The Pen Addict 129/transcript

The Pen Addict Podcast Transcript
Episode:	129
Title:	The Ugly Sweater Pen
Release Date:	November 17th, 2014
Hosts:	Brad Dowdy Myke Hurley
Guests:	Dan Bishop
Additional Information
Official page:	Episode 129
Audio File:	Audio Episode 129
Podcast page:	The Pen Addict 129
Length:	8787 min <br />1.45 h <br /> minutes
Previous Transcript	Next Transcript

Myke Hurley: Hello and welcome to episode 129 of The Pen Addict podcast on RelayFM. This week's episode of The Pen Addict is brought to you by lynda.com, where you can instantly stream thousands of courses created by industry experts. For a 10-day free trial, visit lynda.com slash penaddict, hover, simplify domain management, and our friends over at Karas Customs who make awesome pens. We love them. And you're going to hear about them today, I think. My name is Myke Hurley, and I am joined by The Pen Addict himself, Mr. Brad Dowdy.

Brad Dowdy: Hey Myke, how's it going?

Myke Hurley: Very good, sir. How are you?

Karas Customs

Brad Dowdy: Good, good. And we're joined by Mr. Karas Customs today too, right? I think.

Myke Hurley: I think so.

Brad Dowdy: Knock, knock. Dan Bishop, are you there? I am here. Welcome aboard, Dan. Thanks, Captain. Yes, yes. And for those who don't know, who may be first-time listeners or just picking up this podcast randomly, Dan Bishop works for our favorite pen shop in the world, Karas Customs, making all kinds of great pens and awesome Kickstarter projects. And that's what we are having Dan on today to talk about is a lot of Kickstarter-y goodness because Dan and I, Dan has been super helpful when we did the knock Kickstarter, and Dan's a Kickstarter pro. So he and I had been talking for a while behind the scenes, and we wanted to get on an episode of the podcast and just talk about Kickstarter things, especially for all of us stationary freaks that are spending all our money through Amazon payments and backing all these crazy Kickstarter projects. So we appreciate you coming on and talking about that.

Dan Bishop: No problem. My pleasure.

Myke Hurley: And, yeah, we mentioned last week that Dan currently has another Kickstarter project going right now, so it kind of works out, I think.

Brad Dowdy: Yes, exactly. And we will definitely be talking about that because I have one on my desk.

Myke Hurley: Oh, man.

Brad Dowdy: Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Let's save that. Okay. I need to stop because I will continue on on that path, and we'll never get to some of the news and notes we need to get through real quick, Michael. A few things I just wanted to mention, which we always do around these parts, is when a new Field Notes edition launches, we've got to talk about it. So what do you think about the Ambition edition, Myke?

Myke Hurley: I don't have mine yet.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, me neither.

Myke Hurley: I actually think they may have arrived today, but I haven't picked them up. I am very interested. I have not yet bought any more of them, which is something that I think every Colors edition that I've ever had, I've always bought more than my subscription. But I've not done that yet because I don't know if I will want more of these. I'm very interested. I love that they have gone with a few different paper styles inside, like layouts. So for anybody that doesn't know, the current Ambition edition, it features a three-pack. They're in different colors. They're like in an olive green, a gold. Is that like a gold and a brown? No, it's like an olive green, a sort of cherry red.

Brad Dowdy: Like a wine red, yeah.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. And they have, what do they have? There's one, it's a standard.

Brad Dowdy: So it's a graph. Yeah, a grid, a ledger ruling, and then a planner ruling. So each book has, each three-pack has three different rulings, if you will.

Myke Hurley: Yep. And I think my favorite touch on this is they've gilded the edges, which is like that gold. You see like those old school planners, and they have that gold around the outside. I think that looks super sweet. I love the way that looks. I think that's a nice touch. It's very sort of old school, which these are. They're very old school. So I'm waiting to get mine in. I don't know if I'll be ordering any more, but I appreciate these ones, because they've done something bold and different without going crazy, you know, making them like out of stone or something.

Brad Dowdy: Right. Oh, yeah. Please don't make stone paper.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, we've experienced that, and it's terrible. I told you, right? I did say this, but I'll mention it before. There is notebooks. What's the name of them, Brad, that have the stone paper in them?

Brad Dowdy: Ogami.

Myke Hurley: Ogami. God, look at that. You're like an encyclopedia. I remember somebody, a listener sent me.

Brad Dowdy: I'm an encyclopedia of wrong most of the time.

Myke Hurley: Hey, well, it's still an encyclopedia. And the paper is made from this kind of stone. I can't explain it. But when I used them, for some reason, I will never explain. They made me feel physically sick to use. There was just something about using this paper, the way the paper felt when you used it. I don't know. It just had this feeling that made me feel.

Brad Dowdy: It's kind of squishy, weird feeling.

Myke Hurley: It's like, I don't know. It was kind of like creaky. I don't know. I can't explain it. But it was super weird, and I didn't enjoy it. So, yeah, please don't ever make those. But, Brad, tell me what you think, because you haven't given any faults.

Brad Dowdy: It might have not arrived yet either. I like it. I mean, I like the different layouts. I'm not a fan of the gilding. But I said, I think on Twitter or somewhere, that I think the gilding is actually going to look much better when it's destroyed. Oh, yeah, that looks sweet. When it gets worn and stuff. So, I'm like one or two pages from my last unexposed edition finished up. So, I'll go straight into using one of these. And I'm anxious to see how it does. But I think in general, I like it fine. I'm interested to see. They switched up the paper and went with the Cougar 50 pound. I'm interested to see how the Cougar performs with different pens. But otherwise, I love ledger ruling just for lists. That's one of my favorite rulings. They did that in the traveling salesman edition.

Myke Hurley: I never like the ledger. I don't like ledger. But maybe I should try it for lists because for notepaper, it's terrible.

Brad Dowdy: Sure, sure, sure. So, I think in general, I'm going to like this edition. I don't know if I'm going to love this edition. But it's certainly going to be fine. And I said before on that, I mean, this is like the ultimate gift edition. I mean, there's no – I mean, it's obviously – I mean, it's pinpointed right at the holidays. I mean, these are going to do like super, super well for them, I think, because they look beautiful. Still, to this day, we're going to have to get Brian back on next year. Brian Bedell from Field Notes. And this is stuff that he won't talk about, I'm sure. But I'm just dumbfounded that they're able to keep the price the same.

Myke Hurley: I think he might talk about that. Let's get him on. Talk about the edition since we last spoke to him.

Brad Dowdy: Because that was fascinating last time. These guys put so much into each edition. And they're at the point now where the quantities of scale are certainly in their favor, right? Or the economics of scale.

Brad Dowdy: So it's just impressive what they do. I'm very impressed by this edition, and I'm anxious to get it in hand. Dan, out of all the years I've known you, I don't think we've ever talked about like a pocket notebook directly like you and I. Do you use anything like a pocket notebook, field notes notebook, memo book? Do you carry around anything or what?

Dan Bishop: On a daily basis, not so much. I have a few things I carry in my pockets, but it's very minimal. Most of the time, like in fact right now, I have a piece of standard paper folded in half that I doodle and draw on, and I accumulate those. But I love notebooks, but my problem is I collect them and don't use them. And so there's like two or three pages. And I think it stems from my art background where you buy a notebook or a sketchbook, and they're like $20. And there's a student, you're broke. And so you don't want to draw anything in it but perfection. And so you end up just not using it, which is good for the paper companies but bad for me. Totally.

Brad Dowdy: Totally. I can relate to that. And I finally broke that barrier last year and just started using everything regardless. So yeah, I can understand that.

Myke Hurley: So I'm not going through field notes books as quickly as before now. Mm-hmm. Because now I'm not keeping paper notes as much because of leaving the day job. Mm-hmm. So just an interesting point. Maybe I need to try and find new things to keep notes on. But I take notes of like calls and stuff. But I only really have like one or two of those a week. Yeah. I'm not really doing enough now to keep like that sort of stuff that requires note-taking.

Brad Dowdy: I think you'll figure it out. I mean, I've gone from not taking many notes to just kind of writing down everything. Just even if I'm sitting on a call or, you know, a podcast with a couple other jokers, have it sitting aside when I'm not paying attention, just doodling in it or something like that.

Myke Hurley: I do that when I am paying attention, of course. But I'm taking notes right now about the edit for the show. Mm-hmm. Oh, that's a lot. I know. I use the Arts and Sciences for that. The big size is really useful for that sort of stuff. Because usually I'm like grabbing the pen and I'm barely looking and I'm like writing a timestamp down or something, right? And I'm trying to do that. Because I've done that for ages. I like that. But that doesn't really work for me with a smaller one, smaller books. Yeah. So after I run out of Arts and Sciences, I'll probably just start getting the steno pads or something.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, those are good. So that Arts and Sciences is a really underrated edition. I feel like it just kind of vanished into the ether.

Myke Hurley: I wish they would make a standard notebook this size. Mm-hmm. Hopefully so. The choices that they've made recently about the new standard notebooks to add into the rotation, I'm really surprised they've not put this in.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I think that would be great. I would love that as a stock edition.

Dan Bishop: So Brad, I think I'm a liar. I do use Doan paper, the 5x7 spiral bound or the 4x0 bound. Yeah. I have one of those on my desk at work. And it's like my – turns into my work Bible kind of. I have all the notes from projects and meetings that we have and everything in there. But I tend to try to write small because it's the pattern, the grid pattern in it is tiny. And whereas Bill uses them and he writes like three words per page.

Dan Bishop: He writes super gigantic. And so that's one thing I do use, but I still have this thing about conserving the notebook so I write as much as possible on every page.

Brad Dowdy: Well, those are really good notebooks. I think just in general, like the 5x7 or A5 ballpark range is my favorite size. And that's what those steno books and wire bound pads come in. And that's the perfect size for a desk and even portability, throw it in a bag, carry it around with you. Yeah. Right.

Dan Bishop: If only there was a company that made covers that could make something for a 5x7.

Brad Dowdy: Hmm. Hmm. Hmm. That's – huh. Working on that. Working on that. We'll have to figure something out. But yes, that's – yeah, that's a whole other episode. But that's like so high at the priority list right now. So yeah. 2015 is going to be a big year hopefully around the Noctum. The Noctum.

Myke Hurley: Wow.

Field Notes

Brad Dowdy: So before we get two off the rails on field notes, I have more field notes to talk about. So you saw the DDC pop-up shop, Myke. You saw the special field notes that they made for the pop-up shop.

Myke Hurley: Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: What is that about? So it's just something Aaron Drappen was doing in Portland locally to – I guess for the holiday season just to have a physical store for his DDC merchandise. You know, like I've ordered it on – you can order it online and do all that stuff. But he just has a physical place where you can walk into and he created a special field notes edition that sent the – all the field nuts like in a tizzy. And it looks really good. I love that orange and gray look. And, you know, it's a limited edition three-pack, 1,753 packs, and they're all numbered and on the belly band. But I think it looks good.

Myke Hurley: I love the colors.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah.

Myke Hurley: Are they going to be available like to buy online?

Brad Dowdy: In one of his many, many threads somewhere, he said yes. So we'll see. I might have you hooked up regardless though. Yes. We'll see. We'll see.

Myke Hurley: I was just scrolling through my Rolodex for who I know that lives in Portland to ask. But now maybe I don't need to do that.

Dan Bishop: Wait, do you still have a physical Rolodex?

Myke Hurley: In my mind.

Dan Bishop: Oh. I'm sad now. I was hoping you had a – I could see you, you know, rolling your fingers through a giant Rolodex. And I was really excited about that.

Brad Dowdy: Physical Rolodexes are awesome. They are. I mean that's just one of those cool-looking things that you never, ever, ever see anymore. So the last bit on the Field Notes slant, we did our Fiend Notes.

Myke Hurley: Oh.

Fiend Notes Winner

Brad Dowdy: Oh, no. I got two things to talk about like that.

Myke Hurley: Wow, okay.

Brad Dowdy: So we're going to do our Fiend Notes winner from last episode. And, you know, if you haven't checked it out, go back and listen to last week's episode. We had a listener, Ben Kwok, who is an amazing artist, make us some special edition Fiend Notes. And, Dan, you probably saw his handiwork from Mr. Myke Dudek. He made him a special Rotring Edition, didn't he? Did you see that one?

Dan Bishop: Oh, I haven't seen that yet.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, so Dudek has one as well. But our Fiend Notes winner is Jennifer. And she said her favorite Myke quote is, I bought a banana. Yeah, better pen. I forget what episode that was from, but I remember that. I remember you saying that.

Myke Hurley: I have no idea. I saw this in the dark and I was like, I literally cannot remember at all what this is about.

Brad Dowdy: It was recent. It was like in the last few episodes, but I can't remember what it was around. So, Jennifer, I will be emailing you since there's probably maybe multiple Jennifers that listen. I have your email address, so I will get in touch with you directly and I will arrange shipment.

Myke Hurley: Congratulations, Jennifer.

Brad Dowdy: Congratulations, Jennifer. You will be the proud recipient of a one-of-one Fiend Notes edition, which is pretty cool.

Myke Hurley: Making it even more special than ours.

Brad Dowdy: And for everyone else who did not win, one of our listeners and certified Field Notes. Oh, is this Adam Webb? I'm going to, I butchered them. I made so many name mistakes last week. But he has a giveaway called, he has a Tumblr blog called Field Notes in the Field. And he's given away singles of three like really rare editions. He's given away one of the Glitch singles from XOXO, one of the Coal USA singles, and one of the Sword of Jade singles, which was last year's DDC memo book. So, we'll have a link in the show notes. He asked me to pass that along. And I was glad to oblige because this is a really good opportunity to get a few notebooks that you just can't get very easily.

Myke Hurley: That is Adam Webb, by the way.

Brad Dowdy: Yes, good. Okay. Thanks, Adam, for sending me that. And thanks for doing that giveaway. And we will put it in the show notes for you.

Fountain Pens

Brad Dowdy: All right, Michael. So, let's talk about someone we love so dearly here at the Pen Addict Podcast. And we got a few more things before we dig into this Kickstarter mess that Dan has created.

Myke Hurley: I'm very happy that Lynda.com is sponsoring this week's episode of The Pen Addict. They are an easy and affordable way to help individuals and organizations learn. With Lynda.com, you can instantly stream thousands of courses created by experts on software, web development, graphic design, any type of design, and so much more. Lynda.com have fantastic video tutorials that are produced with high quality standards. These videos are made by absolute experts. They're made by people that have been involved with software products or they're absolute experts in the field in which they're teaching you about. All of their courses are broken down into bite-sized pieces so you can learn at your own pace from start to finish, backwards, forwards, up, down, left, right, however you want. Or you can just jump in and find a quick answer to a question that you have to help you get something amazing done. You can also learn on the go as well. Let's say you're on the bus and you want to find out a little bit more about dynamic range compression in Logic Pro X. If you want to do that, you can just pull out your iPhone and get onto the Lynda app. They have apps for iPhone, iPad, and Android, and you can watch right there. Whether you're a beginner or advanced, Lynda.com has courses for all experience levels on all different types of topics. So let's say that you want to learn a little bit more about how to work better. So you want to be a bit more productive. They have courses on time management training. They have courses about productivity. One in particular is the Getting Things Done course, which is presented by David Allen, the creator of the Getting Things Done productivity system. That's a really cool one. And maybe one for pen addicts. I found a typography course recently. It's a really interesting course about the fundamentals of typography and how they affect design. And it shows how spacing and alignment can affect what you're doing and the way that something looks, as well as learning exactly what kerning is, which I found quite interesting. So if that's something that tickles your fancy, then you should be trying it out. Lynda.com has one low monthly price of $25. This gives you unlimited access to over 100,000 video tutorials. And it's growing every day. But if for some reason you haven't tried out Lynda, they want to make sure that they give you a great deal so you can really get a feel for it yourself. So if you go to Lynda.com slash pen addict, that's L-Y-N-D-A dot com slash pen addict, they're going to give a special extended 10-day free trial to listeners of the pen addicts. You should go and check it out. Just go to L-Y-N-D-A dot com slash pen addict. If you haven't tried them already, we'd really appreciate it if you did. So go give them a shot and I think you're going to love it. Thank you so much to Lynda for their continued support of this show.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, that 10-day free trial is a huge no-brainer. And you've got to check it out. And certainly now in your new gig, Michael, where you're doing this full-time, certainly you can find plenty of videos to help you through your day and learn new things and expand that knowledge in your brain.

Myke Hurley: I'm looking forward to digging in. I'm going to learn a lot more about podcast editing and all that sort of stuff. They even have a course on touch typing. I don't know how to touch type. So that's something that I'm interested in learning a bit about.

Brad Dowdy: And they do a lot of programming tutorials, which you're going to need to understand this next link that we have in the show notes. This is kind of going to stand on its own because there's no way I can explain this. But big pen addict. I don't even know if he listens to the podcast. But Emrah, who I follow on Twitter. Oh, I follow on Instagram mostly.

Myke Hurley: Oh, I sent this and I didn't. I have no. I just don't.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. You can follow his Instagram feed. He's got amazing fountain pen collection. And his handwriting is off the charts. But what he did, I think he's he's into programming, let's say, and he has written.

Brad Dowdy: A.

Brad Dowdy: Program, I guess we'll go with to rip out information from Instagram tags and how many, you know, basically, you know, he's pulling down how many fountain pens are tagged by the brand name. And it's if you're into programming and that kind of stuff and into information, this is a really good post. I want to make sure to put it in the show notes because it's really kind of neat. If you can get around, he goes into this is like really, really detailed and and gets involved into it. I told Thomas Hall sent me this link. I said I'm a lot more simple than this. I just use IFTTT to send hashtags into a private Tumblr blog. And that works for me so I can see different things. But Imra's post here is definitely worth worth checking it out. It's it's really crazy.

Myke Hurley: There's some really interesting stuff, isn't there? Like how he breaks it down and like Aurora, Montblanc and Parker are the highest by far. And then he pulls them out and then you see the different graph and it looks more representative of the fountain pen pen addict world. It's interesting how there are lots of people using fountain pens that we wouldn't necessarily think of as as pen addict pens.

Brad Dowdy: But yeah, the Aurora one shocked me.

Myke Hurley: I can't. But I still can't believe that that is that high because my understanding is they are actually really good.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. I mean, it's a big brand.

Myke Hurley: It doesn't make sense because those two things don't necessarily go together. The fact that it's really good and they're a relatively big brand and they've got like 600,000 mentions. Yeah, it's it's almost there.

Brad Dowdy: Montblanc is third and it's almost triple Montblanc. That's how crazy Aurora is.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, that that's something that shocked me because I don't I don't fully understand that. But like Parker being so much higher as well. I feel like people. Why would you really take a picture of a Parker pen? But I guess a lot of people do.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, they've just they're so so widely available. So and they're they're still known. But this is it's really, really good information and interesting. I've read this at least like two or three times just trying to figure out new things. And he also he also world maps them so you can see where they're coming from, too. So it's a really cool post. And we'll we will have that in the show notes for you. I got a reader email. I wanted to read because I've mentioned him in passing, maybe on accident. Even Father Michael Gossett, who's been as far as I can remember, always been around at least reading the blog or on Twitter, talking to me on Twitter and listening to the podcast. And he sent up a sent a really, really good email and asked him if I could share this on the podcast. And he said, absolutely. So let me share this real quick. He emails and says, I just wanted to share an experience I had last Friday after listening to the podcast for a while now, purchasing lots of pens, inks and paper products. I got the chance to attend the Ohio Pen Show. This was my first pen show and my first chance to interact with other pen fans. Everything I learned via the podcast and your blog came in handy as I recognized brands and models. I got the chance to meet and talk to Brian Gray of Edison and buy some good stuff off of the Andersons. Everyone I met there was super friendly. Everyone was willing to answer questions. And as a priest, I got lots of funny comments. The guy manning the Franklin Kristoff display where I picked up the beautiful Model 40 pocket told me about some old Estabrook that, besides being a fountain pen, held holy water in the top. Now I'll need to search for that. I also picked up my first vintage pen, a cheap Estabrook that is a great writer, and a gift for my sister who volunteered to come with me, the Retro 51 Montana, what the woman at the table called the ugly sweater pen. Myke, you have to own this pen. You need to go look at that. Anyway, I just wanted to express my thanks to you and Myke for introducing me to this fantastic hobby addiction. It was awesome to experience the pen community in person, and I plan on going again in the future. Keep up the good work.

Myke Hurley: Fun fact.

Brad Dowdy: Yes.

Myke Hurley: That pen arrived this week. Get out. Seriously, I bought it. Somebody sent me it on Twitter, and I was like, how can I not buy it? So I have it. And I love it. It's amazing. I love it. It is fantastic.

Brad Dowdy: That's amazing. So I wanted to share that email for a couple reasons. One, Father Gossett, he's gone down that path that a bunch of us have, and me and Myke have, starting this show from the beginning of the show until where we are now. And, you know, it's going to continue to grow, just learning about all these things that are out there and then realizing that there's this whole community of people out there that are super nice and super helpful and just willing to jump in and answer questions and help you out in any way they can. And I'm glad he had a great experience with the show, and I hope he goes again. And I hope all of you out there, if there's a pen show or a pen shop in your local communities, you know, pay them a visit. Talk to them. They're happy to talk about, you know, all the different pens, help you out in any way they can. You know, we've said it many times before, and we'll say it until the cows come home. But this is, like, one of the best communities to be involved in that I can think of as far as the people go. It's really, really amazing.

Myke Hurley: I think that, like, I have my feet in different communities these days, you know. As I kind of, the work that I do spans different genres and stuff like that. And the pen community is the best one by far. Everyone is so nice to each other. And, like, even in, like, amongst the creative people, there's no competition. Like, everyone's trying to help each other out. Because there isn't, this isn't meant in a bad way, but there's not a lot of money in it. So people are kind of, it seems like, more willing to link to each other and help each other out. And the collaborations. And then it gets into physical products as well. So many people create physical products, you know. And we're going to talk about these. And that's really interesting to me because a blogger about Apple stuff can't just go make a computer. Right. You know, or even peripherals. Like, they just make books, right, and videos. But you guys, you go out and you actually make products, right? You make stuff. Dudek makes stuff. And you sort of team up with, like, the Karis Customs guys and make things together. And I just think that it's so fantastic. And it's such a great little community to be a part of. And it's nice to be able to, like, read something from someone and then buy a physical product of theirs to support them. And there's a lot of that. There's a lot of, like, supporting and helping. And it's a great little community. I'm happy to be part of it.

Brad Dowdy: It's definitely a really unique environment to be part of. Dan, did you ever think you would be making pens and talking about pens? I mean, you don't go on other, like, car parts podcasts and talk about them because that's what y'all really started as at Karis Customs, right?

Dan Bishop: Well, yes and no. I didn't think pens were going to be a big thing. And like we said, we can talk about that a little bit. It's funny. But we just kind of were a job shop. You know, somebody would just come in off the street and say, hey, can you guys make this? And we said, yeah, we want to eat. So, yeah, we'll make that. Mm-hmm. And fast forward, you know, we just happened to fall in with a great community, like Myke said. Everybody in the pen community. It's kind of amazing. The people who support us and they collect our pens and, you know, they post on Instagram and all this stuff. It's just kind of dumbfounding. I just – I'm still kind of slack-jawed about it. I just sit there in awe and it's awesome because I get to interact with people like you and all the fans of the show. It's really great.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, it's awesome. It's really, really fun. I mean it makes the day brighter for me and it's something I enjoy being involved in. And I know Myke feels the same way. So, yeah. So, we need to get into this, Dan. We need to get in this Kickstarter stuff. I got a couple more things to knock out real quick. One is the pen blog of the week and that is Ink Dependence. Mr. Michael Madison, a Southerner like myself, he is from North Carolina. And if you're wondering about inks and ink reviews and want to see inks in person and pictures and reviewed on the blog, Myke is the guy to go to. You go to his blog and it is just chock full of ink reviews. He does a really good job. You know, I check them out all the time. I've bought inks just because I've seen them on here and realized that it's a good color. And, you know, I won't say he's known for his ink reviews because he does pen reviews too. But he has a huge, huge resource of ink reviews. So, definitely check out inkdependence.com if you have not already.

Brad Dowdy: All right, Myke. Let's talk to Dan. Let's talk about another really, really good friend of ours before we get into it.

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Brad Dowdy: That's a great coupon code, Refill. I like that. I think I bought another domain last week.

Myke Hurley: Oh, yeah?

Brad Dowdy: They all go to Hover now. So, Hover is like easy mode and it's super high quality and just easy to use. I've been very impressed with everything about Hover so far. And I say it better than Casey List does.

Myke Hurley: We all say it better than those guys.

Brad Dowdy: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. All right, kids. Dan, you have your oxygen tank ready?

Dan Bishop: Yeah, I'm just breathing it in, getting ready, getting prepped.

Brad Dowdy: So, we brought Dan on today, not necessarily to talk about specific products, although we will talk plenty about specific products as we go. But we wanted, Dan, both Dan and I wanted to do a kind of Kickstarter behind the scenes episode. Like what goes on from a creator's perspective. You know, what's happening, you know, with the whole build out of the Kickstarter, the whole expectations, the whole customer facing side. So, I don't know anyone that knows that stuff better than Dan. Dan helped me a lot and Jeff a lot when we were launching our not Kickstarter. And Dan, I didn't realize this. Karis has done seven Kickstarters so far.

Dan Bishop: Yes, two of them will not be talked about.

Brad Dowdy: Two of them will not be talked about.

Myke Hurley: For no specific reason. They just, you know, we just don't want to talk about them today.

Brad Dowdy: No, actually, I think it's very telling and we will talk about them because out of your seven Kickstarter projects, the two that did not fund were not pin related. And I find that super, super interesting. Yes, yes. So, all five of your funded projects are all pin related. So, just let's start at the beginning. I don't want to get ahead of myself. So, the Render K was the first pin that y'all did in the first Kickstarter project you did. How did you even consider going to Kickstarter with this pin just right out the gate? You know, what made you even consider doing this?

Dan Bishop: Okay, I love that pin. That is, I think, my favorite design that I've done so far. Me too. And so, early, early on, I would, I could be wrong, but I think the first, at least the first very successful pin on Kickstarter was the pin type A. Mm-hmm. And when I saw Kickstarter, I started going through Kickstarter once in a while, just kind of looking for stuff.

Dan Bishop: And I saw this pin on there, and it was a machined object. And I said, what? It was like $281,000. And so, I, on my own, had found it. So, at work, I showed Bill, you know, as it was getting higher and higher, and he's like, why should I care about pens, you know? And so, on my own, at home, I designed most of the Render K. And then, I brought it in and said, hey, look, I designed this pin around this and showed him that, you know, they had, you know, an insane amount of money pledged to their project. So, we prototyped the pen and went from there, and the rest is history. So, it's, I might still be working, you know, in the shop with machines, if, and not designing all the time, if Kickstarter wasn't around.

Brad Dowdy: So, what did you expect when you launched that pin? I mean, did you have any idea that, did you, do you think, oh, we're going to throw this out there, maybe it gets funded? I mean, what were your feelings when you, when you pushed the launch button to get the Render K out there?

Dan Bishop: Sheer terror, no. You know, it's pretty nerve-wracking, as you probably know. You really have no idea. And that was our first project. And I designed the pen. I talked Bill into making some prototypes. You know, I storyboarded the video, and I was in the video. It was pretty much kind of me trying to prove myself. But at the same time, it would mean better things for the company. And it was, it was crazy. Like, we couldn't believe it. I think our goal was, or it was fairly low. And it just kept creeping higher and higher and higher. And every single day, I mean, we were, like, constantly checking. I mean, I was refreshing the page over and over and over every day. And I'd wake up in the morning on my phone and check it and check it. And it's, it's an amazing feeling. But at the same time, it's terrifying. Because when you're done, you're, you then realize, oh, no. I have all of these people's money. And I have to make a lot of pens.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, that's, that will keep you up at night. I know that well. So, you know, when you're doing these Kickstarters, and now that you've got, you're a pro now. What kind of running theme through all your successful projects? What's, what are some of the keys to, like, launch a successful Kickstarter? What have you noticed? What did you learn from that very first Render K one all the way up to the cube that's active now? You know, what, what are the things that are kind of tie all those together? You're always doing the same thing in these projects. And what did you learn early on that you shouldn't do?

Dan Bishop: I think it's important to have an audience for yours. Specifically, pens have kind of gained a, a wide audience on, on Kickstarter. People are looking for them. And there's a few companies that have used Kickstarter successfully. And we all know them pretty well. You know, there's a lot of machine pens and things. But you, you have to, you have to use Kickstarter as a market specific tool. You can't throw just anything on there as, you know, as we have proven ourselves and expect it to fund, you know, awesomely. It's not an automatic thing. It's not, you know, write your own lottery ticket kind of thing. And so Kickstarter is, it has a very specific and sometimes fickle audience that if you can cater to them, will treat you very well.

Kickstarter Projects

Brad Dowdy: Now, do you have, out of the, out of your successful projects, and we're talking about the Render K, the Retract, the Bolt, the Ink, and now the Cube. Did I get that right? Yeah. Which has been, the Cube's not done yet. It's, it's funded, but it's not complete yet. Which one of those has been the biggest bear to complete the project? Have you had, like, any, like, super difficulties with any one particular thing?

Dan Bishop: Um, well, it's almost a tie. Uh, those who have backed us and those who haven't, you can go on Kickstarter, um, and read all our updates, which is something we should talk about a little bit later. Yes. The updates. Um, what happened is when we made the Retract, we made them and we, we started shipping them out and we discovered a slight issue. And when I say slight, that's extremely, you know, that, that word is not even close to being accurate. Um, uh, an issue with the pens, whereas a part of the polishing process caused the tip of the pen to deform slightly just enough to where the refill would not protrude out far enough to write. That's a problem when you have a retractable pen.

Dan Bishop: So.

Myke Hurley: I think the whole retraction thing stops working.

Brad Dowdy: I've actually forgot about this. I'm glad you brought this up. Yeah.

Dan Bishop: Yeah. I'm so glad that you forgot about it.

Dan Bishop: Like I lost my mind for about 15 minutes. Uh, and, uh, so I, I jumped, literally ran to the desk, sat down, wrote out an update and came up with an emergency system in which anybody on Kickstarter, as soon as they received their pen, because not all of them were going to be bad. Uh, because it was, it was, it was, uh, the way we polished stuff. It depends on how much force somebody put on the pen while they were doing it. Some of them were perfectly fine. So we established a kind of a recall where they would let us know. We would send out a pen with a return label and a box and they would just swap it and send it right back.

Brad Dowdy: Hmm.

Dan Bishop: And those who were our international backers, they just got a pen. Cause it was, there was no way we could afford to do the shipping to and from because shipping is insanely expensive. So we just did the recall and then people would, some people didn't even open them. They just sent them right back. And then we checked everything and we fixed them all and, uh, moved forward and implemented a procedure so that that would not happen again when we made the next batch. But yeah, that was terrifying. Um, and then the other one was the ink. Well, the ink was, was crazy because it was a brand new, um, product for us. The, the, the, the clips were different. The, you know, the construction was, you know, it's, it's similar. It's all machining, but we had just moved and it threw a huge wrench in the works because we had to interrupt any production we had and physically move an entire shop. And then try to get up and running and get everything going again. And we had a machine, uh, break on us for a brief period. We had just different pitfalls here and there. We had some issues with the design that we had to tweak. So they would, they would be machinable, but, and people, that was our, our longest delay in, in fulfilling rewards was the ink. And that's stressful because you, you want to get it in someone's hand and not have them waiting because you've had their funds. And, um, they're just basically looking to you for an update as to when the rewards are going to ship out. And so that's stressful because some people get agitated and, um, you know, get, get angry or get upset. So those two things were, we're about tied.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. So you said, you said two things there that were very important. I think number one, with the retract, you were fast. I mean, your response, like within, you started figuring out that there's going to be some people started reporting issues. And I think, you know, you acknowledge that like really, really early on. And then I think within less than 24 hours, you had a whole system in place to resolve any of those issues. Yeah. Um, and then secondly, and I'll, I'll let you talk about both of them, both things. If you want the, um, just the communication aspect, um, just, you know, getting out there, not just the quick response, but like communicating in full detail, you're not leaving anything out new, not sugarcoating anything. Um, you know, how important were those things to, to getting, getting these projects were filled and, you know, getting the customers, you know, on your, keeping the customers on your side?

Dan Bishop: Well, it's a very important, and that's kind of how we operate at work where, you know, everybody's pretty straightforward. You know, nobody's trying to tiptoe around everything. So it's kind of how we go about our, our business. But on Kickstarter, we decided early on that, um, unless there was something that was very specific, like we wanted to have a coupon code just for our backers, you know, or something like that, we wouldn't do, uh, a backer only update. Because if somebody wants to find out about us, they, you know, someone says, hey, check out Karis Customs, and they did a couple Kickstarter projects. And so they hop on Kickstarter, and they start looking at this project, and they go to the updates to see, you know, how the project, the project progressed, and it's all hidden. And that, it just kind of seemed weird. So we try to make as much of it transparent as possible. And even our screw-ups. I mean, we're not perfect. We're just a bunch of dudes in a machine shop, you know. It's, we're kind of an odd bunch. I'm a designer. We've got some machinists and some other guys working for us, and we make pens. And that's kind of an odd thing. And so there are, you know, mistakes that are going to be made, and things that are not going to work out as planned. And if you let people know, 90% of the time, you can diffuse any possible situation. You can just say, hey, this is how it is. This is what we're doing. You know, this is how we're solving the problem. Or here's the latest progress. And people go, that's great. No problem. You know, we'll see you next time. Thanks for the update.

Brad Dowdy: Yep. I think that's hugely, hugely important. And I agree with you 100% on the backer updates being public. Unless there's, there is a case where they should be private. Like if you're having a backer-specific code or download link, right? Yes. You know, you may want to have that just for your backers. But for all, you know, warts and all needs to be out there for the public to consume. And if you handle that right, which you do, and, you know, the backers, you know, like you said, you know, 90, 99%, they understand. You know, as long as you're open and up front. And if you're telling your backers, hey, I'm putting this out to the public anyway, I'm not sending you some closed backer update that only you should read because I've screwed things up. That, you know, you know, helps them understand more that, you know, you're really trying to be open and up front with what's going on in this project. Because stuff happens. Yeah. Some of it's bad. And so, yeah, keeping all those things, you know, keeping all the people informed is hugely, hugely important.

Dan Bishop: Yes. And people, like I said, there's some things about Kickstarter that if you have a project that's really, really successful and you overfund, everyone just goes, man, they're rich. They should be able to, you know, get this stuff out the door super fast. And it's completely not the case.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah.

Dan Bishop: You know, it's like I equate it to, you know, like making cookies or something, you know, especially for us, you know, to make cookies, you have to, you know, make your batter, you put it in the oven at 350 for, you know, 15 minutes, any less and it's wrong. And, you know, so you can't speed up the process. So, you know, your goal is one batch of cookies. You meet that goal and you're set and your estimated delivery date is for that one, that one batch. But then if you overfund and you suddenly have to make, you know, 10 batches, you have 10 times the amount of work and the timeframe stretches out that far.

Dan Bishop: And it doesn't, you can't, it doesn't matter how much money you have. It doesn't matter how much of anything you have. You really can't speed up the process. And, you know, people often, you know, have suggestions about, oh, maybe you should hire out some other shops or whatever, but it just, it can be more complicated. Any problem that you might have, it can just amplify it if you have somebody else trying to work on it for you. So to keep control of the situation and to make things right, you kind of have to keep it in your own little bubble and push forward. And if it takes a little bit of extra time, that's kind of the price that's paid for an awesome product.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, that's what we ran into, you know, with NOC, with, you know, all the money that we raised, you would think at some point, you know, well, just hire more help or, you know, bring in other people or add contractors or do all this. But you're just, you're almost compounding the problem instead of solving the problem by bringing that in. So, yeah, what you just do, just kind of almost have to, like, isolate and just, you know, hunker down, work hard, work as hard as you can and just try to get them out. It's not going to, the money's not going to solve the problem of getting it out faster. That's for dang sure.

Dan Bishop: Yeah, well, you had a problem that we didn't have. Now, when we make our pens, there's a lot of handwork that goes into them, but we can set up with a CNC machine and a lot of the steps are automated. You had to, I mean, you guys had to sew everything. Somebody had to physically, you know, sew each one of those items. And so that's extremely labor intensive. Yeah. And anything, anything that...

Myke Hurley: Because you could just, like, switch the machine on and leave it all night or whatever. I mean, I'm sure it's not that simple. But, like, the idea is, like, Brad could only, Brad and Jeff could only make as many as they could make in the time that they had. Like, and they couldn't, they couldn't work through the night because they're human beings. It doesn't work like that.

Dan Bishop: Yeah. And we actually, on some other projects, we started a night shift.

Myke Hurley: Sure.

Dan Bishop: And had guys coming in, you know, working till, you know, one or two in the morning. And then the next shift would come in at six o'clock in the morning and keep going. I mean, there was machines that basically didn't turn off. And it's interesting because you want to, you know, you could scale up and try to do all these different things. But then it kind of defeats the purpose of, you know, you doing Kickstarter. I mean, you do Kickstarter to get something rolling and to kind of build it into something. And if you just throw all that money and time and effort into just making sure that you get the rewards out faster, you could have some fallout afterwards and, you know, go out of business. Right. There are a lot of Kickstarter projects that are kind of one and done. Oh, for sure. I had a design friend who was interviewing another designer. And I won't mention the project, but it wasn't pen related. This guy had a project. It funded and seemed to do really well. And all of a sudden done, he ended up putting $300 or so, $300 to $500 of his own money into it just to ship them.

Dan Bishop: You've seen that time and time again with lots of projects. Yeah, and there's a lot of things to running a successful Kickstarter project because it's a business. And product development is extremely complicated. And, you know, my peers that I went to school with, it's not uncommon for a project to take three to four years to reach completion, not even manufacturing. Just, you know, from the Kickstarter stage to, you know, ready to go, it takes years. And a lot of companies, including yours and other successful companies, they condense that way, way down. And people just kind of, you know, expect that you should be able to produce things very quickly, which in some cases you can if, you know, like if you're doing a book or a comic and the bindery can make you a lot of them, you might be able to do that. But in other cases where, you know, like NotCo, you guys have to physically sew, it was like 10,000 cases or something?

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, it was like 6,000.

Dan Bishop: Oh, yeah. Let's just say 10. Yeah.

Dan Bishop: But at the same time, if you planned it correctly, I mean, you guys also planned on being able to have some extra so that once you were done, your Kickstarter wasn't just for the sake of fulfilling Kickstarter. You actually could start a business and have some stock on hand.

Sponsor Segment

Brad Dowdy: Right. Yeah. I think that's key. And I want to elaborate on that a little bit more. We have one more awesome sponsor we want to get to today, though, before we continue on this path. Myke, who is our last awesome friend for the day?

Myke Hurley: I'm not sure what I think about these guys, to be honest.

Myke Hurley: Sketchy. Karas Customs or something like that. Yes, of course, our friends at Karas Customs, who are part of this episode, are sponsoring this episode, too.

Brad Dowdy: I don't think we planned that. Did we? Did we plan that? No.

Myke Hurley: We were actually going to, I think we were going to have Dan on last week. Okay.

Myke Hurley: But, you know, these things happen. But this is kind of the perfect time, really. I mean, you're hearing about all this great stuff and you're hearing about all the hard work that these guys over in Mesa, Arizona, put into their pens. All of these pens made in the United States of America, like the Bolt, the Retract, the Render K, and the Ink, which is a pen that I recently put in my top five. It's one that I'm actually using to take the notes of this show right now. I'll prove it to you. Wait.

Myke Hurley: There it is.

Brad Dowdy: I'm using the Retract.

Myke Hurley: We use these pens because we love them. We had Dan on the show because we love him and we love the work that he does. I know that if you try out any of this stuff, if for some strange reason you don't already own a Karas Customs pen, you should change that. And if, you know, holiday season's coming up or maybe you just want to treat yourself, buy one of the other pens in the Karas Customs range that you don't already own. Because they are all fantastic in their own beautiful ways. Go on over to Karas Customs because those lovely people are going to give you a fantastic discount. You can get 15%, a huge 15% of anything in their store when you use the code PENADDICT, all one word, before you check out. So before you press the checkout button, you want to enter in the code and you'll see that lovely discount come off. This code is valid until the end of the year, so it's perfect for something now and it's perfect for the holiday season too. These guys are pen addicts just like us, as you can tell because they're on this show. Thank you so much to Karas Customs for supporting this week's episode of The Pen Addict and Relay FM.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, so let me brag on their latest Kickstarter, which is The Cube. If you have not seen this product, you need to run, not walk to Kickstarter and check it out. And I want to explain this in no uncertain terms, the way it is built. I have one. Dan sent me one for a review, a review sample. Number one, I blew his mind by picking the blue finish and not the orange. I said, I need some contrast, you know, so I can put my orange pens in the blue cube and that would look good. But for people who don't understand, just looking at pictures, what this encompasses, this is not a six-walled pen holder. It is a literal solid block of aluminum.

Myke Hurley: I still don't really understand that. It's crazy to me. It's just like a big block of aluminum. Aluminium, Brad, you're saying it wrong, by the way.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, aluminum. How much does one cube weigh, Dan?

Dan Bishop: One pound, 14 and a half ounces.

Brad Dowdy: So almost a two-pound block of aluminum with the holes cut out for the pens and with the Delrin sleeves in there to protect them from the aluminum. It's a solid block of aluminum, people. It's not an empty, hollow block. It is – I basically described it – I think I was talking to Jeff. I described it as a shot put. That's what it feels like. The density of it is if you've ever picked up a shot put, that's what it feels like. This is one of the coolest things. So tell us – I know how it came about like between the collaboration between you and Myke Dudek to actually make a pen holder. But how was the decision to get these huge – like you showed in the video, it's like this huge bar of aluminum. How do you even source that and cut that? And I'm still kind of mind blown with this whole thing, how this came about because it's – looking at it, it's one thing. But actually feeling it in person is a completely different experience.

Dan Bishop: It's all thanks to donuts.

Dan Bishop: Watch the Kickstarter video if you don't get that joke.

Dan Bishop: No. So basically anything that we make on the mill, most of our pens – or all of our pens, I should say, are made on the lathe, which turns cylindrical-type objects. The cube is made entirely – except for the inserts – on a mill, which is basically like a router, like a wood router on steroids. And so we order a giant extruded bar of aluminum, cut it on a bandsaw. And, you know, this is after we come up with the idea, we design it, send it to the machinists. They program it, set up the machines, fixture the machine as necessary. They put the aluminum in the machine, and they cut it. So it takes two different machining operations to complete it, just the cube part, and then we take it, make sure it's in good shape and meets our specs, and then we send it off for anodize to protect it because otherwise it'll get all scratched up, which can look cool, but for this we want them to look nice. It's kind of – it's always satisfying no matter how many times – because I used to work in the shop. I used to load raw material into a machine, push start, and it would run, and then you'd come out with a finished part. Every single time, it's always awesome to see that stuff coming out of the machine in its final state when it just started out as a big hunk of metal.

Brad Dowdy: So it's really cool. Yeah. This – I don't want to slight this and say that it's not as technically impressive as putting together a whole pen and machining out a pen, but it is. It's that good of a product. I know I'm gushing over it, but I've not – I mean you sent me one for free, let's be clear. But I've backed it because – I backed it before I even had it because this just kind of – it blew my mind, honestly, just the quality of this and the style of it. And then actually getting it on my desk, I'm like, oh my god, this thing is awesome. So y'all did a really good job on the cube, so everyone should definitely check that bad boy out. It's awesome.

Dan Bishop: Yeah, I mean it was awesome and it really wouldn't have happened without Myke Dudek.

Brad Dowdy: That's the truth. Myke is a good guy. He is – yeah, it was funny watching him in the video. I was thinking he – like Myke didn't know quite what to expect out of these video guys. But he did a super good job. Y'all did a wonderful job on the video. So – but yeah, I'm glad y'all collaborated.

Dan Bishop: Yeah, I mean it was really cool because like I said, I eat lunch with him about once a week. I mean he's local and so he'll come up and we'll go get some food. His favorite thing to get is empanadas. And so I always give him a hard time about that. But he'll come up and I've been bugging him about wanting to do a collaboration because I feel it's important to interact with outside people and designers and companies just because I think it keeps things fresh. And so he was on board and so we sat down. Like the Kickstarter video talks about briefly but we just kind of brainstormed some ideas and then we designed it in 3D. And the cool thing about working where I work is if we set aside time to make something that we want, we can do that rather quickly. Instead of like the three to four year cycle time that we talked about for product development, we can do something rather quickly and make some prototypes and see if the public wants to be involved in that. And that's what makes Kickstarter a perfect outlet for somebody like us is sometimes it doesn't work like as evident of our two projects that didn't. Some of the people in the chat room are saying that they supported us on those, which is awesome. But it's interesting that we can just put out products and have people say, yes, we want these and then move forward. Because I mean we still sell Render Ks. They were the first thing that I designed and then we sold on that kind of scale. We made iPhone cases and stuff but they weren't as popular. The pens, the people tend to love them more than the phone cases and stuff and it's awesome to see. I love it.

Brad Dowdy: So let's talk about our – talk to our future entrepreneurs here that want to get started in doing a Kickstarter project. It doesn't have to be a pen. It could be anything that you're bringing to Kickstarter. So give me like two or three like absolutely you must do this for a successful Kickstarter launch. What are Dan's tips for launching a successful Kickstarter?

Kickstarter Advice

Dan Bishop: First, you have to understand your audience. You have to have somebody to sell to. You can't just make something off the wall and crazy and expect it to be successful. For example, I used to work – I was a patent illustrator and I worked in an intellectual property law firm and people would come in all the time with ideas. They were like, we're going to make a million bucks. We're going to make a million bucks. But they were just crazy ideas and they would obsess over them. You have to find someone to sell to. And if there's nobody to – that wants your product, you're never going to make it. It's never going to happen. So first and foremost, have a market. And second, understand that market. Don't jump into something and – like I wouldn't try to jump into like women's hair care or something like that and expect to be able to just sell because I don't understand it. First of all, I have nothing to do with that. And it's kind of crazy to just say, oh, well, these people have money. They're going to spend it. Well, if it's not good, they're not going to spend it. So you have to understand that market as well as know that they're there to support you.

Brad Dowdy: So now one of the biggest tips you gave me and I did not listen. So Dan helped me out. Dan helped me out. I'm coming correct here. Dan helped us out a lot getting our Kickstarter project launched for Knock and I greatly appreciate everything. And he told me one of the keys that you have to live and die by is not have too many options, not have too many different backer levels, too many reward levels.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, you really didn't listen to that, did you?

Brad Dowdy: And I didn't listen. I felt, well, I want to provide these options for these different cases and colors. And once we funded, everything was successful, everything was fine. And I was like, damn it. Dan was right. We really overdid it on the choices. And I thought that that's like such a simple thing like to say, but to actually when you're building this out and putting it together, yeah, I'm going to throw this out there and I'm going to have this color and this option and that color and that option. And we're going to have all these different rewards and I'm going to make everybody happy. And you finish the project funds and you're like, holy crap, how am I going to do all these different things in the time frame that I've promised? And that's what bit us in the end.

Myke Hurley: The thing was, though, I do think that whilst that was later on, like after funding was a huge problem for you, I do think that it was one of the keys to your success because you had so many different things people could buy. Agreed. And you had options. Like if you have one case, I don't think it would have been as successful because people, I think what people saw was they saw like, oh, I like this one. I like this one. And they're 20 bucks for the two. Why don't I just go for like 35 and get all of them or however much the money was? I think that that was actually made you overall more successful, but ended up causing you problems.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. And it's just a hard decision to make. It's like, where do you stop?

Myke Hurley: Yeah.

Dan Bishop: No, I think you wouldn't have been as successful. And while it does complicate things tremendously on the back end, it was better for your type of project to do that. With us, we typically would offer something in a more simplistic manner in the past, you know, a couple materials, you know, aluminum, brass, and copper. But with the ink, we decided to offer colors. And I can honestly tell you that when you have those kind of options, it's 10 times easily, 10 times harder to fulfill everything correctly. Because, I mean, you guys had pledges that had, you know, like what, seven or eight different items that were each a different color. Right. And so you can't bulk package. The things that was nice with our early pen projects is if they had an aluminum pen, they were all aluminum, you know, colored pens. Right. And so you could box 150 and then print out labels. And they were all the same weight. They were all identical. And then we could just, you know, label every box and then go to town.

Brad Dowdy: But yeah, like you said at best, like after we were talking, after we'd funded for us, every order is unique. And that poses problems. Yeah. Or, you know, delays and complicates things.

Dan Bishop: It just makes it complicated and it just takes longer. But I think in the end, people get more choice and it makes them a little happier. So it's, it requires a little bit more work and it's more frustrating on the creator's end. And the same thing, you know, I'll just say it briefly is, you know, for stretch goals. Sometimes stretch goals make sense if you have, you know, a production minimum that you need to meet with another company. And it can be cheaper, you know, hey, we need 10,000 units and then it'll make everything, you know, 10 cents cheaper. It saves you money. But doing stretch goals just for the sake of stretch goals just delays a project and makes it harder to fulfill and makes more mistakes, in my opinion. Sometimes it makes sense. But a lot of times the stretch goal, I don't know where it even started on Kickstarter, but it can, it can hurt a project. Because people try to have all these extra expectations and then it just crashes down around them.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, I'm actually anti-stretch goal. And that's something we should, you've, you've kind of led up to my, to my next, next question. And I'm going to give you, not that you haven't had the soapbox this whole episode, but I'm going to give you this specific soapbox to tell backers what they need to know about projects and how they should act and what their expectations should be. And what backers can do to help you as a creator be successful because, you know, you're, it's a partnership now. Once they've backed it and it's funded, y'all are in it together. So how can backers make your life easier?

Dan Bishop: There's a lot of people on Kickstarter who kind of get it. And by that, I mean, they realize this is a, this is an ongoing project and it's not reaching completion. So there's things you can do to help your, a backer of any project. One is try not to make special requests. We get people a lot of times they say, Hey, can you, could you modify this or do this? Which we, if we could, you know, it would be nice, but literally dozens of people, almost, almost daily, they'll ask you questions and everybody wants a little bit, something special. And if we did that, it would, you know, the whole project would fall apart. So if, if you have an idea or a suggestion, it doesn't hurt to maybe mention it in the comments or in a, in a message to the creator, but don't expect or demand that they implement something because you think they should do it. Um, we, you know, we put a lot of thought into our, our projects and, you know, sometimes people can be almost insulting when they, you know, almost demand certain things. And for some projects it can help people have helped people come up with a better solution to a problem in the past and things like that, but just be supportive and not so much demanding, which I don't want it to sound negative because backers do help out a lot. Including helping other backers. People will ask questions in the comments section and some of the, the people that are regulars will answer them or, or kind of run customer service for you, which helps the creator. Yeah. Very helpful. So, yeah, just, you know, do as much as you can to support them. Uh, know your, your shipping address, you know, if you plan on, give them an address that's like your, your brother or your, your neighbor or send it to your work or something, because it's, it's complicated. I mean, we send out the surveys and that's the information we get and we have to run with. So, um, know your address, uh, be nice to other backers and comments and just, uh, enjoy the ride. And if you go in expecting to be supportive and to encouraging, that will make everything easier for everybody. And usually if, if the, the, the creator feels like everyone's behind them, they're going to give you more information and you are going to enjoy the process. So it's what you get in, what you put out of it, or I said that backwards, right? Yeah. So just, just have fun. Kickstarter is there to support people and enjoy the show and don't, don't take it too seriously. It, I mean, granted you did give money, but you know, it's not like you gave a kidney or something. You know, and if, if you financially, if there's something comes up and you really, you know, can't, you know, a lot of people will understand if you need to back out of the project or if you just want to pledge a dollar or whatever, just, just be there for the creators and they will, they will love you and support you back.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. It's definitely a two way street and. You know, we love getting all the feedback and the comments and everything from, you know, everyone, you know, and a lot of it's legitimate questions and things like that. So it's glad to be able to have that platform, like in the comment section, to be able to answer some of these questions publicly. And Kickstarter does provide you some good tools. Like I was adding things to the FAQ several times through, through the thing and could point people, you know, to, to, to the right spots and things like that.

Myke Hurley: Can I say devil's advocate for a moment? Please. Because obviously you guys are Kickstarter creators. Like, is it, is it the responsibility of a backer to like, to treat, to treat it like that? Like to, to many people, they have purchased a product from you. Like that is their relationship with you.

Dan Bishop: Yes and no. Um, uh, Kickstarter came out after a lot of problems and they, they emphasize that it's not a store.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. I mean, I know that. I mean, and people that read Kickstarter stuff know that, but do you think the average person backing a project on Kickstarter is in that mentality when they do it?

Dan Bishop: Well, when you, when you pledge, they, you know, it's just like anything else. They, they try to present you that information and it's, and it's difficult to make sure that people understand that. Um, and so it can be frustrating, but in those situations we try to, you know, talk to those people and either inform them or make them happy in some way. Um, sometimes that can be a refund, but the important thing is, and is, is to, is to listen to what's going on because, and another big thing that I'm sure Brad ran into is people will, you can turn off the notifications from your project creator. And so we will spend a lot of time. Like we personally make videos and take photos and do updates and show the whole process. And then people will send us a message or comment and say, well, we haven't heard any news. And, uh, yeah.

Brad Dowdy: Or how about an update? I don't know. I was like, yeah, we just, we've sent five in the past month. Yeah. Yeah.

Dan Bishop: And, and so it's, it's very much a two way street and that's the problem with, uh, with any interaction online is somebody, um, either they don't understand what Kickstarter is. And that's, I don't know how you can solve that problem because if you're using Kickstarter and someone goes onto Kickstarter and, you know, pledges for something. And that's why I think it's important in, in, in the language, um, everything's a pledge and everything's a reward. Nothing is, uh, it's not a store. I can't just buy it and make it for you because you're really just there to support the project and to get it to move forward. And I don't know how you would educate people short of, you know, forcing them to read something before they could pledge. Um, but I think more and more people know about, my mom knows what Kickstarter is now. So I think people understand it.

Myke Hurley: I think it's just, it's important. But as you mentioned, Dan, the way that you, the way that you try and help those people is still important. Like, I don't think that it's right. And I don't think you were saying this at all, but like, I don't think it's right to say like, well, yeah, of course it's late. But like, what are you going to do about it? Like, this is, this is a project we're trying to, I don't think you can kind of have that, like that attitude of what are you talking about? You know how this works, you know? Because I think there is still like an inherent, like, for example, I appreciate if a project is late, right? But if I, if I paid $80 and the thing doesn't work out and I lose my money, I'm going to be pretty upset about that.

Dan Bishop: Yes, of course. I would be too.

Myke Hurley: And even though like, it's the same deal, right? It's like, well, you supported the project. Unfortunately, the project didn't work out. And there's been like high profile cases of this happening. Yes.

Brad Dowdy: Millions of dollars. Yeah.

Myke Hurley: Like I still expect something at the end of it. Even, I mean, it is really, I've had projects that have been really late and it's frustrating, but like I can kind of let it go. Because kind of my, my philosophy, my mentality with Kickstarter is I like the thing, I'll put the money in, then I forget about it and wait for it to show up like a little present to me in the future. You know? Yep. Because I don't pay any attention to the ship date unless like I get an update and it's like, we're hoping to ship soon. And then I'll check and be like, I wonder if they're on time or whatever. Like, because I just look, but I don't expect it within, I never, I never basically believe the ship date is what I'm saying. Right. Because I think a lot of times it's like a crystal ball. Like people, you guys are just trying to expect, like, we believe we can get it done by this date. But then like, I've seen like if a project becomes massively successful, then actually that tends to push the ship date out in a lot of instances and that sort of stuff. But so like, you know, I, I expect a product at the end of it. I've never had a project personally that I've funded that I haven't received the goal. Like I haven't received the reward, but I would be really upset if that was the case. I'd be really frustrated about that.

Dan Bishop: And, and that's kind of, I think that's kind of what our success has, has been indicated by. We have proven that we, that we're not just a one and done. We are, you know, we're not, we're not, there's other pen projects, you know, the Voldemort of pen projects that you don't say their name. That basically served up, you know, something that people did not expect. They, they got something that they were, they thought they were promised and they didn't get. And we try to avoid that because we are trying to give people what they want. And it's, it's a risk. I mean, unfortunately Kickstarter inherently is almost in the product design category is can't as a gamble. And, you know, it's the, the onus is almost on the backer to, to kind of look at what they're, what they're interested in instead of impulse buy. I, I, I backed a product that I thought was interesting and is well over a year past, you know, it's estimated delivery date. And we received maybe two or three updates every six months or so. And I, I'm just waiting to see what happens. And I'm not angry. I mean, it would be, be nice if it, if it finished, but it kind of gives, you know, me an insight as to what other people struggle with and go through. But I'm, I might be the wrong person to ask because I, I have the background of product development. And so I kind of understand the pitfalls. I mean, Brad, what, what did you, I mean, you've backed a lot of stuff, but have you ever had anything just kind of, you know, fall on the wayside?

Backer Research

Brad Dowdy: And drift into never, never land? Not yet. I've been lucky in that aspect. And that's another thing from a backer's perspective. You got to do your homework. I, I am not going to rush in a project just to get an early bird from someone that I have questions about. You know, you have time to see how these things play out. You have time to research the companies behind it, you know, as much as you can. And you have time to, you know, go through all the comments and see how the, the creators are answering, you know, their backers to see, you know, if they understand what's going on with their own project or not. I mean, I think there's a lot of things that are super, super telling about, about creators that you can glean from updates and projects and communication style and background and things like that. And just, you know, as a backer understanding, okay, maybe something doesn't add up here and maybe I shouldn't put my money into this. So it's, it's, you, you have to be careful from that aspect. So luckily I have not backed a project that has not delivered. I've had some that have taken a year to deliver like the Apollo pin, which I just got last week. I think it funded last December and it just came in last week and they're not even close to done yet. There's going to be people that are going to be waiting until next year for part of that project. So, you know, it's, it's a tough deal. It's a tough deal sometimes, but you know, backers, you know, you need to do your homework too. I mean, you know, we're fortunate to be, to have a public place to discuss things, you know, for our specific projects like the blog or the podcast and things like that. But for people you're not aware of, ask around, do your homework, read the comments section, read their updates, read the comments in their updates. I mean, there's all kinds of places you can get information from. So, all right, we're running long, but I got one more question, Dan. I want to get into that Drew design asked in the, in the chat room that I think is a really good question. And I'm going to, I'm going to do this. This is specifically directed to you and Kara's customs. At what point, at what point do you abandon Kickstarter and launch a product old school, make a first run and then sell them first comes first serve from Kara's, like from Kara's perspective. Would you, is that an option ever to just, you know, make a project, product, sell it on your site and go that route? Or do you feel like you're just like a Kickstarter pro now and that's the way we're going to do it?

Dan Bishop: Well, I can address that quickly so that we can end the show. So, the, the advantage of doing, of doing Kickstarter is two things. Kickstarter has a wide audience and people looking for specific things like pens are already there. So that's, that's kind of a no brainer to go from there. But, anytime you do anything, I mean, like I said, we don't do just pens, we do other work, production work. And so, we launch products on Kickstarter to see if there is a market. Like, we have two failed things. Now, if we had shut down production, made what we thought would be a large, you know, an amount that would be useful to have on hand. Because, you know, we have to pay someone to set it up, to run it, to do all these different things. So, it costs money to even prototype. We have to take paying work, set it aside to do prototypes. And this is with any company, not just us. So, you have to pay to, to even have a prototype before you can get to Kickstarter. So, and once you put it on Kickstarter, you can kind of gauge that public demand. And that will allow you, i.e., kickstart the process to where you can start making them in production. Because it's very possible you make something that just nobody cares about. And at that point, I mean, that's how businesses go bankrupt. That's how businesses fail, is you produce something that nobody wants, you know. And you, you put a big effort into it, and then you fail. And so, I mean, people, I don't know what people think about Karis Customs. We're a tiny little shop. I mean, we're in Mesa, Arizona. We've got 10 dudes working there. I mean, we are small. And if we took the gamble and put, you know, shut down production for, you know, weeks or, you know, months, month and a half, to put out a large number of pens, that could potentially cause us to, you know, go out of business. Just like, you know, a bakery or, you know, any other type of place. And so, the success through Kickstarter has allowed us to grow our business. And we probably would not be where we are without it. And so, it's kind of a symbiotic relationship. And, you know, like with NotCo, you probably could have used some of your clout with your blog, but we didn't. We had nothing. We were just some guys in a machine shop making stuff. And so, without it, we wouldn't be able to do new products or to do anything further. We just happened to have the luxury of Kickstarter to help us grow.

Brad Dowdy: That was a really good answer, Dan.

Dan Bishop: Thanks.

Brad Dowdy: I'm serious. I was like, that makes a ton of sense. I mean, when you're a smaller shop, you know, everyone, all the Kickstarter creators are coming from a different place, you know. It's a lot of small businesses like us. Or like, in my case, it was trying to launch a business. In your case, it's trying to sustain a business. And putting all your eggs in one basket to, like, shut down and make weeks worth of products and then throw them up on your site and hope they sell. I mean, it's a crapshoot. And Kickstarter at least allows you to have that, you know. Kickstarter don't lie. You know, it's going to tell you whether your product's good or not. I mean, you're going to succeed or you're going to fail right there. And it's certainly helpful for that. So, yeah. That was very good. I appreciate that openness and honesty there. So, that was excellent. So, well, I think we could go for another hour easy just on Kickstarter stuff. But this was really, really awesome, Dan. And I appreciate you coming on and talking about all this stuff.

Dan Bishop: No, it's my pleasure, really.

Myke Hurley: Where can people find your work, Mr. Bishop?

Dan Bishop: That sounds weird. Mr. Bishop's my dad.

Dan Bishop: They can find my work on kariscustoms.com or Instagram or anything else like that. And if they want to get a hold of me, they can hit us up through the contact page. You can find some of my personal shenanigans through designconcussion.com or through the same name on Instagram. Yeah.

Myke Hurley: There you go. If you'd like to catch up with myself and Brad, well, first off, go to the show notes for this week's episode, which you can find at relay.fm slash penaddict slash 129. My name is Myke Curley. I am at iMike on Twitter. I am YKE. And Brad is at Dowdyism, D-O-W-D-Y-I-S-M. And he writes the fantastic penaddict.com and sells his wares over at knock.co. That's my favorite. That is my favorite domain that you own for the site. So it's the one that I like to use. Thank you. We'll be back next week with another episode of The Pen Addict. Thanks again to our sponsors this week, Linda, Hover, and Karis Customs. And thank you to Dan from Karis Customs for joining us. We'll be back next time. Until then, say goodbye, Brad and Dan.

Brad Dowdy: Goodbye, Brad and Dan. Goodbye, Brad and Dan.

Myke Hurley: Goodbye, Brad and Dan.