💡 The Lightbulb

Wes Wheless | Positioning + "Intellectual Headshots" for Post-Corporate Soloists

A daily email about monetizing and visualizing your corporate expertise. Give me ~1 minute a day, and I'll help you turn what you know into your most differentiated and lucrative asset.

💡 [Teardown] That silly FT AI chart

You see a lot of visuals on LinkedIn. Most are forgettable. Some are cheap scroll-stoppers. And a rare few are actually great. On Thursdays, I examine a visual, or “Intellectual Headshot” as I call them, that caught my eye, and break down why it works (or doesn’t). Today, it’s a viral chart that tells us everything and nothing at the same time. Let’s hop in. via Financial Times A bit of levity today. You probably saw this visual from the Financial Times making the rounds this week — I saw it...

about 2 hours ago • 1 min read

💡 So, is it time?

It's live! Last week I sent you something a little different - a visual explainer of my flagship 1:1 service instead of my usual Lightbulb format. My own version of walking the walk. The response was warm. Many of you wrote back, offering praise and a few welcomed edits. The word I kept hearing was “clear.” Which, given what I do for a living, felt like the right kind of compliment. So here’s the straightforward follow-up: I currently have room for 2 Sprint clients in March. Far from...

1 day ago • 1 min read

💡 Why some audiobooks can never

I’ve been reading (and listening to) a book called Kin: The Future of Family. Sort of a modern take on the idea of “it takes a village”, it explores the importance of those people in your life that lie somewhere between friends, partner, and biological family. Your ‘kin’. The author, Sophie Lucido Johnson, is also a cartoonist, which means the book has a sprinkling of really helpful illustrations to bring some of the key points to life. My favorite visuals were featured right up front in the...

2 days ago • 2 min read

💡 When a visual backfires

There was one news story from last week that struck me as a shining example of the speed and power of a single visual. Too bad the visual set off the wrong vibe. The story was about the backlash to the Super Bowl ad for Ring, the doorbell camera brand owned by Amazon. It was supposed to be a slam dunk: pull on America’s heart strings by talking about lost dogs and highlight the new Ring feature that helps you find your runaway pet. (Ring’s new feature activates a ‘Search Party’ of Ring cams...

3 days ago • 1 min read

📸 Why burnout stings

Exhaustion and overwhelm are the obvious symptoms. Knowing you're capable of so much more is salt in the wound. But when you self-deploy, the gap is yours to control. 💡 -Wes

6 days ago • 1 min read

💡 [Teardown] 'The Software Shakeout' 2x2

You see a lot of visuals on LinkedIn. Most are forgettable. Some are cheap scroll-stoppers. And a rare few are actually great. On Thursdays, I examine a visual, or “Intellectual Headshot” as I call them, that caught my eye, and break down why it works. Today, it’s from SaaS thought leader and CSO at Faire, Dan Hockenmaier. Last week’s lesson of the-simpler-the-better strikes again. You might look at the visual above and say, “that’s just a 2x2 with logos” And I’d say, that’s exactly why it...

7 days ago • 2 min read

💡 A very meta visual story

You know how you’d want your trainer to be fit? Or your dentist to have good teeth? Or your realtor to have a nice house? It makes sense, right? We want to see professionals we hire actually walk-the-walk. Well, it’s been bugging me for quite a while that while I often wail at-length about how much we as consultants over-rely on talking about our expertise and services… …I, myself, have been relying on a very-text heavy landing page describing my ‘Intellectual Headshots’ sprint. Go figure....

8 days ago • 1 min read

brown hammer on focus photography

💡The old-school pixel-perfect grind

I grew up in what I guess we can now call ‘old school consulting’. Days at the client were spent meeting, greeting, aligning, strategizing. Evenings at the hotel were spent data cleaning, Excel modeling, and of course, deck building. Tedious, pain-staking, ‘don’t get the font-size or brand colors wrong’ deck building. We had a few templates and PowerPoint plug-ins, but this was still hours and hours of very manual apprentice-level work to get things client-ready. And even then, we still sent...

9 days ago • 1 min read

📸 Something to talk about

You've built a mountain of insights. They want to see the map. 💡 -Wes

13 days ago • 1 min read

💡[Teardown] 'The expertise paradox'

You see a lot of visuals on LinkedIn. Most are forgettable. Some are cheap scroll-stoppers. And a rare few are actually great. On Thursdays, I examine a visual, or “Intellectual Headshot” as I call them, that caught my eye, and break down why it works. Today, it’s from “scale whisperer” Judson Rollins. Let’s dig in. When creating visuals, there’s a natural temptation to to want to cram in as much information as possible. But just as our eyes glaze over at presentation slides with blocks of...

14 days ago • 1 min read

A daily email about monetizing and visualizing your corporate expertise. Give me ~1 minute a day, and I'll help you turn what you know into your most differentiated and lucrative asset.