The Pen Addict 74/transcript

The Pen Addict Podcast Transcript
Episode:	74
Title:	Why Can't You Do This
Release Date:	October 1st, 2013
Hosts:	Brad Dowdy Myke Hurley
Guests:	No guests this episode
Additional Information
Official page:	Episode 74
Audio File:	Audio Episode 74
Podcast page:	The Pen Addict 74
Length:	6262 min <br />1.033 h <br /> minutes
Previous Transcript	Next Transcript

Myke Hurley: Hello and welcome to a very special episode of The Pen Addict podcast, your weekly show where we discuss pens, paper, and the analogue tools that we love so dearly. My name is Myke Hurley and I have the pleasure of welcoming Mr. Moneybags himself, Brad Dowdy.

Brad Dowdy: I wouldn't go there quite yet, but we are well on our way, I guess.

Myke Hurley: We'll talk about this in a bit. This is a tease. We're going to do some follow-up first. We're going to make it as rough for you as it is for me.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, I don't know who's more excited about this show, you or me?

Myke Hurley: I think I might be.

Brad Dowdy: I think you might be.

Listener Interaction

Myke Hurley: So, in last week's episode, you will remember that I was very panicky about mentioning a listener who I had bumped into. A listener of the show was wearing a 70 decibels t-shirt and I was deliberating over the person's name.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, you were very worried whether you were getting it right or not. How'd that work out for you? Yeah, I got it wrong.

Myke Hurley: I actually then went into last week's show notes and updated it after I realized my grievous error. But it was actually Dylan Ian Carter, who is the fantastic fan of the show, who came up to me at the 5x5 meetup in Portland. So, Dylan, apologies. Your name is not Jason as much as I... Do you know what? I actually said that his face as well. I was like, Jason? He was like, no. I was like, oh, I think you're somebody else. That was why I did it, you see. For some reason, I think that his name is Jason. It was stuck in your head. Yeah, but that's not the case. He is, in fact, a very handsome, very lovely listener by the name of Dylan. So, Dylan, thank you for being awesome. And I am ashamed. I will die by my own pen sword for that mistake.

Myke Hurley: Well, glad you got that cleared up. Indeed. What else do we have? Right. I mentioned that the London Pen Show is coming up.

Brad Dowdy: Is that, like, next week or something?

Myke Hurley: It's this coming Sunday.

Brad Dowdy: Oh, wow. So, just in a few days.

Myke Hurley: Mm-hmm. So, we have the London Pen Show on the horizon. So, there's a couple of things. I want people to send in their suggestions to me for things that I should be looking out for. I don't really have a very big budget. But I am expecting to be making, like, a trip out for the London Pen Show. Also, as well as that, if you are a UK-based listener and are going to be at the Pen Show, let me know. Because if there's a handful of us, then maybe we'll get together and have a beer afterwards or something like that.

Brad Dowdy: Which might be quite nice. Very nice. Very nice. I need to work on doing more meetups. I think maybe that's in the cards in the future, you know. Yeah. Need to get out more. I've never really done any in London. 2014 might be the year for the Pen Addict meetup.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. Maybe I'll be out. If we're going to arrange it that far in advance, maybe I'll have to show up, too.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Yeah. We'll have to do some stuff like that. That's always been on my radar. Just, you know, hard to get all that coordinated and stuff. But, yeah. Love it. So, yeah. Y'all let Myke know if y'all are going to be at the Pen Show. That'd be cool.

Myke Hurley: And then we can...

Brad Dowdy: He'll get your name wrong there, too.

Myke Hurley: Exactly. And then next week I can come back with a list of people. And it's just all random people. I list the cast of, I don't know, Glee or something like that instead. I received my field notes. Oh, good. Yeah. I want to hear what you think. Here they are right here.

Myke Hurley: All right.

Myke Hurley: I got the... Did you mention the little thing that they come in?

Brad Dowdy: The six-pack holder?

Myke Hurley: Yeah. Yeah. I couldn't remember that. Yeah. That's a nice little addition. I don't really know what to do with it. I know. But I've got it here. I guess I'll have to find somewhere to put it. Because they're currently sitting outside of my archive memo box thing.

Myke Hurley: But I like them very much, the little box. The whole package itself is really nice. You've got the little coasters, which are nice and thick. And the books are weird, right? Not in a bad way, but they're not field notes, as I know them.

Brad Dowdy: You think it's the cover?

Myke Hurley: Yeah, the cover. Like, to touch them. They don't feel like field notes.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, it's the new style cover. I mean, that was one of the... Add-ons in the right word. But that was one of the specific features of this edition, was that satiny type color. And it was funny. I just reviewed that Rodeo R notebook. It had the same type of cover. And I've felt those on different other stationary products in the past. So it's not a new thing.

Myke Hurley: So I have a theory about why I think that they are this... They've got that waxy, varnished cover. So if you get them wet, it doesn't destroy them.

Brad Dowdy: That's right. If you spill your beer on them, you're in good shape.

Myke Hurley: I love the colors. The colors are very old to me. Very, very nice colors. I haven't used one yet. I look forward to it. Because I'm kind of... I'm not sure how I feel about the cover. I love them, but also I'm weird about them. Like, if you gave me, I would be very happy with it. But it's just because I know what this is. And when I pick it up, it feels strange. Okay. But I like them. I like the way they look. I think they look fantastic. The colors are great. So the covers are nice if they're removed. But the fact that they're not my normal Field Notes feels strange. But I like that it's more durable.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. I'm interested to see how it wears. I remember now, if you remember back when we had Brian on the show, Brian Bedell from Field Notes, remember how he said he was carrying a folded up piece of cover in his pocket to see how it would wear?

Myke Hurley: Oh, yeah.

Brad Dowdy: So I think that was this cover. Because I'm interested to see how it's going to wear, too, because I've been using mine a ton so far. I'm completely in love with the Hefeweizen grid color. That's one of the best things ever in my book for me. But what I'm seeing is, okay, so like you open it up and the cover, you know, you have the finish on the outside cover. And then the inside cover, it's a little bit different finish, but it's still different than your normal Field Notes cover. And the inside covers are black. So when you open up the cover, like if I've had it, you know, folded back around itself or something like that, there's a break, just like any other book would, in the cover next to where the binding is. So that shows up white, right, because you're wearing it.

Myke Hurley: Sure.

Brad Dowdy: So like it cracks there, you know, like it normally would. I'm just wondering how that's going to wear over time, like if there's going to be any cover issues. So I wonder if that's why he was carrying it around so much. And I'm interested to see because I have noticed that. Like I wonder if that's going to be more prone to kind of coming apart there, but to be determined. It needs some more wear testing. But I don't think it's going to be an issue. It's just something that I noticed because the covers are black and you can see the white cracking through.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, I had like an interest in,

Myke Hurley: on my original XOXO edition, it has an interesting wear in it where the colors just come away. Which is strange. I don't really know why that happened, but I kind of like it. So I wonder if it might be like that, like you've got these cracks in it and it will show the paper underneath. Yeah, I think that's just, I mean, that's just part of the idea. One of my favorite things about the XOXO one that I've got is that it's got these awesome like white patches on the back.

Brad Dowdy: Okay, yeah, exactly. That's what I was going to say. It's one of those things where it's just a nice wear pattern that actually becomes, you know, something you like about the book. I see the Expedition editions, people that have been using those a bunch, they have that, like the wear pattern through the orange cover. Yeah, it's really nice.

Myke Hurley: I like the wear, but like saying that it's going to wear, I kind of hope that they do. There's a part of me that really likes that.

Field Notes Clarification

Brad Dowdy: Yep, yep. And while we're on the field notes thing, I have a clarification to make from last week, a statement I made that was incorrect. So I want to make sure everyone's on the same page. I don't want incorrect information out there. After last week's show, when we were talking about the quantities of field notes and how they print, Brian Bedell reached out to me because I said that they have print run for the colors editions and for online sales, and then they have a separate retail print run, and that's incorrect information. So for example, the Drink Local is 60,000 books total, right? So they did 30,000 ales, 30,000 loggers. That's for color subscriptions. That's for retailers. That's for field notes online sales. That's it. That's like the all-encompassing number. It's not double that, like I had said. I don't know where I got that in my head because there were some old editions that had regular editions and retail editions and things like that, so I got confused there and misspoke. So I wanted to make sure that when you see the print runs listed on field notes, that is the total actual print run, which makes sense.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, you confused me because I don't remember us ever mentioning that.

Brad Dowdy: I don't know what I was thinking. I was having a senior moment.

Myke Hurley: We've spoken quite a lot about the field notes group on Facebook. Yeah. They are now field notes.

Brad Dowdy: Yes. So there was a little, I don't think, there wasn't a problem or anything, but they needed to switch the name of the group, and I think the Facebook rules are once the group gets over 250 people in size, you can't change the name. So if you were part of the old field notes fan group on Facebook, there's a post that says go to the field nuts page and sign up there and get transferred over.

Myke Hurley: And there's a field nuts website now, fieldnuts.com, and they've got a Twitter account too. Yes, they have a message forward. I think it's just because it's, they didn't have their own brand. It was just called field notes, and then it took off. So it's like, well, yeah, let's make a thing out of it.

Brad Dowdy: Yep, exactly right. And could not be any nicer folks over there. They're very helpful. And, you know, they were talking about, you know, the mistake I made on the thing last week. Oh, were they? Yeah, and they were like, is that right? That doesn't sound right. And I jumped in, because Brian had emailed me like, either that night or the next, by the next morning, just saying, hey, you misspoke there. So I went over there, and I made sure I was like, oh, yeah, I said this wrong, so sorry about that, and we're going to, I'll put a clarification out next week. So I want to make sure I get that right.

Myke Hurley: You can't be trusted.

Brad Dowdy: I know. I know I'm a problem child.

Myke Hurley: You are. So an interesting piece of news, before we go into our sponsor, and then just spend the rest of the episode talking about what everyone wants us to talk about, I'm sure. this sort of permeated my two worlds today. So do you remember the iPad app Paper?

Brad Dowdy: Yeah.

Myke Hurley: By a company called 53?

Brad Dowdy: Yes.

Myke Hurley: So it's like, if anybody doesn't know, it's like, it looks like a virtual Moskin notebook that you open up, and you can get different brushes, and you can, I don't know, you can use like different pens and colors and stuff, and you can create art in them, or sketches or whatever. Well, the company 53 have partnered with Moskin to create something they're calling book. So you can turn 15 sheets, a book of 15 sheets, into a four by three format Moskin book, which they've created for this project, Moskin have created with the 53 people, and they will basically print the artwork that you've created into a Moskin book.

Brad Dowdy: Okay, I see.

Paper App

Brad Dowdy: So you, you do the artwork in paper? I think so. And then they print it into a book? I said that. I'm just looking at it right now.

Myke Hurley: And now I feel like I need to go check that.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, it says stunning custom printed books created right from paper.

Myke Hurley: Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: Paper meaning the app for, those aren't for, that's the name of the app.

Myke Hurley: Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: Which is a really impressive app, really impressive app. I mean, I never really, I never, I've always downloaded it on my iPad. It lives there. I've never had a huge use for it, but it's exceptionally well done and easy to use.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. The kids are going crazy.

Brad Dowdy: Oh my gosh. Yes. I don't know what they're doing. Yeah.

Myke Hurley: So they will then turn them off. And it's basically they've worked with Moskin to create these, which is quite a good, quite a good partnership.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. So it looks, yeah. Okay. I see. I'm flipping. This page is really nice.

Myke Hurley: Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: Um, I'm going through and I definitely see the artwork is definitely the paper style artwork that you've already always been able to create, which is really, really nice. Yeah. This is a great idea.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. Cause Moskin make a book like this and I can't remember what one it is. I think it might be the Japanese sketchbook.

Brad Dowdy: Where? Yeah. I don't know.

Myke Hurley: Oh, what was it called? Maybe it's folio folio sketchbook. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Where it, it opens up as opposed to you, you don't, you don't flip the pages, you open it out.

Brad Dowdy: Right. It's like accordion style.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. And that's what this book is, how this book is created. Yeah, for sure. Interesting choice. I don't know if it's what, how I would want it because.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. I mean, I'm not that artistic. I wouldn't want to see my, my artwork live on in infamy in a book,

Myke Hurley: but I think for some people it would probably work. For definitely for the people that create artwork.

Brad Dowdy: If nothing else, it's an interesting idea. I mean, I like the, I definitely like the idea of it.

Myke Hurley: I think that it's a perfect pairing. I think it makes sense to do that. Do we have any more followup of any kind?

Brad Dowdy: Um, I don't think so. I don't think so. My mind's a little, I'm a little foggy today. Oh, really? You'll have to excuse me. Yeah.

Myke Hurley: I'm not surprised.

Kickstarter

Myke Hurley: Right. Let's take a quick break. Then we'll, we'll thank our sponsor and then we'll get into the, the real topic for today.

Brad Dowdy: All right.

Myke Hurley: So let's take a quick moment to thank Squarespace for sponsoring this episode. They are the all in one platform that makes it fast and easy to create your own professional website, portfolio, online store, site for your business. Basically any project you want to put online. Squarespace can give you the tools to do that for a free trial and 10% off. Go to squarespace.com and use the offer code Tally Ho 10. So Squarespace are always doing great stuff to make sure that their product is changing and evolving and updating. They're always adding new features, new design templates, and they're making sure that their support works even better for you. They have really beautiful designs for you to work with. They have 20 highly customizable templates, which have won numerous design awards. And they also feature loads of great style options to allow you to tweak and create your own space online. And you can change fonts, colors, and you can create your pages by drag and dropping items around the page. That's like how me and Brad create our field notes pages on our respective Squarespace websites. We just drag in image blocks and drag them around the page. It's very, very easy. But if you need any help at Squarespace, they have a fantastic support team that work 24 hours a day, seven days a week. They're always on hand to help you if you need anything at all. Squarespace is beautiful, sort of inside and out. Not only do the templates look fantastic, the backend system looks great too. It's really easy to use when you're like sort of making changes to your site and posting to your blogs and stuff. That's all really looks really good. But they also have very clean code as well. So it's really great for like search engine optimization. So people searching on Google, they're more likely to find your website if they're putting the, you know, relevant keywords and terms in. That's a real dark art, SEO, and they take care of that bit for you. So you just don't have to, it's just one less thing that you have to worry about. You just don't have to worry about anything with Squarespace. Their plans start at just $8 a month, and they include a free domain name. If you sign up for a year upfront, I want you to go and sign up now and try it out for free by going to squarespace.com. There's no credit card required. You just enter in some very basic information and you can start building your website. And when you decide to sign up, make sure you use the offer code TALLYHO10, that's T-A-L-L-Y-H-O, and the number 10, one zero. And that's going to show you support for the pen addict and all of five by five. So thanks so much to Squarespace for sponsoring and for giving you everything that you need to create an exceptional website.

Brad Dowdy: All right. Tallyho 10.

Myke Hurley: Tallyho 10. All right. I like it. So yesterday at 3 p.m. Eastern time.

Brad Dowdy: 3 p.m. London time.

Myke Hurley: That's what I meant to say. 10 a.m. Eastern time.

Brad Dowdy: Mm-hmm.

Myke Hurley: The Knock Co. Kickstarter was launched. Yes. With a goal of $5,000.

Brad Dowdy: Yes.

Myke Hurley: It went on to the Kickstarter and has a fantastic video. I really like that you put little bloopers in at the start. That was a lot of fun. I very much enjoyed your video. But the production quality was excellent on the video.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Our friend Sharif did a bang-up job on that. I loved it.

Myke Hurley: It was very Kickstarter.

Brad Dowdy: Good. So it fit in.

Myke Hurley: It fits in perfectly. You know that nice music and the elegant voiceover provided by you and the guy with the close-up of Jeffrey. Using the books. And like with his... He was like using dome paper. And he's got his Knock pencil cases next to him. And I liked it when he was putting all his stuff and arranging them. And you're talking about... Which I really liked. You're talking about the fact that you want to protect your cases. So you worked with Jeffrey to build them the way that you wanted. And I think that... And especially that bit where you're like, I have like a thousand dollars worth of pens. I've got to protect them. I was like, right. That proves the point, everyone. And then we've got... So you have a big range of... Is it five or six?

Brad Dowdy: So there's... Gosh. One, two, three, four, five, six. There's six styles. Yes. Six models. Six models, if you will. So on the... On our launch, we had lots of ideas, lots of designs that we went through in sketching and prototyping and things like that to narrow it down to kind of what it's going to be our core products, you know, our core launch products.

Brad Dowdy: And, you know, these are all the ones we were excited about. We thought there was a need for each of these and in some way, shape or form. And, you know, they each kind of accomplished something a little bit different depending on, you know, what you're looking for in a pen case. So we tried to make a range of products that would fit all kinds of needs for all kinds of people. And that's been one of the coolest things about this so far is the way people are latching on to different products already and seeing a certain style. And they're saying, that's exactly what I'm looking for for this use. Or, you know, I haven't had anything like that before. But and I didn't realize that that's what I needed. But that's, you know, a perfect fit for what I'm trying to do, you know, with my pen storage or notebook storage. So it's it's it's been really cool to see the feedback that we're getting on the products. You know, that's been that was the most that was the most nerve wracking thing for me, really, is not the money, but are people going to like the product? Are they going to like what they see? Are we going to be able to present it in a way to where they understand what we're trying to accomplish? Um, in and so far, the feedback's been overwhelmingly, like stunningly positive. And I'm very, very excited about that.

Myke Hurley: So you have a range of tiers, backing tiers ranging from $15 to $75 for the products. And then you've got that like, elusive Kickstarter thing of pay us a chunk of money, and you can come make your own thing and have a bunch of us, you know, that that's kind of a

Brad Dowdy: kind of a Kickstarter thing that you just kind of do just in case.

Myke Hurley: In case somebody's in it, like lives around the area and wants to come hang out.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, we figured Atlanta is a big enough area and has enough places around that if someone wanted to make a custom design case and, you know, meet Jeff and I and eat dinner and design your own pen case, we wanted to make that available too. So no, no takers yet, but 28 days to go.

Myke Hurley: So the interesting thing, the tier, which I think is the supreme tier, which is a $75 tier, which is all of the cases, has got the most backers currently.

Brad Dowdy: I didn't see that coming by a long shot.

Myke Hurley: The reason that I think it's the same for me is $75 for how many? Six.

Brad Dowdy: Well, there'll be one, two, three, four, five, six, seven. Because there's two, there's actually two chimney tops, the little one at the very top. There's a small and a medium size. So there's actually, those come, they essentially come together.

Myke Hurley: So you get seven for $75, which is just incredible value. So I was like, whatever your top tier was, I was going to do it. Except the $250, because it will cost me a lot of money to come over there. And $10 shipping for outside the US is awesome as well. That's a good range.

Myke Hurley: So this went out. I have loads more questions, by the way, but I want to carry on the story, as it were. So this went out. Within one hour, you met your goal of $5,000. Yeah. You currently have 28 days to go. You've just ticked over into your second day. And you're at $27,333 with 720 backers.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. That look you see on my face right now is just a huge grin.

Brad Dowdy: I'm at a loss for words, to be quite honest.

Brad Dowdy: So I'm sitting there. Let me tell you about the launch.

Myke Hurley: Oh, yeah. Tell me about that.

Kickstarter Goals

Brad Dowdy: So we're sitting there. And Jeff and I are kind of running around like chickens with our heads cut off yesterday morning. Just trying to get everything synced up to launch at 10 o'clock. And we got all that coordinated and set up. And the launch went fine. So you push the button. You say launch. Then they say, are you sure? And you say, yes, I'm sure. And then it's live. And then that's it. I mean, it's like, okay, this project exists now on Kickstarter. And so we coordinated, sending out our tweets and our blog posts and all that just so everyone knew we were live. And we sent out the mail that people signed up for and all that stuff. So you're sitting there. And then you're kind of relieved. And you're just sitting there because there's nothing to do now. You're just waiting and staring at the computer screen. And here comes one backer. And then two. And then it just started going berserk about 10 or 15 minutes into it. It was just like a countdown ticker in reverse. It was just the numbers were just, you know, it was constantly moving. And I think before we even hit our goal, like maybe only like $1,000 or $2,000 into it, you know, I'm just sitting there like, wow, this is like really happening. You know, I honestly got like a little tear in my eyes. Like, I can't believe this is happening. We are, you know, we've been working pretty hard on this. And, you know, you want people to like it, you know, more than anything, like I was saying earlier. And I was like, wow, you know, this is pretty cool. I mean, it could end right now and I'll be happy and, you know, not even meet our goal. But, you know, everyone kind of wants that confirmation, you know, in their life. And, you know, to see the positive reaction, not to mention the amount that it has been pledged so far is pretty stunning. And it's really hard to explain, you know, to put that in words, like how you feel about seeing something like this. It's pretty crazy.

Myke Hurley: Now, I know that the reason that you set the 5,000 goal is because you're expected to meet it. Well, I assume that you expected to meet it maybe even 10, 15, 20 days maybe. I don't know. What were you thinking?

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, it was a long process to come up with that number. One, we wanted to make sure it did get backed. And number two, we wanted to make sure that if it did get backed, that we had enough money to buy the machinery that we needed and buy all the materials that we need to make. Like if we just sold $5,000, right, say it just ended at $5,000. And that was our goal. We would then have enough money to buy the machinery that we need because we need an extra machine to make the stitching a little bit nicer on some of the pin pocket seams and things like that.

Brad Dowdy: And then give us enough material to make the product and also have some material to stock the store whenever, you know, that goes live. So, and that number we felt was going to be right in that $5,000 range, no more than like $7,000. And so we chose $5,000 because we knew if, you know, if nothing else, if we get to that number, we're going to be okay to launch our store. Because this, Jeffrey and I's goal is to not be a Kickstarter company, right, where we just do Kickstarter projects and make money or make a business off of just continual Kickstarter projects. We want to, you know, we want to, we want to, we want to, we want to have an online business to sell these cases and to create other things and, and do, you know, a whole world of stuff that we have floating around in our heads. So we, our goal was to get enough money to get that started.

Brad Dowdy: And plus, just kind of ancillary to that, you know, there's not a lot of necessarily like, it's not a high dollar project, right? So we need, we need quantity, we need a higher quantity of backers more than we need a higher quantity of dollars, if that makes sense. So that $5,000 goal seemed to be kind of the right thing to do. We felt that if we just got that number, you know, for 30 days and that was the number, we would be able to go on and begin, you know, the, the real business that we want to start once this campaign is over.

Myke Hurley: Okay. So I was talking to Patrick Ryan earlier today, our buddy, and we're talking about your Kickstarter on our show enough. Okay. I'll have to go listen. And he, as I am very surprised how cheap the cases are because you could charge, you could charge a lot more, especially like in the lower tiers, you know, like when you're, you're looking at the chimney top, two cases of $15. Right. These prices are really cheap. So how are you affording to sell them so cheaply?

Brad Dowdy: I think the main thing is that Jeffrey and I are doing a lot of the work ourselves. When you see these cases on here, Jeffrey has designed, cut, sewn, stitched, labeled everything himself. So there's, that's obviously a labor cost. And we've actually, we've figured in labor into our pricing, but we're not paying external sources to manufacture these. So there's not an extra, I guess, layer of cost.

Brad Dowdy: At least at this time, you never know how big it's going to get that we have to have to manufacture these cases. You know, I'm going to be handling a lot of the fulfillment and, you know, shipping and packing. You know, while there is a monetary value tied into my time to do that, I'm not paying a fulfillment service to fulfill our orders, which would be an additional cost. So, you know, right now, that's the way we're set up. You know, we're able to make these cases that are really great quality, really cool designs, and I think provide a great value. That was my goal. When Jeffrey sat down, Jeffrey and I sat down the very first time, I kind of like, you know, I didn't physically do this, but I basically drew a circle around the price point that I wanted to be at with the materials I wanted to use and said, there's a gaping hole right here in the market for a product like this. You know, there's all this high-end leather stuff, you know, that's, you know, $75 to $125 for cases. There's the very cheap low-end stuff that you can get at Staples or, you know, the grocery store that's just kind of like bag-type storage. And I said, there's nothing in here in the middle that I want to use in the materials that I want to use in a style that I like. And I said, this is where I want to end up. You know, there's right here in this big circle. There's nothing there. And I want to be in that circle.

Brad Dowdy: And so, you know, he came back. Jeffrey is pretty amazing, the knowledge that he has in being able to, his experience with manufacturing and tailoring. He is able, he was able to put down, like our price spreadsheet is awesome. He was able, he's able to account for everything. We're able to look at the prices and we're going, okay, we can do this. You know, this is, this is where we need to be.

Brad Dowdy: This is how much it's going to cost us to get here. And, you know, at that point we decided that this was actually a viable thing to do. I mean, because we didn't know until we started putting down the pricing, you know, where we're going to be able to be at on the price point wise. Now, that being said, you know, the Kickstarter prices are probably, are a little bit lower than we will be at retail. But they're close. I mean, I don't want to say, you know, they're not, I mean, they're either going to be the exact same or maybe a few dollars more. So it's not going to be much. So you're getting a little bit better deal during the Kickstarter project. But especially for like the Brasstown, the bigger case, that one's kind of complex to make. I can tell you right now that that one's going to be $35 once we go, you know, to retail at our store.

Brad Dowdy: So we did have a few minor price breaks on the Kickstarter campaign just to kind of get the ball rolling. But even then, so, you know, it's still at a good price for us to be able to, you know, to be able to be profitable and, you know, put this money into the equipment and everything we need to really ramp this up, you know, in an online store once the Kickstarter campaign's done.

Myke Hurley: So, I mean, obviously, you would need to do that. I mean, I'm speaking for you. If you ever wanted to put these in other online stores, you have to increase the price because the retailer needs a profit margin. And if you're going to sell them on your own store, you then need to match the retail price, which that's simple business. I'm doing it this way. So my question to you is, like you mentioned that Jeffrey is going to, I'm assuming you're making money, right?

Brad Dowdy: Yes. Yeah, at these prices, we are profitable. Yes, no doubt.

Myke Hurley: So, is it good? I mean, obviously, you've got to tell me numbers, but is it good profitable? Like, you're not, like, making a cent, you know? Like, when you say profitable, you two will come away with this with some money each, I see. Yes.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, we have the pricing set up right now as a, I don't know what the right terminology is, but basically as a solid, it's solid retail pricing. You know, these Kickstarter prices are a little bit lower than what the regular retail is going to be, but the regular retail pricing includes us, you know, being able to price it to, we want to sell it to other companies and to other, you know, vendors and other pen stores to be able to resell it on their own. So, we do have, you know, all of our pricing figured accordingly.

Wholesale Pricing

Myke Hurley: Yeah, I guess that actually makes perfect sense because you've put these at a wholesale, these are wholesale prices, aren't they, what you're selling them at now? No. No? Okay. No.

Brad Dowdy: These are going to be close to retail prices.

Myke Hurley: Oh, so you're making even more money then. Interesting. Well, yeah.

Brad Dowdy: I mean, no, we're not, the Kickstarter price is not a wholesale price. Like, the price isn't going to, you know, double or whatever when we go to our retail. This is, these are going to be close to the prices. You know, like the $15 cases might be $17 or $18 when we're done or, you know, after the Kickstarter campaign's over. You know, something like that. It's going to be in the ballpark.

Myke Hurley: So, you say that at the moment it's mainly, well, the plan had been for you and Jeffrey to make these, right?

Brad Dowdy: Right.

Myke Hurley: What if you have 5,000 of them to make in 38 days? 28 days, sorry.

Brad Dowdy: We've already contacted or Jeffrey's contacted the people that in his industry that he knows that are his friends that he's either worked with, works with now or has worked with in other, you know, tailoring, sewing, manufacturing, ventures and we'll be able to contract out to him to help us. If we, if we get like really overwhelmed and it keeps going and I hope we get to that point and we'll be able to handle the manufacturing with, without issue. I don't, I don't think at all. And, you know, we have that figured in.

Myke Hurley: And you factored all that into your costs as well?

Brad Dowdy: We did.

Myke Hurley: You guys, you guys are real businessmen.

Brad Dowdy: Hey, all the credit goes to Jeffrey for that. Like I wouldn't, I wouldn't have been able to come up with accurate pricing. You know, I need him to do, you know, he's, he's laid out everything, you know, from the, you know, the zipper to the thread to the length of every single piece that goes into every single case and how much each of those pieces are. I mean, just like, you know, any legitimate business should, you know, we, we have our costs, you know, down to the penny on everything. And that's, you know, including, you know, shipping and, you know, manufacturing time and, and things like that. So, you know, hopefully the math's right.

Myke Hurley: I mean, I don't know if it's obvious to people. I don't know if it is to you. I think it is to you. Why I'm asking these questions. It's because I want this to be a massive success for both of you and that this in some way changes both of your lives. That's what I want to happen. So I am just a worried friend that you guys have a Kickstarter campaign that closes at like a quarter of a million dollars, but you can't afford it, if that makes sense. Because I'm sure that happens a lot with these really big campaigns. And it's only because, you know, I've, I'm, I spent quite a lot of time with the Studio Neat guys. And they, you know, they made a bunch of fantastic Kickstarter stuff. And I consider them good friends. And just talking to them about, because they've had very, very successful Kickstarter campaigns. And the Glyph, which was their first one, they didn't expect it to get anywhere near what it did. And they were well placed because like you, like you two, it was built in such a way that they knew that they could make most of it themselves regardless. And then they were able, they were very lucky to find some good manufacturers and stuff. But it could have gone very, very wrong for them because they, they were one of the very, very early Kickstarters. So they did their, their product, the Glyph. They had a, let me see what their original goal was. They had a goal of $10,000 and they made $137,000. But this was back in 2010 when a $10,000 Kickstarter was pretty big. And they were for a long time, they've made the most money. So that was just my, you know, I just wanted to make sure that you guys were thinking about all of that sort of stuff too. Which you obviously are because you're smart, smart people.

Product Satisfaction

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, no, I totally appreciate that. And that's, you know, I've gotten a lot, believe me, my parents are asking, you know, do you have this? Is this right? You know, are you doing this? Are you doing that? And I'm like, yes, mom, we're doing that. But, you know, and also, you know, I'm fortunate enough to have friends like Dan Bishop at Keras Customs.

Myke Hurley: Of course, yes.

Brad Dowdy: I can call up and spend, you know, two hours on the phone and say, you know, this is what we're trying to do. What am I missing, you know, and have things like that. So I've got the benefit of being able to talk to people like Dan and kind of get some feedback to make sure we have all our bases covered. And he's been like that too. He's like, now I'm seeing the pricing. Like, are you sure you've got this covered and this covered? And I'm like, yep, we've got it. It's right here. I'm staring right at it. It's accounted for. So, you know, it's, you know, it's still, there's still a possibility of the unknown happening. But I feel more comfortable about the manufacturing and fulfillment piece of it than anything.

Myke Hurley: Do you have any concerns? Like that you can point to?

Brad Dowdy: Not really. I'm feeling pretty good about it. You know, it might get down to, if it really goes berserk, like if something, say it goes to $100,000 and there's, you know, I don't know, whatever number of backers, thousands of backers. There might be some time, you know, concerns. Yeah. But I really don't think on that side of the ledger.

Myke Hurley: In January. Right. Which is, and that, you haven't left that, like typically people leave it a bit longer for a manufacturing. But it's because you know you can do it. I mean, I wouldn't be surprised if you've started working on them. I don't, I don't know. Or will be very, very soon.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. We haven't decided that yet. I think we're going to wait a little bit longer because we'll have to order the, we want to get the quantities right. When we order the fabrics and stuff like that, we don't have all that. So it just depends on how ahead of time we want to do it. I know talking with Dan, you know, it can be, say after the funding period ends, it can be weeks before the money actually gets into your bank account to where you're able to start ordering. And we may just have to bite the bullet and get that ordered, you know, and get that ordered early before the money actually appears to where we can pay for it kind of thing.

Myke Hurley: I mean, you're going to have 30 day terms with a lot of companies anyway to get the product to pay. Right. If the business is done the same way. And I guess the benefit you've got is you know you're going to get the money. Whether it takes two, three, four weeks, you know it's coming. So even if you had to find some other way to finance it that it wasn't a problem for you, like if you had the ability to do that, then you could do it. Right. You could, if you needed to spend $5,000 to get some stuff in and between the two of you, you can throw that money together, then you just do it because it makes the whole thing easier for you. Right.

Brad Dowdy: Right. Right. Yeah. So like manufacturing and fulfillment, that stuff doesn't keep me up at night, you know.

Myke Hurley: Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: What keeps me up at night is making a product that people like and people want and that people think is going to be good.

Myke Hurley: See, I think, I know that for me personally, and when I, because I've been showing this to everybody that I can just because of how proud I am of you. Like all my friends, my family, they've all seen this. I've had to explain Kickstarter to so many people. I actually showed it to my mom and she was like, why can't you do this? I was like, thanks mom.

Myke Hurley: Cheers. Thanks for that. Yeah. I'll get right on that. And because she's seen the number, right? She saw it yesterday and you'd made like 16,000 or something. She's like, why don't you do this? It's like, because I haven't got the great idea like, like Brad and Jeffrey. I don't have that. I didn't have the idea. And by saying like, I think people, this comes across in your video, I think to people that don't know you, but the people that are, that know you, they know you're not what, this is how I feel. You're not going to make a bad product here. Because you know what you want. And I feel like for being a good friend, I feel you're, we are good friends. I know that you have very strict levels of what you consider to be acceptable and unacceptable in something. And I believe you wouldn't ship an unacceptable product. Right. Like you just wouldn't do that.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. There's no doubt. And Jeffrey, you know, that's one of the things that clicked with us right in the beginning is we're both kind of that same way. We're, you know, we're very particular about what we like and what we want and what we want to see. And, you know, what the, you know, concerned about the minutiae type of stuff. So, yeah. Yeah. So, we're both very concerned about, not concerned isn't the right word, but we're very, you know, aware of, you know, look and fit and finish and style. And, you know, everything that's going to, you know, make a high quality product that people are going to get in their hands and love, hopefully love. So, yeah. We take pride in this. And, you know, we're, I guess we're at this point, you know, now we're anxious to like start getting stuff into people's hands.

Myke Hurley: Speaking of which, you've been sending some like prototype models out, haven't you?

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, yeah, I did. I don't have a lot to send out. So, I picked out a few of my blogging friends, sent some out on Saturday. So, they would arrive kind of, you know, early this week and just kind of, you know, people who know me, you know, like me, you know, my family, my wife, you know, my family that have actually physically seen these cases. They're like, oh, it's great. It's fantastic. But they don't use the cases like I use the cases or you would use the cases. And so, to be able to get it in the hands, we didn't send any out like early, early on, like our early prototypes when we were still working on. This is kind of our final prototypes. You know, I wanted to get some other feedback on. And so, like Ed Jelly made a post today.

Brad Dowdy: His photography is always so great. And Ed's been a guest on this show. And he did a great job. We sent him the lookout, which is just the, it's the holster style case. And he did a really good job of doing some photos. And he actually, when I woke up today and was talking to Jeffrey, he's like, did you see Ed's post? I was like, yeah. Did you see all the stuff he was doing with the case and sticking the field notes in there and flipping it over like a stand? I was like, yeah, I didn't know you could do that. So, you know, those are the things, you know, you get staring at a product for so long. You need a fresh set of eyes on it and see kind of the neat things that Ed did with it. I thought that was pretty cool.

Myke Hurley: Joe, I'm looking at these, like that material. I know this is going to sound insane. But if some ink leaked in there, that's going to look awesome, in my opinion. Like if you had like, say like the dark blue one and maybe some dark blue ink, like say, I don't know, say you had a fountain pen explosion. There's something about that to me that I think would look really cool. I don't think everyone would agree. But for me personally, there would be something about that that I would quite like. I'm not going to pour ink all over mine when I receive them. I will allow the wear and tear to get it for me. But there's just something about that just because they're so, they're very attractive, but they're rugged in a good way. Yes, yes. And there's something about that once they, once these cases are going to start to look like worn in and used, I think that they will take on an individual life for everyone. And I think that's kind of cool. I like that. Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: And that's why, you know, Jeff and I both like this material, this nylon corduroy material. It's a real durable, I mean, it's essentially like exterior backpack material, you know, for all intents and purposes. So it's thick and durable, but it's still pliable and soft, you know, to where, you know, it's going to work good, you know, when you're carrying it around and, you know, putting it in other bags and things like that. It's just kind of going to work well for anyone who's using it for pen storage and, you know, being mobile and carrying it around. So that was kind of our goal. That's why we wanted to use this fabric, just because, you know, Jeffrey and I like it and we think it makes for a good pen case.

Myke Hurley: It looks good, but it's fit for purpose.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Myke Hurley: And you're Mr. Myke Dudek.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, I love that. He shared out a picture last night and I sent him a sample case too. He has a different model. His is called the Hightower, which has been a very popular case. It's the three plus one case where you have three pen slots on the left side and then a single pocket on the right side for a memo book.

Myke Hurley: That's the one that I can't wait to get my hands on. I feel like that's the one that I will use every day.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Yeah, same here. I've been using the Brasstown, the Zip Roll, but then the Hightower is probably the second most used one that I use.

Brad Dowdy: It's just super functional. It just fit a need that I wanted. There were two cases that were the first designs that I had to have. It was this Hightower, which is the three plus one, and then the Roll Pen case, which is the Brasstown. So I knew if we were doing this, those two would be made. And I just like Myke's picture. I was like, wow. Once you start seeing it with other people, then you're going, we made that? Man, that guy's got a cool case. Where did he get that? Oh, we made that. That's kind of nice. Yeah. It puts a big smile on my face. And I love the, I don't know, I just like that shot from Myke. And we'll have all this in the show notes. And the label came out really good.

Brad Dowdy: We did go ahead and get a bunch of labels ordered, and I like how they turned out. They look good on the case.

Myke Hurley: I can tell, I don't know who chose the colors, but if it was a mixed effort, I definitely know what ones you chose.

Brad Dowdy: Which ones are that?

Myke Hurley: The orange one.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, no doubt. No doubt.

Myke Hurley: Did you work on the, obviously the orange was your choice, but did you pick the other colors too, or was that like a collaborative effort?

Brad Dowdy: Actually, we collaborated on all three of the colors. It was, it's, that was actually kind of a difficult process. I mean, we did it somewhat quickly, but trying to figure out what works well together without seeing like big sheets of fabric. You know, we just have like small, like three by three inch fabric samples and trying to put that together and see what comes out well.

Myke Hurley: I'm very pleased that you went with a greenish Kickstarter only.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, it's, it's kind of, sort of, kind of, sort of green. That's, that color is.

Myke Hurley: Man, the render case look good in those. Sorry. I just see, I just looked at that picture again and seeing those render case look.

Brad Dowdy: In person, and even in pictures, this one came out really well with the dark interior. It's the only one with the darkest interior and a lighter outside. It's kind of reversed from the other ones, which all have a darker outside exterior material and a lighter interior material. This one's kind of reversed, and it came out really good looking.

Case Customization

Myke Hurley: So, I keep, I keep throwing business ideas at you, which is probably driving you insane. Oh no. But, I have another one. All right. For when you guys launch the store. Mm-hmm. Is to allow me, is to give me a range of colors and allow me to choose, mix and match them for extra money.

Brad Dowdy: So, you're saying you want to customize your own case on color. You want to, you want to go and say, all right, I want the Hightower case, and I want to be able to choose this color for the outside, and this color for the inside, and this color for the binding.

Myke Hurley: Yep.

Brad Dowdy: And this color for the stitching.

Myke Hurley: And pay more, however much more you deem. But, obviously, more. Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: We have gotten that question a lot.

Myke Hurley: Because I think that that would be really, I mean, for this purpose, for the Kickstarter, just choose the colors that are there, right? Sure. Sure. But for when you guys launch a store, just to have that, even if it's simply the case of, it's a special page on the site, you select just from like drop, like you just like radio buttons or whatever. Select this, this, this, and this. Send it through as an email order. Then you get sent back, this is how much it's going to cost you. Because there might be differing costs or whatever. I think that would be really cool. I would like that a lot.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. That has come up a lot. And, I mean, we're certainly considering it. It'd be a little difficult right out the gate.

Myke Hurley: Oh, logistically, it's a bit of a nightmare.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Yeah. Which is why you'd want to charge more. But that is something long term, you know, that, you know, a year or two down the line, that could definitely be on the radar. I don't see why not.

Myke Hurley: I just see in a year's time that we have, I just, I just see, I just see great things. I just think in a year's time you will be a, like a manufacturing magnate. You do, and you will just be creating all sorts. I'm so, dude, I cannot even begin to tell you how happy I am for you both and how excited I am. Like, I have been on cloud nine for over 24 hours. I'm just, I'm over the moon just because for as long as I have known you, I've, we said this before, I've tried to get you to do something like this. Right. My original idea for you is slightly different. Well, it was very different actually, but it was, I think that you should use your expertise to, for people to pay you money directly for something. And I, and you've come out with something that was much better than my original idea. I just think it's genius. And I'm, I'm just so, I'm just so pleased that you guys are going to make a ton of money. I've been sitting and doing some maths and just looking at what, you know, yeah. Yeah. Just sitting, obviously not looking at you guys making $20,000 a day, but a fraction of that and what that could be at the end is just mind boggling to me. And I'm, I'm very excited.

Brad Dowdy: Right. I mean, I really appreciate that. I mean, I appreciate your support, your support and, you know, your interest in this and, you know, you're, you know, you've always, you've always pushed me, you know, and into, you know, you're, you, you, you always keep those ideas in the back of my head. And, you know, eventually, eventually I'll get to them. So I'm, I'm glad, you know, this, this one eventually came out onto this, onto, onto the paper, if you will.

Myke Hurley: And I'm sure that you know that you're a featured popular product, right? On Kickstarter. You've seen that?

Brad Dowdy: I have seen that. That's been, that's been kind of cool, you know, watching that pop up there in the, in the popular category or, you know, on the homepage of Kickstarter and stuff. You know, that's cool. You get that, get that a little extra exposure. And, you know, now the, the key is, you know, I'll be perfectly honest with you. It, when we started this, you know, before we pressed go, before anything, I guessed a number of what we would end at. And we've already blown by that. I guess 20, I guess 20,000.

Myke Hurley: Right.

Brad Dowdy: I thought 20, I would be, that would be my like, yes, okay, we did a good job. 20,000. And to have it do this already is, is pretty, not, I don't want to say shocking, but it's, it's been pretty crazy. It's been, it's been a wild ride so far. My fingers were about to cramp yesterday, answering all the emails and doing all the support stuff yesterday. But I could not have had more fun doing that. You know, when you have a, you know, like a passion for the, a product like this, it's easy to talk about. And, you know, when people have questions, you know, you, you, you love answering them and, and, you know, doing that, you know, customer support type of stuff. You know, I love doing that kind of stuff and, and, you know, making, you know, people feel happy about their purchase and, and things like that. You know, it's just a, something, you know, I, I really believe in and Jeff really believes in. And we want this to be, like I said earlier, this is a long-term business for us. This is not, you know, a one-shot fly-by-night Kickstarter deal. This, the, the ideas we have in our head right now for the, some of the products we want to make, we can't wait to make them. You know, we don't, we're trying to, we're doing our best not to get ahead of ourselves. I mean, we got a long way to go to, for this to finish and fund and, you know, get these products out to everybody. But, you know, after that, you know, I mean, I think, I think it's all there for us.

Myke Hurley: So, you know, you said you had an amount that you thought you'd reach. Would you like to know what I thought that you would make? Sure. Somewhere between 30 and 40.

Brad Dowdy: Okay.

Myke Hurley: And you, you will. Yeah. Clearly, you're going to, you, you will definitely be over 30. I, I now think that you will be over 40,000. I have a number that I think, but I'm not going to say it. All right. And I will tell you at the end if, or maybe I will tell you off the air. I just don't want to say it in public. Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: And we'll see, you know, it's interesting, you know, being, you know, I've all, I've obviously backed other Kickstarters and seen other Kickstarters and, you know, kind of how they progress through the cycle, you know, but I've never been involved in one to know. I was like, okay, what happens now? You know, you know, kind of in that, in that middle range. I know it's, it's obviously very busy in the front end and it's probably a little bit busy on the back end, but in that middle, that middle range, you know, kind of seeing, you know, getting the word out and getting some promotion out for the project project and kind of kind of keep it rolling.

Myke Hurley: The economics are strange though, right? Because at the moment, like the numbers don't really seem like they make sense. Like I know when you do the math, it makes sense, but 724 people is $27,500. Like to me, when I just, I mean, tell me if I'm being stupid. I look at that and that doesn't seem right. It feels like 724 people should be a lot less money. I mean, obviously you're close to your product. You know, the prices, I mean, I've done the math. Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: Well, like we said in the beginning, I didn't expect the, all the cases level to be that popular until people started saying exactly what you're saying. Well, that's just a really good deal. I mean, that's just, you know, that's the best value. I thought, you know, I would just have it there for people that wanted all the storage. I thought people would be buying, you know, you know, one case or like, you know, the, the, you know, the combination, one of the combination cases, you know, with two cases in it or something like that. But yeah, for, I guess maybe that's why with the.

Myke Hurley: I mean, if people did it the way that I did, I was like, went on the payers like 15, don't want that. Because I assume that's like a t-shirt. Like, you know, when you look at it and you're like, support us, get the t-shirt. Like for $15, you couldn't possibly get anything out of it. Right. Right. So I'm going down and going down. Like, right. No, no, no. 25, I could still do more than that. And that's like $75 and it's the 250. I'm like, right, I'll get the 75. I didn't even know what I was getting. I was just like, I'll back that one. I mean, probably that's a little bit different for me because I would have always given you that, whatever that amount of money was going to be. Mm-hmm. But, and then I'm looking for it and I'm like, you know, three kicks. And I'm like, hang on a minute. What's going on here? It's all of them. And yeah, I was very, and I think that's what has meant that that is such a, has been such a successful pot for you. I mean, it's interesting. It's so interesting to see.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. And that's a really good deal. I mean, by the time they go to retail, that, that level for what you're getting in that level. Now that will be, you know, if you priced them out, like when we're going to sell them in our store afterwards, that's an exceptional deal. Like I said, the Brasstown alone is going to sell for 35 when we're all said and done and opening our online store. So that's almost half of that right there.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. You, you, you'll be like with shipping for me, I'd be lucky to get two. Right. You know, and I'm getting six and shipping. So. Right. Right. I'm very, it's very awesome. So.

Brad Dowdy: I'm glad that's taken off. Yeah.

Myke Hurley: We have another four weeks to talk about this. I mean. I know. I, I'm not going to apologize. We're going to talk about it every week. Just bear that in mind. And the last week, so the, either the last week or the week after, I would like to have Jeffrey on the show. Okay. And we'll find a way to, if we can find a way to get that to work. And then we'll, we'll, we'll, I would like the three of us to talk, or maybe for me to interview you guys again. And then.

Brad Dowdy: Okay. Yeah. We'll do that. Um, right. When we're getting ready to, um, to close the, close the project. Yeah. I think that would be good. He actually, when I told him I was getting ready to go start recording, he goes, he goes, one day I want to come on and do an ad read. So, um, I'm going to, we'll put him on the spot. He's like, Oh no, that would be terrible. I have a terrible voice.

Myke Hurley: I love it. When, uh, when you go to sleep and the knock code Twitter account just gets crazier and crazier. I love it. It's so funny.

Brad Dowdy: He's a wild man. He is so wild. Like, and if you meet him in person, he is like the calmest, shyest guy. But, um, when he starts getting going on the, on the Twitter or the Instagram, he's, he's pretty funny.

Myke Hurley: It makes me laugh. He just sent, he sends me these like random tweets every now and again. And it just makes me smile. Yeah. Earlier he was like trying to play rock, paper, scissors with me.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. You can, you can tell, um, you can tell who's manning the Twitter at certain hours a day and who's, who's, who's doing responses.

Myke Hurley: It works for you guys, right? Cause you can literally hand them off in shifts. Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: It's kind of funny. It was like, it's like, all right, um, I'm signing off now. Jeffrey's on. And then he's like, you know, he signed off last night and you know, I was on within an

Kickstarter Comments

Myke Hurley: hour, you know, I guess we'll talk about this next week, but I'm interested to talk about comment. I'm going to put, we'll put this in for next week. I want to talk to you about comments and updates.

Brad Dowdy: Yep.

Myke Hurley: And how, and how that is. So I'm going to put that in. Yeah. I want to know how you're dealing with those. And what, what your sort of thinking is and that sort of stuff.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. I actually have lots to say on that. So that, that'll be, um, yeah, that would be a long topic to cover right now. So.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. Excellent. Well, do you have like a short URL of any kind for this?

Brad Dowdy: Um, for the Kickstarter, I don't have one that's, um, memorable. I just have the, uh, the kicks, the Kickstarter shortener.

Myke Hurley: Well, let's, I'll tell you what then go to knock code.com. Yeah. Knock code.com. N O C K C O.com. It's right at the top of the page. If you haven't, if you haven't, if you haven't for any insane reason gone and even backed one of the $15 cases, go do that right now because you're going to get an excellent product. I am sure of that. And, and Brad will tell you the same. Uh, congratulations for already meeting your goal.

Brad Dowdy: Well, thank you, sir. And I really appreciate your support. I mean, you, you have been, um, a very, very huge supporter of us and, and I appreciate it. You know, I don't ask to, you know, talk about these topics and you're just like, we're talking about this and this is what we're going to do. And I'm like, okay.

Myke Hurley: I won't allow it any other way. Um, I'm enjoying living vicariously through the two of you throughout this whole thing. It's, it's fun to be, even to play a small part in it, to get to talk with you on the show about every week is fun for me. Um, so if you want to catch up with Brad's stuff, I mean, obviously go to, we're going to have to start doing this now. Go to knockco.com and penaddict.com. Um, they have at knockco on Twitter and Brad is at dowdyism, D-O-W-D-Y-I-S-M. Um, and at dowdy on app.net and I am at imike, I-M-Y-K-E. We'll be back next week for another episode of the Pen Addict podcast. Until then, goodbye. Say goodbye, Brad.

Brad Dowdy: Goodbye, Brad.