The Exit Track
Roland is your driver.MDC built the track.BA is the community.
Roland’s first sale
A machine manufacturing company. The banker prepping the sale had the answer: a professional management team. Management was management.
“It cost us seven figures and then some.” The team ran it into the ground. Customers bought from people they trusted, not an org chart.
A second team came in, people who knew the industry. Cleaning up, they kept finding more: a handful of customers, one channel, reporting that wouldn’t hold, paperwork that wasn’t there.
“Every problem a buyer finds becomes a price cut or a term you’ll hate.”
Hand it off on purpose, not to strangers. In his words: “you find the problems on your timeline, not the buyer’s.”
That company is why he does this work. Since then: a thousand-plus transactions. Exits to KKR, SoftBank, a Blackstone company. Both chairs: advisor and owner. In our room in Dallas, November 10 and 11.
Roland Frasier, BA Magazine interview, Oct 24 2026. Self-reported.
Now your company. The business works. Customers pay. It still needs you every day.
Roland Frasier’s five keys
Some pay themselves very well. Roland’s five keys, each with one thing to do Monday.
Key 1
Every decision, approval or signature that goes through you is a toll. Roland’s rough count: 20 a day.
20× 260 days
5,200 tolls a year through one person.
“You feel every one of those as stress. A buyer sees every one as risk.”
Count yours tomorrow. Tap once per toll.
Counting is easy. Saying it out loud, in a room that asks again next quarter, moves it.
Key 2
“A job pays you as long as you show up. An asset pays you whether you show up or not.”Roland Frasier
30 days away. Someone you chose in charge. Then 90. Then look.
Write your answer down. Nobody sees it.
“If I disappeared for 90 days starting tomorrow, would my company be worth more or less when I came back?”
Most of us only run it when a room expects the report. Uncomfortable answer? Roland calls that the first useful number in a while.
Key 3
“For 14 years, if you asked me who I was, I said ‘I’m an attorney.’”Roland Frasier
Founders: best salesperson, best problem solver, knows every customer by name. That identity built the company. What comes next, Roland calls Identity Lag. Five evolutions.
“Most CEOs are stuck at Delegating. Buyers pay for Deploying.” The business can’t evolve faster than the owner does.
Mark where you sit on the five. Then where the business sits. The distance is the lag.
Nobody sees their own lag. Your team works for you. Your peers don’t.
Key 4
Four areas, 25 points each. A zero anywhere can break a deal, so the hunt starts with the zeros. Readiness, not size.
Then Your Number: work back from the life you want to what the business has to earn. Yours alone. It never goes on a screen.
Score your company, roughly, right here. Skip it if you like.
Move the sliders. Hunt the zeros first.
A rough first pass is enough.
Your numbers stay yours. Nothing on this page leaves it.
Scoring your own company is grading your own exam. The zeros you can’t see break deals.
Key 5
Three questions, in order. Structural: survives 90 days without you? Performance: is next year predictable? Strategic: a reason no one can copy?
“There’s no point building a moat around a business that falls over when you take a vacation.”Roland Frasier
Pick the one constraint hurting most this quarter. Fix it. Measure. Pick the next.
Easy to remember. Keeping to it while the day job pulls you back: that’s what twelve Boards are for.
The Exit Track on Board of Advisors
3years.
12quarters.
36months.
Buyers don’t buy your best month. They buy your history.
You can’t fake three years of clean numbers in three weeks. You can build them in three.
What’s included
“My job is to call the turns. Yours is to stay in the car.”Roland Frasier
First cohort. No track record yet. Behind it: Roland’s thousand-plus transactions and the way this room already works.
Roland Frasier’s five exits
Roland’s answer: especially for you.
Every founder has five exits. Only one is the sale.
Partial exits count. Sellable is better to own: less of you, cleaner books, a team that runs it.
About half of U.S. business exits are unplanned.
Source: Exit Planning Institute, 2023 National State of Owner Readiness Report (estimate).
Exit ready doesn’t mean you have to sell. It means you can.
Who it fits
If that’s not your road, that’s a fine answer. The tests above are yours to keep.
Buy Exit · not live yet
The Exit Track makes you exit-ready. BUY EXIT is built to bring the buyer.
Not live yet. Nobody will promise you a buyer. Your part is the road.
The next step
Here’s how we’d work with you.
Apply to Board of Advisors and ask for the Exit Track.
Month one: score with Roland, leave with a written plan. Twelve quarters: re-score, fix one, measure. Between Boards: webinars, workshops, calls.
The room rides with you the whole way.
Three seats at Board of Advisors. The Exit Track runs through the middle one.
Nobody can promise you a number. Roland won’t, and neither will I.
We promise a process and a room.
Never a number.
BA is the community.
MDC built the track.
Roland is your driver.
BE an Exit CEO.
If it’s your road:
Nothing to decide today. No is a fine answer.