Every business owner and their mom talks about culture - values statements, team-building events, speeches about what the company stands for. But culture isn't built by what you say. It's built by who you are. Before you can build the business culture you want, you must embody it.

Sometimes quitting isn't failure. Sometimes it's wisdom. The question is knowing the difference. So, this one's a little different. It's about knowing when to quit. When should you quit?

There's a comfort in tracking results. They tell you whether you won or lost. But results are history. By the time you're seeing them, the decisions that produced them are weeks or months old. You can't manage results. But you can manage what drives them.

When customers shop on price alone, most business owners assume that's the nature of their market. But commoditization isn't inevitable. It's what happens when you fail to give customers a reason to choose you beyond simply cost. Commodity-type pricing isn't a market condition you're stuck with. It's a result of your lack of value-differentiation.

When a prospect asks you for a discount, what do you do? Most salespeople negotiate. They justify the price, explain the value, maybe split the difference. What's actually happening is that the customer doesn't see or appreciate the value you're offering. And that's not a pricing problem. That's a qualification problem.

Leaders cast vision, explain strategy, lay out plans. But not every leader is successful at rallying people to a better future. Yes, much of it has to do with the leader's character and presence, for sure. But his ability to communicate the vision in a way that is clear and enticing is fundamental to his leadership. You must give people something to rally toward.

Most business owners set goals forward but don't plan backward. They know where they want to end up in December, but don't know what has to be true in March to make that possible. They then miss their targets because they never figured out what would have to be true - operationally, financially, structurally - to make it happen. Goals without a sequence are just hopes and wishes. Set your goal, and build your plan.

There’s a point in your business building efforts where you’ve given everything you have and the problem is still there. The choice is obvious. Quit, or keep going. It’s not complicated. But it most definitely is difficult. And that’s where most businesses die. Not because the problem was unsolvable. But because the owner ran out of will before they ran out of options.

Maybe you’re a guy who’s got ideas. Lots of them. You’re constantly seeing opportunities, imagining possibilities, thinking about what could be. And maybe, because you’ve got ideas, you call yourself a visionary. Maybe you’ve even convinced others to do so too. But being a visionary takes more than just having ideas.

With knowing that order and control is a means to the end of customer-value, not an end in and of itself, you can build a Value-Centered Administrative System. Here’s what the looks like.