The Maker’s Quest

Curt creates handmade pens from Titanium that are precision machined in his home workshop.   He got his start from his curiosity in machining and CAD.  He created a pen for himself and started carrying it around with him, and people noticed and commented on the quality.  It wasn’t long before he was able to quit his job and make pens full-time.

Today, we talked with Custom Drum maker Bryan Bales.  Bryan got his start in drum making from his curiosity of wanting to learn how to make drums and his love for making things.

Is social media still a viable way to promote your business, or is the new business model to be a content creator, making products secondary? Today, we talk about our past successes and future strategies for getting our products out in front of people.

Tonight, we talk about how to price your work so you can run a successful business and put food on your table.  Whether it is pricing a custom piece or a mass-manufactured piece, we’ve got you covered with a few tips you can implement today to price your work for success!

The Unhealthy Pursuit of Perfection, we have all been there.  Every one of us who makes things tries to make it perfect, but perfection is a fool’s earned and unattainable.  The more you know, the more you know you don’t know.   In this episode, we talk about how the pursuit of Perfection can reach unhealthy levels and what we do to stay sane and continue our maker’s quest.

This is a common issue for creatives that make things. We all have active imaginations; we can visualize lots of things. Then the distractions come into play. We are drawn to the new shiny project or derailed by a project that we have to do to make money to keep the bills paid.

In this episode, the guys talk about the power of staying curious and how it will help you stay creative in your journey as a  maker.

In today’s episode, Brian and Greg Talk about different techniques for gathering inspiration for their designs and then iterating from basic design principles to more abstract concepts and techniques.

n this episode, Brian and Greg talk about how learning new things by learning how to learn. Setting aside preconceived notions about what you think something is about will help you approach learning with an open mind. Then they talk about Chat GPT and how to use it to help us learn and become better critical thinkers.

In this episode, we talk about how makers handle challenges. We talk about acquiring tools, acquiring skills, acquiring new clients, and how social media algorithms are diluting creativity.