What does it take to build a business that is not only profitable but also ready to sell when the time comes? Many business owners think about preparing for an exit only when they are ready to leave. But Michael Preston explains why exit planning should begin much earlier. Building a transferable business, reducing owner dependency, creating reliable revenue, and understanding what buyers really want can significantly increase business value.

In this episode, Michael Preston, business broker and M&A advisor with First Choice Business Brokers in Los Angeles, shares his experience helping lower-middle-market business owners prepare for growth, investment, and eventual sale. Michael discusses the mindset shift required to move from operator to potential seller, the growing sophistication of buyers and private equity groups, and why recurring revenue, diversified customers, strong systems, and reduced key-person risk can make a business more attractive.

Quotes:

1. "Selling your business is just different than selling your product or your service. You're selling a different product, quite honestly."

2. "A business that is built to sell also pays well."

3. "You want to make sure that you're not overly embedded in the business to the point where you're that Jenga piece that I pull out when you sell, and the whole thing falls apart."

Takeaways:

• Build your business with transferability in mind. Strong processes, capable employees, and reliable systems can make the company easier to operate and more attractive to potential buyers.

• Think like a buyer. Understand customer concentration, employee dependency, referral sources, sales channels, margins, and where the business is actually making money.

• Reduce owner dependency. An unexpected five-day vacation can reveal bottlenecks, unanswered questions, and areas where the business depends too heavily on the owner.

• Focus on stability as well as growth. Recurring revenue, contractual relationships, diversified customers, and predictable cash flow can reduce perceived risk.

• Prepare before you need to sell. Unexpected events such as death, disability, divorce, distress, or disagreement can force an owner to exit before they are ready.

Conclusion:

Michael Preston's experience highlights why exit planning is more than preparing for a future transaction. It is about building a stronger, more stable, and more transferable business today. Rather than focusing only on increasing revenue, business owners can create additional value by reducing risk, strengthening their team, improving processes, and making the company less dependent on the founder. When it's time to sell, these improvements can position the business for a smoother transition and give the owner greater confidence in the next stage of life.

Guest Links:

linkedin.com/in/michaeldpreston

Mark Osborne welcomes Kevin Nikkhoo, founder and CEO of ZenX SOC, an AI-native Security Operations Center platform that combines a digital workforce of AI agents with human analysts to detect, investigate, and respond to cybersecurity threats in real time. A four-time founder with more than 40 years of technology experience, Kevin has built and sold multiple technology companies and brings deep technical expertise and strong commercial insight to the cybersecurity industry.

In this episode, Kevin shares how his journey from early computer technology and entrepreneurship led him to build a cybersecurity platform designed to address the growing complexity of modern attack surfaces. He explains how cloud computing, connected devices, and expanding digital environments have made traditional security operations increasingly difficult to scale. Kevin also explores the difference between traditional Security Operations Centers and an AI-native SOC, explaining how AI can improve the speed, scalability, and ability to connect security data across an organization.

Kevin also emphasizes that technology alone is not enough. ZenX SOC combines AI with human analysts who investigate incidents, validate threats, identify root causes, and work with customers when human judgment is required. He discusses the potential of Agentic SOC capabilities while explaining why a fully autonomous approach may not fit every situation, particularly when automated action could affect critical systems such as healthcare, manufacturing, or e-commerce infrastructure.

Quotes:

• "Build it, and they come is not the answer."

• "You gotta understand the customer; the customer needs."

• "The problem has to be in the market, and you gotta identify it."

• "We only win. We only grow if our customers are successful."

• "Don't tell me what you did. Tell me how the customer was successful."

• "It's not about what we do. It's about: do we measure? Do we know the customer's issues, and do we know how to solve them?"
  
  

Takeaways:

• Treat technology as a tool for solving real customer problems, not the solution itself.

• The growing complexity of modern attack surfaces makes scalable cybersecurity operations increasingly important.

• AI-native security platforms can analyze and connect telemetry from multiple sources to improve detection speed, scalability, and response.

• Combining AI with human analysts balances automation, expertise, and judgment when responding to cybersecurity incidents.

• Autonomous response can be valuable for certain security incidents, but critical situations may still require collaboration and human decision-making.

• Customer success should be the central measure of a technology company's value, rather than simply measuring what the company has built.

• Spending time with customers and asking where improvements are needed can help companies identify market gaps and develop more useful products.

Conclusion:

Kevin Nikkhoo's insights demonstrate how successful technology companies can be built by combining technical innovation with a deep understanding of customer needs. His journey from early computer technology to an AI-native cybersecurity platform shows the importance of evolving with the market and identifying gaps existing solutions do not adequately address.

His customer-first philosophy is equally central to his approach. Rather than focusing only on product capabilities, Kevin encourages entrepreneurs to understand customers' problems, measure successful outcomes, and continuously look for ways to improve. For cybersecurity organizations, ZenX SOC's combination of AI and human expertise aims to provide scalable security operations while helping businesses focus on their core competencies.

Links Mentioned:

Website: ZenX SOC — https://zenxsoft.com/

Email: sales@zenxsoft.com

Email: info@zenxsoft.com

Guest Links:

linkedin.com/in/kevin-nikkhoo-5239427

Elijah Falode, business systems consultant, author, and founder of Sentinel Bookstore, joins host Mark Osborne on the B2B Growth Blueprint podcast to explore how Agentic AI can help solopreneurs and founders move beyond simple AI tools and build systems that actually work for them. With seven years of experience supporting founders, academics, and innovation-driven teams across AI, cybersecurity, cloud computing, and digital transformation, Elijah shares how managing multiple clients and repetitive workflows led him to develop practical Agentic AI systems. He is also the author of The Agentic AI Playbook for Solopreneurs, a guide designed to help solopreneurs build and scale no-code Agentic AI workflows.

Elijah explains the difference between using tools like ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini and deploying an AI agent that can reason across an entire workflow, use tools, access memory, and take action. He breaks down how to think of an AI agent like a virtual employee that needs onboarding, training, memory, tools, and guardrails. The conversation also explores the CRISP framework for creating better AI instructions, the importance of keeping humans in the loop, and how solopreneurs can automate repetitive work while focusing their time on the activities that require their unique expertise.

Quotes:

• "Agentic AI is different because it reasons independently."

• "You don't need to be an engineer to deploy an agent."

• "Garbage in, garbage out. If you want your agent to become more efficient, you need to feed your agent with the right information."

• "You are not getting eliminated from the entire system, but you are redesigning yourself back into the system, but this time into the part that matters the most."

• "You don't automate what annoys you. You automate the things that cost you time, your energy, and money."

Takeaways:

• Agentic AI goes beyond generating responses by reasoning across workflows and taking actions on behalf of the user.

• Building an effective AI agent requires the right model, memory, tools, instructions, and guardrails.

• AI agents should be onboarded and trained like employees, with ongoing feedback and clear thresholds for when human approval is required.

• Solopreneurs can delegate repetitive tasks to agents while remaining the gatekeeper for decisions that require their expertise.

• The best automation opportunities are tasks that consume significant time, energy, or money, not just tasks that are annoying.

• The CRISP framework helps improve AI outputs by defining context, role, instructions, specifications, and parameters.

Conclusion:

Elijah Falode's approach to Agentic AI shows how solopreneurs can use automation not simply to generate content, but to redesign how their businesses operate. By treating AI agents like virtual employees—giving them the right context, memory, tools, training, and guardrails—founders can automate repetitive work while staying focused on the decisions and activities where their expertise matters most.

Links Mentioned:

Book: The Agentic AI Playbook for Solopreneurs

Guest: Elijah Falode

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/elijahfalode