Editing The Pen Addict 367/transcript (section)

== YouTube Content Focus ==


'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Well, I want to talk about your YouTube obsession because that's where pretty much all of your content lives. And we're going to talk about why and the hows. And I have a lot of questions about making videos because that's not something I do very often, nor do I think I'm very good at. But before we do that, let me take a quick minute to talk about our first sponsor today. And that's our good friends at Squarespace. This episode of The Pen Addict is brought to you by Squarespace. Make your next move with Squarespace. Squarespace lets you easily create a website for your next idea with a unique domain, award-winning templates and more. Maybe you want to create an online store. Maybe you want to create a portfolio. Maybe you want to create a blog like The Pen Addict. Squarespace is an all-in-one platform that lets you do just that. There's nothing to install, no patches to worry about, no upgrades needed. You don't have to worry about any of that stuff. Squarespace has got it covered. They have award-winning 24-7 customer support if you need any help. And they'll let you quickly and easily grab a unique domain name. And all of those award-winning templates are beautifully designed for you to show off your great ideas. I'm a Squarespace customer. I use it for Pen Addict. I use it for Knock. I have the blog. I have shops tied in there. It's real easy. And their plans start at just $12 a month. And you can start a free trial with no credit card required by going to squarespace.com slash Pen Addict. When you decide to sign up, use the offer code Pen Addict to get 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain and to show your support for The Pen Addict. Once again, that's squarespace.com slash Pen Addict and the code Pen Addict to get 10% off your first purchase. We thank Squarespace for their support of this show and all of Relay FM. Squarespace, make your next move, make your next website. So, why did you choose YouTube as your outlet to share your love of fountain pens?

'''David Parker:''' Well, kind of toward the end of 2015, I started to get the itch to create something. It's fun to be a consumer, but I also kind of had an itch to be a creator. And I wasn't quite sure what form that would take. You know, I was really into fountain pens, and I thought it might relate to that. You know, whenever I would receive a new pen, I would do like little mini reviews of my thoughts about each pen in these A5 Tomoe River notebooks that I had. And I was thinking about maybe starting a podcast or maybe writing a blog. And I finally landed on creating a YouTube channel. I have a background in video production. I like to think I can write well enough. I'm a fairly decent public speaker. So, I thought it was something that I could potentially do. You know, you see other videos, and sometimes you look at things and you go, there's no way I'm doing that. And other times you look at something and you're like, you know what? Hey, maybe I could do that. And I thought that I at least have enough of a base skill set where I could do that. And I've told this story before, but in my notebooks, I actually wrote out like all the pros and cons about starting a channel. And I actually decided against it. I kind of doubted myself. And I wasn't sure that I could have a voice. I mean, why would anyone want to listen to my opinion? And literally like a day or two later, I came across one of Stephen Brown's videos that's entitled, Why Aren't You Doing Reviews? And he was very encouraging. And it was kind of one of those things where it was the right message at the right time. And so, right after that, I decided to go for it.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That's awesome. And we talk about that a lot, too. It's just I really, you know, have people's backs when they want to, you know, start a blog or start, you know, any kind of website or start, you know, a YouTube channel or even just get on Instagram and share their stuff. Like I get those emails all the time. I know you do, too. We're going to talk about like a specific video you have about, you know, getting started and things like that. But I got to know maybe the most important question of this entire interview. What does the name Fig Boot mean?

'''David Parker:''' Okay. Okay. Sometimes it's tough to name something. I mean, how much do you struggle sometimes with the name of one of your new Nock products?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Oh, it's, yeah, definitely. Definitely a challenge.

'''David Parker:''' So I wanted the name of my channel to be unique and easy to remember. And I didn't want it to be like some generic name, like Pen Addict or something like that. Right.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Super generic.

'''David Parker:''' So I landed on Fig Boot on Pens. And the intent was actually is that if I ever decided to branch out to different topics, then I could have like Fig Boot on games, Fig Boot on movies. And kind of the template was there. The name Fig Boot is actually something I've used for an online moniker for quite some time. I used to work in the video game industry. And I like playing a lot of video games, console and PC. And it's what I've used for a username for quite some time. It's different. It's usually a name that's not taken. And the only other Fig Boot out there is a little purple dinosaur that was in the Strawberry Shortcake cartoons. And so the origin story is a little lengthy, but it's actually a reference to a book. There's a series of books by an author illustrator by the name of Graham Romeo. He's based in Canada and he has a number of humor books. And there are three that I really enjoy. It's his Bigfoot trilogy. There is In Me Own Words, Me Write Book, and I'm Not Dead. And, you know, with any type of humor, these books aren't for everyone, but they make me laugh out loud. And for a book to do that, for you to laugh out loud reading a book, it makes it – it's funny for me. Like, for example, there was one page talking about how Bigfoot auditioned for Sesame Street. There was another page about how he went over to Japan to become a sumo wrestler, stuff like that. It's very dark, crass humor. And there was one page that actually showed his online dating profile. And his username was Fig Boot. Actually, it was Fig Boot underscore 2001. But that's where the name came from. So it was Bigfoot's online dating profile name.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Okay. That's amazing. Like, I didn't know this. I haven't – I don't know if you've gone through this in one of your videos. I, of course, will readily admit I have not watched all of the entire catalog of the Fig Boot on Pens video collection. But that's amazing. And I'm sitting here dying laughing when you started talking about this because you and I, you know, not to give away all of our secrets, we're ballpark around the same age. So coming to age in the earlier days of the internet, coming up with, like, your screen name was kind of a – not maybe a big deal, but it was, like, something that stuck around. And you end up using it for other things, just like you started using Fig Boot for one thing. And it's just kind of something that stuck with you, like my Dowdyism moniker, which kind of drives me insane a little bit, which I'm stuck with that Twitter handle now.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That's how that came about. That was, like, my message board handle, like, back in the 90s, right? So, like, these things just kind of, you know, go through our veins and then sometimes they get stuck. But Fig Boot's, like, a really strong, good name for a channel. Do people just come up and when they see you at pen shows, they go, hey, Fig Boot?

'''David Parker:''' Yeah, I'll answer to it. You know, it's not – that's fine. It doesn't bother me. And, you know, I'm used to – you know, I used to play a lot of, like, World of Warcraft. And that was my main tank was Fig Boot. And so everyone would just call you that. Oh, and then I wanted to say that I actually reached out to Graham, Romeo, the author, because I thought it would be really cool to have an original piece of art from him. This was way before I started the channel. And so I actually commissioned a piece of art from him. And I really love it. I'll give you a link that you can post. It's basically Bigfoot just poking a beehive with a stick. But it's one of those things that – it's a one-of-a-kind. It's an original watercolor painting that he made. And it's hanging above my office at work. And it's one of those things that means nothing to anyone else, but it means everything to me. It is, like, one of my most prized possessions I own. I just love that thing.