Season 1 - Episode 1

[00:00:00.420] - Gordon
Maybe some software that we're using or some ideas.

[00:00:04.290] - Taylor
Benefit from things that we've learnt while, you know, being self-employed or, you know, what we do in our day to day lives to make things easier and better so, yeah.

[00:00:15.450] - Gordon
So let us tell you a little bit about ourselves. My name is Gordon and I run a company called "Drayson Design." And both of our companies are very similar. I do hosting of websites, building of websites and print design. I also do videography and photography as well. Taylor?

[00:00:35.970] - Taylor
I'm mostly just web design, so building websites, developing things for, custom coding things and I also host websites as well.

[00:00:47.370] - Gordon
And your company name?

[00:00:48.570] - Taylor
"The Creative Tinker" is...

[00:00:50.280] - Gordon
"The Creative Tinker." So you can find me on Drayson Design. I'm on social media, and the same with Taylor; The Creative Tinker. So Taylor, let's start with you. What have you been up to this week?

[00:01:03.450] - Taylor
So this week I've been working on a few projects that have come in. First one is a health care website. So what they are is, they're like a recruiting agency for health care staff. So people that want to find part time jobs, full time jobs, anything to do in the health care sector, really. I think it's both public and private sector, I believe.

[00:01:24.810] - Gordon
And that's really important at the moment because we're recording this in lockdown. So coronavirus is all over the place and we are on week 4 now, I think, of being in lockdown. So building a website for health professionals is quite topical, really, isn't it?

[00:01:41.520] - Taylor
Yeah. And we've got to try and get it done as quickly as possible because obviously it's quite urgent and in need so that's one of the websites I've been working on. And another one is for a building company. They are re-, its a redesign of their website. So they want to bring it up to date and more modern. Their website was built quite a while ago by themselves, and they just want to update it with all their new projects that they've done and, you know, really showcase off what they can offer and show their potential clients, I guess, what they what they can bring and yeah just really modernize it and bring it to become better, really.

[00:02:20.610] - Gordon
And have you come across any problems that you've had to problem solve on either of these websites this week?

[00:02:27.630] - Taylor
Not yet. I mean, one of them is trying to install and put together the users so people can register and log in and kind of sort that and make sure that works properly. So that's the only real problem with the health care website.

[00:02:42.870] - Gordon
Yes, so building a sort of a membership side to a website is always difficult because there's so many different ways you can do it and different functionality that you can have. It could be that you just want people to be able to log in just so that they can access pages or files that, you know, the normal visitor can't access. But that's not quite what you are needing to do with your health care site, is it?

[00:03:09.090] - Taylor
So they'll need to be able to apply for jobs and things like that. Also, look at their current jobs that they've applied for in their own profile section, upload their CV so that it's already in there so they can just one click and kind of apply without having to put their details in every time. Yeah, and making sure that the, both recruiters and the employers, and the kind of employees or the prospects, both get emails to say you were accepted, you weren't accepted, you've got a new offer, etc, etc. So it was kind of trying to get that to work with each other, really.

[00:03:46.020] - Gordon
And one of the things that we're using to do our processing of forms is a piece of software called "Fluent Forms." There's a lot of ways that you can do this. Now, both Taylor and I use WordPress as our basis for all the websites that we build, mainly because it's user friendly and not from a developer point of view, but from a user's point of view or an owners point of view.

[00:04:13.200] - Taylor
Yep.

[00:04:13.200] - Gordon
So the owner of a website doesn't actually have to know too much to be able to manage their own website.

[00:04:18.990] - Taylor
It's a great framework as well for, especially for local and small businesses that don't have the capital or the money to invest, you know, three, four, five thousand pounds plus into a website, because you've already got that framework built in that you can kind of get yourself started with.

[00:04:36.090] - Gordon
And there's always more 'plug-ins,' as they call them, which add functionality to an existing website when new technology comes along. So, for example, when Instagram came along, you know, WordPress had been out for a long time before Instagram, but there was a plug-in available that you could just bring in your Instagram pictures straight to your website.

[00:04:56.520] - Taylor
Yeah, just embedding them straight in and, you know, it's more user friendly rather than developer friendly. I mean, there's lots of developer functionality that you can, you really dive into the actual PHP code and all of that, but from a user point of view, it's kind of click and play from their side, if they want to just install something onto it you can just do that.

[00:05:17.520] - Gordon
Yeah, it's a little bit like Microsoft Word or Google Docs, you know, you can use an editor to create new pages, to create new blog posts, that sort of thing. But getting back to Fluent Forms, there are lots of different ways to have a form on your website, but just filling in the form is only the first part of it. What are you then going to do with that data? So with your website that you're doing for the health professionals, your data is going to be very specific information that has to go to a specific place, to be able to then be used in a specific way.

[00:05:53.520] - Taylor
Yes.

[00:05:54.660] - Gordon
And Fluent Forms is a really good way of doing that. We are, we haven't used it for long actually, but so far it's been really good. And in fact, they've just brought out brand new functionality, which allows you to integrate payment providers so you can add Stripe or PayPal to a form. So if you need people to pay for something, you can now do that. And that's only just come out, hasn't it?

[00:06:18.660] - Taylor
Yeah, they've got lots of other integrations, so they integrate with a lot of kind of email marketing companies, so you've got 'MailChimp,' 'Active Campaigns,' 'Moosend,' all of that lot as well as other CRMs, so I think they...

[00:06:35.340] - Gordon
CRM being a Customer Relationship Manager, just for those who aren't sure. It basically keeps all your customers' details together in one place and then as people fill in forms and so on, it will add their information to their records so you can always see everything about that one customer.

[00:06:53.010] - Taylor
Yes, so it kind of, it allows you to find out where they are maybe in a process. So if you are trying to on board client, you could see, are they, have they signed up? Are they just, have they got your first email, the second email, kind of thing. But yeah, you can integrate with things like that. You've got "Infusionsoft," which is another CRM as well...

[00:07:10.410] - Gordon
Or 'Keep' as it's now called.

[00:07:11.230] - Taylor
Yeah. Also, you've got...

[00:07:12.720] - Gordon
It's difficult when you, when you're used to a software having a name for so long. We've known it as Infusionsoft for years. And now they're gone and changed it to Keep. So we keep having to remind ourselves it's got a new name.

[00:07:24.510] - Taylor
As well as things like Google Sheets as well, which means you can manipulate the data and use formulas and things, which I think's quite interesting and pretty cool.

[00:07:33.660] - Gordon
So one of the things I've been working on this week is, I, because I also run another company, which is a magician company. So I'm a magician. I do children's shows; I do shows for big groups; I do close up; I do cabaret; I've got a double act. So I've got lots of different shows that I do. And because I'm in lockdown, I can't do any shows. There's no one having parties; there's no one celebrating anything; there's no one having corporate launches. So I am sitting at home not able to do my shows. So I came up with the idea of doing a "MagiCall," see what I did there? Magical.

[00:08:14.100] - Taylor
Very clever.

[00:08:14.370] - Gordon
Yeah, I thought so. It's like C-A-double L at the end. So it's a Magic Call. So it's a Zoom call and I'm limiting it to children's birthdays because of all the people that are affected by the lockdown I think children are pretty much the ones that are having the most hard time understanding what's going on.

[00:08:33.680] - Taylor
Struggling, why.

[00:08:34.710] - Gordon
Yeah, they're not going to school, they're being schooled at home, which is really strange for them. And if you've got your birthday, it's so difficult to explain to a five year old why they're not allowed to have all their friends to come over and and grandma and all the family to celebrate this birthday. And it's, you know, they're stuck with just the people in the house.

[00:08:55.260] - Taylor
Yeah.

[00:08:55.260] - Gordon
So what I came up with was a 10 minute 'MagiCall.' So basically just using Zoom, as everyone is at the moment.

[00:09:02.430] - Taylor
Yeah.

[00:09:03.150] - Gordon
So people will book in a call, and that will be for the day of the birthday party and for about 10 minutes or so I'll do some magic for them over the camera. And one of the ways that I've been trying to work out how to manage it all is to have people fill in a form to book in a session, and the form will give me all the information I need, plus a bit of extra information. And then the idea is all that information will go into a Google spreadsheet automatically. And then I can take that information, grab the bits I need to create a Zoom scheduled call; so it goes into Zoom and it all scheduled so that it knows when I'm going to do it. I can then send that information through to the customer, so they've got the login details for the Zoom call at the time that it needs to be available to them, as well as giving them a couple of other things they need to do, one of which is to let me know that they've got Zoom and that they've downloaded a PDF and printed it. And my whole system is geared to do that now and it's quite a complex system, but it actually is really easy to now run. So it took a bit of time to set up, but it's needing to run. And the problem I'm having at the moment is that Fluent Forms has a Google Sheets integration, which means that it will send everything to Google Sheets except it's a bit flaky at the moment, it's not working. So I've spoken to their support who are very good. They bring out updates and fixes.

[00:10:34.160] - Taylor
They have a roadmap as well which...

[00:10:35.280] - Gordon
They have a roadmap. Yeah. They bring them out really quickly, though. They're quite good at implementing things. And I've been speaking to support for probably about a week or so now, and other people are now having this problem. So it's not isolated to me, which means as far as they're concerned, it's not my fault. So they've decided that if other people are having a problem, it's something that they need to fix so it's become a top priority for them. So hopefully that will be back up and running very, very soon.

[00:11:06.020] - Taylor
Yeah, that's good.

[00:11:07.460] - Gordon
So something else I've been working on is, because I'm in lockdown, my company website. It's funny because I'm always working on other people's websites you never get time to do your own.

[00:11:23.240] - Taylor
A web designer's website is always the worst, because it never gets updated.

[00:11:27.960] - Gordon
It never gets updated. It's using very old technology normally. It's like a plumber's taps they say. A plumber is always out fixing everyone else's taps and plumbing issues and they've always got leaky taps at home because they never have the time to get round to doing their own. And it's been a bit like that for me. Drayson Design's website I feel really, really bad in telling you, is about 10 years old. So I've actually taken it offline. So if you were to go to draysondesign.com, you will see there's a holding page, depending on when you're watching this. If you're watching it now there'll be a holding page, hopefully...

[00:12:05.440] - Taylor
Or listening.

[00:12:06.350] - Gordon
Or listening, yes, that's right. And hopefully if you're listening to it sort of and coronavirus is but a past memory, there should be a nice shiny brand new website up and running perfectly because that's what I'm working on at the moment. And it's really difficult finding a style that I like that shows what I do. Because I've been doing this now since 1998. So this is the 22nd year for me doing this, which is quite a long time in internet. It's, you know, the internet is...

[00:12:41.360] - Taylor
Brand new when you did it.

[00:12:41.570] - Gordon
It's what?

[00:12:41.930] - Taylor
It was brand new when you.

[00:12:42.650] - Gordon
Yeah it was, it was. I mean websites were very rare when I started and everyone's got a website nowadays, hence the reason for setting up Drayson Design. But yeah, it's difficult to find the style and sit down. I've been struggling with that a bit. So hopefully, in a little while, you'll be able to go to draysondesign.com and you'll see this shiny brand new website and it'll be all working wonderfully.

[00:13:08.600] - Taylor
Wonderful. Yeah. Sounds good.

[00:13:09.890] - Gordon
So Taylor had a different point of view with this because he's not been running long, about a year or so.

[00:13:15.890] - Taylor
I started in July 2019.

[00:13:18.320] - Gordon
Ok. So we're coming up to a year for The Creative Tinker.

[00:13:21.350] - Taylor
Yeah.

[00:13:21.740] - Gordon
But he didn't have any customers when he started so his first job was to create the brand and the website. So he's sort of come at it from the point of view that I came at it 22 years ago. We have no customers build, our own website.

[00:13:38.360] - Taylor
Yeah.

[00:13:39.290] - Gordon
So his website is actually really good. So if you get a chance to look at it. How do they find it?

[00:13:43.880] - Taylor
Go to thecreativetinker.com. That's thecreativetinker.com. Yeah.

[00:13:50.030] - Gordon
So anything else you want to add to this?

[00:13:52.370] - Taylor
I don't think so, I think, you know, we've covered what who we are, what we're going to be doing and talking about, we explained a bit about the kind of software we've used this week.

[00:14:02.010] - Gordon
Yeah.

[00:14:02.510] - Taylor
And what we've been working on really. I mean, it's not just, you know, dedicated to just what we've been doing that week. You know, might have product showcases or software showcases for one week.

[00:14:13.160] - Gordon
Yeah.

[00:14:13.610] - Taylor
Where we talk about one piece of software.

[00:14:16.340] - Gordon
Maybe something that solved a problem that we are looking, that we've recently solved, or maybe software that we've just come across and we think, "oh, that's going to be useful in the future." In fact, we'll make a note, I'm looking at some testimonial software that I've recently purchased that we can talk about next week. But it's very, very interesting at the moment. So I think that's about it for this week.

[00:14:45.440] - Taylor
Yeah.

[00:14:46.280] - Gordon
So thank you very much for joining us. This is all very new to us. We've not done this before, so we're still building it, we're still putting it together, finding a style. So currently you can find us on YouTube and Facebook.

[00:15:01.310] - Taylor
|I thought we were going for Vimeo?

[00:15:02.810] - Gordon
Yeah, the video will be on Vimeo, but we'll be promoting it, live streaming this on Facebook and on YouTube. So find us there. Don't know what the names are at the moment. Probably we'll put it on screen somewhere here.

[00:15:16.490] - Taylor
Yeah.

[00:15:16.910] - Gordon
So you should be able to see it.

[00:15:18.530] - Taylor
Hopefully have a website as well that we can build and...

[00:15:21.290] - Gordon
Yeah, if we get enough people watching and it becomes sort of something that you think is of interest, then let us know and we'll do more of these and then we can, we can build a website and people can follow us and hopefully you'll get something out of this. So let us know if there's anything in particular you want to ask us, any questions. And yeah, we'll see how we go.

[00:15:45.980] - Taylor
I've been Taylor from The Creative Tinker.

[00:15:48.320] - Gordon
And I've been Gordon from Drayson Design. We'll see you next week. Bye.

[00:15:52.800] - Taylor
Take care.