Waking up at 4 a.m. is not an accident for me. As an entrepreneur, the early hours of every morning are my quiet time to plan, reflect, cast vision and get stuff done, so Saturday September 1, 2012 started like any other. I jumped out of bed at 4 a.m., took a shower, and walked downstairs to make myself a café con leche (coffee with milk). At 4:35 a.m., as my heart intensely circulated caffeine throughout my body, I began rewriting and touching up my will. In just a few hours my family and I would be boarding a plane for a month-long overseas vacation.

Then I died at 4:42 a.m. I died for 18 minutes before being revived at 5:00 a.m. I crossed to the opposite side. There was no dazzling shining light, no flashing montage of key life events, and no voice summoning me to the golden gates.

I didn’t get a heart attack out of nowhere. There was no automobile slamming into my living room, and I didn’t pass out from an overdose of Spanish coffee. I committed suicide. I imagined myself lying in my casket, surrounded by weeping relatives and friends. I was looking for genuine emotion on their expressions. The reality that someone would soon be taking the platform to deliver the eulogy struck me, and I braced myself for what would be spoken. It was agonizing, and I felt myself resisting something that was definitely immutable. The legacy I left was not the ultimate tale I desired to leave, nor was it the book I desired to write.

I turned my thoughts back and gasped my first breath of a new life. In me was a fresh determination to write my book in every action of my daily life. To live out something that would be worth leaving in my words, actions and intentions. While I am here on Earth, my life has an immediate impact on everyone I come in contact with, but I also leave a legacy that lives on in the people I touched. I only have a predetermined amount of time on this planet to make an impact, and I choose to do so now.

When my new life started at 5 a.m. I started writing my book based on the legacy I am leaving. I asked myself the good, tough questions:

• What is the small paragraph in the newspaper going to say?
• Why can’t it be the whole newspaper?
• Whose lives have I altered and in what ways?
• Are my actions right now, and every minute of every day congruent with this story?
• Am I taking the steps that will lead me to this legacy?
• If not, why am I participating in these actions?
• What am I thinking about and worrying about right now?
• How do these thoughts help me leave a meaningful book and touch lives?

These questions cast an everlasting light on the daily responsibilities of being a man, leader, spouse, parent, friend, and entrepreneur. My everyday chores are organized around my legacy, and if I find myself doing something that does not contribute to my intended legacy, I eliminate it from my life.