The price is set before you list.
We take the seat that moves it.
A fractional Chief Strategy Officer is a part-time executive inside your leadership team, working on the handful of things that decide what the company is worth on the day it sells: whether it runs without you, the books a lender will test, the pricing, the people. The Nolan Scott Team offers the seat to owners of service and manufacturing companies doing $1M to $15M+ in revenue who are one to three years from a sale. What you pay comes back as a credit against the fee when you sell with us.
A flat monthly retainer, set in the engagement letter after the first conversation. Brokered by eXp Commercial and eXp Realty.
Three things owners buy instead,
and what each one costs.
Most companies this size solve the same problem one of three ways. Each one buys a piece of what the seat does. The seat is the rhythm, the system and the executive in one retainer, and the retainer comes back at closing.
The rhythm without the hands. Somebody still has to write the procedures, review the pricing and do the math, and that somebody is usually you. This is one seat, every week, doing that work inside the rhythm.
Software for the field, priced per head, with the office still run from spreadsheets and the owner's memory. Our platform is the office side, built under your name, included in the retainer and kept current inside it.
The right answer for a company large enough to carry it. For one that is not yet, this is the seat, the rhythm and the system for about a quarter of that, from someone who will also take the company to market when it is time.
Comparison figures are published list prices and market ranges gathered in September 2026 for the three alternatives owners most often name, and they move. Our retainer is stated in the engagement letter.
The four things a buyer
prices before anything else.
By the time an owner calls a broker to list, the inputs to the valuation are fixed. The last three years of financials are what they are, the customer list is what it is, and the company either runs for a month without the owner or it does not. A broker can present those facts well and negotiate hard. None of that changes the facts.
Every one of them takes a year or more to move, and small movements in the multiple are large numbers at closing. That is the work of this seat, and it is why we would rather be in the company before the listing than meet it the day it goes to market.
The company runs without you. The single largest driver. A buyer discounts a company that lives in the owner's head, and the discount shows up in the multiple. Procedures written down with the people who do them, a second manager up to speed, a weekly rhythm that holds when you are not in the room.
Books a lender can trust. Recast financials, add-backs documented, and the records a buyer's accountant and an SBA lender will ask for, gathered before they ask. At the Embedded level, the scorecard carries the history a buyer wants to see.
Pricing against what the work costs. Most service companies price from habit. We review the price list against measured time and real cost, so the margin a buyer underwrites is the margin the company actually earns.
Revenue that renews, spread across customers. Contracted and recurring work is worth more than work someone has to win again, and no customer should carry more than a fifth of the revenue. Both take time to rebalance, which is why the seat starts early.
From the first meeting
to a company that runs on the system.
The order is the same in every company. The build and the writing happen inside the weekly rhythm rather than before it, so the team is using the system while it is being made, and the seat stays until the rhythm holds without us in the room.
Meet the team
Working sessions with you and your managers. A number on the business and the gap list.
Build the platform
One private site under your name: people, procedures, documents, customers.
Write it down
Procedures with the people who do the work. Pricing checked against cost. The scorecard.
Train and run the rhythm
The weekly leadership meeting: scorecard, priorities, issues, to-dos. The seat in the room.
Repeats every week, until it holds
The company runs on the system
The owner steps back. The seat stays until it holds, then the company is ready to list.
Advisory covers 01 and 03 in a session a month. Embedded runs all five, in the room every week.
A session a month, a seat every week,
or the seat with a stake.
Each level is defined by what changes for you, and an owner can start on one and move to the next. Advisory and Embedded are a flat monthly fee stated in the engagement letter, with no timesheets and no overage bills. Partnership is the Embedded seat with ownership behind it.
For the owner who plans to sell.
You are twelve to eighteen months from going to market. You want the books cleaned up, a clear picture of what the sale will look like, and the company ready when you list.
One working session a month, and a direct line for the short questions in between. Notes after each session: decisions, owners, dates.
- A number on the business in the first month, and what is holding it down.
- The sale process walked through end to end, so none of it is a surprise.
- The books in order: recast financials, add-backs documented, the lender's file gathered early.
- The pre-sale decisions worked one at a time: pricing, key people, customer concentration, contracts.
In the conversation and in the records you already keep. No new system at this level.
For the owner who wants the company to run differently.
You want the company to run on a system rather than on you, and you want a strategy executive in the room every week while that happens.
Weekly: working meetings, the leadership meeting, and working time on the build between them. A recap after each meeting, and the scorecard and priorities live on the platform.
- Your company's operating system on our platform: one private site under your name, loaded with your people, procedures, documents and customers.
- The management rhythm set up and run inside it: scorecard, quarterly priorities, issues, to-dos, the weekly leadership meeting.
- The strategy work nobody in the building has time for: procedures written with the people who do them, pricing reviewed against cost, the math behind a hire, a truck or a contract.
- Your team trained, and the seat kept until the system is how the company runs.
In the private site built for your company. Where you already run software that does part of the job, we connect to it rather than replace it.
For the owner who wants an operator with skin in the game.
You want the same seat, with our own money and reputation behind the outcome. Offered after we have worked together at either level, by mutual agreement, for a handful of companies a year.
Everything at Embedded, plus accountable to you at the board level, with a report to the owners or the board every quarter.
- The Chief Strategy Officer title on the org chart and a seat at the board table.
- Whatever the business needs to succeed, on the list above or not. Our reward is the value of the stake, so the work goes wherever the value is.
- The company prepared for the sale from the inside: the records, the contracts and the story a buyer and a lender will test.
A reduced retainer or an officer's salary, in exchange for a minority interest sized for the company and vesting over time.
We list the company on our standard terms, with your consent as a member and an independent valuation, and take our vested share of the proceeds as an owner.
Vested interest is bought back at a formula price set in the operating agreement. Unvested interest is forfeited.
Applied against our success fee on the day the sale closes.
- Advisory. Everything paid in the 18 months before the sale closes, capped at half of the success fee.
- Embedded CSO. Half the retainer paid in the 12 months before the sale closes, capped at a quarter of the success fee.
- Partnership. No credit. The reduced retainer and the stake are the trade.
The sale runs under a separate listing agreement. Our success fee follows the Lehman scale: 10 percent of the first million, 8 of the second, 6 of the third, 4 of the fourth, and 2 above four million.
Outside our own brand.
The third level, in practice. Each began as advisory work and became a seat on the board. The platform page shows the system as it runs in one of them.
Your company,
your decisions.
Five things hold at every level, written into the engagement letter so there is nothing to interpret later.
The first month is a review of the business and a short list of the priorities that matter most, written down. Most owners come without a written plan. If you have one, we work from yours.
Set in the engagement letter and the same every month. No timesheets, no overage bills. Some weeks run heavy and some run light.
We advise, do the work we take on, and build. We do not sign contracts, hire, fire, approve spending or speak for the company unless you ask us to in writing for a specific matter.
Your numbers, your customers and your plans stay with us. Nobody learns the company is preparing for a sale unless you tell them.
The retainer does not oblige you to list with us. When it is time, the sale runs under its own listing agreement, and the credit applies then.
Legal, tax and accounting advice, and bookkeeping: we work with your attorney and CPA. Day-to-day management: we advise the managers who run the company, we do not dispatch or supervise crews.
What owners ask
before they take the seat.
What is a fractional Chief Strategy Officer?
A part-time executive who holds the strategy seat in a company that is not large enough to fill it full time. In our case the seat is held by a business broker who ran and sold companies of his own, so the work points at one thing: what the company will be worth on the day it sells, and what has to change before then. Depending on the level, that means a monthly session on the number and the pre-sale decisions, or a weekly seat inside the leadership team with the company running on our operating platform.
Who is this for?
Owners of service and manufacturing companies doing $1M to $15M+ in revenue who expect to sell in one to three years and can see that the company still runs through them: the pricing, the hiring, the weekly numbers, the key customer relationships. If you are selling inside a year, the listing track is the better fit and we will say so. If the business is smaller than that, the retainer is hard to justify against what it can move, and we will say that too.
What does it cost?
A flat monthly fee. Advisory is set by the size of the company and Embedded is set in the proposal, and both are stated in the engagement letter before anything is signed. There are no timesheets and no overage bills: some weeks run heavy and some run light, and the fee is the fee. Figures are not published here because they depend on the company; the first conversation ends with a number.
How does the credit against the closing fee work?
If you start on a retainer and later sell the company with us, what you paid comes back as a credit against the success fee on the day the sale closes. On Advisory the credit is everything paid in the eighteen months before the sale, up to half of the success fee. On Embedded it is half the retainer paid in the twelve months before, up to a quarter of the success fee. Partnership carries no credit; the reduced retainer and the stake are the trade. If the business does not sell there is no fee and no credit, and nothing is refunded. The terms are written into the engagement letter.
Do I have to sell with you afterward?
No. The retainer and a listing are separate agreements, and nothing in the first obliges you to sign the second. The credit only applies if you do list with us, which is the whole reason it exists: an owner who prepares with us and then sells with us has paid for one outcome, and should not pay for it twice.
What do you need from me?
Five things, and the engagement moves at the speed of them. A named point person, and the owner in the room for the meetings that need a decision. The numbers: at the Embedded level that means full financials each month and a seat in the systems you already run, because that is where the real data lives. Access to the people the work touches. Timely decisions, with the routine ones answered that week. And your managers running the company day to day. We advise the managers; we do not dispatch, supervise or run payroll.
How is this different from hiring a consultant?
We can only speak to what this seat does. It sits in the weekly leadership meeting, it does the work in the company's own system rather than in a deck, and it stays until the company runs on what was built. The person in the seat is also the broker who will take the company to market, so the preparation and the sale are one plan. The work is also the work we did for ourselves: at Prime Sweeping we came in on pricing and sales and today hold an ownership interest, a board seat and the Chief Strategy Officer title.
A working session,
about an hour, no charge.
Where the number is today, which value drivers move it, and whether a monthly session or a weekly seat fits your timeline. If the honest answer is that you should list now, you will hear that instead.