I promised more ‘in-the-wild’ examples of visuals/Headshots, so why not kickoff with an icon in our space, David A. Fields.

If you don’t know him, he’s one of the preeminent coach/strategists for small consultancies and is definitely worth a follow.

(His visuals are 👌, he doesn’t need my help at all.)

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David posted this 2x2 yesterday breaking down the different ‘flight paths’ your consulting practice might be on.

I don’t need to preach to a group of consultants about the power of a 2x2, but let’s break down exactly what makes this work.

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First, without even a title, you get the point:

Matching my innate genius with market need is the winning combo for my firm.

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But if you just say that, it’s easy to have your prospect simply agree and let it roll off.

I mean, it’s a hard premise to dispute, right?

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But by breaking this down into four buckets, something happens in our brains where we instinctively want to stop, engage, and self-triage.

And we do, in a matter of seconds, accelerated by the use of a visual metaphor like the planes.

Instantly giving us a diagnosis of what might be keeping us from that holy grail top-right quadrant.

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The ‘so what?’ then comes via two potential moments of truth:

1. You click further into David’s article to read his take on proposed actions for each quadrant, and then perhaps sign up for his newsletter
2. And/or, you initiate a meeting with him, using this framework as the foundation for that first conversation (e.g. “I’m stuck in puddle jumper phase…”)

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And suddenly, a nugget of wisdom that would’ve been easily passed over in a text post has turned into a scroll-stopping engagement, and then some.

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And by the way, after seeing something like this, even if you didn’t know him before, do you have any doubt what line of work he’s in?

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The power of an ‘Intellectual Headshot’:

A set of [David’s] unique insights synthesized into a visual, shareable POV.

Distributed broadly.

Digested instantly.

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💡

-Wes