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.)

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.

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

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

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?

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.

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…”)

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.

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?

The power of an ‘Intellectual Headshot’:

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

Distributed broadly.

Digested instantly.

💡

-Wes