Julie's Story!

This Success Story will blow you away. If anyone deserves their success it is Julie Ringrow. Here is her success story (Jan 2008).

My name is Julie. I am 37 years old, married, mother of three, cancer survivor and Inventor of a budgeting device called SPENDTRACKER.

I developed SPENDTRACKER after years of the frustration of never being able to stick to my family’s budget. One day it reached breaking point and I sat down with my husband and we talked about a solution. I told him that my biggest problem was that I couldn’t keep track of what I had spent during the month.

I had no idea how much I’d spent let alone how we were really tracking against any sort of monthly budget. I said to him that I just wanted to be able to carry something around that let me keep a running total of what I’d spent.

I basically knew how much I could spend through the month, but I just couldn’t keep track of it.

From that conversation, I came up with the idea of SPENDTRACKER. That was 2003.

At that point we honestly thought that there must be something out there like it, but believe it or not, there wasn’t so my husband said, “Let’s make it.”

I must say that there were heaps of budgeting tools out there but nearly all of them were tied to a computer and none of them were able to fit in your wallet or purse.

After we realized that there was nothing else like this in the world, I had to work on exactly what I wanted my ‘budgeting tool’ to do.

Essentially, I wanted it to keep track of what I was spending, hence the name SPENDTRACKER.
I also wanted it to hold a budget that I could deduct down from. These two functions became the basis of SPENDTRACKER.

From there, my husband drew up a simple plan of what we wanted the product to do and I approached an electrical engineer. A few of them probably thought, “Is this lady for real?” I would walk in with kids hanging off me and prams and nappy bags…it must have been a real sight! Anyway, I eventually found one company that would help me. Then, reality set in!!

This was going to cost a lot of money to develop so my husband wanted to be sure that there was a real need for something like this. He soon realized that credit card debt was a massive problem in this country to the tune of 26 billion dollars at the time.

He also realized that on average, the group most at risk with credit card debt paid interest on an average of $560 per month. Over 1 million people in this country are in this situation.

We decided that if SPENDTRACKER could help me, then it could help others so we moved forward with the development of a prototype.

The first prototype was very crude but it did work. So I carried it around with me for a month and tested it. It was brilliant; scary, but brilliant. It was simple to use and it worked. From here we added a few other practical features and developed a slimmer second version. These prototypes were closer to the finished product.

Once I had this, I gave a few to some friends for testing and presented the product and concept to a few people that I thought may be interested in it. I even approached a couple of the major banks but unfortunately the banks didn’t appear to have any interest in SPENDTRACKER. Let’s just say the concept seemed to be contrary to their business interests.

Anyway, after refining the electronics, I realized that the product needed to be even thinner. I needed another Engineer to work on the look and feel of SPENDTRACKER. Through the electronic engineer, we found Design Momentum and eventually we came up with the final prototype. Essentially this was the first version of SPENDTRACKER that was available for sale.

At this stage I was 27 weeks pregnant with my 3rd child and I started to have some complications. To cut a long story short, I ended up in hospital for over a week. Nine weeks later I was in hospital again, this time for an Emergency Cesarean. I ended up in intensive care post-op for about 24 hours after losing almost 2 litres of blood on the operating table and Dylan was born 4 weeks premature. This was a tough time but my husband and I got through it and Dylan is now a healthy young boy!

It was time to manufacture the SPENDTRACKER so we looked to China for a manufacturer.

My first dealing with China was through a third party and this proved extremely complicated and very costly. I had many problems with initial pilot runs and at that point, given all I had been through, I nearly gave up, but deep down I knew I had to go through with it.

My husband was a great support through this time. Eventually, I started dealing with China directly and realized very quickly that the language barrier was going to be a problem. It took about 10 months before I eventually got a packaged product that was right. Once I got this, I pushed the button on manufacturing and began working on the website.

A local guy from a company called Creative Code helped me out here and he was excellent. I was making headway. Everything was set and manufacturing was underway. This was October 2005. I felt really good about everything at this point and the early part of November was basically spent getting everything in order.

Then, in the middle of November, the worst possible news came from a mammogram that potentially saved my life. Normally 35-year-old women don’t have mammograms. The only reason I had one was to complete the files of The Breast Clinic who took an ultra sound 6 months earlier to diagnose a blocked milk duct. To their credit, they followed me up after this ultra sound to have the mammogram. It showed irregularities so a core biopsy was needed. The result of this biopsy was the news we didn’t want to hear. It was Breast Cancer. Specifically, widespread - Grade 2 Ductul Carcinoma In Situ (DCIS).

So, SPENDTRACKER was launched through my website as I went into hospital for a full mastectomy.

This was a tough time but the support of my husband, family and friends was incredible. Coincidentally, as I went into hospital, a newspaper article ran on SPENDTRACKER and sales went through the roof.

In a really positive way, the launch timing enabled me to take my mind off the breast cancer for short periods of time and also gave me the strength and courage to just get on with life. But the story doesn’t end there. After a few more newspaper articles and a story on A Current Affair, sales spiked in late January but while all of this was occurring I started to feel a lump on my other breast. A mammogram revealed a 2cm tumor and the subsequent core biopsy confirmed cancer - again! This time, it was more aggressive and invading the breast tissue.

Surgery was scheduled and in March 2006 I underwent a second mastectomy. The operation showed further invasion of the cancer into the Lymph Nodes so 19 nodes were taken in the same operation.

Having a young family (one, four and six year old children) made starting a business very difficult while having operations and then chemo. I was lucky to have a lot of family who flew from Adelaide to Sydney to stay and help us. Family support and help is invaluable at a time like this. It was during Chemo that we decided it was time to move back to Adelaide.

Selling our house in Sydney was not fun while having treatments in-between open houses. We sold within six weeks. It was quite sad to leave a home where we had started our family and also developed Spendtracker.

The first six months in Adelaide we lived with my parents and set up a new phone line for Spendtracker and sold them over the Internet so business could continue. This was all done out of the bedroom I grew up in with my sister, and was once again sleeping in. All three kids were squeezed into my brother’s old room.

Thanks to retailers who purchased Spendtracker and to word of mouth, sales continued even though we didn’t advertise.

After 6 months of Chemo and continued interest in Spendtracker, I thought “I have to try and sell more of these”. That’s when I received an enquiry from a lady asking if I could do company branding. Of course I could! I had stickers made with their logo and physically cut the tops off the packaging, put the tiny sticker on and resealed it with a ‘With Compliments’ sticker. The first 100 weren’t too bad. They loved it.

By the end of 2006 we signed an exclusive deal with Mortgage Choice, Australia’s largest Mortgage broker. They wanted another 1000 product with stickers. (Mum and dad were on hand to help out once again!) More importantly they were interested in Spendtracker ‘Advanced’ a multi category Spendtracker I was dreaming of. We could brand this one for them straight from our manufacturer.

At that time we moved into our own home that was close to our family.

The beginning of 2007 was all development and working with the electrical engineers and designer again. We wanted different things this time so it was like starting from scratch. It was exciting to see it coming together. Our ‘production’ and ‘prototype’ talks with the manufacturer began in June 07. This was slow going, as we didn’t always understand each other due to language barriers.

Then, in July my worst nightmare was realised when I felt a small lump in the skin of my breast reconstruction. It was the same cancer back again. Doctors found that my hormone treatment wasn’t working and the only way I could have other drugs was to be put medically into menopause. I was 37 years old!

In a way it was lucky that we were having lots of problems with the prototypes we received from our manufacturer because it gave me the time I needed to have 30 treatments of radiation therapy and then four weeks after that a full Hysterectomy.

I had lots of tests and to my relief the cancer had not spread anywhere else. It was just the tiny lump I had found. While I was recovering we finally received Spendtracker ‘Advanced’ prototypes that were correct.

2008 is here and my health is back. Spendtracker ‘Advanced’ has finally arrived and now it’s time to let people know about this new improved product.

For me, my faith, the support of family and the support of friends is what got me through. I have surrounded myself with positive, strong people and their strength rubs off on me.

To date, I have sold over 10,000 Spendtracker units which is fantastic given all of the trials along the way. What I find most satisfying is the fantastic feedback I have received from people who use the product. It is incredibly simple to use and it works.

The moral of my story is really quite simple. Dream about the future, plan in the present, believe that you can do anything and most importantly, love good friends and family and treasure their compassion and encouragement when it comes your way. Never take their support for granted and always believe that Life is a wonderful gift, no matter what it throws at you.

Sincerely

Julie Ringrow


Wow! Julie must go down in history as the only woman to have two mastectomies and three cases of Breast Cancer! So let me ask you, "what excuse do you use when you don't achieve the goals you didn't get around to setting?" None of us really have an excuse compared to Julie who obviously has lots of guts and determination.

She has overcome extraordinary difficulties to achieve what she has and I believe we will see a lot more of her in the future now her updated product has hit the market.

That's it for today...

If you are interested, Click Here to find out more about SPENDTRACKER 'Advanced'.

Regards
David Wright