Prepare Your Business for Change — Planned or Unexpected
Your Business Executor helps Canadian business owners prepare for the transitions that can change how their business operates, who leads it and what happens next.
From an unexpected absence or change in capacity to succession, exit, retirement or death, YBE helps you make the decisions, organize the information, and prepare the people your business may eventually depend on.
Business Transition Preparedness + Executor Support
Helping Canadian business owners prepare for the unexpected.
Your Business Will Change. Is It Prepared To?
Business preparedness isn't only about emergencies.
It's about making sure you've made enough decisions, documented enough information, and connected enough people that your business can navigate change.
Sometimes that change is unexpected.
An illness. An accident. Incapacity. A family emergency. The sudden departure of a business partner.
Sometimes you know it's coming.
A leave of absence. Reducing your workload. Bringing someone new into the business. Succession. Retirement. Sale. Exit.
And one day, every business owner will eventually leave their business.
Different transitions require different plans.
Continuity asks how essential business activity keeps moving.
Contingency asks what happens if a specific event like illness or sale or death occurs.
Incapacity asks what happens if you're alive but unable to lead or make decisions.
Succession asks who or what comes next.
Exit asks what you ultimately want to happen when your relationship with the business changes.
Business Transition Preparedness brings those conversations together.
It helps you make the decisions, organize the information, involve the right professionals, and prepare the people who may eventually need to act.
You Built the Business
But how much of it still depends entirely on you?
You know the clients.
The passwords.
The suppliers.
The accountant.
The banking.
The decisions.
The relationships.
The weird little thing that has to happen every month that nobody else even realizes you do.
That's normal when you're building a business.
But as the business grows and as your life changes having everything depend on you can become a risk and a limitation.
If you couldn't work tomorrow, would your business know what to do? Would your family?
And if you decided to step back six months from now, would anything be different?
Business preparedness helps you move important knowledge, decisions and instructions out of your head so your business - and the people around it - have somewhere to start.
What Does Your Business Executor Do?
Your Business Executor helps Canadian business owners prepare their businesses for planned and unexpected transition - and supports the people around the business when a triggering event means the owner can no longer lead.
The work has three connected parts:
1 | BUSINESS PREPAREDNESS
What I specialize in.
Making the decisions, organizing the information, and connecting the people your business needs to navigate change.
2 | THE BUSINESS EXECUTOR METHOD™
How we do the work.
A practical methodology that helps you Learn → Prepare → Plan → Act, based on your business, your circumstances and the transitions you're preparing for.
3 | BUSINESS EXECUTOR SUPPORT
When the plan needs to become action.
Practical operational support when an owner dies or can no longer lead and their family, business partners, team, and professional advisors need help understanding what happens to the business next.
You don't need a plan for every possible thing that could happen.
You need enough clarity, information and preparation that the people involved aren't forced to figure everything out when something does.
The Business Executor Method™
Business preparedness isn't just one plan.
Your business will change throughout its life - and so will your relationship with it.
Some changes will be planned. Others won't.
You may take an extended leave, reduce your hours, care for a family member, lose a business partner, experience an illness or incapacity, prepare someone to take over, sell the business, retire, or die while you still own it.
Each situation raises different questions.
Business continuity planning asks:
How will the essential parts of my business keep operating if normal operations are interrupted?
Contingency planning asks:
What happens if a specific event changes my ability - or someone else's ability - to work?
Incapacity planning asks:
What happens if I'm still alive but temporarily or permanently unable to make decisions or lead the business?
Succession planning asks:
Who or what comes next if I'm no longer the person leading the business?
Exit planning asks:
What do I ultimately want to happen to the business when my relationship with it changes?
Business Transition Preparedness brings those conversations together.
It's the proactive work of making decisions, organizing information, documenting instructions, and connecting the people your business may need to navigate planned and unexpected change.
The Business Executor Method™ gives you a practical way to do that.
LEARN → PREPARE → PLAN → ACT
Every business owner's preparedness journey looks a little different.
That's why every service follows the same practical framework.
LEARN
Understand what your business may need to prepare for and which questions actually apply to you.
Discovery Call | Workshops | Downloadable ResourcesPREPARE
Organize the information, people, responsibilities, and professional support your business depends on.
The Dahlias Planner™ | Business Preparedness Starter Package™ | Business Preparedness Foundations™ | Healthcare Practice Preparedness Starter PackagePLAN
Make the decisions and create the continuity, contingency and transition instructions your circumstances require.
Your Business. Your Plan. | Your Business. Protected.PROTECT
Communicate the plan, prepare the people involved, and make sure they know where to start. If a triggering event occurs, Business Executor Support can help your family, team and professional advisors navigate what happens to the business next.
Business Executor Services
Business preparedness gives you the foundation. The Business Executor Method™ gives you the process. Business Executor Support helps when the plan has to become action.
→ Explore the Business Executor Method™
Meet Jodi Laking
I’m Jodi Laking, Founder of Your Business Executor. For more than 25 years, I’ve experienced entrepreneurship firsthand — building businesses, navigating change, and making the same kinds of decisions my clients face every day.
Throughout my career, I've worked with business owners at every stage of entrepreneurship — from launching new ventures and navigating growth to transitioning, selling, and closing businesses.
I've supported entrepreneurs through my consulting practice, Work Smart Canada, and spent more than eight years as a Senior Business Development Officer with the City of Hamilton, helping businesses across a wide range of industries navigate opportunities and challenges.
Working alongside hundreds of entrepreneurs, I noticed something that kept coming up.
Business owners knew how to build a business.
Very few knew how to prepare it for the unexpected.
When an owner became seriously ill, was hospitalized, or passed
away, families and business partners were often left trying to
make important business decisions with little information and
no clear plan.
I knew there had to be a better way.
That's why I created Your Business Executor.
Today, I combine my personal and professional knowledge and expertise to bring business owners the
Business Executor Method™ — a practical methodology designed to help owners prepare their businesses
for planned and unexpected transition.
That can mean preparing for an extended absence, changing capacity, incapacity, succession, retirement, exit, or death.
Because the question isn't only:
“What happens to my business if something happens to me?”
It's also:
“Is my business prepared for what comes next?”
Learn more about my story and The Business Executor Method™ →
How We Can Work Together
No matter where you are in your preparedness journey, there's a service designed to help you move forward.
You want to...
Learn what business preparedness is
→ Discovery Call & Blog/Articles
Understand what matters when preparing your business for the future
→ Workshops & Downloadable Resources
Get organized (guided and self-guided options available)
→ The Dahlias Planner™ or Business Preparedness Starter Package™ or Business Preparedness Foundations™ or Healthcare Practice Preparedness Starter Package
Build your Business Transition Roadmap™ independently
→ Your Business. Your Plan. | Independent Planning with Strategic Guidance
Build your Business Transition Roadmap™ with monthly guidance
→ Your Business. Protected. | Guided Planning with Monthly Momentum
Prepare your family with professional operational support or need support when a plan must be activated
→ Business Executor Services
Are you seeking personal estate planning and preparedness services?
MONEY+DEATH — A PODCAST FOR BUSINESS OWNERS
You don't have to do everything today. But you do need to get started.
Money. Wills. Executors. Insurance. Estates. Succession. Family. Your business. And what happens to all of it when you're no longer here to answer the questions.
Join Jodi Laking, Founder of Your Business Executor, and Wendy Brookhouse, Certified Financial Planner and Founder of Black Star Wealth, for Money+Death — a new 12-episode podcast series about the conversations and decisions business owners and their families tend to put off.
Plain language. Real stories. Important conversations. And considerably more laughter than you'd expect from a podcast with this name.
Leave a plan, not a mess.
Why Business Preparedness Matters
Business preparedness isn't about expecting the worst.
It's about creating more options while you still have the time and ability to make thoughtful decisions.
A prepared business makes it easier to step away when your family needs you.
To reduce your workload.
To bring someone else into the business.
To prepare a successor.
To plan your exit.
To respond when life changes unexpectedly.
And to make things considerably easier for your family, team, and professional advisors if one day you're no longer able to lead the business yourself.
Preparedness gives your business somewhere to go when something changes.
At Your Business Executor, our goal isn’t just to help business owners prepare.
Our goal is to become Canada's most trusted source of practical business preparedness guidance — helping business owners and the people around them navigate the operational realities of planned and unexpected business transition.
Through education, planning tools, and reliable Canadian-focused resources, we want to make important information easier to find, understand, and use when people need it most.
Looking Ahead
Ready to Get Started?
Most business owners already know this planning is important.
Very few know where to start.
Let's change that.
Whether you're looking for practical education, self-guided planning, or expert guidance from beginning to end, I'm here to help you take the next step.
Helping Canadian business owners prepare for planned and unexpected change—so their business, family and future don't depend entirely on them being available to hold everything together.
What’s Your Business Preparedness Score™?
Take the free assessment to understand how prepared your business is today, identify your strongest areas, and see where important gaps may still exist.
Who This Work Helps Most
This resonates strongly with:
Sole proprietors and sole owners who carry most of their business information and operational knowledge in their heads
Entrepreneurs and small business owners who are the primary decision-maker in a business with 1–20 employees
Incorporated owner-operators, including consultants and service providers
Healthcare professionals in private practice
Self-employed individuals, agency owners and independent professionals (including realtors, mortgage brokers and financial advisors)
Business owners who want to protect their clients, team and families
If your business depends heavily on you, Business Transition Preparedness helps you identify what needs to change, what needs to be documented and what needs to be decided — before a transition forces the issue.
Your Business Will Change.
Prepare it for what comes next.
You don't need to solve every possible future today.
You need to know what matters, what you've already handled, what's still missing, and what your next step should be.