The Pen Addict 259/transcript

The Pen Addict Podcast Transcript
Episode:	259
Title:	Another Thing in a Long Line of Things
Release Date:	May 31st, 2017
Hosts:	Brad Dowdy Myke Hurley
Guests:	No guests this episode
Additional Information
Official page:	Episode 259
Audio File:	Audio Episode 259
Podcast page:	The Pen Addict 259
Length:	5353 min <br />0.883 h <br /> minutes
Previous Transcript	Next Transcript

Myke Hurley: From RelayFM, this is The Pen Addict, episode 259. Today's show is brought to you by Harry's. My name is Myke Hurley. I am joined by my partner in crime, and in not crime, Mr. Brad Daddy.

Brad Dowdy: I mostly run a criminal enterprise, Myke.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, but I only participate in some of that, you know, so I'm not completely taken by the crime like you.

Brad Dowdy: So, Raleigh, look out this weekend, because I'm arriving, and the police are on high alert now that I'm coming into town. So, it's Raleigh Penn Showtime. I think I'm ready. I'm not really sure at this point. This week has been a whirlwind, of course. It's always a whirlwind around here. But, yeah, I'm excited to finally get on the road tomorrow. This is a driving show for me, and my daughter's coming with me because school is out. We packed up everything at NOC yesterday, and we did a really poor job compared to what we did for Chicago, because in Chicago, I brought everything I possibly wanted in one giant duffel roller. I guess because I'm driving this time, I played a little fast and loose with the rules, because not only do I have the same exact duffel roller completely packed to the hilt, I also have another plastic bin completely full of stuff. So, I don't know what I'm thinking. I guess I just assumed since I'm driving, I have more space, but I really don't. So, it's going to be awesome, though. We have all kinds of fun stuff. You can come see us at the NOC table in Raleigh starting Friday, even though there's trader days on Thursday. So, if you're around Thursday, there'll be people mingling. I won't get in until the evening and probably set up Thursday night, but it'll be raring to roll on Friday through Sunday.

Myke Hurley: You really are a traveling salesman these days, aren't you?

Brad Dowdy: I am. I am. And I'm actually okay with that. I enjoy traveling. It's not something as stressed out as I am. The actual traveling and show part don't bother me. I don't mind airplanes or airports or road trips or any of that stuff. Hotels. You know, none of that stuff bothers me too much. So, I guess I'm used to it by this point and kind of have a system down. But this week, there's just a lot of extra things going on that always get in the way of the planning and packaging. I'm a stressful planner and packager. I'm not a stressful traveler, if that makes sense.

Pen Shows

Myke Hurley: I have a question for you in that, right? Like, the more and more of these that you do, is there a diminishing return? Like, is it still making financial sense for you to be taking all these trips to all these different shows?

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, that's a perfect question because we don't know. That's what we're trying to find out, right? This is the year we're trying to figure that out. Right. If Chicago is any indication, it's well worth our time. But yes, it could be a diminishing returns thing where we don't have new things every time we show up somewhere, right? Because that's not how the business works. You know, we have two or three big releases a year, and then we'll mix in some small stuff here and there. But you also, the way I see it too, you're also getting out into new areas where people are not familiar with your stuff.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, that's the thing, right? But I mean, that's the thing that you need to find out is like, is it just a really large overlap of the same people? Or are you really getting in front of new people? And the money will tell you that eventually.

Brad Dowdy: Right. Right. So Chicago was a good mix of both. We had some great, you know, customers that have been with us since the beginning. And then we had just a huge amount of new people because they run a lot of people through the show. And there's a big headcount at that show going through the door. So there's lots of new people being able to experience it. And me being able to tell people what we do is always fun. And, you know, even, you know, I don't necessarily care. I mean, I'd love for everybody to buy something, but just me getting to tell the story that we exist. And this is a thing, even whether someone buys it or not, is very useful, right, for the future. So it's working on that type of thing and figuring out, you know, does the bottom line justify the travel? And time I'm away, right? That's where you don't know how to run the numbers because I'm essentially away for four to five days. When I do this, right? So it doesn't, I can't just say, well, I covered my expenses and I made this much money. I'm also been away for four days, not doing my regular job or what I would be doing normally, right? So it's, yeah, we're trying to figure that out. I don't have an answer for you yet, but I do understand the diminishing returns aspect of it because, you know, how many of the same color cases can I bring to every show? Well, the fact remains that there's new people at every show that have never seen our product and it's figuring out if there's enough every year to do that. So we'll see, you know, it's a work in progress right now. The results are super positive. So we're going to keep going.

Myke Hurley: I mean, it obviously works for some people, right? Like it obviously does because there are people like, for example, the Van Ness and the Andersons, like they travel all over the country doing these things whilst also having successful brick and mortar and online stores. So there must be financial sense for them to keep moving around, but it's up to, you know, we've just yet to see if that's the case for you, right? And that, as you say, that's going to, that will come out in the wash, I think, over the next 12 months or something like that, I guess.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, I was going to say it's going to probably, maybe around this time next year, we'll have a better idea. You know, it's going to take a while because we only have three more shows this year that are planned. So Raleigh, DC, San Francisco, right? So that just really kind of gives us a five-show sample. I can kind of tell, I guess, from there, but yeah, I'd really want more.

Myke Hurley: All right, so next week, we're going to be doing our top five pens of 2017. So like the top, our current top five, we haven't done this in a while. So there's a funny reason why we're doing it. We'll talk about that next time.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, you shocked me with the show notes for next week. So that's going to be fun.

Myke Hurley: In advance of that, though, maybe we should do something that we like to do every now and then, but try not to do too often. Talk about what we're using today as we record the show. So Brad, what do you have in front of you today?

Brad Dowdy: So this is always the most difficult question for me, the today aspect of things, because I use something different every day. So is it just what I grabbed today? Is it something I'm using regularly? So I'm just using what I grabbed today, which is kind of a common setup for me, if you will. I haven't used my Sean Newton Shinobi in a while. I realized that a few weeks ago when I was inking up some new pens, and I missed that pen. I guess I'd started to been seeing them from my friends at the Chicago Pen Show and seeing them floating around the tables. I was like, oh, I haven't inked up my Shinobi in a while. And I love the big eyedropper capacity of it and just the huge amounts of ink you can pour into this thing. And it's just a comfortable pen for me. It fits my hand really well. The shape and weight of it fit me well. I, of course, got to pick out the colors. It's like a smoky gray barrel with a amber section. And then I realized when we were talking about this and I put it in the show notes, I never reviewed this pen.

Brad Dowdy: That happens to me from time to time. When I use a pen so much, I think I've reviewed it. And I went back to link it into the show notes today. So Myke could have something to refer to when building the show notes. Lo and behold, I've never reviewed this pen. I don't know why. I really enjoy it. I really like it. It's a fun, it's just a fun pen to use. It's a very me pen. You know, I love the clear style and demonstrator style. I got a steel cursive italic nib on it. And it's just cool. I love this pen. Do you have a Shinobi? I can't remember.

Myke Hurley: I don't have any new pens. I have one on the way, right?

Brad Dowdy: So you just have one on the way. A different shape. Yeah, different shape. Okay. So that's my pen I'm using. And I've actually been using it pretty regularly since I inked it up a couple of weeks ago. What's interesting about this pen is the ink that I used. It's a black ink. And I've been way off the black ink bandwagon for a long, long time. But there's an ink I discovered at the Los Angeles pen show working for Van Ness. This Kyoto ink. I forget the store's name in Kyoto. But this particular black ink is called Kiyo no Oto 01 Nureba Iro. And I don't know what that means. But this is a black ink that has a little bit of extra sheen color in it. It's not just a pitch black. It's very, very black. But it has some extra things that you don't normally see in a black ink. There's no gray really in the colors. But you kind of see like a bluish, purplish, reddish sheen sometime. So, and it's a very lubricated, very nice ink to use in this fine cursive italic nib. I don't know that I've used a black that I like more than this ink other than Sailor Nano Black. Those are kind of, that's kind of always been my main primary black ink. This is a fun ink. I'm enjoying using black again because of this ink. And I really like it a lot. And what I'm using to write on is probably the single most common thing that I write on when I'm at home. And it's the NotCo.A5 Spiral Pad. I have probably two or three of these active around the house. I have one sitting right here on my podcast desk. I have another one in the desk where all my junk lives. And then there's another one floating around that my wife uses that we use for notes and different things like that. I think A5 is the perfect paper size. It's not too small. It's not too big. It's the right amount for everything. And I just, I lean towards A5 for everything if I can. It's not the most portable. You know, it's a great notebook size and it's great to throw it in your bag and, you know, things like that. But it's not like a pocket notebook. But it's not like a huge A4 pad either. I just love, love A5 size. I obviously love the Top Bound Spiral. You know, disclaimer, I own the company that makes these. So I feel like I have to say that every time because people don't know. But like we've discussed a thousand times, I make things I want to use. And if I didn't, that would be, if it was something that I didn't feel was worth using, that would be a bad business model. And I just love this paper. I love the format. I love the grid. And I love the size and that it's a top bound that you can just flip over. It really keeps the space on your desk under control instead of having a side, a side bound book when you're working on your desk. So sometimes you need that, sometimes you don't. I just really, really like this format and just A5, anything in general is really wonderful.

Myke Hurley: For absolutely no reason at all, I'm going to make my selection a cliffhanger and we'll take a break right now. I'm building up unnecessary tension in the episode. Wow. You must think you're special or something. I really don't. There's kind of not really anything super exciting, but I figure why not make it a cliffhanger right now and thank Harry's for supporting this week's show. This is an important message for the people out there, Brad. This is a reminder. This is a reminder. This is a helpful, helpful sponsorship right now because Harry's here to remind you that Father's Day is just around the corner and I think everybody has a dad in their life that has, or like a grown-up in their life that is difficult to shop for, right? You want to get people, especially people that are older than you, something that they'll want, something that will be useful for them, right? Like you want to be able to give them something that is fun but that they'll actually get use out of and enjoy. And you've probably by now bought them all of the socks, screwdrivers, and golf tees that they're ever going to need. Well, fortunately, our friends over at Harry's have a special offer that both you and a dad in your life is going to love. You can get $5 off one of their shave sets, including the limited edition Father's Day set by going to harrys.com slash penaddict. Harry's shave sets start at just $15. You get a razor handle, moisturizing shave gel, and three of Harry's five-blade precision-engineered razors. Their limited edition Father's Day shave set comes with a storm grey razor handle, chrome razor stand, foaming shave gel, three replacement blades, and a travel cover as well. Plus, it comes in a sleek giftable box with the option to add custom engraving and a personalized card for free to give that little extra touch to the gift. Now, Brad, I believe that Harry's actually sent you two of these kits. Am I right?

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, so they hooked me up this year. Last year, I got one set, and it was a perfect gift for my father-in-law whose name happens to be Harry because the top of the box says Harry's shave set. So, it was a perfect gift. It's just easy.

Myke Hurley: You didn't even need the engraving or card. They did it for you. No.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, exactly. They took care of it. And I was also jealous because I didn't get the sweet chrome razor stand that was in this box, which I think is a really cool thing to have on your counter in the bathroom. So, I got two sets this year. My dad's going to get one this year. And I'm going to get one this year. So, that's where they're going. So, I got two sets. I'm finally going to get my razor stand, which I've never ordered. But I always thought it was a really, really cool idea to have in this set. And when I open it up, the size of the foaming shave gel they give you is gigantic. This is like some huge size of their regular shave gel. So, it's really cool. The storm grey handle looks awesome, of course. And, you know, I'm ready to use the little chrome stand on my counter starting soon.

Myke Hurley: Special offer this week, which is really great if you want to buy one of these sets, one of these Father's Day sets. Go to harrys.com slash penaddict and you'll get $5 off any of Harry's shave sets. This is a limited time offer. Go to harrys.com slash penaddict and you can get $5 off and you'll also be helping support this show and making your gift buying that little bit easier. Thank you to Harry's for their support of this show and RelayFM.

Myke Hurley: All right, Dowdy. Are you ready?

Brad Dowdy: I am ready.

Sailor Pro Gear

Myke Hurley: Well, I mean, it really isn't anything too exciting. I probably have said these exact things before, but I'm today using my Sailor Pro gear. My orange Sailor Pro gear. It's the only Pro gear that I own and I want another Pro gear. Me and you were talking about this recently. Yeah. But my problem is the Pro gears that I want are all these crazy limited editions that you can't get your hands on for love nor money. That's what I want now because I have the solid color one. I have, in my opinion, the best color, which is the orange. I remember I first saw this pen at my first Atlanta pen show. You showed it to me and I immediately fell in love with the color. It is such a great orange and I really want to get one of these special editions like the Golden Black Bung Box one or the Pink Love one. This is what I want now, so I'm keeping my eye on it. I spoke to some people about how you order these things from Japan and I'm starting to feel a little bit more confident in that, but I'm still kind of really apprehensive of the whole thing because it seems like basically you have to hire someone to buy it for you is kind of the way that this works, which is like a super weird thing and I know many people have done it, but it's still like it's a step removed from my usual ordering process, right? So I haven't gotten around to doing it yet, but I'm keeping my eye on it because I really want one of these awesome pro gears if I'm going to get another pro gear.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, so I just wrote a note while you were saying that to email the Sailor distributor. So you know what that means.

Myke Hurley: Oh, yeah. You see, because I can wait for that one.

Brad Dowdy: I can do one myself. Yeah. Well, I don't know if it's possible, but they're certainly doing it for a lot of people. Why not me? Yeah.

Myke Hurley: I mean, exactly. Why not, Brad? Brad, now the demand satisfaction, Sailor. You must provide it. I don't mean it that way. I know you don't, but I enjoy saying it. Thanks. Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: Oh, man. You're already getting me in trouble.

Myke Hurley: Uh-huh. But I think, you know, if they're going to do these for anybody, they should be doing them for you first, right? Like, I feel like that's how that should work. Like, Brad gets first dibs on any and everything, you know? Do you not know, Brad, do you not know who Brad Dowdy is? Yeah, I definitely don't play the do you know who I am card. You should start playing it. People should, because people do know who you are. Anyway, so the ink, obviously, that I have in this is Hiroshizuku for Yugaki. It's a perfect pairing. The orange. Yeah. They work so well together. They're very similar in color. It's a perfect pairing. I will say, like, I don't want to show my hand for next week, but I really do believe that for the money, a Sailor Pro Gear is the best pen you can buy on the market today. Like, that is my belief.

Brad Dowdy: You're not going to get much of a disagreement from me. I mean, there's some... It would be at a semantics type of level. That's how good the pen is. Yeah. I'm not going to disagree with you.

Myke Hurley: Because it's just, you know, like 200, you get them for like 200, you can pick them up for...

Brad Dowdy: A little over that. Yeah. It depends. You can, yeah.

TWSBI Pen

Myke Hurley: And you can get some great colors, right? There are lots of options available. That's the best thing. They have a bunch of demonstrator models as well, and the nibs are just... They're just dreamy, right? Like, it's just such a great experience to use these things.

Brad Dowdy: Hard fine is where it's at.

Myke Hurley: I have a... I think I have a medium, right? But the medium is finer for me than usual, right? Yeah. But it's just perfect. I remember I bought this pen in Atlanta, and I took it to Myke Masayama, and I gave it to him, and he looked at the nib, he inspected the nib, and he was like, I don't need to do anything. Yep. And I was like, all right, we got this. Yep. My notebook today, I can't talk about.

Brad Dowdy: Like, the show notes literally says redacted in it, so I thought he was just going to tease all of us, or tease me, then say it during the show, but you're literally not going to say it.

Myke Hurley: I can't. It's an unreleased product. I have a demo unit.

Brad Dowdy: Do I have one of these? You have one of those. Okay. That's what I assumed it is.

Myke Hurley: That's just mean. It's a demo. I'm being honest, right? I could have just said I was using a byline or something, but I'm not today. I'm using an unreleased product, which I'm pretty excited about, and I'm looking forward to sharing it with people when the company in question releases it. When are they going to release it?

Brad Dowdy: I don't know. Soon. It's a really good product.

Myke Hurley: From an unexpected source.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Maybe we can actually set up an interview.

Myke Hurley: Oh, yeah. When it happens, we will be talking to the people in question, I'm sure.

Brad Dowdy: Now, I also need to make a notebook called Redacted.

Myke Hurley: So, in the future, people will just think that I'm using your notebook.

Brad Dowdy: Actually, Austin Kleon probably already has that handled. You know, he's the guy that marks out the books to tell the stories. You know what I'm talking about? I have no idea what you're talking about. He takes a black marker to... Yeah, just look him up. All right. He takes a black marker to the words of a page and then tells a new story with the words left that are remaining.

Myke Hurley: Okay. I'm out-time. It's very cool. Talking about it. Yeah. All right. So, that's what I'm using today. I apologize for being that person.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. I didn't realize it was going to go full redaction, but yeah, go for it. Look at you.

Myke Hurley: Honesty is the best policy, even if it's frustrating.

Brad Dowdy: Sure. I agree. I agree. So, Honesty was the best policy on this next product, Myke.

Aurora Pens

Myke Hurley: This is all killing me, right? Like, I didn't pick up an Aurora pen this year. Mm-hmm. And I keep seeing them, like the Nebulosa, right? And I'm like, ugh, I want one. They're very expensive, right? Just in general. I know that they're less expensive than they used to be, but they are still, they're still pretty expensive.

Brad Dowdy: They're very expensive pens. There's, even with whatever price reductions US gets, they're super expensive. Yeah. No doubt.

Myke Hurley: It's one of those things where I'm like, this is a new pen for me, right? Like, I haven't really used one in really kind of a lot, like, in a lot of detail. Like, I haven't spent a lot of time with them. And when I look at the prices of them, I think of all of the other pens that I want, like, that I know that I really want or stuff that I've tried. You know, like, I look at the price of this and I'm like, this looks real nice. We're talking about the Aurora 88 Minerale. We'll talk about it in a second, right? In more detail, but just so I can give a bit more context. And this is beautiful. The, the Nebulosa, is it Nebulosa?

Myke Hurley: Oh, what's that? The purple one.

Brad Dowdy: The purple is the Nebulosa, yes.

Myke Hurley: Like, I look at that too and I'm like, oh my gosh, I really want one of those. But it's, I think about, like, a Nakaya. Right?

Myke Hurley: Because like, something like the Nebulosa, it's like a couple of hundred dollars if that difference between that and a Nakaya and I'm like, I can't justify it. Right?

Brad Dowdy: Right.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, I agree completely. And, I look at the Minerale and I think, well, I've got two already and as awesome as this looks, so I need to spend that money on a similar writing experience or a similar feel. Now, it's a different look and when I first saw this in Chicago, Brian from Kenro basically walked over and had it in his jacket pocket, you know, and pulled it out and just held it in front of me and I was like, dang, give me that. And, because it looks so cool and he told me the story of what it was and Aurora's gonna be doing a, at least four colors that he was telling me. So, this is the blue one. Um, it's azuriti for azurite blue and the other ones I don't have complete confirmation on but what he told me was you're gonna get nebulosa finials so you get the purples, you'll get the sole finials which are the yellow that they released last year and then the, the red color which I have in my other demonstrator, I don't know what that red color is called. So, these are gonna look great. Um, and they're limited edition 333 so you know they're gonna be expensive. I can't, I don't even recall the price point. They may not even had it at the time. But, I said, can I take pictures of them? And so I just, I just tossed them down on the table and tried to take, they're not great quality pictures. And, um, I got up to the room that night and I was writing the newsletter for the Pen Addict members about the show and I was gonna include that in there then I said, you know what, I never asked Brian if I could share this. And, I'm careful about that kind of stuff and I texted him and I said, hey, can I share these pictures? And he's like, you know what, I don't know, let me find out and I'll tell you. And, turns out, I couldn't. So, I was glad I asked and then he texted me yesterday and he said, hey, you can release those pictures because they have all the details out now. So, they'll probably be pricing and all that stuff out. I think they're coming out next month, late next month, early July, something like that. But, the shape of this pen is awesome. The colors they're gonna come in are fantastic. I think it looks great. It's a great looking pen. It really is. Yeah, I just like, I just like those, the shape and the feel of those pens and especially the nibs. I really like their nibs.

Brad Dowdy: So, yeah, the, that's gonna be a new release this year and it just kind of came up out of the blue.

Brad Dowdy: Mm-hmm. They're gonna, they get you, man. These pen companies, they get you. Especially if they do

Myke Hurley: like that demonstrator one with the Nebulosa finial, like that's gonna be real hard for me to turn away because I really like the Nebulosa but the only thing that I go back on is I think it's too, it can be a little bit too much. Right? Like it's, I would like it, whilst it's incredibly beautiful, it feels like maybe at times when I look at it I'm like, there's a, there's a, there's quite overstated, right? Like there's a lot of it going on but just having like a hint of that might be really interesting. Yeah. Oh dear.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. So, as, as good as Aurora is in, in all things pen related, there's another company, Myke, that, in the show notes, I just called them dumb. Lamy is dumb.

Myke Hurley: Okay. Okay. Okay. I, I, I,

Brad Dowdy: they're just, they've confused me for the last couple of years. There's so many things that they've done that we've had to question and this one, their explanation makes sense to a degree. So, what the issue is, is Lamy is no longer providing extra fine nibs to the United States market.

Myke Hurley: Okay.

Brad Dowdy: It seems like a very strange thing to say or to do, actually. We should just say to do because they're doing it. It's done.

Brad Dowdy: Basically, Lamy is saying we don't have enough ability to manufacture enough EF nibs because they take a little extra work. So, therefore, all the extra fine nibs we're going to focus on markets that are better than yours which are Europe and Asia.

Business Decisions

Brad Dowdy: I'm, okay. I, I guess. I mean, as a business, you got to make those decisions. It's just weird to me. Like, I don't know. I would think they would be able to fix their production, pull from something else to make the extra fine nibs happen because that's a pretty common nib. Yeah, steel extra fine nibs. I should clarify. Not the gold, not the gold nibs, but the common extra fine nibs. In the end, I don't think it's going to be a big deal.

Myke Hurley: Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: It's probably more overstated than actual effect that it'll have. You know, people have lots of extra fine nibs. You know, they've been common for years. You can swap them in and out. It's probably not going to be a big deal, but Lamy just keeps doing weird things and it's just a weird company right now. I just don't get them sometimes.

Myke Hurley: You know. Let me play devil's advocate

Brad Dowdy: on this one, right? Sure, sure. I'm not that opposed to it. I mean, it is what it is.

Myke Hurley: They, you know, they're obviously having production constraints, right? Like, which happens. I mean, it doesn't, you know, it doesn't matter how big a company is, you can have production constraints, right? Like, you know, you have them, Apple has them, right? Like, this stuff can happen and like, ideally, they would like to be able to offer their entire product line everywhere, but they can't.

Myke Hurley: They know their sales numbers, right? If the US was their, one of their biggest, if not their biggest market for extra fine, they would continue offering it here, right? Like, they are clearly prioritizing on customer taste.

Brad Dowdy: Yep. I agree 100%. Like, I can't really knock the decision from a business perspective. I just, it's just, it's another thing in a long line of things recently with Lamy. That's all.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, it's just, yeah, I see what you mean. I think if this was in a vacuum, it maybe wouldn't rub, grind your gears so much. Yeah, and it doesn't even do that, but yeah. But, you know, like, to the point where, like, we would even maybe bring it up, right? But it's because they've been doing some really weird, like, unexplainable things, like, when they cut that supplier off recently and, you know, just, like, strange stuff, like, their marketing and product development has been weird in places, right? Like, when they repackaged that ink and called it something else, when they, you know, like, the 2000 limited edition was just an absolute disappointment and nobody could discount them, so people were having to give away pens just to get rid of their stock, right? Like, it was a bit of a nightmare. So, like, coupled with all of that, this is a weird thing, but I think, on its own, to me, like, this just seems like a company repositioning their offerings based on customer demand. And, frankly, like, if you're super interested in getting extra fine nibs, like, everybody already knows at least one retailer they would be able to continue getting them from. It's just not going to be one based in the US, right? Right. You'd have to get them maybe from JetPens or something like that if they would even get hold of them, I don't know, but, you know, like, there is a, you know, everyone's going to have a company. I mean, get them from Colt Pens, right? They're in the UK, they will ship to the US, like, there are other options, but it is just an added frustration.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, I don't think anyone's going to not be able to get an extra fine nib if they want it. And, you know, they said they'll eventually come back when they can fix their capacity, but, like I said, it's, on a business, on a business level, it makes complete sense on just a perception level in the grand scheme of all the goofy stuff they've done recently. It's just another mark on, that makes you question what's going on over there.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, it's a trend for them right now, right? In the end. What are they up to?

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, in the end, no big deal. You'll, I mean, everyone will be able to get extra fine nibs pretty much. If you're in this, if you're listening to this podcast, you know how to get a lot of extra fine nibs. So, no worries, but just another oddity, weird thing. So, just wanted to bring that up because that was a, that was a new, new thing that happened last week. So, for us,

Online Work

Myke Hurley: TPA last week, you were talking, we were talking a lot about kind of working online and you were focusing because of the questions that you were receiving on pen blogging, right? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Which is obviously a thing that you know something about, you know, you have, you have a little bit of experience in that, in that realm. Mm-hmm. I should say, podcaster first, blogger, blogger second, right? Like, that's how it is now. I dabble. Uh-huh. You dabble. You dabble. And, it got me thinking because we got quite a lot of feedback that people were interested. I think a lot of people that listen to this show, you know, you have all these pens, you have all this money that you spend on pens, you want to do something with them, right? Like, and sometimes it's showing them off to people and some people do that on Instagram, but a lot of people, and this has been a thing over the history of this show, a lot of people start their own pen blogs, right? To show off their stuff, to talk about what they like, which is something that me and you thoroughly encourage and I think that we have over the whole time.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, it's a very sharing hobby that we're all involved in. You want to show these things and talk about them.

Myke Hurley: There was a segment a long time ago on the show where we did a pen blog of the week. Do you remember that?

Brad Dowdy: Absolutely.

Myke Hurley: That was long running, right? That was like a big thing that we used to do, which just popped into my head. It's funny to me. I forgot about that. I totally forgot that we used to do that. That's amazing. So I wanted to ask of you to get a little bit more process-y. I want to understand the tools and systems that you're using these days to manage the penaddict.com empire, right? Okay. You know? So what apps do you currently use on your devices to write?

Writing Apps

Brad Dowdy: So right now, I'm exclusively using Bear. Oh! Before that, I'm all on Apple stuff. So Mac, OSX, iOS. So I want something that's cross-platform. And before Bear existed, or even while Bear existed, I had been using Ulysses. Ulysses was an app that was designed perfectly for me because I love hierarchical folders and being able to see that in your writing software and that type of thing. Like, I love how Ulysses was set up. And, you know, it had a couple little quirks that didn't work great with the way I like to write in Markdown and the way it exports things. It was easy to work around. It wasn't perfect, but it was as perfect as perfect could get. Then Bear came, and I downloaded it, and I was like, oh, this is great for notes.

Brad Dowdy: And then I found, I just started finding myself opening that app more to write a little bit longer things in them. It's also cross-platform. You know, I can use it on my cross-device. I can sync it across iCloud and have all my files where I need. And the way they do their tagging system, I can just put in hashtags for the topics and that becomes essentially my folder hierarchy for reviews, sponsors, podcasts, and I can keep all that in one place. Like, I would never use Ulysses for podcast notes. Ulysses was for writing reviews, writing the newsletter. Bear is for writing reviews, writing the newsletter. Oh, and I can open up a short note to list out the color specifications for the new knock cases that we're making. And it's all in one place. And that's what turned me over to Bear completely. Ulysses is off my home screen and off my menu bar or off my dock on my computer completely now because I can do everything in Bear. Like, I wrote last week's newsletter, I wrote half of, I wrote the beginning of last week's newsletter on my phone, like the first draft of it as I was driving in a car, or two weeks ago, driving in a car to North Carolina. And I could do that with Ulysses, but everything else I can do with Bear makes it more useful for me because now I can use it for quick notes and long form writing. So that's the only app I write in these days.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, it's interesting that you use Bear to me, like it was unexpected because I knew that you were using Ulysses and I thought you were going to keep doing that.

Myke Hurley: But like Bear, because Bear is like primarily a note-taking app rather than like a word processor, which Ulysses is.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, Bear does it better. Bear does markdown better, in my opinion, the way it folds the text. the way it exports it into a perfectly usable format. Not that Ulysses doesn't, but there were some of the ways Ulysses manipulated markdown in the window, and maybe there were some other settings I could use. It is a little bit weird. I don't like that as much as the way Bear does it. And I have to write in markdown now. I can't not do it.

Myke Hurley: Markdown is like a writing format, in case you're not familiar, which allows you to type in and add into plain text a bunch of formatting like bold and italics, and also to maybe add in URLs, but without actually doing any rich text formatting. It's all plain text, and you use a bunch of symbols and stuff to put that in there. I'll include some links in the show notes. It's a great way to write if you're writing for the web. And I write in markdown whenever I write anything, and so do you, so do many people that we know. I really, really recommend it as a method of writing, especially if you're writing for the web.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, and once you start, you won't be able to go back to how you did it before. It's so simple, and you get frustrated when you can't use it.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, like if I'm using any kind of application that processes text in some way, I want to be able to use markdown, and if it doesn't support markdown, I'll still write in it anyway because it's perfectly readable. Right. exactly. So what devices do you find yourself writing on the most?

Brad Dowdy: I'm pretty much, I have a 13-inch MacBook Pro, that's majority of my writing. I tried the iPad with external keyboard thing, that doesn't work for me, it's just not my style, and like I said, I do maybe 10% of the writing on my phone. Like I did a huge chunk just out of necessity, you know, a couple weeks ago, in general, I'll just bang it out on my laptop. You know, the 13-inch format laptop is perfect for me, I can carry it everywhere. It's the reason, my laptop is the reason why we made the Lanier, because I wanted something to carry it in, but just it, and then a couple more things. yeah, it's, that's my primary writing device from a digital standpoint. You know, I will write some rough drafts and notes in various notebooks and things like that, but from a, you know, from a computer standpoint, it's 90% on my laptop.

Myke Hurley: From a services perspective, you're still using Squarespace, right? You use that for the blog.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, Squarespace is just easy for me. I'm, I'm a very technical person, but I don't want to be if I don't have to. Yeah. Right? I don't want to go in and fidget with stuff all day long. I can figure it out, I can do it. I don't want to do it because I don't want to waste that time. Um, in Squarespace, I've been on Squarespace for, I don't even know how long. Um, I'd have to go back and look since Squarespace version five was a thing and that was a while ago.

Brad Dowdy: The best thing for me is they import markdown. I just select my little boxes defaulted to markdown. I copy my markdown text in it, throw in some images, schedule the post that I'm done. Like I can, I can get a post up, you know, from one of the other writers in like 10 minutes, you know, after I've edited it, you know, I'll edit it in bear, you know, I'll open the files in bear and, you know, check everything out, get it edited, get it, the formatting done. And then I can have it all set up in Squarespace. It's, it's just too easy. I mean, yeah, I mean, there's not, yeah, I mean, it's great for me. I love it.

Myke Hurley: And for the, I guess the newsletter is a big part of the process now. It's a big part of the stack. I guess the majority of your writing these days goes into refill, I think.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, that's a huge amount of, that's a huge time commitment every week. So like I mark Friday off my calendar, is exclusively for refill writing. I try not to plan anything else on Fridays because it takes so much time.

Myke Hurley: And refill is the best newsletter around. It's my favorite. And it is available to anybody by going to penaddict.com slash members, sign up for a membership and you get the best weekly newsletter that is published on the internet.

Brad Dowdy: Did you read last week's issue? I'm not trying to put you on the spot. I read

Myke Hurley: every single issue.

Brad Dowdy: So last week I did basically a recap of the Lanier Kickstarter from Knox perspective and the pros and cons and how that went. So it was really interesting. If anyone has any feedback on that. I wasn't sure should I write that or should I not, but I figured I guess I could. There's a lot of detail. Which I quite liked. Yeah, yeah. And it helped me clear my head a little bit, which is one of the things I talked about. So anyway, I use MailChimp for the newsletter.

Brad Dowdy: MailChimp's a pain in the butt. I'm just going to say it.

Myke Hurley: You are not the first person that I have heard this from recently.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, but it's kind of your only choice. Yes, I know there are other options, but MailChimp is the best. MailChimp integrates with my membership service, which is memberful, which they are wonderful. That service is awesome. And it integrates into MailChimp. It enjoys. It manages the members as new members. It enjoys to manage them. As members come and go, it keeps the list up to date, right? So I don't have to do anything. That's why I'm using MailChimp. But the interface is just janky and it's screwy and I can't do markdown in it and it's a pain in my butt.

Brad Dowdy: But it's kind of the best thing going. there's so many things they do wrong with the UI that, and I'm not a UI designer, but it's just very basic level stuff that is constantly screwed up. You should look at Campaign Monitor. I know. I mean, that's the second choice, right? Yeah. We use them for hours. I don't know. Does Memberful integrate with Campaign Monitor?

Myke Hurley: Yeah. Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: Okay. I'll have to look at it. You should look at it and

Myke Hurley: maybe talk to Stephen because he takes care of the membership stuff for us and we use Campaign Monitor.

Brad Dowdy: And I'm not going to lie, I have a soft spot for MailChimp because they're an Atlanta company. They're a great company too. They are. Some of my good friends work there, but I yell at them all the time because the interface for actually creating is severely lacking. You know, where they win is all the other stuff, right? All the tracking and monitoring, but I don't need that. Like, I don't track anyone's stuff in newsletters, right? I don't need to see, did I get sales conversions or click throughs? Like, I have everything turned off that I can possibly have turned off for the members newsletter. It's just the interface is very painful to use. Yeah. It's painful.

Myke Hurley: The impression I get as well is that they change it a lot with kind of no real explanation.

Brad Dowdy: Yep. Yep. I had to open a ticket like a month ago, I remember, because they changed something that just broke all kinds of things. And they had found it already, but yeah, it's frustrating.

Brad Dowdy: It's kind of, I mean, the end result looks good, but it's a challenge to put it in there to make the end result, if that makes sense.

Myke Hurley: No, it makes perfect sense. How do you feel about your photography skills recently?

Brad Dowdy: I mean, they exist. I don't know that they're good. I take pictures, I can confirm that. There's some level of picture taking. I feel better about it because I'm really good with the iPhone now, and I'm really good with VSCO. They finally stopped being stupid with their UI decisions, and I can use it better. I had to give them up a while ago. They've done some better things recently, so I shoot and edit everything on my iPhone 7 Plus, is that what it's called? 7 Plus?

Myke Hurley: I think so. It depends on what model you have. I have the big one, the 7S. The correct one.

Brad Dowdy: The Plus Club. That's what my phone's called, Plus Club.

Brad Dowdy: Everything's done on there, and then I just airdrop the edited images to my laptop and then produce everything that way. It's all shot and edited on my phone. I was going to say, I have a good area now to shoot in my house that has good lighting, and I got some good backgrounds, and I need to change it up a little more. I'm getting too boring, the same thing all the time.

Brad Dowdy: I have a good lighting area to shoot, and I still have my Orange Monkey Lightbox, the Foldio 2, which is a fantastic product. That's a good one when I want to do lightbox stuff, but it's still all with my phone and VSCO.

Writing Routine

Myke Hurley: time for writing refill on a Friday, right? You just take the whole time and you're like, this is what I'm doing. Do you set aside time like that for pen addict writing, or is that just when the mood strikes?

Brad Dowdy: No, it's Sunday. My biggest writing days are Sunday and Friday. I usually set aside a good half day, four to six hours every Sunday to get pen addict ready for the following week, whether that's writing a pen or product review that I've had. I'll have the products in use on my desk and taking them with me. Then when it's time to actually write the review, that's almost always done on Sundays because I rarely have time during the week to get ahead. I never have more than one week's post written these days where I used to do more.

Brad Dowdy: Then I plan out the week. on Sunday for that.

Brad Dowdy: Sundays and Fridays are dedicated to writing and then I fit in other things when I can. I do the other editing for all of Jeff's, Susan's, and Sarah's posts in the evenings, but that doesn't take as long as when I just have to write myself. I usually do all that on Sunday. That's pretty much dedicated Sundays and Fridays.

Myke Hurley: It's interesting to hear when I talk about this and you mentioned that pen addict maybe takes up 20% of your week, the writing of the blog. I don't think this is what we imagined five years ago, that the day that Brad Dowdy quits his job, what will he be doing? I think in both of our minds it was like, well, he'll just be writing the pen addict full time. Right, right. Yeah, exactly. But it's just a funny way that things have turned out where really, funnily enough, the pen addict is still your side gig.

Brad Dowdy: It's about equivalent, I'd say. I'd say pen addict and knock take about an equivalent amount of time every week.

Myke Hurley: Okay, but you know what I mean? But it still feels, I don't know.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, I see what you're saying. I see what you're saying. It's not the thing. I'm not writing it, well, it's not all me all the time.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's, yeah, there's just something funny about that to me, you know? Yeah. Kind of like, yep. Brad, I want to ask you one last thing about this and then we can wrap up this topic for a while. But I feel like it's nice to go over these things every now and then for the aspiring Brad Dowdies in the audience. If you could give one piece of advice of any kind to people that are interested in starting a pen blog, what would it be?

Brad Dowdy: To make sure it's fun.

Hobby Enjoyment

Brad Dowdy: You know, you have to have fun while you do this. If sometimes writing, if you think writing a product review is a chore or writing about a certain topic is a chore, it's going to get old pretty quick. You have to really have a passion for it and have fun while you're doing it. You know, impart that fun into what you're writing. you know, to make people smile and find some interesting tidbits of information. Because there were times in the past where I didn't have fun. And you've been involved in that, right? Where I was just overly stressed. And, you know, this was way before Panadict was a business or any of that stuff where just the specter of writing two or three posts a week was no longer fun. and I've had to stop and assess. And the thing I always found out whenever I took a break in the past was that I missed it. And once I realized how much I missed it, then I was able to go full bore into it. But you got to have fun. Like, if you're not having fun, it comes across the page. It comes across in your tweets and your Instagrams. if it's a chore for you, it's going to show and people aren't going to like that. So you got to have fun and be honest. Exactly. Have fun and be honest.

Myke Hurley: To piggyback on that a little bit, is that if you want to do this, be prepared to do this. It's just a hobby and never to make any money out of it.

Brad Dowdy: Absolutely. Right? Because if you're going

Myke Hurley: into this with the expectation of like, I'll be able to make some money, even a little bit of money, or I'll be able to get free products, then it's going to become a chore

Myke Hurley: money to go around, right? And it's not necessarily about your talent, but there are opportunities, you know, it's difficult.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, and I don't want to dissuade anyone from doing this. I think you should do it, you should do exactly what Myke says. You have to go into it doing it for yourself and wanting to share and be part of the community. You know, I never intended for this to be my job. It'll be 10 years that the blog started in November this year, and I probably didn't like, make any money like, that was of significance probably for seven or eight years, right? And if just the blog was my job, I wouldn't make enough still to, you know, live, you know, with my family. I would need a regular job if I didn't have the podcast and knock, right? The pen addict will never sustain me and my family on its own. It just never will.

Myke Hurley: And let's put this into perspective. The pen addict is the biggest one, right? So, like, just bear that in mind. I think so. You know, like, who else? So, like, it's just worth thinking about, like, you know, this is part of what Brad does, and it would be, if you start your own blog, it'll be part of what you do, and the rest of it will be probably what you're currently doing. So, like, just go into this with, like, I'm doing it for me, and I'm doing it to share, and if anybody reads, that's fine. If they don't, then it doesn't matter, right? Like, and it was the same thing for me with podcasting. I just really wanted to do it because I thought it would be a fun way to share my thoughts and experiences with a couple of friends. And then over a couple of years, it kind of got to the point where I was like, now I really am focused on making this a business because I feel like I can do it. But it took years for me to get to that point. And up until that point, I didn't care about busting my butt every day to work like an extra six hours to do the shows because I loved it. And if you don't have that love for it, then it's better for you to not do it, right? Like, if you don't feel like you're going to go and do like this thing that you really want to do, like that you love, then I recommend not trying it because you probably won't get a lot out of it. You won't get out of it what you think, you know?

Brad Dowdy: Right. So Punky said it good in the chat room just now, and I think it's a very good statement, even though, like, I have a business behind me now, I do this because I can't not do it. Like, this is what I do. It is part of me. Yep. I also feel that's why I'm successful at it if I can, you know, people like to say that I have an ego or I'm too big for my britches, but it's because I work hard at it, and I believe this is what I should be doing, so I'm going to keep doing it because I can't not do it, right? I'm at that point where this is my life and I fully believe in it. I'm fully committed to it. I don't do this just to make money. I do this because I have to do it, right? From a mental perspective. Like, I feel this is, it sounds stupid to say, but it feels like this is my calling, right? Ever since I was a little kid. So, I don't know, we got a little meta here, but I just, I have very strong beliefs about what I do, and I'm going to keep doing it because I can't not do it.

Myke Hurley: It's a beautiful way to put it. All right, next week we're going back to all pens all the time. We're going to do our top fives. My brother's a top five. I have a top five. We're going to talk about them. This is going to be funny. It's going to be funny. It's going to be funny, and it's going to be interesting. So, if you have any questions for us, you can always tweet with the hashtag AskTPA, and they'll go into a spreadsheet for us, and we can pick them up, and I think we might do some of those over the next couple of weeks. Don't forget about the wiki, stationery.wiki. It continues to grow, and it's a great resource, which is only going to get better over time, but it needs your involvement. If you're interested, go ahead, take a look at what's there, and start filling some stuff out. And we have the subreddit as well, reddit.com slash r slash penaddict. You can find Brad online. He is over at penaddict.com, not dot co. He's dowdyism on Twitter, penaddict on Instagram. I am imike, I-M-Y-K-E. Our show notes for today are at relay.fm slash penaddict slash 259, and I'd like to thank Harry's for their support of this show. We'll be back next time. Until then, say goodbye, Brad. Goodbye, Brad.