Drs. Leilani Felix-Acosta and Fernando Acosta are certified M&A advisors, licensed business brokers, and published authors who own and operate First Choice Business Brokers offices in Phoenix, Arizona and El Paso, Texas. A husband-and-wife team who both hold doctoral degrees in business disciplines, they came from the corporate world with a shared goal of business ownership, and a mission to help entrepreneurs build wealth, freedom, and legacy. They are the creators of the Acquire, Maximize, and Exit framework, which guides owners through the full life cycle of buying, growing, and selling a business.
Their path to Value Builder began with a single client. “We had a client who was desperate to sell her business,” Leilani recalls. Her daughter had been in a serious car accident and was on a kidney transplant list, and Jane needed the proceeds of a sale to pay for surgery. Being tied to her business, Leilani says, “did not allow her the time and the freedom to be there for her daughter.” The Acosta’s found a buyer within months, but the outcome exposed a hard truth. “The buyer did not pay maximum value because she was highly underprepared,” says Leilani. “She had not even considered what an exit would look like.”
Business Challenges
That experience crystallized a problem the Acosta’s saw play out constantly. “Eight out of 10 businesses that go to market don’t sell; that’s a real stat,” says Fernando. “We’ve lived it many, many times over. We feel helpless sometimes because we know a company is not sellable.” Industry data backs him up: up to 80% of business owners may never control their own exit.
The root cause, they realized, was preparation, or the lack of it. Owners arrived at market having never thought about readiness, and by then it was often too late to change the outcome. Compounding matters, the traditional brokerage playbook asked for detailed financials upfront, a request many owners weren’t ready to meet before trust had been built. “A lot of people were not ready to share the financials upfront, especially if the relationship hadn’t been built,” says Leilani. The Acosta’s needed a way to start the value conversation earlier, and to move that eight-out-of-ten statistic in the other direction.
Why The Value Builder System™
Value Builder gave the Acosta’s the tools to change the conversation from “what is my business worth” to “how do I make it worth more.” “It has been fundamental in the way that we operate our business,” says Leilani. “It’s given us the tools to help business owners better prepare so they can exit on their terms.”
Rather than lead with financials, they open with the Value Builder Score assessment, which owners complete themselves. “Never in this process have we even mentioned financials yet,” Leilani explains. “They feel there’s not much to lose, because I’m answering those questions myself. It’s my own data. I control how much I want to share.” The report also carries third-party credibility. “We have confidence in the data because it’s backed by research, research we didn’t do ourselves,” says Fernando, pointing to the 80,000+ business owners who have completed the assessment. The Acosta’s cross-check its estimates against First Choice’s own comparables: “We tested it multiple times, and it’s aligned. That makes us 100% confident using it in our process.”
Implementation and Impact
The Acosta’s engineered a deliberate, low-friction funnel around Value Builder’s tools. “We wear an advisor hat first,” says Fernando. After an initial consultation, they send PREScore™, but only once trust is established. Making it an action item after that first conversation, often a simple text-message link completed on a phone, changed everything. “It doesn’t feel like homework. It just feels like part of the process,” adds Leilani.
From there, the Value Builder Score sets up an honest, options-based discussion. “If we take the business to market today, here’s what that looks like: it could be 1 to 1.5 million,” says Fernando. “Or if you keep building value, it might be worth three million in a couple of years.” Using the Scenario Planner live on the call, they show owners exactly which value drivers move the number. “Clients love seeing what it would take and how realistic it is for them,” says Leilani. “Our goal is never to pressure them; it’s to give them enough tools to make a strategic decision.”
The model also reshaped how the Acosta’s grow their practice. Recognizing that trust is “the new currency,” especially as AI erodes confidence in digital channels, they doubled down on in-person relationships layered over Value Builder’s online nurture. A single LinkedIn message five years ago, from the founder of a group called Arizona Entrepreneurs, became their first networking foothold; today they are brand partners, co-host events, and have team members active across five BNI chapters spanning the Phoenix metro and El Paso. Most significantly, they shifted from a one-to-one model to one-to-many by speaking on stage. Since making this shift, they’ve already booked multiple speaking engagements and turned a single buyer-focused event into appointments on the calendar.
A Value Builder Success Story
The Acosta’s favorite story shows their Acquire, Maximize, Exit framework come full circle. A corporate couple wanted out of the nine-to-five, so the Acosta’s helped them acquire a $1 million business using just $50,000 from a 401(k) plus an SBA loan. Because the business was owner-dependent, lacked systems, and had messy financials (weak on three of Value Builder’s key drivers), they negotiated a purchase price about 30% below asking. Then the work began. “Once they bought the company, we had them focus on those things,” says Fernando. “They removed the owner dependency, put systems in place, and got clean financials; that’s what really increased the value.” Twelve months later, the Acosta’s sold the same company for over $3 million. The clients paid off their loan and are now acquiring their next business. “It’s a cycle that repeats,” says Fernando. “You acquire a business, you focus on maximizing it, and then you exit on your terms.”
Conclusion
For the Acosta’s, Value Builder became the connective tissue of a practice built on trust, education, and a repeatable framework. Asked what they’d tell an advisor starting out, their answer is about simplicity. “Don’t overcomplicate it,” says Leilani. “People just want a seamless process.” Fernando adds a hard-won lesson: “We tried charging for the Value Builder Score upfront. We quickly realized it’s better served as a tool to build trust.” By leading with that trust and layering Value Builder’s data over their own First Choice expertise, the Acosta’s have turned an emotional, high-stakes decision into a guided journey, and built a scalable practice in the process.
