How a Major Personal Crisis Led to a Smarter Business When his child suddenly required round-the-clock care, an entrepreneur adapted his company's operations to allow him to run it from anywhere, anytime.

One Sunday in 2011, as Chris Carter and his family were leaving for their church outside Milwaukee, his oldest daughter began acting weird. She was 12 at the time, and she stood frozen -- her face blank, her complexion white as chalk. Soon she was vomiting and having a seizure. The family rushed her to the doctor, and a diagnosis was made: epilepsy.

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"It was a day I don't wish on any parent," Carter says. But he couldn't be just a parent; he was also a CEO, having founded a startup called Approyo only six months earlier, and his employees relied upon him, too. Carter tried tending to both sides. "I started working 24-hour days," he says. "I couldn't focus on one or the other."