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The Idea Climbing Podcast

The Idea Climbing Podcast

By: Mark J. Carter
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 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 Economics Leadership Management & Leadership Marketing Marketing & Sales
Episodes
  • How to Creatively and Strategically Scale Your Business with Lysle Wickersham

    How to Creatively and Strategically Scale Your Business with Lysle Wickersham
    Jun 3 2025
    Creativity and strategy can seem like two sides of the same coin when it comes to business scaling, but they run well together when combined. I discuss how to do that in this episode with my guest, Lysle Wickersham. Lysle’s unique crossover skill set and insights not only transform startups and SMEs into scalable, successful ventures but also redefine the very essence of creative capitalism, masterfully blending positioning strategy with storytelling and building intangible equity to drive growth and build enterprise value. Lysle is an combination of two career paths that led him to his current business. He grew up as a creative director in integrated communications and brand development and advertising and eventually built a large agency that he ended up selling. After that Lysle ran a couple of tech companies connected to venture capital groups. He founded an investment bank and did a strange crossover for a creative person into mergers and acquisitions working with private equity and venture, a more strategic endeavor. What felt natural to him was the integration between the pragmatic side developing sound business strategies and the creative side of expressing the attributes of a company that builds the emotional connections. The truth is if you do both of those things well, that’s where the money is. Where to Start When it Comes to Blending Creativity and Strategy Creativity and strategy don’t run at the same time; it’s a linear process. To be creative you first need to be strategic. Every business must start with core positioning. Who is the target market that you’re trying to reach? All of this at first is connected to the founder by the company’s goals and visions and what they want to be and build. You take that and decide who would buy that and who’s going to scale with you so you can grow. You need to ask: What is the context that you are in the market in other words what space are you playing in, what’s your primary point of differentiation and what’s the proof that you can deliver on that point of differentiation? You must be able to deliver on that brand promise. If you do that stuff well and you have that core foundation that naturally leads to the attributes of your brand that align with your positioning and audience. That means answering questions such as: What do you look like? What do you sound like? What are the brand values from that you can discern your primary messaging? All of that then moves into things such as brand identity and communication strategies. The marriage between the two comes when you know who you are as a business and how you tell your story in a way that emotionally resonates with your potential clients. That’s the natural connection between the strategic foundation and the creative expression of that foundation. How to Know When You’re Ready to Scale It’s kind of an abstract way to look at the word, everybody wants to scale or grow. Every business’ goal is to get bigger and make more revenue. That’s a natural progression. There is no specific trigger for that. When you’re figuring out positioning for your business you want to make sure that the audience you want to build has room to grow. Then there’s market potential. That’s where there’s white space competitively where you can be different and be desired. All those things must go into consideration when you’re figuring out how to position a business to raise capital. You’re looking at the size of those marketplaces, how big they are, and what your potential to attract a piece of that market is. All those things must be calculated, especially if you’re talking to investors and you want to present a financial story to them about how your company can grow. How to Differentiate Yourself in the Marketplace That is the connection between strategy and creativity. When you create your positioning one of the core functions of that positioning is to articulate your core point of differentiation.
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    22 mins
  • How to Build a Meaningful Personal Brand on Social Media with Vladimer Botsvadze

    How to Build a Meaningful Personal Brand on Social Media with Vladimer Botsvadze
    May 20 2025
    If you want to build a meaningful personal brand online you need authenticity, gratitude, and a few other strategies. I discuss them in this episode with my guest, Vladimer Botsvadze. Vladimer came to the United States on a work visa in 2006. He eventually moved to New York City, the best melting pot in the world. In NYC Vladimir realized how important it is to build a personal brand. He started rubbing shoulders with successful people and left no stone unturned. Vladimer became a lifelong learner, reading 400+ pages a day and working 16 hours a day. He built Twitter/X followers from zero to 57,000 in a year because he’s an authentic storyteller that loves to provide value. The Starting Point of Creating a Meaningful Online Brand Start small, build gradually for the long term, and give more than you take. You have an iPhone at your fingertips; you can easily record videos and upload them to YouTube to share your knowledge and your journey with your audience. Steve Jobs said the most powerful person in the world is a storyteller. He also said people that know what they are talking about don’t need PowerPoint. Be on different social media channels, don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Remember, great oaks grow from small acorns. Long term thinkers give more than they take by sharing content that is in their followers’ best interests. Many people that connect with you on LinkedIn send sales pitches. People don’t pay attention to those pitches. They pay attention to value. How to Provide More Value to Your Social Media Audience Give away your best advice for free. Vladimir has never charged his followers for “picking his brain”. He leads by example, not by titles. That is one of the things that sets him apart from the rest of the herd. A majority of executives lead by their titles. Gary V. leads by example, Tim Ferris leads by example because they are self-made success stories. Both are examples of why you should never give up. There is always light at the end of the tunnel if you are positive and see the glass half full. Inspiration Along the Way It doesn’t matter where you were born, your background or your education. If you take massive, strategic action you will succeed. Vladimer was born in Georgia and dreaming about experiencing the Western world. In the nineties he was burning the midnight oil and pursuing his dream. Now he’s a global citizen. He loves instilling confidence in other people. If he can do it, anybody can do it. Establishing and Building Your Reputation You start to build a robust personal brand by showing gratitude. When people leave you comments or like your social media posts you should respond to them and thank them. Vladimir did and still does consistently express gratitude to his followers. He brought and brings his followers together which built and further builds his personal brand which translates to his personal success including hundreds of endorsements on LinkedIn. He treats his followers as his friends. You need to consistently create great content. That means creating content with authenticity, compassion, and devotion. Vladimir shares his authentic story with the world. That helps him build emotional connections with his followers. A Cohesive Strategy for Building Your Personal Brand You need to have a presence across a variety of social media channels. You need to create content consistently. You need to interact with your audience because a majority of people don’t consistently interact with their audiences and hence, they don’t grow their audiences. Then they complain that they have never built their personal brands because they almost never interacted. They get on their high horse while Vladimir does the opposite; he shows up and is down to earth. You need to be curious on a daily basis. You need to collaborate with influencers. When he began his social media journey in 2014 he had the foresight to interact with big brands.
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    23 mins
  • How to Scale Your Business with a Market Dominating Position with Ed Middlebrooks

    How to Scale Your Business with a Market Dominating Position with Ed Middlebrooks
    Apr 23 2025
    When you create a Market Dominating Position (MDP) you’re on track to successfully scale your business. I discuss how to do that with my guest, Ed Middlebrooks. Ed is not your typical business coach—he’s a strategic weapon for entrepreneurs who are done playing small. Ed Middlebrooks is the founder of Elite Profit Coach, where he works with driven business owners to uncover hidden profit, outmaneuver competitors, and install dominance into their markets. Ed was the kid in the server closet for 25 years working a job in IT services. That job got him involved with business planning. He realized that technology affects the growth of a business. He found himself interfacing with high-level executives about more than just small technology issues. Ed began asking “How does the infrastructure of the business really allow us to foster growth and increase communications which ultimately increases sales and marketing results? “ Entering the Entrepreneurship World After 25 Ed left the corporate IT world because he learned about real estate investing and how to automate a business using what he calls “The Five Steps of Every Business”; which is: To get customers, you must first generate leads. Prescreen those leads. Construct and present offers. Close quickly. Follow up with everybody. Those five steps exist in so many places within a business. In his real estate investing career, his firm bought 24 houses with none of their own money, no banks and no credit. He had 17 Air BnBs. He built a multimillion-dollar business providing rentals. He took the strategies that he learned from working with C-Suite executives, negotiating and networking. Ed discovered that the secrets of growing and scaling a business appear to be fairly unique to each business, but they all come down to a singular strategy or pattern. When you put the building blocks in the right order, things happen, your strategies work, and your business grows. The Starting Point of Marketing Strategy and Business Growth First, you must take an analysis of your business. When it comes to growing and scaling a business, most entrepreneurs look at how to generate more revenue. They’re always thinking about the income. They want to foster more business. Whereas that’s true to a point, what Ed finds is that a lot of businesses are just chasing good money after bad. For example, they spend money on ads without really understanding the fundamentals of their business and how the ads boost (or don’t boost) the bottom line. Ed has a mantra that he’s learned along the way. That is “Revenue feeds the ego, but profit feeds your family.” When he talks about growing and scaling a business, he’ll show a business how to become more profitable without spending any extra money on marketing. This is assuming that there’s already a steady flow of business coming into that company. What they can do is make some changes. They can reduce the cost of goods sold, they can look at making more compelling offers, and so on. Creating Your Market Dominating Position (MDP) One thing stands out above everything else. That is understanding your company’s Market Dominating Position (MDP); sometimes referred to as the Unique Selling Position. What is the MDP of your company? If you don’t have that all you’re doing is throwing money into marketing, hoping that people connect with your messaging. You’re doing what everyone else does. When you do that, you can end up stuck in a red ocean (filled with “sharks”) and you’re not in a blue ocean. Ed’s not talking about creating a product that nobody else has. He’s talking about what the capacity of your business is to provide and deliver unique and superior value amongst your competition. Here’s another question that you must ask regardless of what your industry is. The question comes down to “What are the benefits you offer to your target market that set you apart from all of your competitors?” Once you figure that out,
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    28 mins
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