether you are in alignment with them or not-whether you own or work in a business that reflects them or not they affect your every thought, word and action.

I am the best example of how values- or rather a conflict in personal and business value-helped to shape my behavior and decision-making. I sold my thriving business, not because it was a failure- financially speaking, it was wildly successful- but because I was not able to keep that business and honor my own value of personal freedom. The nature of the business demanded too much time and dedication. Once I realized this, no amount of money could make me stay.

If you are a business owner, your business values are your company's invisible CEOs. Whether you realize it or not, your values help manage every aspect of your business. They guide your decisions; they help determine if your business is viable and valuable. When you create a business that is in alignment with your values-and when you bring people on board who are in harmony with those values-your business has the best chance of meeting your personal and financial goals.

How closely your business is aligned with your own values, and how closely your employees' values follow suit, determines the degree to which your business will fly or flop on all fronts. A strong sense of shared values allows you to initiate meaningful actions based on mutual agreement instead of spending all your time managing the fallout caused by not honoring them.

Without this shared value, our working relationship would have been doomed from day one. With the respect piece missing, we would not be happy with their performance and attitude, and they would not be happy trying to fit in with us.

The payoff for consistently knowing and acting from this and other shared values was that we enjoyed long term relationships with employees, vendors, clients and customers that stretched 25 years or more. We had corporate contracts that lasted 15 and 20 years, a time period unheard of in the contract dining services industry.