Graphic Recording + Visual Facilitation
Wade Forbes turns complex conversations into something a room full of people can actually look at, live, in real time, while it's happening.
Trusted by the U.S. Navy · Microsoft · Keller Williams · Department of Energy · ASHA · Luminis Health
What We Do
RedTale works with organizations navigating complexity. Strategy sessions, leadership retreats, multi-day conferences. Wade draws what emerges. Megan helps your people say it clearly.
01
Wade attends your event, in person or virtual, and captures everything as it happens. What you get at the end is a visual artifact your team will still be looking at years later.
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02
For leadership teams working through hard problems. Wade draws the room's thinking in real time, surfacing patterns and gaps that talking alone never finds.
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03
Megan Forbes works with executives and teams on how to say the thing they want — clearly, confidently, without the jargon that leaves people behind. If you can't say it yourself, Megan can say it for you!
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04
Your team learns to sketch for clarity, not for art. A half-day that changes how your people run meetings and explain ideas to each other.
Learn moreThe Work, In Detail
01 — Graphic Recording
He shows up with markers and a blank wall. By the time your session ends, that wall holds everything your room said, thought, debated, and decided. Not summarized. Not interpreted. Captured. Attendees see themselves in it. They point at things. They argue about specifics instead of abstractions. That's when the real conversation starts.
Wade has done this for defense agencies, hospital leadership teams, national conferences, and everything in between. His work has been laminated into walls in buildings you need a clearance to enter.
02 — Visual Facilitation
Graphic recording captures what's said. Visual facilitation shapes what gets said. Wade works alongside the facilitator, mapping ideas in real time and feeding them back to the room in ways that move the conversation forward. Patterns emerge. Contradictions become visible. Teams stop talking past each other because they can all see the same thing.
This is the deeper engagement, for groups doing hard thinking over multiple sessions.
03 — Communication Specialist
Most communication problems are not about what people know. They're about how they say it, or don't. Megan works with executives and teams on clarity, confidence, and what to do when the room isn't responding the way you expected. Her background is in facilitation and public speaking coaching, and she brings a directness to the work that makes the time count.
She is not only a communications consultant but also a trained voiceover artist, with many videos, commercials and exhibits in her portfolio. Megan and Wade often work together to provide a full-spectrum communications package with visual and audio aspects that take your content to new levels.
04 — Visual Thinking Workshops
Nobody needs to be a visual artist for this to work. The workshop teaches your people how to use simple sketches to explain ideas, run better meetings, and get alignment faster. It changes the way your team communicates, internally, without requiring a graphic recorder in every room.
Half-day format, in person or virtual. Works well as a follow-on to a recorded session.
The Process
Wade gets familiar with your goals, your audience, and your challenges. He shows up knowing the context, not guessing at it.
While your people talk, Wade draws. The strategy, the tension, the big ideas, the things that almost got missed. It all goes on the wall.
People see themselves. They point at things. They argue productively about something specific instead of something abstract. That's when the real conversation starts.
High-resolution files, physical boards, whatever the project calls for. Not a deck that gets emailed once and forgotten. Something that stays on the wall.
What People Say
The picture was still on the wall eight months later. Someone had added sticky notes to it. That's the sign of a good one.
Conference organizer, healthcare nonprofit
His work has been laminated and plexiglassed into our walls. That's not something you say about a PowerPoint deck.
Defense contracting partner
Selected Work
Draw What Matters
Wade posts a drawing on LinkedIn and Instagram every morning — an illustration, a thought, something worth a few seconds of your day. The email goes out once a week. It's a drawing and a short piece of writing. No pitch at the bottom. People have been getting it for years and still write back.
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More from clients
I gave him a story with pictures. That's the only way I know how to explain what happened. He made something I could actually point to.
Senior Officer, U.S. Navy
Don't come to us with exactly what you want. That was the wrong approach. Wade found something better than what we thought we needed.
Healthcare sector client
We've had him back six times. The first session was good. By the third, our team started thinking differently about how they run their own meetings.
Government agency, Pacific Northwest
We thought we knew what we'd decided. Then we saw the drawing. Three things we thought were resolved were clearly still open. That was worth the whole day.
Executive team, national association
He received a challenge coin from one of our senior admirals. That's not something we hand out lightly, and almost never to a civilian.
U.S. Navy
More testimonials coming. Wade has 83% returning clients and we're rounding them up now.
About Wade
Wade Forbes has spent years in rooms where the stakes were high and the clarity was low. Defense agencies, government working groups, hospital leadership teams navigating something hard. His job is to listen and then put what he heard somewhere everyone can see it.
Most of his best work can't be shown here. It's laminated to walls in buildings you need a clearance to enter. He's received challenge coins from four-star admirals for it, an honor that isn't asked for and rarely goes to civilians.
For the work that is public: government, healthcare, education, agriculture, real estate, nonprofits. Organizations trying to do something meaningful inside a complicated system. Wade helps them see where they are.
Megan Forbes co-runs RedTale and works with clients on how they communicate, internally and publicly. Her background is in facilitation and public speaking coaching. When the picture is clear and the words finally catch up to it, that's the two of them working together.
Start Here
Book a discovery call. Wade will sketch something live on that call, a version of your problem, your team, your event. You'll see immediately whether this is something you want in the room.
No commitment. Wade draws. You decide if it helps.