All Posts

The consulting industry operates on a simple economic principle: recurring revenue is more valuable than project work. A client who pays $5,000 monthly for three years generates $180,000. That same client as a one-time $40,000 project generates $40,000. The math favors dependency. This is why most consulting relationships are structured to create ongoing need. Not through malicious intent—most consultants genuinely believe they provide continuous value. But the business model

Every enduring structure follows a sequence. Foundation before framework. Framework before walls. Walls before finishes. This order is not arbitrary—it reflects how forces distribute, how materials interact, how systems integrate. Reverse the sequence and the building fails. Skip a phase and cracks appear. Rush to aesthetics before structure is sound and beauty becomes brittle. Brand architecture follows identical logic. At Maison Pence, we build brands through five deliberat

You paid $15,000 for brand strategy. The deliverable arrived as a beautifully designed PDF—seventy pages of insights, frameworks, and strategic recommendations. Your positioning is clarified. Your messaging architecture is defined. Your voice and tone guidelines are articulated with precision. It sits in a folder on your desktop, unopened for three months. This is not a story about bad strategy. The strategic work may be brilliant. This is a story about the gap—the chasm, rea

The language we use to describe brand work matters more than most realize. When we say a brand is "designed," we invoke a particular mental model—one rooted in aesthetics, surfaces, and visual appeal. Beautiful, certainly. But incomplete. At Maison Pence, we believe brands are not designed. They are architected. This is not semantic wordplay. It is a fundamental reframing of what brand strategy actually requires—and why so many beautiful brands fail to endure. The Design-Firs