Editing The Pen Addict 363/transcript (section)

== Squarespace Sponsorship ==


'''Myke Hurley:''' All right. That website that we just spoke about, that website, NotCo, that's actually a Squarespace website. And Squarespace, one of the sponsors of today's episode. Because you can make your next move with Squarespace. They will let you easily create the website that you want for your next idea. With the ability to grab a unique domain name to give it the brand that you want. Take advantage of it and customize beautiful awarding and templates to make sure that it shines when people visit it. And so much more. Squarespace is the all-in-one platform that will let you put your next project online. There is nothing to install. There is nothing to patch or upgrade. They take care of all of that stuff so you don't have to. And they give you the ability to add tons of functionality to your site so you can make the type of website you want to make. If you have a restaurant and you want to be able to put in a bunch of information and maps and all that stuff, you can do that. If you just want to create a blog or a portfolio, maybe for your writing or for your photography, you can. But if you want to create an online store where you sell physical products and you want to manage your inventory and all of that stuff, Squarespace have all of the tools to do it. And many, many people, including Brad, do. You can go and check it out yourself right now. They have a free trial. So you can go to squarespace.com slash penaddict and sign up. And you can play around and really to your heart's content just get a feel for what Squarespace is like before you get ready to launch your website to the world. And then you sign up for one of their plans, which start at just $12 a month and include 24-7 customer support as well because they are amazing like that. When you decide to sign up for a plan, use the offer code penaddict and you'll get 10% of your first purchase of a website or domain and be showing your support for this show. That is squarespace.com slash penaddict and the code penaddict to get 10% off your first purchase and show your support for this show and all of RelayFM. Squarespace, make your next move, make your next website.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' One quick thing on Squarespace we haven't mentioned in a while. They have a commerce app, which when I travel, that comes in really handy to adjust inventory if I need to. Like if we've miscaltered or got new stuff in, I can just like pull up that app on my phone and go right into like our product inventory and make a change on the fly in about two seconds. It's really cool how they've done that. I like it.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' All right. After Raleigh, North Carolina, Myke, I headed south and built some spoke pens for a few days with Brian. And what's so funny?

'''Myke Hurley:''' There is just something amusing to me about you making the pens because I feel like sometimes you're surely more of a hindrance than a help.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That's probably Brian would probably agree.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Like Brian can't do it all on his own. So like he needs you. He needs help. Like he needs you to help him. But I assume that like you don't know what you're doing. Like you're learning, right? Yeah. Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' He has to teach me.

'''Myke Hurley:''' There must be times where like he puts you on the lathe and he's just like, oh, God, he's going to lose his hand. What do I do if he loses his hand? You know?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. He has band-aids. We've used them. Oh, boy. Let's take this really, really clear. Brian's an engineer. Like literal. Like I could tell you some of the products he designed and you'd know what I'm telling you type of design engineer. He knows how to make stuff.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That's why you work. Yeah. I know how to make pointy hair.

'''Myke Hurley:''' You know how to design things. You can design. You have the brain to come up with products. Like you can do that part. But for taking it from idea to physical product, you need people to help you with. Right? You have Jeff and you have Brian.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right. Right. So Brian is amazing at that stuff. Like we run across a problem and like he gets that little like computer mind going where like he doesn't talk for like a minute. Then he goes, okay, let's do this. And it works. Right? Like I don't function that way.

'''Myke Hurley:''' He seems to make lots of jigs, which is a thing that I learned from Tom and Dan. He makes it. He makes everything. A jig is like a tool to help you use a tool effectively. Right. Exactly. Which is kind of, I mean, just the concept of it is kind of hilarious to me because you need jigs for the jigs, I guess. Yeah. But yeah, I've seen pictures that you share on Instagram or in your newsletter. It seems like that there's lots of jigs going on in the spoke pen workshop.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. So this is all foreign to me, right? It's like we're not grabbing, I'm not getting a pen that's been delivered to us and reshipping it out to someone else. Right. There is an assembly process. And like I said, there's a build document for our pens. Like it's intense. So therefore it takes us a while to make the pens.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Do you think that the document exists because of you? Would the document in you to be interested in here too if you weren't around? Yeah. Because that's how Brian is. That's good then.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It will be fully documented. That's good. Yeah. Oh no. If I wasn't around, the document would still exist. It just has a lot more colors and pictures now that I'm here. So yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' He's, yeah. He has to teach me, like I get a job, right? So like then I just sit down and do the job until I'm done with the job and then I get another job. Like I can't think of what to do next. I don't have the order. Yes. The order of work down. You're a shop assistant. I'm a widget maker. Sure. Like I'm damn good at making widgets. You're a production line. Yeah. That's why I like shipping. I'll never like argue with shipping because like I don't mind shipping. That's my, shipping is making widgets, right? It's, you know, I don't have to like actually physically think about, you know, have we done this part here to this pen and where is this whole status out? But, you know, I can, you know, I can do my widget making pretty well. I mean, I think I'm a decent widget maker, but, you know, I'm not going to invent anything. So, you know, in over the span of like two and a half days, we ended up with over 200 pens. So now I'm starting to ship those out now. So this will be like for all the spoke pen backers who happen to be listening, you know, this will be a slower shipping process. Like we're still like within our timeframes and dates, but it's not like I can take those 200 pens and batch ship those in like two days, right? That's going to take me like a week, probably more than a week to ship that many pens because it's a one-on-one type of fulfillment. Like since we have so many colors and so many styles and so many things that have to be verified, I can only take like one order at a time, sit down with the order, figure out what they do, box it up, pack it up, label it, ship it, go on to the next order. So that's just a process. Whereas if I sell 50 of the not Coleman cases, I can batch print probably 40 of those orders and have that done within an hour, right? It's a different type of process. So, you know, that's where we're at right now. We're starting to ship. We have all these parts in and everything's looking good. We're still, we should get the orange and blue parts we had redone. We're hoping to get them next week and then we'll just keep going. So, you know, we'll be making pens and parts throughout the summer and shipping throughout the summer and we'll get it done. They're looking awesome though. I love this pen. I love, everyone I pack up, I'm like, ooh, this is a nice pen. And I do that all day long. So that's pretty cool.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So I'm still waiting, right? Because I'm an Orange Crush person.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' You're an Orange Crush, yes. So you'll be, whenever we get those in and ready, we'll circle back to like the top of the list because we're just doing it in backer order.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, backer order based upon availability. Yep. Yep.