Episode 192 of the Localization Fireside Chat with Rick Elmore, Founder and CEO of Simply Noted
There’s a moment in every great entrepreneurial story where something small changes everything. For Rick Elmore, it happened on a Wednesday night in an MBA classroom at the University of Arizona.
His marketing professor, going through the standard rundown of channel performance, paused and said something almost offhand: handwritten notes get opened 99% of the time. Everyone nodded. Nobody did anything about it.
Rick did.
From the NFL to the Mailbox
Rick Elmore spent years as a professional football player, drafted by the Green Bay Packers and playing for six NFL teams before retiring at 25. He wasn’t the most physically gifted player on the field. His own draft profile, which a Browns executive once showed him, described him as an “overachiever who constantly plays above his potential and wins with effort.”
He wears that as a badge of honour.
After football ended, Rick translated that same work ethic into medical device sales, quickly becoming a top 1% performer. But the corporate ladder wasn’t enough. He went back to school for his MBA, and that classroom moment in 2017 set off what he calls an “entrepreneurial seizure.”
He pulled a prospect list, sent 500 handwritten notes, and waited. The responses floored him. Doctors were calling him, not to complain, but to say they had never received anything like it. In six weeks, he generated nearly $300,000 in sales against a $50,000 monthly quota. His VP of sales wanted to know what he was doing.
That was the proof of concept. The next question was whether it could scale.
Building a Robot With Zero Engineering Background
Rick had no technical background. None. He Googled “writing robot,” found a pen plotter from China, and ordered it. Then he started asking everyone he knew if they knew anyone who understood robotics or software. He pieced it together through sheer persistence and a willingness to ask questions he didn’t know how to answer.
The early version was rough. No paper feed. You placed one sheet at a time, hit a button, and watched the machine slowly write. But it worked well enough to validate the idea. And Rick kept iterating.
Today, Simply Noted operates 225 custom-built handwriting robots, running with computer vision, automated paper feeds, mailing automation, and full tracking infrastructure. The company has nine patents and serves clients across industries, all without a single dollar of outside funding.
As Rick puts it: “I feel like I have a PhD in problem solving. I just know how to find the right people to help me solve the right problems.”
Why the Mailbox Is the Most Underrated Channel in 2026
The core insight behind Simply Noted is deceptively simple. While every business was racing to compete digitally, flooding inboxes, running ads, chasing clicks, the physical mailbox was getting emptier. And emptier means less competition. Less competition means more attention.
Handwritten notes, Rick explained during our conversation, don’t just get opened. They get held. They get kept. They create a level of brain space that no email can replicate, because the recipient knows someone made a deliberate effort to reach them.
Simply Noted made that effort scalable and trackable. The platform integrates with CRMs through Zapier and API connections, sends notes with real ballpoint pen and ink, and tracks delivery and engagement through QR codes, just like you would track an email click. The physical becomes measurable.
“Think of it like constant contact for the mailbox,” Rick said. “Same logic, same flows, same tracking. Just a completely different channel that nobody else is competing in.”
The AI Layer Nobody Expected
Here’s where the story gets interesting for 2026.
Rick is not just running a robotics company. He is running an AI operation inside that robotics company. Three AI SDR agents, running locally on a MacBook Pro in his office, handle lead follow-up and appointment booking for his account executives around the clock. Cost: roughly $9 a month in electricity. Savings: over $180,000 in annual payroll.
He runs the largest OpenClaw group in Phoenix, Arizona, hosting “Build a Clock” sessions where entrepreneurs come into the Simply Noted warehouse, see the automation in action, and get help launching their own AI agents.
His analogy for what is coming: the movie Deep Impact. The wave is visible on the horizon. Most businesses are standing on the beach. The ones who move now are the ones who survive.
“Pick one thing you want AI to do in your business,” he told our audience. “Find someone to help you implement it. Don’t try to do everything. Be an inch wide and a mile deep.”
What This Means for Sales Leaders and Entrepreneurs
Rick’s story carries a few lessons that are worth sitting with.
The uncrowded channel is almost always the counterintuitive one. When everyone is doing the same thing, the highest ROI move is often the one that feels old-fashioned. Nobody is fighting over the mailbox.
Effort compounds differently than talent. Rick was told his entire career that he was overachieving relative to his natural ability. He built a multi-million dollar company the same way he played football: by simply outworking the problem in front of him.
Technology does not remove the need for the human touch. It makes it scalable. Simply Noted exists precisely because handwritten notes feel personal, and the entire business is built on robots making that feeling available at scale. The tension between high-tech and high-touch is not a contradiction. It is the product.
Listen to the Full Conversation
Robin and Rick cover the full journey in Episode 192 of the Localization Fireside Chat, from the NFL locker room to the MBA classroom to a fleet of 225 handwriting robots and an AI SDR operation running for $9 a month.
Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/mL1ikEDGpVs
Listen on Simplecast: https://localization-fireside-chat.simplecast.com/episodes/he-sent-500-handwritten-notes-and-made-280k-in-6-weeks-rick-elmore-simply-noted
Connect with Rick Elmore: https://simplynoted.com | https://www.linkedin.com/in/rick-elmore/
Book a conversation on the LFC podcast: https://calendly.com/robin-ayoub/localization-fireside-chat-podcast-recording
Robin Ayoub 
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