Somewhere in your operating agreement is a sentence obligating you to buy your partner's interest at fair market value inside ninety days. Almost none of them say where that money comes from. That blank line is the whole problem, and most owners have never put a number on it.
No application. No exam. No forty-page insurance presentation.
What the document obligates you or the company to pay, and how many days you get.
Cash, credit that survives the event, coverage already in force. Not what you'd like. What's there.
X minus Y. The number nobody has figured out how to cover. That's where the damage happens.
The only difference is whether the money was already sitting there.
Nothing about the top row is unusual. It's what an ordinary, competently drafted operating agreement produces when nobody funded it. The second scenario only costs an affordable monthly premium.
Find your situation
Click the one that sounds most familiar.
An agreement without funding isn't protection. It's a lawsuit with a table of contents. The estate's attorney will enforce it, and she represents a spouse with a mortgage holding half a company she can't run and can't sell to anyone but you.
One meeting fixes it: put a real number on the buyout, then price what it costs to have that money already sitting there.
Without an agreement, default rules control what happens to his half — which usually means his spouse or his kids inherit an interest in your company, with no obligation to sell it to you and no experience running it.
An attorney drafts the agreement. Someone else makes sure there's money behind it. Both together cost a fraction of the fight.
Most avoidable delay in SBA lending. Two things before you buy anything: the required amount is based on your collateral shortfall, not the loan balance, and term coverage satisfies it — nobody should be selling you whole life for this.
Already own a policy? You may be able to assign it instead of buying a new one.
Payroll still runs. Vendors still invoice. The line of credit you personally guaranteed is still there. Somebody has to keep the lights on while probate sorts out who owns it.
The question isn't only whether your family gets money. It's whether they get it fast enough, and whether anyone is authorized to make a decision on Monday.
The only licensed tech. The estimator who prices every job right. The salesperson who personally owns every relationship you have. Ownership percentage is a lousy indicator of who's load-bearing.
Two separate problems: what it costs if they die, and what it costs if they walk. There's a structure for each.
Three things go wrong constantly: the coverage was sized to a company you no longer own, the ownership and beneficiary structure contradicts what the agreement says, or the notice-and-consent paperwork required for business-owned policies was never signed — which can cost the tax-free treatment of the entire death benefit.
Bring the policy and the agreement. If it all checks out, you'll hear that and you're done.
Price depends on age, health, coverage amount, and term. That's why every site says "it depends" and then asks for your email anyway.
A short call with your age and a coverage target gets you an actual range from real carrier pricing. Ten minutes, no application.
Chapter 7 of book one is a list of the bullshit to watch for, including the agent who solves every problem with permanent life insurance because it carries the biggest commission. I wrote it knowing I'm in that industry.
So ask me the questions the book tells you to ask. What does this cost, what's the alternative, and what's in it for me. If I get cagey about the third one, you'll know what to do.
The series
Plain English, no product pitch, and a list in every one of them of the ways people in my industry will try to sell you something you don't need.
Protecting the company, the family, and everyone left behind. What actually happens in the eighteen months after, and what it costs.
Get it freeProtecting the person your business can't afford to lose — the one who isn't on the cap table and takes the revenue with them.
Keeping your business, family, and employees from getting screwed when the owner is the one who's gone.
Succession planning for normal business owners. Not dynasty planning. Yours.
The five policies that could actually save your business, and the ones you're overpaying for right now.
Making sure the money is actually there when a partner dies. The fourth question most agreements leave blank.
Book one · 45-minute read · free
Chapter one is a timeline. Month three, a letter with the word "fiduciary." Month seven, the foreman leaves with $1.9 million of revenue. Month eighteen, you're running service for a competitor. None of it was caused by the death.
One email with the PDF. No sequence unless you ask for one.
What actually happens
The reason owners put this off is they assume the meeting is a pitch. Here's the actual sequence.
If you have partners, bring them. Half the failures here come from one owner quietly buying coverage the others didn't know about, structured for an agreement that says something different.
Book the reviewOperating agreement, loan commitment letter, existing policy. If you have none of it, the call still works.
We read the relevant section out loud, put a number on what it obligates you to do, and find the gap if there is one.
What you're exposed to, what covering it costs, what you can reasonably ignore. Yours whether you buy anything or not.
Applications mean health questions and usually an exam. Later step, separate decision.
Chapter seven, abridged
Including the kind that comes from people who do what I do.
If your business would be fine without you — real management depth, no personal guarantees, no concentration in one relationship — you may not need business coverage at all. If you're behind on payroll taxes, fix that first. If you have no agreement, no debt, and no employees, you probably need a personal policy and a will, not a corporate structure.
And if anyone steers you toward permanent insurance to satisfy a bank's loan requirement, ask why in writing. Term satisfies it.
You'll hear all of that on the call if it applies to you. Shorter conversation, and it's the one that makes the rest of this worth trusting.
Objections, answered
Including the uncomfortable ones. If yours isn't here, text it and you'll get an answer, not a callback request.
Who you'd be talking to
I work with business owners on the financial side of business protection. Finding the people, the ownership arrangements, and the funding gaps that turn an already terrible event into a financial disaster.
I make money in this industry. So ask me the questions I told you to ask in chapter seven. What does this cost, what's the alternative, and what's in it for you. If I get cagey about the third one, you'll know what to do.
I'm not replacing your attorney, your CPA, or your banker. My job is to help you find the holes, understand the numbers, and walk into those four phone calls knowing exactly what to ask.
Based in Tucson. Working with owners across Arizona, in person or by video.
Credentials
Angel Esteban Fraijo
Independent broker · multiple carriers
Insurance Producer — Life
Arizona license #22152790
Arizona Dept. of Insurance and Financial Institutions
Effective 03/10/2026 · Expires 05/31/2029
Tucson, Arizona
520-368-4750
contact@angelfraijo.com
Book it
Thirty minutes. No application, no cost. You'll leave knowing what you're exposed to and roughly what covering it costs — or that you don't need anything, which is an answer people actually get.
In a hurry? Call 520-368-4750 or send a text.
