October 1, 2024 • 59 mins
Get ready to roll the dice and hit the sweet spot with our guest, Andrew Davis, the genius behind Dodecadonuts - a successful venture blending the world of tabletop gaming with deliciously whimsical doughnut-shaped dice boxes. Andy reveals his journey, from his long-standing passion for gaming to the creation of a business that's as entertaining as it is tasty. He takes us on a tour of his experiences at gaming conventions like PAX West and the reactions of the gaming community to his unique confections.
Then, Andy tells us about the behind-the-scenes action - from the initial days of managing his hobby business on Etsy to the strategic transition to Shopify. You'll learn what goes into setting up an online shop, optimizing it to minimize fees, and his future plans to take his business to a whole new level. But it's not all business - Andrew also discusses the fun and intricate details of doughnut production. From hand injecting urethane to 3D printing, he shares his experimental journey with different materials and methods, and the importance of safety measures in his craft.
Finally, Andrew gets real about the entrepreneurial side of Dodecadonuts. He talks candidly about the hurdles of marketing a unique product and his savvy use of platforms like Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok to reach his target audience. He also discusses how he builds relationships with his customers at events like PAX and GenCon, proving just how much he values his gaming community. With a story as unique as his product, Andrew imparts the thrill of turning a love for gaming into a successful and downright delicious business venture.
Find Andy & Dodecadonts at:
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Courtney (00:08):
Hello and welcome to Role Play Grow, the podcast for
tabletop entrepreneurs, creatorsand fans.
In this show we dig intoprocesses, challenges, tips and
really look at how to grow abusiness in the tabletop
role-play gaming space.
Sit back and join in as welearn from the creators behind
your favorite brands about whothey are and how they are
turning their passion for gaminginto a career.
(00:29):
I'm at today's guest.
A few weeks ago at PAX West, Iwas wondering the TTRPG section
of the convention when Brentonwaved me over to look at the
coolest dice boxes that wereshaped like donuts.
There were dice towers shapedlike coffee mugs and I was
absolutely enthralled.
I'm at Andrew, the owner andcreator behind the shop DoDeka
(00:50):
Donuts, and I immediately went.
I have to talk to you on mypodcast.
Here's my business card and weget and now he's here.
I am really excited to sharethis conversation with you all
today, as he is a delightfulperson who creates the best dice
boxes to add a bit of whimsy toyour table.
We dig into how the shop cameto be, how he is going about to
(01:12):
a bunch of conventions andactually has plans to do a bit
of a convention circuit over thenext year, and it's just really
interesting look at how tostart and grow a business that
is creating some really funcrafts.
Before we get into theinterview, I do want to remind
y'all that the game that I amproject, managing Burnaway, is
live on Kickstarter right now,through the end of October.
(01:35):
In this game, you play asBurnaways, a group of
mercenaries hired to confrontEmbergeists, which are spirits
that are so upset aboutsomething that their ectoplasm
combusts.
You either have to exercisethem or playgate them, which
involves finding clues in theburning building you're
exploring to figure out who theywere, why are they upset, and
convince them to leave.
(01:55):
It's a fun game, meant forshort campaigns, that is live on
Kickstarter.
If you are interested inkeeping up with the game, you
can look for Burnaway onKickstarter and I'll also have a
link to the page and the shownotes.
Andrew (03:04):
It's going just great.
It is fantastic.
I'm really excited to be here.
Courtney (03:09):
I'm excited to get the chance to talk to you.
I know that it was probablyDodecad onuts hectic when just
some random person is like, ohhi, I want to interview you in
the middle of an event.
Andrew (03:20):
Yes, yeah, pax West where we met was, yeah, it was
like it's a little overwhelming.
There was a lot of people there, by far the biggest convention
that I've ever attended as avendor, and it was, yeah, it was
fun.
Courtney (03:35):
Yeah, if it wasn't the biggest, it was probably like
the second biggest that I'veever attended.
I'm honestly really curious toknow what the actual numbers
were.
Andrew (03:49):
I remember talking to the rep and I think they said
their expected attendance waslike in the 70 to 80,000 range
and the tabletop area.
They typically say they expectlike 12 to 15,000 people there.
I'm pretty sure I talked tolike 4 or 5,000 people over like
four days Just myselfindividually, that's not
counting anybody else who was atthe booth with me.
(04:09):
Good, Lord.
Yeah, insane.
Courtney (04:13):
That is god.
No wonder Like that's veryoverwhelming.
Andrew (04:17):
Yeah, yeah, it's pretty intense.
By the fourth day my patternwas a lot less, was a lot less
enthusiastic than it was thefirst couple of days.
Courtney (04:30):
I'm not man.
I was exhausted by the end ofday two.
It was just like, hmm, okay,and I wasn't trying to tell
things, I was just walkingaround talking to people.
Man.
Okay, well, to kick things offa little bit, can you just tell
us a bit about who you are andhow you got into gaming?
Andrew (04:46):
Sure, so my name is as we said, my name is Andrew Davis
.
I am a long time creativedirector and in advertising, but
you know, a long time justgeneral creator, like I have
always made stuff and beenpretty creative in my life.
My father was an artist, mybrother and I both super, super
creative our whole lives, kindof like.
(05:06):
I got into gaming, I think theway I'm on the older side, I'm
like Gen X, so I got into theway the gaming way a lot of my
fellow Gen Xers got into it,which is playing stuff like Risk
and Monopoly and cards withyour grandparents and trivial
pursuits and a fellow and allthe rest of it.
Yeah, that's kind of how I gotstarted with just broadly in
(05:27):
gaming and just always enjoyedplaying games and stuff like
that.
It's always fun stuff to doaround the house, around the
family.
Courtney (05:36):
Yeah, what do you play these days?
Andrew (05:39):
What do I play these days?
Good God, I have a huge stackof I mean, I have just the
classic stack of boxes thatboard gamers have of all these
different sorts of games.
Frankly, I buy sometimes I buygames just because I love the
artwork on them.
I just at PAX, I picked up onBerricks, nexus, Inferno by this
(06:00):
company, archon, which isapparently the way that I
haven't had a chance to play ityet.
You play one of six cults who'strying to raise your dark lord
and some sort of apocalypticthing.
The graphics were amazing andjust the premise of it made me
laugh.
So I was like, okay, well, Ikind of have to pick that up.
But you know, I play a lot ofdifferent games.
I play a lot of role playinggames.
(06:21):
I started when I was like 12 or13,.
A couple came over to for likea dinner party with my parents
and they brought the red box setfor D&D and they were going to.
We were going to play D&D aslike a which no one had played
before.
No one understood what it was,but we were all going to play it
as a like a dinner after dinnerkind of activity and my parents
(06:44):
this other couple completelybounced off of it, like they
were just like what are welooking at?
And my brother and I were likeoh, this is kind of interesting.
And I was like obsessed.
So you know, I started.
I was in the high school.
My high school's D&D clubplayed a ton of like Gamma World
and all the old school stuff.
You know I have all the.
(07:04):
I still have all my original AD&D books from back in the day.
So yeah, I mean I just kind ofreally fell in love with TTRPGs.
Then I stopped playing, alittle bit like college kind of
mid 80s or late 80s I should say.
I stopped playing for a longtime Partly I just kind of just
didn't have a group of friendswho were as into it as I was.
(07:24):
But picked it back up againwhen my kids were younger and
started playing with them andhave been playing with really my
kids and other extended friendsand family like that for a long
time since.
Courtney (07:38):
Yeah, I mean that's really fun, that like you're
even if they weren't necessarilyentered at the beginning like
you kind of got your start withlike trying with your family and
now it's like kind of come fullcircle and you're playing with
your kids.
Andrew (07:49):
Yeah, for sure.
And you know, like I think itwas just one of those things
where you know, especially inthat moment in time, like the
idea of a role-playing game,nobody really knew how to play
it.
Well, I mean, one of the thingsI think the things that's been
like just a tremendous boon withlike fifth edition, is All the
live streamers and being able tosee you show like critical role
(08:09):
or dimension 20 or just otherpeople playing the game, and
just like if you've never playedit before, to see somebody
playing it.
So you go like, oh, I couldplay it like that or I could
play it like that, like I mean Iserious was when I was a kid.
I was a serious murder hobo,just like all my friends.
It was just all about how muchloot you could get and these
battles.
(08:29):
But it wasn't.
It was like zero role-playing.
It was just purely like thisweird tactical thing of your
career going and creating a mapand All those sorts of things.
Now that I'm older, like sortof exploring the other parts of
the game is like super fun, buta lot more it's differently
entertaining.
Courtney (08:48):
Yeah, like.
So my husband and I justrecently Made a new group of
friends because we've only beenin Seattle for like a year and a
half, and so we just met someneighbors recently and a lot of
them are, like, interested inD&D.
But I've never played it before,and so we're introducing them
and like it's so funny how it'slike okay.
Well, I guess your expectationsare that we're gonna do a
(09:10):
dungeon crawl.
That's fine, we'll start withthat and we're doing that.
They're starting to like get afeel for things is going well
and then like I'm like okay, butalso, um, I really want you
guys to watch dimension 20, justtwo hours at a time.
Andrew (09:22):
Okay, by the way, just so you know, I want you to be
fully.
You don't have to do voices.
But if you want to do voices,that's okay.
Courtney (09:31):
Yeah, for sure it's just like okay, it's shorter
than critical roll.
You know it's comedians, likeit'll be, you'll have a good
time.
We don't expect you to do thislevel At all.
Yeah, I would be amazed if youdid, but no, but just
Role-playing, it's fun.
Andrew (09:47):
Well, it's very funny because so when I got back into
playing D&D, I was DMing for myson, who at the time was like a
freshman in high school, so IDMed For him.
And then I ended up DMingseparately for my daughter and a
group of her friends.
So it was my son and a group ofhis friends and then my
daughter and a group of herfriends and I was DMing two
(10:08):
separate campaigns, kind of inparallel.
And then and I was also gettingbut I was like, but hey, I
wanted, I want to play.
So I started going to likeGames at Berkeley, which is my
friendly local game store andthis, and I basically was going
there at first as a player.
Then I started DMing for themas well, which is like because
(10:28):
I'm a dumb ass.
And Then I saw that I was likeokay, wait, this is too much.
I'm like I have a full-time job.
I'm like trying to run threecampaigns and do this fairly
intense job.
At the time I was like I got abail on something.
So I I Backed out of a couplethings.
My son's campaign wrapped up.
He wanted to run stuff.
So I was like you run it foryour friends, great.
(10:49):
So I pulled way back and then Istarted to miss it again.
So I went back to the, to thegames of Berkeley, and I started
playing with a group of peoplewho are all, like, frankly, like
half my age, you know they'rethey're not much older than my
daughter is, but they're nowlike a tremendous group of
really really good friends.
We played together.
We had been playing for likealmost a year before COVID hit
(11:12):
and then we moved online and sonow we like meet for dinner.
We have, like you know, it'sit's just really been a Real
blessing in a lot of ways interms of being able to meet
people that I would not haveotherwise met at all and,
frankly, formed some reallypretty great relationships over.
It's been, you know, just, Ithink that's one of the things
(11:33):
that's really fun about gameslike this is they do give you
this opportunity just to spendtime with people and Kind of be
goofy, which is great.
Courtney (11:44):
You know, it's super fun, yeah so Okay, you got into
playing it, into DMing a lot.
Andrew (11:55):
Yes, into DMing a lot.
Courtney (11:57):
And then, at some point, dodeca doughnut started.
Let's establish what is dodecadoughnut.
Andrew (12:04):
Right.
So what is?
A dodeca doughnut, as yourlisteners might guess, dodeca
being 12-sided and a doughnut.
It's not actually a 12-sidededible doughnut.
What it is is and I'm not sureI can fully explain the thought
process, but it is a.
It is a wooden doughnut thathas eight pockets on the inside
(12:24):
to hold your dice and it's heldtogether by magnets.
It's basically a carved woodendoughnut that is painted to look
as much like a real doughnut asI can possibly make it, but it
splits apart to hold your dice.
It sort of the Genesis of it.
As an idea came about as we weretalking about critical role.
The sort of second arc ofcritical role had started and
(12:46):
Jester was right and they wereLaura Bailey was just
establishing that Jester wasobsessed with pastries at about
the same time that I'd gottenI've always had a woodshop and
so I had gotten a small CNCmachine and I was trying to
figure out a project that mightwork for something that scale.
And and I was just sittingaround talking with my kids and
(13:07):
we were talking and trying tosort of figure out what I could
make and it just popped into myhead that like, oh, I bet I
could make a dice doughnut.
That would be really funny.
You know, that would just bekind of a silly thing to make.
And then I thought of the nameand I was like, oh, dodeca
doughnuts is just a really goodname for something.
And I was like, well, you know,crap, I got it.
Now I have to make the thing.
(13:28):
So I went off and just Againbecause my backgrounds and
marketing and stuff I just wentahead and registered the URL to
have it.
And then I started trying tofigure out how to how to make
this thing.
And I made like the first.
You know, because when you'rejust sort of messing around
trying to prototype stuff, ittook me a little while but I
made like probably Half a dozenof them and painted them all
(13:51):
different and was just trying toexperiment, figure out how I
could, what would sprinkles bemade of, and it was just kind of
a fun, kind of creative project.
And then they looked reallygood and I went out and bought
like a dozen donuts, like actualdonuts, and then just put the
real doughnuts next to the thefake ones and took some pictures
and they looked really reallygood.
I was like, oh man, I wonder ifI could sell these.
(14:12):
And so I started trying to Sortof figure out how I could see
what the reaction might be andlike where the audience was.
You know, I mean, that's one ofthose things where I think it's
important with stuff,particularly stuff like this.
And this was, you know, to befair, this is like five years
ago.
This is five or six years agothat I started doing that, when
I made the first one.
So I think I signed up for likea geek craft expo which was like
(14:36):
a cheap, it was veryinexpensive table it's like a
hundred bucks for a table for aweekend and In Fort Mason Center
in San Francisco, didn't sell athing, didn't sell any donuts,
and made like a really kind of avery sort of quick and dirty
display for him, had a bannerput together, you know, just
enough to look kind ofprofessional, some cards, but I
(14:57):
was at the event and Nobody atthe event, everybody.
It was geek craft, but it waslike it's more like anime and
like meme stuff.
It was not gaming focused atall, and so I was kind of like,
oh well, okay, well, clearly myaudience is not here, it's not
as broadly nerdy as I thought itmight be.
Nearby where, where I live,kubla Khan happens every year
(15:20):
and it's one of the larger sortof West Coast board game
conventions.
I Called them and they had Icould get like half a table.
They had like guest artistspots for the weekend so you
could get like half a table fora couple hundred bucks.
So I was like, okay, sure I'll,you know.
So I made, I made more, youknow.
So this time, instead of havingjust like six or eight, I
showed up with, you know, I hada couple, I maybe had two dozen
(15:42):
doughnuts and it was one ofthose things where I, you know,
I had my little half a table.
I was sharing it with a womannamed Teresa, who was now
somebody that I see anotherconvention.
They were always like, oh, mygod, you know, but you know,
shared a table with her and thenthe same sort of thing.
Like you know they're, they're afunny product to show, because
this is I love is the fact thatthey are very confusing to see,
(16:06):
right, you know, like I cannottell you how many people walk by
and they're like are youselling real?
Like they show up and they'relike, oh, doughnuts, there's
like somebody selling actual,like edible doughnuts at a
convention, not in the food hall, just as part of the vendor
table.
It's like so they're alreadylike kind of perplexed.
And then when you show them adoughnut, you're holding it in
your hand and from like a fewfeet away they look like a real
(16:28):
doughnut.
They're like why is this guyhandling it?
Food product?
And then I split it open andit's got dice inside and you can
just see people's brains breaka little bit and they like
Double-take.
I get all these people who arejust like you know they look
super confused and perplexed bythe whole thing.
But they're very well made.
I spend a lot of time makingsure that they are.
(16:50):
It's funny to me to makesomething to the very best of my
ability that is so ridiculous.
So that like combination ofstuff.
But it's also that that makesthem like way more interesting
in a lot of ways than justmaking something that I had like
Injection molded in plastic orsomething like that.
Yeah, so was that kula con, andthen slowly just grew my
(17:10):
presence at kula con had itagain, had the like really good
reaction to the first set ofdoughnuts at kula con and people
were just like these areamazing.
And so every year when I goback to kula con, which has been
the big convention I've alwaysdone For me.
Every year I've gone back.
You know we they shut down forCOVID, but I've been back.
You know, ever since then I'vecome back every year with
(17:30):
growing my presence.
So it started with just thedoughnuts and then it was like
doughnuts and some stickers anda few t-shirts and then, most
recently, I Showed up and I cameup with a coffee cup dice tower
which essentially is like adice tower, that, so you can
have coffee and doughnuts, it'sall, it's all bits.
All I do is bits.
So it's coffee and doughnuts.
(17:50):
So you drop that, you have yourdoughnut that holds the dice
and then you can drop your diceinto the top of the cup and
there's a little 3d printedinsert that bounces them out and
they come, the dice come out ofthe hole on the side.
It's just all pastry food, it'sjust food puns, it's food D&D
puns, which you know they'resurprisingly a lot that if you
(18:12):
think about it, you can makework.
So I know that was a little bitof a rambling discourse on what
is a dodeca doughnut?
I guess.
No, that was perfect.
Courtney (18:26):
But since we are audio only, I would love if you could
just paint a picture of likewhat I mean?
Yes, they look like doughnuts,but just yes paint a word
picture.
Andrew (18:35):
So imagine if in your mind the platonic ideal of Homer
Simpson's doughnut right, soyou have this lovely sort of
light colored bottom and thenpink, the pink frosting on top
with the sprinkles.
Then take that platonic ideaand split it.
(18:55):
Imagine someone has just slicedit horizontally so that it
comes apart.
The top and the bottom of itcome apart.
When you open it up there arepockets.
There are eight pockets insideand two pairs of magnets that
hold those two pieces together.
And so basically, functionally,what they are is I Make them
out of a variety of woods, butessentially I have a CNC router
(19:18):
that's carving the pockets.
I Round over the edges of thatso that it's nice and it looks
like a torus, looks like a bagel, essentially.
And then most recently, I'vechanged how I've made them.
I started created like aurethane mold, and so I the
frosting is cast in urethane soI can paint it separate from the
doughnut, like all thesprinkles are just their glass
(19:41):
bugle beads, you know.
And then I just basically Glue,pour, paint, all that stuff
together and then it all comestogether at the end.
And then when I sell them Isell them with a pink felt bag,
so kind of like the pink boxesyou get doughnuts in from the
grocery store.
Yeah, so like the classic HomerSimpson might be, the bottom of
it might be like made out ofmaple or cherry.
(20:03):
You know, if you want more of achocolate doughnut, then I
would make the bottom out oflike walnut.
Like the tops I've painted allkinds of different ways and then
, like the last couple of showshave been starting to make mimic
doughnuts, where I actually goand take like a the Homer
Simpson one, and I'll like uselike a two-part epoxy Clay and
essentially mold, like thetongue and a bunch of teeth and
(20:25):
a bunch of other eyeballs andbunch of other stuff, and then
I'll paint all that and and addthose because I just again, this
is all purely what amuses me asa gamer and as a TTRPG person
like the idea of just liketrying to like wedge together
these two things, the food andthe gaming stuff.
Just it just takes you to somevery funny places that I don't
(20:46):
feel like a lot of other peopleare doing work in.
Courtney (20:49):
So Okay, honestly, after that, I really just want
to go buy some doughnut.
Andrew (20:56):
Everybody at these shows everybody's like, aren't you?
If I had that at my table, Iwould just be hungry all the
time.
I'm like dude, it is a sugarand gluten-free High-fiber
doughnut.
Like you know, we would wreckyour teeth to eat one of these
things, but I guarantee thatit's diet friendly.
You know it's pretty funny.
Courtney (21:22):
Hey, entrepreneurs, I love introducing you to new
creators every episode, but Icould really use your support.
I would love to invite you tojoin our patreon page.
We'll gain access to behind thescenes content.
Add your questions to upcominginterviews and you could even
receive a shout out on our siteand an upcoming episode.
To learn more, go tolightheartadventurescom.
Slash RPG.
(21:43):
And now back to the show.
So okay, I'd love to take alittle bit into more of like a
timeline of sure.
I'm messing around being likeoh that's a funny thing to make,
and then you.
So between that point and thefirst couple of conventions,
like right how much time passed.
Andrew (22:02):
So I probably made the first one.
What are we're in 2023 now?
I probably made the first onesin 2018, right?
That's probably when I made thevery first couple of couple of
donuts, and so this is rightwhen everybody's cosplaying
jester and my daughter wasreally heavily into cosplay at
the time.
So, you know, I made a few andthen I kind of was it had always
(22:26):
been, I think, really up untillike very, very recently I've
been really seriouslyconsidering me pivot.
It's always been like a hobbybusiness, right.
So I would spend a month or twomaking a bunch of them and
trying to figure out and andit's like Anything that's
handmade, like this, that is netnew, it's not like I can go.
I can't, like you know, order abunch of blank boxes from
(22:50):
another vendor and then justlaser engrave them or something
else like that, like their stuff, that I have to basically
figure out how they're gonnawork, and then so it's that I
don't know if you there's awhole thing about like you fail
10 times on something.
So the first ones that I made,like I made them, they looked
pretty good, but then I realizedthat like, oh, like my order
was wrong and how I wasassembling them.
(23:11):
So, like when I sanded, Istarted sanding the finish off
of the magnets that I had puttogether and I had.
There was a lot ofexperimentation the first few
years and just sort of figuringout how to make them.
I would make them better everytime, you know, because the
first few were they were greatand I was happy to sell them and
I'm very proud of what I made.
But every time I make them Iget better at making them right.
(23:34):
I get better at how do Iunderstanding the mistakes I
made in previous rounds of them.
So I would make them in batchesand those batches started to
get bigger and bigger over time.
But you know, I would basicallymake.
You know I'd make 50 at thebeginning of the year and I'd
take them to Kubla Khan.
I would sell, you know 10 or 12and I would put the rest of
(23:55):
them up on an Etsy shop and sellthem through the rest of the
summer of the year and I tend torun out in the fall and then I
would be like, okay, well, nowI'm gonna make another batch.
So that's kind of like theprogress of the doughnuts sort
of.
You know, without getting intothe details of like specifically
why certain things were failing.
But like one of the big reasonsto move to like the urethane
lid was how do I make them in away that improves the quality,
(24:20):
because it makes it a lot easierto paint.
I can do a lot more stuff withthe paint jobs when I separate
the frosting from the actualdoughnut.
But it's also about how can Imake them faster and like more
efficiently.
I was spending 3 to 4 hours perdoughnut because I was hand
carving the frosting on everydoughnut and then I would have
to sand forever because I reallywanted it to have this really
(24:42):
like tight, high gloss kind offinish to it.
My personal goals regardingquality were like coming into
conflict with how many I couldmake.
I've had plenty of game storesand stuff like that approach me
be like hey, if you can bringthis price down at all, we would
love to carry them, either onconsignment or something else
you know.
So it really starting like thisyear really became clear to me
(25:06):
that if I wanted to that a, itwas possible to bring it, move
it beyond just being a hobbybusiness, but also like oh, hey,
that there's.
You know, if I can figure outhow to like drive this.
It could actually be a realbusiness that I could, you know,
make a more significant part ofmy living on, which is kind of
the goal.
Now, you know, it's probably acouple years of kind of really
treating it as like the hobbybusiness.
(25:27):
And then, when one of the thingsI realized at like Kubla Con
and I talked a lot with theorganizers at Kubla Con because
they become friends and they'reeverybody's really interested in
the product is, you know, thedonuts themselves are fairly
expensive.
You know, there I sell them forabout $125 and up, depending on
like the mimic donut clearly isgoing to be more expensive than
(25:50):
a regular donut.
And what I realized there wasthat like I had, like I was
doing a really good job ofsetting kind of the top price at
the booth but I didn't haveanything for people who wanted
something from me.
They were engaged with thebrand, they were engaged with me
personally.
They love the story of thedonuts, but they didn't
necessarily have something thatthey could afford to buy on
(26:12):
their budget, you know, which isa little different than like
the packs experience was likekind of like through me,
honestly, for a little bit of awrench, because there are a lot
of people there.
I brought 75, almost 80 donutswith me.
I sold 65 of them.
Wow, you know, in four days,like, and I sold relative to
(26:32):
that.
Like you know, at Kubla Con myexperience would be like oh, I'm
going to bring 30 donuts.
I might sell a third of those.
If I was having a very goodshow, I might sell a third of
them.
But I was sell a bunch of tshirts, I would sell a bunch of
stickers, I would sell a bunchof the coffee cups.
So I sold plenty of coffee cupsat packs, but fewer relative to
(26:54):
the total number of donuts thatI sold.
Like it was a little.
It was super interesting justto see kind of the different
audiences there and like who waswilling to spend and what they
saw as like a barrier forpricing, right so, and I'm going
to be at Big Bad Con at the endof September and it'll be
interesting to see how that Imean like universally everybody
(27:14):
loves the donuts.
They really into the, they'rereally into it, but it'll be
interesting to see who is ableto buy versus, you know, buy or
not.
So that part of it was reallyinteresting from a learning
perspective at packs.
Courtney (27:28):
Well, I also like.
What's kind of interesting too,is that packs is, you know,
such a huge event and yet themajority of facts is you're
walking around and playing demosof video games.
You're not buying things on thefloor, right, and so you know
like obviously there was, therewas a decent amount of things to
look at on the tabletop floor.
Andrew (27:47):
However, and yet, if you like, when you walk down to the
X so up in the tabletop ExpoHall, phone brain was there
selling dice and Misty MountainGaming was there with a big like
triple sized booth selling abunch of accessories.
Phone brain was also down onthe Expo Hall on the bottom
floor and Misty Mountain wasdown there selling stuff as well
(28:12):
, which I was kind of surprisedat.
I really thought it would bemore segregated and there would
be more kind of like video gamemerch at packs.
But I mean, I know it was to mybenefit.
Anybody who buys dice is superinterested in looking at the
donuts.
Courtney (28:27):
Oh yeah, for sure.
Yeah, it will be interesting tocompare that to like Big Bad
Con.
Andrew (28:34):
Yeah, yeah, exactly, I'm like.
I'm like my expectation for BigBad Con is it's not nearly as
you know.
It's going to be probably 35,maybe it'll be 3500 people total
for two or three days.
Right, it'll be a lot closer.
That's what Kubla Con size is.
It's about 3500 people, ofwhich only a percentage of them
are actually like tabletoppeople.
You see a lot of like.
I get a lot.
It all.
Show the donuts to people.
(28:55):
I spend the whole show likebasically opening and closing
the donuts Again for thoselisteners.
If you don't want to interactwith your potential customers
and you just want to sort of sitthere and do them, don't make
something that confuses people,because you will spend all day,
every day, talking to peopletrying to explain what it is
(29:15):
that you've made.
For whatever reason, I'vechosen to create a niche that is
really narrow and I'm just likedigging even deeper into it.
Courtney (29:26):
I mean honestly, it's true.
Like when I saw the coffee cupsI was like, okay, well, for one
thing I would absolutelyaccidentally grab that all of
the time.
Andrew (29:34):
Yes, yeah, it's really funny.
There are some universalobjections to the donuts.
When people, when they see themand they're like, they look at
the donuts and they go, oh, thatwould make me too hungry, I
would want to eat donuts all thetime.
I don't know that that's a badthing.
What's the other one?
I get a lot of?
Oh, I own more than one set ofdice, so like, they hold eight
(29:59):
dice.
So if you own more than one setof dice, that's a problem.
Or it's something like oh, I'mnot in the tabletop, I don't
like, I don't value my dice thatmuch, or whatever.
I'm always like telling peoplelike these are the donuts are
for they're like it's tooexpensive for what I'm doing.
You know, I'm like which isfine, you don't have an issue
with people being concernedabout the price.
But it is always kind of funnyto tell people like, well, it's
(30:21):
the opposite of a dice jail.
You're rewarding the dice thatare performing well by putting
them in the donut.
It's restoring their energy,it's keeping them well fed and
happy.
It's a lot of magical thinkinggoing on around the dice, you
know.
And then with the coffee cupsit's always like oh, universally
, people are like oh, well, itwould be great if you could like
do this so that you couldactually drink your coffee out
(30:43):
of one side of the cup and useit as a dice tower, which I'm
always like I don't know thatthat's a great idea, and they're
always like, oh well, I wouldtry to drink from it.
I'm like, well, that's not thatbig a deal because it's an empty
coffee cup, right, it doesn'tweigh what a regular coffee cup
is.
It's way more of a problem ifyou start throwing your actual
dice into your hot cup of coffeeat the table.
(31:04):
That's the real problem is thatyou're going to do something
like that.
But yeah, it is pretty funnyLike everybody's got kind of the
same.
There's definitely like acertain, the sales objections
from a sales process perspectiveare always kind of in the same
universe.
It's very funny.
Courtney (31:21):
Oh, that wasn't an objection.
I was like oh, that's hilarious, I know I would do that.
Andrew (31:24):
No, no, I think it's.
I think it's.
I mean that's that's part ofwhat I'm always pitching is like
, I mean really, guys, like thedream is to show up at your
gaming table with a donut and acup of coffee and watch in the
same way that your mind justbroke when I dropped a die in
out of the donut in the coffeecup and it rolled to the side
the way you just went.
What the actual everybody atyour table is going to do that
(31:47):
every time you do this, you know.
So that's, it's, it's superfunny and it's, yeah, it's, it's
very fun.
I also, I mean, I have to sayit's just a very different.
You know, the whole brand sortof sets a whole different mood
from a lot of the otheraccessories you see in the
marketplace, which tend to bebeautiful wooden products with,
(32:09):
you know, dragons laser engravedon stuff, and it's like there's
just a sort of like they wouldlean really heavily into the
sort of fantasy milieu and it'sfun to make something that is so
outside of that.
You know, because there's likethere's definitely a market for
a lot more whimsy in this stuffthan you necessarily see.
(32:30):
You know, you have to pair thatwith, like, trying to achieve
the quality parts of it.
But I think you know there'sdefinitely an opportunity there
for people who are thinkingabout products they want to make
or things you know that shouldgive yourself permission to to
be a little, have a little funwith it doesn't have to be a
quite so grimdark all the time.
Courtney (32:51):
For sure, yeah.
So what point did you start theEtsy store?
Andrew (32:57):
At what point did I start the Etsy store?
I started the Etsy store prettyearly, honestly, but I had
gotten the URL and I was justlooking for like an easy way to
to.
I didn't really want to likepay for a Shopify subscription.
I wasn't sure if I reallywanted to commit to it.
It was sort of a low cost, loweffort way to get an online
(33:18):
presence up and running.
When I first started, it was ina lot of ways it was great like
I was again because it was ahobby business.
You know, if I sold somethingevery few months or once a month
or whatever, like it was no bigdeal and a lot of the tools
they have are great.
The shipping stuff is awesome.
You know, I've shipped stuffall over the world and it's easy
(33:39):
to deal with, like the customsand all the other stuff that you
have to do, because it justgoes through their, their
shipping centers.
When I started doing t shirts,I started using like printify
and print full to do and they.
Etsy has some nice integrationsinto your Etsy shop so you can
just create listings for these,you know, for designs that
you've made, and then they go upand I literally don't have to
(34:01):
do anything other than answer afew emails, you know, here and
there.
So that part of it was great.
That's like literally when Istarted the Etsy thing and I've
been on Etsy pretty much eversince as the deck of donuts my
the URL dot dot dot com isessentially a redirect into the
Etsy shop and what I found waslike, especially over like the
(34:22):
last year, kind of like duringco, but I started putting more
effort and I was putting up moredesigns, I was spending more
sort of more engaged with theEtsy shop.
I had left full time work andstarted working as a freelance,
freelance creative director, soI had a little more control over
my schedule, so I could be alittle more engaged with it.
(34:42):
And so I started to do that.
I started to spend more onadvertising on Etsy and just
trying to experiment with how Ican drive a little more
engagement, and it was nevergreat but I started to get, I
was selling more regularly andthat was going on for like a
year.
And then, like I think at thebeginning of this year, I really
looked at like how much I wasspending on Etsy versus how much
(35:04):
I was actually making.
And it could be just because Ido it for living doesn't
necessarily mean that I'm agreat ad guy.
But you buy essentially searchads on.
You're buying search ads onEtsy and I had done what I could
to kind of optimize that stuff.
You know, I wasn't deeplyengaged with it but what I found
was I was spending quite a loton advertising and I was making
(35:27):
a profit, but so much wasgetting eaten up by fees and
some of the other stuff that Ireally found that, like you know
, whereas I thought that I wasdoing, you know I look at my
sales and I'd be like, oh man, Imade you know 500 bucks this
month or I made you know Xamount of dollars, you know,
over time I'd be like, oh,that's pretty cool, that's
pretty cool.
But then when I looked at thefees I was getting charged on
(35:49):
the other side of it, I was like, wait, like 90% of that money
is getting eaten up with feesand all the rest of it.
And you know and I'll to betotally fair to Etsy I optimized
my shop to like minimize myfees.
No, you know, there's a lot ofstuff that I could probably be
doing to be more efficient onEtsy.
But you know I'm connected.
(36:10):
You know, in a couple ofdiscords with other creators and
I think sort of universally,everyone's looking at Etsy and
it's very easy to see there'sless and less handcrafted stuff
on Etsy.
You know there's less and lesskind of it feels like the
company is moving away from whatI'm trying to sell.
As you know, they want morecommercially produced stuff at
scale that I'm not particularly,then that I wasn't really set
(36:34):
up to sell and you know, thefact of the matter is if I'm
going to pay that, if I'm goingto pay essentially either
through fees to them or like asubscription to Shopify,
probably, you know and justtalking with other vendors and
other people who use it up, I'lllikely be shifting soon to
Shopify.
They have a lot of the similarintegrations that I'm already
(36:55):
taking advantage of and then atleast if I'm spending money to
drive traffic, I'm really justdriving traffic for myself.
I'm not necessarily driving itfor random other competitive
listings.
So that's sort of my story withEtsy.
Again, I don't really have anycomplaints with the service
itself, you know, and, like Isaid, it's been very good in a
(37:17):
lot of ways for me when I wasgetting started, but it
definitely feels like it'spivoted away from what I'm
interested in doing and we'llsee, you know I mean I may end
it back on it.
I've had a couple of placesrecommend that I look at like
fair and try to get onto fair asfair as a like a whole sale or
site for stores, so particularlyfor like the stickers and stuff
(37:38):
that I make.
There's a couple of people havesaid like oh yeah, you would do
well on fair, but fair is likethey're relatively new and
they're scaling somewhat slowly.
So you know you can get ontheir waiting list but you're
just sort of at the mercy ofwhen they decide to sort of open
up for the next chunk ofpotential vendors.
Courtney (37:55):
So that's interesting.
I hadn't heard of them, butthat sounds like cool concept.
Andrew (38:02):
Yeah, it's fair.
F-a-i-r-ecom it's basically forit's super interesting, it's
basically a and they have someTTRPG stuff on there and they
sell a lot of.
Again, like it's great forsmaller vendors who are trying
to sell stickers and otherthings that are going into like
the game store, so like games ofBerkeley, their buyer uses fair
(38:23):
to like identify stickers andpins and other accessories that
they might be able to add totheir store.
And then you as a vendor, youknow you're just basically, as I
understand it, you know you'rebasically accepting an order but
you're selling at wholesaleprices.
You're not necessarily sellingat retail prices.
You know you're not sellingdirect to consumer.
Yeah, so you get to sell more,but your prices have to be a
(38:45):
little lower, a little less of amargin.
Yeah, which is one of thethings like at the beginning of
the summer I really tried to diginto, like the cost of goods,
for what it was actually costingme to make like the donuts and
the coffee cups and some of theother things, and trying to
really look at how I could againmake them more efficiently,
(39:06):
make them with not lessexpensive parts.
But, like you know, how can Ilike tighten up the time in
order to maintain the samequality, which is always kind of
the goal.
Courtney (39:17):
Yeah, I mean, how long does it take you to make you
know a batch of donuts, A batchof donuts.
Andrew (39:23):
So yeah.
So now I make them kind of inbatches.
It's honestly I have to, kindof I was in a mad scramble to
make as many as I could ahead ofover the summer.
So what happened was, you know,had a good event at KublaCon
with the freelance work was alittle quiet.
So I was like, oh I'll, I'lljust start.
I made a spreadsheet and started, you know, pulling together,
(39:45):
like here, all the gamingconventions in the US.
Here's their contactinformation, and I just started
like I made a little like salesheet.
I don't know.
I basically, you know, madeessentially like a one-pager PDF
that just said pictures of thedonuts and the description of
what I was selling and kind ofjust generally like, hey, here's
my vibe, and was just kind ofboth applying, but then also
(40:07):
just like when I could findcontact information, I would
just email people and be like,hey, is this something that
would would be in the right vein?
You know, trying to get a lotof the conventions were already
sort of set in terms of theirvendors and stuff like that.
So the Pax opportunity came fromone of those emails that I sent
in, not expecting to get intoPax.
I certainly didn't get it.
(40:27):
Expect to get in 2023.
But then they said, yeah, canyou do it?
And that was in late May, earlyJune, and so then it was like a
mad scramble for me to figureout like, okay, well, I know I
can't make enough donuts the wayI had been making them, so it
was like a mad scramble tofigure out how to like come up
with essentially a new way tomake them.
(40:49):
So I'm like hand injectingurethane and all this other
crazy stuff, so that was likefiguring out a whole new process
.
So it wasn't terribly efficient.
The net of it is to say,whereas before it probably took
me three to four hours to fullyfinish a donut individually, now
I think I can get it down toabout an hour of total work.
So, which is great, and it'snot just that I can get it down
(41:12):
an hour, but I also feel likethe quality and the variety that
I can make is better.
Right, a lot of the stuff that Iwas doing before that was
taking up so much time was likehaving to mask all these little
bits and then paint it, and then, if I painted it and the paint
job wasn't great, you had tolike sand it all off and start
from scratch again.
And now I can be like I canpaint something, and if it turns
(41:33):
out awesome, I can be like, oh,I'm gonna make more of those.
And if it turns out horrible, Ican be like, okay, well, I'm
gonna put that in the pile ofstuff to be thought about some
more before I try that paint jobagain.
No, yeah, yeah.
So there's a lot of likeexperimentation and everything
in it.
But yeah, that's the goal.
It was kind of the same thingwith the coffee cups I started
(41:53):
when I first started making thecoffee cups in the first.
No, I probably made a couplehundred of the coffee cups.
Now at this point, the first 70I was printing were just 3D
printed.
So I'd gotten like a littleEnder 3 and I figured out how to
get it to print stuff, but ittook nine hours to do.
Every little tower that wentinside took nine hours to make,
and so I was printing as fast asI could.
(42:15):
But I was like, oh, I gottamake a, I gotta figure out how
to do this faster.
So I ended up making a mold ofthat 3D print and then just
casting it with.
I was already doing injectionmolding for, you know, homemade
injection molding for thedoughnuts.
So I was like, oh well, I bet Icould do the same thing for
this.
And so then I was able once Ifigured that out, I was able to
kind of crank out a bunch ofthem much more quickly than I
(42:37):
had been before, you know.
So yeah, technology, technology, it's amazing, hey, everybody.
You know like if you're gonnawork with your thing where your
rubber gloves, where yourrespirator get good ventilation,
probably don't do it in thebasement of your house Like I've
been doing it.
So yeah, yeah.
Courtney (42:58):
I was about to say don't poison yourself.
Andrew (42:59):
Yeah don't poison yourself.
Read the health and safetyliterature.
Where your dust masks whileyou're sanding.
You want to be a long timewhere your safety glasses.
I managed to just absolutely.
I had a chop saw, throw a pieceof wood into my face and chop
bang up the bridge of my nosewhile I was working on stuff
Because I was doing something alittle sketchy and I won't do
(43:21):
that again.
So, yeah, that is.
You have it in your list ofquestions.
Lessons learned along the way.
Where your safety gear folks.
Where that eye protectionthat's the thing.
Courtney (43:32):
Yeah, that's the lesson that you don't want to
have learned.
Yeah, that's the lesson thatyou don't want to have learned.
Andrew (43:37):
Yeah, don't go to the emergency room at 10 o'clock on
a Thursday night with a big cutacross the bridge of your nose
because you've been trying tocut something that you're not
supposed to.
Power tools are fun.
Courtney (43:48):
I feel like I was gonna tell a story to relate,
that wasn't me, it was my mom,but I realized it's actually bad
if any of you are squeamish, sowe'll hold that for after the
recording.
Andrew (43:58):
Hold that for after the recording That'll be for the
after show.
Everybody, we can talk shopaccidents, yeah yeah, you know,
I do actually really enjoymaking them, even though they're
kind of they're transitioningfrom a fully art thing to more
of a production thing.
But there are like it's stillreally interesting and really
(44:21):
challenging to make that sort ofthing happen.
It's fun.
Courtney (44:25):
Yeah, you mentioned earlier that you are thinking
about doing this more full timethan you have been.
Andrew (44:31):
Yeah, so advertising is a very odd business but it is
somewhat.
One of the things that's trueabout it is I've loved doing it,
but I've been doing it for 25years.
I also love doing woodworkingand doing kind of this stuff and
I really enjoy meeting peopleat the cons.
I think one of the thingsthat's so fun about the donuts
(44:51):
is just the reaction people haveand just like how much joy that
you see in people's faces whenyou know, by and large, when
they see the donuts like, like Isaid I've said earlier, you
know they the reaction is almostuniversally like really
positive.
So it's like really fun to seethat it's a.
It's a great sort of like,frankly it's a great ego boost
for me, but it's also like it'sjust really fun to sort of put
(45:14):
that sort of energy out in theworld.
I think probably in 2024, I'mgoing to try to go to all of the
PAX events, like to go to PAXEast, go to unplugged and go to
PAX West and then also try tohit some of the other.
I'm going to try and hit itlike a more regular schedule of
cons as well.
(45:35):
As you know, like I may try todo a Kickstarter or something
like that.
Just but generally like if Ican see if I can get enough
activity.
Both my children are veryinterested in sort of gaming and
game design.
My daughter is finishing anillustration degree and wants to
get in sort of character designand that sort of thing.
My son is very interested insort of like game mechanics and
game design that way.
(45:55):
So it's also a way for me toideally be away, for me to.
You know, probably we're notgoing to be a full time gig, but
it might be go from somethingthat's being sort of like five
or 10% of my time to more like50% of my time.
So if I can do that and sustainthat with the other work that I
do, then it'd be a differentsort of living that I'm doing
(46:18):
now, but it would be, I think,equally satisfying.
You know it's.
It's very exciting for me tothink about building a business
of my own, which is notsomething so in sort of the
advertising marketing field.
What I've been in is, you know,you sort of drop into somebody
else's business and you sort ofhelp them solve this immediate
need to sell a product and sella story or whatever that is, and
(46:42):
so you don't necessarily have,and one of the things that I
like about business is sort ofunderstanding the strategy
behind driving those things.
And so the idea of being ableto kind of engage at that level
with something that is my own isvery, very interesting.
And you know, I mean hell, I'lldo it for a year and if it
(47:02):
completely falls apart I'll dosomething else.
You know that's there's no, youmight as well go for it, right?
You know life's, life's prettyshort.
You know, if you have a goodidea and I will say like I'm
saying that, but I'm saying thathaving, you know, five years of
generally positive reaction tothe product that I'm interested
(47:24):
in selling, so I'm not like, I'mjust like I did one event.
Now I'm like, yeah, but I meanlike I've had a lot of it.
I've had a lot of good personalexperiences and I've made a lot
of good connections, so that Ifeel like I've been steadily
progressing towards this.
And now Pax is sort of like abig leap forward.
So now it's like, okay, well,how do I capitalize on that big
leap forward?
Courtney (47:45):
Yeah, I feel like now I want to bring you back and
like a year and be like okay,yeah please do, please do, and
I'll be homeless and living outof a van.
Andrew (47:55):
Yeah, I'm hawking wooden donuts in the back.
Yeah, no, it's who knows.
Yes, I would love to be back ina year.
Hopefully it'll be a massivesuccess.
And yeah, but yeah.
But, honestly, doing thispodcast is part of me trying to
sit here and go like, okay, howdo I make the connections to be
able to like leverage all thisstuff and, you know, get my name
(48:17):
out there and let people knowthat.
I think that's one of the things.
Again, it's sort of cobblershoes, the cobbler shoes
phenomenon, and I haven't reallyspent that much time trying to
do like social media or any sortof real brand building beyond
just going to these events andkind of showing the product off.
So the next level of this isgetting those ducks in a row and
actually doing that sort ofwork, which, again, I know how
(48:40):
to do for other people but havenever had to do it for myself,
and so that's like a reallyinteresting, sort of like mental
pivot that I have to make tosort of do that in a real way
and sort of like, you know,super interesting, little
challenging, but that's, it'sall good, you know it's.
I'm again, like you know, justhaving that experience in
(49:01):
advertising, like I have a lotof.
I have a very robust skill setthat is very well suited for a
lot of what I'm trying to do.
It's definitely a lighter liftthan somebody who's like trying
to come up with an amazing ideabut doesn't actually have that
backstop of skills to capitalizeon.
Courtney (49:19):
Yeah, honestly, I feel like most people.
When I ask the question I'mabout to ask you, I'm like
what's been the most challengingpart?
They're like marketing.
Andrew (49:28):
It is, it is, it always is.
It's hard.
What has been the mostchallenging in the past is like
figuring out those efficienciesso that I can, like, actually
scale the product.
So that has been the problemand I feel like I've cracked
that Right.
I've finally gotten to a placewhere I'm like okay, I will
continue to improve it, but Ican see the path forward to how
(49:50):
the product continues to getbetter and I can make more of
them and I can have.
You know, whereas before Ididn't know how to like, how
would I tell somebody else howyou're going to carve frosting
and sand it to a level that Iwas going to be happy with?
It's just not, there was no wayto do that.
But now I'm in a place where,like, oh, I figured out this and
a jig on this tool andeverything.
It's like, oh, I can have myson like sand donuts all day
(50:11):
long and they're going to begreat, you know, I know that
they'll be, that he'll do a goodjob and it won't be as reliant
on judgment.
You know it can be more of aprocess moving forward.
For me it's the big challenge islike okay, how do I, you know,
do the advertising?
How do I do the marketing?
(50:33):
How do I fund it?
Like, how do I raise the moneyto be able to?
You know, marketing isexpensive.
Getting your name out isexpensive, so, like, how do I
raise the money to do that in away that is going to support the
business and not just be?
You know, there's a joke withinthe ad world where somebody
(50:54):
asks somebody like a businessowner is told by his ass by
someone about his advertisingbudget and he says, well,
basically, I know 50% of myadvertising is wasted, I just
don't know which 50%.
It is Right and that's verytrue.
You know, in the tools, youknow how you reach the
appropriate audience is verydifficult and a lot of the
(51:15):
platforms that people had beenleveraging, like Twitter and
other sort of social mediaplatforms some of them like
Twitter, is collapsing in a lotof ways.
Like, I was very, both in mypersonal life and in for Dodeca
Donuts.
I was very active on Twitterand after some of the stuff that
Mr Musk did, I decided to.
(51:35):
I'm just done with it.
So I've moved over to likethreads and Instagram and all
this stuff.
But those are totally differentmodalities, totally different
sort of ways of interacting withpeople.
And even just Facebook toInstagram is different sort of
interactions than you see fromlike, you know, threads or
Twitter to Instagram, right,they're just totally different
(51:57):
ways.
There are different sorts ofcontent are needed in different
places.
Or TikTok you know I've donesome stuff with TikTok.
It's super fun, but it's alsolike I'm not.
I'm just I would rather bemaking the donuts than spending,
you know, two days working on aTikTok.
You know floss video involvingthe donuts, like it's just not
going to happen.
(52:17):
So I have to.
It's that combination offactors of like how do you find
this sort of content that'sgoing to work for you?
And then, of course, there'sjust like all the paid stuff,
like you know, search,advertising and optimizing for
search and everything that allhas to be done.
So it has to be done and redone.
So, yeah, it's, it's no fun,it's not.
(52:38):
I mean I shouldn't say it's nofun, it can be, you just have to
approach it with the right sortof frame in your head.
Courtney (52:45):
It's a lot and there's so many platforms.
Andrew (52:47):
It's a lot, it's a lot of stuff.
Yeah, I mean, you know, yeah,you know.
So it's like so.
So, frankly, I look at likegoing to events like packs and
you know like, if I ever end upat GenCon like there are
opportunities to sell theproduct, but as much as anything
there are also opportunitiesjust get the name of the product
out.
And if all I had done was covermy booth fee at packs, packs
would have been a success justby virtue of getting in front of
(53:09):
so many people that are exactlymy target market, versus, you
know, the geek craft expo right.
That if I had spent you know abig chunk of money to go to an
event like that and then nobodyhad looked, even nobody even
understood what TTRPGs were,much less that there is an
accessory market for TTRPGs,would have been a huge
(53:32):
disappointment, you know.
So, like that, like findingyour audience thing is
interesting.
Courtney (53:39):
So I feel like we've touched on this, maybe a little
bit already, but what would yousay has been just the best part
of your journey up till now 100%is the people's reaction to the
product right?
Andrew (53:51):
It's just.
I mean, really I'm a prettyhappy person and it's just.
It brings me a lot of personaljoy to see people smile and
laugh about the product and tosee just kind of like even when
they're making me crazy, likeseeing little kids who are just
freaking obsessed with thedonuts and they're like, oh my
gosh, you know, like peoplepopping them open and closing
(54:13):
them and just sort of like haveyou know, having this really fun
experience interacting withthem.
And then people who bought themNow that I've been selling them
at KublaCon year over year,like people come back to those
conventions every year and theycome back and they tell me how
much they have, how much funthey have with the donut every
time they sit down to play theirgames.
They're like this thing justmakes me laugh every time I look
at it.
So that part of it is justamazing.
(54:34):
Yeah, that's hands down thebest part about it.
Courtney (54:38):
Okay, well, I know we didn't even get to talk about
your podcast at all.
Andrew (54:42):
Hey everybody, listen to the dad vantage.
Courtney (54:47):
So if you want to take a minute and talk about, you
know, like podcasts or any otherkind of cool upcoming projects
and stuff you've got.
Andrew (54:53):
Yeah, yeah.
So really, like you know, forme the coolest projects I'm
working on right now are dodecadonuts, you know, and but I also
, with another friend of mine,have a separate project called
the dad vantage, which is twoold school dads embrace new
school play.
And really, michael, my cohost,and I we've worked together for
(55:15):
20 years.
We're just extremely goodfriends.
We started playing.
I never realized that he was agamer and he didn't realize I
was a gamer until like about thetime I started doing the donuts
and I mentioned that was like,oh yeah, I'm going to be at this
game convention.
He's like wait, you game, likeit just turned into this whole
thing.
So we basically sit down andtalk about being a parent, being
(55:40):
a father and and playing gameswith your kids.
We talk a lot about like how tointroduce kids to the kids to
the game, how to introduce newplayers.
You know we run through likerules, basics, but we also do a
lot of stuff like we come upwith tropes of different things.
We'll be like, okay, we're bothgoing to build an anti hero and
what does that look like?
And then we will sort ofcompare and contrast what we've
(56:00):
built.
We started doing some live playepisodes more recently where my
son has been the DM for acouple of them or vice versa.
Now we're switching it up wheremy son is now who's?
He's 20 now, so he's 21.
So he's he's playing with us aswe play through that.
But it's really it's veryinteresting to sort of be able
to play with your kids for thislong and and watch how they
(56:21):
develop, as I mean, he's a goodplayer and he's a really good
player to develop, as I mean,he's an amazing DM.
So it's it's super fun to kindof go through that process.
But you can find it on all the,on all the regular places the
dad vantage and it's, yeah,super fun.
And then you know, pleasefollow me on tiktok, on the
Graham and Facebook and whatnot.
(56:43):
I am very seriously consideringdoing a Kickstarter.
At the beginning of the year.
They have a make 100 event, soI may be trying to do a little
bit of a small Kickstarter atthe beginning of the year just
to sort of feel out what thatplatform is like.
And so, if people areinterested in it, hopefully I'll
be there sometime soon.
But if you follow me onInstagram or any of those places
(57:04):
, I'll be announcing it whenever.
Whenever it does happen, yeah,and then otherwise, you know, go
to.
I'm at wwwDodecaDonutscom.
Right now it goes to the Etsystore, but soon it will go to
some somewhere else.
And, yeah, just keep track ofit.
And as soon as I have moredonuts to sell, I will be
putting them up on the sidetrying to get how, hopefully, I
(57:26):
can take advantage of thisholiday season and this buzz
I've got going on.
Courtney (57:30):
So I will have a link on the show notes.
Andrew (57:34):
Sweet.
Courtney (57:35):
Well, thank you so much for coming on today and
just talking about donuts for anhour.
Andrew (57:41):
Yeah, yeah, no well, thanks very much for inviting me
.
This has been super fun.
I love talking about this stuff.
I'm a D&D nerd and I'm abusiness nerd too, so it's all
like it's like.
This is an amazing intersectionbeing able to sort of talk
about how those things worktogether.
It's great.
Courtney (57:57):
Yeah Well, at this point we are going to wrap up
the interview portion, but afterI hang up I am going to start
recording again and we're goingto do a fun little quick
question blitz for patrons.
So I will be asking some extraquestions.
Some are gaming related, someare not, but that'll be over in
Patreon exclusive stuff.
(58:19):
So if you are interested inlistening to that, you can find
role play grow on Patreon.
Andrew (58:24):
Do it, do it, yeah.
Courtney (58:28):
He said so I might even get featured on an upcoming
(58:56):
episode.
See you next time on role playgrow.
Hello and welcome to Role Play Grow, the podcast for
tabletop entrepreneurs, creatorsand fans.
In this show we dig intoprocesses, challenges, tips and
really look at how to grow abusiness in the tabletop
role-play gaming space.
Sit back and join in as welearn from the creators behind
your favorite brands about whothey are and how they are
turning their passion for gaminginto a career.
(00:29):
I'm at today's guest.
A few weeks ago at PAX West, Iwas wondering the TTRPG section
of the convention when Brentonwaved me over to look at the
coolest dice boxes that wereshaped like donuts.
There were dice towers shapedlike coffee mugs and I was
absolutely enthralled.
I'm at Andrew, the owner andcreator behind the shop DoDeka
(00:50):
Donuts, and I immediately went.
I have to talk to you on mypodcast.
Here's my business card and weget and now he's here.
I am really excited to sharethis conversation with you all
today, as he is a delightfulperson who creates the best dice
boxes to add a bit of whimsy toyour table.
We dig into how the shop cameto be, how he is going about to
(01:12):
a bunch of conventions andactually has plans to do a bit
of a convention circuit over thenext year, and it's just really
interesting look at how tostart and grow a business that
is creating some really funcrafts.
Before we get into theinterview, I do want to remind
y'all that the game that I amproject, managing Burnaway, is
live on Kickstarter right now,through the end of October.
(01:35):
In this game, you play asBurnaways, a group of
mercenaries hired to confrontEmbergeists, which are spirits
that are so upset aboutsomething that their ectoplasm
combusts.
You either have to exercisethem or playgate them, which
involves finding clues in theburning building you're
exploring to figure out who theywere, why are they upset, and
convince them to leave.
(01:55):
It's a fun game, meant forshort campaigns, that is live on
Kickstarter.
If you are interested inkeeping up with the game, you
can look for Burnaway onKickstarter and I'll also have a
link to the page and the shownotes.
Andrew (03:04):
It's going just great.
It is fantastic.
I'm really excited to be here.
Courtney (03:09):
I'm excited to get the chance to talk to you.
I know that it was probablyDodecad onuts hectic when just
some random person is like, ohhi, I want to interview you in
the middle of an event.
Andrew (03:20):
Yes, yeah, pax West where we met was, yeah, it was
like it's a little overwhelming.
There was a lot of people there, by far the biggest convention
that I've ever attended as avendor, and it was, yeah, it was
fun.
Courtney (03:35):
Yeah, if it wasn't the biggest, it was probably like
the second biggest that I'veever attended.
I'm honestly really curious toknow what the actual numbers
were.
Andrew (03:49):
I remember talking to the rep and I think they said
their expected attendance waslike in the 70 to 80,000 range
and the tabletop area.
They typically say they expectlike 12 to 15,000 people there.
I'm pretty sure I talked tolike 4 or 5,000 people over like
four days Just myselfindividually, that's not
counting anybody else who was atthe booth with me.
(04:09):
Good, Lord.
Yeah, insane.
Courtney (04:13):
That is god.
No wonder Like that's veryoverwhelming.
Andrew (04:17):
Yeah, yeah, it's pretty intense.
By the fourth day my patternwas a lot less, was a lot less
enthusiastic than it was thefirst couple of days.
Courtney (04:30):
I'm not man.
I was exhausted by the end ofday two.
It was just like, hmm, okay,and I wasn't trying to tell
things, I was just walkingaround talking to people.
Man.
Okay, well, to kick things offa little bit, can you just tell
us a bit about who you are andhow you got into gaming?
Andrew (04:46):
Sure, so my name is as we said, my name is Andrew Davis
.
I am a long time creativedirector and in advertising, but
you know, a long time justgeneral creator, like I have
always made stuff and beenpretty creative in my life.
My father was an artist, mybrother and I both super, super
creative our whole lives, kindof like.
(05:06):
I got into gaming, I think theway I'm on the older side, I'm
like Gen X, so I got into theway the gaming way a lot of my
fellow Gen Xers got into it,which is playing stuff like Risk
and Monopoly and cards withyour grandparents and trivial
pursuits and a fellow and allthe rest of it.
Yeah, that's kind of how I gotstarted with just broadly in
(05:27):
gaming and just always enjoyedplaying games and stuff like
that.
It's always fun stuff to doaround the house, around the
family.
Courtney (05:36):
Yeah, what do you play these days?
Andrew (05:39):
What do I play these days?
Good God, I have a huge stackof I mean, I have just the
classic stack of boxes thatboard gamers have of all these
different sorts of games.
Frankly, I buy sometimes I buygames just because I love the
artwork on them.
I just at PAX, I picked up onBerricks, nexus, Inferno by this
(06:00):
company, archon, which isapparently the way that I
haven't had a chance to play ityet.
You play one of six cults who'strying to raise your dark lord
and some sort of apocalypticthing.
The graphics were amazing andjust the premise of it made me
laugh.
So I was like, okay, well, Ikind of have to pick that up.
But you know, I play a lot ofdifferent games.
I play a lot of role playinggames.
(06:21):
I started when I was like 12 or13,.
A couple came over to for likea dinner party with my parents
and they brought the red box setfor D&D and they were going to.
We were going to play D&D aslike a which no one had played
before.
No one understood what it was,but we were all going to play it
as a like a dinner after dinnerkind of activity and my parents
(06:44):
this other couple completelybounced off of it, like they
were just like what are welooking at?
And my brother and I were likeoh, this is kind of interesting.
And I was like obsessed.
So you know, I started.
I was in the high school.
My high school's D&D clubplayed a ton of like Gamma World
and all the old school stuff.
You know I have all the.
(07:04):
I still have all my original AD&D books from back in the day.
So yeah, I mean I just kind ofreally fell in love with TTRPGs.
Then I stopped playing, alittle bit like college kind of
mid 80s or late 80s I should say.
I stopped playing for a longtime Partly I just kind of just
didn't have a group of friendswho were as into it as I was.
(07:24):
But picked it back up againwhen my kids were younger and
started playing with them andhave been playing with really my
kids and other extended friendsand family like that for a long
time since.
Courtney (07:38):
Yeah, I mean that's really fun, that like you're
even if they weren't necessarilyentered at the beginning like
you kind of got your start withlike trying with your family and
now it's like kind of come fullcircle and you're playing with
your kids.
Andrew (07:49):
Yeah, for sure.
And you know, like I think itwas just one of those things
where you know, especially inthat moment in time, like the
idea of a role-playing game,nobody really knew how to play
it.
Well, I mean, one of the thingsI think the things that's been
like just a tremendous boon withlike fifth edition, is All the
live streamers and being able tosee you show like critical role
(08:09):
or dimension 20 or just otherpeople playing the game, and
just like if you've never playedit before, to see somebody
playing it.
So you go like, oh, I couldplay it like that or I could
play it like that, like I mean Iserious was when I was a kid.
I was a serious murder hobo,just like all my friends.
It was just all about how muchloot you could get and these
battles.
(08:29):
But it wasn't.
It was like zero role-playing.
It was just purely like thisweird tactical thing of your
career going and creating a mapand All those sorts of things.
Now that I'm older, like sortof exploring the other parts of
the game is like super fun, buta lot more it's differently
entertaining.
Courtney (08:48):
Yeah, like.
So my husband and I justrecently Made a new group of
friends because we've only beenin Seattle for like a year and a
half, and so we just met someneighbors recently and a lot of
them are, like, interested inD&D.
But I've never played it before,and so we're introducing them
and like it's so funny how it'slike okay.
Well, I guess your expectationsare that we're gonna do a
(09:10):
dungeon crawl.
That's fine, we'll start withthat and we're doing that.
They're starting to like get afeel for things is going well
and then like I'm like okay, butalso, um, I really want you
guys to watch dimension 20, justtwo hours at a time.
Andrew (09:22):
Okay, by the way, just so you know, I want you to be
fully.
You don't have to do voices.
But if you want to do voices,that's okay.
Courtney (09:31):
Yeah, for sure it's just like okay, it's shorter
than critical roll.
You know it's comedians, likeit'll be, you'll have a good
time.
We don't expect you to do thislevel At all.
Yeah, I would be amazed if youdid, but no, but just
Role-playing, it's fun.
Andrew (09:47):
Well, it's very funny because so when I got back into
playing D&D, I was DMing for myson, who at the time was like a
freshman in high school, so IDMed For him.
And then I ended up DMingseparately for my daughter and a
group of her friends.
So it was my son and a group ofhis friends and then my
daughter and a group of herfriends and I was DMing two
(10:08):
separate campaigns, kind of inparallel.
And then and I was also gettingbut I was like, but hey, I
wanted, I want to play.
So I started going to likeGames at Berkeley, which is my
friendly local game store andthis, and I basically was going
there at first as a player.
Then I started DMing for themas well, which is like because
(10:28):
I'm a dumb ass.
And Then I saw that I was likeokay, wait, this is too much.
I'm like I have a full-time job.
I'm like trying to run threecampaigns and do this fairly
intense job.
At the time I was like I got abail on something.
So I I Backed out of a couplethings.
My son's campaign wrapped up.
He wanted to run stuff.
So I was like you run it foryour friends, great.
(10:49):
So I pulled way back and then Istarted to miss it again.
So I went back to the, to thegames of Berkeley, and I started
playing with a group of peoplewho are all, like, frankly, like
half my age, you know they'rethey're not much older than my
daughter is, but they're nowlike a tremendous group of
really really good friends.
We played together.
We had been playing for likealmost a year before COVID hit
(11:12):
and then we moved online and sonow we like meet for dinner.
We have, like you know, it'sit's just really been a Real
blessing in a lot of ways interms of being able to meet
people that I would not haveotherwise met at all and,
frankly, formed some reallypretty great relationships over.
It's been, you know, just, Ithink that's one of the things
(11:33):
that's really fun about gameslike this is they do give you
this opportunity just to spendtime with people and Kind of be
goofy, which is great.
Courtney (11:44):
You know, it's super fun, yeah so Okay, you got into
playing it, into DMing a lot.
Andrew (11:55):
Yes, into DMing a lot.
Courtney (11:57):
And then, at some point, dodeca doughnut started.
Let's establish what is dodecadoughnut.
Andrew (12:04):
Right.
So what is?
A dodeca doughnut, as yourlisteners might guess, dodeca
being 12-sided and a doughnut.
It's not actually a 12-sidededible doughnut.
What it is is and I'm not sureI can fully explain the thought
process, but it is a.
It is a wooden doughnut thathas eight pockets on the inside
(12:24):
to hold your dice and it's heldtogether by magnets.
It's basically a carved woodendoughnut that is painted to look
as much like a real doughnut asI can possibly make it, but it
splits apart to hold your dice.
It sort of the Genesis of it.
As an idea came about as we weretalking about critical role.
The sort of second arc ofcritical role had started and
(12:46):
Jester was right and they wereLaura Bailey was just
establishing that Jester wasobsessed with pastries at about
the same time that I'd gottenI've always had a woodshop and
so I had gotten a small CNCmachine and I was trying to
figure out a project that mightwork for something that scale.
And and I was just sittingaround talking with my kids and
(13:07):
we were talking and trying tosort of figure out what I could
make and it just popped into myhead that like, oh, I bet I
could make a dice doughnut.
That would be really funny.
You know, that would just bekind of a silly thing to make.
And then I thought of the nameand I was like, oh, dodeca
doughnuts is just a really goodname for something.
And I was like, well, you know,crap, I got it.
Now I have to make the thing.
(13:28):
So I went off and just Againbecause my backgrounds and
marketing and stuff I just wentahead and registered the URL to
have it.
And then I started trying tofigure out how to how to make
this thing.
And I made like the first.
You know, because when you'rejust sort of messing around
trying to prototype stuff, ittook me a little while but I
made like probably Half a dozenof them and painted them all
(13:51):
different and was just trying toexperiment, figure out how I
could, what would sprinkles bemade of, and it was just kind of
a fun, kind of creative project.
And then they looked reallygood and I went out and bought
like a dozen donuts, like actualdonuts, and then just put the
real doughnuts next to the thefake ones and took some pictures
and they looked really reallygood.
I was like, oh man, I wonder ifI could sell these.
(14:12):
And so I started trying to Sortof figure out how I could see
what the reaction might be andlike where the audience was.
You know, I mean, that's one ofthose things where I think it's
important with stuff,particularly stuff like this.
And this was, you know, to befair, this is like five years
ago.
This is five or six years agothat I started doing that, when
I made the first one.
So I think I signed up for likea geek craft expo which was like
(14:36):
a cheap, it was veryinexpensive table it's like a
hundred bucks for a table for aweekend and In Fort Mason Center
in San Francisco, didn't sell athing, didn't sell any donuts,
and made like a really kind of avery sort of quick and dirty
display for him, had a bannerput together, you know, just
enough to look kind ofprofessional, some cards, but I
(14:57):
was at the event and Nobody atthe event, everybody.
It was geek craft, but it waslike it's more like anime and
like meme stuff.
It was not gaming focused atall, and so I was kind of like,
oh well, okay, well, clearly myaudience is not here, it's not
as broadly nerdy as I thought itmight be.
Nearby where, where I live,kubla Khan happens every year
(15:20):
and it's one of the larger sortof West Coast board game
conventions.
I Called them and they had Icould get like half a table.
They had like guest artistspots for the weekend so you
could get like half a table fora couple hundred bucks.
So I was like, okay, sure I'll,you know.
So I made, I made more, youknow.
So this time, instead of havingjust like six or eight, I
showed up with, you know, I hada couple, I maybe had two dozen
(15:42):
doughnuts and it was one ofthose things where I, you know,
I had my little half a table.
I was sharing it with a womannamed Teresa, who was now
somebody that I see anotherconvention.
They were always like, oh, mygod, you know, but you know,
shared a table with her and thenthe same sort of thing.
Like you know they're, they're afunny product to show, because
this is I love is the fact thatthey are very confusing to see,
(16:06):
right, you know, like I cannottell you how many people walk by
and they're like are youselling real?
Like they show up and they'relike, oh, doughnuts, there's
like somebody selling actual,like edible doughnuts at a
convention, not in the food hall, just as part of the vendor
table.
It's like so they're alreadylike kind of perplexed.
And then when you show them adoughnut, you're holding it in
your hand and from like a fewfeet away they look like a real
(16:28):
doughnut.
They're like why is this guyhandling it?
Food product?
And then I split it open andit's got dice inside and you can
just see people's brains breaka little bit and they like
Double-take.
I get all these people who arejust like you know they look
super confused and perplexed bythe whole thing.
But they're very well made.
I spend a lot of time makingsure that they are.
(16:50):
It's funny to me to makesomething to the very best of my
ability that is so ridiculous.
So that like combination ofstuff.
But it's also that that makesthem like way more interesting
in a lot of ways than justmaking something that I had like
Injection molded in plastic orsomething like that.
Yeah, so was that kula con, andthen slowly just grew my
(17:10):
presence at kula con had itagain, had the like really good
reaction to the first set ofdoughnuts at kula con and people
were just like these areamazing.
And so every year when I goback to kula con, which has been
the big convention I've alwaysdone For me.
Every year I've gone back.
You know we they shut down forCOVID, but I've been back.
You know, ever since then I'vecome back every year with
(17:30):
growing my presence.
So it started with just thedoughnuts and then it was like
doughnuts and some stickers anda few t-shirts and then, most
recently, I Showed up and I cameup with a coffee cup dice tower
which essentially is like adice tower, that, so you can
have coffee and doughnuts, it'sall, it's all bits.
All I do is bits.
So it's coffee and doughnuts.
(17:50):
So you drop that, you have yourdoughnut that holds the dice
and then you can drop your diceinto the top of the cup and
there's a little 3d printedinsert that bounces them out and
they come, the dice come out ofthe hole on the side.
It's just all pastry food, it'sjust food puns, it's food D&D
puns, which you know they'resurprisingly a lot that if you
(18:12):
think about it, you can makework.
So I know that was a little bitof a rambling discourse on what
is a dodeca doughnut?
I guess.
No, that was perfect.
Courtney (18:26):
But since we are audio only, I would love if you could
just paint a picture of likewhat I mean?
Yes, they look like doughnuts,but just yes paint a word
picture.
Andrew (18:35):
So imagine if in your mind the platonic ideal of Homer
Simpson's doughnut right, soyou have this lovely sort of
light colored bottom and thenpink, the pink frosting on top
with the sprinkles.
Then take that platonic ideaand split it.
(18:55):
Imagine someone has just slicedit horizontally so that it
comes apart.
The top and the bottom of itcome apart.
When you open it up there arepockets.
There are eight pockets insideand two pairs of magnets that
hold those two pieces together.
And so basically, functionally,what they are is I Make them
out of a variety of woods, butessentially I have a CNC router
(19:18):
that's carving the pockets.
I Round over the edges of thatso that it's nice and it looks
like a torus, looks like a bagel, essentially.
And then most recently, I'vechanged how I've made them.
I started created like aurethane mold, and so I the
frosting is cast in urethane soI can paint it separate from the
doughnut, like all thesprinkles are just their glass
(19:41):
bugle beads, you know.
And then I just basically Glue,pour, paint, all that stuff
together and then it all comestogether at the end.
And then when I sell them Isell them with a pink felt bag,
so kind of like the pink boxesyou get doughnuts in from the
grocery store.
Yeah, so like the classic HomerSimpson might be, the bottom of
it might be like made out ofmaple or cherry.
(20:03):
You know, if you want more of achocolate doughnut, then I
would make the bottom out oflike walnut.
Like the tops I've painted allkinds of different ways and then
, like the last couple of showshave been starting to make mimic
doughnuts, where I actually goand take like a the Homer
Simpson one, and I'll like uselike a two-part epoxy Clay and
essentially mold, like thetongue and a bunch of teeth and
(20:25):
a bunch of other eyeballs andbunch of other stuff, and then
I'll paint all that and and addthose because I just again, this
is all purely what amuses me asa gamer and as a TTRPG person
like the idea of just liketrying to like wedge together
these two things, the food andthe gaming stuff.
Just it just takes you to somevery funny places that I don't
(20:46):
feel like a lot of other peopleare doing work in.
Courtney (20:49):
So Okay, honestly, after that, I really just want
to go buy some doughnut.
Andrew (20:56):
Everybody at these shows everybody's like, aren't you?
If I had that at my table, Iwould just be hungry all the
time.
I'm like dude, it is a sugarand gluten-free High-fiber
doughnut.
Like you know, we would wreckyour teeth to eat one of these
things, but I guarantee thatit's diet friendly.
You know it's pretty funny.
Courtney (21:22):
Hey, entrepreneurs, I love introducing you to new
creators every episode, but Icould really use your support.
I would love to invite you tojoin our patreon page.
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Slash RPG.
(21:43):
And now back to the show.
So okay, I'd love to take alittle bit into more of like a
timeline of sure.
I'm messing around being likeoh that's a funny thing to make,
and then you.
So between that point and thefirst couple of conventions,
like right how much time passed.
Andrew (22:02):
So I probably made the first one.
What are we're in 2023 now?
I probably made the first onesin 2018, right?
That's probably when I made thevery first couple of couple of
donuts, and so this is rightwhen everybody's cosplaying
jester and my daughter wasreally heavily into cosplay at
the time.
So, you know, I made a few andthen I kind of was it had always
(22:26):
been, I think, really up untillike very, very recently I've
been really seriouslyconsidering me pivot.
It's always been like a hobbybusiness, right.
So I would spend a month or twomaking a bunch of them and
trying to figure out and andit's like Anything that's
handmade, like this, that is netnew, it's not like I can go.
I can't, like you know, order abunch of blank boxes from
(22:50):
another vendor and then justlaser engrave them or something
else like that, like their stuff, that I have to basically
figure out how they're gonnawork, and then so it's that I
don't know if you there's awhole thing about like you fail
10 times on something.
So the first ones that I made,like I made them, they looked
pretty good, but then I realizedthat like, oh, like my order
was wrong and how I wasassembling them.
(23:11):
So, like when I sanded, Istarted sanding the finish off
of the magnets that I had puttogether and I had.
There was a lot ofexperimentation the first few
years and just sort of figuringout how to make them.
I would make them better everytime, you know, because the
first few were they were greatand I was happy to sell them and
I'm very proud of what I made.
But every time I make them Iget better at making them right.
(23:34):
I get better at how do Iunderstanding the mistakes I
made in previous rounds of them.
So I would make them in batchesand those batches started to
get bigger and bigger over time.
But you know, I would basicallymake.
You know I'd make 50 at thebeginning of the year and I'd
take them to Kubla Khan.
I would sell, you know 10 or 12and I would put the rest of
(23:55):
them up on an Etsy shop and sellthem through the rest of the
summer of the year and I tend torun out in the fall and then I
would be like, okay, well, nowI'm gonna make another batch.
So that's kind of like theprogress of the doughnuts sort
of.
You know, without getting intothe details of like specifically
why certain things were failing.
But like one of the big reasonsto move to like the urethane
lid was how do I make them in away that improves the quality,
(24:20):
because it makes it a lot easierto paint.
I can do a lot more stuff withthe paint jobs when I separate
the frosting from the actualdoughnut.
But it's also about how can Imake them faster and like more
efficiently.
I was spending 3 to 4 hours perdoughnut because I was hand
carving the frosting on everydoughnut and then I would have
to sand forever because I reallywanted it to have this really
(24:42):
like tight, high gloss kind offinish to it.
My personal goals regardingquality were like coming into
conflict with how many I couldmake.
I've had plenty of game storesand stuff like that approach me
be like hey, if you can bringthis price down at all, we would
love to carry them, either onconsignment or something else
you know.
So it really starting like thisyear really became clear to me
(25:06):
that if I wanted to that a, itwas possible to bring it, move
it beyond just being a hobbybusiness, but also like oh, hey,
that there's.
You know, if I can figure outhow to like drive this.
It could actually be a realbusiness that I could, you know,
make a more significant part ofmy living on, which is kind of
the goal.
Now, you know, it's probably acouple years of kind of really
treating it as like the hobbybusiness.
(25:27):
And then, when one of the thingsI realized at like Kubla Con
and I talked a lot with theorganizers at Kubla Con because
they become friends and they'reeverybody's really interested in
the product is, you know, thedonuts themselves are fairly
expensive.
You know, there I sell them forabout $125 and up, depending on
like the mimic donut clearly isgoing to be more expensive than
(25:50):
a regular donut.
And what I realized there wasthat like I had, like I was
doing a really good job ofsetting kind of the top price at
the booth but I didn't haveanything for people who wanted
something from me.
They were engaged with thebrand, they were engaged with me
personally.
They love the story of thedonuts, but they didn't
necessarily have something thatthey could afford to buy on
(26:12):
their budget, you know, which isa little different than like
the packs experience was likekind of like through me,
honestly, for a little bit of awrench, because there are a lot
of people there.
I brought 75, almost 80 donutswith me.
I sold 65 of them.
Wow, you know, in four days,like, and I sold relative to
(26:32):
that.
Like you know, at Kubla Con myexperience would be like oh, I'm
going to bring 30 donuts.
I might sell a third of those.
If I was having a very goodshow, I might sell a third of
them.
But I was sell a bunch of tshirts, I would sell a bunch of
stickers, I would sell a bunchof the coffee cups.
So I sold plenty of coffee cupsat packs, but fewer relative to
(26:54):
the total number of donuts thatI sold.
Like it was a little.
It was super interesting justto see kind of the different
audiences there and like who waswilling to spend and what they
saw as like a barrier forpricing, right so, and I'm going
to be at Big Bad Con at the endof September and it'll be
interesting to see how that Imean like universally everybody
(27:14):
loves the donuts.
They really into the, they'rereally into it, but it'll be
interesting to see who is ableto buy versus, you know, buy or
not.
So that part of it was reallyinteresting from a learning
perspective at packs.
Courtney (27:28):
Well, I also like.
What's kind of interesting too,is that packs is, you know,
such a huge event and yet themajority of facts is you're
walking around and playing demosof video games.
You're not buying things on thefloor, right, and so you know
like obviously there was, therewas a decent amount of things to
look at on the tabletop floor.
Andrew (27:47):
However, and yet, if you like, when you walk down to the
X so up in the tabletop ExpoHall, phone brain was there
selling dice and Misty MountainGaming was there with a big like
triple sized booth selling abunch of accessories.
Phone brain was also down onthe Expo Hall on the bottom
floor and Misty Mountain wasdown there selling stuff as well
(28:12):
, which I was kind of surprisedat.
I really thought it would bemore segregated and there would
be more kind of like video gamemerch at packs.
But I mean, I know it was to mybenefit.
Anybody who buys dice is superinterested in looking at the
donuts.
Courtney (28:27):
Oh yeah, for sure.
Yeah, it will be interesting tocompare that to like Big Bad
Con.
Andrew (28:34):
Yeah, yeah, exactly, I'm like.
I'm like my expectation for BigBad Con is it's not nearly as
you know.
It's going to be probably 35,maybe it'll be 3500 people total
for two or three days.
Right, it'll be a lot closer.
That's what Kubla Con size is.
It's about 3500 people, ofwhich only a percentage of them
are actually like tabletoppeople.
You see a lot of like.
I get a lot.
It all.
Show the donuts to people.
(28:55):
I spend the whole show likebasically opening and closing
the donuts Again for thoselisteners.
If you don't want to interactwith your potential customers
and you just want to sort of sitthere and do them, don't make
something that confuses people,because you will spend all day,
every day, talking to peopletrying to explain what it is
(29:15):
that you've made.
For whatever reason, I'vechosen to create a niche that is
really narrow and I'm just likedigging even deeper into it.
Courtney (29:26):
I mean honestly, it's true.
Like when I saw the coffee cupsI was like, okay, well, for one
thing I would absolutelyaccidentally grab that all of
the time.
Andrew (29:34):
Yes, yeah, it's really funny.
There are some universalobjections to the donuts.
When people, when they see themand they're like, they look at
the donuts and they go, oh, thatwould make me too hungry, I
would want to eat donuts all thetime.
I don't know that that's a badthing.
What's the other one?
I get a lot of?
Oh, I own more than one set ofdice, so like, they hold eight
(29:59):
dice.
So if you own more than one setof dice, that's a problem.
Or it's something like oh, I'mnot in the tabletop, I don't
like, I don't value my dice thatmuch, or whatever.
I'm always like telling peoplelike these are the donuts are
for they're like it's tooexpensive for what I'm doing.
You know, I'm like which isfine, you don't have an issue
with people being concernedabout the price.
But it is always kind of funnyto tell people like, well, it's
(30:21):
the opposite of a dice jail.
You're rewarding the dice thatare performing well by putting
them in the donut.
It's restoring their energy,it's keeping them well fed and
happy.
It's a lot of magical thinkinggoing on around the dice, you
know.
And then with the coffee cupsit's always like oh, universally
, people are like oh, well, itwould be great if you could like
do this so that you couldactually drink your coffee out
(30:43):
of one side of the cup and useit as a dice tower, which I'm
always like I don't know thatthat's a great idea, and they're
always like, oh well, I wouldtry to drink from it.
I'm like, well, that's not thatbig a deal because it's an empty
coffee cup, right, it doesn'tweigh what a regular coffee cup
is.
It's way more of a problem ifyou start throwing your actual
dice into your hot cup of coffeeat the table.
(31:04):
That's the real problem is thatyou're going to do something
like that.
But yeah, it is pretty funnyLike everybody's got kind of the
same.
There's definitely like acertain, the sales objections
from a sales process perspectiveare always kind of in the same
universe.
It's very funny.
Courtney (31:21):
Oh, that wasn't an objection.
I was like oh, that's hilarious, I know I would do that.
Andrew (31:24):
No, no, I think it's.
I think it's.
I mean that's that's part ofwhat I'm always pitching is like
, I mean really, guys, like thedream is to show up at your
gaming table with a donut and acup of coffee and watch in the
same way that your mind justbroke when I dropped a die in
out of the donut in the coffeecup and it rolled to the side
the way you just went.
What the actual everybody atyour table is going to do that
(31:47):
every time you do this, you know.
So that's, it's, it's superfunny and it's, yeah, it's, it's
very fun.
I also, I mean, I have to sayit's just a very different.
You know, the whole brand sortof sets a whole different mood
from a lot of the otheraccessories you see in the
marketplace, which tend to bebeautiful wooden products with,
(32:09):
you know, dragons laser engravedon stuff, and it's like there's
just a sort of like they wouldlean really heavily into the
sort of fantasy milieu and it'sfun to make something that is so
outside of that.
You know, because there's likethere's definitely a market for
a lot more whimsy in this stuffthan you necessarily see.
(32:30):
You know, you have to pair thatwith, like, trying to achieve
the quality parts of it.
But I think you know there'sdefinitely an opportunity there
for people who are thinkingabout products they want to make
or things you know that shouldgive yourself permission to to
be a little, have a little funwith it doesn't have to be a
quite so grimdark all the time.
Courtney (32:51):
For sure, yeah.
So what point did you start theEtsy store?
Andrew (32:57):
At what point did I start the Etsy store?
I started the Etsy store prettyearly, honestly, but I had
gotten the URL and I was justlooking for like an easy way to
to.
I didn't really want to likepay for a Shopify subscription.
I wasn't sure if I reallywanted to commit to it.
It was sort of a low cost, loweffort way to get an online
(33:18):
presence up and running.
When I first started, it was ina lot of ways it was great like
I was again because it was ahobby business.
You know, if I sold somethingevery few months or once a month
or whatever, like it was no bigdeal and a lot of the tools
they have are great.
The shipping stuff is awesome.
You know, I've shipped stuffall over the world and it's easy
(33:39):
to deal with, like the customsand all the other stuff that you
have to do, because it justgoes through their, their
shipping centers.
When I started doing t shirts,I started using like printify
and print full to do and they.
Etsy has some nice integrationsinto your Etsy shop so you can
just create listings for these,you know, for designs that
you've made, and then they go upand I literally don't have to
(34:01):
do anything other than answer afew emails, you know, here and
there.
So that part of it was great.
That's like literally when Istarted the Etsy thing and I've
been on Etsy pretty much eversince as the deck of donuts my
the URL dot dot dot com isessentially a redirect into the
Etsy shop and what I found waslike, especially over like the
(34:22):
last year, kind of like duringco, but I started putting more
effort and I was putting up moredesigns, I was spending more
sort of more engaged with theEtsy shop.
I had left full time work andstarted working as a freelance,
freelance creative director, soI had a little more control over
my schedule, so I could be alittle more engaged with it.
(34:42):
And so I started to do that.
I started to spend more onadvertising on Etsy and just
trying to experiment with how Ican drive a little more
engagement, and it was nevergreat but I started to get, I
was selling more regularly andthat was going on for like a
year.
And then, like I think at thebeginning of this year, I really
looked at like how much I wasspending on Etsy versus how much
(35:04):
I was actually making.
And it could be just because Ido it for living doesn't
necessarily mean that I'm agreat ad guy.
But you buy essentially searchads on.
You're buying search ads onEtsy and I had done what I could
to kind of optimize that stuff.
You know, I wasn't deeplyengaged with it but what I found
was I was spending quite a loton advertising and I was making
(35:27):
a profit, but so much wasgetting eaten up by fees and
some of the other stuff that Ireally found that, like you know
, whereas I thought that I wasdoing, you know I look at my
sales and I'd be like, oh man, Imade you know 500 bucks this
month or I made you know Xamount of dollars, you know,
over time I'd be like, oh,that's pretty cool, that's
pretty cool.
But then when I looked at thefees I was getting charged on
(35:49):
the other side of it, I was like, wait, like 90% of that money
is getting eaten up with feesand all the rest of it.
And you know and I'll to betotally fair to Etsy I optimized
my shop to like minimize myfees.
No, you know, there's a lot ofstuff that I could probably be
doing to be more efficient onEtsy.
But you know I'm connected.
(36:10):
You know, in a couple ofdiscords with other creators and
I think sort of universally,everyone's looking at Etsy and
it's very easy to see there'sless and less handcrafted stuff
on Etsy.
You know there's less and lesskind of it feels like the
company is moving away from whatI'm trying to sell.
As you know, they want morecommercially produced stuff at
scale that I'm not particularly,then that I wasn't really set
(36:34):
up to sell and you know, thefact of the matter is if I'm
going to pay that, if I'm goingto pay essentially either
through fees to them or like asubscription to Shopify,
probably, you know and justtalking with other vendors and
other people who use it up, I'lllikely be shifting soon to
Shopify.
They have a lot of the similarintegrations that I'm already
(36:55):
taking advantage of and then atleast if I'm spending money to
drive traffic, I'm really justdriving traffic for myself.
I'm not necessarily driving itfor random other competitive
listings.
So that's sort of my story withEtsy.
Again, I don't really have anycomplaints with the service
itself, you know, and, like Isaid, it's been very good in a
(37:17):
lot of ways for me when I wasgetting started, but it
definitely feels like it'spivoted away from what I'm
interested in doing and we'llsee, you know I mean I may end
it back on it.
I've had a couple of placesrecommend that I look at like
fair and try to get onto fair asfair as a like a whole sale or
site for stores, so particularlyfor like the stickers and stuff
(37:38):
that I make.
There's a couple of people havesaid like oh yeah, you would do
well on fair, but fair is likethey're relatively new and
they're scaling somewhat slowly.
So you know you can get ontheir waiting list but you're
just sort of at the mercy ofwhen they decide to sort of open
up for the next chunk ofpotential vendors.
Courtney (37:55):
So that's interesting.
I hadn't heard of them, butthat sounds like cool concept.
Andrew (38:02):
Yeah, it's fair.
F-a-i-r-ecom it's basically forit's super interesting, it's
basically a and they have someTTRPG stuff on there and they
sell a lot of.
Again, like it's great forsmaller vendors who are trying
to sell stickers and otherthings that are going into like
the game store, so like games ofBerkeley, their buyer uses fair
(38:23):
to like identify stickers andpins and other accessories that
they might be able to add totheir store.
And then you as a vendor, youknow you're just basically, as I
understand it, you know you'rebasically accepting an order but
you're selling at wholesaleprices.
You're not necessarily sellingat retail prices.
You know you're not sellingdirect to consumer.
Yeah, so you get to sell more,but your prices have to be a
(38:45):
little lower, a little less of amargin.
Yeah, which is one of thethings like at the beginning of
the summer I really tried to diginto, like the cost of goods,
for what it was actually costingme to make like the donuts and
the coffee cups and some of theother things, and trying to
really look at how I could againmake them more efficiently,
(39:06):
make them with not lessexpensive parts.
But, like you know, how can Ilike tighten up the time in
order to maintain the samequality, which is always kind of
the goal.
Courtney (39:17):
Yeah, I mean, how long does it take you to make you
know a batch of donuts, A batchof donuts.
Andrew (39:23):
So yeah.
So now I make them kind of inbatches.
It's honestly I have to, kindof I was in a mad scramble to
make as many as I could ahead ofover the summer.
So what happened was, you know,had a good event at KublaCon
with the freelance work was alittle quiet.
So I was like, oh I'll, I'lljust start.
I made a spreadsheet and started, you know, pulling together,
(39:45):
like here, all the gamingconventions in the US.
Here's their contactinformation, and I just started
like I made a little like salesheet.
I don't know.
I basically, you know, madeessentially like a one-pager PDF
that just said pictures of thedonuts and the description of
what I was selling and kind ofjust generally like, hey, here's
my vibe, and was just kind ofboth applying, but then also
(40:07):
just like when I could findcontact information, I would
just email people and be like,hey, is this something that
would would be in the right vein?
You know, trying to get a lotof the conventions were already
sort of set in terms of theirvendors and stuff like that.
So the Pax opportunity came fromone of those emails that I sent
in, not expecting to get intoPax.
I certainly didn't get it.
(40:27):
Expect to get in 2023.
But then they said, yeah, canyou do it?
And that was in late May, earlyJune, and so then it was like a
mad scramble for me to figureout like, okay, well, I know I
can't make enough donuts the wayI had been making them, so it
was like a mad scramble tofigure out how to like come up
with essentially a new way tomake them.
(40:49):
So I'm like hand injectingurethane and all this other
crazy stuff, so that was likefiguring out a whole new process
.
So it wasn't terribly efficient.
The net of it is to say,whereas before it probably took
me three to four hours to fullyfinish a donut individually, now
I think I can get it down toabout an hour of total work.
So, which is great, and it'snot just that I can get it down
(41:12):
an hour, but I also feel likethe quality and the variety that
I can make is better.
Right, a lot of the stuff that Iwas doing before that was
taking up so much time was likehaving to mask all these little
bits and then paint it, and then, if I painted it and the paint
job wasn't great, you had tolike sand it all off and start
from scratch again.
And now I can be like I canpaint something, and if it turns
(41:33):
out awesome, I can be like, oh,I'm gonna make more of those.
And if it turns out horrible, Ican be like, okay, well, I'm
gonna put that in the pile ofstuff to be thought about some
more before I try that paint jobagain.
No, yeah, yeah.
So there's a lot of likeexperimentation and everything
in it.
But yeah, that's the goal.
It was kind of the same thingwith the coffee cups I started
(41:53):
when I first started making thecoffee cups in the first.
No, I probably made a couplehundred of the coffee cups.
Now at this point, the first 70I was printing were just 3D
printed.
So I'd gotten like a littleEnder 3 and I figured out how to
get it to print stuff, but ittook nine hours to do.
Every little tower that wentinside took nine hours to make,
and so I was printing as fast asI could.
(42:15):
But I was like, oh, I gottamake a, I gotta figure out how
to do this faster.
So I ended up making a mold ofthat 3D print and then just
casting it with.
I was already doing injectionmolding for, you know, homemade
injection molding for thedoughnuts.
So I was like, oh well, I bet Icould do the same thing for
this.
And so then I was able once Ifigured that out, I was able to
kind of crank out a bunch ofthem much more quickly than I
(42:37):
had been before, you know.
So yeah, technology, technology, it's amazing, hey, everybody.
You know like if you're gonnawork with your thing where your
rubber gloves, where yourrespirator get good ventilation,
probably don't do it in thebasement of your house Like I've
been doing it.
So yeah, yeah.
Courtney (42:58):
I was about to say don't poison yourself.
Andrew (42:59):
Yeah don't poison yourself.
Read the health and safetyliterature.
Where your dust masks whileyou're sanding.
You want to be a long timewhere your safety glasses.
I managed to just absolutely.
I had a chop saw, throw a pieceof wood into my face and chop
bang up the bridge of my nosewhile I was working on stuff
Because I was doing something alittle sketchy and I won't do
(43:21):
that again.
So, yeah, that is.
You have it in your list ofquestions.
Lessons learned along the way.
Where your safety gear folks.
Where that eye protectionthat's the thing.
Courtney (43:32):
Yeah, that's the lesson that you don't want to
have learned.
Yeah, that's the lesson thatyou don't want to have learned.
Andrew (43:37):
Yeah, don't go to the emergency room at 10 o'clock on
a Thursday night with a big cutacross the bridge of your nose
because you've been trying tocut something that you're not
supposed to.
Power tools are fun.
Courtney (43:48):
I feel like I was gonna tell a story to relate,
that wasn't me, it was my mom,but I realized it's actually bad
if any of you are squeamish, sowe'll hold that for after the
recording.
Andrew (43:58):
Hold that for after the recording That'll be for the
after show.
Everybody, we can talk shopaccidents, yeah yeah, you know,
I do actually really enjoymaking them, even though they're
kind of they're transitioningfrom a fully art thing to more
of a production thing.
But there are like it's stillreally interesting and really
(44:21):
challenging to make that sort ofthing happen.
It's fun.
Courtney (44:25):
Yeah, you mentioned earlier that you are thinking
about doing this more full timethan you have been.
Andrew (44:31):
Yeah, so advertising is a very odd business but it is
somewhat.
One of the things that's trueabout it is I've loved doing it,
but I've been doing it for 25years.
I also love doing woodworkingand doing kind of this stuff and
I really enjoy meeting peopleat the cons.
I think one of the thingsthat's so fun about the donuts
(44:51):
is just the reaction people haveand just like how much joy that
you see in people's faces whenyou know, by and large, when
they see the donuts like, like Isaid I've said earlier, you
know they the reaction is almostuniversally like really
positive.
So it's like really fun to seethat it's a.
It's a great sort of like,frankly it's a great ego boost
for me, but it's also like it'sjust really fun to sort of put
(45:14):
that sort of energy out in theworld.
I think probably in 2024, I'mgoing to try to go to all of the
PAX events, like to go to PAXEast, go to unplugged and go to
PAX West and then also try tohit some of the other.
I'm going to try and hit itlike a more regular schedule of
cons as well.
(45:35):
As you know, like I may try todo a Kickstarter or something
like that.
Just but generally like if Ican see if I can get enough
activity.
Both my children are veryinterested in sort of gaming and
game design.
My daughter is finishing anillustration degree and wants to
get in sort of character designand that sort of thing.
My son is very interested insort of like game mechanics and
game design that way.
(45:55):
So it's also a way for me toideally be away, for me to.
You know, probably we're notgoing to be a full time gig, but
it might be go from somethingthat's being sort of like five
or 10% of my time to more like50% of my time.
So if I can do that and sustainthat with the other work that I
do, then it'd be a differentsort of living that I'm doing
(46:18):
now, but it would be, I think,equally satisfying.
You know it's.
It's very exciting for me tothink about building a business
of my own, which is notsomething so in sort of the
advertising marketing field.
What I've been in is, you know,you sort of drop into somebody
else's business and you sort ofhelp them solve this immediate
need to sell a product and sella story or whatever that is, and
(46:42):
so you don't necessarily have,and one of the things that I
like about business is sort ofunderstanding the strategy
behind driving those things.
And so the idea of being ableto kind of engage at that level
with something that is my own isvery, very interesting.
And you know, I mean hell, I'lldo it for a year and if it
(47:02):
completely falls apart I'll dosomething else.
You know that's there's no, youmight as well go for it, right?
You know life's, life's prettyshort.
You know, if you have a goodidea and I will say like I'm
saying that, but I'm saying thathaving, you know, five years of
generally positive reaction tothe product that I'm interested
(47:24):
in selling, so I'm not like, I'mjust like I did one event.
Now I'm like, yeah, but I meanlike I've had a lot of it.
I've had a lot of good personalexperiences and I've made a lot
of good connections, so that Ifeel like I've been steadily
progressing towards this.
And now Pax is sort of like abig leap forward.
So now it's like, okay, well,how do I capitalize on that big
leap forward?
Courtney (47:45):
Yeah, I feel like now I want to bring you back and
like a year and be like okay,yeah please do, please do, and
I'll be homeless and living outof a van.
Andrew (47:55):
Yeah, I'm hawking wooden donuts in the back.
Yeah, no, it's who knows.
Yes, I would love to be back ina year.
Hopefully it'll be a massivesuccess.
And yeah, but yeah.
But, honestly, doing thispodcast is part of me trying to
sit here and go like, okay, howdo I make the connections to be
able to like leverage all thisstuff and, you know, get my name
(48:17):
out there and let people knowthat.
I think that's one of the things.
Again, it's sort of cobblershoes, the cobbler shoes
phenomenon, and I haven't reallyspent that much time trying to
do like social media or any sortof real brand building beyond
just going to these events andkind of showing the product off.
So the next level of this isgetting those ducks in a row and
actually doing that sort ofwork, which, again, I know how
(48:40):
to do for other people but havenever had to do it for myself,
and so that's like a reallyinteresting, sort of like mental
pivot that I have to make tosort of do that in a real way
and sort of like, you know,super interesting, little
challenging, but that's, it'sall good, you know it's.
I'm again, like you know, justhaving that experience in
(49:01):
advertising, like I have a lotof.
I have a very robust skill setthat is very well suited for a
lot of what I'm trying to do.
It's definitely a lighter liftthan somebody who's like trying
to come up with an amazing ideabut doesn't actually have that
backstop of skills to capitalizeon.
Courtney (49:19):
Yeah, honestly, I feel like most people.
When I ask the question I'mabout to ask you, I'm like
what's been the most challengingpart?
They're like marketing.
Andrew (49:28):
It is, it is, it always is.
It's hard.
What has been the mostchallenging in the past is like
figuring out those efficienciesso that I can, like, actually
scale the product.
So that has been the problemand I feel like I've cracked
that Right.
I've finally gotten to a placewhere I'm like okay, I will
continue to improve it, but Ican see the path forward to how
(49:50):
the product continues to getbetter and I can make more of
them and I can have.
You know, whereas before Ididn't know how to like, how
would I tell somebody else howyou're going to carve frosting
and sand it to a level that Iwas going to be happy with?
It's just not, there was no wayto do that.
But now I'm in a place where,like, oh, I figured out this and
a jig on this tool andeverything.
It's like, oh, I can have myson like sand donuts all day
(50:11):
long and they're going to begreat, you know, I know that
they'll be, that he'll do a goodjob and it won't be as reliant
on judgment.
You know it can be more of aprocess moving forward.
For me it's the big challenge islike okay, how do I, you know,
do the advertising?
How do I do the marketing?
(50:33):
How do I fund it?
Like, how do I raise the moneyto be able to?
You know, marketing isexpensive.
Getting your name out isexpensive, so, like, how do I
raise the money to do that in away that is going to support the
business and not just be?
You know, there's a joke withinthe ad world where somebody
(50:54):
asks somebody like a businessowner is told by his ass by
someone about his advertisingbudget and he says, well,
basically, I know 50% of myadvertising is wasted, I just
don't know which 50%.
It is Right and that's verytrue.
You know, in the tools, youknow how you reach the
appropriate audience is verydifficult and a lot of the
(51:15):
platforms that people had beenleveraging, like Twitter and
other sort of social mediaplatforms some of them like
Twitter, is collapsing in a lotof ways.
Like, I was very, both in mypersonal life and in for Dodeca
Donuts.
I was very active on Twitterand after some of the stuff that
Mr Musk did, I decided to.
(51:35):
I'm just done with it.
So I've moved over to likethreads and Instagram and all
this stuff.
But those are totally differentmodalities, totally different
sort of ways of interacting withpeople.
And even just Facebook toInstagram is different sort of
interactions than you see fromlike, you know, threads or
Twitter to Instagram, right,they're just totally different
(51:57):
ways.
There are different sorts ofcontent are needed in different
places.
Or TikTok you know I've donesome stuff with TikTok.
It's super fun, but it's alsolike I'm not.
I'm just I would rather bemaking the donuts than spending,
you know, two days working on aTikTok.
You know floss video involvingthe donuts, like it's just not
going to happen.
(52:17):
So I have to.
It's that combination offactors of like how do you find
this sort of content that'sgoing to work for you?
And then, of course, there'sjust like all the paid stuff,
like you know, search,advertising and optimizing for
search and everything that allhas to be done.
So it has to be done and redone.
So, yeah, it's, it's no fun,it's not.
(52:38):
I mean I shouldn't say it's nofun, it can be, you just have to
approach it with the right sortof frame in your head.
Courtney (52:45):
It's a lot and there's so many platforms.
Andrew (52:47):
It's a lot, it's a lot of stuff.
Yeah, I mean, you know, yeah,you know.
So it's like so.
So, frankly, I look at likegoing to events like packs and
you know like, if I ever end upat GenCon like there are
opportunities to sell theproduct, but as much as anything
there are also opportunitiesjust get the name of the product
out.
And if all I had done was covermy booth fee at packs, packs
would have been a success justby virtue of getting in front of
(53:09):
so many people that are exactlymy target market, versus, you
know, the geek craft expo right.
That if I had spent you know abig chunk of money to go to an
event like that and then nobodyhad looked, even nobody even
understood what TTRPGs were,much less that there is an
accessory market for TTRPGs,would have been a huge
(53:32):
disappointment, you know.
So, like that, like findingyour audience thing is
interesting.
Courtney (53:39):
So I feel like we've touched on this, maybe a little
bit already, but what would yousay has been just the best part
of your journey up till now 100%is the people's reaction to the
product right?
Andrew (53:51):
It's just.
I mean, really I'm a prettyhappy person and it's just.
It brings me a lot of personaljoy to see people smile and
laugh about the product and tosee just kind of like even when
they're making me crazy, likeseeing little kids who are just
freaking obsessed with thedonuts and they're like, oh my
gosh, you know, like peoplepopping them open and closing
(54:13):
them and just sort of like haveyou know, having this really fun
experience interacting withthem.
And then people who bought themNow that I've been selling them
at KublaCon year over year,like people come back to those
conventions every year and theycome back and they tell me how
much they have, how much funthey have with the donut every
time they sit down to play theirgames.
They're like this thing justmakes me laugh every time I look
at it.
So that part of it is justamazing.
(54:34):
Yeah, that's hands down thebest part about it.
Courtney (54:38):
Okay, well, I know we didn't even get to talk about
your podcast at all.
Andrew (54:42):
Hey everybody, listen to the dad vantage.
Courtney (54:47):
So if you want to take a minute and talk about, you
know, like podcasts or any otherkind of cool upcoming projects
and stuff you've got.
Andrew (54:53):
Yeah, yeah.
So really, like you know, forme the coolest projects I'm
working on right now are dodecadonuts, you know, and but I also
, with another friend of mine,have a separate project called
the dad vantage, which is twoold school dads embrace new
school play.
And really, michael, my cohost,and I we've worked together for
(55:15):
20 years.
We're just extremely goodfriends.
We started playing.
I never realized that he was agamer and he didn't realize I
was a gamer until like about thetime I started doing the donuts
and I mentioned that was like,oh yeah, I'm going to be at this
game convention.
He's like wait, you game, likeit just turned into this whole
thing.
So we basically sit down andtalk about being a parent, being
(55:40):
a father and and playing gameswith your kids.
We talk a lot about like how tointroduce kids to the kids to
the game, how to introduce newplayers.
You know we run through likerules, basics, but we also do a
lot of stuff like we come upwith tropes of different things.
We'll be like, okay, we're bothgoing to build an anti hero and
what does that look like?
And then we will sort ofcompare and contrast what we've
(56:00):
built.
We started doing some live playepisodes more recently where my
son has been the DM for acouple of them or vice versa.
Now we're switching it up wheremy son is now who's?
He's 20 now, so he's 21.
So he's he's playing with us aswe play through that.
But it's really it's veryinteresting to sort of be able
to play with your kids for thislong and and watch how they
(56:21):
develop, as I mean, he's a goodplayer and he's a really good
player to develop, as I mean,he's an amazing DM.
So it's it's super fun to kindof go through that process.
But you can find it on all the,on all the regular places the
dad vantage and it's, yeah,super fun.
And then you know, pleasefollow me on tiktok, on the
Graham and Facebook and whatnot.
(56:43):
I am very seriously consideringdoing a Kickstarter.
At the beginning of the year.
They have a make 100 event, soI may be trying to do a little
bit of a small Kickstarter atthe beginning of the year just
to sort of feel out what thatplatform is like.
And so, if people areinterested in it, hopefully I'll
be there sometime soon.
But if you follow me onInstagram or any of those places
(57:04):
, I'll be announcing it whenever.
Whenever it does happen, yeah,and then otherwise, you know, go
to.
I'm at wwwDodecaDonutscom.
Right now it goes to the Etsystore, but soon it will go to
some somewhere else.
And, yeah, just keep track ofit.
And as soon as I have moredonuts to sell, I will be
putting them up on the sidetrying to get how, hopefully, I
(57:26):
can take advantage of thisholiday season and this buzz
I've got going on.
Courtney (57:30):
So I will have a link on the show notes.
Andrew (57:34):
Sweet.
Courtney (57:35):
Well, thank you so much for coming on today and
just talking about donuts for anhour.
Andrew (57:41):
Yeah, yeah, no well, thanks very much for inviting me
.
This has been super fun.
I love talking about this stuff.
I'm a D&D nerd and I'm abusiness nerd too, so it's all
like it's like.
This is an amazing intersectionbeing able to sort of talk
about how those things worktogether.
It's great.
Courtney (57:57):
Yeah Well, at this point we are going to wrap up
the interview portion, but afterI hang up I am going to start
recording again and we're goingto do a fun little quick
question blitz for patrons.
So I will be asking some extraquestions.
Some are gaming related, someare not, but that'll be over in
Patreon exclusive stuff.
(58:19):
So if you are interested inlistening to that, you can find
role play grow on Patreon.
Andrew (58:24):
Do it, do it, yeah.
Courtney (58:28):
He said so I might even get featured on an upcoming
(58:56):
episode.
See you next time on role playgrow.
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