From The NFL to Writing Oh So Well, Meet Rick Elmore

Jun 10, 2023

Wes Schaeffer

The Sales Podcast Professional Development Marketing Automation Digital Marketing Entrepreneur

The power of timely, relevant, consistent outbound marketing

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No background in his business.
Didn't come from money.
Athlete in his younger days.
School was not easy for him.
Drive, want, and work ethic helped him succeed.
Played three years in the NFL.

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Athletes don't appreciate how well they are prepared for the business world.
You can reinvent yourself.
Success is often hard.
Life is a team sport.
Got into medical device sales.
He knew nothing about sales, marketing, etc.
He asked a lot of dumb questions.

Rookie of the Year at Stryker.
There are no dumb questions.

Work for the job you want."

Just put in the effort.
He's an introvert.
His clients—doctors—wanted to have four-hour dinners, eating, drinking, and talking.
It wore him out.
His managers were always traveling and divorced.
Got his MBA.
Felt stuck.
A year into his MBA, his marketing professor was going over statistics of what worked, and it was hand-written notes.
It was obvious, "But who has the time to write a bunch of notes?"
He has no experience in robotics, no funding, no nothing.
He built his own handwriting robot, engine, and technology.
All self-funded.
Started with a $10,000, 0% interest rate credit card.
Bought a cheap pen plotter, but it wasn't high quality.
Uses machine learning to learn how you write.
Took almost four years to get to the point where "I wasn't losing sleep every night."
The barrier to entry is in the millions.
His platform helps you integrate and automate.
Timely, consistent, relevant communication is key.
We're all too busy.
You have to let go of some responsibilities.
Get out of the day-to-day grind.
He never knew about VAs until he got into this.
A VA could've saved him 10 hours a week as a sales rep.
The early pen plotters were bad...quality...belt-driven...out of calibration.
He built a $300 website.
Ignorance is bliss...he had no idea how much this would cost.
He cold-called and networked and did solution selling.
Become an efficient, creative, resourceful problem solver.
Had production issues...there were no paper feeds.
Others use third-party plugins, so they have no native tools or machine learning.
Fortune 500 companies need real technology.
After losing these big orders, he had to dig in.
"If I build it, they will come."
He created a great product after many years.
You have to want to win as much as you want to breathe.
Test. Test. Test...before you shoot your shot.
Worked 24/7.
His machines were quoted at 4-6 months, and it took over three years.
Open API + Zapier and some online automations + some white label options.
Lots of real estate people and politicians can just upload a list and let them run.
Uses blue ink by default.
People have lost the ability to think.
It will soon farm zip codes and pull lists for you.
Property Radar to Zapier for real estate.
The tools are prebuilt to solve the problem.

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