1. Create A Leadership Team

Garner encouraged all CEOs to make a "Mars list" of the five to 10 people you would take to start a new company on Mars. Once a CEO does that, Garner said, he or she must delegate and stop being involved with everything.

Switching the focus from people to process will ensure that a company can survive - even if its CEO dies or retires and provide a much higher valuation in the merger-and-acquisition market.

To Garner, a company in which the CEO is vital to the success of the business is virtually worthless (since he or she could leave at any time), while he would value a company in which the CEO isn't vital to the business's success at four times its annual revenue.

"Build a team under you so if you go, nobody cares," Garner said.