Our special guest in this episode is Rick Elmore, who shares his incredible journey of going from scratch to success. Rick started out as an athlete and medical device salesperson with no business experience, but he was determined to make it work and develop a winning strategy. With hard work, grit, discipline and passion from his background in sports, he was able to stand out in the corporate world. He also used two useful analogies - climbing a mountain and Dave Ramsey's debt repayment analogy - to illustrate how he achieved success.

Rick then talks about turning challenges into opportunities through technology. He was able to build a handwriting robot after finding help from knowledgeable people and testing out potential solutions. Rick also explains how he built a strong team by being flexible, having empathy and offering understanding.

This episode is packed with wisdom that will certainly inspire any budding entrepreneur or anyone hoping to take their business career to the next level. Tune in now to hear Rick's story!

Episode Highlights

01:57 - I wouldn't say that I found Simply Noted. I felt like Simply Noted found me. I was in a marketing class and I had a professor going over the success rates in marketing and everything was super nominal, email, cold call, all the normal stuff. And then he ended the lecture saying, "Handwritten notes have a 99% open rate." I just thought that was such a believable stat because who doesn't open a handwritten note? So, I just thought it was a good business idea. There's a lot more in between and there's a lot more that came after, but that was really like the idea where the seed was planted. Handwritten notes can be a really good business idea if there's a cool, easy way to do it.

04:40 - You got to be doing something you're passionate about, and I know that's kind of like the same advice everybody gives you. But that's why it was really easy for me to keep kind of pushing in those hard times. To develop that grit or to develop that discipline, you just got to wake up and do things, like even if you don't want to do it that day. You can start off by doing something simple, as easy as just making your bed every single morning and just not negotiating with yourself. You wake up and just do it. Even if you don't feel like it, you're doing a small win to start the day.

12:03 - There's a lot of free knowledge online, like how to book a meeting, how to run a meeting. Go to Google. Go to YouTube. I call myself relentless in the pursuit of knowledge. I come home and talk to my wife about something that I learned today and exhaust her. She's like, "You, literally, this is all you do, just trying to figure stuff out," but it's exciting. As you learn, like your tunnel vision goes from what you know, to what all the possibilities are. And when that picture becomes so clear, you get really excited and it builds more energy. So, it really just comes from effort. It comes from consistency. It comes from talking to people. It comes from being helpful. If you show people that you're interested in them and you want to help them, they're going to give you their time and attention to help you.

16:29 - A Phase 0 is basically you tell them your idea. You show them what you're trying to do. They dig into it, research it, build you a plan, and give you a quote. I did that 14 times and we spent over $800,000 on this. I knew this project was going to be big. We have no loans, no debt, no investors. This is all customer-funded, so it's like we could not afford to miss. So, I went through that process 14 times. Again, I have a sales and athletic background. I was afraid to make the wrong decision.

22:04 - What's really important about being a leader is showing that you care and actually showing that you care, taking the time to ask questions, be flexible, to be understanding, and show interest. A lot of the same things that help you to be successful in sales, it's the same thing about being a leader. But the ultimate thing is really being empathetic. You're going to want things to be done on your timeline, especially when a lot of that pressure is mounting, but you just got to be understanding, be empathetic, understand things will happen as they happen, and really just try to keep people together. Because at the end of the day without everybody here, we couldn't do this. So, it's like I owe the success to everybody who's helped build this.

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