Editing The Pen Addict 328/transcript (section)

== Podcast Introduction ==


'''Myke Hurley:''' From RelayFM, this is The Pen Addict, episode 328. Today's show is brought to you by Squarespace and RxBomb. My name is Myke Hurley. I am joined by Yeehaw Brad Dowdy. Hi Brad Dowdy.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I got a pretty decent amount of grief for my roping some cowpokes comments last week, and rightfully so. It was a very enjoyable event in Dallas that I just came back from. I actually even had someone come up to me with their phone, and they had it typed out, and they stood there and read it to me around all their friends and mocked me, so it was wonderful. Thank you, Dallas. The end. I'm never coming back. I'm just kidding.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Damn, you got roasted.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I did, and it, hey, totally deserved, right? That was a bad moment in pen addict history.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I don't understand what's going on. Like, I don't know. Maybe I've missed a lot of context here. I don't get it. But we don't need to go into that today. I think that might be best for everyone. If you just tell me how Dallas went instead.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It was a blast. So we had, we talked last week about how this was going to be my first time there, and it was going to be a new setup. The end of Pen Show for me being that it was just a two-day show, so Friday and Saturday instead of a three-day show all the way through Sunday, like the shows that you've been to and most of the shows that I go to around the U.S. tend to be Friday, Saturday, Sunday shows. And I was curious how that was going to play out. And before I made the trip, I had come around to the fact that, hey, I think this setup is going to be good. It'll be good for sales. It'll be really busy, just all kind of crammed into two days, and then I'll get home Sunday. And that's kind of nice instead of racing home Monday and getting back to the house and no one's here, things like that. And I have to say, it completely worked. So it was crazy busy, about as busy as I've been at any Pen Show before. Because of the consolidated two-day timeframe, people were lined up at the door Friday morning. Like, I don't know how many people, but not hundreds, but like, you know, 50, 60 people were probably waiting to get in. First thing Friday morning, so we started setting up. Friday morning, 8 o'clock, doors opened at 10 o'clock. I was ready to go. And up until about 3 o'clock, it was just constantly busy. We kind of had a little bit of a lull. And then after like 5 o'clock, you know, we cranked all the way up until, you know, I was selling things right until they shut the doors at 8 o'clock. So it was fantastic. It was long. It was exhausting. It was tiring. Sold a lot. Talked to a lot of people. Met a lot of people. Had a good time. I had a good table of location. So I was right next to Franklin Kristoff and right near Van Espen's end in the same room as Myke Masayama. So that's a pretty good trifecta right there of people you want to be around at a Pen Show.

'''Myke Hurley:''' It's good for football.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, yeah. And so, you know, that day was crazy. And then the outside of the hotel, really the only restaurant within walking distance is directly across the street. It's a steakhouse that I ate there three nights in a row. So that which was fine. It was good food. But, you know, we closed at 8. We had a dinner reservation at 8.15. And then I was back to the bar at like 10 o'clock. So, you know, people wanting to hang out and mix and mingle and, you know, share pens and tell stories. You know, we were there pretty late and we'd had a long day. So we didn't have much bar time, even though I still didn't go to bed till like 12.30, 1 o'clock, something like that. So there wasn't as much after hours socializing because there's no time. It just isn't. And since the show ends on Saturday, so it ran 9 to 5 on Saturday. Oh, sorry, 10 to 5, I think. I don't know. Whatever. Anyway, it ended at 5 o'clock. And normally Saturday nights at the three-day shows are pretty busy just for socializing and stuff. Well, everyone's gone then, right? This is when people go home. A lot of the vendors stayed, you know, weren't leaving until the next day. But a lot of the just attendees, you know, they were driving home or flying home or heading back to their house locally. And I did find it to be like a very heavily locals show, which is good. Lots of people from all over Texas made the trip, you know, four, five, six hours in the car. I actually did a little bit of a video recap where I said a lot of these things for Lisa Van Ness. You know, after the show closed down and after we got dinner Saturday night, we went and shot a little recap video and explored that. We'll put the link in the show notes to that. So that was fun.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Where is that? Is that on YouTube? It's on YouTube. It's on YouTube. All right, great. That'll be on YouTube. Perfect.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So it was nice to go to the show because I got to meet a lot of people that I haven't met at other pin shows. You know, lots of big time new crowd. And the show promoters felt that it was a really good crowd. It definitely skewed younger than the past. They said it was noticeable. So I always like to hear that. And I know every vendor I talked to like had a good show. Knock had a good show.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Sales wise. And it was just, you know, I was pretty much every waking hour I was on. Like there was not much chill time until Saturday evening. And then by then most everyone was gone. So, you know, but that was fine. But, you know, if you're going for like the big social event show, I will say that's the one downside. You know, it doesn't have the social time like Atlanta or D.C. or Chicago or any of the three day shows. It's just really tough to do that on a two day show, especially when you go to eight o'clock. So like I couldn't do we couldn't do like a pen mixer or a pen attic meetup or anything because I'm pretty much not available Friday night until 10 o'clock. And Lisa's not available until 10 o'clock. And then Saturday, everyone's kind of gone. You don't want to do an event Saturday night. So I don't think that's a big deal. Like a lot of us get a lot of those opportunities elsewhere, myself included. So I do like this format. I do want to come back to the show. I thought it was awesome. The people there were fantastic. I mean, people are always fantastic. But man, that that Texas hospitality was in full force there. And it was really good.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, I wonder about the the socializing aspect of it, though, because my instinct is that that's what makes people return.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. But I think the crowd of this show was so regional like this is their show for Texas and Oklahoma and Arizona and even Arkansas, even though there's a little rock show. A bunch of people from there came in Louisiana where they're they're not going necessarily going to D.C. or San Francisco or Chicago. This is the one. So we had so many people driving in from San Antonio and Austin and, you know, everywhere, you know, Oklahoma City that made the show their only show of the year and made it special for them. And it was special for us to to be there for them and hang out and meet all these people that came from all over. Like it was it's not that a crowd that you normally see it like like I'm used to seeing the people I see in Atlanta. And there's always new people in Atlanta because we do special things there like the podcast and people travel from all over the world there. Yeah. But I'm not seeing I didn't see many of the Atlanta people in Texas, you know, which is a good thing. San Francisco people in Texas. It's a great thing.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Because you want to see new people at different shows because it means that the overall kind of maybe industry is the wrong word, but like the whole thing is increasing. You know, like the overall people that are there to care about this stuff increases if you start to see new people. If it's just the same people moving around, you're just saturating it.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right. And I think the promoters and the vendors would agree that they saw that change and have been seeing that change recently. So, I mean, I don't have enough good things to say about it. And I already told them I'll be back next year. So we'll have to figure that out.