The Pen Addict 345/transcript

The Pen Addict Podcast Transcript
Episode:	345
Title:	A Very Brad Dowdy Situation
Release Date:	February 6th, 2019
Hosts:	Brad Dowdy Myke Hurley
Guests:	No guests this episode
Additional Information
Official page:	Episode 345
Audio File:	Audio Episode 345
Podcast page:	The Pen Addict 345
Length:	7272 min <br />1.2 h <br /> minutes
Previous Transcript	Next Transcript

Myke Hurley: From RelayFM, this is The Pen Addict, episode 345, and today's show is brought to you by FreshBooks and ExpressVPN. My name is Myke Hurley, I'm joined by Brad Dowdy.

Brad Dowdy: Hello, Myke Hurley.

Myke Hurley: Hey, big business boy.

Myke Hurley: Big business money boy Brad. That's his full name now. We're going to get into that a little bit later on, I think. Well, we're definitely going to.

Brad Dowdy: Brad's a big boy now.

Myke Hurley: Big business boy, money boy, that's what we'll call him. I want to start off with some follow-up, though. We're going to bury the big topic after some follow-up and some news items, as we always do.

Brad Dowdy: Lots of good news, lots of follow-up and good news items.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, you seem like you're in a good mood today.

Brad Dowdy: There's a lot I actually want to talk about besides my own stuff.

Myke Hurley: Good. I got my Mark 1, or my two Mark 1s, I should say. Nice. But I immediately lost one to my wife.

Brad Dowdy: Oh, nice. I was wondering what this meant. I was ready for a legitimate loss based on the show notes I'm reading here, but you trolled me there. And Adina's actually stolen one because it's a darn good pin, right?

Myke Hurley: They did not last very long. She has the black one now, and I have the white one. And, you know, I will repeat everything that you said. Of course, it's wonderful. The knock is wonderful. It was funny because I have like three prototypes of the Mark 1 now, and I was comparing the mechanism to some of the old ones, and that was a big surprise to me. It was just funny. It was like, oh, yeah, it was a really good idea that you went back to the drawing board on this one because that standard knock that Schmidt make is junk. Right. So I'm really pleased. It's fine.

Brad Dowdy: I don't think it's junk, but I understand the dislike for it. Let me rephrase that. The dislike for it.

Myke Hurley: It is comparably junk. On its own, it's fine. When you compare it to this thing, it's mushy and so unsatisfying, right? Like, it's not good. I don't like it.

Brad Dowdy: Well, the problem that we've discussed for years is that's your choice. It's either Schmidt or you create your own, and a lot of people have decided to create their own because it's not satisfying. It doesn't make your product special. Not at all. Because it goes squish.

Myke Hurley: That's kind of how it feels. But the Mark 1 is incredible. And again, like, I will echo what you said about the tolerances of this pen. Like, I'm shaking it around now. Nothing. Silent. Nothing moves in this pen except the things that need to move. And it has seen how well this thing is made. So, obviously, Studio Neat did a wonderful, wonderful job. I love the white and the copper. Love, love, love that combination. If you haven't got one of these, you should get one. They're still shipping out. I think they're having some problems with the white ones, but they should all be shipped out in February, I think. Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: They sent out an email yesterday or this morning, something I read. And also, quick, quick shout out to our buddies, Dan and Tom. Dan reached out to me yesterday on our product launch of the Spoke Pen, which we'll talk about yesterday. And I really appreciate his support for that. You know, we're all in this thing together and, you know, supporting your buddies and doing good things and sharing good work, you know, as always. Really, really appreciate it.

Myke Hurley: So, thank you. But there were some new products. There's some new cafecos. What do you think of this?

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, actually, I meant to put these in the show notes last week and we just got so busy. And I've been wanting to talk about these. So, there's two things. One, the Frosted Sport, which is going to be the new primary sport lineup for this year. Every year, they kind of do something a little bit with the sport lineup, which is the base plastic model. Probably one of my favorite pocket pens going. And these Frosted models are awesome. This is going to be a problem for me because there is more than one in my future, right? I think they're that good because not only are the barrel designs cool with the Frosted look, it's kind of that semi-translucency. But it's all silver trim, right? That's all you need to sell me on something is make it all silver trim, right? Like, if these had gold trim, I might pick one up. And now I'm looking at these like I'm probably going to need three or all. I don't know what's going to happen here. Here's a question for the chat. And this may have come up before. And a question for our listeners. They can get with me later. Are these Kaweco, the plastic barrel ones, eyedropper-able? It seems like no because I don't see that very common. So I haven't looked at the internals enough to see if there's any kind of mechanism to stop the ink flow out. But, man, these would look cool if you could eyedropper these. But even if you can't, I'm in. Frosted's board, I'm in. What do you think?

Myke Hurley: Because they're slightly translucent, right? So if you could eyedropper these, it would be wonderful. All right.

Brad Dowdy: Chat room says absolutely yes. So chat room is filled with yeses right now. So that might be a new project for me this year to get a few of these and eyedropper them up. So I just never use it.

Myke Hurley: Right. Because it's in the same way that Franklin Kristoff's look good eyedropper. These will too. So, yeah, I'm up for that. I really like the look of these.

Myke Hurley: You know, the pink is really good. That green and blue. The yellow. Oh, God. All of them. I mean, honestly, probably the only one I'm not that interested in is the clear one. Because I have pens that look like that. I don't have pens that look like these. You know what I mean? Like, I don't have like a translucent pink or like lime green pen. So, yeah, I'm up for it. Like, I'm on board as somebody who hasn't bought a cafe co in a long time. These things for like, they're going to be like $25. It's just like, absolute no brainer. Like, 100%. So, do we know when they're going on sale?

Myke Hurley: Yes, I do.

Brad Dowdy: It's in this document here.

Myke Hurley: Oh, pre-orders are now being with the Nibsmith saying delivery expected near the end of February.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. So, not long. Can I just say about Dan Smith?

Myke Hurley: It's everything. Right?

Brad Dowdy: He's got it going on. He's got it going on.

Myke Hurley: I don't know like how this happened for him. But just like, guys got hookups.

Brad Dowdy: He's quick on the draw too. Yeah. He does not mess around.

Myke Hurley: He's good to follow on Instagram. It's where I find out about a lot of new products now.

Brad Dowdy: He takes great pictures too.

Myke Hurley: He really does.

Kaweco Sport Discussion

Brad Dowdy: Well, you really need to think about which model you want in the Frosted Sport because you could really just skip that one and save up for the Sterling Sport, which I know is really what you want, right?

Brad Dowdy: No.

Brad Dowdy: Are you sure? You don't want a Sterling Silver Kaweco Sport to carry around in your pocket every day?

Myke Hurley: No. No, I don't want that. Did you really think I wanted that? No, not at all. Okay. Good. I just checked it because like I really don't want it. No, no way. I'm pleased that it exists for the people that want it. But like under no circumstances am I interested in a Sterling Silver Kaweco Sport for what I'm sure will be like a billion dollars. That thing's going to be super expensive.

Brad Dowdy: 1500 euro. Yeah, no thanks. Are you in? No, I'm not. No. You sure? No. I think I might pass on this one. Chat, bang, remind me six months. Do you really think? Yeah, no. No, I don't. But I like that I'm annoying you with it.

Myke Hurley: They're making a red Kaweco grip too.

Myke Hurley: But this product like doesn't work anymore with the new one. Like this product is dead for the new Apple Pencil. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, yeah, exactly. That flat side killed it.

Myke Hurley: They even call it out in their press release. They're like, oh, no, it's not going to work anymore.

Brad Dowdy: They have to. Yeah. Yeah, they have to. Unless they create a flat side on their pin.

Myke Hurley: Well, it's the induction charging is the problem. It won't work through the...

Brad Dowdy: Oh, yeah. True, true, true. It will fit.

Myke Hurley: Like it will 100% fit. You could use this with the new Apple Pencil and it would work. Like with all of the benefits you had last time. But it won't attach and it won't charge. So you would have to take it out of the grip every time you want to charge it. So that kind of sucks. It's like killed the product. But I think they had a pretty good life for the original one. The original one is still sold and is still used by other versions of the iPad. So like it still works. But if you have the new Apple Pencil with the new iPad Pro, it's not going to work.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, this is the Tiffany fountain pen, right? The selling sport. This belongs in the... Yeah.

Myke Hurley: I mean, they sell it with this huge stand, right? Like they know what they're doing, you know? It comes in a huge box with this like display stand that you can put on your desk. So like at least they're owning it, right? Because like that's what it should be. But I don't know who's buying this. I don't know if I've ever met someone who loves Kaweco this much. I'm sure they exist out there, right? Because it's a cool brand.

Brad Dowdy: We will see one in person this year.

Myke Hurley: 100%. I do not doubt that we will see one. I just don't know who that person is yet.

Tiffany Fountain Pen

Brad Dowdy: And I want... I'm fascinated by this pen. I will not own this pen. I'm utterly fascinated by it.

Myke Hurley: Why?

Brad Dowdy: Because it's ridiculous.

Myke Hurley: Okay.

Brad Dowdy: I mean, in an awesome kind of way. Like I just want to see it. Like I want to see it and I will grin ear to ear and hand it right back to the person. And it's just like I just want to hold it and touch it. I don't want to own it, you know? But I don't know. I'm fascinated. I don't know. I'm fascinated by it. But like not in a purchasing it kind of way. Yes. If you will. So interesting. I like when companies make like the crazy thing just so we'll talk about it. Yeah. I'm always down for crazy.

Myke Hurley: Something that's not crazy. I don't think these are crazy. These are crazy awesome. Lamy's put out a YouTube video, which is a fun way to show off their special edition products for 2019. It is way too long. It's six minutes and 40 seconds. So, you know, my recommendation is like YouTube has speed controls. So like just wrap this one up to two times speed and you'll get done in three minutes. Start to complete the useless countdown.

Lamy Pen Discussion

Brad Dowdy: I put a link in the show notes just now that breaks them all down. Okay. It has individual videos. So that's what I watched. These are fascinating, right?

Myke Hurley: These are beautiful. They've done a great job.

Brad Dowdy: Like what is Lamy doing right now? Because this is amazing. Like I wrote about this in Refill this weekend and I wanted to put it in the show notes and I popped in and you'd already dropped it in there. Like this is killer. Like really good job, Lamy. Yeah. I know I give you an extremely hard time. Fan freaking tastic on these videos, right? It's like I need that lime green Pico now. It's good, man. Like I had no interest in buying an Ion. I might have to get a red one. Like what is wrong with you, Lamy?

Brad Dowdy: They need to get on the same page inside the building there because this is amazing.

Myke Hurley: In the same page in what way?

Brad Dowdy: It just, their releases just don't seem to jive with the visuals that they present. I don't know. Whoever commissioned these videos needs to be like the new VP of everything at Lamy or something.

Myke Hurley: Right. But the colors and stuff are great though, right? I know. Yeah. They're great. I mean, all those safaris? I'm into that.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. I'm into it.

Pen Count Shift

Myke Hurley: Like I want all five of them. There are five, by the way, which I don't know if we knew before. I'd always been seeing three. Three, yeah. There are five, right? Yeah. Or at least in the video there are five. It's kind of confusing because the video shows like a whole big range of colors, but it looks like that there's three of them. I'm a bit confused, to be honest. But I want all five that they're showing in the video.

Brad Dowdy: Right. So, Kawekos and Lamy's, that's 10 pins right there so far this year, right?

Myke Hurley: Mm-hmm. Hey, I prefer to want more than I will buy than to be disappointed. I like a wealth of choice.

Brad Dowdy: So, here's something for you. I received a package from a friend that purported to contain the Lamy Topaz ink cartridges for like the new All-Star that they're doing. You know, this year's limited edition one. And I say purported because I'm really not sure. Like it was, I don't know if it's in the real box or not. The ink looks brown in the cartridge, but it goes down orangey, very orangey. So, I'm hesitant to share it just yet. Are we doing this again? I'm trying to get more details on it. Is this what we're doing again?

Myke Hurley: Okay, do we have to do another Lamy pen serial style show of trying to work out the... Yeah. Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: So, yeah. I said Topaz. It's bronze. It's supposed to be bronze. So, maybe bronze is orangey, but this doesn't look like the pen, but it's a cool color on its own. So, we'll see. I'll have to decipher this more. It's from a very trusted source, Michael, but I'm a little bit awkward on that. Speaking of trusted sources, I got a bunch of friends that went to the New York stationery show this past week and were spilling the beans on Blackwing's new stuff that I couldn't share because I'm a man of my word. They told me, and they told me I couldn't tell, but once an image linked on Instagram of this new thing that I had been hearing about, I felt it was fair game. And it's one of the most anticipated things that Blackwing could have done is that make an extra firm core and a natural wood pencil available in their product lineup. Can I share this image? You may not share this image. I do not have permission because that image has been pulled down from the Instagram.

Myke Hurley: Okay.

Brad Dowdy: So, there's literally a thing in our show notes that says, do not post in show notes. Michael, can you read?

Myke Hurley: Well, but no. Okay. But then I thought, because then you were like, oh, but then stuff started to come out and I thought I could talk about it. So, I thought that maybe something had changed and you should put the image in.

Brad Dowdy: No, I went and looked to see if I could find a live image currently and I couldn't. So, I'm not comfortable putting it in there. But, I mean, we predicted this or like we wished for this last year. At least I did in for my 2019 what I want to see from companies. But it's also like predicting that A is the first letter of the alphabet, right? It's super obvious that they were going to do this. This was the most requested thing by far. Not just an extra firm core, but an all natural pencil. So, hey, they did it all in one. And so, those are going to be coming out next week, I think. 18th, I think, was the date on something like that. So, not too long now. So, I'm sure they'll be announcing more. They shared them with all the people at the National Stationery Show. So, it's not like a huge secret. But there are pictures on the internet now. And I felt like it was good enough to share that info because I'm excited about it. That's what I want. And that's what most people want who are Blackwing fans.

Brad Dowdy: With all this good news, Myke, we got to bring it down a notch a little bit. But our buddies at Wancher, the Arushi Pin Kickstarter champions of all time, with this crazy insane project that we thought was crazy insane, but I also felt it was crazy good and I'm a backer and supporter of, has taken quite some time. We assumed that from the beginning. I called this. Do you remember? Oh, we both did. I said it was a moral lot that they would not make their dates.

Myke Hurley: I think I was much more skeptical than you, though, just in general, the whole project. But I think we both agreed that they would never be able to make these pens in the time frames that they were purporting to be able to do.

Brad Dowdy: Not in a million years. Right.

Myke Hurley: That it was just never, ever, ever going to happen because they got too many orders. And it just didn't, it was like physics felt like they were going to work against them because they just couldn't make these pens fast enough. It's just physically impossible to do that.

Brad Dowdy: Yep. And I still backed it. Like, I knew, like, this is going to take forever. And about a year, I think we're about exactly a year now later, they're starting to ship the first batch of Arushi pens. I didn't get a shipping notification. I was an early backer and I have a pretty basic pen. Yeah, I can't believe this.

Myke Hurley: Their estimated deliveries were, like, beginning in April of 2018.

Brad Dowdy: I think that was for Ebonite pens, though. Was that Arushi or just Ebonite?

Myke Hurley: Yeah, you're right. That was just Ebonite. The Arushi was August. Yeah. So they're about six months late, which isn't too bad.

Brad Dowdy: No, no. Like, I knew. But that's honestly, that part was expected. Like, I think if you backed this project, you had to go into it expecting that. What you didn't expect, if you're a backer, was the previous update where they posted about an issue they had with acquiring the rose gold nibs. I actually have a pretty big problem with what they've done here. I don't know all the details other than what they've spelled out in this campaign. But they're saying they basically had a difficult time sourcing the Yovo rose gold nibs. And I just have, like, a big perception problem with this. Because we're a year into this project. And I don't know how many people backed it. It was several hundred. And 30% of them chose rose gold nibs. So say, let's just say for ease of conversation, we needed 250 rose gold nibs. Okay. How can you not acquire that within a year? I don't understand. This does not add up in my head. So what they're actually doing is they're punting on the rose gold nib. If you order the rose gold nib, you do not get a choice to get it. What you get is this Watcher custom nib that they've been supposedly working on for four years.

Brad Dowdy: And it's not rose gold is a choice, right? You buy it for the aesthetic of the color. And you're not getting that. When you pay this amount of money for a pen, you expect to have it the look that you wanted. And having a gold nib for that is just not going to work for some people.

Myke Hurley: Right. So they're saying then, just so I can make sure I'm following, they couldn't get the rose gold nibs that they wanted from the place that they wanted. So now they're just not doing it? Yeah. Correct. They're not getting them from Yovo. They're not getting Yovo nibs at all. So now they're just like, well, you'll get gold now, not rose gold.

Brad Dowdy: And you'll get Watcher nibs, not Yovo nibs. Which no one's used the Watcher nibs because they're something new that they're doing.

Myke Hurley: And what is the situation for the non-rose gold nibs?

Brad Dowdy: You get those.

Myke Hurley: So you're getting the Yovo?

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, Yovo rhodium plated nib.

Myke Hurley: Why don't they just swap out the, I mean, you don't know this, but why aren't they just swapping out the rose gold Yovo nibs for other Yovo nibs?

Brad Dowdy: That would make it better because this feels like a bait and switch.

Myke Hurley: Because now you're getting like... This feels dirty. Can you even swap the nib yourself? Like what are Wancha nibs going on? Like what feeds are they going on to?

Brad Dowdy: That's a good point. The Wancha, I don't know. I'm imagining... I mean, did Yovo make these Wancha nibs?

Myke Hurley: Because the thing is, right? Someone has to make them. If you get a Yovo nib, you can swap it out for other Yovo nibs, right? But like, what are these Wancha nibs? Like what are they? Because you maybe can't swap it out so easily.

Brad Dowdy: Which, that really sucks. This just feels like a mistake. Like this feels wrong in the people that are getting affected.

Myke Hurley: I feel like this is a decision that they shouldn't have just made on their own.

Brad Dowdy: Yep.

Myke Hurley: Hmm. I would be annoyed about this. I really would be annoyed about this. I would be too.

Brad Dowdy: Like I'm not affected by it.

Brad Dowdy: But it's super... If I was, I would be hot. Like this is not a suitable answer to me.

Brad Dowdy: For what they're doing. So we'll see what happens. I don't know what their feedback's been like.

Myke Hurley: But I will say though, if this is the biggest problem that they encounter and talk about, like that is a big surprise to me. Because I figured they would have way more than this when it comes to the issues.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Yeah. So it's just weird. It's like not all or none. It's partials. And it's not original. I don't know. It's super confusing. I just... I have a problem with the timing is what I have a problem with. Right? The quantity is not that large. I don't feel for 12 months of sourcing.

Brad Dowdy: It's weird. It sounds weird. So I don't know. You know, there's going to be some people that should be rightfully upset. I don't know. But I think the problem I really have is you paid a lot of money for this pen.

Myke Hurley: Not me.

Brad Dowdy: Right. But the Royal U. Well, the Royal... Yes. The Royal U paid a lot of money for this pen. And I'll be danged. I want what I ordered on this case. Or some other type of reasonable choice. They're basically being told not being able to choose. Yeah.

Myke Hurley: You would want like for like. And I don't know if you're going to get that. Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: Right? Right. That's the thing is we don't know. This pen, this new nib could be the best nib ever created. Known to man.

Myke Hurley: Well, I'm also going to... I will maintain nobody even knows what they're getting at all.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah.

Myke Hurley: No one knows what these pens are going to turn out like yet. Because nobody's gotten them. I am so fascinated to see what they turn out like. And honestly, not the one you get. Sure. Right? I want to... I'm very intrigued to see what people talk about. Right? Yeah. Just the average person. And again... We're going to be seeing some original pens pretty soon. I'm not trying to cast aspersions on this company. But like just in general, if Brad backs a Kickstarter campaign, I am more interested to see... I always keep my eye on what other people say. Right? Like it's like if I'm the person making a pen and you back it, I am going to like double, triple, 1,000 check your one.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. I get like a little highlight mark or a star next to my name. I understand. Yeah. It better be right. Right? It better be right.

Myke Hurley: So like it's always a point of like checking what other people say too. Right? Which is like the same with the Mark 1. Right? Like you got yours. You loved it. I got mine. I loved it. But again, I know that mine was picked out and sent to me in advance because they had to send me some other stuff too.

Brad Dowdy: I'm assuming mine was too because I've had mine for weeks.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. Yeah. But in the same vein, like I'm always then going to keep an eye on like what other people are saying. And, you know, I can see on Twitter that people are super excited about the Mark 1. Right? Because again, like they retweet the people that are super excited about it, but like they're regular customers. So I kind of treat the watcher the same. I'm sure yours is going to be good, but I want to see what other people are saying about it too, because who knows? Exactly. Nobody knows.

Brad Dowdy: Exactly. No, I agree. I agree with that. Like you have to take a lot of things I say and like apply some context to things like that. So for sure, things to think about. So this is a long way from over and we're already a long way into it. So, you know, we're not in any kind of scribble pen territory here, but it's getting interesting, Myke. It's getting interesting.

Myke Hurley: Mm-hmm.

Brad Dowdy: Smoke break.

Myke Hurley: Let's take an ad break. Let's talk about ExpressVPN. They're our first sponsor of today's episode.

Myke Hurley: I don't, you know, I just, these days, you cannot walk in any direction without seeing something about some security breach somewhere. Someone's got your data. Someone's using your data badly. This is the world that we live in today. And so it's only becoming more and more natural to worry about where your data is going and where your private information is and what risks you're taking. You're being tracked every day by social media websites and marketing companies, maybe even your internet provider. They want your browsing history. They want to know where you're going. Take back your privacy with ExpressVPN. ExpressVPN works by securing and anonymizing your internet browsing. It encrypts your data and hides your public IP address. You can turn on ExpressVPN protection with just one click. They have easy to use apps that run seamlessly in the background of all your devices, computer, your phone, your tablet, and it costs less than $7 a month. ExpressVPN is rated the number one VPN service by TechRadar. And I mean, I agree. I've loved it. It's super fast, super easy. Like when I was traveling in Seattle, I just had it on all the time because I was connecting to a lot of public Wi-Fi networks. And I came home and left it on on my iPad for like a week and a half and didn't notice the difference. Like there was no speed changes or anything. And yeah, it's great. Like if you ever need to use public Wi-Fi and you want to keep the bad guys away, you should try out ExpressVPN. Like I've been very, very happy with it and they have a bunch of information on their website so you can find out more and you can find out about like kind of their practices and what they believe in. Go to expressvpn.com slash penaddict. If you don't want your online history in the hands of your internet provider or data resellers, ExpressVPN is the answer. And you can get three months free of a one-year package when you go to expressvpn.com slash penaddict. That is expressvpn.com slash penaddict for three extra months free of a one-year package. Our thanks to ExpressVPN for their support of this show and RelayFM.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, I told you I bought it after they sponsored last time because I already used one provider. Since they were sponsoring the show, I've said, hey, I'll give them a shot. Use the code penaddict. I mean, I'm technically inclined as it is, but I need products like this to be super simple to set up and install on all my devices. And it was just, it was dead simple. It's working well. I haven't really traveled with it much yet, but that's why I use a lot of the VPN for. But I've had it on the house. Don't notice anything, anything different. So that's what I want to see out of a product like this. So yeah, very good.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. And I've looked at that. Look, I'm no lawyer, but like I've looked at their privacy policy and it makes sense to me. Like I am personally happy using this service. So they do a lot of really interesting stuff about the way that they look after data and get rid of data. So definitely a really great. I'm very happy with them. Big news. Big news. Brad Dowdy finally has made a pen. Now let me, I want to give a bit of background about this because this isn't the first time that we've made statements like that. Brad has had pens in the past. So the Franklin Kristoff pen and the Retro 51s. But these are pens, you can correct me if I'm wrong, Brad, that already existed that were given the Brad Dowdy treatment, right? In some way. Yeah, that's a good way to. Right? Like some design flair to them that you like. But this pen built in collaboration with Spoke Design who make that wonderful pencil that we spoke about a little while ago, which we'll talk about again in a minute. This is a straight up Brad Dowdy design like influenced pen, like straight from the ground up. This is just a color thing. This is a, I want to make a pen for a specific reason and I want it to have these features. Let's make that pen. Like how you work with Jeff to make the cases you want. You know, like this is a very similar situation, I would probably say, right? In which you have worked with Brian to create the pen that you want.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, that's the more I think about this relationship with me and Brian and Spoke Pen and me and Jeff and not. It is eerily similar in that I've been lucky enough to find people that can make the things that are in my head. That's a challenge, right? Because I can't do the things that Jeff does and I can't do the things that Brian does, but they don't bring to the table what I can bring. So it's kind of like this good match.

New Business Ventures

Myke Hurley: That idea has been a great inspiration to me. We haven't spoken about it yet, but I'm in the realm of starting my own company that makes stuff.

Myke Hurley: This is something that me and Gray are working on together. It's a company called Cortex Brand. We've kind of unveiled it recently and we're working on stuff, but it's the same idea. They're like, I have ideas. We have ideas, but I can't do them. So I need to find people to help me do them. So, yeah.

Brad Dowdy: And that is super not easy to find those people, right? No. That's why I didn't make a pen four or five years ago when people were saying, hey, you should make a pen. I was like, well, it's got to feel right. It's got to be right. I have to understand everything more than I understand it now. I got to decide on, you know, does something, does it need to exist? Is there a market for it? All these things like just years and years and years are just rattling around in my head and then boom, project yesterday.

Brad Dowdy: That's how it happens, Myke. You just, you just open up the computer and go, I'm going to have a project today. And you click the button and go.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. And I don't think it's that easy, but you can get into some of the details. So I will run through some of the specifics. It's on Kickstarter right now. It launched yesterday, February 5th, and there's 31 days to go. So 457 backers at the moment. It was a goal of $20,000, which was met in two hours. Two hours. Which was wild to watch that happening. That was not expected. No. The project is at $38,000 right now. So probably by the time you're hearing this, it's at 200% would be my expectation. It was so much fun yesterday for me. I can't even imagine what it was like for you to watch the numbers just like ticking, ticking, ticking all the way through. So that's incredible. Congratulations to you and Brian for this. So the pen will be made, obviously. And many, many more of them are going to be made. I want to know, though, going kind of back to the beginning, why did this partnership begin? Why did it happen? And then kind of how did it lead to this pen?

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Brian had been making stuff like stationary products for years before I even noticed Spoke Pencil. Like I remember the very first Spoke Pencil. I remember seeing that. He might have even emailed me years and years ago or someone sent it to me. Hey, look at this Kickstarter project for this pencil. I was like, okay, I'm not really going to use that. But cool. Yeah, looks good. And then just moved on. And that was like the Spoke Pencil version one. And then he's had a version two and a version three. And I never noticed or saw any of those. Didn't know they existed. And then the Spoke Pencil 4 launched. And I saw some Instagram pictures of it. I was like, whoa, I need that. Like that's my pencil. We both have one.

Myke Hurley: You showed it to me. And I was like, oh, damn, no, I'm going to buy it. And I bought one.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. I was like, that's my pencil. Like who makes, what's the deal here? And I was like, Spoke. Yeah, that kind of sounds familiar. Then I went back and looked at the first project. I was like, oh, that kind of sounds familiar. So I bought mine, got it, raved about it. You know, I don't know if Brian emailed me first saying, hey, thanks for sharing that. He probably did. And or I reached out to him. But that was, I went back and looked through my emails. And I ordered it on December like 22nd. It was like my Christmas present to me, I guess. And then I got the pen and pencil in early January. And then I found this email, Myke. Let's see. From January 15th, 2018. Me to Brian. You free now? I have ideas. Oh, gosh.

Brad Dowdy: And here we are. That's how it starts with me. Yeah.

Myke Hurley: So that is a very Brad Dowdy situation for sure. Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: So we can put that email in the show notes. It's pretty funny. That's like, that's all it says. I'm very, I don't have time for email. So Brian is like, I'm going to compare him to Jeff a lot. And I'm sorry if that's unfair to either of them. But what's weird, what I find weird about both of these guys is they're just incessant tinkerers. Right? Like I'm not that way. It's like, I see a thing and I'm like, well, let's, I don't know if I can figure out how to make the thing. And they're like, well, I'm going to figure out how to make the thing. Right? It's this whole mindset that both of these guys have. So Brian just starts firing ideas off. I mean, and there's like chains of messages and texts and pictures and images and prototypes. I'm going to start sharing some of the early prototypes I got from Brian, like early last year, like in the spring. And then like by the summer, like early June or so, we had kind of figured out most of what we wanted the design to be. So, you know, the general aesthetic. And now is figuring out, well, what does the clip material need to be to ensure it's durable? What does the nose cone shape need to be to look good and function properly? And, you know, attached to the magnet, how strong does the magnet need to be? All these extra, extra fine details. That took months. We were initially, when we started talking early last year, we wanted to launch like September last year. But it just takes that long. Right? Like we've talked about how I've got all these things launching at once. It's because it takes that long. It's not, the intention was never to have all these things be land on top of each other.

Myke Hurley: Especially because, let's be real, you're going to have two overlapping Kickstarter campaigns.

Brad Dowdy: We're going to be launching the pinout campaign hopefully within two weeks. Yes.

Myke Hurley: So, there's going to be two overlapping campaigns, which is less than ideal for you, I think. Right? Like just to split in your attention and people's money. But, you know, that sometimes it's just the way that things go.

Brad Dowdy: Right. But like we're, you know, we have a lot invested in the spoke pin. We have, you know, hundreds of test parts that we've, you know, we've got, you know, expenses and things in this. So, at some point you have to push the button. Yes. Right?

Myke Hurley: You can't just sell it forever.

Brad Dowdy: Right. So, like we're, we're, we were done sitting on it over the holidays. Like we weren't going to launch in December or, you know, first of January. So, this is when it happened. Like even though we wanted it to happen in September, we weren't ready. So, yeah. Like the amount of tinkering and sampling and prototyping we did to get this to where it is, has been a lot. Like I have so many parts at my house. I can imagine what Brian's house and garage looks like. Like he has all the equipment to quickly prototype, but not to like mass produce. Right. He can print, do 3D printed parts. He can, has a small lathe. Like he can knock out like the prototype stuff for us to test out and see if we want to pursue it further. So, yeah. As of yesterday, we were ready to pursue it further.

Pen Design Discussion

Myke Hurley: So, I want to talk about the design of the pen a little bit and kind of like understand why, why this pen, why this refill. If you can share some of those details.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. So, it's clear that I love this refill. It's been my number one gel pen recommendation for probably the existence of this blog.

Myke Hurley: And this is the Unibull Sino DX, right? Yeah. And it's many iterations, but you prefer it in the .38.

Brad Dowdy: I prefer it in the .38. We're actually shipping out the .5 with it, but I think most people are buying it because they already have the DX and want to use the purples and greens and oranges and things that they have. Yeah. I wouldn't recommend shipping it with the .38 because most people are going to like that. Yeah. We'll ship it with a basic black ink refill. But anyway, it's the best gel ink refill and the product that's the most lacking of specialty barrels for being such a popular pen. Like there's Pilot G2 barrels everywhere. There's Pilot Hitec C barrels everywhere for like two of the most popular gel ink pens. And the DX has never gotten that treatment other than like in a mass refill pen like the Ti Arto, which I love and I'm huge fans of the Big Eye Design guy. And so it's got like a clamp in the front of the pen to adjust to, you know, 200 different refills. And they did an old DX just like a tube where you use the tube, like an aluminum tube or stainless tube and use like the front end of the DX tip refill and screw it on there. But that was never a good option. And that's one of like their first designs like seven or eight years ago. So the DX just does not have its own pen. And it's such a popular pen that I like I should it should have its own barrel treatment. I thought like it just deserved it. I want it right. I'm I've always used the DX. There's always one sitting on my desk and it's always in the basic plastic barrel. Well, I'm someone who likes to upgrade the barrels and I like to have cool looking barrels and I like to have fun colors to play with. And that's I wanted to make it specifically for the DX. Brian is funny all along that he didn't wasn't aware of the DX. And I was adamant that it had to be. We're only doing this if it's specific to the DX. And he's like, well, but, you know, we could fit other refills in there. I was like, we can do that later. Like we can make all kinds of stuff later. But the DX needs some love and I want to be the one to do it. And I want you to do it with me. And he's like, I'm in. Yeah. It's like I can make generic pen for everything and maybe sell a lot more of them. Right.

Myke Hurley: Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: But there this was a deliberate choice, even though it does fit a few other refills. Actually, surprisingly enough, it doesn't fit things like the Pilot G2 or the Parker refills or the Schmidt refills. It doesn't fit any of those because it's this is the DX barrel. Like and that's what I want it to be. Like, you know, we have built and we'll talk about what we're going to do later. But I mean, we've built, you know, a pen that can be modified to other things later. But that's not what we're doing now. We're making the DX barrel and that's it.

Myke Hurley: Can I just say only a few people are going to really. Well, actually, you know what? I think a lot of people are going to do this. Get this. DX was a popular team in wrestling in like the 90s. I missed that. D-Generation X. Now, whilst again, like there aren't as many wrestling fans today, there were a lot more than. So it's just kind of funny when you say it. All I keep hearing in my head is break it down, which a lot of people will get. But yeah, sure. Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: Well, the funniest thing that I find is that this is really not the name of the pen at all. But that's what it goes by for some reason. And, you know, it's the Signo UM-151. And is it a hard G or soft G? Do we know this? It's a hard. We do. It's Signo. Because we used to call it the Sino. Right. It's Signo. Okay. That's for sure. We worked on this years ago. It's Signo. It took me a while to get my pronunciation changed. Yeah. But it is Signo.

Myke Hurley: So tell me the design of the pen. Where did the design come from? What considerations were made? And then also, like, I want to know a little bit about the options that you have available for people and why you've chosen the amount of options you've chose.

Brad Dowdy: Is it too many or too little?

Myke Hurley: Well, I think that there's quite a lot there. But there isn't as many, for example, as there were variations in the original Nockco Kickstarter campaign. Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: So we'll get down to that. But we'll talk about the style first. I love the Spoke 4 pencil sold me on anything that Brian can do. It's very reminiscent of the Spoke 4.

Myke Hurley: Right. Like, very, very much so.

Brad Dowdy: So I wanted to take that barrel and stick this refill in. And I was like, we don't have to change anything. Give me that pen and we'll jam this refill in. Well, it obviously doesn't work. It's not that simple to modify that. Because the Spoke pencil is essentially an external sleeve for a full length pintle lead mechanism. Right. So it's... But we wanted to keep that same style because that's the style I liked. I like the barrel design with the cutouts and the scalloping. I like the separate grip colors because I like to have, you know, a lot of different color options or materials options. I like to have choice.

Myke Hurley: And I bet it would be fun if you use one of the colored versions, like a colored ink, right? One of the colored scanners. You'll see some color coming through there and stuff, which would be fun.

Brad Dowdy: No. No, no, no, no. You will not. So we'll talk about this. Okay. So the way this pen is designed... So when you look at the pictures and you see that internal color, like you're looking at black probably in most of the pictures, right? That's a physical sleeve. Oh. So that's a part we will be able to change and modify. If you go look at a model we're calling the Joker, and we'll get into all these options in a second, you can see it's a purple sleeve. That's not a purple refill. So we're going to be able to choose what color. That's actually kind of better.

Myke Hurley: So in the future, you could offer different color inlays, right? Okay.

Brad Dowdy: That's a good way to put it. It's like an inlay. It's not technically an inlay, but it's an inner sleeve. That's its own cylinder in that barrel part that we slot in there. So you don't actually see the refill through the slots, through the pen slots. Okay. So it was keeping that. I wanted to keep that kind of design, the spoke four pencil design. And then it was just figuring out how to convert it into best fit the DX. The hardest part, of course, to me, with any metal pen is the closure system. You know, we weren't going to do a retractable pen. This refill is not made to be retractable. So we're going to do a capped pen. Well, with a metal capped pen, you normally do either threaded barrels, you know, cap and barrel threads or magnets because it's really hard. There's not a lot of options for metal on metal closures. We tried to avoid doing threads just from an aesthetic purpose, and we succeeded by able to do a magnet cap. But that also prevents you from posting the pen. Like, we had to make a choice. And generally with metal pens, the choice to not have the cap posted on the back is pretty common just because it ends up being technically a bad decision. You either have to adjust the barrel style, reline the cap for it to slide on deeply. Like, I've seen pens that have done it good, but only like one or two. Or you have to have a screw threading on the back end and really extend the pen. Or you have to have it wide enough so the metal will...

Myke Hurley: This pen body is too big to post. Like, I know that it's going to frustrate some people that you can't post because there are posting people out there in the world. But like, then this pen just isn't for you because it would be a disaster.

Brad Dowdy: It would be. There's no good answer to that with what we wanted to make. Like, we could recreate something maybe, you know, figure out how to do it later. But that's not a priority with this at all. So, like, in all the design decisions are based on that style of the spoke pen, but based on the options that it gives you. So, like, there's 10 different parts we talk about in the campaign. And we can, like, and it's all aluminum unless we call out titanium. But, like, the end caps on each of these pens are aluminum and they're anodized. So, we can change the colors of the end caps. We can change the colors of all these parts. And we're keeping it where we're actually down to the basics for the Kickstarter campaign aside from the two special ones we're calling addition pens. Just to give an example of, hey, later we're going to be able to make a barrel that has pretty much any color configuration you can think of. And that's going to be our goal long term. So, it's super, it seems super complex and convoluted. And we actually had a really hard time figuring out how to make the rewards as simple as possible.

Brad Dowdy: And we were changing the rewards up until about 10 minutes before launch. Like, I've been sick to my stomach for days before we launched just because it's anxiety. Like, are you doing it right? Like, is this the right thing? And the rewards are never, like, a price thing. We didn't change the pricing on any. But is it, can we convey our message to where people will understand what they're supporting, you know, by these backer levels? So, that's, like, the hardest challenge with writing the rewards when you have several options of pens. So, we actually try to keep it as simple as possible from a Kickstarter perspective. And then we can get crazy after the Kickstarter when we're selling them directly since it's funded and it looks like it's going to be a thing.

Myke Hurley: Hmm. So, the options that you have, all the colors and stuff, is this not a problem? Like, how are you going to do this? For us? Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: For us in manufacturing and assembly and stuff. So, no, I don't see it as being a problem. Um, we have a factory that can batch anodize us parts in, like, the hundreds of quantities, like, small enough quantities, um, to where it's very feasible to us to offer several different colors. And we'll be assembling all the pens ourselves. Me and Brian, we're doing the assembly of the pens. So, we're ordering parts. And, um, and then doing the assembly ourselves. So, yeah. I, I mean, it's kind of like, well, this is the start. And we have, you know, options to do lots of fun colors. Let's do it. Why would, I don't want to, I mean, there's only in some, I love all my black and silver pens, but, you know, I need some color on my desk too. Right? Why don't we do it?

Myke Hurley: Evan Max in the chat just suggested the title, We Have a Factory, which, like, Brad hated Pet the DX so much that he went and bought a factory. And now he's making his own, his own pens.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, we do not, we do not have a factory. We have an assembly line. The B&B assembly line is about all we have. We do not have a factory, but we have factories that do our work for us. Where is Brian based? Uh, North Carolina. Okay, so that's not too far for you. We meet frequently. Again, it's just, it's like, I didn't know where he was when we started the thing, right? That's how it was with Jeff. It's like, the similarities are just eerie.

Myke Hurley: So I did back, by the way. Thank you. Because I love my buddy. And I've gone for the two pens because I want the Joker and the Orange Crush. I want them two, which are, they are what you're calling spoke pen edition. Right. So like, as well as the, like, the seven color options that you have, silver, red, orange, purple, gold, blue, and black, which are the traditional ones, which you can get in aluminum or titanium grip, right? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. You're also doing two kind of like put together customs. So one is the Joker, which is a gold body. Lime green. Lime, lime green. Lime green. Sorry. It looks a bit gold. Any pictures, man, what are you going to do? Could be. Anodization, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And you've got like a purple inlay with a purple cap and a black aluminum grip. That's that one. And the Orange Crush, wonderful name, REM reference, acknowledged, which is all orange with a aluminum, silver aluminum inside and a titanium grip and aluminum end caps. Mm-hmm. So why are you doing these two as well? Is it just for funsies? Yes. Because we want to show what we expect to offer when we're done. So the ultimate idea here is a, again, very knock-co-like bunch of colors that we think look cool in a limited run maybe or run for a period of time. Like here's five pens.

Brad Dowdy: They all look like this, but they don't look boring. Right. So we'll have a stock lineup, which is essentially our black anodized aluminum parts with colored barrels, right? The classic lineup, if you will. Then we'll have the additions lineup where we can do whatever we want, right? You will always be able to buy a stock, you know, spoke pin that looks really cool and is really nice and really well made. And then we're going to be able to do some really cool stuff with materials and colors in the pin. And the DX is a good platform for that because they have like 30 different colored refills already. Like if, you know, maybe we'll make a unicorn barf pin for your pink refill, like, you know, and we can just do smaller batches and smaller additions of these and, you know, release them every quarter or six months. I don't know. We haven't totally figured that out, but we wanted to put those pins in as an example of the fun stuff we'll be able to do later. And if you've been involved in business with me for a long time now, if I'm not having fun, I'm not going to do it. So like if I can do fun, fun, silly stuff while doing really good stuff at the same time, I'm even like more in than ever before. So it's funny you mentioned the orange crush and the color of the Joker, because I told Brian sent me the picture of the orange crush with REM's monster CD behind it. And I said, oh yeah, that looks good. Except orange crushes on green, you know, the green album. And that has an orange color to a tint to it. But he put the green album up against and the background, like he did with the monster CD. And it basically turned the pin yellow. So we couldn't use it. So the orange colors of those two CDs affected how these anodization colors look in light, which is why what you're, why what you're calling gold is actually green. And what's purple, you know, some people have called magenta. Like it's super hard to, to do the anodization. But I will say like our group picture, like the rainbowish type picture, those colors are really accurate. But you know, you never know with anodization, there can always be some variants. But I thought that was a funny little anecdote. We couldn't use the picture of the real album that the, that the name came from because it threw off the color too much.

Myke Hurley: That's wonderful. All right. I have some more questions for you, but let's take a break and thank our friends over at FreshBooks. It's probably very pertinent to you right now. Small business owners, they need to do invoicing. They need to do expense tracking and they need to get paid. FreshBooks does this and they drastically reduce the time that it takes for their over 10 million customers to deal with these exact issues. So FreshBooks can automate late payment email reminders. So when you send out an invoice with their wonderful system, which is so easy to use, which by the way, the way that you design it in their platform is exactly how it will arrive in the inbox. It's like what you see is what you get. So once you send that invoice out, they can automate checking when it's been sent. And if it extends the period of time that you've set, they can send out late payment email reminders for you automatically. So you don't have to spend time chasing payments. You can spend more time getting your work done. And on every invoice, they track everything for you. So they'll see when it's been opened. They'll see what it's received, right? Open. So you can see when it's printed. It's one of the things I love about FreshBooks. So you can see exactly how your invoice is progressing through your client system, which is wonderful. If you're listening to this and you still haven't tried out FreshBooks, now is the time because they are offering an unrestricted 30-day free trial for listeners of this very show. No credit card required to do it. All you have to do is go to freshbooks.com slash penaddict and enter the penaddict in the how did you hear about us section. So it's freshbooks.com slash penaddict to sign up for that 30-day trial. Our thanks to FreshBooks for their support of this show and RelayFM.

Myke Hurley: All right. So this is obviously a big success for you so far. And, you know, long may this Kickstarter continue to grow and grow and grow in funds. You know, let's keep that going. It's even continuing to go up as we're recording today, which is wonderful. But I want to know what the future holds for this collaboration. Like, is this a one-time deal? What's going to happen here?

Brad Dowdy: No. So we don't have any dead set numbers that if we hit this goal, this happens. Or if we hit this goal, that happens. But I think, essentially, Brian and I looked at this as the trial run to partnership in the company for me, if you will. All right. Like, it's his company. But if this goes well, we become full partners. It has gone well. Yeah. Yeah. And so we become full partners in Spoke. So I'm essentially a co-beic. This is not finalized or anything yet, but we're tracking this way. I'll essentially be a co-owner of Spoke, like I am of Nock. And I'll have my hands in all of the Spoke products going forward. And we'll be, essentially, a part of the company as a co-owner, as an equal partner in the company. So that's the goal to get this done and using this campaign to test that out. And I'd say it's gone pretty well so far. So, you know, like I'll have my hands in, you know, Spoke pencil things and whatever other Spoke products we create. So, yeah, this will be a full-on business entity under the pen addict umbrella, if you will.

Myke Hurley: I'm really excited about that.

Project Scope Discussion

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Yeah. Like this isn't a one-off project, right? Unless it like tanked or just did average or whatever. Then, you know, one and done. We're happy. We made a cool pen. And we'll move on and we'll keep doing our own things. But if we can make it a thing, then we felt it's best that I come on as an equal partner in the company. And I think that's where we're headed.

Myke Hurley: What is like the process looking like from getting these out though? Like how are you feeling about the deadline that you set?

Brad Dowdy: Pretty good. Pretty good. At some point, if for some reason this goes like haywire berserk, right? Once we, like if we, I don't know, starting, I don't even know what the number would be. Like if we all of a sudden like hit 80,000 and there's no end in sight, we'll stop our current reward levels. And then we'll have to offer a second batch of reward levels where we push them back like two or three months, right? Okay. So that's all. We're not capped by quantity. We will be capped like by time and we'll have to push that back at some point just because we can't physically put all these pens together in a reasonable time frame. But, you know, we're still a little bit ways off from that, but we do have that plan in place if it gets to a number where we feel is untenable. Our factories have been, can turn around our products really quickly. Like all of our prototype stuff has had good turnaround times and, you know, we haven't done any like large scale assembly, but, you know, it seems like it should go reasonably. So right now we feel totally fine at that. And if we feel it starts getting too far or too much, we will, we'll have a separate timeline for later backers.

Myke Hurley: I think that that's perfectly reasonable, right? Like that makes a lot of sense.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. But like nothing will affect like the, the quantities we receive or anything like that. We like physically getting the stuff is not an issue. It's just the time to put things together would push us back a little bit if it got, got a little bit crazy.

Myke Hurley: And, you know, everybody's favorite question, stretch goals, stretch goals. You're going to have those.

Brad Dowdy: We don't have defined stretch goals. We might do something. If we did anything, we'd, we'd, we'd throw in another choice for people to choose for an addition color or material or something like that. Brian and I are on the same page on stretch goals. And we've talked about stretch goals a thousand times. I'm not anti stretch goal, but it's, you got to do it for a reason. And it's just really kind of got to be a throw in. It's not, we don't do stretch goals to get people like, you're not going to do a stretch goal and get a lot of new people into the campaign necessarily. You're doing it for your backers to give them something else cool for doing something well. And, you know, we don't have defined levels or defined product that we do for that. So maybe, maybe not probably leaning towards maybe not, but you never know.

Myke Hurley: There has to be a reason, right? And if it doesn't come up naturally, there's no point forcing it.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. So we don't do force or stretch goals. We're not set at every, you know, $10,000. We're going to introduce a new color. We're not going to do that.

Myke Hurley: And there are some campaigns that are built that way and it's fine. But if your campaign isn't built that way, it's not necessarily a good idea to just push it.

Brad Dowdy: Because if it, if it was built that way, we'd have launched with three colors and I would have released the next four just to be a tease, right? Like I would have already had it done. I'm just going to give you all the stuff up front. And I hope you like it and you can choose to back it then. I'm not going to like purposely hide the other stuff just for every 5,000 marks so I can send you an email.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. All right. I'm very proud of you. Thank you. Because you're just continuing to do more great stuff very well and seeing incredible success.

Brad Dowdy: We're really happy with where this has gone so far. It's exceeded our expectations by a lot, I think. Yeah. By a lot.

Myke Hurley: Less than 24 hours, 200%. That's kabunkers. Yeah. This is probably your most successful like in pure like...

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. I think launch wise. The launch. Yeah.

Myke Hurley: I'm trying to find the terms, you know.

Brad Dowdy: It's like usually like the first 48 hours and the last 48 hours are where all the... Yeah. All the big movement happens. This is definitely like... And we didn't set like a phony like launch goal like $999 so we can say we beat it by, you know, 10 million thousand percent. Right. We set... I've always set realistic goals like we have a lot of money invested into this and we need to make a certain amount of money to like get going.

Myke Hurley: I do know. I'm laughing because I just did my favorite thing. I went to KickTrack. Uh-huh. Which is that estimation system for Kickstarter campaigns. Right. So you're going to make $644,000 on this. So good luck. Right, right. And congratulations. Congratulations.

Brad Dowdy: It's just a straight, straight, equal line. The entire...

Myke Hurley: It's just a straight line. You're trending towards $600,000. So that's really great.

Brad Dowdy: Sweet. Let me know how that works out for you.

Myke Hurley: Can I have like $50,000 just for fun when you get there? Yeah. Yeah. We could probably work something out. Thank you so much. I don't know. Like I'll do some like... I'll do like a photo shoot or something. You know? Whoa. I could be like the face of the brand. Like whatever you need. Like I can do that for you. Okay.

Brad Dowdy: You are that kind of hipster guy that we're looking for.

Myke Hurley: I could do that. You know? It would look good. But no, but seriously though, like, you know, I've been getting on you for years to do this. And this is, you know, and you've done what you always do. You've waited until the right opportunity comes along. You didn't rush it. And you've made something that looks super, super cool. We have a great story behind it, which is the Brad Dowdy way. So I'm very proud of you. Thank you. And I can't wait to see how this ends up resulting. Me too. It's going to be a fun few weeks. And again, like everybody needs to put their money where they should put it. They should totally give it to you. But also don't forget that we have a Kickstarter campaign coming in a couple of weeks time, which was really, really helpful.

Brad Dowdy: If you can back it, we have some great rewards in place. We do. We do. It's going to be awesome. But don't forget, you also have bills to pay and rent and food to put on your table and a family too.

Myke Hurley: So that's what I mean. Value your money highly. Also keep a slice of it for us, but do what you need to do in your life.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Yeah. These things are just kind of happen sometimes. Like I said earlier, sometimes you got to push the button and they happen to be all the buttons at the same time.

Myke Hurley: But also, again, another note, like we're not a charity. We're businesses. Only give us the money if you want what you're going to get out of it.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, totally. Totally. And I just let me wrap this up just saying thank you all for all the support. Thank you, Myke, for just all your help. Like Myke helps me out a lot behind the scenes with my mental state and running. He allows me to run things by him that come out of left field sometimes. So thank you, buddy. I appreciate that. And thank you for all the listeners and supporters and readers and backers. I mean, I literally could not do it without you. Like those words I do not take lightly. I literally would not be here without you. So thank you so much for allowing me to do this.

Myke Hurley: Should we do a couple of us TPA? Let's do a couple. So we can have a fun note rather than an emotional note.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, I'm not going to cry. I promise. I was crying in the bathroom most of the last few days. Why do you choose the bathroom?

Myke Hurley: Is that your crying place?

Brad Dowdy: Well, because the floor is colder. Like, you know, you want to get that chill in there and get totally miserable.

Myke Hurley: So you're like straight up, like laying down, crying.

Brad Dowdy: Fetal, fetal position, yeah.

Myke Hurley: Are we being serious? I know you cry. No, no, I'm not serious. Okay. But where were you crying? Because I know you've cried. I know you've cried in the last 24 hours. There's no way you haven't. I haven't.

Brad Dowdy: I haven't yet. What? I haven't yet. I thought about it. You thought about it.

Myke Hurley: You considered it. Well, I just decided not to.

Brad Dowdy: No, I said, what's the point when I'm going to cry? I think it's probably going to be at the close, right? Right, right, right. So like, that'll be like, that's probably when I'll cry. I've been like, I've been trying not to throw up for days.

Myke Hurley: Okay.

Brad Dowdy: Like, seriously. No, no, I get that.

Myke Hurley: Like, yeah, I think the crying thing has changed for both of us now because we have experienced the like overwhelming, unbelievable nature of like a project being funded. Mm-hmm. So now it's just like towards the end when you see just how much, right? Like this is when the emotion really hits in the strongest way, right? Yeah. Because I know for me it was like that first time when our campaign funded was unbelievable. And now it's more like there are different things that happen each time that are unbelievable, if that makes sense. Because you get like a little desensitized from the raw emotion. Like it's an incredible thing. Right. Like you've done an incredible thing. But like if your first Kickstarter campaign funded the way that this one did, I don't think I would have been able to talk to you today. Right. You know what I mean? Like it just changes over time. Yeah, for sure. Because once you experience something, the shock of it isn't there anymore. So then you look for different things.

Brad Dowdy: But yeah, I mean, my eyes water a lot. I reflect on it a lot and I think about it a lot. So I just realized how lucky I am to be able to work for myself and have people that support whatever visions I have and whatever shenanigans I want to do. And, you know, hopefully we can provide a little sunshine in their life when they need it. So that's what we're here for.

Ink Color Trends

Myke Hurley: Evan Max tweets says, I barely have any blue inks because I tend to think of blue as standard or boring. All I have that's close are aqua or teal like Sailor, Yamadori and Lamy Pacific. Can you recommend any true blues that don't feel stuffy?

Brad Dowdy: I think there's a huge blue, basic blue backlash. And I think it's justified, honestly, because of two reasons. One, in general, for new fountain pen users, they're boring. Two, that a lot of people were brought up on these inks and they never want to see them again, right? A lot of people came up writing, you know, especially, you know, Europeans came up writing with blue inks in school. And like that doesn't necessarily bring back fond memories. But and it's also like the base cartridge that ships with a lot of your first, your very first fountain pen. So the fountain pen thing has always been about exploration once you get in the door and that's leaving basic blues behind, which I pretty much have. The only one that I like. In use in any kind of reasonable.

Brad Dowdy: Rotation, like any kind of usage is pilot blue. I like pilot blue. It's a little bit richer than like the Lamy blues or Pelican blues, which are a little bit lighter, a little bit more royal, a little bit more traditional. I find the pilot blue to be a little bit richer. That's the one I would go for if I was going for a basic blue. Like I just started using that Akramond Delfts blue and it's just fine. Like it's just not that special. So that's a hard question. I know Waterman blue is still the most popular ink at pen shows because it's a good color and it doesn't harm pens. So you'll find pretty much every vintage table will have a bottle of Waterman blue. But, you know, if I'm going to do that, I'm just going to get mysterious blue and get that blue black I need. So check out pilot blue. That's probably my recommendation. Everyone will have a different idea of the basic blue, but I think in general, you're right, Evan. Like it's kind of boring. And that's why we go for things like the bright blues, like, you know, aqua and teals and things like that. So it's a, it's a, be careful over committing to any one huge bottle of blue ink because you might get bored easily. So give pilot blue a shot.

Myke Hurley: Ben Goet asks, I've been enjoying a Statler Triplus fineliner that I found in my stash. Any similar or better options that I could be looking at? I'm happy to try different barrel shapes. It's the writing experience that I like. I'm not hung up on anything else.

Brad Dowdy: So what's funny is these, the barrel shape for this style of pen is almost generic. They all use the same basic idea of the Statler fineliner, the Secure Pikma Micron, the Kuretakis that I love, the Copics. They're all generally the same. So I wish I could tell you some cool, cool barrel fineliner drawing type pen that you should try. But there's not anything with a cool barrel. I do find the Kuretakis to be the best. They also have the least color options. The Kuretaki Zig Mangaka is my favorite by a long shot. And I still use the Secure Pikma Microns more than the fineliners, the Statler ones. But I do like the Statler ones. And those are extraordinarily popular. You'll see like a lot of artists using those in their work, like Joanna Basford, whose people never got back to us for an interview on the show. But I'm not bitter. She uses those for all her detailed artwork. So those are, the Statler one is a great choice. It's a very high quality. It's a lot of people's number one pin in that market. I prefer some of the other ones. But it's like a 1A, 1B, 1C type of situation. They're all super good. And they all have the same barrel pretty much. I find actually the Kuretaki has the least aggressive edge on the barrel cap where it seals off. So if that edge bothers you like the fineliner and the Micron, check out the Kuretaki and the Copics. They're a little bit better.

Myke Hurley: All right. And our final question today comes in from Maison Di Domenco, which is a great name. Nice. How does someone incorporate extra ink cartridges into their everyday carry? I keep running out of ink when I'm away from my desk.

Brad Dowdy: So I love this question, number one, because Joe, our friend Joe at the Gentleman Station, just did a blog post recently in praise of the humble ink cartridge. And I parroted his thoughts completely. I'm a huge ink cartridge fan, surprisingly enough, for someone who uses lots of fountain pens and eyedropper's pens and does crazy things. I love ink cartridges for how easy they are. I always keep them in a case because I'm usually carrying a case with me because I make pen cases. I'm not sure if you know about that. So if I'm using any case with any type of zip, I'll throw two or three ink cartridges in there. Without a doubt, if I have pens that are inked up with cartridges, I'll throw a backup cartridge in those things. Outside of that, you can get little tiny containers that will hold like three short international cartridges or four short international cartridges. You can get those from like any art supply stores, just like a little tin. It's like a little Altoids mini tin. Or you can even get some Altoids mini, get good breath and use them for cartridge storage when you're done having good breath. So and that gets really out of the way. If you have a purse or a bag or a backpack or even a pocket, you can throw those in without even noticing anything. But you can get you can find some real small aluminum tins that don't take up any space. And I know that's a popular way to carry them, too. So you do kind of have to have an extra, you know, an extra spot for them and think about carrying them. But it's pretty easy to throw in some extras more easier than you may think.

Myke Hurley: All right. I think that about wraps us up for today. You should go to our show notes. You can go to relay.fm slash pen addict slash three, four, five to get those. And I really recommend that people do and that they go and click the Kickstarter link that's in there and go back. Brad and Brian's Kickstarter campaign. We'll have to have Brian on the show as we round out towards the end of the campaign. So we can we can hear from the man with the plan. Oh, yeah. Maybe you're the man with the plan.

Brad Dowdy: He's the man with the actual skills. No, I just work with the men with the plans. OK.

Myke Hurley: OK. So the people with the plans. People with the plans sounds good because you've got all the alliteration in there. Right. You can go to penaddict.com, knock.co to find Brad's other work. And you can find him on Instagram or he's penaddict. Twitter dowdyism. D-O-W-D-Y-I-S-M. I am iMike. I-M-Y-K-E on penaddict. On penaddict. Why do I always do that? On Instagram and Twitter. So you can follow me there. Follow me on Instagram. I like Instagram. I think other people like it, too. You should follow me there. I want to thank FreshBooks and ExpressVPN for their support of this show. But most importantly, thank you for listening. And we'll be back next time. Until then, say goodbye, Brad. Goodbye, Brad.