#26: Rick Elmore, Founder & CEO | Simply Noted

On this episode of In the Thick of It, Scott interviews Rick Elmore, Founder & CEO of Simply Noted, an automated handwritten notes company. Rick shares his unique journey that shaped his unrelenting drive and competitiveness, from losing his father at a young age to becoming a college football standout. Though he played in the NFL, Rick quickly realized it wasn’t his lifelong passion. 

He tapped into his curiosity about business and sales during corporate roles before taking the ultimate risk to start Simply Noted. Rick candidly details the realities of bootstrapping a tech company for over five years without investors while teaching himself software development, supply chain logistics and more.

Tune in to hear Rick’s outlook on building company culture, avoiding growth traps, and focusing on relationships over quick wins. He leaves founders with advice on knowing priorities, smart risks, and bringing teams along. Rick proves with tenacity and a willingness to learn, unconventional entrepreneurial paths can thrive.

About Rick:
Rick Elmore is an entrepreneur, sales and marketing expert, and a former college and professional football athlete. As the founder of Simply Noted, Rick has developed the world's first AI writing robot technology with 6 patents pending. This technology uses real pen and ink to scale handwritten communication.

About Simply Noted:
Simply Noted stands as the premier global technology leader in the handwritten notes industry. Our API-first platform revolutionizes the way genuine handwritten notes are created and distributed, offering a seamless integration for businesses. Entirely customer-funded, we collaborate with hundreds of leading startups and Fortune 5000 companies, empowering them to automate and scale their handwritten outreach efforts effectively.

To learn more, visit simplynoted.com. 

Creators & Guests

Host

Scott Hollrah

Founder & CEO of Venn Technology

Guest

Rick Elmore

Founder & CEO, Simply Noted

What is In The Thick of It?

Join Scott Hollrah, founder of Venn Technology, as he takes you "In the Thick of It" with the real stories of founders who are actively navigating the challenges and triumphs of running their businesses. This podcast goes beyond the typical entrepreneurial success stories and delves into the messy, gritty, and sometimes chaotic world of building and growing a company. Get inspired, learn from the experiences of others, and gain insights into what it truly means to be in the thick of the entrepreneurial journey.

You when you're 85, you're not gonna look back

and say, "Man, I'm so happy I stayed at

that safe job that didn't allow me to become

the best version that I wanted to be."

There's so much potential in you that you don't

even realize that is out there that you need

to go chase and find and become.

Welcome to In the Thick of It.

I'm your host, Scott Hollrah.

We recently asked listeners if there were any

must have questions we should ask founders.

One that came up was, "How do you

know when taking a risk will pay off?"

In this episode, I explore that with

Rick Elmore, founder of Simply Noted, a

technology company with a unique offering:

automated, handwritten notes.

You heard me right.

Rick shares his journey from being a

driven football player to starting his robotics

business with no technical expertise.

After years in corporate sales jobs, Rick

tapped into his competitive nature and made

a handshake deal to start.

Simply noted, he bootstrapped it for five

years without investors, teaching himself software development,

patents, supply chain, and more.

Through relentless curiosity, Rick gives an inside look

at the tough decisions around funding technology versus

marketing, avoiding paths that don't align with his

values, and building company culture rooted in trust.

While extremely challenging, Rick reflects on how he's grown

more in the last few years as an entrepreneur

than he could have in 25 corporate careers.

He leaves founders with advice on knowing

your priorities, taking smart risks, and bringing

teams along to accomplish their dreams, too.

Tune in to hear his

unconventional path and hardearned wisdom.

All right, joining us virtually today, we've got

Rick Elmore, founder and CEO of simply noted.

Thank you so much for making time for us today.

It's great to be here, and I appreciate it.

Thank you for having me.

All right, so you're in the Phoenix area today, right?

Yes.

Tempe, Arizona.

That's not where things started for you.

You came from Southern California. Yeah.

So, actually, yesterday was my birthday.

Well, happy birthday. Thank you.

And this is a very interesting, special

birthday because I was in California for

the first 18 years of my life.

I grew up in Simi Valley in Ventura county,

just north of LA, and then we got scholarships

to play football at the University of Arizona.

And that's a whole long, different story.

But I was in California for 18 years.

I turned 36 yesterday.

So I've been in Arizona officially 18 years.

So kind of more of an Arizona now.

My oldest is getting ready to start taking driver's

ed, and he'll be getting his learner's permit.

And it dawned on me, I'm 42 coming up on 43.

And I got thinking, okay, 16.

I've been driving more than half of my life.

I've been driving more of my

life than I haven't been driving.

And so now you're on the upswing with your.

You've lived more of your life

in Arizona than you have California.

Yeah, it's a weird thing.

I don't really feel old, but me and

my wife, we're talking about, our teachers are

like, oh, when we're in our.

I've been with my wife for actually 18 years,

since my freshman year in college, and we're like,

oh, my gosh, that is so close.

We're not that far from that anymore because

my wife's two years older than me.

It's just know time goes so fast,

especially once you get out of college.

It literally just like years seem like days or weeks.

It just goes really quick.

I'm right there with you.

Well, football is a big part of what took you to Arizona,

but I want to talk more about you as a kid.

I assume that football was a part of

your life from a very early age.

What was Rick like as a kid? Yeah.

So as you get older, you start really learning.

Know why you are the way you are and

who you are and what made you that way.

Grew up in a lower middle class family.

Blue collar parents were phenomenal.

I could not have asked for a

better set of parents growing up.

I had my childhood tragedy when I was seven.

My father passed away when I was seven.

So that was like, the cataclysmic, massive change

in my life at a very early age.

But I was very lucky.

My mom actually married my football coach, and he coached

me for ten years, from nine until basically 19.

He's still here.

He watches our kids every day,

but he's just a phenomenal person.

But, yeah, I don't know.

Say I was like your typical

hardworking, always wanted to play sports.

I played everything.

I don't know if that was

because of my childhood tragedy.

I just wanted to stay busy, but

I just needed to do things.

I had this energy.

Couldn't sit in a classroom.

I skateboarded, BMX, raced,

played basketball year round.

Outside of football, I played the summer and

winter league, and I played football in the

fall, played soccer, played every sport.

But, yeah, I was just super busy.

I have a twin brother, and that was awesome.

You're basically like a built in best

friend, and we did everything together.

I think kind of when we got more to the

middle school, high school, he had his friends, I had

my friends, but we always played sports together.

Very supporting family.

Couldn't have asked for a better situation. Just.

Yeah, very lucky for the journey I've had from

an early age to where I am today.

You just said BMX and skateboarding.

As if football isn't injury inducing enough.

Yeah, I got hurt more skateboarding than I

ever did in football, I'll tell you that.

I imagine you probably had some, er, visits. Yeah.

So I actually can still 360 flip,

kick flip, heel flip, burial flip.

And I'm 36 and I have it.

I mean, it's just weird.

I can still do a ghost flip.

I did it for a long time and

it's kind of like riding a bike.

Once you do it a few times,

you kind of get the feel back.

I remember I was just always incredibly competitive and

I don't know what drive it or drove it.

I was a middle child and my older brother wasn't

super competitive, so he wasn't coming down on me.

If anything, he was always supporting and he was more of

a musician and he kind of was our biggest fans.

But, yeah, BMX, I always remembered

you start at the gate.

I always wanted to get on the inside, first

position so you can get that turn real quick.

And I would always go as hard as I could.

And the parents started asking my mom to stop letting

me do it because I would cause all these crashes,

because I would go so hard and I don't care.

And I was just like, after the

third crash, I was like, you're done. Stop doing this.

You're going to get hurt. People are getting hurt.

Stop doing it.

But I'm just super competitive and I think, I don't know,

maybe it had to do with my dad passing away.

I don't know.

But I just remember being young, I just

wanted to do things with my body, be

physically active, always been extremely driven.

And I think the drive comes from my

mom, because my mom's always done everything, no

matter what, how hard things have ever gotten.

She's worked multiple jobs.

Her story from a young childhood inspired me

because she could have went off the deep

end really easily because there was some issues.

We all have our own stories, but she's inspired me.

She's made me want to be a good person, a better

person, take care of our family, take what she did and

my stepdad, and do something better for our kids.

Basically raise the bar.

So, yeah, I just feel very fortunate.

You mentioned your twin brother.

You were more athletic, although it sounds like

he played sports and he was more artistic.

Is that a fair way to look at it.

My older brother was more of a musician.

My twin brother, I mean, he played sports,

got a scholarship to the University of Arizona.

But he was just a big guy.

He didn't have the passion I had for sports.

I wanted to be in the NFL.

I do at 7th grade.

That's what I wanted to do.

And he had friends, and he liked playing

games, and he just liked doing different things.

He was still a great football player.

But to go to the elite level, and, I mean,

I was never elite, but to be, like, elite, top

1%, you just have to be so obsessed.

You have to be obsessed with everything.

And you pay attention to these.

The Tiger woods, the Kobe Bryant's, LeBron James.

Just people who are just at the top, the Tom Brady's.

It's their.

You know what I loved about football

was hitting people, lifting weights, and competing.

But there was a lot of things I

didn't like about football, which probably held me

back from being more successful than I was.

But my older brother was a musician.

He never really played sports, and my twin brother played

sports because we all played sports, really got it.

So this competitive nature, this drive to excel,

how did that translate to the classroom?

Is this a video podcast, or is this only audio?

Because I won't do what my coaches told me.

Is this a video podcast?

It's an audio first.

Well, I'll show you.

So, I had my college football coaches, and

I was pre nil, and I really did

feel like getting a scholarship was a privilege.

I felt like just going and playing for

the University of Arizona was an incredible privilege.

It wasn't a right.

Having school paid for giving me a scholarship check every

month, living my dream, playing in front of millions of

people every single weekend, that was a privilege.

And I know we were living in a different world,

but my coaches, they always used to say that school

is number one and football is number two.

Since you guys can't see this, when they say

school is number one, they hold up two fingers.

And when they say football is number

two, they hold up one finger.

Clearly, the administration in the

athletic department had slightly different.

It was position coaches.

They would do know.

We still had really great tutors.

We had, like, full time tutors.

I mean, it was their mission to

make sure that we were focused on.

They were.

We spent a lot of time with them.

We were 2 hours a day in study hall, 3 hours on Sunday.

Tanner remembers this. I know.

We both know tanner, but we spent a lot of time.

I mean, it was a big commitment,

but I knew at an early age.

And we mean, I don't know if this

is an entrepreneur thing or business owner thing.

You just know you're built different.

You got to be busy.

You got to be doing something.

And I knew I wanted to be

in business someday, but I don't know.

School was more like memorization.

It wasn't creative.

It wasn't problem solving.

It was more like studied this glossary,

multiple choice tests, and I hated that.

And for me, I wanted to create. I wanted to build.

I wanted to achieve. I wanted to compete.

I wanted to do big picture stuff.

I know you got to go through that.

And education is incredibly important.

It's a part of the process.

I just knew I wanted to do not the memorization.

I wanted to do the building, the going out,

the hunting, the closing, that type of stuff.

What did you study in school?

So I was a triple minor in my undergrad.

It was interdisciplinary studies, but basically my undergrad was

just a stepping stone to go to the NFL.

But I knew I wanted to be a business

owner someday, so I went back and did my

MBA full time evening program in 2017.

So when I was 30, actually 29, I was doing my MBA.

I had my first kid.

I did two iron man's that year at

a full time job, and I was launching

my part time side hustle business, simply noted.

So it was an incredibly crazy year of my life, man.

So let's go back to just

right after college real quick.

So, that dream of playing in the NFL came true,

and you went from sunny and warm Arizona to maybe

not Buffalo cold, but one of the coldest places you

can play pro football, Green Bay, Wisconsin.

Talk me through that.

Talk me through the emotional aspect of that.

Was that just this incredible feeling that you

finally got to do what you knew you

wanted to do starting at age seven.

I think everybody in their life has these

outer body experiences, or you're just so in

the moment, or it's just so surreal.

And I remember I got drafted.

I mean, it was a six round draft.

Headache, wasn't super high, but I got drafted to the

Green Bay packers in 2011, and it was just one

of the most amazing days of my life.

It was 15 years, 16 years, 17 years of envisioning where

you want to go and working at it every single day.

And it was just incredible. I can't explain it.

That doesn't mean my experience

in the NFL was incredible.

It was extremely know I got to enjoy it for a night.

I remember it was a lockout year, and

there was no offseason so I remember coach

Kevin Green, the late Kevin Green. He passed away.

He was my linebacker coach there.

Hall of Fame outside linebacker, one of the

best pass rushers in the NFL's history.

He just told me, he's like, hey, get ready.

I'm not going to be able to talk to you, coach.

You do anything.

And I was converting from a four three hands

down defensive end to a stand up outside three

four linebacker in Don Caper's incredibly complicated defense.

He's like, good luck.

He's just like, hey, we're happy

to have you, but get ready. Talk to Clay.

Because Clay Matthews was playing there, and he was training

in Westlake when I was in California, which is like

30 minutes, but he's like, get with Clay. Talk to him.

Get ready.

I can't talk to you, but hold on.

It's going to be crazy.

And, yeah, it was three years.

I was in the NFL for three years.

Journeyman career, bounced around.

I actually, at Green Bay, Cleveland.

I grew up in California.

Perfect weather, Arizona, hot weather.

And then I wouldn't say it was miserable,

but when you don't see the sun for

three months, that seasonal effectiveness disorder, sad, whatever.

It's a real thing. It's a real thing.

Especially when you grow up in the sunny weather.

Remember, my mom would call, I'm

like, hey, how's it going? I'm like, I don't know.

I prep.

It's just like, I'm tired all the time.

I'm 23, in my peak, prime shape, and she's

like, yeah, it's probably just the weather, right?

Yeah, it was weird.

I was like a 250 pound guy

from California and Arizona and going.

And we practice outside because our games were outside,

and I would put on, like nine layers, and

on film, I looked like I weighed, like, 290.

And all these guys would just laugh

and like, look at this California boy.

He can't handle it. It was fun.

I mean, it was a lot of cool memories, but, yeah, NFL,

three years, that was a very hard chapter of my life.

We talked about this a little bit when

we did our kind of initial get to

know you conversation a few weeks ago.

You got married in there, too, right?

Yeah, I married my college sweetheart.

I met her, like, three months into college.

So I had a high school girlfriend.

I don't know if this is a

twin thing, but I like relationships.

I had a high school girlfriend for all four

years that we broke up, like, three months in.

And I met my wife now, like a month

later, and I've been with her ever since.

So, yeah, we dated for seven years, got engaged,

married a year later, had kids a year or

two later, been together for 18 years. Yeah.

So you're trying to get your NFL career going.

You're bouncing around the country.

Like you said, you played for

a number of different teams.

That's going to be hard on a relationship.

She was an athlete.

She got it.

So it really wasn't my wife.

I always say she's more decorated

of an athlete than me.

She won two national championships, who was a

four year starter at the University of Arizona.

She played softball.

She's in multiple hall of Fames.

She's like, in the Tucson, Arizona Sports hall of

Fame, Gatorade player of the year a couple of

times in high school, played professional softball.

So she got that commitment in what it took to

be successful at a high level as an athlete.

So I think that's one of the reasons our relationship worked

so well, the ways that we need to be the same.

We're very compatible.

And in the ways where I'm not good, she's great.

I'm more of like an introvert behind the scenes.

I just want to grind type of person.

And my wife is extremely opposite.

She's extremely extrovert, wants to make

friends, make sure everyone's happy.

So, yeah, I think we got lucky.

We met so early on.

And you grow through what you go through.

There's been a lot of ups and downs.

Same thing in life and business.

You got to go through challenges to grow.

But we've gone through moving all over the

country, deaths in the family, different jobs, having

kids, and going through all of it.

You go through it together.

And a lot of people, when

you hit hardships, you separate.

And I think that's an early sign.

And if it's a relationship or a business relationship, go

through a hard two or hard thing once or twice

and see how you guys handle it together.

And that may be a good

predictor for success in the future.

I think that's a good word right there.

So after the NFL period was over,

you went back and got your MBA.

Where'd you go get that degree?

The University of Arizona.

Eller business school.

So I wrote my senior high school, whatever entrance,

I want to get my MBA, and I felt

good to go back and do it.

I still have a couple of classes left

because I left to start, simply noted.

But I credit the University of

Arizona for where I am today.

Number one, they gave me an opportunity to play

football, but I was six years, seven years into

my corporate career, and I was like, I don't

want to do this the rest of my life.

I need to go and try something different.

And six months into my MBA, I was trying everything.

That's what you got to do

in your got to try everything.

You're going to fail at everything.

Some things are going to work,

some things are going to stick.

And that was one thing I was good at.

I was consistently good at just talking

to new people, asking different questions, trying

new things and seeing what stuck.

But six months into my program, we had like a

project, a research project, and there was this company called

Bond, and they did robotic, handwritten notes and I just

was so fascinated with the idea, but I thought they

were doing a terrible job because they were focusing on

the wedding market, which, if you're a business, what do

you need as a business? Consistent revenue.

I was like, why would you go after

one time clients and extremely stressed out clients

that are going to change their mind constantly?

Yeah, I just ran with an idea and

what was it, almost six years ago?

And here we are.

Time does fly. Yeah.

At some point, outside of playing football, were you

working in the corporate world before getting your mba?

Yeah, I worked at Striker, so I was

the typical athlete that went to Stryker.

I had no idea what I wanted to do.

I thought I was going to play football until I was 30.

I honestly thought I could.

I thought in my abilities I was good enough to

be that guy who had a seven, eight year career,

whatever it was, but got done after three years.

I had some futures contract with the

colts, but there's nothing was guaranteed.

I was like, I'm not going to

go through this for a year.

My hamstring feels like it's going to blow.

My knee is like one bad hit from going out.

And then I had a contract in Canada and I was like,

I'm not going to go risk my health for 90 grand.

No idea what I wanted to do because I thought I was

going to make all this money and open up a gym and

just sail off into the sunset and enjoy my life.

But obviously that didn't happen.

So I just started calling people, and this

is all I was just talking about.

In your got to talk to people,

ask, turn over stones and try things.

And I just started calling people who transitioned from

sports and at least from the outside looking in,

I thought they were like, doing good.

And I was like, hey, what are you doing? You like it?

How'd you do it? Where'd you get started?

Who'd you talk to?

And Dane Crogstad.

I think that was actually, somebody a part

of Tanner's class guy I just always respected.

He was really nice and he was in

medical sales, so I talked to him.

He just kind of pointed me in the direction.

This is how you should do it. I did it.

I got a job at Striker.

I was selling spine implants to surgical doctor

or, like, neurosurgeons, which was really weird.

I was like 25 years old telling this neurosurgeon how

to do a surgery, and I was like six months

on the job, and he was like 15 years into

his career, so I always thought that was really weird.

Were you actually in the or

when they're doing these surgeries?

Yeah, I was like 6ft.

I mean, I had to stand back for sterilization

reasons, but I was 6ft with a laser pointer.

Hey, if you're doing this incision, use this tool.

Grab that implant.

If you're going to use that implant,

you got to use this screw.

I was like, yeah, product expert.

Basically, I wasn't telling them how to do the

surgery, but I was just like a product expert.

Six months onto the job, was that terrifying?

Like your very first surgery that you

were in, you were totally confident.

That's why the striker loves athletes.

They like people.

When you get up to the

plate, you don't buckle under pressure.

It is high pressure.

We worked with reps that would get

in there and they wouldn't say anything.

Like, you have to have confidence.

You have to be poised.

There are surgeries.

I was just talking to my wife about this the

other day about one of our doctors, a scoliosis case,

which is like a really bad curvature in your spine.

One of the doctors accidentally hit a vein or

an artery, and the back just pooled with blood.

Like, literally, it was just pooling.

And this person was dying on the

table and just watching this doctor, this

doctor staying cool, calm, the anesthesiologist.

For an hour, I'm standing there like, oh, my

God, this person's going to die on the table.

And watch this doctor and this

anesthesiologist calmly save this person's life.

But they do that routinely every single day.

But if you're in that situation, some people

are going to step out and fold.

I was just like, wow, this is fascinating.

Watch these people perform under pressure.

That's what you need to do at

a high level, is perform under pressure.

And a lot of these athletes that are

division one or professional, they have that experience

of performing under pressure, and I think that's

why it was just a natural fit.

This topic has come up a number of times and

we've interviewed some other college athletes and it's so true.

People that have played at that level, there's

just something different, there's something mentally different.

And in my business, we have a couple of college

athletes as well, and they're some of our absolute best

people because they've got whatever it takes mentality.

They've got all about the team

mentality, and it's so important.

So for people that are listening, if you get a resume

that comes across your desk and you see that they were

a college athlete or if they played at the pro level,

I would look at that one really hard.

So did you like the job at Stryker?

I loved what I was doing.

I thought it was a fascinating career.

I felt like I could have did it for a career.

I felt like it was fun, worked

with interesting people, had an important job.

But what I just didn't like was the corporate aspect.

I think if you were at the right place, I think

it could be a really good situation for most people.

But I don't know.

I was early in my career as a sales guy.

You know how corporations treat salespeople.

Everything's their fault.

They're the first, first people to get cut.

So anyways, I went back after six years of perform.

I mean, I was top 1% or top

five sales rep for six straight years.

Literally top performer.

When you ask for help, they don't give you help.

They cut your pay every single year, make you

just go chase your tail, don't support your growth.

I asked my last year, I asked like, hey, I'm literally

like your top rep in this division, help me grow.

Can I get an associate rep so they

can help me manage some of these smaller

accounts so I can go get bigger accounts?

They're like, no, if you want to do

that, we'll have to split your territory.

I'm just like, yeah, not doing this.

And I grew up in a locker room.

I need a team.

I was on a field with eleven people, and if I

didn't do my job, I let ten people down, right?

And I like playing with those types of

people, people that we're going to suit up.

And when we go out there, it's war and

we're going to fight and we're going to do

everything that we can do to win.

And I know it's really hard to find that in

the real world because it's just not like that.

But I'm trying to build that here at simply

noted, we come here, we all have a job.

We don't do our job.

We're letting each other down.

We all can count on each other, we all

can trust each other, but we're a small team.

We're eleven people.

It's not like it's a corporation of 45,000

people, which I know that's a different beast.

Yeah, I just like the team locker

room trust family type of atmosphere, not

the backstabbing culture of corporate.

So where did you go after Stryker?

Went to Strahman.

So Stryker was a top medical

company for the orthopedic side.

And then I went to the dental side and Strahman

was like the number one dental company in the world.

Good company.

Had a lot of fun over there.

We launched a product out of Brazil and

$0, like zero revenue when we came in.

I was there for three years and we did like four

and a half million in my territory selling a cheap knockoff

product and I had no idea what it was.

The manager I knew was a good friend from college.

He's like, come over here.

It's a great opportunity.

And I was like, great, I'll do something different.

Yeah, it was fun.

I had a lot of fun, but

I just saw the same thing happening.

I was like, man, unless I want to.

This is another thing for corporate.

I never wanted to work the ladder and become

like the VP where I'm traveling all the time.

A lot of these managers, they're

divorced, they never see their kids.

My parents, maybe this is why I

have an inkling to not like corporate.

My parents went to every practice,

every game they were at, everything.

And I wanted to do that for my kids.

And I saw in order to make more money and go up

in your career, you had to travel more, miss more things.

And that was something I never wanted to do either.

So that's why I was like, you know what?

This isn't going to be my 30 year career.

I'm going to go back and do something different

and try my MBA and see if that helps.

All right, so let's talk a little bit more about that.

Did you enjoy the classes?

Was there truly like a desire, like, I really

want to get in, I really want to learn?

Or was it more of like, I think I need

this in order to get to the next level.

So I was the first person to

go to college in my family.

So I think there's a lot that we don't

know and that's what I feel this way.

It's like the more you know, the more you

realize you don't know, and when I was younger,

I didn't realize, I didn't know that much.

I thought I knew a lot.

And all I knew is I had to do something different.

And what I think the MBA program is good

for is introducing you to ideas about business.

If it's marketing, if it's

finance, if it's spreadsheets.

I feel like I became like an Excel sheet guru

master during my Excel program or my MBA Excel program.

I was at my Excel program.

I think what the MBA does, it

dips your toe in every subject.

And I think that's what it's supposed to do, is to

introduce you to all these different ideas of senior level business

and then you find where you'd like to go.

But what it did for me

was it introduced me to everything.

I didn't know all that stuff, but it

just lit the fire even more under my

tail that I could be an entrepreneur.

Like, oh, this guy runs a business, I talk

to him, this is what he's good at.

Like, oh, this guy talks, I talk

to him, he owns a business.

This is what he's good at.

I can own a business because this is what I'm good at.

There's just different things we all

can bring to the table.

You don't have to be a

marketing professional to open a business.

Like, you don't have to be a

finance professional to open a business.

You just have to become really good at something

that you can market, that is valuable to a

client, that you can sell, and then put the

pieces together as you keep going.

If you wait to try to figure it

all out, you'll never get off the ground.

I was good at sales and marketing.

Like, I can figure out a way to position

a product and give a presentation, close and deliver.

But there's so much more to that.

Like, I had to do coding, engineering,

finance, development, all this different stuff.

I had no idea I was ever going to have to do.

But you just figure it out as you go.

What classes did you enjoy in your MBA program?

I thought finance, even though it was the hardest classes

I ever did there, just what you can do with

numbers and how you can, I wouldn't say manipulate, but

how you can move stuff around and how that affects

your PNL and your balance sheets.

I didn't even know anything about that.

So I always thought that was the most fascinating

because I just didn't even know anything about that.

But to be honest with you, what I remember most

about my MBA is the cohort and the relationships, the

people you meet there because you spend the most time

with them, and you spend like six week blitz.

You don't even really have enough time to

really sink into the information you're learning.

Just my classmates, my birthday yesterday, and I

had a bunch of people from my MBA.

They reached out and it's like, oh, how you doing?

How's the job going?

And congrats.

A lot of people are moving up in the career,

so it's like the relationships, but that's like everything.

Life boils down to relationships.

Your network is your net worth.

It was cool being around people that were motivated

to learn and be better, if that makes sense.

I kind of missed that because you're in the locker

room, you're around those type a people that want it.

They're driven, they're competitive.

So that was like, my thought.

I was like, oh, I go to my MBA.

It's people who want to get better.

I'm going to be around, surround myself with people.

And as you get older, you realize

it's hard to find those people that

are chasing the same things you're chasing.

Because we have kids, we have different

jobs, we're all doing different things.

So you have to put yourself in

the situations to find those people.

So you alluded to it a minute

ago while you were in your program,

you came across this wedding stationery business.

Unpack this whole, like, revelation for us.

I'm super interested in tech

about drones, cameras, computers.

I like tinkering with electronics.

I've done video editing.

Just, I would say I'm not semi pro. Whatever.

The step below that is where you just kind of,

like, get into it and have fun with it.

But six months in, I saw this company.

I grew up in, the generation that got

handwritten notes, and I'm sure you did, too.

But, like, in 6th and 7th grade, we all

got in trouble for passing handwritten notes, right?

So we all remember the power of it.

It was just nostalgic.

And I remember my coaches, coach, Jim Harbaugh, when I

left the 49 ers, he sent me a handwritten note.

It's a keepsake. It just resonated.

But I remember seeing this company, and what actually really

set the idea on fire was I had a friend

who's still a really good friend of mine.

He showed me, like, you can mine

data and get addresses based off demographics.

And I never knew of this.

So I was like, man, if I can match

a handwritten note with all this targeted data, and

the open rate is 99.2% because I was in

a marketing class and a professor was going through

all the success rates in marketing, and he said,

handwritten notes have a 99.2% rate or open rate.

I was like, 99.2% open rate, targeted data.

If I get in front of my targeted client 99%

of the time, that's going to make me more successful.

And I bought this really crappy

pen plotter off of eBay. It came from China.

I had to build it.

It took me three months of hand feeding this robot

and write 500 notes to my target dental clients.

Out of 500, had like 28 doctors call

me back within four or five, six weeks.

My monthly quota was 50 grand, and I

sold like, 280 grand in six weeks.

My VP of sales was going

absolutely nuts for the first time.

My phone's ringing.

People are calling me, asking to.

So I was just like, oh, my God, it works.

My hypothesis was correct, right?

So I was just like, this is it.

My business is going on autopilot.

I'm going to figure out a way to scale this.

And it's been incredibly hard since that point.

Incredibly hard.

Ignorance is bliss sometimes, because it forces

you to take the step without knowing.

And taking the step sometimes, for

people, is just the hardest.

First thing to do, is just to take the first step.

This is all customer funded, but we've invested,

like, five and a half million dollars back

into this business the last six years.

But I didn't have that money. I didn't.

I started on a 10,000 0% interest credit card.

Didn't put money back in unless we

sold, so the profits were reinvested.

But I'm building robots.

I have six pending patents, 400,000 people

coming to our website every single month.

We have software integrations, we're

doing full stack development.

And I had no experience doing any of this,

but I've had to do it as our products

matured and our clients wanted new features.

So I've been doing the same thing I did when I was 29.

I ask people, talk to them about my problems.

Hey, this is what I got to do.

How do you think I should solve this?

Who should I talk to? Oh, thank you.

Go to the next person.

Hey, this person said, you can help me.

This is what I got to do.

How do you think I should solve this? Can you help?

Oh, you can't.

Who do you think I should talk to? Boom.

I've just been doing that for six years.

And this football guy, who has a sales his

background, has started a robotics software industrial automation company

that sends millions of handwritten notes a year with

hundreds of thousands of people coming to the website

that has no reason to be here.

But tenacity will drive perseverance.

That's going to take you so

much further than talent ever will.

It really will.

So as far as your offering, companies come to you

and say, hey, we need to run a sales campaign.

And I say, they come to you, they talk

to you, they're probably just doing this all online.

They come, they upload a list, they type in a message,

and then your robot writes a quote unquote handwritten note and

you guys get them out the door and in the mailbox

and they sit back and the phone rings.

Is that kind of a good overview?

We try to sell it as like a relationship

building tool, not as a marketing tool, even though

a lot of our clients use it for marketing

because the open rate is so high.

But yeah, we've had a lot of people go out of business.

We've had like three competitors go to business

in the last twelve months because everybody tries

to make it a marketing tool.

And as the economy changes, interest rates

go up, inflation, whatever, all time high.

That really makes your Roi all over the place.

And if you're a marketer, if you

run a business, you don't like those

drastic changes in your marketing campaigns.

You like to see like little ups

and downs in your ROI campaigns.

You don't like to see the drastic changes.

So we try to sell people like birthdays,

holidays, anniversaries, thank you for your purchase, that

type of stuff, because that's going to lead

to, and I'm a perfect example of this,

that's going to lead to long term growth,

commitment, referrals, repeat business, lifetime value.

The only way that we've been able to

build our business is investing in evergreen strategies.

So things that are going to continue to make you

money and drive traffic and drive people to your website,

ongoing, every single month I'll pick up the phone.

Any new customer who spends more

than $100, I call them.

And it's becoming really hard to do now, we invested

heavy on not in Google Ads, no Facebook ads.

And that's the first thing everybody does.

Literally every person at every business, they're

going to jump straight into ads.

We put everything, everything into pr and SEO.

So we establish ourselves as a leader in

the space, a thought leader reviews, getting people

to review us and then SEO.

I spend nothing on ads.

What I spend money on ads now is to protect my name.

Simply noted, we have so many small little

people trying to enter this space because they

think, oh, this guy did it.

We're going to do it and become rich.

So all they do is they try to. PPC. Simply noted.

So my budget goes to protecting.

Simply noted on PPC. Real quick.

PPC pay per click for people who may not know.

Is that what you're talking about?

Yeah, it's Google Ads. Yeah, Google Ads.

So when you click in italian restaurant, those first

three or four things you see is an ad.

And all we invest now is trying to make sure that

we're the first one out there when people are looking for.

Simply noted.

But yeah, we have taken the hardest path possible

that nobody else has ever wanted to take because

it will kill you, the stress kills you.

And I think that's my background in

athletics has prepared me for this.

It has been incredibly hard making the

right decision versus the easy decisions, and

nobody else has built their own robot.

But I knew eventually I wanted to sell. Simply noted.

And nobody was going to want to buy a

company at the scale that we're going to be

at with a really bad, unreliable technology.

So instead of investing money into just marketing and sales

and growing marketing and sales and not our product, we

spent three years building a robot that is better in

every single way because we've tried everything else and it's

going to be a lot easier for people to use

and more enjoyable to use in production because the production

side is a lot of work with what we do.

I just feel like you grow through what you go through.

You have to take the right course, not the easy course.

A lot of people are going to take the least

path of resistance, but we're trekking our own path.

We're trying to do things different

and it's been working for us.

So let's talk about the path.

This whole culmination of things came together.

You saw success in your job that you

had while you were getting your MBA.

You saw this wedding invitation business and you

decided you're going to go for it.

What were those early days like?

How were you spending your time?

What were those mountains that you had to climb that were

the really difficult parts just to get to day one?

I'm going to tell anybody who's listening to this,

the biggest mountain you'll ever have to climb, and

we've all heard this a million times.

It's what's between your ears.

Doubts will kill more dreams than

any problems you'll ever face.

And I'm six years in and I still deal with that.

I'm just like, oh, my

God, this issue is insurmountable.

It's going to kill us right if we have to

do this, or how do we scale to that?

Because we're self funded.

We're not $5,000 problems anymore.

It's like 50,000 is like a $5,000 bill.

Consultants will come in like, oh, $75,000, right?

Or a new project, 300 grand.

And it's like if you miss now, you're knocking

yourself back years or you're closing your business.

So I think in the early days, I was very ignorant.

I had no idea what I was doing, which

played in my favor, because if I knew what

I knew now, I probably wouldn't have started this

business, because there's just so much money that has

to go into engineering and robotics.

But on the other side, I'm glad I did it.

I've learned more in these last five years than

I could do in 240 year corporate careers.

The personal growth that I've gone through, the

confidence that I now have as a business

person or an entrepreneur, is unshakable.

I know now, no matter what, I can wake up

tomorrow and figure out a way to make money.

I didn't know that when I was a sales rep

at a corporate job, they put me in a box

to go sell a product to a person.

Now I know how to create a business.

Now I know how to do SEO, now I know

how to do manage ads, now to do engineering.

I know how to do file for patents.

I know how to do sales and marketing automation.

We talked about Zapter earlier.

I feel like that's literally anything.

I know how to automate anything.

Probably not to the level of you

guys, but all these transferable skills.

I could be a CMO at most small businesses.

Like, with what I know.

So just the confidence that you gain and you learn

by having to figure it out on your own.

I wouldn't trade that.

I would not go back and say, I want

it easier because I feel better now than I

did six years ago as a professional.

When you set out and you had your business

plan, whether it was one that was actually formal

and written, or if it was just kind of

in your head, was step one build a robot?

No, I came at year two when I got sick

and tired of hearing businesses saying, hey, your robot.

There's a bunch of reasons why we did the bigger

orders of like, hey, if we're going to spend this

much money, we want them to look more humanistic.

So the older technologies, there's a lot

of patterns in the way it writes.

The other issue was scaling with the off

the shelf solutions that are out there were

not reliable, and it was too expensive.

So they have these robots you can buy.

The president uses them.

It's like an auto pen, but they're like, twelve grand.

I was like, man, what happens if I

need three of these or 300 of these?

You'd call the company that sells them.

They won't call you back.

Or like, oh, you need 20?

Okay, I can give you, like, two right now, and

I'll try to get you two in, like, three months.

And I was just like, that's not going to work.

And then the machines that we did have,

when we needed parts, we'd call them and

they'd say they'd send us parts. We never get parts.

I was just like, how am I going to

scale a business with a vendor that's expensive, unreliable,

and they're like, in their late 60s?

They're going to go out of business in five years.

Right.

It was really frustrating.

Clients weren't happy with the quality of the product.

Also on our side, we weren't happy with the

service we were getting from the people that provided.

The only machine in the world that would kind

of do what we wanted it to do.

We were very lucky.

I micromanage our money.

I'm super tight.

We don't need it, we don't buy it.

And we saved up a decent amount of money

because we knew that we possibly could do it.

We went through 14 phase zeros

with 14 different product development companies.

You pay somebody, like, six grand to 45

grand, literally asking them for their opinions.

This is to build you a proof of concept.

Yes, a proof of concept.

So we just basically went to

the first person, ask them for.

It was the most expensive one.

So just for their high level.

Hey, we'll think about this for two weeks and

give you what we think you should do.

That was like 50 something grand.

Then we would take that guy's idea blueprint, take off

his logo, take off his name, take off his pricing,

and go to the next company, next product design firm,

say, hey, this is what we want it to do.

This is what the other guy says.

And then we'd get his idea.

So they would just go back and

forth, and we did that 14 times.

Like, literally 14 times.

We spent, like, over 150 grand just

on opinions before we got started. This was.

You said in your second year, did you have the

revenue to support $150,000 in consultants we saved, yeah.

So we had a few hundred thousand

dollars in our account at the time. Okay. Yeah.

I'm just saying, from phase zero opinion, phase blueprint

to just prototype robot, it was like 330 grand.

So we got six prototypes because they would just get a

bunch of parts and then from there go to production.

It's another half a million dollars because you have to

go through injection molding, you have to buy a bulk.

We spent over a million dollars just

on our robotic technology, our website.

We spent like 600 grand.

But again, as money came in, we just kept

posting here, how much does this guy need today?

Oh, he needs six grand.

How much does this guy need?

That's just how we've done it.

And if you want it bad enough, he'll figure out a way.

And we really want this to work, so we

wouldn't keep pushing because it's incredibly expensive and hard.

Yeah.

And, I mean, you did this without

taking on investors and taking on debt.

I mean, you've funded this all through cash flow.

No loans, no debt, no investors. That's rare. That's.

Congratulations.

We're the only person in our space that is 100% owned.

The CEO owns 100%.

We've had three competitors go out

in the last twelve months.

One raised eight and a half million, one raised 12

million, and I don't know what the other one raised.

All of them went out under.

They all focused in the real estate industry.

We all know what happened in the

real estate in the last 18 months.

So, yeah, I know we probably could have grown faster

and done this faster, but I had no idea where

to go, what to do, what questions to ask.

So going alone seemed like the only thing I

could do in the early first few years.

Plus, I knew once we got off the ground

where we're at now, we'd have a lot more

leverage in negotiating if we needed to raise money.

So I was willing.

I was young and dumb.

I was 29, had no idea what I was getting myself into,

but I knew I was willing to kind of bet on myself.

I've bet on myself for 15 years. Prior to that.

I've done hard things prior to that.

I've overcome the odds prior to that.

Why can't I overcome this?

And here we are.

You talked earlier about how you're into technology.

You've got cameras and drones and computers, and you

mentioned all these things you've had to learn yourself.

You talked about having to write software, so you have

sat behind the keyboard with the text editor and cranked

out code that's in your system now, in your product.

All I know how to do is for software.

All I know how to do is,

like, basic UI, ux, front end stuff.

Run a debugging and then submit

a report to our dev team.

But I'm not doing any of the dev work on the back end.

I have learned enough to be a competent

project manager of everything that I do.

So if it's electrical development, software development, mechanical

engineering, database backend engineering or backend development, Uiux,

CSS, HTML, Javascript, whatever it is, I am

competent enough to manage that person and know

what he's saying and understand, think.

And someone told me this in another podcast.

It's like, Rick, you're just a great business manager.

I always just say I do all these different things.

Yeah, like this is why you're successful.

You're a great business manager.

You know how to manage different parts

of every aspect of your business.

And I was like, that's a good

point, but it comes through drive.

I want to know. I want to know.

I don't want to be caught in

a situation where ignorance is very expensive.

If you don't know, you're going to pay somebody

who does know, who spent five years learning it.

And I knew instead of paying that guy time

and money, you're going to pay one or two

ways with your time or your money.

I would rather pay with my time and become better and go

through the crap now and put all this pressure on me.

Because what happens to coal under pressure, right?

You turn into a diamond.

I knew if I learned and cut through all the

hard stuff now by the time I'm in my late

30s, early forty s, I was going to be an

incredibly capable business person, that no matter whatever happened in

this business, I would go anywhere else and be fine

because I would know a lot.

So, yeah, that's just what I do.

We're getting to a point now where I can't do that.

You have to delegate the elevate. Right.

It's just really good help is really expensive.

So I'm trying to go like the standard

operating procedure route, build all these systems.

I'm trying to go that route first and

hire younger, younger, hungrier, motivated people versus seasoned

people who are going to need equity packages.

Take us back to getting your first customer.

Do you remember that day?

How did you find them?

I knew people who were in business that

had a problem that this could probably solve. Right?

So I go to them and say, hey, this is what I'm doing.

This is what I think you need help with.

This is how I think it would help you.

Do you mind testing it?

Just soft ask, right?

And ask three or four people, someone will buy

and I think that's why it's really important for

young people to get into a sales job, because

you learn, number one, relationships, you build out your

network, you learn how to have tough conversations.

You learn how to sell, you

learn how to overcome objections.

I know people bash sales jobs, but it's the

best, I think, outside of starting your own business.

I think sales in service. Sales and service. Right.

I think in your 15 to 25 decade, it's incredibly

important to have a ten year period of that and

then go specialize in this marketing or HR. Right.

But, yeah, it was really easy. Doesn't matter.

I'll start a company tomorrow.

I'll have a customer in five days. It doesn't matter.

I know where to go, or I know

where to go find the people who are

having those problems that my problem's solving.

But that comes through everything

that I've gone through.

I've done the bnis, I've done the

eos, I've done the chamber of commerce.

I'm in vistage now.

I'm incredibly active.

My wife's in a networking career.

We go to, what is it coming up here in Scottsdale?

The waste management, the golfing again,

your network is your net worth.

You can't sit behind your computer at your house, never talk

to anybody, and expect for people to like you, trust you,

want to do business with you, you got to get out

there, you got to meet with them, take them to dinner,

spend time with them face to face. Right?

So, yeah, finding your first customer is not hard.

If you put in all that time, was it more

satisfying closing that first deal when it was your own

than when you were selling for other people?

I was very nervous because somebody else is trying

it, and I got to see if they like

it or if it works for them again.

I bought a 10,000 0% interest credit card.

I bought one of these robots.

They let me put $6,000 down.

That was incredibly a lot of money for me when I

was 28, 29 years old, and I was like, crap, if

this doesn't work, what am I going to do?

But when you're in sales, you learn how

to pivot and like, oh, that didn't work. Let's try this.

Okay.

Hey, let me do some free work

over here to make up for that. It's like a relationship.

It's back and forth.

It can't be one sided.

I can't go to my customer and

say, hey, it didn't work for you. Give me more money.

Like, hey, said, let me put some time

into this and see why it didn't work.

Or, hey, let's try this and just pay for

postage and I'll do my service for free.

If you have those networks, people that believe

in you, and that's built over time, building

those networks and people, what is it?

It takes a lifetime to build up your

reputation in like a minute to destroy it.

It's taken me 36 years to build up my reputation.

If someone knows me who's actually spent

time with me or has been in

my network, they know I'm extremely driven.

I'm not going to fail.

I'm going to push through. I'm going to overcome.

I'm going to persevere.

And I have an unwavering work

ethic that won't be worn down.

I'll wear people down until I'm successful.

If you know me, that's why people believe in me.

They're like, oh, he's going to be fine.

Even if it doesn't work, if he's having a

hard month, he's going to figure it out.

That's what I've built over two decades.

That's why I'm incredibly confident that no matter what business, what

product, I can find people to believe in me, take a

chance on me, or people refer me because they believe in

me and know that I won't let them down.

When you started the business, day one, was it just you

or did you start it with other members of the team?

Yeah, I had my buddy.

He's actually outside my office right now.

I played football with him.

I've known him my whole life.

Started playing football with him when I was eight.

That was another thing.

I had a $10,000 credit card.

I paid $300 to fly to California to go recruit

my friend, to come start this business with me.

So, best man in my wedding, a groomsman in my wedding.

Known him forever, like a brother.

I talked him into quitting his job

and coming out here and starting this.

There's days we're like, what are we doing?

Why are we doing this?

But then there's other days you're

like, how amazing is this childhood?

Best friends running our own

business, calling our own shots. It's amazing.

But, yeah, there's a lot of hard days.

But, yeah, he came out and started this with me.

And he shares a lot of the blunt

force trauma that comes with owning a business.

So it's really fun having somebody I've known for

so long that can lean into and share what

I'm going through with somebody like that.

So real quick, you've got no customers, no revenue.

You've got a credit card with a $10,000 limit and

it's down to 9700 because you paid 300 for.

Because I knew it's going to work, Scott, I

don't care if I start a marketing business. Wrong.

I'll make that a $10 million business in five years.

I don't care if I go to a car dealership.

I'll be the number one salesperson within five years.

I'm that confident.

There's a recipe.

It's hard work, it's passion,

it's drive, it's perseverance.

Become the most knowledgeable person in your industry.

It's follow up.

It's a formula. It just is. It's just.

People will ignore parts of the formula.

Why did he say yes?

Because he knows who I am.

He just knows it's just going to work.

And I've known him for so long.

I told him it was like, hey, 100 days,

we're going to build this company in 100 days.

And it's been five years of a lot longer than that.

But our vision has drastically changed

versus where it was 2017.

I'd love to hear more about that.

What are the things that changed?

We thought it was only going to take

four machines for these really expensive, old, really

outdated technologies to be a million dollar company.

We were incredibly wrong.

It took about 35.

So that is about $400,000 in equipment

to manage million dollars in business.

And that was the hard thing because the problem was like,

oh, yeah, if we run these 16 hours a day, six

days a week, at this rate, we can be at this

and we can only need this amount of people.

So our projections were way off because we

had no idea what we were doing.

Getting into paper, print, postage, mailing equipment,

just everything that went into it.

That was one of the issues with scaling.

It's like we can't scale with this technology.

So we were incredibly off there getting a

space we didn't know as you go to

different volumes in stamp affixings, envelope stuffing, all

this stuff, like how big the equipment was.

We have no experience in the mailing industry.

So we went from my bedroom office, or

my house office to 1100 square foot facility.

We're like, oh, this will be

good until we're like 3 million. No, it's not.

We went to a 3000 square foot

facility, a couple of million in revenue.

We're like, okay, if we go to

ten, we're going to need 15,000.

Probably going to be like 20,000 sqft.

So it's just like, you just

don't know until you get there.

And it may be bad, but I'd rather err on

the lower side versus over commit and overextend yourself.

And now I'm paying $3,000 more a month in rent that

I don't need or get the bigger piece of equipment and

spend $1,800 a month on the lease more versus saving that.

So it's like, we always were risk adverse.

I'd rather err on the risk adverse side

than that's that measure 14 times, cut once,

the thing that we do with the engineers.

So, yeah, he knows who I am. Very driven.

Nothing's going to stop me.

Two football players starting this company.

But we know what it's going to take to be successful.

We've done it.

Yeah, but it has been incredibly hard, what you just described

of, okay, do we take on more than we need today

and grow into it, or do we take on just what

we need today, knowing that it may not last as long?

Man, business is a constant daily

game of taking calculated risks.

And sometimes they pay big, sometimes you

lose big, and sometimes you break even.

But, man, that's one of the

biggest struggles for me, anyway.

It's a huge struggle of, okay, how far do we go?

How far do we extend ourselves?

And if I extend myself too

much, that could have consequences.

If I don't extend myself enough, it may inhibit growth.

Is that a regular thing that you wrestle with, too?

Elon Musk said it.

He's like, I think the big problem with business

owners is wishful thinking, or best case scenario thinking.

We always get stuck in the idea of what if?

Like, what if?

But it's always like, oh, what if that contract lands?

Or what if we get that price? Or what if? Whatever.

We live in a very weird world now with all the

social media and all these fake gurus and people looking like

they're making all this and making it look easy.

If it's easy, there's a problem.

How it comes is how it goes.

If it comes easy, it's going to go easy. Right?

So that's why I've always kind of had

the mantra like, let's do it hard, because

people won't go through what we're going through.

So, yeah, I definitely do agree.

It's a constant battle, making hard decisions.

It's calculated risk.

But I think, I don't know if it's a

fear based thing, but as soon as I catch

myself thinking about, like, oh, my God, this could

be this and how big it's going to go.

I have this conversation with my wife

a lot, like best case scenario, but

in business, best case scenario never happens.

It never happens.

So it's like when you catch

yourself thinking, oh, best case scenario.

So we should do this.

That should be like, ding, ding, ding, red flag, pump

the brakes, write it down, come back to it.

And that's something I've really gotten really good

at the last couple of years is like

kind of taking the compulsiveness away.

Like, we're compulsive beings, we want to do things.

We get the idea.

What I'll do is I'll write the email and then

I won't send it, or I'll write down the ideas

and then I'll come back to it a couple of

days later versus like, oh, great deal.

That person's going to give me this

piece of equipment at this, right?

I won't respond, I won't let

my, whatever temptation fall into it.

So yeah, that's something.

The head case again, living between your

ears is one of the biggest battles.

And we mentioned that in the beginning that you have

to struggle with to grow and be a business owner.

Getting the robot built took longer and a

lot more money than you expected it to.

What have been some of the other biggest

challenges that you guys have dealt with?

Web development.

So I have no technical background,

I have no development background.

My first website cost me $300 to build.

And I was like, oh, this should get me going.

And that was basically just like a brochure

website with an email sign up, and then

my next website was $12,000, didn't even work.

And then our current version of our website has, with

just development, just over 400 grand invested into it.

But there's a lot more that's going into it.

It's all the SEO, it's all the pr,

because that helps drive traffic, increase rankings.

I had no idea any of this.

All I do is on my way, like

going to the gym, going to work.

I listen to YouTube videos, I listen

to podcasts, I pick up nuggets.

I hope anybody listening to this, you just pick

up one idea, this podcast is worth it.

And then you write it down, you research it.

I'm just obsessed with consuming

and learning and staying ahead.

But yeah, the website has been incredibly hard because as

we use APIs from square, as square updates their API,

we have to update it on our side.

And if in code, and I'm sure you

know this, a line of code breaks above

anything below it won't work unless your developers

are really good, which I'm paying for offshore

development, which I haven't found the best development.

But for my budget, they're great.

But yeah, the website is like, our next focus is

building, like an enterprise level web app, because now we're

not investing all this money into the robots anymore, but

web development, building something that's robust and reliable, I mean,

that's what's keeping me up at night now, thinking about

your day to day today versus your day to day

in the first year or two, how much of what

you were doing then are you still doing today?

So I love every aspect of this business.

Three years ago, I was managing the SEO.

I hired two SEO companies and weren't really bad, so I

took it away and I managed it and I learned.

But I love doing the research, the blog,

planning, working with the Vas, and doing the

backlinking, but I was doing it all.

But mostly what I'm doing now is managing contracts

and development, project managing, like, our web development, because

I have to be highly involved there.

And then our engineering, just making sure

the robots are being built, they're scaling.

We're actually starting to sell our robots.

So I know who all the players

are out there that are doing this.

So I'm reaching out to them, seeing if they want

to buy this technology, but more big picture stuff.

But that doesn't mean I'm taken away for some

of the responsibilities I had three years ago.

I'll still talk to business accounts when they're onboarding,

making sure that all their in depth questions are

answered, because I've managed or built everything.

So I can answer those questions and make sure if

we get that one opportunity to meet, like, I'm on

that meeting and I can answer it the right way,

that they need to hear it delegate to elevate.

That's a real thing.

That's why I'm trying to build all these

standard operating procedures before going the next route,

which is hiring seasoned talent, which will require

higher incomes and equity packages.

But to sell your business, you have to have Sops.

So I was like, let's go this route first.

The harder route, right, which is to get organized, write

down everything, and try that and train people, because to

sell your business, you got to kill the king.

Like, your business has to run without you.

So I thought instead of hiring someone who's 45 or

50 who's done this, let me try doing this first.

So, yeah, it's engineering, development, larger

contracts, and kind of building sops.

That's what I'm focused on right now.

Of those things, what do you enjoy the most?

I like sales.

I like sales, marketing.

In a perfect world, if I had a ton

of money, I would be chief revenue officer.

Like somebody who's in charge of growing.

I just like the challenge.

I like the hunting.

I like the problem solving.

I like the networking, the

relationship building, problem solving.

I don't enjoy development whatsoever.

I think it's a language I just don't understand.

I'm more sales and marketing guy.

I've really enjoyed the engineering, though.

Engineering has been really fun.

Seeing an idea come to life, like

a product that's been really cool.

In a perfect world, if I had a

ton of funding, I'd be more focused on

growing revenue, partnerships, that type of stuff.

Looking back, is there anything

you would change professionally?

Hindsight is 2020.

You've made a lot of mistakes.

I could probably have saved a million dollars

and a lot of the problems that.

A lot of the problems or issues we

had, but that's a part of the process.

And you can't regret the things that you've gone

through to get to where you are today.

But it's just not realistic. I wish I had a little bit

more experience before starting and becoming an

entrepreneur, but that's just not realistic.

You have to be inexperienced

before you have experience.

But I wish I would have did SEO a lot sooner.

I wish I would have learned ads a lot sooner.

Basic business stuff.

I wish I really would have understood

what it takes to build a website.

We've mismanaged and lost hundreds of thousands

of dollars on building a website.

But everything else, no, just say, understand what it takes

to become an entrepreneur before you get into it.

It's not just working for yourself.

A lot of people are like, screw it,

I'm going to go work for myself.

You're going from a 40 hours a week

job that you're probably really only working 30,

like, let's be honest, or even 20.

And now you're going to be working 100

hours, managing everything, stressing about everything, and all

the responsibility falls on you and you really

don't get it until you're in it.

So someone could tell you, but to really prepare you,

because you won't really get it until you go through

it, but to prepare just to have that mentorship, that's

actually like something what I want to do when I'm

done is kind of like talk about that.

I don't know if it's a podcast or something, but

help, especially athletes, because I really do believe athletes they

kind of fall off a cliff after sports.

They just don't realize how well prepared

they are for life after sport.

Like how to show you and prepare you

and propel you to be successful or at

least coach you what to prepare for.

You talked earlier about your stepdad and your mom.

They were there for every game.

They were there for every practice.

And we just talked about how being a business owner

is not a nine to five kind of a job.

You've got kids today.

You've got a wife.

What's it like keeping work and

the personal life in check?

So I know what my number one priority is, is my family.

I don't care.

Simply note it would be a $20 million

year company right now if I treated it

like how corporate management treats their corporate jobs.

Out every night at the happy hour.

Networking with customers.

Gone all the time.

I am home every single night.

Every single night.

430 or five.

I coach my son's basketball team and his football team.

I'm doing a daddy daughter dance this weekend.

I rented like a pink jeep and

I'm putting like lights all over it.

My number one priority, which is why I

didn't continue my corporate career, is my family.

It is 100% my family. There's this book.

I'm trying to remember what it was.

But as you mature and as you

grow, there's different stages of life.

When you're kids it's all about presents and

gifts and birthdays because it's all about you.

Then when you get into your 20s, it's about

experiences and ego and all these things, right?

These superficial things.

And then there's the best stage of your life.

And it's about people, it's about relationships.

And that's where you start feeling the most fulfilled.

And there's just nothing better than being a dad.

There's nothing better.

There's nothing more fulfilling. Happy.

It's stressful, right?

It's stressful being a father. You have to provide.

You have to see them growth.

Go through bullying and all these things, right?

It's stressful.

But there's nothing better but priorities.

You always got to make sure they're number one.

Don't put money as a priority.

Don't put your business as a priority. Your health.

Any first time entrepreneur, you're going

to go through some health issues.

It's just you're going to have a lot of stomach.

Whatever you're going to go through sleep,

whatever it is, you're going to be

more stressed than you've ever been.

Don't take your health for granted.

Especially when you're going into your mid thirty s and

forty s, your body changes, you got to sleep, you

got to eat good, you got to cut out alcohol.

You're going to put yourself behind the eight

ball of success if you're not taking care

of, just like those types of things.

And a lot of entrepreneurs, they'll kill themselves.

They'll ruin their chances for success by not just

doing the easy things, sleeping, don't drink, don't do

drugs, because those things exacerbate how you're feeling.

If you're sad, it's going to make you feel more sad.

Right?

If you're depressed, it's going to

make you feel more depressed.

If you're stressed, which me, I'm

usually a high stress person.

I have one beer and it's just like, whoa.

It turns off the control factor in my brain.

When I feel something coming, I usually

have the power to shut it off.

But when you drink or do drugs or whatever, that

shuts that off in your brain, at least for me.

And I cut that out a long time ago.

So know your priorities, take care of your health, and

you're going to set yourself up a lot better to

have higher chances of success versus just chasing money.

Because money, you're going to take bigger

risks, you're going to do dumber things.

And there's nothing wrong with taking the slow process to

success and have a 10% annual growth that's safe and

that's going to endure years and decades versus quick wins

that are going to put you in bad situations.

Because if you grow too fast too, it's

going to force you to increase your bills

too fast that you're not ready for.

So we turn down things that we won't put

ourselves in a bad situation for because it's going

to force us to take on $14,000 in new

equipment a month for a two month job.

Yeah, I know I'm rambling, but you

got to get your priorities straight.

Family is number one.

If that stuff's not good, you

talked about saying no to things.

Have there been temptations to go into a new market or

add a new line of service or something like that?

Direct mail. Yeah.

We would be a hundred million dollar company.

But the margins on direct mail are so

bad and it's a race to the bottom.

It's a red ocean.

It's not blue Ocean.

If anybody's read that book, blue

Ocean, red Ocean, it's a marketing.

The only way you compete on direct mail is price.

But I never wanted to be that I

wanted to differentiate product and service and having

a leveraged position to position a price. Right.

And why you should pay this.

But yeah, we get rfps all the time.

This is like how I think it's

unique to us, but it's not. And this is like that.

You have to be mentally tough.

And I'll get really upset sometimes where

people will just email us like, here's

an RFP, give us your lowest price.

And that's what these vendors do is they'll just take

a job and they'll shoot it out to everybody and

they just look for the cheapest price and we'll spend

an hour quoting it because we got to look up

everything and make sure it's right.

And I'm not going to get there.

I'm not going to go there.

I'm going to build my product, my business, find my tribe,

and I'm going to be happy with where I'm at.

You got to keep the blinders on.

Don't get shiny object syndrome.

And also the niches are in the riches, too.

Don't be everything to everybody.

You can't scale that.

Become great at one thing and everybody's going to

know you for that one thing, and everyone's going

to come to you for that one thing.

So when you need revenue, it's hard.

When you need money and you're self funded, it's hard.

But it's discipline.

It's just being disciplined.

As an aside, we don't do rfps at my business.

Like, we just period, don't do them.

I told myself when I started that

we weren't going to do it.

There are two times that I have broken my promise to

myself and each time reminded myself why we don't do it.

And like you, I don't want to be Walmart.

I flat out don't want to be the lowest price.

If I am, that's only by happenstance.

But I'm with you.

I would rather focus on adding high value and

charging a price that reflects that high value. Yeah.

And you want your customers

to value your product, right?

You know what? It's like.

The person who gives you $100 is a

bigger headache than the person who gives you

$10,000 or whatever is your industry.

If it's a $10,000 client versus $100,000 client, we have people

who only buy on price and then they email you nonstop

and it's like, this is all the money I have.

And if it doesn't work, I took the risk

on you and it's like, then don't do it.

We don't want to work with you.

That's not what we're selling here.

When you're a young entrepreneur, though, it's

a hard thing to walk away from.

Oh, somebody who has this job where I can make money.

But as you grow, you'll kind of start pushing

out the trash, like the things that distract you.

But in the early days, hold on, because you're going to

be inundated with opportunities and you got to figure out what

works for you and what to push to aside.

And that's one of those things.

RFPs, for sure, they're exciting, but

they're a waste of time.

They're just bottom feeding.

Customers don't care about anything.

Cheapest price.

They're never going to be happy.

They're going to take your price, give it to somebody else

and take their price and bring it back to you.

It's not worth it.

You've said a number of things that lead

me to believe you're just a sponge and

you're just constantly looking to learn.

What are some of the most

impactful books that you've read?

I mean, basic business books.

The e myth by Michael E. Gerber.

Actually met him here.

Traction, I think any young manager, young business owner, just

like how to run a business, how to get out

of your business, how to run business meetings.

That's a good one. What's that?

A conversation with the devil. Who is.

That's a very old book.

I thought that was a very entertaining, good book.

Have you know what book I'm talking about?

I haven't read that one.

The first two, the Devil.

It's the negative person in your mind and it's

talking about how to overcome that negativity doubt person.

That was a really interesting book.

It was from, I forget who it was.

I'd say the Michael Gerber attraction.

Any young Business on, I mean,

most businesses are young businesses because

most businesses fail in five years.

I think those are two books you absolutely got to nail.

And they're easy reads, they're short and

they're actionable things that you can do.

And then there's win.

Any young salesperson should read Dale Carnegie's

how to win friends and influence people.

I listen to it on audiobook every January.

It's just basic, great, fundamental advice on how

to be likable, how to build relationships.

Anybody listens, you don't need

to be liked by everybody.

You'll find where you're supposed to be.

But there's just some basic things and just how to

be a good salesperson, how to be a good manager. Yeah.

I mean, there's tons.

Like, you should be listening all the time.

You have to have this curiosity to learn,

curiosity to hear someone else's point of view.

And a hard thing, too, is just because

you heard it doesn't mean it's right.

Like, you got to be able to learn and dissect and put

it against other things and then make up your own mind.

A lot of people just read

something, they think it's true. That's not so.

That's a mental muscle you have to develop. Man.

You nailed that right there.

Just because somebody puts it out in a

book and just because that book is a

bestseller does not mean it's right.

And I'll show some naivety here.

I can talk about how to make anybody a bestseller.

I mean, it's so easy. You pay for it. It's pr.

So, literally, you find a publisher, you pay them.

How much are you willing to pay, and

you'll be a bestseller because they're going to

put it on all their publishers.

I mean, there's so many ways to manipulate that.

So you have to develop that.

Again, mental muscle.

It's critical thinking.

Yeah, critical thinking. Sure. Yeah.

Well, was there anything that we haven't touched

on that you hoped we would get into?

I think at any time on a podcast, and

if anybody's listened this far, number one, thank you.

I appreciate it.

But I want anybody who listens, anything I have

to say is that you can do it.

Whatever you want to do, you can do it.

When you're 85, you're not going to look back

and say, man, I'm so happy I stayed at

that safe job that didn't allow me to become

the best version that I wanted to be.

There's so much potential in you that you don't

even realize that is out there that you need

to go chase and find and become.

And if there's a risk, take it.

What's the worst thing that can happen?

Oh, you're in debt. Okay? You'll figure it out.

You'll get out of it.

Just do it.

And I'm a football player who started a robotic

software and industrial automation company that arguably is the

largest provider of this in just six years.

And it just came from nothing but

tenacity and drive in not giving up.

And I would say that's the only

reason I was successful in football, too.

I just wanted it way more than anybody else.

So if there's something you want

and you genuinely want it.

And it's not for superficial reasons, it's not

for money, it's not to impress your parents,

it's not to impress your friends. It's in you.

It's in me. I feel it.

You'll feel it, like, crawling out of your skin.

Like if you have that feeling where it's a drive,

it's not an external reason, it's an internal fire.

Go after it and you don't have to quit your job today.

I did simply note it on the side for a

year, like ten months before I went full time.

So there's just be smart about it. Chase it.

Become the best version of yourself.

You're going to look back five

years and you won't regret it.

You won't if you really go 110% into it,

because you're going to become, like I said 45

minutes ago, I fit 250 year corporate careers in

the last five years of becoming an entrepreneur.

And just go after it. Attack it.

You'll love the person that you've

become five years down the road.

I don't have the actual stats, but let's say

it's 1% of high school athletes go on to

play in college, and of those, it's probably 1%

that go on to play at the pro level.

And you did that again.

Forget what the exact stats are.

But so many businesses fail within the first couple

of years, and you have exceeded the ods.

And of the businesses that make it past

that, the number of businesses that make it

to $5 million in revenue is very small.

You've accomplished a ton in your personal life and

in your athletic life and in your business already.

What's next?

I heard this from a mentor in

the beginning, your dream is your dream.

Like, it's whatever you want for you.

But as you are owning a business and

your business is growing, he told me this.

He's like, make sure that your dream is

big enough to take care of those people's

dreams that are helping you build your dream.

And it's figuring out how to take what I thought

I wanted five years ago, which I'm there now.

I'm there now.

But it's like, man, now I feel like I

have a responsibility to take care of everybody's dream.

And that's what leadership should do.

Leadership should be taking care of their team,

their employees, investing in them, making sure they're

talking to them, asking what do they want

and how can they help.

I mean, it doesn't mean that you

just give it to them, right? They have to earn it.

You should help them become better so they can

earn more money and do whatever they need to

do to take care of their dreams.

But yeah, I have kids now, so my vision is even bigger.

Legacy I want to do what I said an hour ago.

My mom did what she did and got us here.

Now I'm taking what my mom

did and going somewhere else.

And I want to make sure that I'm elevating the platform

for them so it gets a lot more outside of those.

Like I said earlier too, it's

like in your 20s, it's ego.

It's all the things that don't matter right now.

It's more about the people and the relationships.

So yeah, just make sure it's okay

to get started thinking about yourself.

But as you keep going, it's just make sure

that you're taking care of the people that have

helped you achieve what you are achieving.

So just don't ever lose sight of that and your

business is going to grow and continue to grow.

Rick, thanks so much for coming

on and sharing your story.

Yeah, thanks for having me. It was great.

That was Rick Elmore, founder and CEO of Simply Noted.

To learn more, visit simplynoted.com.

If you or a founder you know would like

to be a guest on In the Thick of It,

email us at [e-mail].