From The Desk of Nerd³ - September 2024 Edition

Dearest Patreons,

This week I, alongside many of you, watched as Clarkson, Hammond and May drove off into the sunset, concluding an era of unparalleled television adventure not seen since Michael Palin’s Around the World in 80 Days back in 1989. Sure, Clarkson’s a colossal twat, Hammond is irritating, and May is better on his own taking apart lawnmowers, but I can’t deny that watching these three boob their way across the planet has been a structural pylon of my television watching for the past eighteen years. There’s Doctor Who. There’s Star Trek. There was Top Gear. An era is over.

Then, while watching Clarkson whine about electric cars not making him feel manly enough as his seatbelt threatened to bisect his perfectly spherical belly, a thought occurred. The first Top Gear special was in 2007. I started Nerd³ in 2010. I’ve been doing this almost as long as they’ve been going on adventures. Blimey.

This comment led to introspection, that led to thought, and that led to this post here. I’ve been running a company for almost fifteen years now… and I still don’t know if I’m good at it or not.

In the beginning, Nerd³ made lots and lots of money. Heaps of it. My reaction, instead of getting my Scrooge McDuck on, was to hire as many friends and family members as I could like the shit capitalist that I am. Then, as that money lessened, people left, some grateful, others not. YouTube dried up, we headed to Patreon, and that seemed to right the ship into some sort of consistency. All I had to do was keep making things, keep people engaged, and I could hopefully ride this cashflow to retirement at 95 years of age. A great plan, until it wasn’t.

Last year, everything went to shite. I focused on finishing Paradox, neglecting YouTube and Twitch to do so, Matt admits he checked out, leaving some of the few videos I had actually done unedited, and Rebecca discovered that they had the specific type of Autism that is incredibly sensitive to noise about two seconds before some prick next door decided to let some diggers move in. Suddenly, Nerd³ was in freefall. Matt explained to me how bad everything had become far too late for me to do anything about it, we fell into debt, and have essentially been micromanaging every single movement of our finances for the past year to stay above water.

So, this year I tried to repair everything. I returned to editing, streams became consistent and even the Toys channel is back. I’m loading everything up slowly to make sure I don’t overwhelm myself, but right now I’m happy with this workload. With a push at the start of the year to obtain Patreons, we saw a nice big influx of people which has helped things out a lot. Right now, we’re not falling towards the ground like a glider with it’s wings sheered off, but we’ve not quite finished pulling up either. We’re hopeful, but cautious.

So then, am I good at business or not? When it comes to taxes, forms, numbers and all that other civilisation flotsam, I’m dreadful. I have no interest in money, nor the brain to compute how much of it needs to go where. Ask me if I have a pension, and I’ll just stare at you until you leave.

However, I’ve also become quite good at knowing what my lovely audience wants, and how that intersects with what I want to make. My response to “we’re running out of money” wasn’t to explode into forms, or launch a lunchables knock-off that somehow teaches kids how to gamble. It was to make more things. That’s my instinct, to create until the problems go away. I’m not sure if that makes me good at business or not, but I’m still here after fifteen years, so I guess it’s sort of working? If I’m still here after thirty, I’ll write a book on it. The Business Paradox. It might sell, but I don’t really care if it does or not. I suppose that’s the problem…

 Anyway, aside from that bollocks, this month I want to talk art prints! Those of you on the art print tier may have noticed that they’ve started up again after a fair few months of very scattered releases. Hopefully, with everything crossed, the current plan is to be caught back up with all of the backlog by April of next year. I cannot stress enough that if you have paid for art tiers, you will receive them. Even if the company dissolves and I have to get a regular job, or aliens invade and reduce the planet to a husk, goddammit we’ll be there, battered trench coats coated in a thick layer of dust, handing you an envelope of neat art and a cool sticker.

 To be even more transparent with this, next month we’ll be launching a public Trello that you can all view, showing the state of each month of prints. When they’re designed, signed, and shipped, you’ll know every step of the way. When money comes in, it’ll go out in the following priority. Tax man. Mortgages. Art prints. Rebecca says you should be first, but HMRC beat me up in an alley recently and threatened to break my knees, so they get priority for now.

Also, stickers! We’re having to switch our sticker manufacturer for some bloody stupid, very 2024 reasons. Our plan was another five or so of Rebecca’s adorable gaming consoles before we switched to a new series of designs, so it’s question time! Would you rather we switched to the new designs earlier, or should we finish the consoles despite the fact that the foil effect might be different? Head down to the comments to let me know, or just think about the answer really hard and I’ll try and hear is psychically. Both are fine.

Happy September,

Daniel

xx