Editing The Pen Addict 619/transcript (section)

== Transition from tech career to focus on Japanese stationery ==

* I quit my tech job in 2015. OK. And when I did that, I we can go back into the wine stuff. But I spent about a year focusing on going back to Japan, building my network there, connecting with people both on the community side as well as the the manufacturing side, the corporate side to introduce myself, get get to know people, learn about products and kind of go deep into, you know, what what's cool out there.
* My focus. Well, when I quit my corporate job, I wanted to do something that can leverage my strengths. I was in the tech world for 25 years growing up in Japan. So I thought, you know, what's a good intersection of those things? And, you know, I tried. I had a passion for stationery. But when I was thinking about my job and career, I was trying to be rational. I was trying to be rational. Yeah. And I thought, you know, OK, tech when it comes to electronics and cars and stuff, Japan used to be at the top. But now, you know, there's so much global competition when it comes to culture, anime and food and stuff. That's, you know, so well known in the American market. And what's something that Japan's really good at that hasn't gained any kind of traction in the States? And it just hit me that stationery in a weird way. Japan was kind of this island of its own that had this super advanced stationery that really hadn't made it globally. And there are plenty of reasons for that. But I thought, you know, that's an interesting possibility. So I decided to see if I can make a career out of this. And that's when I and after I gained that confidence, I quit my job, spent a year going back to Japan for research and networking. And then it was probably around 2016 that I felt comfortable enough that, OK, I've done my research. Let me reach out to people and, you know, people, influencer, you know, people, influential people. I hate to use the word influencer. Same, same. People like you who have been at this for a long time. I thought, you know, what a great person to see if I can connect with and share what I have.
* Now, part of the reason probably people. Well, most people don't know about me. I'm not big out there. I'm not big in social media and stuff. So I'm a behind the scenes person. Yes. Part of the reason is, yeah, that's just not my strength. You know, people like you, you are great being the face of this industry. So I thought, you know, I want to reach out to the people who are good at, you know, talking about it. So, you know, popularizing things. So me sending you packages was a great excuse for me to get over the guilt hump. You know, I know I have, I already have 35, you know, gel pens, but, oh, I'll buy this for Brad. Oh, I'll buy this for this person. Then I can, you know, justify. It was all to help me deal with my guilt of having so much fun supposedly working on my career. Yeah, but it was a good, it was actually kind of like a subtle two-way street too, because you would get feedback from me who, like, I'm not, you know, embedded in Japan. But, like, I have a passion for this stuff, and, like, I could, you know, give you the feedback on why I like this, why I think this is good, why I think this is bad, you know, things like that. So we would just have these conversations just about, like, the craziest, wildest products that you would send and just, like, really cool pens. I get to see stuff ahead of time. Like, if the Jetstream Light Touch, which is a topic that I've talked on about, like, the past few weeks, because, like, that's something I'm super passionate about is those little product changes in, like, the mainstream pens. That's something we would have talked about a decade ago, if you'd found that over there, because I'm not going to have information on it here like I do these days, you know, 12 years ago. So I'm going to have Bruce, and we can, Bruce can send me this pen, and we'll have a little talk about it, and, you know, and that's it. We would enjoy it amongst ourselves, and then we'd carry on. But, like, it turns out, like, you were playing the long game, and I was playing the long game. We were just doing something that we liked, and it turned out to be pretty cool. And my focus really was on the day-to-day products.