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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 Sell Your Services Without Being Pushy with Eric Shulman

    How to Sell Your Services Without Being Pushy with Eric Shulman
    Jan 21 2026
    Today we’re discussing how to sell your services without being pushy; because nobody likes to be sold to but everyone loves to buy. My guest is Eric Schulman. Eric brings over 5 decades of business experience to the table. A “Serial Entrepreneur”, he’s worked with both tangible and intangible products and services in B2B and B2C environments. After building 5 businesses on his own, he started Consultants Can Sell! specifically to work with Business Owners, Consultants and Sales Professionals to provide sales training that really works. The Accidental Salesperson Eric believes sales is an accidental profession and nobody ever plans to be in sales. His accident happened when Eric was a kid. He used to sell stuff door to door, if the reader remembers door to door. But at the age of 12 years old, his mom and dad opened a record store in Levittown, New Jersey, in 1963. Six months later, there was a group called The Beatles that was on the Ed Sullivan Show. Eric was the 13-year-old kid in Levittown, New Jersey, whose dad owned the record store. Most people’s parents teach their kids things such as children were seen and not heard, don’t talk to strangers and so on. Eric’s mom taught him something different. On one busy day his mom told him to go wait on a new customer. She effectively said “Go talk to a stranger”. What that taught Eric was don’t talk to strangers until you’re old enough to earn a commission. That’s how Eric accidentally got into sales. He found that he was good at it. He could connect to people well. Because of that all through high school, Eric was the only one who always had money in his pocket. In addition to commission Eric also earned an hourly salary. That was nice and he liked having money. Eric likes to say that salespeople are coin operated; they do what the money tells them to do. If his mom and dad hadn’t opened a store he probably would have wound up in sales, but not at such an early age. The “Official” Start of a Sales Career Eric says his sales career “officially” started in his early teens because by the time he was 18 he had been accepted to three colleges, but he didn’t want to go to college. Eric liked what he did. He was making decent money as a kid. He was making hundreds of dollars a week in 1969. When you were making that much money you could buy a house back then. Eric believed he didn’t need to go to college. He was very, very well read and he went to college but wound up dropping out after one semester. Then he gave college another try one year later and stayed for two semesters. He achieved a 3.9 GPA. His parents sold the store in Jersey in 1973 and moved to Orlando and opened a chain of stores. Eric was the heir apparent to the family business and decided that was his career path. So consciously around the age of 19, he decided that’s what he wanted to do. He didn’t need to go to school. Eric worked for the family business until I was 28 or 29 years old. Sales as an Adult Eric came to an interesting realization. At the age of 29, he did the math and realized he was never going to get rich in the family business. So, he made the decision to leave the family business after doing the marketing for eight years. Eric started in the marketing field and wound up forming a direct marketing agency in 1980 and bought a computer when they cost $30,000. He mortgaged the house and started providing direct mail services. In five years he grew that business to 54 people in a 17,000 square foot facility. Eric was doing 90% of the sales. He sold that business in 1993. Eight months later, he met Sharon, who owned a wedding back business and would eventually become his wife. Eric bolstered the value of the business and they sold the business in 1995. They moved to upstate New York and Eric took a job where he became the number one salesperson in the company. From there he opened a Sandler Training franchise in Orlando, Florida. He made more money in eight months than he had made in the previous year and did that for almost two decades. He sold the business just before the pandemic and struck out on his own as a sales trainer. Eric created a sales system called truth-based selling that showed people how to create a place where people can feel comfortable being honest with you. The rest, as they say, is history. From there we dive into topics including: Why most salespeople default to high pressure selling.How to develop relationships with prospects whether or not they buy from you.How to break down the wall of resistance with prospects so they’ll trust you enough to speak honestly with you.The real reason prospects are coming to you, and it’s not to buy something.How to discover the real reason prospects are coming to you.The process of “Building radical empathy” of how to leverage it in your sales conversations.The three steps of diagnosing your prospect’s problem.How to navigate the road between creating a safe space to ...
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    29 mins
  • How to Create Your Servant Leadership Origin Story with Adrienne Wilkerson

    How to Create Your Servant Leadership Origin Story with Adrienne Wilkerson
    Jan 13 2026
    If you practice servant leadership people want to get to know you through your origin story. Sharing it will help you boost your brand and enhance your marketing. I discuss how to create and develop your origin story in this episode with my guest, Adrienne Wilkerson. As Co-Founder and CEO of Beacon Media + Marketing, Adrienne is driven by a passion for developing people and fostering a culture where innovation thrives. In her early 20s, she realized she would make a much better boss than an employee, which led her to found her own company in 2001. Today, she is a visionary leader who’s company has earned it a spot on the Inc. 5000 list of Fastest-Growing Private Companies for three consecutive years. The Origin of Adrienne’s Servant Leadership Origin Story One of Adrienne’s favorite things when she gets to talk to founders, CEOs, business owners, there’s almost always a powerful story behind why they’re doing what they’re doing. Why did they start their own business? Why does this matter? That “why”, that story, has really created them as leaders and created them in the business space. That’s why Adrienne believes that’s why that origin story is so important. It’s a powerful connection piece. Entrepreneurship is a lot of Adrienne’s origin story. Her father is an entrepreneur and a business owner, so was my grandmother. Adrienne has a lot of entrepreneurs in her family and hence she had a lot of excellent examples of entrepreneurship in her life. Her grandmother together with a partner started the very first art gallery in Anchorage, Alaska way back in the day. She was just an entrepreneurial person. Adrienne’s father started one of the first counseling and medical clinic combinations with the idea of taking care of the whole person and the medical and the counseling working together. It was a beautiful vision and there was a reason behind that. Those origin stories and what both of them accomplished spoke to Adrienne as an entrepreneur, as a business owner, and as a leader. Growing Up Entrepreneurial Adrienne’s father is a therapist that started his own therapy clinic. So she was raised by a therapist. There was a lot of times where she would have to tell her dad, “I need you to be my dad and not my therapist right now”. And he’d be like, “okay. Right, right. Thank you”. Then we would laugh and switch gears. He passed on his insights into people and his understanding of what drives people and how people work and tick and interact with each other. It was that experience and that knowledge that he had through school, through working with a lot of leaders. He passed a lot of that on to Adrienne organically. He was a natural teacher. Even with the circumstances that Adrienne would grow up in, such as dealing with personal conflict at school, at college, and just even in relationships, he would just walk her through a lot of resolutions. He would tell her you must ask these questions and you understand what’s really going on in each situation. He told Adrienne if you’re going to lead, there’s a guiding relationship there. She remembers coming back from high school one day from class very frustrated because she was the year book editor in chief and we were co just coming off a big deadline and she did all the work. She was venting that her team didn’t do this and that. Adrienne had to take over for that them and had to do this person’s job and that person’s job. She wondered why can’t they just do their jobs? Her father’s feedback was: You met your deadline. You got across the finish line. How much of your team came across the finish line with you? Or did you just plow through and make it happen and leave the rest of them in the dust? Leadership Lessons Learned That was one of those moments, one of the lessons that hit Adrienne upside the head and shifted the course of how she viewed leadership. Adrienne learned it’s not just enough as a leader to accomplish a goal. You have to try your best to guide your team to come with you. Now granted, not everybody will choose to walk across that finish line with you. If they don’t choose to, that, that’s their choice. As long as you as a leader are doing everything that you can to create that kind of environment where people want to grow with, want to accomplish the goal with you, and it’s not really leading. If you do everybody’s job and cross that finish line by yourself, it was a great hike, but that’s not leading. There are things like that, stories like that, that Adrienne’s father wove in those lessons that he wove into her life that have really shaped how she chooses to lead now. Adrienne definitely doesn’t nail it on the head every time. That’s part of the process of learning and growing. Creating and Leveraging Your Origin Story As a business owner or a CEO, there are stories that make up your origin story. Those are powerful because they are what connect with people and make ...
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    25 mins
  • How Entrepreneurs Can Build a Circle of Trust with Jonathan Hung

    How Entrepreneurs Can Build a Circle of Trust with Jonathan Hung
    Jan 7 2026
    Creating a circle of trust can create explosive business growth. I discuss how to do that with my guest, Jonathan Hung. Jonathan is a successful VC and entrepreneur. He has evolved from his role as a prolific angel investor with over 150+ pre-seed and pre-IPO investments under his belt to becoming the Managing Partner for Entrepreneur Ventures. Jonathan believes that everyone thinks entrepreneurship is all about fundraising. That’s one aspect of building a business. Jonathan is dedicating his upcoming book to his father. He was a great entrepreneur who came to this country with nothing and along with Jonathan’s mom they built an amazing company. Entrepreneurship is about building trusted relationships from business partners to advisors and mentors. The Importance of Being Real Jonathan’s perspective on life is that you’re going to meet a lot of fakes. A lot of people who try to sell you an idea by telling you it’s all going to be roses, but really, will they be helpful in the long run, right? You must find people that you could trust to work with you. You can easily like somebody, but can you actually trust them? That’s why the subtitle of Jonathan’s upcoming book is “Why trust drives venture capital success.” Jonthan built his career based on people that he trusted, and who have trusted him. That’s how he’s built success. How to Build Trust It’s the simplest things. It’s not just saying “I’m going to write you a check.” It’s about both parties being be very communicative. That means doing things like giving regular updates. Having great communication is the most important rule. It also means asking for help. If you don’t ask, it’s always no. The number one rule in sales that you ask. That you keep going, you don’t take discouragement. You know, it sucks sometimes, right? Getting turned down and you might have to hear a thousand no’s before you get to that one yes. But when you get to that yes, it was all worth it. It was all worth it. For Jonthan building trust is showing up. It’s doing the hard work. It’s not about just executing, it’s also about showing people how you did it because some people think it’s just how like the ends justify the means. For Jonathan it’s about growing as a human being. It’s about finding those people you can trust because you can count on them. Neither of you over promise and under deliver. Jonathan is a big believer that you don’t over promise and then under deliver. He’s always about under promising and over delivering because he’s had people in his past who he’s invested in give that gave him crazy numbers. He would think, “How are you going to do that? How are you going to 10x your business in a year?” Sometimes that makes no sense. Jonathan also loves people who give him a plan. It’s all about the execution. It’s how you go through with something. That’s how you build trust, in his opinion. We also dive into topics such as: The definition and examples of a circle of trust.How you can start to intentionally build a circle of trust.The types of people that should be in your circle of trust.Why nobody that’s successful has done it by themselves.How to approach the right people to bring them into your circle of trust.Why you should practice being a “giver”.How to maintain a circle of trust over time once you’ve built yours.The role vulnerability plays in building your circle of trust.Jonathan’s philosophy of “living your life in quarters” and how to embrace it.The one thing, above all else, that you need to do to build a successful circle of trust. …and other golden nuggets of advice! You can get my book here: “Idea Climbing: How to Create a Support System for Your Next Big Idea” About My Guest Jonathan Hung is a seasoned venture capitalist and entrepreneur with a proven track record in governance, strategic growth, and financial expertise. He led his family’s textile business across the U.S. and Asia before transitioning into venture capital, where he has invested in more than 250 companies and 50 funds. Today, Jonathan is the Managing Partner of Entrepreneur Ventures, a fund he co-founded with Entrepreneur Media, deploying capital into innovative startups and helping founders build profitable businesses. He also manages his family office fund, J Heart Ventures. His success in raising millions for venture funds, combined with cross-border operational expertise, positions him as a leader in capital growth and value creation. Learn more about Jonathan! Website / Portfolio LinkedIn Want to learn more about entrepreneurship? Check out “How to Create a Millionaire Mindset”!
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    26 mins
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