This week, police in North Carolina found Michele Hundley Smith alive and well. She’d been missing since December 2001. Left home to go Christmas shopping at a Kmart. Never came back.
Three children left behind. The youngest was seven.
Twenty-four years of not knowing whether their mother was dead or alive. Her daughter, who was fourteen when it happened, said she’s ecstatic, furious, and heartbroken all at once.
Now here’s a story I know personally.
Ray owned a services business. Three kids. Working marriage, or so he thought.
One afternoon, the school rang. His children needed picking up. His wife hadn’t shown. He called her. Nothing. Called again. Voicemail.
He was reaching for the phone to dial the police when a sms came through.
She’d left him. Run off with her boss. Contact her lawyer for any future communication. The kids were his.
That was it. No warning. No conversation. Just a text message and a new life he didn’t ask for.
Now imagine you’re Ray. Three kids who need you present and functioning. A business that requires your attention every day. An emotional bomb that would flatten most people for months.
This is where Ray’s story splits from what usually happens.
Because Ray had already done the work in regards to his business.
Years before that phone call, Ray had built a management team that could run the company without him in the building. He’d documented his systems. Built recurring revenue streams that didn’t depend on him personally showing up. Created an operation that functioned like an asset, not like a job with his name on the door.
So when his world fell apart, his business didn’t.
His management team stepped in.
Ray spent the next year or so putting his family back together and didn’t show up at the office for a long time.
But he didn’t need to.
Because the company didn’t just survive but actually thrived and got stronger.
Revenue kept growing. Clients never knew the difference.
Most owners I speak to think building a sellable business is only about the exit. The payday. The final chapter.
And they are smoking crack in thinking that.
Because it’s not just about the exit.
It’s about what happens today.
On the Tuesday afternoon you weren’t expecting.
The phone call you never planned for. The moment life decides to test whether your business is an asset or a house of cards.
Michele Hundley Smith’s children didn’t get a warning. Ray didn’t get a warning. You won’t get one either.
The question isn’t whether life will throw something at you. It’s whether your business can take the hit when it does.
Ray’s could.
Can yours?
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P.S. Feeling trapped in your business? Turn it into an Asset you love to run – and that investors want to own.
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