Editing The Pen Addict 78/transcript (section)

== Kickstarter Campaign ==


'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right. So as we speak, you have 1,945 backers who have pledged a total of $74,171 against the goal of $5,000. Now, we want to talk about this today. Of course we do. But we do have one little item of follow-ups, also Kickstarter related. So last week's episode, we spoke about the draft notebook, which is the notebook that you scan and send it off and it's in the cloud. And one of the things that me and Brad spoke about was the fact that it seemed strange to us that you couldn't just do one at a time if you wanted to. Well, in an update to the draft Kickstarter page, they have announced a new funding level. So for $25, you can get one notebook and you can just do it whenever you want, send it back whenever you want. And that's that kind of thing. It's not like a monthly thingamabobber.

'''Jeffrey Bruckwicki:''' Yeah. So John and Marshall reached out to us on Twitter after the episode last week. It was actually pretty quick. It was like we had barely posted. I didn't know anyone had time to listen to it. And the two guys we talked about somehow found it and were hitting us up on Twitter. Super nice guys.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Maybe they're as nice as they are. Maybe they're somehow involved in the NSA.

'''Jeffrey Bruckwicki:''' Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I'm being monitored for sure. There's no doubt for my relationship with Jeffrey Brook Whitney. Yep.

'''Jeffrey Bruckwicki:''' But yeah, they reached out to us and just understood our concerns. And you know one thing I missed last week, Myke, and I don't know how I missed this. So when you send your notebook back to get scanned in, it's essentially destroyed. You don't get your notebook back.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Oh.

'''Jeffrey Bruckwicki:''' So I didn't put that together last week until I was reading on notebook stories. Nifty did a little more in-depth conversation about it. And that's when I realized that – I mean that kind of makes sense because they're going to have to rip it apart to scan it in. And they're not going to send it back to you because that's more shipping cost. So you're going to have this notebook that you've put your handiwork in with pen or pencil and just pouring your thoughts into it. And it's going to go get digitized, but that notebook is going to go away. Right? So the notebook will be essentially destroyed, but that brings about the other part of security. Like I write things in my notebook like that me and Jeff are working on like prototype type stuff. Like and I don't want necessarily that stuff being shared, so that wouldn't be something I put in here. So maybe if you're just like a straight-up artist or something, this would look good. But then your original artwork is also going to get damaged.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I guess it depends. I mean really. I don't know if I really opened that many notebooks after I finished with them.

'''Jeffrey Bruckwicki:''' I know. I know. It's just there's lots of things to think about in what should be a pretty straightforward, simple project. And that's really – looks really well done and really nicely set up. There's kind of a lot of what-ifs and can I wrap my head around what's actually happening here and things like that. But I mean I still think it looks good. I just – I don't think it's for me. But I mean I think some people would find this useful.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I would. I would actually use it.

'''Jeffrey Bruckwicki:''' Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I would – if this was like – if I was able to back it in the UK, then I would actually do it. Yeah. It's just enough for me to think that it's something that I would want, you know, just to be able to take notes about stuff and just have them scanned and that would be very useful. Just to have it all searchable, like computer searchable, that would be really interesting to me.

'''Jeffrey Bruckwicki:''' Yeah. I'll still think about it because the three-month subscription level is only $29. I mean that's totally fair.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah.

'''Jeffrey Bruckwicki:''' I mean I would do it. I would do it. But yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So good luck to them. And I hope that they are as successful as you, Super Megasars.

'''Jeffrey Bruckwicki:''' Yeah. They've got a little ways to go. But they can maybe make it. We'll see. It'll be close, I think. I think they've just got to, you know, convince a few people of a few things and they'll be rolling. But yeah. It'll be close. So I'll think about it. I might just do it to do it and see what the whole process is like.

'''Myke Hurley:''' And they'll send you a book.

'''Jeffrey Bruckwicki:''' Yeah. You can just do it yourself. That's right. You can have one of my months.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I'll tell you what I'm going to do in the future. I'm just going to mail all of my field notes to Jeff and then he can just like write them out on like to the computer for me.

'''Myke Hurley:''' That'll be great. Yeah. And I'll do the same thing that I do with my notebooks and forget them somewhere and then my wife will throw them out.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That'll be perfect. That sounds like a very similar system.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah.

'''Jeffrey Bruckwicki:''' And you can get some really cool sketches of me in Jeff's notebooks.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So I want to, obviously we're going to talk about the Kickstarter and where you guys are now and sort of, you know, what's next now that we've had the 30 days. So I figure maybe we should thank Squarespace now and then we can have a clear run through to the end. Does that sound good? Seems like a natural break point in the show. Yeah. I think that's fine. So these fine gentlemen, they are users and supporters of Squarespace. Let me tell you who Squarespace are. They are the all-in-one platform that makes it fast and easy to create your own professional website or online portfolio. For a free trial of Squarespace and 10% off, go to squarespace.com and use the offer code TallyHo10. So Squarespace do awesome stuff. If you're looking to create a site for you, maybe you want your own blog, like I have MikeHurley.net there and Brad has ThePenAddict.com there as well. Is it PenAddict or ThePenAddict? I always forget.

'''Jeffrey Bruckwicki:''' How many times have we gone over this? Not enough times, clearly. Yeah. So it's PenAddict.com, but you yelled at me for months. You need to go by the domain, ThePenAddict.com and redirect it, which I finally did.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, which I was happy that you did that. So we have our own personal blog.

'''Jeffrey Bruckwicki:''' ThePenAddict.com and sent me to hover.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That's some real cross-promotion right there. So yeah, we got that. So if you want to set up a blog there, you can do that. Maybe you're a business. You can set up your business site there or an artist. You want a portfolio. Or maybe you want to sell something online. Well, you can do that too with Squarespace Commerce, which allows you to sell physical and digital goods. These fine gentlemen that are with me today, they are setting up the KnockCo website there. It's knockco.com. You can find the blog and all that stuff. And that's also where you will be able to go after the Kickstarter campaign is all squared up and buy their wonderful products and projects. Let me tell you why. Let me tell you why I believe that these gentlemen chose this. It's because Squarespace have fantastic features, really easy to build pages with Squarespace. Everything's WYSIWYG, so what you do, what you see is what you get. So as you're dragging sliders around the page, it's automatically updating for you in front of your very eyes. You want to change colors and fonts, and it all updates so you can see exactly how any changes you want to make are going to look. But they have beautiful, award-winning templates that you can build your site from. It's so easy to use, but they have a 24-hour, 7-day-a-week support team. Brad has contacted them during his insane work hours in the middle of the night, and they've been there right for him. So they're awesome with that. It's definitely the truth. We know that much. I mean, I'm in the other side of the globe to Squarespace, and they can respond to me whenever I need them to. Squarespace plans start at just $8 a month. They include a free domain name if you sign up for a year. I want you to go and try them out, and I'm sure that you're going to fall in love. So go to squarespace.com, sign up for free trials, no credit card needed. When you decide to sign up and purchase an account with them, you'll get 10% off if you use the offer code Tallyho10. That's T-A-L-L-Y-H-O-1-0. Thanks so much to Squarespace for the support of Panaddict and all the 5x5. They give you everything that you need to create an exceptional website. So you two are in the tail end of the roller coaster. You are pulling back into the station to be helped out with a carriage by an attendant. I believe that's an apt metaphor. The project has had an incredible start, like a really incredible start, and you've been building really strongly up to this point now where you are. Has anything changed in the last day or so? I know that a lot of projects, they see an uptick again. Are you guys experiencing that yet?

'''Jeffrey Bruckwicki:''' Yeah, yeah, it has been. I think the first week, week and a half, was pretty rapidly in an upward angle. There was lots of backers each day, and then for a two-week period in the middle, it kind of slowed down some to where it was just very steady every day, just a small amount every day. It was almost the same for about two weeks straight. And then starting about two, three days ago, we started to see an uptick again. And so I thought we'd finish around 65 or 70, the way things were tracking. But that last little uptick is the truth. Dan Bishop from Kara's Customs told me this would happen, and that's exactly what's happened. So we're getting these last-minute backers and everyone coming to the site and getting a definite increase in pledges. So it's been awesome. It's been awesome to see.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So is the excitement maintaining, or is it just norm now? It's like, oh, these people just keep buying our products.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Jeff, how does that feel for you?

'''Myke Hurley:''' For me, I don't know, to be honest. It's one of those things where, and like Brad and I have spoke about it some, and it's like, oh, we're so close to 75. I know that we're at 74 and we wanted $5,000, but it's like, can somebody just give me a little extra money? Come on. Yeah. I know you have it. But it's been really exciting, just the whole process. And the first day was the most mind-blowing day I think I've had in a really long time. Just seeing it go from zero to 5,000 in the first hour and then 20,000 by the end of that day. Nothing could have happened unless everybody pulled out that would have made this any type of failure to us.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So obviously I've spoken to Brad about this some, but what was that first day like for you? I mean, going into it, Brad's this crazy internet guy, and he's got these lofty dreams of being able to make $5,000. Did you think he was crazy?

'''Myke Hurley:''' No, because we met face-to-face for the first time two months before we launched the product, almost to the day. That was it. The first day we met in person, we decided that we would move forward with it, that it was a good idea. And I think by the end of two weeks or so, we had all the numbers crunched, and we knew that it would be a viable product to sell. And because of his internet reach, and yours as well, Myke, we really knew that we could get at least five grand. That was the hope, at least, because that would give us everything we needed to continue with the business.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Go on, Brad.

'''Myke Hurley:''' No, I don't know. I didn't think that – I wasn't afraid of $5,000. We were talking about $7,000 or $8,000 initially, and that was a little more scary to me, I think. And I know now it seems minute, but at the time, it's like, you know, it's twice as much almost.