Afterburn: Maker Talk After Dark cover art

Afterburn: Maker Talk After Dark

Afterburn: Maker Talk After Dark

Written by: Erik Crowell & Kristen Thompson
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Afterburn is the after-dark maker show for people building real businesses with lasers, UV printing, DTF, embroidery, and custom products.

Every week, Erik Crowell and Kristen Thompson go live and unfiltered once the shop lights go down. No script. No highlight reel. No fluff.

Each episode gets into the stuff nobody else streams: shop talk, pricing, workflows, mistakes, tools, trends, and the messy middle of turning maker skills into real revenue. Plus a rotating guest and whatever the live chat throws at us.

What works, what doesn't, and what's actually worth your money. Pull up a chair. Thursdays, 9PM ET.

2026 Erik Crowell & Kristen Thompson Economics Leadership Management & Leadership
Episodes
  • Next Level Maker Conference - Worth It?

    Next Level Maker Conference - Worth It?
    Jul 17 2026
    Is a maker conference actually worth it? The money, the travel, closing the shop for a few days? We put that question to the two guys who built one. This week Kristen and I hang with Mark Collier and Will Louie from Next Level Maker Events to talk about Next Level Maker Conference 2026, "REFRESHED", and the honest version of what you actually get out of an event like this. We get into how they fell into laser design, how they teamed up, and why they'd rather build a room for makers than just sit in someone else's. It turns into a real conversation about why making stuff can get lonely, what happens when you finally get in a room with people who do what you do, and why the hallway is sometimes worth more than the sessions. Plus the vendor room, the Creator's Corner, giving back through Wipeout Kids Cancer, and a healthy amount of complaining about social media algorithms. Grab a seat. This one's a good hang. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ What we get into ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ • How Mark and Will got into laser design (and into business together) • What REFRESHED actually is, and who it's really for • The "is it worth the ticket" question, answered straight • Why the vendor room and Creator's Corner are more than a sales floor • Making stuff is isolating. A room full of makers fixes that. • Giving back with Wipeout Kids Cancer • The usual gripes: algorithms, and why we can't have nice things ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Takeaways ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ • The laser world is better when makers build together instead of guarding secrets • A conference isn't the sessions, it's the people. That's where the value hides. • Getting out of your own shop and around other makers beats grinding alone • The right room can change how you think about your business, fast • Supporting a cause like Wipeout Kids Cancer makes the whole thing mean more • And yes, the algorithm is out to get all of us ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Chapters ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 00:00 Introductions and background 01:06 Falling into laser design 02:30 How Mark and Will teamed up 07:07 The Next Level Maker Conference 19:07 Is it actually worth it? 20:59 Why "Refreshed" 24:01 Inside the vendor room 25:44 The heart of REFRESHED 27:19 Making stuff can get lonely 28:12 Getting in the room and growing 34:23 Vendor Room and Creator's Corner 36:22 Learning and making connections 47:51 Supporting Wipeout Kids Cancer 51:11 Getting ready for the event 52:11 Community and showing up 59:00 The social media gripe session 01:00:28 What we're each fired up about ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Learn more about REFRESHED / Next Level Maker Events: https://nextlevelmakerevents.com/ Afterburn - Maker Talk After Dark. New episodes every week.
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    1 hr and 6 mins
  • Trailer: It Starts With a Spark

    Trailer: It Starts With a Spark
    Jul 7 2026
    Welcome to Afterburn, the after-dark maker show for people building real businesses with lasers, UV printing, DTF, embroidery, and custom products. Hosted by Erik Crowell and Kristen Thompson. Every week we get into the real stuff: pricing, workflows, mistakes, tools, trends, and the messy middle of turning maker skills into revenue. Plus rotating guests. First full show: Thursday, July 16 at 9PM ET. Watch live and find every link at https://afterburn.show Pull up a chair.
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    1 min
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