2067: The Magic of Real Handwritten Notes with Rick Elmore Founder and Owner of Simply Noted

What you do speaks so loudly, I can't hear what you're saying. This is The Entrepreneur Way with Neil Ball. Unlocking the secrets of successful entrepreneurs seven days a week. Subscribe to our podcast and follow us on Twitter at Neil D.

Ball. Napoleon Hill said the power of the mastermind is the driving force. To discover how you can unlock the potential in your business using the power of a mastermind, go to mastermindunlimited.com.

And now, here is your host, Neil Ball. Hello, it's Neil Ball here. Thank you so much for joining me today on The Entrepreneur Way. The Entrepreneur Way is about the entrepreneur's journey, the vision, the mindset, the commitment, the sacrifice, failures and successes.

I am so excited to bring you our special guest today, Rick Elmore. But before I introduce you to Rick, I have a quote for you by Amit Kalantri. Punctuality is not just limited to arriving at a place at the right time. It's also about taking actions at the right time.

the entrepreneur way asks the questions so we all get the insight inspiration and ideas to apply in our businesses rick welcome to the show are you ready to share your version of the entrepreneur way with us absolutely excited to get this started rick i'm super excited that you're here and thank you very much for being a guest on the show today. Thank you for having me. It's an honor to be here. You're very welcome.

Rick Elmore is an entrepreneur, sales and marketing expert. As the founder and CEO of Simply Noted, Rick developed a proprietary technology that puts real pen and ink to paper to scale handwritten communication, helping businesses of all industries scale this unique marketing platform to stand out from their competition and build meaningful relationships with clients, customers and employees. Founded in 2018, Simply Noted has grown into a thriving company with clients of various sizes across the USA, including in hospitality, real estate, insurance, non-profit, franchise, B2B and others.

Rick has served as the company's CEO since its founding for more than three years and has over a decade of sales and marketing industry experience. Rick, can you provide us with some more insight into your business and personal life to allow us to get to know more about who you are and what you do? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, so my name is Rick Elmore.

My background's in college and professional sports. I played collegiate football and then was drafted into the NFL in 2011. got to live out my childhood dream and be a professional athlete. But when I got done, like everybody eventually have to hang up the cleats.

I got into the corporate world like a lot of the players do because it's exciting, it's hard, it's challenging, it's rewarding. I was in medical device sales for about six years. Had a lot of success there, was a rookie of the year, my first year, then either top 1% or top five rep in the company for the next five years. But I had an itch I couldn't scratch.

I think a lot of entrepreneurs at some point in their life, they're just looking for something more. And that was definitely me. The corporate world was not going to be a 50-year career for me. So I went back and did my MBA at the University of Arizona at Eller Business School in 2017.

And that's where the idea for my current business started. Simply Noted, we're a company that creates or we're a handwritten notes platform that creates the ability for companies to either automate or scale, sending real genuine handwritten notes for their clients. An interesting concept you've got there, handwritten notes that you send for your clients. Can you just talk a little bit more about how that idea came about?

Yeah, so sitting in a marketing class, and I had a professor going over all the success rates in marketing, and everything was super marginal. He was going over email, he was going over direct mail, cold calling, everything was like single digit success rates. And then when he got done with the lecture, he kind of half jokingly said, hey guys, you know what works better or what works more better now than ever was a good old fashioned handwritten note. They're rare nowadays and they have a 99% open rate.

And being in sales, I thought, hey, if I can get in front of my client 99% of the time, that's going to make me more successful. So got to work, worked with the mailing house here in Arizona. And then a We flew some technologies in from South America, China, and basically built a little tiny robot that would handwrite notes. And then fast forward now, almost five years later, we've invested over $800,000 into our own genuine handwritten note machine.

It's the only purposely built writing robot in the world. We're working on six patents, and we send tens of thousands of handwritten notes out a day for companies. So, yeah, it's been a pretty crazy, wild journey. Writing robot.

That's an interesting concept. I've never heard of that before. So does it use its own? When people have these notes or use your platform to create notes, can they choose the style of the writing and things like that?

Of course. Yeah, absolutely. So that was kind of the problem. You know, there are some like pen plotters out there, You know, these little AxiDraw writing machines that people have tried to use in the past.

And, you know, they're an old technology. They're antiquated. You know, they kind of have some restrictions. And they just don't give you the most authentic product out there.

So that's why we built our own machine. But, yeah, absolutely. Every person can either, you know, recreate their own handwriting style. And why we call it a handwriting style and not a font is because we actually pulled a unique characteristics out of every person's unique handwriting.

So, you know, the way the natural spacing between characters, the ligature styles, you know, what does two Ts look like together versus a T at the beginning of a word or in the middle of the word or at the end of a word. So there's a lot of technology that goes into this behind the scenes just to get a simple handwritten note out. And that's just the software. And that's not the mechanical, the electrical, you know, the developed apps online.

So, yeah, there's a lot of technology behind the scenes here to help our clients just get a simple handwritten note out the door. What did you have to do to develop a writing robot? Yeah, I mean, essentially, we tried some products that were out there. We worked with like a little pen plotter.

There were some machines out there, like an auto pen or something, like a president would use to sign something. But for the use case or application that we do or use it for with basically we're running an industrial automation company here. Like we're getting orders in through software. We have to get them sent to robots from robots.

They got to go to mailing equipment and the QR process and then out the door. So the only way to build the most reliable, fastest scaling, best product available was to build that writing robot. But yeah, it just took years and years of just refining, just trying, failing, trying again, failing. It took us about two years of development.

We went through 14 different engineering firms before we found the engineering firm we wanted to work with. So there was a lot of phase zeros, which is basically just like an interview process to basically get a quote on a project. so it was basically just a ton of research a ton of small tests um you know we just uh you know kind of took away what we thought wasn't going to work and just went full you know fully forward after what we thought would work what do you enjoy most about what you do well i think like anybody's going to say to really to be successful in life like you it can't be work I really do believe in the problem that we solving here As Simply Noted I do think we live in a digital world The average person receives over 4 digital notifications a month The average person receives less than five handwritten notes a year.

So there's a massive opportunity to stand out and build relationships in that more tangible way since we're living in a digital world. Plus, no one's competing in the mailbox anymore. But yeah, I'm completely obsessed with this product. I, you know, I'm still in the warehouse at 11, 12 o'clock sometimes, you know, especially when we're busy helping out.

And it's just cool to see this idea that came, you know, from business school over five years ago, you know, come to life and to see all these little robots holding pens. And then plus, you know, the customers, you know, every once in a while we'll get a customer who give us a call and just thank us and just tell us like, hey, like you have no idea, you know, how well this is working. you know, the relationships we're building, or they'll say, hey, I'm getting screenshots or text messages from our clients, you know, about the notes we're sending.

So it's really cool to get that kind of feedback as well. What drives you to do what you do? Well, number one, it's my family. I kind of come from a lower middle class family.

So I'm completely driven to, you know, change and take, you know, number one, take care of those who took care of me along my journey through athletics and becoming an entrepreneur. My parents were super supportive. My wife, who I've been with for 17 years, has been by my side through all the ups and downs. I have two kids now.

I have two brothers, you know, and they've all supported me, you know, throughout my, you know, college, NFL and business career. So I really want to take care of them. So it's really easy for me to get up in the morning. You know, drive is, I would say, is an understatement.

I would say I have a relentless determination, you know, to be successful for them. How do you relax when you're not working in your business? So, you know, being done with sports, I didn't realize how important physical activity was. You know, I was working out and training and running every single day for about two decades.

And being an entrepreneur, you know, I'm sure a lot of entrepreneurs are, you know, we're all the same. We kind of dive in and go full force into our work. But, you know, what's really important is to take care of health. So what I do now, when I'm not working, if I'm not spending time with my family, I'm outdoors, I'm backpacking.

You know, I just did a half marathon a couple weeks ago, training for an Ironman in June. So I try to do physical activity because, you know, when you get done with doing those types of trainings, you know, you just kind of have like all those natural endorphins running and you just feel better. So I like to be active. Do you have any entrepreneurial role models?

So basically I have business mentors and they're just people who've been in my life, you know, ever since I could remember, probably, you know, since the middle school days. But they are small business owners to large, successful CEOs, just people who've guided me and mentored me in my life. It's really hard for me to look up to people I don't know because you don't know them personally. And character is a huge, huge, important thing to me.

So it's hard to just look up to somebody for their success if I don't know them personally. So, yeah, I just I just have mentors that have guided me, you know, throughout the different stages of my life who've been successful business owners. Folks, we've learned about Rick's business and his personal life. Now what we're going to do is go back in time and talk to Nick about the time before he was an entrepreneur.

Rick, what difficulties did you have to overcome when you started your business? Well, we started this with no loans, no debt, no investors. and saying I bid off way more than I can chew is an understatement. There's tons of software that goes into what we do, tons of mechanical engineering, tons of development.

And we've spent over seven figures just R&D and development back into our business. So doing this with no money was an extreme challenge. I'm extremely conservative by trade. My wife was the one that really pushed me into doing this, how excited I was about it.

but I think that was a really good thing for me to do or any entrepreneurs to really start off you know don't just go get a loan don't just go get an investor really what you need to do is build a product find a proof of concept find a you know product market fit and then go after it and that's really what we've done here and that's what has allowed us to scale profitably. Did you have any doubts that delayed you starting your business? Yeah I was in you know corporate America making extremely good money.

And, uh, we just had a, you know, we just literally the same year, uh, I started this business. I had my first son, you know, my, or my first child. So becoming a new father, walking away from an extremely, you know, comfortable corporate job, um, going to now spending lots of money and not making lots of money. It was, it was extremely challenging, you know, for somebody who's extremely conservative, but, you know, I think a lot of people who take those risks and get outside their comfort zone, that's where ultimately you get the most growth as a person and as a business entrepreneur.

I wouldn't trade it for the world. I have more experience in the last five years and gained more knowledge from what I've done than what I would have done in a 50-year corporate career. So did you start your business while you still had your corporate career or did you just finish in your career and start the business? So I did a ton of research.

Did a lot of, you know, asking a lot of questions, met with people and said, hey, you know, what do you think about this idea? Do you think it can work? Just to make sure I wasn't, you know, doing something that was insane. But yeah, you know, I did a lot, probably about a year's worth of work.

All of 2018, just kind of getting things ready, you know, trying to get a couple of machines going. I had to get somebody to help me run these machines. So I got basically a co-founder friend from California to move out to Arizona to start this. Then we got a basic, quick e-commerce website up.

And then I went full time, you know, January 2019. So, yeah, there was some work beforehand. I didn't just jump in. You know, I did a lot of research, talked to a lot of people, put some pieces together, but then kind of kicked it off and went all in to focus on growing this business.

Were you generating revenue when you went all in at that point? Oh, nothing. I mean, we're, you know, yeah, we were like under 10 figures a month. I mean, it was, it was not enough whatsoever, but yeah, I mean, it was enough to barely pay the bills.

If that. Yeah. Well, it's good to, at least you got proof of concept at that point rather than not knowing if it works. So that was an important thing, wasn't it?

Yes, absolutely. You know, it's the hard thing about growing a business is, you know, a lot of people, it takes time for them to come around. You know, and they have to believe in you, the product. They got to see you come around.

And especially, you know, what helps you scale a business is working with other larger businesses who have budgets. And that's where we're at now, being into this almost five years. They've seen that we're serious, dedicated. We're committed to building a great product.

They've seen that we've been focused on this for four years. So those accounts we talked to like four years ago, they're coming around now, which is helping us scale tremendously. So it's a lot of work out front. It can be daunting.

But if you stick to it, those people that you talked to a few years ago, if you do the right things, they'll come back. what mistakes did you make that slowed your journey so i started a robotic software and industrial automation company with the sales and marketing background so i would not recommend anybody to do that because it's just you don't you're gonna make a lot of mistakes because you're just you're ignorant you don't know any better but um i would say my biggest mistakes are have been the the developers that we've worked with I've gotten bad advice who's, you know, which has ultimately set us back, you know, years.

But yeah, you know, I would say if you're going to start a business, get a consultant, talk to someone who's done it for five or more years or 10 or more years in a similar space. So if you're going online, talk to someone who's going to online brand. If you're going to be a real estate agency, talk to a real estate agency and pay for their time, you know, make them know that you're serious. Don't just, you know, waste their time.

But that's what I wish I would have done is talk to somebody, you know, a lot longer, you know, waited three to six months and done a lot more research and got some consulting before we kicked this off You know that would have saved me years and hundreds of thousands of dollars and do you think if you had done that you would have still done it sometimes that naivety helps doesn't it so i was completely naive to this if i if i knew how hard this was i probably wouldn't have started it because i mean this is going to take me you know this was built to sell, you know, this is simply noted, you know, I always had it in mind to, to build the platform, you know, for a larger business to come in and scale it even more.

So, um, if I knew it was going to take me a couple million dollars in funds pushed back into the business, you know, yeah, I don't know, but yeah, ignorance is bliss sometimes. And I'm glad, I'm glad I didn't know because everything I've learned and how much I've grown over this journey, is well worth it. Yeah. What are some of the things that you did before you started your business that will be helpful tips to some of the listeners who haven't yet taken the first step on the entrepreneur way?

So what has made me successful here was I mastered my sales and marketing process in corporate. If you're going to start a business, you have to become really, really, really, really good at some part of the business, whatever that is. If it's product development, engineering, software development, marketing, sales, something that's going to bring so much value that it's going to be able to carry the other things along until they pick up speed. So I would recommend anybody starting a business.

Number one, start it for the right reasons. Don't start it because you want to get rich. Don't start it because you want to work four hours a week because money's not going to come for a long time and you're going to work twice as much as you've ever worked. Become insanely, insanely proficient, you know, almost like a master level at some part of the business before you start that business.

Otherwise, it's going to be nearly impossible. And you're just going to become part of the statistic of 95 businesses that 95% of businesses that fail within five years. Folks, we're now going to jump forward in time and talk to Rick about the time after he became an entrepreneur. Rick, do you think culture is important from the beginning in a business?

Absolutely. It's almost like a team slash family aspect. If you don't look at it like that, it's really cool. Steve Jobs quote is like, you got to have a future forward thinking when you're thinking about building your team and your business.

You got to think in terms of, you know, years or decades, not, you know, weeks or months, like you got to put the right people together you got to train them grow them invest in them make sure that they're happy um because those are the people that are going to help you grow and scale your business and you got to trust them and they got to trust you as well so their culture is extremely important you know any business doesn't matter if it's a startup or you know some corporate job how do you make sure that you hire the right people so that they fit with the culture in your business?

You know, most of our hires come from referrals, but that is something that there is no perfect answer. There's been people that did not work out because there's just things in their lives that you can't control, you know, them moving, you know, them going back to school, whatever there's a really cool um elon musk interview question um there's actually two tell me about the hardest problem you've ever solved and you know you want to listen to what they say because you want to kind of get an idea of you know the type of problem solver they are do they jump into work do they delegate you know what type of problem solver and then the other question was, you know, tell me about a time in your life that, you know, is the biggest adversity that you've ever gone through.

So problem solving and adversity. If you can find people that are good problem solvers, they're hard workers, you know, they have a history for pushing through and being, you know, and persevering. Those are going to be good core characteristics. Then other things as well, loyalty, needing to have people that are loyal as well.

Yeah. Knowing what you know now, Is there anything that if you'd known it when you started out that would have helped you to shortcut the learning curve? Yeah, basically building an e-commerce website, the do's and don'ts of doing that. But I would recommend anybody who's out there listening to this podcast to scale a business.

You've got to have a good product. You've got to have product market fit. But then here are the two ways that you're going to scale your business. It's outbound.

You got to have a really good sales team. You got to have a really good outbound strategy. And then you got to have an inbound strategy. So what type of inbound are you going to do?

Is it going to do SEO or is it going to do ads? If you have product market fit and a strong product, if you master outbound and you're inbound, your business is going to just go through the roof. And it took me a couple of years to figure that out. But once you do, you know, it's a lot more fun versus kind of scratching your head on what you think, you know, scratching your head on what you should do.

How much does gut feeling influence your decisions in your business? Yeah, I mean, extremely conservative. so um you know i you know kind of look to what could go wrong versus what could go right so i would um always again the people i'm going to work with i want to make sure that if something goes wrong now and this is something i figured out versus the developers i've worked with in the past is hey if something goes wrong they're going to take care of me and help me fix and not leave me high and dry what makes you uncomfortable as an entrepreneur I think entrepreneurs are uncomfortable every day um I mean I'm yeah yeah not knowing right and having to figure out every problem or figure out the right person to solve that problem so um yeah I would just say the unknown is constant but you have to live in that constant every day if you're gonna you know consistently improve your business and what do you think are some of secrets to success?

The only secret to success is just to never give up. You have to strive every single day. Wake up, keep moving forward. You're going to get knocked down.

You got to get back up. And that's what athletics taught me and ingrained into my DNA for two decades. There are no secret answers. There really isn't.

No, I'm a part of tons of networking groups and and business owner groups. Every business owner has doubts. Every business owner doesn't know what they're doing in some form or fashion, but what business owners do who are successful, they figure it out and they don't give up. Life is made of constant change, whether we like it or not.

And many people say that the only constant in life is change. Rick, how do you try to keep up with change? yeah i kind of have a i explained to my wife like an anxiety for progress i'm always trying to do like self-teaching um i'm a consumer by trades i i like to learn new not new tools listen to new podcasts um so you have to stay with the now you have to stay engaged even though sometimes you have to unplug to recharge. Um, if you're not staying engaged with, you know, what's going on in the industry, um, you're going to get left behind because everything's changing so fast.

Now it is. What is your favorite book on entrepreneurialism, business, personal development, leadership, or motivation? And can you tell us why you have chosen it? yeah well the first one was when i got done with the with um with football i had i was so raw um i really didn't know um what i was doing in sales and i had a good manager for my first sales job and he got me into dale carnegie sales school and dale carnegie has a book how to win friends and influence people.

And that book impacted me so much because it was just such an eye-opener, just about how to engage people, work with people, you know, be memorable, remember names, you know, basic business skills that help you, you know, in the normal business world. But I'm trying to remember, it's a Michael E. Gerber, oh, Built to Sell. Michael Gerber, probably the email.

Yeah. Built to Sell. Oh, email. John Waterloo, I think it is.

Yeah. Yeah. That was the other one. I discovered that about two years ago.

Yeah. Um, when I was trying to do everything myself and I was basically living in my business nonstop um you got to get out of your business Uh eventually when you sell you got to kill the King they call it Um if your business 100 goes through you nobody going to want that business Because if you get hit by a car you know your business is done So, yeah, I would say, yeah, the Dale Carnegie and the E-Myth. Those are two, you know, I would say very impactful books I've read in my life.

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As long as you've not already signed up, then you will qualify. Rick, are you ready to speculate about the future? Absolutely. Oh, good.

what one thing would you do with your business if you knew that you could not fail one thing um i mean i would scale the the heck out of this um i would i would pump a lot more money into it today um yeah i've kind of done the jim jim collins i believe um um bullets in cannonballs technique i just do tons of test shots but yeah if i knew this wasn't going to fail i mean i believe in this so much i would just go out and raise tons of money and scale this yeah what skill if you were excellent at it would help you the most to double your business it's really people um you know at the at the end of the day it's people it's learning how to you know conversate with them on a level that makes the most sense with them and it's it's a It takes an entire life to master.

Negotiating a contract or negotiating a salary or negotiating equity or something like that, really trying to work with people. And it's just a skill that's completely invaluable. If you can master that, get the right people on the ship, you guys are going to be unstoppable. so is is that for you the people skill is that still a skill that you need to master now i will will continue need to master it you know at 70 you know i have a five-year-old i you know you know getting your five-year-old to brush his teeth how hard is that right getting you know a teenager to do what is necessary you know you're gonna be negotiating your entire life but you're gonna have to learn how to talk to that person in terms that is best for them but they believe it and want to do it and that's what dale kernegie was really good at and that's why i still listen to book every january in five years from now if a well-known business publication was publishing an article on your business after talking to your customers and suppliers what would you like it to say um he did it um i would i would be a really cool um article name he did it this was this was a challenge for me from the beginning um i think this could be a relatable story to anybody i had no tech background no software background no robotics background but i was so passionate about it i was obsessed with it i didn't give up um and i think it could be a very relatable story to anybody starting a business you don't have to be professional or a master at any of it um you just have to be really good at something a part of it um yeah i think that's something that's completely relatable to any entrepreneur out there.

It's now time for three golden nuggets. Rick, what is your favorite quote and how have you applied it? So I had this quote in my locker room in college. I was there for five years.

And the quote was, what you do speak so loudly, I can't hear what you're saying. And that was really impactful to me because a lot of people like to complain or make excuses in their lives. But a part of football, we had to watch every play on tape and to watch every play on film. So, you know, those excuses really stood out on film.

So I took it personally to make sure that I was never a complainer. I never talked. I just, I showed up, I worked and I showed people, you know, that I can do it, you know, versus sit there and just kind of complain about it. Do you have any favorite online resources you can share with us that will be useful for other entrepreneurs?

Oh, there's tons. I feel like I should write a book on how to start a business online. I mean, great, great courses right now that I'm working with. I'm doing a software development course on Coursera.

It's like I'm trying to learn how to work with my developers better. I'm on YouTube nonstop. They just released a revolutionary software out there called ChatGPT. They're not a big thing.

You're missing it. It codes things in seconds, which would take developers months. can you just repeat the name of that just broke up slightly as you were saying it chat g p t okay it just it got released a couple weeks ago yeah um think think macintosh 1980 i mean it's just it's going to revolutionize the world and then um yeah there's tons of i mean google and youtube i mean I spend three to four hours either listening to podcasts or figuring out how to do things. So I would say Corsica, IPT, Google and YouTube.

You'll find it. Whatever problem you're trying to solve. What is your best advice to other entrepreneurs? You know what?

Every person kind of has that analysis paralysis. and that they don't get started. If you don't get started today, you're most likely never gonna get started. It's just getting started, taking that first step.

I'm a big backpacker and hiker and get to the bottom of a mountain and you're looking at the top and it just seems daunting. But how do you get to the top? It's just literally one step at a time, right? And that's what it is to build a business.

It's just one step at a time. But you gotta be patient. you know that it may not look like that far but you know you're doing the switchbacks and you're going up the mountain it may take a long time right and that's really what it's been like here for simply noted i thought this would take me five years it's more likely going to take me 10 um but you look back you're like wow i've come a long way right and then you get to the top right and enjoy the view but analysis paralysis can kill your dreams um just get started take one step at a time.

You know, don't get over your head in debt or with money problems that'll kill your business and then just keep moving forward. And it'll work out. Folks, if you didn't manage to get a note of Rick's favorite resources or his favorite book, you can find the links on Rick's show notes page. Just go to theentrepreneurway.

com and search for Rick or Rick Elmore in the search box. Rick, is there anything else you would like to add about your business? I would just say if anybody's interested in learning about how to automate or scale sending genuine handwritten notes, either connect to me on LinkedIn, just Rick Elmore, E-L-M-O-R-E. I'm on there basically all day or just go to Simply Noted.

It's S as in Sam, I-M as in Mary, P-L-Y noted.com. And just request a free sample. We do a really good job of sending a nice sample kit.

Well, thank you for that, Rick. And Rick, thank you for coming on the show today and telling us about your journey as an entrepreneur and how you got to where you are right now. It's been fascinating just hearing about your journey and how you've, how you've arrived here and some of the things you've gone through and some of your experiences that you've shared with us and some of the insight you've shared with us today has just been really valuable. So thank you very much for being a guest on the show.

Thanks for allowing me to be here. I truly appreciate it. Rick, you are very welcome. And thank you.

Folks, you have been listening to Neil Ball chatting with Rick Elmore on the Entrepreneur Way. If you have enjoyed the show, please share it on social media and subscribe to our email on the Entrepreneur Way website. Also, please add your comments on Rick's show notes page on the Entrepreneur Way website at www.theentrepreneurway.

com and search for Rick Elmore in the search box. Thank you for listening and until the next episode, goodbye. Thank you for listening to the Entrepreneur Way. Subscribe to our podcast and follow us on Twitter at Neil D.

Ball.