The journey of entrepreneurship is often filled with paradoxes, one of which is the challenge of building a company that can thrive without its founder. This is the central theme that is explored through the story of Alex Stapleton, an advertising agency owner. Alex's experiences, though fictional, mirror the real-life struggles of many business owners. In the United States alone, there are approximately twenty-three million businesses, but only a few hundred thousand are sold each year. This means that for every business owner who creates a company that someone will buy, there are about a hundred that do not sell. The story provides a framework and action plan to ensure that business owners are among the desired 1 percent who successfully sell their businesses. The experiences and lessons shared in the story are drawn from the author's fifteen years of covering the small business market. The author's first exposure to the life of a business owner was as a recent college graduate attending an awards show celebrating successful entrepreneurs. Inspired by their stories, the author decided to create a business that would help others achieve similar success.