Documentation.  What do I mean by this?

This is the collective knowledge all about your business: trade secrets, special supplier or customer relationships, secret recipes; all the things that are integral to why your business is successful. Your operational secrets, truly define your competitive advantage.

This is not a document to be shared with everyone.  In fact, much of the needed knowledge is not just with you and could be with your key employees or other family members and should be gleaned from them and documented in some way.

Write it down.

This is a method to force you to consider your business and its strategy and organize your thoughts in a cogent way to facilitate a transition at some point in the future. What you write down, could help those who will be taking over the business, to keep it successful.

Learn think apply!