Editing The Pen Addict 568/transcript (section)

== Career journey and entrepreneurship ==


'''Frank:''' Yeah, actually, I had a couple of careers, if you could say that. I'm a classic entrepreneur, I would say, in the sense of I like following paths that I'm passionate with. Usually it starts as a hobby. And then I just dive in with everything I have committed to that and try to make a profession out of it. Just for example, when I was 14 years old, I was in a little discotheque in a youth club in my hometown. So, I started becoming a DJ back then. It's a very small hometown. But I did that for about 20 years, I think, until I turned 34. So, I'm famous when it comes to that hometown. But no, outside of that, nobody knows me. Being a DJ. It was a hobby. I love music. I still listen to music every day over the headphones I'm talking to you right now. Music is a very big part of my life. So, I did that for a job. Then I did photography for a lot. I used to have an analog darkroom in the basement of my parents' house, developing black and white photography. Which is quite good, in a sense, until today. Because many pictures you see on my website, the product shots, are made by me. It's something I enjoy as much as pen making itself. And the profession I actually became when I was an adult was, I wanted to become a teacher, but took a side way to become an educator, I think it's called. A social worker might be the right word. Okay, sure. So, I lived and shared my life with children that don't have a proper home. And so, I moved in a house with them and stayed 24 hours, 24-7 around, being a spare parent, if you want to say. Yeah. So, and out of that very intense work and experience, I made myself self-employed with a partner and founded a social company where we did exactly like that. We helped children, families to, in the best way, live together for themselves. That I have been doing for 20 years.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That's wonderful. Yeah, that is a really valuable, valuable thing for the world. Like, not just like in your local community, but for people to give their lives and dedicate their lives to that type of work is really amazing. So, yeah, that's great. And listening to you talk about not just like your social work type of job, like the jobs prior to that definitely had a creative bent to them, right? Like music, photography, art, design, things like that. And did that type of creativity eventually like light a spark in you to say, hey, you know, I'm doing this great social work and, you know, maybe I need a hobby on the side. And how did it come to where you decided to make your first pen?

'''Frank:''' Yeah. The social work is a very intense work between human beings. So, you get lots of energy back, but you put lots of energy in it. And if you don't find a way to do something beside that verbal work, which is on a high psychologic level, then you might become ill or sick over time. You need something that founds you, that gives you a proper base to be able to do a good job. And for me, that was craftsmanship in the first place. So, we bought a very old house built in the 1930s and rebuilt that house. And I learned if you find somebody who tells you how to use a tool and which tool to use, you can do a lot on your own and you can get very far by it. And I felt a success doing this rebuilding of the house because you see at the end of the day what you have done. And you feel it in your bones and in your hands. They hurt.

'''Frank:''' And I liked that. I liked that. Working in the dust and making something. And I felt a relief from my very, I don't know the right term, head work compared to using your hands. And because I was so motivated after that, I made a hobby which was like first building up a workshop. It's not the one you might ask for later. Oh, we're going to talk about that later. It was a very old, very small garage carport thing, which I stuffed full with tools and tried to be a carpenter, work with wood. And then I found a crazy guy from your home country in America. Jeff Spira was his name. He was a designer for boats because the River Elbe, which might be a hint of the name of my brand, flows through Hamburg. It's a beautiful river. And I was dreaming of going on the boat there, on a boat that I built myself. And this Jeff Spira had a very old ancient internet website, which was not graphically nice to look at. But the content was that he gave you a plan you could download for a little money. And people from all over the world downloaded the plans, build a boat, and send it to him. And he would answer and give them advice. And I told my wife, you know what, I'm going to build a boat now, which was not very taken honestly or serious by her. But a couple of years later, I managed to finish the boat. It was a giant project. It took me five years. It was a crazy project. I took a break for two years in between. But then there comes the moment you realize, oh, this is going to come to an end pretty soon. And you have so much joy doing this. What's the next thing I'm going to build? And then it came to me. You said it's a spark in the head? What's the?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, like a spark, yeah.

'''Frank:''' Like a spark, yes. I was looking at this almost finished boat. And then there was the spark that the captains of ships write in their log book. Is it the same word in English? Yes, like captain's log, yes. A captain's log, yes. So they write their route, they write their adventures, they write, make a protocol, whatever they experienced. And somehow I came to the topic of writing, log book, experience, adventure, that mixture. And I ended up with writing instruments, small pieces, much smaller than boats, that have so much in them, if you think it through, what they can give you, what you can do with them, but writing, but also what you can do with them, designing on them. And then there was the spark and never went away. And the first idea was making writing instruments using the same materials as I used with my boat, which was wood. Okay. There was lots of brass. Usually back then they had these, it's a compass in Germany. What's the thing that gives it the direction? Yes, compass. Compass. Which usually was used out of ebony brass and nice materials. That was the first idea to start with something like that.