# Kevin Maresh, Founder / Creative Director at Maresh Creative — read of Pencil, June 9 2026

> 11 years running a 6-person branding and design studio in Minneapolis. We do brand identity, packaging, and the occasional web project. I write every proposal myself, which is something I am increasingly resentful about.

## How I got here

LinkedIn ad caught me mid-scroll between a client Zoom and lunch. The ad copy said something about "proposals clients actually open" and I half-laughed because we sent one last Tuesday that the client still hasn't looked at according to our HoneyBook tracking. I clicked mostly out of spite. I have a tab problem so this sat open for two days before I actually read it.

## What I clicked first

The hero pulled me in on the problem side, not the solution side. "You're losing nights to proposals clients don't open for days." That's accurate enough that I kept reading. The "Unlock the dossier for $5" thing is a weird call to action to put in the hero though. I had to read it twice to figure out what I was supposedly paying $5 for. Still not totally sure.

## Where I paused

The analytics feature. "See exactly when clients open your proposal, which sections they linger on, and how long they spend reviewing pricing." I stopped here because we already have basic open tracking in HoneyBook and I actually do adjust my follow-up timing based on that. If this product does it better and at the section level, that is a real workflow change, not a gimmick. That made me take the rest of the page more seriously than I otherwise would have.

## What I distrusted

The numbers feel invented. "3.1x higher close rate" -- compared to what? Whose baseline? My close rate on inbound referrals is totally different from cold pitches. And "4,200+ proposals sent" is a pretty thin number for something that has been around long enough to have all this testimonial data. Marcus Delgado going from 28% to 61% close rate in three months is a significant claim and the only thing backing it is his first and last name and the fact that he has been independent for 14 years. No company, no vertical, no link, no LinkedIn. Sarah Kowalski is a "brand consultant, Chicago." Dana Wu is "operations consultant, SF Bay Area." These people have the specificity of a persona exercise, not a customer.

Also: "A polished restatement of the offer. The full landing page follows below." That sentence is sitting in the hero text of the live page right now. That is either a mistake they haven't caught or something that made sense in a build context and got published. Either way it rattled me.

## What would convince me

Show me a before-and-after of an actual proposal. Not a mock UI screenshot with "Meridian Healthcare" in it. An anonymized real one: what went in, what came out, what the client said. Even one screenshot of a real analytics dashboard from a real account with numbers in it would do more than five testimonials. On the close rate claims specifically, I would want to know how they are even measuring that, because most consultants I know track their close rate loosely at best. If Pencil is calculating that for users from within the product, say that. If it is self-reported from a survey, say that too. Either is fine. Just tell me where the number comes from.

## What I'd ask in an email reply

1. The brand voice training feature says I can "train Pencil on past proposals I have written and won." How many do you need to actually calibrate something useful, and does it degrade if I only have 8 to 10 strong historical proposals to upload?

2. On the Agency plan at $99, there are 3 team seats. My studio has 6 people but realistically only 2 of us are ever writing proposals. Does the seat count restrict who can review and comment or just who can generate?

3. What happens to my proposals and training data if I cancel? I want to know before I upload 3 years of IP into your system.

## Verdict: on-the-fence

The section-level analytics and the tiered pricing generator are features I have not seen done well elsewhere and they solve real problems I have right now. But the testimonials feel like they came from a swipe file and there is a broken sentence sitting in the hero of your live page, which does not inspire confidence in the product team's attention to detail. I am not closing this tab.

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*Memo by skeptic persona, generated 2026-06-09. Studio breaks own self-grading loop.*