Editing The Pen Addict 430/transcript (section)

== Introduction ==


'''Myke Hurley:''' From RelayFM, this is The Pen Addict, episode 430. Today's show is brought to you by the Canalea Penco and Harry's. My name is Myke Hurley and I'm joined by Mr. Brad Dowdy. Hi, Brad Dowdy.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Hey, Myke Hurley. How are you today?

'''Myke Hurley:''' I'm fine and dandy, my friend. I'm excited. I'm excited about our first ad today, actually.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, you are.

'''Myke Hurley:''' But we'll get to that in a little bit. I want to just give everyone a final thank you and reminder about the RelayFM fundraiser for St. Jude. Today is the last day of September, so it's the last time you hear us talking about it this year. So, the month is quickly drawing to a close. I really cannot even conceive of the fact that we have now raised $430,000 for St. Jude this year.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Whoa, whoa. I haven't checked in, like, since Monday, and I don't think it had eclipsed four then. That's insane.

'''Myke Hurley:''' There have been some and one especially incredibly generous donations that have occurred over the last few days.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I saw a couple hints to that.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, which has propelled us to the level that we're at now. But small or large, it doesn't matter. Any donation has helped get us to this amount of money. Right? So, that's $430,000 raised this year, which actually puts us to, we're currently over $745,000 raised in the last two years. Golly. So, I guess we're going to go for that cool million next year.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Easy peasy to hit that million mark. That's, you should be very proud. You and Stephen should be very proud.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I'm proud of everybody, bro. This is, you know, like, you know, we set it up and we put the work in, but this is something that everybody's come together for, from our hosts to our listeners, right? This is something that we're all doing together. And it really, you know, people talk about community as a thing. And it was originally, like, a phrase that I was a little hesitant of, but I've definitely grown fond of more recently. And this is, like, a big thing for me that shows that, like, the strength of the community of listeners that we have and their generosity. It's really quite, quite overwhelming for such a fantastic cause. So, thank you to everybody that has donated. And we'll be doing it again next year. You can bet on that.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, it's fantastic. And you definitely should believe it in the power of community. And it's something that you and Stephen have built here and that allows this to happen. And it's something to be very, very proud of. And I'm proud to be a part of it.

'''Myke Hurley:''' And I'm proud of the pen addict community who have helped you meet your goal for the Noco wax canvas pen cases. Yeah. As it has happened in between our last episode and now, you're currently at $31,500 of your goal of $30,000. So, I kind of just wanted to touch on this a little bit with you. I'm very, very pleased, very proud that you've hit that. And I kind of just wanted to get, like, what is your feeling for now? And just to underscore, like, hitting that goal, like, what is it going to enable you to do?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, I'm super happy. When I woke up Monday morning, it had just ticked over to $30,000. So, a little over a week, you know, with a weird launch schedule covering Friday nights and weekends. It was not the best scheduling of a project I've ever done.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I think it makes sense for this one, though, because, like, you know, we spoke about it, but this campaign has kind of weird reasoning and beginnings.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' It's like, this is not intended to ever be, like, the most particular meticulous campaign to try and, like, really blow the doors off. Like, you would have done for, say, the original one or the spoke design stuff, like, you know, with, like, the roadie and the spoke pen. The roadie you didn't do a Kickstarter for, but the spoke pen you did. And that's really, like, we want to hit this. We want to hit the community and hopefully break outside of that. Where, like, whilst it would be lovely if that happened, that's not the intention of this campaign anyway.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I think that's 100% correct. Like, this was a personal campaign in a personal, like, reach out to our supporters, right? Like, this is not designed to hit the Kickstarter front page and, you know, go viral like some, you know, Kickstarter projects are set up to do. This is a project to continue to build out Knock. And what it's going to allow us to do now that we've hit this goal is to not just make these cases for all these cool people that backed us and get them these cool cases in their hands. It's going to let us put in orders for other inventory, which I'm going to start teasing on the campaign. I'll take some pictures of some other cases, colors we have in the works, no new designs yet. But, you know, like, this is what, like, the profits from this campaign are going to allow these other cases to be made. So I'm going to start showing that off and see if we can raise some more money to get even more cases made. So, like, that's exactly what this is for.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' You know, I'm thrilled that we've already hit the goal. And I felt that we would. You never know until you launch these things, right? It's always a nerve-wracking experience. You know, have you done the right things? Will people support you and things like that? So they have. We're in. We're making these cases. I'm excited about it. And now I'm going to keep trying to push it a little bit more over the next couple weeks. So you will see me and hear from me talking about this as we try to drive this up a little bit higher.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, because now every extra just goes to make everything better and everything easier.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right. This is a production campaign, not a profit campaign, right? I don't use Kickstarter to make money. You know, we use Kickstarter to make products. And we've talked about this before. So this is like 100% of the proceeds go into making 100% of the cases, right? So that's one of those things. And like the more we raise, the more I get to send over to the manufacturer. And the more we have to fill the virtual shelves. And, you know, it's a good place to be right now with it already fulfilled. So I'm very happy with that.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Good. As you should be. Yeah, I'm really, really pleased that this happened. I'm really pleased that everybody got behind it.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I'm excited that people are excited about this case because it's a cool case. It's something a little bit different. Even though same shape and design, the materials are super cool. And I think everyone who hasn't had the chance to use one of our wax canvas products is going to be really happy with this.