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SEO TitleBefore You Hire a Consultant, Read This | Axer Strategies
Meta DescriptionTwo B2B consulting engagements ended in the same month for apparently different reasons. Looking at both through the lens of work wiring reveals the same underlying pattern — and a clearer way to assess whether a consulting relationship is likely to produce results before you sign anything.
Focus Keywords B2B consulting fit marketing consultant client match Scientist Sage consultant right fit consulting relationship Axer Strategies David Estrada
SeriesAxer Strategies — Practitioner Notes  |  Standalone  |  Read time: 10 min
On the Consulting Relationship

Before You Hire a Consultant,
Read This.My wiring. What it means for the engagement. Whether we're actually a match.

Most consulting relationships fail not because of poor strategy or insufficient effort — but because the type of work the consultant does best is not the type of work the engagement actually requires. That mismatch is predictable. And almost nobody names it before the contract is signed.

D
David Estrada — Axer Strategies June 2026  ·  Practitioner Notes
10 min read

Two consulting engagements ended in the same month. One was seven years long. The other was eighteen months. Different industries, different clients, different surface reasons. Looking at both through the same lens reveals a pattern I should have been naming from day one of every engagement.

The pattern is not about strategy quality or execution effort. It is about what kind of consulting relationship each client actually needed — and what kind I am built to deliver.

This post names that clearly. My wiring, what it means in practice, who gets the most from this work, and who would genuinely be better served by someone else. If you are considering working with Axer Strategies, this is the most useful thing you can read before reaching out.

The Framework

Work Wiring and Why
It Shapes Everything

Jonathan Fields' Sparketype research — drawn from nearly 800,000 participants — identifies ten distinct work impulses: the specific kind of effort that fuels a person most deeply, and the kind that costs the most to sustain regardless of skill level. Everyone has all ten. Three define the pattern: a Primary that fuels you, a Shadow that amplifies it, and an Anti that is the heaviest lift.

The Sparketype framework was the basis of a five-post series published on the Estrada Marketing blog, where the application is specifically for solo practitioners and law firm attorneys redesigning their practices around how they're wired. The underlying concept is identical for consulting relationships. The examples there are from the legal world. The examples here are from B2B consulting engagements — and they are more specifically mine.

↗
Related series — Estrada Marketing
The Work That Fits: A Five-Post Series for Solo Practitioners
The foundational series covers the Sparketype framework in full, walks through a real attorney's Maven/Sage practice pivot, includes three diagnostic questions to surface your own wiring, five practical redesign moves, and the same compatibility tool applied to a legal practice context. If you want the deeper background before reading the rest of this post, start there.
Read The Work That Fits on Estrada Marketing →
My Profile

Scientist Primary.
Sage Shadow.
Warrior Anti.

David Estrada — Axer Strategies

David Estrada

Marketing strategist and advisor · Axer Strategies · Dallas, TX · 16+ years
Primary
Scientist
"I live to solve."
Shadow
Sage
"I awaken insight."
Anti
Warrior
"I gather and lead."
I come alive when there is a real problem to figure out — not a task to execute, but a puzzle with a non-obvious answer that requires genuine analysis to solve. The Sage Shadow means the work lands for me when the client actually understands what I found and can use it. A strategy document that lands in a drawer does nothing for me. A client who leaves the conversation seeing something they could not see before is what this work is actually for.
A note on the Warrior Anti. Warrior Anti does not mean cannot lead. I commanded a JROTC battalion as Battalion Commander and Armed Drill Team Commander in South Texas. I directed brand marketing at one of the largest newspapers in Texas. I have led contractors, coordinated vendors across multiple accounts, choreographed and produced runway shows. I know what sustained group leadership requires from the inside — because I have done it at multiple scales.

What I know now, after all of that: large-scale organizational management is not what fuels me most deeply. As I have gotten older and more deliberate about where my time goes, I have realized that I lead best by example — by building the thing, laying the foundation, creating something others can follow. That is the Sage expression of leadership, not the Warrior one. The lean agency model is not a retreat from leadership. It is a more precise configuration: I extend my leverage through AI and automation rather than headcount, and I focus my extremely valuable time on the work only a Scientist/Sage can do.

The most accurate description of my best work: I figure out why the strategy isn't working — then make sure the client understands it well enough that they could explain it to someone else. That is Scientist into Sage. That is what I do.

The Two Stories

Two Engagements That Ended
in the Same Month

In June 2026, two long-term engagements ended in the same month. On the surface, the reasons were different. Looking at both through the lens of work wiring, they reveal the same underlying pattern.

Story 01 — Seven-Year B2B Tech Engagement

The engagement began in the early days of a B2B cybersecurity software company. Direct access to the founders. Clear problems to solve. Real latitude to shape strategy. That is the environment where a Scientist/Sage does their best work: a problem worth figuring out, and a client who wants to understand the answer.

Over seven years, the company grew. Organizational layers accumulated. A new CMO came on board whose mandate was to organize and execute — to lead campaigns, manage vendors, drive consistent output. That is Warrior work at its core: gathering resources and running a sustained operational quest. The direct client relationship that had fed the Scientist problem-solving dynamic became a filtered, layered, approval-dependent process.

The engagement ended with a precise assessment from the new CMO: my expertise had exceeded the company's current needs. Reading that now through the wiring lens — it was not a comment on quality. It was a wiring mismatch made visible. The company needed Essentialist execution: run the established playbook, report the metrics, maintain the system. My Scientist Primary kept questioning the playbook rather than running it. That is not a flaw in either party. It is a structural incompatibility that neither of us named when the organizational context changed.

The full story of that conversation is told in The 8:53 Conversation on this blog, if you want the unedited version.

Wiring insight: A Scientist/Sage consultant is incompatible with engagements that have moved into pure execution mode. The presence of a real problem to solve is not optional — it is the fuel. When the problem is decided and the work is just running it, the wiring mismatch becomes structural.
Story 02 — Eighteen-Month E-Commerce Engagement

A premium brand entering the US market from Mexico. Ambitious founders. Starting from zero in a new country. The engagement was built around a clear Wildly Important Goal: grow US market sales from a standing start. That is a legitimate Scientist problem — figure out what the market needs, what the funnel is missing, what the trust gap is.

Over eighteen months, the scope expanded significantly. The founders needed coordination across multiple markets simultaneously. They needed someone to manage a secondary agency, weigh in on Mexico strategy, quarterback platforms, and sustain presence across an expanding operation. That is Warrior work: gather, organize, and lead people on a sustained multi-front quest.

My Scientist Primary kept figuring out the US problem. My Warrior Anti absorbed the organizational complexity without naming its cost. The results arrived — revenue up 306%, orders growing, the system working. The termination call came the same month, for financial consolidation reasons. But the wiring story was always there underneath: I was carrying the organizational coordination load of a Warrior while being paid for the strategic insight of a Scientist.

The full story is You Can't Carry the WIG Alone in The Learning Files on this blog.

Wiring insight: A Scientist/Sage consultant who absorbs Warrior-scope coordination work — because they can — is working against their own wiring. The capacity to do something is not the same as being built for it. The costs compound silently until they become visible all at once.

Two different clients. Two different industries. Same pattern: the engagement drifted toward Warrior work, and the Scientist/Sage wiring that made the early work valuable became the mismatch that made the later work costly for both parties.

What This Means

What I Do Well.
What I Don't.

These are not aspirational statements about what I would like to be good at. They are honest assessments of what the wiring pattern actually produces — drawn from sixteen years of observing where the work lands and where it doesn't.

Where this works

The engagement that produces results

  • There is a real, unsolved strategic problem at the center of the engagement
  • The client wants to understand the strategy — not just receive a deliverable
  • Direct access to the person who makes decisions
  • The scope is defined and does not require sustained team management from the consultant
  • The client will act on what the research and analysis reveals, even when the answer is inconvenient
  • Long-term engagements where the strategy deepens over time
Where someone else serves you better

The engagement that quietly fails

  • The strategy is already decided and the work is purely executing it
  • The client needs maximum availability for day-to-day management decisions
  • Multiple organizational layers between the consultant and the decision-maker
  • Scope requires coordinating large teams, multiple agencies, or cross-department campaign management
  • The deliverable matters more than the client understanding it
  • High-volume social media execution at the center of the scope
The Compatibility Check

Select Your Sparketype
Primary

If you have taken the Sparketype assessment at sparketype.com, select your Primary below. The read you get is specific, honest, and based on what the wiring patterns typically produce in a consulting relationship — not what a polished pitch would tell you. If your result is in the Strong Match column, reach out. If it isn't, the read will tell you why and what kind of consultant would actually serve you better.

The Consulting Relationship Match Check

Based on your Sparketype Primary. Take the assessment first at sparketype.com if you haven't yet — ten minutes, free.

Your Primary Sparketype
The Direct Statement

Who I'm Trying to Find
With This Post

To the B2B marketing leader or business owner reading this

The clients I work best with come to the engagement with a problem they genuinely haven't been able to solve — not a checklist of tasks they need executed. They want to understand what I find, push back when it doesn't make sense, and make decisions based on what the data actually reveals rather than what confirms the direction they were already heading.

They have direct authority to act on the strategy. There are not four approval layers between my recommendation and a decision. When the research points somewhere inconvenient, they are willing to go there rather than asking me to find a way to confirm the comfortable answer.

The pattern that shows up in every good engagement I have had is the same: the client is running toward something specific, they have a real obstacle they haven't figured out, and they show up to every conversation ready to think. That is not a high bar. It is just the condition under which a Scientist/Sage does their best work — and its absence is the thing that makes even technically excellent strategy land in a drawer.

If your company is in execution mode on a decided strategy and needs someone to manage the operation, I am not the right person. If you have a genuine problem — why your pipeline isn't converting despite traffic, why your positioning isn't landing with the buyers you're targeting, why the content strategy isn't building the authority it should — that is a problem I am built to figure out. The two are different engagements. Knowing which one you need before you hire tells you as much as anything else about whether we're a match.

— David Estrada
Axer Strategies

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