Working leadership
Not a slide workshop. We take a seat in pricing reviews, customer conversations, and the decisions that move the P&L.
Fractional C-suite · Charleston
An operator in the room, not another deck.
Paragon sits with owners as working executive leadership. Strategy, pricing, markets, operations, and growth. All scoped to what the business actually needs next.
The practice
Built for owners who still run the floor.
Most shops don’t fail on craft. They stall because the person who can win the next contract is also the person signing the traveler, pricing the job, and covering a late shift. Paragon is the executive seat you don’t have to hire full-time: someone who has already sat in that chair.
Manufacturing first
The core is the shop: capacity, cost, quality, and how the plant actually makes money, then the market around it.
Transportation depth
Rail, transit, bus, and the suppliers underneath them are home turf. That network is an advantage, not a fence.
Capabilities
The work is executive. The menu is not a pitch.
Some clients need a standing C-suite partner. Some need a hard 90 days on pricing or a market they haven’t cracked. Business development is one of those seats, not the only one.
- 01
Fractional C-suite
A working executive cadence of planning, decisions, and accountability, without adding a full-time payroll line.
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Pricing, costing, and bids
Numbers that reflect strategy and capacity, not a late-night guess before the proposal goes out.
- 03
Markets and customers
Who actually buys what you make, where the next volume lives, and how to walk into the room already known.
- 04
Operations that can scale
Throughput, process, and the management rhythm that keeps growth from breaking the shop.
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Growth and commercial leadership
When the gap is pipeline and relationships, we run that function: tracked, worked, and owned.
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Special situations
Turnarounds, owner transitions, new market entry, and the messy middle after a good year or a hard one.
Where we work
Transportation is the deepest bench. It is not the only door.
Years in passenger rail, freight, transit, bus, and the component makers underneath them. That world still informs how we work with any owner-operated manufacturer or industrial service company: long sales cycles, regulated customers, real metal, real delivery risk.
Home turf
Rail, transit, bus, and the shops that feed them
Car builders, Tier suppliers, component plants, and industrial service companies that already know the names in the room, or need to. Buy America, OEM programs, agency work, aftermarket.
Same discipline, other floors
Adjacent manufacturing & industrial operators
If you build, machine, assemble, or service something that has to ship on time and price honestly, the advisory work is the same. We don’t pretend every industry is identical. We do know how owner-led plants actually run.
Engagement
Three ways to put an executive in the seat.
Advisory retainer
A standing monthly cadence: C-suite counsel, planning, pricing support, and the decisions that don’t fit a project plan. Best when the owner wants a partner in the chair, not a one-off study.
Defined sprint
A time-boxed push against a specific problem: a market, a bid strategy, a leadership gap, a pipeline that isn’t real yet. Useful when you want to test the fit before you keep the seat.
Fractional partner
End-to-end working leadership across the functions that are thin: commercial, pricing, operations rhythm, and growth. Closer to an executive hire than a consultant, without the hire.
Scope and investment are set together. No catalog pricing, no long-term lock-in required to start.
Start here
Keith Frazier
President
A short conversation about where the business stands, where it needs to go, and how Paragon partners to drive that success.