John Cox has said hundreds of times that every business owner needs an exit strategy. He says this not out of habit, but out of urgency.
“Every business will sell someday,” Cox said. “And a lot of owners don’t have a great exit strategy. They just don’t think about it until something forces it to.”
Cox is the founder of Cox Business Brokers AZ, a brokerage that helps Arizona business owners value, prepare, market and confidentially sell privately held companies. He works with small to mid‑sized businesses across the state, including automotive shops, service companies, landscaping firms, nail salons, hair salons, even a Mobility City franchise in Gilbert.
His brokerage is affiliated with West USA Realty’s Business Sales & Acquisitions Division, and he’s a member of AZBBA and IBBA.
But the real foundation of his work is experience. Cox spent more than 20 years as a small-business owner himself, followed by two decades in real estate sales and negotiations.
“I’ve been on the other side of the table,” said Cox, 69. “I know what it feels like to build something, to fight for it, and to think it’ll last forever.”
He also knows what it feels like when it doesn’t.
Before becoming a broker, Cox ran a direct‑mail advertising company for car dealerships nationwide. At its peak, the business was sending out 700,000 pieces of mail a month.
“We were cranking,” he said. “It was unbelievable.” But as digital advertising rose, response rates fell. Cox found himself trying to outrun a market that had already changed.
“I waited too long,” he said. “Business brokers were calling me, telling me it was the right time to sell. If I had listened, it would have been a very lucrative transaction. But I kept fighting the decline. You think you can out‑advertise it, out‑hire it, out‑innovate it. You can’t.”
That lesson shapes nearly everything he tells clients now.
“You can’t do addbacks if it hasn’t been taken away.”
Cox spends much of his time educating owners on how their financials affect valuation — especially when owners pay themselves via draws rather than payroll.
“They’re saving on taxes, which I get,” he said. “But when you go to sell, you need a two‑ or three‑year track record of high net income and paying yourself as the key employee. You can’t do addbacks if it hasn’t been taken away. It has to show up on the P&L.”
Some owners arrive well‑prepared, with clean books, documented payroll, and separate entities for real estate and operations. “Those are dream clients,” Cox said. “You can give them a much stronger valuation because they’ve done the work.”
Others arrive with a tangled web of problems.
He recently worked with a buyer who purchased a local business only to discover that the previous owner still controlled the trade name — and that a UCC lien covered the business’ assets.
“The transition wasn’t clean,” Cox said. “Whenever you come across a business, you have to track the trade name, how it’s registered, and whether there are liens. You deal with that kind of thing all the time.
“Owners think the cash is just going to keep flowing.”
Cox said the biggest mistake owners make is waiting until they’re burned out, older, or facing declining revenue before considering a sale.
“They think the cash is just going to keep flowing,” he said. “But things change — technology, competition, health, family. Something always changes.”
Constantly, he sees owners who have built thriving companies but never trained a second‑in‑command, documented processes, or prepared the business to run without them.
“You need someone in place who can manage the business so the money machine you created can keep operating without you,” he said. “Buyers want continuity. They want stability. They want to know the business won’t fall apart the day you walk out.”
Cox’s path to Arizona began long before his business career. He grew up in Georgia, the youngest of six, and moved west after serving a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter‑day Saints. He met his wife at BYU, started his advertising career in St. Louis, and eventually relocated to Arizona in 1989 to pursue the dealership marketing opportunity that shaped his early professional life.
But health problems and loss changed his perspective. Cox’s father died at age 48 of heart disease and his brother at 19 of drowning.
“[The drowning] devastated my father,” he said. “But it also moved him toward the scriptures, toward healing.”
Cox later underwent bypass surgery himself. “The doctor told me, ‘You’re just a plaque factory,’” he said, laughing at the bluntness. “It’s just genetics.”
Those experiences, he said, make him appreciate the fragility of timing — in life and in business.
“You don’t know when something’s going to change,” he said. “That’s why owners need to prepare early. You want to sell when the business is thriving, not when you’re forced to.”
“It’s miraculous when someone builds a business that lasts.”
Cox said he is always impressed by entrepreneurs’ grit.
“Not everybody can create a business and sustain it,” he said. “It’s miraculous when they do. And once they do, they need to capitalize on it before it starts to die. My job is to help them protect what they built. And to help them sell it at the right time — not the last possible time.”
