The Idea Climbing® Podcast cover art

The Idea Climbing® Podcast

The Idea Climbing® Podcast

By: Mark J. Carter
Listen for free

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.© 2026 Mark J. Carter & ONE80 Economics Leadership Management & Leadership Marketing Marketing & Sales
Episodes
  • How to Successfully Build and Scale Your Service Business with Rick Elmore

    How to Successfully Build and Scale Your Service Business with Rick Elmore
    May 19 2026
    There’s an art and a science to scaling your service business. A big part of it is learning to work on your business and not in your business. I discuss how to do that with my guest, Rick Elmore. Rick Elmore is the Founder and CEO of Simply Noted, a technology company helping businesses build stronger relationships through automated handwritten communication powered by real pen and ink. A former college and professional football player turned entrepreneur, Rick has combined his background in sales, marketing, and relationship-building to create one of the fastest-growing handwritten outreach platforms in the world. We dive into topics including: Rick’s early days in sales that lead to his multi-million-dollar discovery. The importance of getting the right people in the right seats of your business.How to work on your business instead of in your business.Where and when Rick started working on his business instead of in his business.Your life cycle as an entrepreneur from inception to scaling your business.The importance of building an ecosystem of trust in your business and how to do it.What you need to do next after you build the core team of your business.How to scale your marketing initiatives.How to keep your sanity when you’re scaling as an owner/operator.The importance of discipline and how to develop it.Why scaling is a lifelong journey that never ends.The one thing, above all else, that you need to do to successfully scale your service business. …and other golden nuggets of advice! Rick’s Origin Story Rick has a pretty unique background. He was an athlete growing up. He played college and professional sports, even though athletics didn’t come to naturally to him. Athletics was something that Rick was able to be successful at because he was a hard worker and didn’t overextend himself. A lot of people discredit what you can get done in 10 years versus all the pressure they put on themselves to get done in a year. Rick had 15 years of experience working on not overextending himself before he became an entrepreneur. Rick made it to the NFL in 2010, but he was an athlete for a long time before that. His first year in the NFL he was playing for the Cleveland Browns, and he was with one of the back office people. They showed me his draft profile and it said, “This guy plays above his potential, is an overachiever, and wins with effort.” Back then he used to think that was like a stab. But now, being 38 years old, Rick looks back and he believes that all of those were his strengths. He used that and leveraged his ability to keep working hard to push on and persevere through any of life’s problems. Then five years in the NFL Rick went back and got his MBA. He was a typical B or C student; nothing special as he recalls. His mindset was that he was just there to memorize stuff and take tests. But he fell in love with learning because he was passionate about and interested in business. He wanted to learn how to start a business. He wanted to learn about what made businesses work even though he was completely green in the entrepreneurship space. When Rick went into sales that was one of the turning points in his life. Life After Sports Because he found something he was interested in, it became a lot easier to dedicate his life to it after sports. He had a marketing professor that said something that changed his life. About a year into his program, the professor said that handwritten mail had a 99% open rate. Rick realized that if you got something in the mail, and it was handwritten, you were going to open it. He grew up in the nineties, when people used to write notes to their friends. It became a lost art over time. BUT there was no way to like do it efficiently at scale. It took Rick a lot of time to sit down and write a holiday card to each of his clients and put them in envelopes. Rick started researching and there was a technology called a “pen plotter” out at that time. It had no paper feed, no technology behind it. He got it from China, built it and went to his friends and said “Hey, this is my idea. Can you help me?” He knew nothing about software, nothing about software integrations and software coding. Rick’s a-HA! Business Scaling Moment But he DID know that if his idea could be flushed out there would be an opportunity for a business because nobody else was doing it. Rick made it work. He created 500 handwritten notes using that simple handwriting robot and sent them out to clients and prospects. The response rate was amazing. Many of his clients and prospects were doctors and many of them responded to his note that it helped Rick bypass his $50,000 a month quota. Rick made over $270,000 in sales. That was the most money he had ever made. He laughed because people think just because he was in NFL, that he made a lot of money, which is not true. Only about 1% of the athletes who go to the NFL make all the money that you think they do. The CEO of his company ...
    Show More Show Less
    27 mins
  • How to End Self-Sabotage and Boost Self-Confidence with Dr. Robyn Lynette

    How to End Self-Sabotage and Boost Self-Confidence with Dr. Robyn Lynette
    May 13 2026
    Entrepreneurs face self-sabotage more than most people. We can also experience powerful self-confidence when we have the right strategies. I discuss how to overcome self-sabotage and replace it with life-altering self confidence in this episode with my guest, Dr. Robyn Lynette. Dr. Robyn is an executive strategy partner who has spent nearly two decades working privately with CEOs and founders during the highest-stakes moments of their professional lives. Drawing on business and sport psychology, she identifies the hidden patterns that can quickly undermine decision-making and leadership at the top, where the pressure is high and the margin for error is thin. The leaders she works with aren’t looking for help; they’re looking for an edge. She’s also the author of the memoir I’d Like to Thank the Cartel for Getting Me Out of a Cult. We dive into topics including: Why playing competitive sports helped form Robyn’s mindset for success in all areas of life.How your brain can either help or hinder you.Specific examples of the best way your brain can help you.The unfortunate reality of our “Fight or flight” response and how to overcome it.The power of intuition and what it really is.Examples of what happens when you ignore your intuition.Where self-sabotage comes from and why it’s there.How to recognize self-sabotage and stop it in its tracks.What your logical brain needs to do to step in and “save the day” on bad days.How to build mental habits to automatically break your stream of self-sabotage.Why people stay stuck in self-destructive or self-sabotaging habits.The definition of self-confidence.Where building self-confidence starts and what it looks like.Examples of confident behaviors and how to develop them.The all important role of self-talk in your life, especially when it comes to self-confidence.The origin of self-fulfilling prophecies and how to create good ones.How to change negative emotions when you realize you’re feeling them.How to maintain self-confidence over time even on the “down days”.The role your logical brain plays when combined with your emotional brain.The one thing, above all else, that you need to do to end self-sabotage and boost self-confidence. …and other golden nuggets of advice! Robyn’s Introduction to Self-Sabotage and Self-Confidence Robyn’s story goes back to when she used to play competitive beach volleyball. There were some days when she could get on the court and just nail it; she felt like a phenomenal volleyball player. And then there were other days when she would get on the court and her partner would hold out a volleyball and ask, “Robyn, this is a volleyball. Have you ever seen one before?” Robyn wondered, “Where did my game go?” Because of that, Robyn’s interest was sparked. She had the opportunity in college to study high performance people and how and why they achieve more than the general population. The thing that she noticed was that across all professions, whether you’re in business, sports, or the military, is how your brain can either help you or hinder you. She likes to joke and say, “Whether you’re using your brawn or your brain, your brain is still gonna be in the way.” Your Brain Can Help or Hinder You… It’s Your Choice! Obviously, your brain can help with critical thinking. For example, we can manage stress and override our fight or flight response. You probably know that in the modern world; we’re constantly in fight or flight mode. Because of that we have all hormones that are constantly flooding our brains; for better or worse. If you’re going to succeed, you must be able to set that mode aside and realize, “I know I’m not being chased by a saber tooth tiger; I can do this.” Doing that starts to help. The hinder part, or problem, is if you’re constantly overcoming fight or flight and pushing down that fear, you’re also eliminating your gut instinct and your intuition. Things like those that can help you get pushed down because you’re in fight or flight mode. Which leads us to intuition… Entrepreneurs and Intuition Intuition is an interesting phenomenon. There’s a lot of science around it that talks about how intuition is your sunconscious picking up on patterns before your logical mind recognizes them. Which means your emotional brain is the part of your brain that makes you think of the perfect thing to say 20 minutes after the argument. That’s the part of your brain that was overriding things. If you want that intuition to come through, you must listen to your emotional, or subconscious part of your brain. So many of us are ignoring it, and we’re all in critical thinking mode most of the time. That’s what keeps us awake at 3:00 AM because we’re thinking of all the things that we didn’t share when we had the opportunities to do so during the day. You should make time during the day to listen to that part of your brain. There are many ways you can do that. It...
    Show More Show Less
    26 mins
  • How to Package and Price Your Service Offering with Alex Shartsis

    How to Package and Price Your Service Offering with Alex Shartsis
    May 5 2026
    How to package and price your service offering are difficult decisions to make. Most entrepreneurs wrestle with them for years. I discuss how to do it faster and more effectively with my guest, Alex Shartsis. Alex is a multi-exit founder and go to market strategist who has led go-to-market at venture-backed startups including Drawbridge, acquired by LinkedIn, and TripIt, acquired by Concur, and ran corporate development at Opendoor. Today he’s the co-founder and CEO of Skyp — an AI-powered outbound email platform that helps founders and sales teams book more meetings without hiring an sales development representative. He built Silverwood Advisors, an advisory practice focused on GTM strategy, into a go-to resource for teams in Silicon Valley and beyond. We dive into topics including: The difference between charging hourly, project-based, or retainer pricing options.Where to start when you’re packaging a service.The importance of understanding your clients’ needs before determining pricing models.How to make promises that you can follow through on.The importance of setting expectations before the sale and how to do it.How to do research about how to price your service offering.The importance of having a deep understanding of your clients’ business models.How to position yourself for success in the marketplace.Why most service providers underprice themselves and what to do about it.Why pricing low to win business rarely works.How to pick the most profitable target markets.The one thing, above all else, that you need to do to package and price your services successfully. …and other golden nuggets of advice! Living in the Startup World Alex has worked with a lot of startups, at least 20 or 30 at this point. He prefers early-stage startups where he must figure out their product market fit and figure out what their customers want. Alex has been advising and selling consulting services for six years now, and he’s become great at packaging his own service as a result. In addition, he’s spoken with many other consultants about how they package themselves successfully. Alex has ended up with a wealth of knowledge that he never intentionally set out to get; but he’s grateful to have it now. The Origin of How Alex Packaged His Service Offerings and What You Can Learn from His Experience For Alex, it’s a funny story. Originally Alex wasn’t looking to get into consulting. He had just left his startup, and it was a rough time. A venture capital friend asked Alex to become an advisor to one of his companies. Even though he was planning to take some time off, Alex agreed. Alex spoke with friends who were in the consulting world. One had only done consulting throughout his entire career. His advice to Alex was to charge $300 an hour. The challenge with that was that startup founders often don’t know how many hours they need. More Ideas and Suggestions for Fee Structures Alex continued his conversations. Next, he spoke with people that worked only on project-based fee structures. He liked that because he believes people don’t want the surprises that come from charging hourly rates. It can hurt your relationships if the hours go over the amount initially proposed. The project-based work they discussed involved payment at certain milestones. When you hit a milestone with your clients, they pay you $10,000 and so on. That structure aligns the work with the results. And then the third fee structure Alex discovered was the retainer-based model. For example, he would charge $10,000 a month for one day a week, and $20,000 a month for two days a week. Then there was the option for $30,000 to have Alex for a full week. Alex realized was that he had a strong opinion after having been a founder who hired consultants, and that was that. Immediately, he didn’t want to underprice. He believed the biggest risk he faced was underpricing his time. And second, he wanted to make sure he didn’t get stuck in a cheaper-will-get-you-more-clients mindset. He didn’t want to be the poor salesperson who drives a Honda Accord, who asks “Why would you ever spend $150,000 on a car?” Thinking that way is self-defeating when it comes to pricing your services. If you put yourself in your buyer’s shoes, they may have a completely different perspective of budget and value than you do. Value and budget are equally important. Alex didn’t want to make that mistake and didn’t want to have to track his hours as the sole way of delivering value. He notices that the consultants that took the hourly route were working with founders who had lots of different things going on and needed a variety of consulting services. An hour here for this project; an hour there for another project. More Decisions About Pricing Models For example, if Alex took the hourly route and asked a client to review his work on their website and then move onto the next step, if it took the client two weeks to get to the next step he couldn’t ...
    Show More Show Less
    25 mins
adbl_web_anon_alc_button_suppression_c
No reviews yet