Editing The Pen Addict 124/transcript (section)

== Bullet Journal Notebooks ==


'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, there's no doubt. I mean, the quality and care they put into those notebooks is clear, like immediately from when you pick it up and open it up to the first page. It's a fantastic product. That's, yeah, I'm really excited about that part, if you couldn't tell. So I want to dig into this community piece just a little bit more. And just in case it wasn't clear to the listeners, Ryder's background, your background is in web design and development, right? I mean, that's your day job. So what was so impressive about the bullet journal, the original launch, when we all first became enamored with it, was the website you put together. And I remember just raving about how well the website was done and designed and that was all your work. And now that the bullet journal has grown and has this whole community around it, and we're going to put this link in the show notes, there's a whole Google Plus page where everyone is, there's like well over a thousand members, right, that are sharing in all their things, you know, how they're all their bullet journal modifications. What are your plans to integrate that community? If you can talk about that into the future website that's going to come out of this Kickstarter project?

'''Ryder Carroll:''' Well, the last thing I want to do is take away from communities that have already popped up around. What I would like to do is provide another option to people for people who may not find those other communities, that kind of thing. And hopefully the communities that are already going strong will want to engage with this other community as well. So for me, the thing that's most important is to provide another valuable tool that might be more easily accessible to those coming into the system for the first time. And for those who are more experienced, hopefully they'll be contributing their knowledge as much as they like. So my goal is to build that tool.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So now, I haven't dug into the community aspect of this much, but are people creating their own, say like, add-ons or inserts or you were referring to modules as different, you know, things you can put on the page or people creating these physical tools? I know a product like the Chronodex, I'm not sure you're familiar with that, started out as a very, as one man's idea and it was very simple and straightforward and people grasp onto it. And I see a lot of similarities in the bullet journal in the community and how people just took that idea and ran with it and built on top of it. Are they, are people coming up with like, you know, all these different add-ons or inserts or different modifications? All the time.

'''Ryder Carroll:''' All the time. And that's, that's really where I see like the lifespan of the bullet journal increasing significantly because it keeps evolving with people's needs. You know, they, they, they come up with things that I never would because I don't live that person's life or I don't have that person's experience. They create the tool to match the challenge and people have very different individual kinds of challenges. And that's what I think is so exciting. And I hope that a lot of people can benefit from each other through a platform that allows people to very quickly find these solutions, if you will. But yeah, they're constantly coming up with some really, really clever stuff. That's so cool.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I really liked that, that community aspect of, of how this is really just become so integrated in people's lives. That's, that's awesome. So now as we're sitting here, I'm staring at the Kickstarter page. There's 40 hours to go. We're recording this on a Monday evening, 40 hours to go. You're at $66,757. What, what, what, what does your brain think about the amount that this has reached in 2,386 backers? Tell, when you see those numbers, what, what pops into your head?

'''Ryder Carroll:''' I'm just really grateful. I mean, that, that's all I can say. It's, it's, I'm just really grateful. And if I had any doubts about whether or not people found this to be useful for them, they, they were obliterated, certainly within the first eight hours of this Kickstarter campaign. I'm just, I'm just really excited about what it can become and what people are making of it. And, uh, you know, I'm, I'm really committed to try and making the bullet journal the best it possibly can be. And it seems that there is just a really engaged and very clever community surrounding it. So I look forward to, um, you know, building better tools for them as well, seeing how they can grow the bullet journal because it's definitely way beyond just me now.

'''Myke Hurley:''' There must be like a great vindication feeling. Like you created this, this thing that was for you and you thought people might like it and you put it out there and then, you know, people take to it and you put it on, on a site like Kickstarter. I mean, I know me and Brad spoke about it a lot when, when he had his stuff up for, for not co it shows that people believe in what you're doing and like, and it means enough to them that they want to, to pay their hard earned money to support it and make it happen.

'''Ryder Carroll:''' Yeah. It's, it's almost a little bit surreal to me right now. Um, I'm just really excited and I'm spending all this time right now behind the scenes, trying to make sure that people will get their books as fast as possible. You know, it's very, it's very real now and I have to deliver and I'm, I'm spinning up for that right now.