You lowered the owner dependency. You fixed the customer concentration. You grew. So the offer comes in where you expected — right?

John Martinka has spent 25+ years on the other side of that moment. He's Co-Founder of Nokomis Advisory Services in Kirkland, Washington, a sell-side M&A firm working the lower end of the lower middle market — deals he puts at "five to fifteen, twenty million is our sweet spot" on earnings of "about say one or so until about three." He's written five books, he's known as The Escape Artist, and he's back on the Value Factory to pick up where he and Nick Anderson left off.

On the sale itself, John is blunt about what sellers still get wrong:

"And for the seller to think, well, I'm gonna sell my business for 15, 20, 25, or whatever million and just get a check at closing — no note, no earnout, no rollover, nothing besides cash — they're mistaken." … "Or they're gonna sell it for less."

On tying an earnout to EBITDA:

"It shouldn't be the measure. Because it's easy to manipulate."

On who is actually responsible when a seller gets blindsided by deal structure:

"If the attorney and the intermediary do a good job of educating, if they're surprised it's because they have their ears closed."

And on the 90-day transition period nobody finishes:

"I was so glad he wasn't coming in on day ninety-one."

Nick brings the other half: what it actually looks like to retrofit a 26-year-old consulting firm into an AI-native one, and whether buyers are paying for it.

"Zero to eighty is transformational. Eighty to a hundred is marginal."

"I've given my agent a name and her name is Sarah. And Sarah is my SEO agent." … "I have five digital employees for less than a thousand bucks a month."

"We will save a hundred thousand dollars in operating expense by way of not having to pay for a human to do something that quite frankly humans loathe, which is creating a slide deck."

"If the business doesn't have, like, underlying fundamentals around their go-to-market, their sales strategy — you bolt AI onto it, it'll never work."

And John's counterweight:

"You also have to watch out what it tells you. And make sure it's feasible."

Guest: John Martinka, Co-Founder, Nokomis Advisory Services — https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnmartinka · https://nokomisadvisory.com

CHAPTERS

Most owners reach for AI to trim costs. Michael Ellison is using it to change what his company is fundamentally worth.

Mike is President and CEO of Corporate Insight, a competitive intelligence firm his father founded in 1992 and that Mike joined in 1997, now a roughly 100-person operation in New York City serving financial and healthcare institutions. On this episode of the Value Factory Podcast, host Andrew Ballard asks him what convinced him the business had to change, and what he thinks the bigger prize actually is.

His answer starts with a promise to his team:

"I am not about leveraging AI to lay off half the staff. But what I want to be able to do is leverage AI to make a 100-person firm do the capabilities of a 200-person firm."

Mike saw the threat early. In a professional services business, he says, "that knowledge work is gonna get eaten by AI", so the firm moved before it was forced to. For years its research was manual: analysts working through client websites page by page. Now Corporate Insight is building "digital twins" of those analysts, and the deliverable itself is changing shape.

The core insight is about where the value actually sits:

"The knowledge was locked in a PDF."

"I don't want the PDF to be the initial data architecture. I want it to be the end result of what's already in the system."

That shift, from producing documents to producing queryable data, is what changes the economics. It opens up on-demand reports, MCP access for clients who want to plug the firm's data into their own stacks, and dashboards. It also changes who the firm can serve: instead of only Fortune 500 engagements, Mike asks whether you can "do something profitably at a $50,000 or $25,000 price point."

He's blunt that none of it moves the number on its own:

"Multiple is still all gonna come down to EBITDA."

The most striking part of the strategy is that he's deliberately building his own competitor:

"I don't want to be disrupted blindly by this. So I'm trying to set up a digital twin that is potentially a competitor."

He also makes the case for prototypes over strategy decks, "you can prototype things at a cost and speed that was not remotely possible three years ago", and for keeping the company human while it automates:

"I think the culture is the business in many ways."

"I also don't want to become a faceless machine."

"And I will always have humans in the loop."

Also in this episode: Mike's work as co-chair of the Financial Literacy Committee at the SPARK Institute and with FinEd50, why Claude is the firm's main model, and the maritime history publishing imprint and relaunched magazine Ships and Scale he says he "couldn't have done pre-AI."

Guest: Michael Ellison, LinkedIn (two L's in Ellison), corporateinsight.com

CHAPTERS

That is the question Sel Watts builds her entire practice around. On this episode of The Value Factory Podcast, host Andrew Ballard talks with Sel Watts, founder of wattsnext PX, a culture architecture firm for founder-led professional services businesses across the US and Australia, about "return on person," and why the number almost nobody calculates is the one that now matters most.

In Sel's words:

On why a weak return is almost never a people problem:

On annual performance reviews:

And the line that gives this episode its edge:

Connect with Sel Watts: [email protected]

The Value Factory Podcast is presented by OneAccord, a national consulting firm headquartered in Kirkland, Washington.

Nick Anderson gave Jesse Kreun one job: make OneAccord, a 26-year-old professional services firm, AI native by January 1, 2027.

This episode is the unglamorous conversation nobody films: not prompts and demos, but file architecture, metadata, SharePoint lists, CRM columns, and the change management required to get 25 people to actually put the data in.

"I have asked you to get OneAccord to this place of AI nativity. Make us AI native by January 1, 2027." (Nick)

"For decades, we've just been filing stuff in the old folder system... you started putting things in folders, organizing in subfolders, and kind of had your own system created." (Jesse)

Nick is blunt about his own habits: "Let's be honest, man. I save everything to my desktop and then I put it in a folder later... my file nomenclature, my file architecture, my folder architecture, it's horrendous."

They get concrete fast. On the other side of the podcast studio wall is a storage room full of banker boxes and manila folders, and Nick's point is that OneAccord's SharePoint looks exactly the same. Jesse walks through what metadata actually is, why a single "city, state, zip" column kills your ability to report, and why automation has to come before AI.

Then it gets uncomfortable:

"Every online fitness influencer from 2020 to 2023 is now an AI expert, and they're all pitching a $997 AI audit for your small business to have this conversation that we just had right here. Newsflash: nobody's ready. Just saved you a thousand bucks." (Nick)

They talk real numbers. A Fortune 100 data cleanup runs "three hundred, five hundred, eight hundred thousand dollars." OneAccord is running about $3,500 a month in AI applications and token spend, and six months in Nick tallies the whole bet at roughly $75,000, while admitting the honest answer on ROI: "Is there an R on this I yet? ... The answer's no, right? I mean, not yet."

Nick's resolution is the most useful idea in the episode: "I can't go back and not eat the ice cream... but I can make the decision today to not eat ice cream tomorrow." Don't spend $500K cleaning up 26 years of history, just do it right from today forward.

The back half is the part most AI conversations skip entirely: adoption. Jesse and Nick work through ADKAR and SCARF, why "make someone aware" isn't awareness, and why status, certainty and autonomy are what actually stop a team from using the tools you built.

"You have built beautiful systems. But if nobody uses them, they're worthless." (Nick)

Also in this one: letting Claude loose on 20 years of SharePoint and surfacing client testimonials nobody knew existed; running the sales pipeline through Claude and not liking the answer; conversational intelligence that turns every recorded call into coaching; why chasing unqualified deals is the expensive habit; and the "say the exact words back" rule Nick borrows from marriage coaching and applies to clients.

Guest: Jesse Kreun

Chapters

OneAccord helps founders and owners of $25M+ companies increase enterprise value ahead of transition. oneaccordpartners.com

Nick Anderson runs OneAccord, a 25-year-old consulting firm that leads lower-middle-market companies (manufacturers, trades, professional services doing $25M+) through transition and growth. In January 2026 he stopped being an AI cynic and started building agents. Today three of them work in his company: Donna, his digital chief of staff, who has a OneAccord email, a Microsoft 365 license and a seat on the org chart; Harper, who runs marketing, content and video; and Grace, who writes code.

Ansh Nanda, founder of Chorus.com, sits down with Nick to get the unfiltered version: what it actually cost, what broke, what he still won't hand to an agent, and why the answer to almost every "AI readiness audit" in America is the same.

In this conversation:

Guest host: Ansh Nanda, founder of Chorus.com.

Chapters

OneAccord helps founders and owners of $25M+ companies increase enterprise value ahead of transition. oneaccordpartners.com

Every business has an operating system. The question is whether it's helping your company grow or holding it back.

In this episode of the Value Factory Podcast, host Andrew Ballard sits down with business operating system expert Sergiu Simmel to discuss how the right systems create stronger leadership, better execution, and greater enterprise value. They also explore why AI can't fix broken processes and what leaders should look for as their businesses grow.

Learn more about building a scalable business at oneaccord.co.

What if the biggest obstacle to growing your business is you?

In this episode of the Value Factory Podcast, host Andrew Ballard sits down with executive coach, retired Air Force Lieutenant Colonel, and bestselling author Ben Morley to explore the connection between personal transformation and enterprise value. They discuss owner dependency, leadership, process documentation, and why the strongest businesses are built to thrive beyond their founders.

Discover practical insights for building a more scalable, transferable business at oneaccord.co.

Why do so many strategic plans fail to deliver results?

In this episode of the Value Factory Podcast, host Andrew Ballard sits down with Joseph Thompson, CEO of Target Tech and former Army officer, to explore why execution is often the missing link between strategy and success. They discuss the difference between urgent and important work, how CEOs can create lasting enterprise value, and why accountability and operating cadence matter more than another planning session.

Learn practical insights for building a stronger, more valuable business at oneaccord.co.

What makes one company impossible to compete against while another gets stuck competing on price?

In this episode of the Value Factory Podcast, host Andrew Ballard sits down with Lorraine McGregor, founder of Spirit West Management, to explore how discovering your company's unique X factor can drive growth, increase profitability, and create lasting enterprise value.

Together, they discuss customer perception, Blue Ocean Strategy, and why the strongest businesses stop chasing competitors and start building on what makes them truly different.

Learn more at oneaccord.co.

Why do so many business strategies fail?

In this episode of the Value Factory Podcast, OneAccord Principal Huba Rostonics joins host Andrew Ballard to explain why execution, not strategy, is the biggest challenge facing growing businesses. Together, they explore the relationship between vision, strategy, and execution, why most strategic initiatives fall short, and how a business operating system creates the accountability needed for lasting growth.

If you're a business owner, CEO, or leader looking to turn strategy into results, this episode offers practical insights you can apply immediately.

Learn more at oneaccord.co.