Editing The Pen Addict 223/transcript (section)

== Top Five Pens ==


'''Myke Hurley:''' Top five pens update. That's what we got first up in the document so I can stop screaming.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, it feels like I'm giving that little bit short shrift today. And actually, I have a bunch of links that I saved to talk about next week. So, when y'all come listen to this episode, say, why didn't you talk about this? Why didn't you talk about that? Save them for next week. I got a bunch of stuff already for next week that I knew we wouldn't have time for today. But I wanted to... Oh, someone just canceled their pledge. I know.

'''Unknown:''' I know. I wasn't going to say anything.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' My money's on Tony. I bet Tony's in there. Well, you know what it is?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Someone's listening live. They want to be the one to push it over the edge. So, they've canceled their order. Right? They're going to wait for one more person to jump in and then hitting it.

'''Unknown:''' Oh, that's fine.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Oh, you're killing us. You're killing us. All right.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Focus, Michael.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I can't focus, but I'm trying.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' All right. So, top five pens. That's been a thing I've always done. And I've refined and reworked how I've done it over the years. And, you know, recently, probably in the past year, I think I've kind of got it down to a science. And the issue with updating it is not a lot of things change. You know, in gel pens, ballpoint pens, all those kinds of things. They don't change that much. Someone's going to have to come up with something really nice to beat the Uniball Sino DX or the Uniball Jetstream and, you know, things like that. So, it's not like I have the opportunity to update this list every three months. There's not enough churn in the market, if you will, on the majority of pens. So, I went through, looked through all the lists. You know, most of the lists didn't change for the standard pens, if you will. I did add a just-miss section because there's some good pens that kind of get left out a little bit. And so, I wanted to make sure they're talked about, like, in the micro gel ink pens.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Like a special mention kind of thing.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, yeah. Like special mention. Like, the Pentel Energel Euro is a wonderful gel ink pen. And it just, it never really cracks my top five because it doesn't have as many colors, as many barrel styles, as something like the Zebra Saracic clip. You know, it's never really going to beat that pen. And it doesn't mean it's not an awesome pen for someone who's looking for a great black ink needlepoint 0.35 millimeter gel ink pen. It's killer. So, I added that into all these lists.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Did it. It's done.

'''Myke Hurley:''' It's done. It's done. See, I knew it, right? You know what happened? It's one of these people in the chat room here.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Oh, I can tell who-

'''Myke Hurley:''' It went up by one and then immediately made it.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Do you want me to go look? I can see what you guys do, by the way. Do you want me to go look? No, no. Okay, I'm not going to go look because I'm not even logged into the back end.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Whoever it was, they claimed their victory. It doesn't matter because they did it. You did it, man! We did it! Yeah! I am so pumped for you guys. My God, less than 24 hours.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, like almost exact, like we turned it on at 10 a.m. yesterday, but we did it in, I guess you would call it a soft launch. Like, I just sent it out to the newsletter, the NotCode newsletter subscribers. And because we had a bunch of early bird cases that we wanted to do, so I wanted to make sure they got the first shot at it. So we didn't really kind of go public, like with blog posts and things like that till 2 o'clock yesterday afternoon. So yeah, 24 hours. I will take it.

'''Myke Hurley:''' This episode is a mess. We're like, here's part of the next topic. We'll do it right now. And we'll just start screaming for a while. Man, I am so freaking proud of you two. Thank you. My God, what a business you have built. I am so proud of you. I'm so proud of you.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I've got a huge smile on my face. And I was telling you how I was feeling nervous before we launched this. You know, it's been a lot of stress. I feel pretty good right now. I bet you do. So I'm not going to lie. I feel better.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I cannot even describe how happy I am that we've been able to do it now. And, you know, I feel like a kindred spirit to your company. So on behalf of you guys, I want to thank everyone.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Hey, you're a big part of it. I'm not going to lie.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Well, I mean, I'm a sometimes employee, right? For a week.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, exactly.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Maybe two weeks next year.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I said in the newsletter that I sent out, you know, I'm not sending out this newsletter out to just customers. I'm sending out to friends. And that's what I feel this business is built on. And now I'm about to cry.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Good. You got to get those feels out, man. You got to just get them all out.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' You know, that's the kind of business, you know, Jeff and I built. You know, we, our customers are our friends. And that's how we want it to be. And, you know, that I think that makes for a good business.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I think history is showing out right now. Yeah. It's making for a good business. I'm so excited about this. Well, thank you. This is amazing.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And thanks to everyone in the chat room. I'm getting lots of thanks and all that stuff. So I really, really appreciate it. And Jeff does too. We got to get him on here soon.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Well, I was thinking maybe in the coming weeks before the end of the campaign. So we can kind of talk about the campaign. And maybe as we're getting, you know, towards the end of that or something.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, the last push.

'''Myke Hurley:''' That might be fun. Actually, it will be fun. But that's a good idea. All right. Let's go back to these top five pens. We're going to talk more about the Kickstarter campaign in a bit.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, we'll have a whole huge, most of the show will be on the Kickstarter. But I just did want to bring that up. I did, most of the updates were small. There were a few changes in all of the fountain pen price ranges for the most part. There's some different things. There's some price changes. There's some price adjustments. I did add a top five fountain pens between $200 and $500. That's been asked ever since the beginning. But I was never comfortable doing it until I had enough experience in that area. And I've gotten that experience via my wallet in the past year or so. So I felt like I was able to put together a good list and explain why these pens are good for the price that you have to spend, even though they're quite expensive. And I think that's mostly it. Did I add another list? So I added that list.

'''Myke Hurley:''' It's interesting to see the Aurora Optima straight in on that top five fountain pens $200 and $500 range.