The Leap: How Rut Quit the Nine-to-Five and Found his Tech Company

By: zoe Thursday July 1, 2021 comments Tags: Small Business Feature

It took Two Years of grinding on Minimum Wage for Rut to buy his first Commercial Drone

It was a 5,000 dollar investment, but he had a concept and ideas for simplifying municipal probems across multiple industries. 

"I would listen to Podcasts Driving to improve my English, and I heard the story of Captain Cortez [...] When he arrived in Spain, he had a few hundred men against a thousand."

Rut recalls to me that when Cortez' crew learned the odds they were up against, they began to panic. They considered a mutiny. "He kept calm" Rut tells me, "As soon as he landed on the coast, he burned his ships". Essentialy, Cortez told his men they had one option: if they wanted to go back to Spain, they had to fight and they had to win.

"If I'm going home, I'm going home in their ship" 

The Struggle Months

But again, it really wasn't that simple. The first thing Rut did on his way to closing six-figure accounts for his company was get used to a lot of rejection. I asked him point blank: "When 

you started you didn't have a website, you didn't have a business card. What percentage of people responded to you?"

"Two Percent" Rut says. He doesn't blink.

That's two in a hundred people who didn't say no or outright ignore him. I pursue: "Ninety-eight percent of people either said no or outright ignored you".

"Of course! Think about it - why would they say yes? I was just some random guy knocking on their doors- and I knew that - but I was fine with it because I knew of a hundred people one or two would say yes, and that's all that I was looking for"

Instead of giving up, Rut used the no's he got to refine his pitch. He learned more about the problems facing small business owners and how to better reach them. Over time, he thought about the scope of his service and set his sights on landing larger accounts.

A foot in the Door

Okay, I have to digress for a second.

Rut said something very astute to me at this point in our interview. "You have to do something to stand out". It's true. The solutions you implement in the short term might not matter so much as the results they produce. Living in the world of business is about taking calculated risks, and leveraging the tools you have on-hand to improve your situation how you can.

So here's the story of how Rut Patel sent a shoe to the Mayor of Lakeland Florida.

"So I heard a story once about a rapper" Rut says. "He offers this record producer a jacket, it's a pretty high quality jacket and the guy likes it. He wears it out one day and realizes there's a CD in the pocket". That guy got a meeting out of it and a record deal. "I was thinking about going after Lakeland's big electric company, and I needed the support of the city to do it"

Rut went out to UPS and purchased a box and zipped over to Cole's and bought a brand new pair of shoes. He took one shoe and dropped it in the box.

"I wrote a handwritten letter: 'Dear Mr. CEO, I want to have the opportunity and privelige to work with your company, I've placed a shoe in a box to show you I've managed to get one foot in the door, please meet with me so I can have another"

And miracuously, it worked. Within a week he had landed a meeting with the City of Lakeland and the Lakeland Electric chair who had no idea who he was.

"I have different tricks I've used to grab people's attention, but you have to do something to stand out"

Today, Rut Patel and Voyager Industries have multiple successful six figure accounts. He leads teams of contractors with his business up to eighteen-man crews. He recently employed a full-time manager.

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