Jere Cowden knew a lot of lives depended on his own.

He was in his 50s with about 25 employees and all of his clients depending on his good health. That's when he came up with the idea that he was going to slowly turn his business over to his vice presidents.

"It hits you pretty early that you need the ability for life to go on if something happens to you," he said.

Now Cowden Associates, a business consulting firm, has a secure future that is no longer dependent on the well-being of one man.

"We're in the business to plan for clients. You better plan for the business, too," he said.

Over the next decade, with an outside cap of 15 years, the men who work for Mr. Cowden, 61, of Leet, will become the owners of the firm. As Elliot N. Dinkin, 48, of Squirrel Hill, and Vincent G. Wolf, 40, of Moon, the two executive vice presidents at Cowden, slowly take over, Mr. Cowden will slowly have less to do.

That does not mean Mr. Cowden will be out entirely. Over time his stock will be bought out by the company and sold to Mr. Dinkin and Mr. Wolf, but as long as he can get into the office, he will have a place to go -- though Mr. Dinkin was sure to point out that the deal to buy him out did not include giving Mr. Cowden a free parking space.

In family businesses, the successors are easy to identify: sons, daughters or siblings often are ready or at least willing to step in and take the helm.

But when Mr. Cowden approached his own children about going into the business, which consults on human resources, compensation and employee benefits, they said they weren't interested.

In 2001, he flirted with the idea of selling his company to a larger firm, Palmer & Cay, a national firm that could provide his clients with a one-stop-shop for business consulting. But he didn't like the idea of having a boss, so he bought the local office of Palmer & Cay instead. That gave his firm the depth that Palmer & Cay had, without dealing with dictates from the home office.

"My driver was to create a firm that was independent, not pressured by the short-term quarterly profits," Mr. Cowden said.

Mr. Wolf said private ownership of the firm also relieved the workers from having to "sell the idea of the moment."

Cowden Associates was founded in 1996. Mr. Wolf joined the firm in 2001, Mr. Dinkin in 2005.

Cowden Associates provides business services to mid-size companies, which Mr. Dinkin defines as employers of 200 to 10,000 workers, or as he phrased it "a couple thousand lives." The company has annual revenues of about $5 million.

"For employees to entrust their future to us, they had to feel there was a future beyond one individual," Mr. Cowden said. And it wasn't just the employees. Clients also were forthcoming in saying that there had to be a plan in case anything ever happened to Mr. Cowden. "We solicit their opinions on how we can help them better," he said.

Mr. Cowden also realized that by owning a fairly small business, he wasn't going to attract major talent if they weren't going to be able to grow in their roles.

"I couldn't attract the type of talent I needed to run the business without them having an ownership stake," he said.

Enter the lawyers.

Mr. Cowden had his own attorney. Mr. Wolf and Mr. Dinkin had a joint attorney. The three men then told them they wanted them to draw up a deal in which Mr. Cowden was gradually bought out as his work hours dropped.

The attorneys had never seen a deal that had no break point -- it just continued so that Mr. Cowden would become a minority owner after 10 to 15 years.

It took about a year to put it all together, they said. In part, that was because the three principals in the deal had their own jobs to worry about so no one was shepherding the agreement full time.

The final version included the old model from law firms in which Mr. Cowden will never fully retire. Instead, he'll continue coming into the office, doing some work and reaching out to clients.

"I'll always have a place to toddle off to," he said.