Editing The Pen Addict 131/transcript (section)

== Karis Customs ==


'''Brad Dowdy:''' It's certainly awesome. And I want to talk about one of these video series that you put out that I think has been a huge influence for me, huge influence to a lot of people. And that's the Fountain Pen 101 series. And I know you put a lot into that. Before we get into that, I want to talk about another one of our very, very good friends, Michael, Mr. Dan Bishop at Karis Customs.

'''Myke Hurley:''' We love Karis Customs. And they're back to sponsor another episode of The Pen Addict. They are a pen maker based in Mesa, Arizona. All of their stuff is made proudly in the United States of America in their very own shop. These guys make a whole range of awesome pens like the Render K, the Ink, the Bolt and the Retract. The last two, the latter two, the Bolt and the Retract. You can now get in gorgeous two-tone colors which look fantastic. Like, they are incredible. Like, aluminium and one of the beautiful colors, like the red, the blue, the orange, the purple. You should be checking those out because they're absolute faves. You can choose the materials that you want these pens to be made out of. All of the pens at Karis Customs. They do aluminium, brass and copper, allowing you to customize your pen with the right balance, weight and texture for you. And you can also choose one of these vivid colors, the awesome colors that they have, to let your pens give a bit of flair too. All of Karis Customs stuff is made of such great care and the materials that they use only get better with time. I'm a huge fan. They make amazing products. I buy everything they do because I know it's made with love and care by pen addicts just like us. The folks over at Karis Customs have a real connection with their customers and this is something they're proud of. They make these pens by hand. They ship them out to all of you guys and they interact with you directly. Definitely. Dan Bishop is usually in the chat room. If he's not already today, I haven't looked. And he's there. He is not. Oh, what's happening? I'm missing. I'm missing. He must be busy for Christmas. That must be it. But Dan is usually in the chat room. It might be because we're recording a different day today. But Dan is in the chat room and he's talking to pen addicts and he's having fun with you guys because that's what these guys are about. They're a great part of this community. So you should show your love for them by buying some of their awesome stuff. And just in time for the holiday season, we can get you 15% off anything in the Karis Customs store if you enter the code pen addict before you check out. It's all one word, pen addict. P-E-N-A-D-D-I-C-T. I don't know why I spelled that. You should know by now, obviously. This code is valid until January the 1st. So get in now and buy some stuff for the pen addict in your life or buy yourself some holiday presents. Thank you so much to Karis Customs for supporting this week's episode of the pen addict and helping us out at RelayFM.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Did you check out the two-tone retract? Yes. Yeah, those look pretty slick. That's the one I don't have yet. So I'm going to have to pick up one of those guys.

'''Brian Goulet:''' Yeah, let me just tag team on that. I know Dan a little bit. Super nice guy. And what's really cool is when they did their Kickstarter, he actually emailed me about linking to my store for people. Because he does pens, but he doesn't do ink or anything else like that. But he was aware of my videos and all that. Loved our store. And he asked me if it was cool if he linked to us in the Kickstarter just so that he could help out his loyal pen people and give them a place to have ink and all that. And I was just like, you know, that's really cool for him to use his own platform to plug somebody else, of which he has no affiliation whatsoever. So super nice guy. But that's just very representative of, like, the people in the pen industry. Like, everybody's willing to help each other out. It's so cool.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Exactly. And I love just being part of this community. And I know me and Myke, you know, hear that from, you know, our listeners and readers of the blog and things like that. It's an amazing, amazing community. And I've really never been involved in anything like it. And, I mean, and part of it, you know, to be honest, Brian, is guys like yourself that are just, like, pouring everything into it. Like, I can't imagine the hours, not just on the business side, not just, okay, you know, let's, you know, figure out what products we're going to get in. And figure out how we're going to store them and how we're going to set up the warehouse and how we're going to pack and how we're going to ship and how we're going to pay the bills. And then all of a sudden you have a 19 video series of Fountain Pen 101.

'''Brian Goulet:''' Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Which, that's no small feat. And that's just, I mean, that's like a fraction of the videos that you've done. But this series specifically, how important has it been to your site? Because I know I send a lot of people here that are just learning about fountain pens. And every day, you know, I'm getting emails like, I want to buy my first fountain pen. And I'm worried about, you know, how to fill it or something like that. And, you know, you can only tell them so much in an email or a chat. But then, you know, going out and putting out this whole video series, just tell me about this whole Fountain Pen 101 series.

'''Brian Goulet:''' Well, it's interesting because that's what you're describing is very much kind of the motivation that there was behind me doing this series. You know, right now I have a whole team of people that help, you know, customers like day to day. I do what I can, but I'm only one guy. You know what I mean? And so, but you get people that are asking the same question over and over again, you know. And it's like you said, it's really impossible to tell somebody how to do an eyedropper conversion in an email, you know. But if you do a video in like one or two minutes, it conveys a thousand times the information. And it's like, oh, I get it. Okay, cool. So, not only that, not only is the information transferred better, but then, again, it's that more personal feel. You know, especially me, like I care a lot and my passion can come across so much better in a video or in an audio podcast or something like that than it can in an email. You know, there's so much lost in translation in an email. So, in those early days, you know, I didn't have a team of people. It was me and my wife, you know. So, I would have to pack all the orders, unpack everything, you know, do all the blogging, do all the research, answer phones, answer email, you know, all that. I did do everything. So, everything was about like, okay, how do I make my life easier? You know, how do I help people better than I am now? How do I make just everything more efficient, more effective? And a lot of that was video. So, a lot of my earliest videos were basically like, what are people asking me over and over again that I could just do a video on that would help everybody? And then I could just boop, boop, boop, link them to the video, be like, here, check this out. And that spurred so much of the direction that my videos went. And I'd considered doing something like Fountain Pen 101 from the very beginning because, for me, you know, I had to hunt and peck around on different blogs and forums and all kinds of stuff to try to learn. Just, you know, I didn't know anything about fountain pens. I had to figure it all out. And I was sitting here thinking, like, everybody who wants to get into fountain pens that wasn't, like, raised with them in school, they're having to do the same thing I am. Just go around and try and figure it out for themselves. And, you know, most people just aren't going to do that, you know. I mean, for a very dedicated, you know, group of us, we're willing to, you know, the passion carries through that much. But, like, let's try to make it a little bit easier for folks, you know what I mean? So once I'd been into fountain pens for a couple of years, I had been getting asked enough times all of the kind of basic questions. And I thought, like, okay, I feel like I'm finally at a point now where I, I'm not going to say I have the authority, but where I, like, I feel like I can competently put a video together. That can help some people out. You know, that can be, like, a good place for people to just come. Like, if you know nothing else, go to fountain pen 101. You can get your bearings. And then you will be, like, two years ahead of where I was when I first started out. And so that's kind of what was the motivation for fountain pen 101. And it's funny because I look back on it now. It's two and a half years old when I started doing it. And I look, I'm, like, 60 pounds heavier when I do the videos. Like, the production quality is not fantastic.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And you got some rad sweatshirt action going on too.

'''Brian Goulet:''' I know, right? Oh, gosh. Like, yeah. So, you know, but, hey, look, if you look back at my earliest videos, I got dirty laundry piled up in the back of my bedroom. Like, you know, I'm not shaving sometimes. Sometimes with my glasses on because it's, like, 2 o'clock in the morning and I had my contact lenses out. Like, I did not worry about the production quality necessarily. I knew that there was, like, it had to be up to a certain quality. But beyond that was just, like, you know, a nice to have. I knew that the content had to be solid. And that was what was most important. And, you know, even today, like, now I have a videographer. I have a photographer. I have people who are better at that stuff than I am that help me to make it look better than I ever could. But even still, for me, the most important thing has always been and still is, do I know my stuff? And am I presenting this in the best way that I feel that I can? And so, you know, something like Fountain Pen 101, that was the best that I knew. And honestly, all that stuff, I still stand behind everything I put together in that. Like, even though it's 2 1⁄2 years old, which is, like, an eternity on the Internet, you know, I still am very proud of that particular video series. Because it is, like, you know, the starting point for anybody who has any interest in fountain pens whatsoever. Just go watch that. And you're going to save yourself 2 years of hunting on the Internet to try to scrap that information together. And then if you really like pens, then you go buy some stuff. Then you go, you know, watch more videos, do that kind of stuff. But, you know, this, it's an hour and a half or so total time for that whole series that will, if you don't, if you don't, if you aren't, like, on fire, crazy about pens at the end of that video, just forget it. You know what I mean? Yeah. That's how I feel about them.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. So I put in two specific links that, I mean, we'll link to them all on the show notes, obviously, which are at relay.fm slash penaddict slash 131. How did I do, Myke?