The Idea Climbing Podcast

By: Mark J. Carter
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  • 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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Economics Leadership Marketing
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Episodes
  • How to Use Storytelling to Stand Out from the Crowd with Thom Van Dycke

    How to Use Storytelling to Stand Out from the Crowd with Thom Van Dycke
    Dec 11 2024
    People love to hear and listen intently to great stories. If you can craft them for your marketing initiatives, you’ll build your business faster. I discuss how to do that in this episode with my guest, Thom Van Dycke. Thom is a business advisor for solopreneurs and small agencies and a certified StoryBrand Guide. He works to help his clients develop strategic offers that deliver huge value to their customers. Thom was a pastor for 19 years. When you’re in that kind of role there’s a lot of storytelling already involved. In 2020 he left the ministry and started his own business after reading the book “Building a Storybrand” by Donald Miller. In the back of the book the author described how to get certified as a “Storybrand Guide”. Thom realized that the Storybrand framework is very powerful for organizing your thoughts around storytelling. That sparked the idea: “I wonder if it’s time for a switch”. After getting certified Thom launched his business and started out as a copywriter. He fell in love with taking the genre of communication, marketing, and figuring out ways to interweave it with storytelling. Thom has been copywriting for four years and now and is starting to do more storytelling consulting work. When it comes to storytelling and marketing, where do you begin? Many people think storytelling is about telling their story and being autobiographical. While there is a place for that in marketing, that’s not necessarily what it means to tell your story in marketing. Storytelling in marketing really looks at what other parts of a story are and how do we can use them in our marketing strategy. Storytelling begins with a hero who wants something and can’t get it, they have an external problem. Then frustration about that leads to internal problems for them. Then the hero meets a guide. The guide gives them a plan, paints a picture of success and failure, and calls the hero to action. The whole arc of the story is one of transformation. So, the idea is the framework for a story. The reason that is so powerful is that our brains are wired to recognize the patterns of stories. From the beginning of written communication humankind has used stories to make sense of their world. The more ancient you go, the more the stories are more supernatural in nature. The Need for Storytelling In modern times we’re still creating stories to explain the world around us. We are still using stories to make sense of the universe, often in scientific and naturalistic ways. It’s part of our DNA to make sense of the world that way. When Thom starts working with a client, he first makes sure they understand that concept. Then he helps them understand that when it comes to marketing, in order to be effective, you need to be extremely clear. The brain wants to find the shortest path to an understanding or meaning as possible. When we put our marketing and messaging into a story format, we’re helping people’s brains get to the point we’re trying to make faster. It helps us land more deals and close more sales because it cuts out some of the brain’s confusion of trying to get to the point. In this episode we also discuss: How to get to the point quicker in your marketing strategy. The case for making your clients to heroes of your stories instead of yourself. The pitfalls of the least effective marketing campaigns and how to avoid them. How to articulate your hero’s (customer’s) problems effectively and show them how you solve them. The role of and need for compassion in marketing. How to position yourself as the hero’s guide in your customer’s journey. How to arrange the content on your website to create a hero’s journey. The need for a call to action and how to create one. How to balance explaining problems with explaining solutions in your marketing. Two common storytelling mistakes most people make and how to avoid them. The one thing that,
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    27 mins
  • How You Can Become a Lifelong Learner with Eric Pfeiffer

    How You Can Become a Lifelong Learner with Eric Pfeiffer
    Nov 20 2024
    Everyone can be and probably should be a lifelong learner; that practice can change the course of your life. I discuss how and why to do that in this episode with my guest, Eric Pfeiffer. Eric is the founder and CEO of MPWR Coaching. Eric has been in the leadership development space for over 15 years, having helped build a multi-million-dollar coaching business and trained over 150 coaches worldwide. Eric says becoming a lifelong learner didn’t start early enough in his career. In his twenties and even into his early thirties he felt pressure to know everything, to have arrived, to have achieved, and to have whatever knowledge base he needed to be successful. He constantly ran into roadblocks and to different challenges that kept reflecting to him “You don’t know everything.” There was a long season when every time some inadequacy was exposed in him through some deficiency, usually by other people, he would take that as an insult as somehow diminishing his value, disqualifying him from something better. This eventually changed with help from mentors. One day a mentor said to Eric “You need to get over yourself! You’re going to spend the rest of your life becoming a better version of you. If you see every exposure of something you don’t know or don’t know how to do as some kind of diminishing of your value, you’re going to stay plateaued and stuck. Then what you’ll do is create a world around you where what you know and know how to do currently is the only thing that’s required. That means your success level and trajectory are diminished as well.” Something Changed He says he “flipped that script” and recognized that every time some deficiency in him was exposed he decided to celebrate it. He realized that he could be grateful and appreciative because it’s exposing a potential new growth opportunity. If he can embrace the positive perspective, he sees it as an opportunity instead of being an obstacle. Then what happens is every time something’s exposed as a deficiency he gets to experience another area to grow in. He could go on another journey of personal transformation and development. As that became more and more the norm for his life Eric realized that his trajectory radically changed, and he found himself on this continual growth path. How Does Becoming a Lifelong Learner Begin? At first, it’s a choice, it’s a mindset shift to “flip the script” by realizing we can always choose how we interpret an experience. When we experience an area of life that we’ve fallen short in we’re either going to self-protect and project responsibility on everybody else or decide in that moment to choose to see those circumstances as opportunities for our own personal growth and development. That is the starting point because until we have that mindset, until we can control our mindset about our failures and shortcomings then we will always see those as roadblocks rather than the opportunities that they really are. From there Eric believes that we have to learn some basic mechanisms to squeeze the learning out of our life experiences, whether they be positive or negative. It’s all up to you! We also dive into topics such as: How to flip the script on internal dialogue/shift your mindset. The importance of and how to practice self-awareness. How to shift your mindset from my failure is an obstacle to it’s an opportunity. How developing and adopting small habits leads to big success. How to know what to take in and what to leave out. Words for time: Chronos (sequential/stopwatch/calendar time) and Kairos. How to recognize moments that are most relevant to you and embrace them. What are brains are hardwired to do in our best moments. How to maintain a life of lifelong learning and not just have it be a blip on your radar. The ROI of being a lifelong learner versus just being a momentary learner. How to create a paradigm shift from obstacle to opportunity.
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    23 mins
  • How to Build and Scale a Business You Love with Mary Kelly

    How to Build and Scale a Business You Love with Mary Kelly
    Nov 5 2024
    If you’re going to build a business, you should love what you do. Once you build a foundation it’s time to scale the business. I discuss how to do that in this episode with my guest, Mary Kelly. Mary started working for her dad’s business at trade shows when she was just seven years old. Her parents would leave her at their tradeshow booth to write orders while they worked the room to get more business. Mary took a hiatus from the business world for 25 years when she joined the navy and spent 17 of those years in Asia. During that time, she got experience leading teams that were both multi-cultural and multi-lingual. She learned how to manage people, assets, and supply chains. Transitioning into the Private Sector During her last tour in the Navy, Mary taught at the naval academy. The admiral was always being called to give talks about the status of the Navy, leadership, and other topics to government institutions and private sector businesses. One day the admiral was busy, and Mary’s friend called her and asked her to give a talk. That led to more talks. At one of those talks the organizer asked her to come back and train their people. Mary was ready for the opportunity because the premises of what you’re managing doesn’t really change. It doesn’t matter if it’s Navy people or businesspeople. Managing and leading people is still managing and leading people. This is where people get hung up on “How do we lead Gen Z, or millennials, or boomers if they’re older or younger than us?” Mary believes that regardless of the demographic, people need great leadership. You don’t lead demographics, you lead individuals. Lead your people well and the rest will follow suit. This belief has led to a very successful private sector speaking career for Mary. The Biggest Lessons Learned Number one, you must pay attention to your numbers, always pay attention to your numbers. Number two, realize and embrace that your people are your most important assets. You must make sure that people show up every day to serve you, the mission and the vision you’ve got in mind. The third thing is when you see a disruption there’s almost always more to it than what you think. Dig a little bit deeper than you initially want to, look at the surface problem and go “Ok, we’ve solved that, put a band-aid on it, everything is fine, NO. What Mary found is there’s almost always a deeper-rooted problem that needs a solution. Many leaders are worried about making a mistake or going in the wrong direction, so they do nothing. Sometimes they stagnate or believe a decision they made a year ago is still a good decision today. In that case they’re not taking the current market conditions into consideration. You need to ask yourself what is the situation today and how has it changed since yesterday and how might it change tomorrow. How to Start Building a Business and Do It Effectively First you must figure out your vision and your mission. The next question to answer is why are you better at those than somebody else? You can be competitively better (you’re just better) or you can be comparatively better (and have a lower price point, or you’re more convenient, and so on). This means answering: Competitively and comparatively where are you better? Build your value proposition around that. Then you build out your mission and figure out where you want to go. From there you create the action steps to get you there. When you cross the action steps, this is where Mary believes a lot of people get stuck, you must first say, “What’s going to be the biggest obstacle?” Sometimes, it’s your own friends and family. They’re going to say things like “You can’t start that business.” Those are not the people you don’t want to listen to. Once you see those obstacles then you brainstorm on the solutions. If you don’t give your brain a place to go with the solutions, it’s going to focus on the obstacles.
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    24 mins

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