Francis McPartlon
Turning a quiet track record into a visible consulting brand
What Francis came to me with
When Francis first came to me, he already had the kind of track record most consultants are trying to reverse‑engineer. He had taken over a family‑owned struggling roofing company and grown it into a modern, profitable, multi‑million‑dollar business with roughly 100 employees on the books and around 125 across his different companies. He had launched a solar company doing commercial projects across the U.S. He had co‑founded a stucco company with his wife that became a multi‑million‑dollar business inside two years. He had served on industry boards, chaired two companies, and committed himself to nonprofit work on food security for children in New Mexico.
And almost none of that lived anywhere in a clear, compelling way online.
He had been using a concept name for the consulting work (“Lighthouse”), a partially formed website in progress, and a LinkedIn presence he admitted he had never really spent much time building out. The depth of his operating experience and the clarity of his values were there, but the container wasn’t.
There were a few key gaps. The consulting brand and website weren’t anchored in who he is by name. The offer wasn’t cleanly framed around the transition and succession work he actually wanted to be doing. LinkedIn was under‑utilized, incomplete, and not reflecting his reality at all. He had the substance. What we needed was a story and a structure to hold it.
What we did over a few months
1 Clarified who the work is for and what’s at stake
The first thing we did was zoom out and look at who Francis is actually serving. He wasn’t just “a consultant.” He was, in practice, helping owners and founders navigate succession and transition — both the outgoing owner trying to step out without leaving a mess, and the incoming owner or operator trying to step into an existing system without blowing up what already works.
We re‑framed his work explicitly around those two people: the outgoing owner who wants to leave a legacy instead of a mess, and the incoming owner who needs to step into an existing system, stabilize it, and then grow. We baked that directly into the website structure and the messaging. Instead of a generic list of services, the site speaks to both of those journeys and makes it obvious that Francis is thinking about the full handover, not just one side of the table.
We agreed on a simple architecture: Home, About, Contact. No fluff. No content for the sake of content. Just enough to tell the story, spell out the work, and give someone a clear next step.
2 Moved from concept brand to personal brand
The next decision was a big one: drop the abstract brand and move to his own name. Like a lot of experienced operators‑turned‑consultants, Francis had been using a concept name (“Lighthouse”) because it felt neutral, flexible, and “bigger” than one person. But we looked at how people actually talk about him and how this kind of work really moves — it’s personal, referral‑based, and anchored in trust.
I shared the pattern I see over and over: consultants who start with a studio‑style brand almost always end up rebranding back to their personal name once the work matures. That landed. He committed and secured the domain in his own name.
From there, we built a visual language that matched who he is in practice — a clean, modern, minimal layout that reads more “professional advisor” than “agency”; natural, grounded colors (forest greens, blues, neutrals) that nod to the New Mexico landscape and his renewables work without locking him into any one industry; simple, sans‑serif typography used calmly, not decoratively. We pulled from his existing photography, mixed in carefully chosen imagery, and made sure the site felt like Francis: serious, thoughtful, no‑nonsense, with enough warmth to be approachable.
3 Translated the brand onto LinkedIn and quantified the story
Once the site went live, our next focus was LinkedIn. Francis described himself as someone who had “always had a presence” there but had never taken it seriously. That made it the perfect leverage point: the moment the website existed, we could use LinkedIn to carry the same positioning into a space where his network already lives.
We rebuilt his profile around three things — a consulting‑led headline and visual presence that match the site, experience sections that actually quantify outcomes rather than list job titles, and board and cause work that show depth and values, not just commercial wins. That meant going line by line through his businesses and pulling the numbers and narrative out of his memory: the roofing company bought from owners under strain, modernized to profitability by 2017 and grown to roughly $10M in sales and ~100 employees by 2018–2019; the solar company that grew from residential offerings into commercial projects across multiple states, including Texas; the stucco company he launched with his wife as CEO, a multi‑million‑dollar operation inside two years with ~25 employees doing major commercial work across New Mexico; six years on the New Mexico Roofing Contractors Association board, serving as vice president and then president on regulation and industry issues at a systemic level; and his ongoing nonprofit work on food security for children — the throughline of his giving.
We then wove those details into copy he would feel comfortable standing behind, and I implemented the updates directly into his profile.
What’s different now
The shift was simple. Francis is no longer in the position of having to remember “what did I do again?” when he talks about his work. The story is there. The structure is there. And both now match the caliber of the operator — and advisor — he actually is.