The Idea Climbing Podcast

By: Mark J. Carter
  • Summary

  • If you’re passionate about bringing your big ideas to life and want actionable strategies for marketing, branding, sales, mentoring, networking and more this show is for you! You’ll learn from interviews with successful B2B thought leaders and entrepreneurs.
    © 2019 Mark J. Carter & ONE80
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Episodes
  • How Entrepreneurs Can Build a Stronger Brand Online with Shon Christy
    Oct 30 2024
    Building a strong brand and powerful online presence are necessities for entrepreneurs. I discuss how to do that in this episode with my guest, Shon Christy. Shon brings over 20 years of marketing expertise as the founder of Shon Christy Social Media, Fractional Social Pro, and NeuroSocial Labs. He's worked with over 800 companies internationally, pioneering innovative social media marketing and engagement approaches. When Shon got discovered social media he was just a basic user. When social media got to college campuses, he was getting his master’s degree at the University of Akron. He was in the right place at the right time. Shon launched his first social media company. They were the first niche social media marketing agency in the state of Ohio. Talk about a great start! Shon had to build the business “brick by brick” by practicing what he was preaching and trying new things online. In addition to his company he built his own personal brand, establishing himself as the local leader in social media through public speaking and his online activity. Shon was building his online presence and promoting himself. When he looked back after a couple years of doing that, he examined why some things worked and why some things didn’t work. He realized that attention was becoming the new currency. We’re getting bombarded with marketing messages more and more every day. Our minds are filtering and rejecting information all the time. For this reason, it’s even more important for you to stand out. So that’s what Shon started to do. He focused on some principles that he successfully used to grab people’s attention. You don’t automatically have somebody’s attention during your first interaction with them. Shon realized that saying the same things on social media over and over gets boring to your audiences. He shifted his messaging from time to time to stay fresh in his marketing efforts. How to Start Building Your Online Brand Shon started by asking “Who am I?” The answer guided his online branding messages. Social media is the great digital amplifier, and he was amplifying the right messages. Marketing begins with taking an authentic look at yourself. Shon likens your personal brand to a recipe. It’s the concept of a “secret sauce”. Understanding what that taste palette is for you and understanding the ingredients of your personal brand is where it starts. Shon recommends broadcasting multiple things to attract like-minded people. You might try five or six things, and the sixth thing creates a way to connect with somebody on a human level, that will grab attention. That’s part of his alignment concept. If you’re aligned with other people they’re going to like you a little bit more. Getting somebody to like you because of that branding is a key to long term success. We also delve into things such as: How to get people’s attention. How to eliminate roadblocks for people to communicate with you. How to keep people’s attention after you get it. Two ways to know that you have someone’s attention. The importance of amplifying other people's stories while amplifying your own and how to do that. How to build a reputation and not just have a bunch of people’s attention. How to move along the know, like, and trust continuum faster. How to build and balance your personal reputation with your professional reputation. How to build a reputation and a business without being “salesy”. The importance of practicing the Golden Rule in your professional life. How to maintain your reputation over time after you build it. …and more golden nuggets of advice! You can get my book here: “Idea Climbing: How to Create a Support System for Your Next Big Idea” Click here for more outstanding interviews with entrepreneurs and thought leaders! About the Guest Shon Christy brings over 20 years of marketing expertise as the founde...
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    25 mins
  • Beat Your Brain Bully: How to Master Your Mind and Manifest Your Mission with Lynn Smith
    Oct 16 2024
    Do you ever run into your Brain Bully? What does that feel like? With the right strategies you can build your self esteem and achieve success in all areas of your life. In this episode I discuss how to do that with my guest, Lynn Smith. Lynn is a national media expert, consultant, keynote speaker, and host of “StrollerCoaster” a parenting podcast brought to you by Munchkin the world most loved baby brand in the world. Previously, she spent 15 years as an anchor on the TODAY Show, NBC News, MSNBC, and CNN Headline News. In 2021, Smith left TV News to launch her company Rylan Media which takes her media insight and expertise to tackle corporate and individuals greatest branding and communications challenges. Meet Your Brain Bully The brain bully is that voice we all have in our mind that’s saying, “What if I screw this up?” or “Does Mark like what I’m saying?” or “What if the audience thinks I’m a total idiot?” Lynn realized after coaching hundreds of executives, after being a news anchor for 15 years, and having her own Brain Bully incidents many times, that almost 100% of us have a Brain Bully. If you don’t, you’re likely a sociopath or a narcissist. Just saying. Her brain bully creeping in was so common that Lynn decided “I have to create something in order to help myself and other people overcome this situation…”, and through self-examination she did just that. As a news anchor she was told many times (to her face) “You’re not good enough, you’ll never make it in TV”. Then she had her own internal audio loop; “Maybe they’re right, maybe I’m not good at this…” She had to create techniques to overcome her Brain Bully to sustain a long term career in television. Now, when she shares her methodology with executives it’s this lightbulb moment for them. “Oh, I shouldn’t ignore this voice, this voice is actually not real, or right, I just have to tame it, I need to know how to manage my Brain Bully”. How do you overcome your Brain Bully? Initially, early on, when Lynn was in her early twenties and started in television, beating her Brain Bully was the result of pure grit and tenacity. It was a case of “just keep going”. Sometimes she didn’t have any reason or logic to believe in her eventual success, she just had to push through it. There was no other option. From seeing what good came from pushing through her Brain Bully dialogues she realized “Now I can have fun with this, and I can talk to my Brain Bully. I can say, ‘Brain Bully’, listen here, you’re through right now”. She parented her Brain Bully out of the situation. If you have kids, what would you say to them if they had a bully? What advice would you have to get rid of that bully? That’s what she did. You must literally name it and then tame it. You tame it by having those conversations with it. The next step? Reframe it. That Brain Bully could be an asset to you by keeping you on your toes. We don’t want to get complacent. It’s when we lose control of the dialogue that we have problems. So, you must name it, tame it and reframe it. We do a deeper dive into that methodology and discuss topics such as: What’s really holding you back in life, and it’s not your professional skillset or lack of one. How to find ways to do whatever it is you were meant to do with your life. Why just pushing your Brain Bully away won’t work. How to control your fight, flight, or freeze responses in your primitive brain. It doesn’t know the difference between you giving a presentation and you being attacked by a tiger. It’s protecting you from what you perceive as a threat. How to create a Brain Buddy and use it to your advantage. How and why you have complete control over which thoughts you focus on. How to show up as your authentic self. …and more golden nuggets of advice! You can get my book here: “Idea Climbing: How to Create a Support System for Your Next Big Idea”
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    24 mins
  • How to Leverage LinkedIn to Build Your Brand with Donna Serdula
    Oct 9 2024
    LinkedIn is only a powerful tool if you know how to use it. My guest Donna Serdula and I discuss LinkedIn branding strategies in this episode. Donna has almost 20 years of experience on LinkedIn. She is the founder and president of Vision Board Media, a professional branding company that helps individuals and companies tell their unique stories on LinkedIn and beyond. Getting Started Donna’s relationship with LinkedIn started in 2005. A colleague of Donna’s asked if she had heard of LinkedIn and said “You should join, you will get a lot of opportunities. Things just drop in your lap; you’ve got to sign up for it!” When she signed up, she saw that her profile looked like a resume. So, she copied and pasted her very dry, dull, out of date resume. She thought “Ok, opportunity, hit me! I can’t wait to see what happens here!”. Then nothing happened. It seemed like a huge waste of time. She continued with her professional life and didn’t think much more of that LinkedIn profile for quite some time. She accepted another job, no thanks to LinkedIn. She found herself in a much more cutthroat sales type of environment. She was dialing for dollars; she was cold calling. Suddenly LinkedIn started to cross her path again. She was using it to enhance her cold calling, she wanted to learn about the people were that she was calling before she spoke with them. One day she had an epiphany; she thought about all these people and every time she looked at their profiles, she was disappointed. She wanted to learn more about their story. Then it hit her, how was she showing up? She Googled herself and her LinkedIn profile was the first thing to pop up. She realized by lack of caring and lack of activity she was doing the same thing all the other people were doing – nothing. That’s when she realized that your LinkedIn profile isn’t your resume. It’s much bigger than that, it’s your online presence, often your first impression, and your brand. A BIG Shift in Thinking and Results… Donna contemplated how she wanted to be perceived and what goals she was striving to achieve. She looked at LinkedIn strategically. She created a new profile that was much more aligned with her desired personal brand. As soon as she did that amazing results started to happen. She became a magnet for opportunities. People were searching for someone like her, and she was popping up in the search results. People were seeing her as someone in their industry that is a thought leader and cares about other people in her industry. That’s when she realized she wanted to help other people do the same thing and get the same branding results. They need help with their resumes, help with their bios, help with strategically using LinkedIn as a networking tool, help with thought leadership assistance and so on. How to Build Your Brand to Get Opportunities to Come to You When it comes to LinkedIn certain things have changed, and certain things haven’t changed. When you think of the LinkedIn feed, that has changed massively. The LinkedIn profile hasn’t really changed, it’s still this huge area to really tell your story, to showcase your career trajectory, and it’s a place to get found. Most people forget that LinkedIn is a search engine. A lot of people think LinkedIn is just a professional social network. Many people on LinkedIn are there looking for someone like you. That’s one place where successful branding strategies begin. What terms do you want to be found for? You need to be peppering those terms throughout your profile, that way you can collide with opportunity. Many times, Donna finds big mistakes that people make are doing what she had been doing. For example, she was looking for opportunities in sales, but she was aligning herself as a job seeker. Her target audience wasn’t recruiters, it was sales managers and other people in her industry. She overhauled her profile, and the right people started to find her because she was align...
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    23 mins

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