Founding Cohort · Est. 2026 · $3M–$25M Revenue 50 Seats Only

Top Quarter

Make your next 90 business days your best 90 business days.

The Private Round Table for Owner-Operators doing $3M–$25M.

We’re here to solve That Gap — between what you decide alone and what you’d decide with one relevant data point — the most expensive line item that never appears on any financial statement. The business isn’t the problem. Being alone at the top of it is.

So we built it. 10 meetings every year designed to help you make next quarter your top quarter. Expert-led, peer-driven sessions hyper-focused on one common problem for operators like you: how to save more, earn more, grow more. Real solutions from real pros, aimed at saving you $10,000 minimum, every time.

Real Owners  ·  Real Receipts  ·  Real Solutions

10Expert Working Sessions / Year
50Founding Seats · June 1 Close
$0Conservative Year-One Recovery — The Thesis
<30dFirst ROI Payback
00 — The Rooms You’ve Already Been In

You’ve tried the rooms. They weren’t built for this.

The networking group full of people who want to sell you something, or the mastermind full of people talking about revenue they haven’t made yet, or the industry association full of competitors performing confidence. They feel warm while you’re there. You leave hungry and in the dark. That’s not a peer group. That’s a campfire.

The problem was never that you weren’t in a room. The problem was that no room was built around operators at your exact revenue, with your exact pressures, who run on receipts instead of opinions. Until now.

01 — Who This Is For

You’ve built something real. The room should match it.

The Feeling

You can’t talk about cash flow anxiety at dinner. You can’t tell your team the margin is tighter than the revenue suggests. You can’t ask your banker if the number you carry in your head — what this business is actually worth — is real. There is no one in your current life whose job it is to know, and tell you the truth.

The Pattern

The business is profitable. The books are messier than you’d like. You think about the exit — what it would look like, what it would take, what it would be worth — more often than you mention to anyone. You haven’t done anything about it yet.

The Culture

At Top Quarter, one rule: you can only speak if you’re showing dollars. Not opinions. Not strategies. Screen-shared receipts. What you paid, what you saved, what you recovered. No receipts, no floor. That’s the line between a round table and a campfire.

The Ask

One afternoon a month. Your real numbers on the table. A functional expert who has seen your exact situation fifty times. And fifty owner-operators running the same race — who will remember what you committed to last month.

02 — The Problem

You don’t have an MBA on staff. Neither does anyone else.

Top-tier consultants walk into a $3M–$25M business and assume a specific infrastructure exists — entity optimization, clean monthly financials, a documented sales process, benchmarked vendor contracts, key person insurance. They assume it because in a $50M+ business, it does. In yours, most of it doesn’t. Not because you’re a bad operator. Because no one ever told you it was missing.

Put yourself in a room of 50 owners running businesses your size. Someone in that room made the exact mistake you’re about to make — and fixed it. Someone else already knows what your business is worth to a buyer, what’s standing between you and that number, and what it would take to close the gap. That knowledge exists. The only question is whether you’re in the room when it surfaces.

The Gap

Expert advice assumes expert infrastructure. Your team can execute. They cannot independently translate a strategic framework into an operating plan.

The Cost

The thesis: $150K–$300K per year in avoidable cost and unrealized margin — running on autopilot, every year, until someone names it.

The Trap

No vendor, broker, or advisor has a financial incentive to tell you to pay them less. The gaps persist because the people who could close them profit from their existence.

The Fix

One expert. One topic. One round table of peers. Monthly. The insight that takes 30 minutes can return $10,000–$50,000 in the 30 days that follow.

03 — The Isolation Tax

Where the money goes when no one’s watching.

Active, ongoing drains — almost certainly present in your business today — each fixable with a single decision, a single call, or a single conversation.

01
Wrong Tax Entity Structure
$15,000 – $50,000+ / year

Operating as an LLC taxed as a sole proprietor above $100K net means 100% of profit is subject to 15.3% self-employment tax. An S-Corp election splits income — distributions avoid self-employment tax entirely. One IRS form. Most owners were never told this existed.

02
Unreviewed Business Insurance
$12,000 – $30,000+ / year

Auto-renewing at 5–15% annual increases on an already-inflated base. Wrong classification codes, outdated payroll figures, redundant endorsements. An independent broker audit costs nothing. Most businesses that do it save 15–25% at next renewal.

03
Wrong Payment Processing Model
$12,000 – $36,000+ / year

Flat-rate bundles a hidden markup on top of wholesale interchange. On $50K/month in card volume, the spread between flat-rate (2.9%) and interchange-plus (1.9%) is $500/month. One conversation with a processor. Sometimes with the same provider.

04
SaaS Subscription Sprawl
$15,000 – $60,000+ / year

The average business in this range pays for 40–75 SaaS subscriptions. A significant portion are redundant, abandoned, or auto-renewing on a card no one monitors. One person, one afternoon. Businesses that do this cut 20–35% of software spend in the first pass.

05
Dormant Customer List — Never Marketed To
$20,000 – $100,000+ / year in unrealized revenue

The most valuable marketing asset in the business — hundreds of past buyers who cost nothing to reach — sitting completely uncontacted. One re-engagement email routinely generates $10,000–$50,000 in reactivated revenue. No ad spend. No new leads.

06
Pricing Not Raised in 2+ Years
$40,000 – $200,000+ / year in margin erosion

Inflation and labor costs have increased 20–30% since 2021. A 10% price increase on $3M revenue is $300,000 in additional gross revenue with zero additional cost. Most B2B clients accept a well-communicated annual adjustment.

07
Stale AR with No Follow-Up Process
$15,000 – $50,000+ / year

Collecting at net-52 instead of net-30 on $5M revenue means $300,000 in unnecessary float. At 7% cost of capital: $21,000/year in pure opportunity cost. A four-touch automated follow-up sequence, built in one afternoon, reduces average collection time by 10–18 days.

08
CEO as the Operational Bottleneck
$50,000 – $200,000+ / year in opportunity cost

The most expensive person in the business spends 60–70% of their time on work a $60K–$80K manager could handle. Every hour the CEO spends on $40/hour work is an hour not spent on $500/hour work. This is a delegation problem, not a time management problem.

04 — Your First 30 Days

What happens before your first session.

01
CFO Intake

A vetted CFO reviews your P&L, cost structure, and vendor stack. Private. No pitch.

02
Benchmark Review

Your numbers benchmarked against the room. You’ll see where you stand.

03
Vendor Opportunity Score

Every vendor scored. Overpayment identified. Vetted shortlist provided.

04
30-Day Identified Savings

Specific. Documented. Actionable. $10K minimum mandate.

05
TQ Score Baseline

0–100 sellability index. Your starting line. Every session moves the number.

Every person at this table starts with the same intake. Your numbers are private — but your starting point is never unique. That shared context is what makes the room work from the first session.

05 — The Round Table

One room. Once a month. One afternoon.

01

A 30-day verdict on your money.

02

Ten expert working sessions a year. Functional experts, not generalists.

03

Bring your plus one. Your ops lead, controller, or whoever has to make it happen.

04

Your TQ Score. For your eyes only. 0–100 sellability index updated every session.

05

A room that runs on receipts. No vibes. No theories. Just numbers.

06

Vendors the room has already hired. Tested, not pitched. Members vote with their books.

06 — The Audit
We don’t charge you $10K. We find you $10K twelve times.
Payment Processing
Flat Rate 2.9%Interchange-Plus
Move this first. Fastest payback.
$8K–$25K
Business Insurance
Single broker, renewal autoGroup purchase + re-broker
Most operators never touch this.
$4K–$30K
SaaS Stack
64 licenses, unchecked22 core apps
Zombie apps. Check the card.
$25K–$95K
Paid Advertising
Unattributed spendAttribution + reallocation
Highest variance. Verify your own.
$20K–$240K
Tax Structure
LLC defaultS-Corp election
One IRS form. Most owners were never told.
$15K–$50K
Conservative Annual Recovery$0

These ranges reflect what operators at this revenue level recover across these categories. Your number will be different. It will be real. The room has already worked through every one of these — and the receipts are on the table.

07 — Top-Quartile Performance

Where the gap actually lives.

A top consultant walking into your business assumes all of these exist. They are not sophisticated — they are the operational equivalent of a lock on the door.

MetricMost SMBsTop Quarter
Monthly close by the 10thNever / 45+ days✓ Always
S-Corp or equivalent entity optimizationLLC default✓ Modeled
Gross margin tracked by service lineAggregate only✓ Monthly
Insurance audited by independent broker>3 years ago✓ Annual
Documented AR follow-up sequenceNone / ad hoc✓ 4-touch
Pricing reviewed and raised annually2+ years stale✓ Annual
Business runs 30 days without CEOPauses immediately✓ Runs
No single client above 15% of revenueOften 25–40%✓ Managed
08 — Where the Savings Show Up
Lane 01 Identified · Annualized
$18,400
Payment Processing

Founder-led service business, $5M revenue. Migrated flat-rate to interchange-plus after Session 1.

Illustrative recovery scenario · Actual receipts posted at launch

Lane 03 Identified · Annualized
$42,000
SaaS Stack Audit

Agency at $6M. 64 active tools rationalized to 22. Recovered within 90 days of audit.

Illustrative recovery scenario · Actual receipts posted at launch

Lane 05 Identified · Annualized
$27,000
Insurance + Tax Structure

Medical practice, $4M revenue. Group re-broker plus entity restructure. Year-one recovery.

Illustrative recovery scenario · Actual receipts posted at launch

09 — The Revenue Ladder
$3M – $8M · Founder
Founder Dependence

Every deal and every hire runs through you. Your time is the ceiling of the asset. The business isn’t sellable yet — it’s just you wearing a company’s name.

$8M – $15M · Operator
Operational Strain

Growth without systems is complexity accumulating faster than you can manage it. The cracks show up in margin, not revenue. Most operators don’t see it until it’s expensive.

$15M – $25M · Strategist
Margin Blindness

Revenue looks healthy. The books tell a different story. You’re running a bigger machine on a leaking foundation — and the gap shows up at the sale, not before.

The Pattern
The gap is rarely sales.

It’s almost always financial architecture. And it stays invisible until it’s very expensive.

10 — The Long Game
There’s a version of this where you fix the leaks, clean the books, reduce the concentration, and document the processes — and then one day someone hands you a number that reflects all of it. That’s not a growth story. That’s an architecture story. The businesses that fix these gaps don’t just save money. They sell for more.
Founder-Dependent
3–4×
Buyer-Ready
6–8×
On $1M EBITDA — the gap is $3M left on the table.

On a $1M EBITDA business — the gap between a 3× and a 6× multiple is $3M left on the table. Not created by growing the business. Created by making it legible, defensible, and owner-independent. Every session in Top Quarter moves your TQ Score. Every point on that score is a fraction of a multiple. The 50 people at this table are building toward the same number — and watching each other get there.

11 — A Note from Brad

I built Top Quarter because I know what the fragility looks like.

My father and his partners ran a construction business for decades. $30M a year, hard-built, and fragile in the ways you only see from the inside — the decisions made under pressure, the things that shake your tree when no one warned you they were coming, what it costs a family when the business gets shaken. I didn’t read about operators like you. I grew up next to one.

What I learned is that the business itself is the project. Not the product. Not the revenue — the structure underneath it. And that no operator should have to figure that out alone, in the dark, at 9pm, with no one in the room who has actually done it.

I’ve built and hosted a room like this before. 250+ exceptional professionals, built from the ground up in just over a year. I know what it takes to make a room produce something, and I know what it looks like when it doesn’t.

This room runs on that conviction. One expert. One topic. Real numbers on the table. Every month. My job is to make the room worth showing up to. Yours is to show up.

Brad Rochefort — Founder, Top Quarter

Founding Membership · Application Required
Founding 50 · Closes June 1, 2026
$10,000 Year 1 · Founding Rate · Annual Membership

Fifty owner-operators who will remember what you committed to last month. That’s the structure. Then the thesis: the average business in this revenue band recovers the full membership fee from a single insight acted on in the first session. Every session after that is pure margin.

Not every applicant is accepted. Fit matters more than availability. If you’re in the revenue band and you run on receipts, send an email. No pitch. No deck. No follow-up sequence if it’s not right.

This is not a campfire. If you want to talk about your business here, you show the screenshot first.

You’ll get a human response, a 20-minute conversation, and a straight answer.

Or write directly:

The thing that doesn’t go away after the first session isn’t the savings number. It’s the sentence: I can’t believe I didn’t know that.

That’s the irreversible part. Once you know what your business is actually worth to a buyer — and what’s standing between you and that number — you cannot unknow it. You leave the first session seeing your own business differently. The savings are real. The knowledge is permanent.

The 50 people at this table are not here because they needed help. They wanted a table that matched them — in revenue, in pressure, in the willingness to put real numbers down. That table now exists. It closes June 1.

This table is for operators who are done with:

01Googling things at 9pm that a peer with the right background would have answered in 30 seconds.
02Sitting in rooms full of people who want to sell them something and calling it peer advisory.
03Making the vendor decision, the hire, the pricing call — alone, with incomplete information, under time pressure.
04Thinking about the exit every week and doing nothing about it because there’s no one to hold them to a number.
05Being the most accomplished person in every room — and the most isolated.

A seat at the table includes:

0110 expert working sessions — one domain, one expert, one actionable insight per session
02CFO intake before your first session — P&L reviewed, leaks identified, $10K minimum found
03TQ Score baseline — 0–100 sellability index, updated every session, yours to keep
04Founding rate locked permanently — the table grows around you, the price doesn’t
0550 peers in the same revenue band, with the same pressures, watching each other follow through

The knowledge is permanent. The table is real.

Request a Seat at the Table →

If you’re done with the campfire, come inside.

The 2026 session locks June 1.