17 SepEpisode 25 | A Better Mousetrap: Building The Perfect Bully Stick Holder
If you have a dog, you've likely encountered bully stick chews. They're great for keeping dogs occupied, but there is always the risk of swallowing them, especially when they get chewed down to their ends. Several products have recently hit the market, each of which tries to solve this problem in a novel way by sheathing, clamping, or holding the chews in such a way to make it impossible (ideally) for a dog to choke on them.
In this episode Annie surveys some of these products, and interviews the inventor of the one she deems the best: The Everchew, designed by Austin-based inventor Kirby Kendall. Kendall is trying to raise money on Kickstarter (through 10/3/18) to fund production of the Everchew. Learn more at Everchew.com.
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Transcript:
**music**
Annie:
So, you know, you're a pretty big dog loving nerd, if you can get very excited about bully stick holders. And, uh, I'll explain later in this episode exactly what a bully stick is, if you're not familiar with bully sticks, but basically they're a very popular kind of dog too. I recommend them to clients all the time because they're a single ingredient and dogs love them. Lots of great things about bully sticks. But one downside to bully sticks is when they get to their very last inch or so, they kind of look like cigars depending on the size that you get, but when they get down to that little nub, there's always the risk that a dog can swallow it which is never a good thing. So over the last few years, a couple of companies have started offering various kinds of bully stick holders, basically devices that keep your dog from being able to get to that last little bit.
And at School for the Dogs, we get really thrilled when we receive one of these things to try because like I said, we recommend bully sticks all the time. So right now a storeforthedogs.com, we sell three and each one kind of has a different approach to solving this problem. Probably our most popular one is called the Animaswizzler. It's this very cool looking kind of like plastic and rubber cage that fits over a bully stick. And we sell a lot of these. I like them, but they're not really great for super heavy chewers because plastic and rubber can be broken and sometimes the dogs do end up breaking them. So I don't recommend them for heavy chewers.
Then we have one made by the company West Paw, which is a really great company. It's all rubber and you kind of shoved the bully stick in. It kind of looks like a really big hot dog bun. Um, and that also has its advantages and disadvantages. I think the main disadvantage is most of the bully stick is lodged in the rubber thing, so your dog really can't get to it at all.
And then the third one we've be recently started selling is called the Bone Head. And it's kind of like a clamp that literally screws onto a bully stick with a screwdriver. And it's pretty cool, but it was actually designed really to be used with Himalayan chews, which are a little larger and more square than a bully stick. You can use it with a bully stick, but I find it's not ideal.
So recently I received in the mail, this very different kind of bully stick holder that was unlike any other bully stick holder I'd ever seen mostly in that you had to use it with bully sticks that had a hole drilled into them. So I wasn't sure what to think of this.
I left it at the studio for some of the trainers to try out during our Day School program. And Oh my God, the trainers loved it. They said that the dogs who normally destroy all the other holders, we have could not hack it at all. So I called the guy who sent it to us and I said, “Hey, can we buy a bunch of these? I'd love to sell them in our shop.” And he said, “no.” It turns out I had received one of only about a dozen prototypes that had been created that he is only beginning to manufacture these bully stick holders, which are called, EverChews and was about to launch a Kickstarter campaign. So I said, well, if I can't have the product, now, maybe I can at least have you on the podcast to let people know how cool this is.
So this conversation is with the inventor of this toy, which I really hope will meet its Kickstarter goal. You can go see it on kickstarter at everchew.com that will bring you there for the next few weeks, at least. And I hope that you will be able to try with your dog sometime soon, because from what I've seen with dogs and from the experiences of my trainers, I think it really is a game changer.
**music**
Annie:
So Kirby, why don't you introduce yourself and tell us a little bit how this interesting product came to be.
Kirby:
My name is Kirby Campbell, and I am the inventor of the Everchew, which is a safety ring to keep dogs from choking on bully sticks and rawhide.
Annie:
So you've sent us at School for the Dogs, a prototype, I guess, of the Everchew a couple of weeks ago. And I have to say, we have had several different kinds of bully stick holders that we have experimented with at School for the Dogs and this was, I'd say the one that has gotten the most rave reviews, at least from our staff, which is what led me to contact you because I wanted to carry them. And you said not, not happening yet. So I should say the bully stick holders that I've come across up until now and maybe we should back up a little bit. Why do you think there's a need for bully stick holders? And I guess for those who are listening, who don't know what a bully stick is, maybe you can explain what a bully stick is, since I'm talking about them like it's something that everyone should know about.
Kirby:
Yes. A lot of people don't know. A bully stick is a part of the cow that only comes from half of the cows. And specifically it only comes from boy cows and, on the Facebook posts, everybody reverts to middle school mode, I think. And they start joking about helping misses and stuff.
Annie:
Right. A lot of people don't believe it when you tell them it's a cow penis in my experience.
Kirby:
Right. Right. And a lot of people are grossed out by that, but dogs adore them.
Annie:
And we’re using every part of the animal? I mean, it's a part of the animal that.
Kirby:
It is the whole nose to tail philosophy that people are even trying to get into now. So, um, yeah, it's good to use it. And dogs adore it. It's good for their teeth.
Annie:
My middle school joke about it is, you know, what the original bully stick holder was called… the cow vagina.
Kirby:
Oh my god.
Annie:
It’s the worst right? So bully sticks are very popular with dogs. They, I believe, they're dried out. They start out very, very long, some places in the world, they make canes out of them from what I understand. But usually they're cut up into pieces that are maybe six inches or a foot long and dogs chew on them. So where does the need for a holder come in?
Annie:
Well, it comes down to the whole, the last three quarters, inch of it after they’ve gnawed down to it. I know my dog, she gets possessive of food and treats, like I guess most dogs. And so she gets low on a bully stick and it gets really short and you walk into the room, she thinks this human creature is going to steal this from me, I need to swallow it now. And so a couple of times, she was doing that with rawhides and I actually had to pull a segment of rawhide out of her throat. But bully sticks do the same thing. And I've even had people talking to about this, that they'd given their dogs a six inch bully stick, and the dog has swallowed the whole thing in one go.
Annie:
Oh my goodness.
Kirby
That's what they told me, which is astounding, right. But so then the need comes from these things can get live in the trachea, esophagus., I'm not medical enough to know where it can get lodged Um, but it gets lodged in there and I suppose they could die if it, if it blocks enough of the airflow, if it's in the right spot. But other times the veterinarian has to go in there and remove it, I guess with forceps many times is what my sister says ‘cause she's a veterinarian. Occasionally they have to go in and do a little surgery to get it out. And so it's an expense and of course, a big hassle on pain for the dog. And that's the risk of death or injury, right?
Annie:
Right. From what I understand from having dogs around who swallow things sometimes, they're not, it's not necessarily a death sentence if a dog swallows one, but it's certainly not a good idea.
Kirby:
Right.
Annie:
And so on the market, there are some bully stick holders, which I'm guessing you've been aware of some of the ones that are out there, but yours is quite different for for a bunch of reasons. And well maybe you can explain a little bit how it works and how you came up with this really interesting design.
Kirby:
Yeah. Well, the whole goal was to of course come up with something that my dog couldn't defeat. I knew that,the things like that used just the stretchy rubber on it, wasn't going to work, cause the dog could pull it out. In fact,I started out doing a whole bunch of experiments for a nice rubber ring, I actually brought in some hockey pucks drilled out and turn it into a hockey button donut essentially, and then sliced it and sorta was trying to clamp it with compressive force. And, my dog,Eva, kept pulling the chew out of it. So I’m like, okay, that's not gonna work. Just the compressive force of the rubber. I've seen the ones that screw down and it works like a compression fitting where it, you know, you're trying to screw, a compressive force on it, that digs into to the side of the chew and
Annie:
Right. Like that's, I guess like, the bonehead one.
Kirby:
Like the bone head and I actually never bought one because they didn't think it was going to work. It just looked like my dog would be able to pull it out ‘cause she was doing crazy things. Like I was taking that the hockey puck version and I was even putting deeply countersinking them, so she wouldn't hurt her teeth on it, but I was putting like wood screws, metal wood screws in there that was digging in about an eighth of an inch into a rawhide to see how that would hold and once the rawhide would soften a little bit as she got closer and it would start to get soggy, she was able to rip it free because it was now soggy in that, just that little eighth of an inch of a wood screw wasn't enough to hold it. So I was like, okay, this is really something that my dog, which is a 60 pound doodle, 65 pound doodle, she's defeating everything that I come up with.
So I totally gave up on any sort of just sheer compression as like, well, I have no choice. I have to drill a hole through the chew and put a pin through it. And that started a whole series of experiments and designs and prototypes, trying to figure out, what diameter the pin needed to be, what the mechanism should be. Of course the easiest one is you use a, say a nylon bolt with a nylon nut on the other end. And I actually made up a few like that and she was able, she was breaking my, the nylon bolt on those because it was a quarter inch diameter, nylon bolt, but of course you've got threads, which makes it a little bit thinner than a solid quarter inch because it's a bolt and she was able to snap the nylon on those and pop it free.
I actually decided, I liked the idea of going through a hole to secure it because when it worked, it worked. The dog wasn't able to get it free. But I didn't want something where it had threads because the threads would get damaged. And you're sitting there with your fingers to screw things inside of a recessed plastic, rubber thing. And it was hard to reach and I didn't want to have to use a screwdriver. So that's where I came up with the whole sliding nylon pin. So it's just a smooth nylon pin with a head on it and then I needed some sort of latch mechanism that would hold it in place. And I started out with just rubber tabs that would kind of just catch the tip of the head of the nylon pin and that wouldn't work,mostly, but because sometimes she would get down and she would just get it just for that angle which she is pulling on the chew. and she happens to be pulling it in the direction of pin exit. And it was slowly walk that pin out.
I was like, okay, well that's not going to work. And so, um, that's why I came up with the design and the prototype you have, where it has this nice thick, black, rubber nylon, I call it the latch and it holds the pin head. And you absolutely cannot push the pin out past that latch until you reach in with your finger and just swing the latch to the side. And now the pin’s free and the pin comes out. So it's a dual action locking mechanism, which can't be defeated by a dog because you have to move the latch on one side while you push the pin free on the other. If you just try to push the pin free, it won't come out. If you just move the latch to the side, nothing happens and you let go the latch, it goes right back into place. So it's a double action and the dog can't beat it. And so my dog has never defeated that latch mechanism.
Annie:
So how would you describe how it looks? How would you describe how it looks to someone who hasn't seen it?
Kirby:
Oh my goodness. Well, it's essentially, think of a of a rubber ring and then it’s has got a hole in the middle, which is where the chew goes. And then if you were to lay the ring flat and drill a hole all the way through the body of the rings across the cavity, that's in the hole, in the middle and then out the other side, you now have the that's the path that the latching pin slides on. And then on one end, there's a rubber latch, which kind of like blocks, it's like a door. And so you push the pen, pass that black latch rubber door, which is, it's a segment of a black, rubber, extruded, cabling is what it is. And it just hangs down a lot to pin in place. And so there's room for you to push it to the side and now the pin can pop out free.
Annie:
How did you get into dog toy product development? Had you invent… is this the first product that you have invented?
Kirby:
Well, I am a research scientist, a chemist by training.
Annie:
And you're based in Austin, is that right?
Kirby:
Yes. I'm down in Austin and I get to do science and technology. It's, you know, it's kind of like in inventing, R and D and I enjoy it, but I've always, ever since I was a kid, wanted it to be a garage inventor and I had an adventures notebook as a kid, you know, all that sort of stuff, right that you hear people like to do. And then, since I've been in Austin, I've decided I like inventing in my garage. So I pursued some other ideas, that didn't go anywhere. I came up with a tripod that had legs instead of that extend like a conventional tripod. They're a tube of plastic and then they can have a slit in it. And so it rolls up flat, kind of like a really long slap bracelet. And so the tripod rolled up. And so I played around with inventing something like that.
I came up with a hot melt glue gun that there's a way that you could, it would snap the glue string so that if a crafter-those glue strings get everywhere that it would do that. And so had all sorts of ideas that never really went anywhere. And so thinking about the next thing I wanted to do, and my dog, Eva choked, I was like, looked at the what's on the market and it didn't like everything out there. So I said, let me see if I can come up with something. So I didn't mean to just say, I'm going to go invent something for dogs. It was a point of necessity for me because raw hides and bully sticks and all sorts of chews were banned in our household after a couple of choking incidents. And so I thought, well, let's see if I can come up with a solution ‘cause the dog really loves him. And I like giving them to her, but we're worried about choking. And so it was just, it just kind of happened. It was a project that started pursuing and, and here's where I am now.
Annie:
So was your first step to research what else was on the market?
Kirby:
Yes, it was working at, see what you could buy and, you know, there was the rubber sleeves and stuff. And, like I said, I played around with trying to make my own and even making them stronger and I didn't like them. And so after you know, that initial round of development and I'm pursuing three or four different ideas for products to chase at the same time, it's like, I need to pick one and kind of focus on it. And it's after doing like a market comparison and doing a few rounds of experiments and a bit screening experiments, said, well, this looks like it goes somewhere. I think I could come up with a solution for this. There's nothing out there on the market that appears to be undefeatable and I want to make it undefeatable. That would be one of my goals. And from what I saw about the dog market, you know, they say it's recession proof because people go hungry, but they'll still buy their dog a toy.
Annie:
Right.
Kirby:
Okay. That sounds good. Maybe I can actually make some money for a change doing it. So it just kind of been, I decided, okay, let's go forward, let's pursue this anti-choking chew holder idea.
Annie:
Now, one question that some of my staff had about the product is, it has to be used with a bully sticks, or I understand you also use raw hide with it, or whatever you're using, let's say bully sticks. It has to have the bully stick has to have a hole drilled into it. Now, are you, is the idea that you would be selling bully sticks that have holes in it or do you sell instructions on how to put a hole into a bully stick? Because, I mean, I guess I can imagine drilling into a bully stick to create a hole, but it's not anything I ever thought about doing before.
Kirby:
Yeah. Well on the Kickstarter campaign we’ll actually have options for both. You can, if you know how to use a 5/16 drill bit, which is all it takes, you can just real quick drill hole through the bully state, if the bully stick is big enough, it's gotta be like a jumbo size bully stick, in order to have enough girth to have a hole drilled in it. So there's that, and then we're providing bully sticks with the ring that already has the hole in it. And the goal is that we would then work with our manufacturers to provide the refills long term. So then at that point, the consumer has the option of either buying their own bully sticks and if they're comfortable drilling holes and I'm cool with that, or if you don't want to, then you could just go online and order to refill.
And I think that might be why some people are hesitant to purchase it because they're worried about us being around long term and providing bully sticks for this toy, you know, beyond the initial Kickstarter campaign. I’ve established relationships with Tasman’s Natural for the rawhide and so in fact, at their plant, they were able to drill the holes for us and send me a box of around a hundred prototypes that I've been using. And in fact, those are the ones that you got in yours. And then I work with Pray and Pets and set up an agreement with them to be the provider for the rawhides cause they have really nice USA, grass fed jumbo-sized raw hides that for drilling a hole in, it's real nice. And so for the Kickstarter campaign, I was going to handle drilling the holes with those myself, and then work with Prey to establish, ideally they would do that at their factory, if not, we'd set up a middleman sort of system where they could get drilling a hole’s a piece of cake.
Annie:
Okay. S it's not so hard. The idea is that, you know, someone could basically do themselves without too much fanfare. If you have a drill and you have a drill bit. Yeah. Okay.
Kirby:
Yeah. You just need a drill bit and a little, a cordless drill and..
Annie:
I can handle that. Yeah. Now have you learned anything about sourcing bully sticks as you've been down this interesting path?
Kirby:
Anything about what bully sticks?
Annie:
Sourcing. Have you learned anything about sourcing bully sticks? Like where, where good ones come from or what to look for? Because I know that's definitely a concern of my clients is the quality of the bull penis that their dog is consuming.
Kirby:
Right. Yeah. I have learned quite a lot about the different types of, not just types of bully sticks, but how they're made and where they're made from. The difference between bully sticks and rawhides, of course, is bully sticks don't have to undergo as much treatment, which is why a lot of people like them a whole lot better and feel that they're safer,
Annie:
Right. Rawhides, they're usually dried and then bleached and flavored, et cetera. Right.
Kirby:
Right. Right. And bully sticks are pretty much just the bully stick. They do come in sort of two flavors thought, There's the ones that stress that they are odor free, which, I know that in our household, the odor free ones are preferred because if you get the odored kind, it smells like a urinal and my wife has walked into the house with those and she can smell it since she stepped in the front door. So she prefers the odor free ones.
Annie:
In my experience, there's really no such thing as an odor free bully stick though. They all have some sort of smell to them, but the odor free ones, how are they odor free? Are they dried for longer? Do they wash them?
KirbyL
It's the washing step. I believe that as long as they get all of the the residual urea and related compounds out of the bull penis when it's still undried in its natural state, I think if, as long as you wash it really well, that's the step that getting the odor out. And then pass that, there's no real difference, I don't think… I've seen a lot of differences, I'm not sure why, they've got the ones that are rolled up like twists and some that are knotted, but on a general ones that are straight some, almost look like a nice on a cross section, like an oval and then other ones, are very indented and, and have really weird shape cross-sections hold up is just because of the way the cow was hung or if that's the way that, due to some of them being dried vertically or being dried horizontally, I don't know the difference there. But they do come in and a huge difference in sizes or thicknesses. You've got the petite regulars, the jumbos.
Annie:
Laughing
The petite cow penis.
Well, I guess also one thing that's different about your product from other ones that I've seen is I guess, that it could be used with like a curly bully stick, which comes from the curly hung, bulls.
Kirby:
I don’t think the curls are natural but…
Annie:
So that’s certainly an advantage. Okay. Well now tell me about how you're funding that's, how have you, I'm curious to know how you funded it, how you have funded it so far and then what the next steps are and how long it's gonna take for me to be able to sell these to my clients who I think are going to buy them up quickly.
Kirby:
Well, the effort to development project is all self-funded right. It just comes out of…this is my hobby money, more than anything. I don't play golf and I mountain bike a little, so I don't spend much money on that. So it's just my thing. And so everything up to this point has been funded with me fiddling around in the garage.
But then to go into manufacturing, that's a big expense. And so you're looking at 10, 15, $20,000 to have the molds cut for the injection molding. And then after the injection molding, you have to have enough money to have it made. You have the pin also needs to be injection molded and it has to be made. So you have, have minimum quantities of making all of those. And so that's why I moved into the Kickstarter type model, where I was hoping that I would raise the funds on Kickstarter, get enough, essentially pre-purchases on Kickstarter is the way it works. People are putting money down and anticipating, an anticipation of delivery about two months away.
What we're looking at is if we achieve our funding goal on Kickstarter is that we will be delivering the chews before Christmas. And so if people celebrate holiday presents with each other, it'll be perfect for that. So that's when delivery will be, and then we would be manufacturing, not enough, but more than just what the Kickstarter requires, we'd make enough that we would then be able to supply it to retailers on an online store or whatever model we're going to go with after that, we haven't completely nailed all that down yet. Baby steps.
Annie:
What is your goal with Kickstarter then?
Kirby:
The goal on Kickstarter is to raise that a bit over $18,000. We've been doing it just under a week and we have… we started out, we did a whole lot of pre-advertising to build up our contact list beforehand. So the majority of our advertising was through Facebook and we have built up an email response list and a messenger response list that were people that said that they were interested, and you know, they clicked on it and entered their information. And so that when we launched, we said, “okay, we're launched.” September the fourth was the day we launched so we've sent out the email blast and the messenger blast everybody and said, “okay, you said you were interested, why don't you go visit and make the pledge.” And so we've had a whole lot of traffic landing on the page.
The difficulty that we're facing is that the traffic that's landing on the page, isn't converting into pledges. And we're trying now to troubleshoot why. And I think part of the issue is the fact that they get there and they see the whole video and they see that there's a hole going through the chew and that kinda gives them a little bit of a pause that they become concerned over, how am I going to source this long term? And the thing is with the Kickstarter is I'm not a existing chew manufacturer, you know, or a existing toy company. I'm a new guy, right, the new kid on the block. And so I think they're concerned, even if I can build up their trust, that I know what I'm doing, and I've got all the manufacturing lined out, and then I can make this thing and I can supply it. And when you give me 30 bucks, you'll get your 30 bucks worth of product. I think they're a bit concerned that they won't be able to buy refills long term. And so now they're stuck with something that needs a chew with a hole in it and they have no way of getting that chew with a hole in it. So I’m trying to figure out is that the issue we;re facing with people committing to the Kickstarter campaign, or is it something else that went missing? Hopefully it's not like my accent or something, I can’t do much about that.
Annie:
Maybe you need to do a demo to show people how easy it is to drill a hole through a bully stick, which I'm saying it's easy, I assume it's easy. I haven't tried it yet, but I will try it.
Kirby:
No, you're absolutely right. That's and when we were talking earlier, that's something that we don't show and it would be real easy to, I mean, it's a five-second loop showing I'm doing a hole through a chew.
Annie:
All right. Well, maybe we figured out the answer to the problem. What are these going to be retailing for?
Kirby:
Well, the rate tell price is for the ring itself, we have that nailed down around $20. And then for the chews, we’ve folded in free shipping with everything and so on the Kickstarter campaign itself, we have the early bird special of the ring and the rawhides for $29 and then the ring and the bully sticks for $34.
Annie:
Awesome. So do you have any other products in the works?
Kirby:
I would love to come up with a way, like the Everchew 2 or the Everchew Pro would eventually be getting away from the hole through the pin. I don't know how I would do that. I'm not sure it's even possible because right now that's when thing is undefeatable and it's got a hole that goes through the chew. I'm now asking myself to develop a product that is still undefeatable without the hole. And of course it's like without using metal and without using tools. And so I stack all these other requirements onto it.
AnnieL
I can see how you could lose sleep over that.
Well, I wish you a lot of luck with this one. I hope the Kickstarter campaign makes… achieves its goal. And if there's anything we can do at School for the Dogs to help let us know, because we're definitely eager to carry this offering it to our clients.
**music**
Fun Dog Fact of the Day, or perhaps weird dog fact of the day. While bully sticks aka bull penises also sometimes called pizzle are not generally eaten in America. They are eaten in some other countries, I believe specifically in China. There are some dishes made with bull penis, but in 2014, a supermarket in Austin, Texas, which coincidentally is where Kirby is based, was sued by the state for trying to sell their customers raw packaged bull penis in the meat section, as if it were for human consumption. They had arrived in a box that stated it was not intended for sale as human food, but somehow staffers at the supermarket repackaged it and relabeled it and it got sold to some unsuspecting to soe Texans.
And our Woof Shout Out today goes to Disco Disco who has been mentioned before on this podcast belongs to my School for the Dogs co-founder, Kate Senisi, he is an adorable, much loved pit bull rescue with an epic underbite and a huge capacity for snuggling. I love him to death. Earlier this week, we received the sad news that he seemed to have some kind of inoperable tumors on his spleen and his heart. He's only about eight years old. A date was set to euthanize him. We were all incredibly heartbroken at School for the Dogs, but then yesterday, Kate and her husband got a second opinion and it doesn't seem like the situation is quite so dire. So although we're not sure how long Disco has, if it's a little time ahead or a long time, we are very glad that he is going to be with us for some more time, because we all need those snuggles, Disco. So big love to Disco and to Kate and her husband, Jared, who've had a very difficult week. I love all three of you very much. And I only mildly dislike your cat.
Special thanks to Kirby Kendall for taking the time to talk to me for this episode, his Kickstarter campaign, which I will link to in the show notes runs through October 3rd. So go over there and contribute so you can get an early model of one of these things. Also, thanks to Alex Kriss who produces School for the Dogs podcast. And to Jazz Banjo Rex for his tune for this show.
And to our sponsor, SaneBox. To talk a little bit about SaneBox, I've invited someone, I care a lot about my husband, Jason, to tell me a little bit about his email habits.
Annie:
So Jason, do you use a SaneBox to manage your email?
Jason:
No.
Annie:
You know that your wife has a podcast and they sponsor her podcast and if you go to school forthedogs.com/sane, you can get a two week trial and a $15 off.
Jason:
Really?
Annie:
Yeah. You don't know that because you don't actually listen to your wife's podcast do you?
Jason:
Um, sometimes double speed.
Annie:
Laughing
Okay. Well, tell me how you manage your email.
Jason:
Well, I just use like a different browser tab for each of my inboxes and I have a whole system. I have the unread emails show up first and then a special starred section for emails I need to get back to and then everything else.
Annie:
So everything else is like the stuff that's like important, but not super important, but not like spam?
Jason:
Yeah.
AnnieL
Okay. Well, is there ever important stuff in that spot by accident?
Annie: Sometimes?
Jason:
Probably. Yeah.
Annie:
Yeah. Well, you know, if you had Sanebox, you wouldn't have to have all of that part of your email. SaneBox sorts your email for you, so you don't have to do all the sorting.
Jason:
That's amazing.
So, for each of my email addresses, I have a separate person, which I keep in a different browser. Then inside my inbox….
Annie:
A separate person?
Jason:
Yeah, they're called people in Gmail.
Annie:
Oh, okay. You don't actually have a person who manages your email.
Jason:
No, uh, I do it all myself.
Annie:
I have, I have a robot that manages my email. It's called SaneBox.
Jason:
So, anyway, as I was saying, I keep my unread emails first. Um, then I have my starred emails appear after my unread so I can star the ones I want to come back to. And then last of all, the red emails show up and I always read all my emails. And then when I check my email, I turn each of my emails into tasks and write it in my Google tasks bar. And then when my tasks build up, I copy and paste them all into Trello. So I can organize my tasks and decide what I want to do first.
Annie:
That sounds complicated.
Jason:
It is, but it's also beautiful.
Annie:
Laughing
Wouldn't it be worth to spend a little bit of money every month and have a robot that could do all that for you?
Jason:
Uh, I hate admitting this, but you're probably right.
Annie:
How many unread emails do you have in your inbox right now?
Jason:
About a hundred.
Annie:
Right. You know how many I have, 10? You know, why?
Jason:
Why?
Annie:
Because I use SaneBox. I love you.
Jason:
Love you too.
Annie:
Even if you don't listen to my podcast.
Links:
Animaswizzler
Quizl
West Paw
BoneHead
Everchews
Tasman’s Natural
Jazz Banjo Rex
