Editing The Pen Addict 185/transcript (section)

== Nock Outreach ==


'''Brad Dowdy:''' Well, with Nock, it's going to be outreach and retail. It's two things. I've never sat down and focused on building Nock. Nock has been, we plan very well to have as much inventory as we can, but we're always running out, which is awesome. I want to solve that problem, right? Which, I'm going to make it worse. And that's how we're going to solve it, because I'm going to get out there to people who have never heard of this company or this brand and say, hey, we make this really cool thing. And I think it's something you might be interested in. And here's why. And we're going to put the pressure on manufacturing. You know, I want to, we already have so much pressure on us because all of our wonderful customers, that's our customer base is growing, growing exponentially every day. And they love our products, and I'm super glad that they do. But there's so much untapped out there that we want to manufacture more. And that's a huge problem to solve. And we're working on that now. And I want to be able to focus on that.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' You know, with the pen addict, I want to grow that in the fountain pen community as a whole, really in the stationary community as a whole. I want to get out more. I want to travel more, get out to more shows, just increase awareness and keep bringing people into this community. You know, the people that listen to this show are not your traditional stationary users that, you know, people who are not aware of this would think of, right? People who don't know us, you know, air quote us, don't understand any of this. They think, you know, pens are for old people or fountain pens. Who uses that anymore? And I want to continue to spread the word of stationary. I want to build, like, a massive community around this. You know, I think it can be done. And I want to continue to get the word out. And, you know, if that's traveling to more pen shows this year, you know, maybe that's it. You know, I want to grow the pen addict as a brand. You know, I'm not going to lie. I think there's something there with the website and the name and things like that. But so, you know, I want to build a pen addict store. You know, I want to do something like that. You know, not a physical store, an online store. Physical store. That'd be pretty cool one of these days, wouldn't it? Don't worry. That's not on the right. Don't worry. I'm not alluding to anything there. That's not on the radar. But those are the kind of big things, the big picture things that I'm working on with Nock and with pen addict. I have that more defined with Nock right now than pen addict.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yep.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' But pen addict, I've been doing so long, I can do that quicker. If that makes sense.

'''Myke Hurley:''' The funny thing is, you can go from having a job and two side jobs to one job and a side job. Yeah. You know, like the website can become your side job, but that will take like all the time that Nock and the pen addict had on it before.

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

'''Myke Hurley:''' You know, depending on how you want to split up your time. Right.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So like the time, like I was kind of figuring out how to explain that earlier. Nock's going to get a lot more of my now free time, right? My old jobby job time is now going to go a lot to Nock. But that's because I already spent a lot of time of my previous free time on the pen addict. So that percentage, my time spent on pen addict is going to increase, but it's not going to increase near as much as what it's going to spend with Nock. Yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. And even though that will increase, it won't be at the detriment of anything else. Exactly. Exactly. All right. So I have one thing I wanted to mention and a couple more questions. So like, you know, you've been talking a bunch about like what this is enabling you to do and thinking about like, you know, making the jump. And it reminds me very much of when I did this. And it was like we were able to get so far in a short space of time, really, with RelayFM. But it was after many years of work, right? In the same way that you had. But we just had a new beginning type thing. But the company got so quick, like so far so quick that I was looking at it and was like, I've been able to do this with such limited time, you know, that I've been able to put on this. Like, you know, I'm able to put a few hours, a couple of hours a day at most into this thing. And we're able to make X amount of money every month. Imagine what I could do if I could give all of my time. And I assume that that is a very similar feeling to how you are right now.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, completely. And I mean, it's a huge unknown, right? But it feels right. And it feels like it's the time. And the things I will be able to do now that I could have never done in the past because of time are going to start like, you know, flying off my tongue like that, right? Let's start this. Let's start that. Let's do this. Now I have the time to do that. And I think it's only going to be good. That's, you know, that's going to be the focus is where to redirect all this new time. Even though, you know, it's going to be a lot of hard work and a huge challenge. It's just the shifting of time into something that's like in my core, right? This is like who I am. Like this is, you know, I didn't love pens and paper as a kid for no reason, right? I mean, it was something in me that obviously grabbed me. And then something eight years ago that made me start writing about pens of all things. And something that three and a half years ago made me do a podcast about pens. It's in me, right? And figuring out a way to do that as a career is not the easiest thing to do. And it's taken a lot of time and it's super challenging and it's going to continue to be super challenging. But trying to, I'm excited about trying to solve these problems. And I say problems, it's, it's not, there's not, it's not a real problem, but it's trying to figure out, okay, what can I do to make this whole world of stationary better and welcoming to more people? How can I, you know, get knock out in the world more and bigger and grow that company? And these are awesome challenges to have right now. And I'm glad I could finally, you know, make that jump and to start working on these things. And, uh, it's going to be hard as hell, but, um, it's really, really exciting. And, you know, I've got so many moving parts in the background already and, you know, I'm not overwhelmed. I'm like excited. It's like, it's going to be a good challenge that I'm, I'm up for. And, um, you know, it's going to be good.

'''Myke Hurley:''' And my last question, shall we record earlier in the day?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So I've been thinking about this a lot and we haven't, um, we haven't not talked about this even in passing. Number one, yes. Yes. And number two, we should probably switch the day. All right. So we'll have to talk about your schedule because I want.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Monday to be, that's going to be a really good day for me to be at knock all day. This Monday, after the weekend, after weekend orders come in, after weekend emails have piled up, getting that extra help by me physically being there on a Monday would be great. And I could actually record there after everyone leaves, but I think it would just end up being too challenging and we should maybe consider moving the day aside from moving it up during the day. So we will absolutely do it earlier, buddy. You deserve that after all these years. We've never recorded at an early hour, except on one or two rare occasions if I had a holiday or something. Um, but you have done this at this hour for as long as the show's been running.

'''Myke Hurley:''' We should talk about that maybe when we get off the air today.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' You're, you're a little bit ready. Yeah. A little bit ready.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Uh, so that's why question's over. Um, and we probably, we've run a bit long today anyway. Uh, but I'm so, I'm so happy. I'm so thrilled that we get to talk about this. I'm so pleased that it's happened, you know? Um, and nothing bad has happened and, and that it's all good stuff, you know? And, and the reason you're doing this is because everything's going so great and it's not because something's falling down. And, and, and, and, and, and I'm so happy that I, uh, get to have a little bit of a part in this and, and that really means a lot to me. And, uh, I'm so happy that we've been able to get to this point after all these years and you deserve it. So do you want to sign us off? Is there anything else you want to say?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Well, I just wanted to say, we didn't even discuss how it will change the podcast and it's not going to change it other than maybe we might change the time, but you know, we're going to have lots of things, lots of kind of different things to discuss. I think, um, more so than we normally do.

'''Myke Hurley:''' There'll be new challenges and new things for us to discuss, like on a personal level, which we've always done a bit of that. Um, obviously you're going to be busier and there's going to be more things going on there, which is going to be really exciting. But I think more than anything, we'll be able to put more time and effort into it. You know, there'll be less scrambling at the last minute to make sure we've got everything in place and we'll be able to do more guests and stuff because Brad will be more flexible on time. And you know, there's going to, I, I, this will only mean good things for the show.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Exactly. Exactly. Right. And, you know, to, to sign it off, I, I couldn't do it without everyone listening right now, everyone reading the blog, um, everyone talking about the pen addict, everyone being so supportive through all these years. It's, it's a mind blowing community to be involved in. And I'm glad that I can be involved in it every minute of every day from now on.

'''Myke Hurley:''' If you want to catch our show notes for this week, head on over to relay.fm slash pen addict slash 185. You can also find the buttons there for, if you want to become a member of relay FM and see your membership money, go to this show. You can feel free to do that. And thank you to everybody that has, it really means a lot to both of us. Um, if you want to find Brad online, head on over to knock.co and pen addict.com. You want to also look for Brad on the social networks. You want to find him on Twitter. He's at dowdyism, D O W D Y I S M. And he is pen addict on Instagram. And I am I Myke. I M Y K E on Twitter and Instagram. Thanks again to our sponsors this week. The great people over at lynda.com, Karos customs and pen chalet. And we'll be back next time. Thank you so much for listening until next time. Say goodbye, Mr. Free time.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Goodbye, Mr. Free time.

[[Category:Podcast Transcripts]]
[[Category:The Pen Addict Podcast Transcript]]