We stopped calling ourselves consultants

Sometime last year we went through our site, our proposals, our invoices, and replaced every instance of the word consultant. It was a small, pedantic edit. It took a few hours. The effect has been disproportionate.

Consultant does useful work in some industries. In ours, by 2026, it mostly meant somebody who sends you a deck and a bill. The word had collapsed into its worst examples. When we called ourselves consultants, people assumed we would do consultant things.

We build products. We advise when advising is what helps. The order matters.

The replacement

We now say we are a product studio. The word studio carries craft. The word product carries outcome. Together they say: we make things, we ship them, we ship them for you. Consultant, by contrast, carries meeting.

Clients noticed the change before they noticed the cause. Intros got easier. Scoping conversations started faster. Procurement stopped asking for a methodology document.

When advising still fits

We kept one advisory track because some problems genuinely need a second opinion more than they need a third vendor. We are selective. It is hourly. It is senior. And it is explicitly labelled, so nobody confuses it with the rest of the practice.