Sometimes we think we have more time than we really have to accomplish things that are important in our lives.

At 2 o’clock in the morning, a doctor came to me and said, “Mr. Blake, we have your results. We think the problem you’re having in your stomach has to do with a thickening of your small intestine wall. It’s probably a virus, but that’ll be OK. But we also saw a mass in your stomach. We think it’s this thing called a GIST — a gastrointestinal stromal tumor. I’m going to have the surgical team come over and probably admit you, and we’ll talk about what comes next.” And then he left.

So what I found is that only one out of 120,000 people a year in America is afflicted with this. They don’t know what causes it. The tumors start small, and they grow. They start local, and they spread. When they spread, they go from benign to malignant. When they’re malignant, this kind of tumor doesn’t respond to chemotherapy or radiation. Surgery is the only recourse. It’s pretty bad.

Eventually the doctor said, “Yeah, it’s a GIST; it needs to come out.” I started thinking about what I had done to protect my family.

Many of us have wills. My wife, Stacia, and I updated our wills about a year before the pandemic. We had put a lot of things in place, but I realized, Who is going to run my company? What is my succession plan?

In our family the governance of my business is run by the power of attorney provisions in my will. That means that Stacia gets to inherit or run the company. We’d never talked about it. Would she want to? Would she be able to?

The principle of traction talks about a business having a visionary, who has the vision and clarity to run a company, and an individual called an integrator, who will take care of this work in cohesion with the visionary to build a robust business.

It also talks about having what is called accountability silos, having individuals who are responsible for specific components of a practice. I had already been pursuing that in my company; I created silos for finance, sales and operations.

I came up with this idea that I’m going to find somebody to be my family’s advocate. I thought about what qualities an advocate should have. Should they know my product portfolio? Should they have stronger operational skills that complement my visionary skills? Most importantly, would they be acceptable to my wife?

I found three individuals in the industry. I identified who was the best person for me. I talked to this individual, and he said yes. I had my advocate in place.

As for my sale options, one is internal, and two are external. I’ve got a staff. I’ve had my right hand with me for 27 years, and other individuals for 22 years and 21 years. We all complement each other. Would I be dishonoring them by not giving them the opportunity to be involved and manage my company?

I have thousands of individual policyholders. It would be a good choice for me to give my company to somebody else who could walk in and provide continuity of service, which maximizes and preserves the value of my company. But also my product focus is so limited that I partner with other people to fully round out the services we offer. If I’m working with health care institutions all over the country, would there be other vendors who might offer retirement plans, nonqualified executive benefits or group insurance benefits who may not care about my individual clients as much as my institutional relationships?

The first thing we looked at was internal. As I said, I’ve got a right hand who’s been with me for many years. I had to ask myself, Why do we work so well together? Because we complement each other; because I’m vision and he is stability. If you’ve got the principal gone, do you want someone there to continue to have a vision to drive it or just maintain it? Those qualities will differ depending upon what the outcome would be in terms of business management versus business sale and disillusion. But I wondered how the staff would receive this individual as the leader of the company.

We went around my company one day asking, “What’s the one word that describes you in this company?” The word that came to my mind was “drive.” His word was “calm.” As entrepreneurs, do we want calm? We don’t; that’s not growth. I also had to look at if he was ready now. Could he drive it forward?

We worked through this in the limited time we had, and I said, “The only viable thing for me and my family was external sales.” We had to look outside.

So we looked at the different options. Who knows my marketplace? Who can actually do this?

I had this little idea: Why don’t I build a second team that I’m going to call my dissolution team? I’m going to find people who can sell the company.

I picked two people who said yes. I put these two people together. I have my marketing recruiters, and I have my negotiators who would bring an offer to my advocate, who would then bring it to my wife.

The first thing I didn’t do was figure out the value of my company. I’ve contracted two companies to get competing bids to find out what the value is. The second thing we are looking at is our communication to key clients and centers of influence to make sure that if something happens to me, they know what’s going on.

What about the staff? The value of a company is the staff you have. And what if they think, David’s gone or David’s out for six months, and I’ve got to work for that guy, so I may be looking for another job? So we started talking to our staff more; we wanted them to understand the steps we are taking.

Also, every week we have a three-hour meeting to operationally flow chart every single process in the company. And not just the process, but who does it, who they report to, and who is going to manage them in doing that as well.

The most important thing is to be honest with the people in the company. I’ve had some candid conversations with my right hand. He needs to understand why I’m thinking what I’m thinking. I need to ask him, “Do you want to do it? What are your concerns?” If he says no, I then want to take steps to protect him and also the company. If we sold the company, how do I protect him from a future purchaser?

By taking these steps, you protect your family. You protect your business. There’s no reason that any of us shouldn’t do this.

Do you really have as much time as you think you have? I certainly thought I had more. I’m grateful to be here sharing this message with you today.