[00:00:10.320] - Gordon
Hello.
[00:00:10.740] - Taylor
Hello.
[00:00:11.220] - Gordon
My name's Gordon from Drayson Design.
[00:00:13.170] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from the The Creative Tinker.
[00:00:15.510] - Gordon
And welcome to "This Week With," a weekly podcast and vidcast where we talk about things that have affected our businesses over the last seven days. And here we are again. And I got it right that time. Did you notice?
[00:00:27.030] - Taylor
I did, yes.
[00:00:27.750] - Gordon
Last week, I sort of tripped up on what I was. It's weird, isn't it, when you do something over and over and over, how you can sort of forget it for no reason at all. I had something similar happen to me during this week, in fact.
[00:00:41.520] - Taylor
OK.
[00:00:42.420] - Gordon
So I was out doing a show, a close up magic show. And it's the first time I've done a lot of these tricks for, well about about fourteen months now. And even though I went through them all before I went out, just to make sure I remembered how to actually do them, it was so weird when I got there. I found that, you know, something that I've always done, I just completely forgot to do. And it meant that something was on the wrong, in the wrong place. And just so weird, isn't it?
[00:01:14.430] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:01:14.850]
And you do it again and again and again, and all of a sudden you have a mental block. Anyway, welcome, everybody. Anything happen of interest before we get to our topics with you this week?
[00:01:25.650] - Taylor
No, nothing in particular.
[00:01:27.510] - Gordon
OK, a couple of things with me. I submitted my tax return.
[00:01:34.290] - Taylor
Well done.
[00:01:34.290] - Gordon
Yeah, it is well done because it's, what are we now? Seven months before the time that I normally submit my accounts. Normally I get my accounts to the accountant sort of October, November time and she gets it done by sort of mid January and we submit it just in time for the self employment January 31st deadline, which is when I then also have to pay. But because last year was a little bit different and if you are a self-assessment tax payer, you will get a payment on account, which makes, which means that you're paying towards next year's tax bill for the previous year. And I wanted to make sure I was paying the right amount rather than an estimated amount that was based on my previous year's income, which was obviously a lot higher than what I've actually done in the last year.
[00:02:34.570] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:02:35.280] - Gordon
So we got that in. And I think it's the first time since I've been doing tax returns that I've got it in, you know before the previous payment. So you pay at the end of January, you pay at the end of July, which is why we needed to get it in now. So it's before the end of July. And I think it's the first time it's ever happened.
[00:02:53.670] - Taylor
I did mine in May, I believe. The beginning of May.
[00:02:57.660] - Gordon
Yes. So you can do it right after the what is it the?
[00:03:01.560] - Taylor
Tax year end?
[00:03:02.250] - Gordon
The tax year ends 4th of March?
[00:03:04.590] - Taylor
April.
[00:03:05.130] - Gordon
April, sorry, 4th of April. So you can do it from then. But I never have done. But it is a good idea to do so because - (video glitch) exactly, in, you know, six months time and you can plan for it, which is always a good thing. We like planning.
[00:03:20.340] - Taylor
Exactly.
[00:03:21.360] - Gordon
The other thing that I've been doing, is I've been taking apart our 3D printer.
[00:03:25.500] - Taylor
Have you?
[00:03:26.040] - Gordon
Yes. Well, you know this. We had a slight problem with adhesion; it wasn't sticking to the bed. And I do have a couple of upgrades that I've bought which need to go into the extruder head, which is the bit that melts the plastic before it squirts it out again. And so, yeah, we've only had it just over a month now?
[00:03:51.010] - Taylor
About that. Yeah.
[00:03:51.540] - Gordon
And already I'm taking it apart to put new bits in. And I've been watching some YouTube videos to find out how to do it. And it's, you know, I don't know how people managed to do things before YouTube was around because...
[00:04:03.720] - Taylor
Manuals.
[00:04:04.650] - Gordon
Well yeah, manuals, but also I guess in some respect is, you've got lots of different YouTube videos with different opinions and different ways of doing things, which is probably very similar to how it was before YouTube when you sort of went to a shop, or a person to ask them to do it.
[00:04:21.240] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:04:21.570] - Gordon
Because they had the knowledge and again, different people would have different ways and opinions as to how it should be...
[00:04:26.460] - Taylor
People broke more stuff, basically because they were experimenting and trying to figure out how to do it.
[00:04:32.140] - Gordon
That's true. But you did end up with people who were, you know, really good and expert at everything, because everyone would take their things to that person to get fixed or repaired, whereas now you just hold onto your own stuff and you just put videos on YouTube as to how to fix that stuff. So you become an expert on a smaller number of things, I guess. Anyway, onto today's topic. So Taylor, would you like to start?
[00:04:58.770] - Taylor
Yeah. So this week I had my BNI presentation, and it was good.
[00:05:07.050]
So do you want to explain what the presentation's all about. Why? Why do you do a presentation?
[00:05:12.680] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:05:13.670] - Gordon
How often do you do them?
[00:05:13.670] - Taylor
Yeah, every week we have kind of, everyone gets like a slot in essence and yes, everyone gets a slot to just go in a bit more detail about, you know, who they are, what they do, and kind of just more information about about them and their business. Because normally you get about 60 seconds. Um sorry, last week, my bad I got mixed up. It was last week but it's come around very, very quickly because I had BNI yesterday, that's why. But yeah, we kind of yeah, you get more than sixty seconds, you get like a ten minute presentation and yeah, you get to kind of tell people more about your business. And we had our visitor day, last, yeah, last week, which basically we invited people from the High Street. So we had lots of different shops, things like that that attended. And yeah, it was really interesting.
[00:06:07.820] - Gordon
So you did your presentation on the same day as Visitor's Day.
[00:06:12.860] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:06:13.220] - Gordon
So you got extra people watching your presentation.
[00:06:16.730] - Taylor
I did.
[00:06:16.730] - Gordon
So how often do your presentations take place? I mean, you've got X number of people in the chapter.
[00:06:23.240] - Taylor
It's about every... Well we've got about 17 members so about every 17, 18 weeks, I guess.
[00:06:30.410] - Gordon
Ok.
[00:06:30.750] - Taylor
Give or take.
[00:06:32.510] - Gordon
And what does your, what did your presentation present?
[00:06:37.500] - Taylor
Yeah, so I kind of, I spoke about how I, why I set up my business, how I got there. So kind of the fact that I'd finished college and, you know, things like that. I went through why people would want a website and then also kind of, you know, what your website should include and things to, just kind of tips and stuff. And then I kind of had taken screenshots of our members websites that I had done and had built. Some of them hadn't been fully finished, but they were at a good enough point that people kind of got the idea and could see. And I also went back and got their previous websites to kind of give a comparison to show, you know, this is what I, what I've done and, you know, where they were before, where they started and kind of where we've come to now. And a lot of people were, you know, I think quite impressed. And also the fact that, you know, a lot of people that were, that I'd done the work for how, were saying great things and saying, "yeah, you know, Taylor's done a great job" and things like that, which obviously helps.
[00:07:36.020] - Gordon
That's really nice. And did you get any immediate enquiries or do you think this is an ongoing thing that you'll get...
[00:07:41.510] - Taylor
I think it's just an ongoing thing and just telling people a bit more about what I do and... Apparently people found it interesting, which, you know, is also always the best thing because, you know, I find it interesting, but I don't know if it's interesting to other people.
[00:07:54.890] - Gordon
And what's really interesting about doing this talk is that, the number one fear for people everywhere is speaking in public.
[00:08:06.950] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:08:07.580] - Gordon
And as a self-employed person, you have to speak in public. You have to tell people about what you do. Otherwise, it's very, very difficult to get new business in.
[00:08:18.140] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:08:19.520] - Gordon
And so, you know, I grew up doing amateur dramatics and theatre and stage and and you get quite good at performing. That's how I look at talking in public, it's a performance. And so I you know, I have the skills that I've learnt to be able to do that. But someone like yourself, that's a lot more difficult. So how did you feel it was for you talking to people for ten minutes straight? I mean, that could scare an awful lot of people.
[00:08:51.740] - Taylor
I mean, I've done it before. I've done it a couple of times. I think the main thing was that I think I felt ok about it because I was talking about a subject that I was the most qualified to speak about, in the entire room. And so that, I think was kind of helpful to me because I knew in the back of my head I'm not going to have anyone trying to question what I say or anything, because I'm the most knowledgeable in that situation. If it was you know, in a different situation where I was doing a talk to other web developers, maybe then I probably would be a bit more nervous because anything I say, I know I'm going to be judged, or people are going to have their own opinions on things I say or things or what I think about. So I think that would be more scary. But I mean, we did it over Zoom. So it wasn't you know, I didn't really have to look at the audience per se, if I didn't want to just turn the cameras off and just, yeah, just look to my presentation.
[00:09:44.570] - Gordon
Which if you were doing it in real life, you should always look at...
[00:09:48.680] - Taylor
Yeah, of course.
[00:09:48.680] - Gordon
People individually and make sure that you make people feel like you're including them in your talk.
[00:09:53.930] - Taylor
Yeah, exactly.
[00:09:54.920] - Gordon
Very good. Well, that sounds like an achievement really. Well done.
[00:09:58.970] - Taylor
Yeah, it was good. I enjoyed it.
[00:10:02.030] - Gordon
Good.
[00:10:02.030] - Taylor
How about you for this week?
[00:10:03.530] - Gordon
So my topic this week is positioning. So positioning is a very interesting thing when you're talking about your business. So how to position your company. Now, what I mean by positioning is, what sort of type of customer are you going after?
[00:10:22.810] - Taylor
An avatar.
[00:10:24.910] - Gordon
Yes. Yeah, exactly. Sorry you caught me, I was thinking of the film then. But yeah. I was thinking, "blue people, why's that got anything to do with positioning?"
[00:10:34.750] - Taylor
Unless you're The Blue Man Group?
[00:10:35.710] - Gordon
Well, yeah, I guess so. And so yes. Position's really important. And it's something that you should look at for your business when you start doing, when you start your business, but also, you know, as you go through your business because your business does change.
[00:10:53.800] - Taylor
Yeah, I know a lot of people that, you know, they started their, I mean, I have quite a few people actually that I'm doing websites for, and they started their business with this one target audience, and they're now like moving their focus into looking to a different target audience. And so they wanted their website to reflect that, for example.
[00:11:10.570] - Gordon
Yeah, and that's a really good point, which I'll come to in a second. So positioning yourself for a particular target audience means that you need to be able to talk to that audience in their language. You need to appeal to that audience. You need them to desire what it is that you sell or you do. And you need them to talk about what you do with other people that are your target market. And the chances are that, if you do a job for a particular type of customer, then they will talk to other people that are going to be very similar to themselves. So they are going to be passing on your name, your details; telling them how they felt about the product or the service that you supplied. And you will find yourself getting a similar sort of customer each time.
[00:12:07.690] - Taylor
Yeah. So, I mean, a good example is, I have a couple of contacts who are quite high up in kind of the business industry, like CEOs and things like that. And the type of clients that they refer to me are those same types of people, these bigger clients, these more high executive people. And, you know, I'm kind of right at the top in terms of the ladder of the communication that I, the people I talk to. And, you know, it's good because, you know, if I wanted more of that type of work, then I have then more connections to be able to go and reach more of those people. Whereas, you know, if I was going for local businesses, then obviously I'm going to get more of that.
[00:12:45.970] - Gordon
So if you're aiming for sort of CEOs and so forth, everything about your company needs to be positioned to attract that sort of person. So your website needs to be the sort of website that that person would be attracted to. Your printed stationery, business cards...
[00:13:07.720] - Taylor
Your branding.
[00:13:08.620] - Gordon
Letterheads, the whole branding, everything. Also...
[00:13:12.160] - Taylor
The social media that you are on.
[00:13:13.780] - Gordon
Yes, social media very much so.
[00:13:16.810] - Taylor
CEOs are going to be spending less time on Instagram and Pinterest than they are going to be on LinkedIn and things like that.
[00:13:23.470] - Gordon
So maybe LinkedIn is where your customer base is hanging out. So maybe that's where you do all of your social media. But also how you present yourself as well. So if you are wanting to go after CEOs, you don't want to turn up to a meeting necessarily, you might do, but you don't want to turn up necessarily in sort of shabby jeans and a T-shirt, because that's not the sort of person that they are likely to trust their business to.
[00:13:52.390] - Taylor
Yeah, I think it also comes down to your branding. If you're branding is very playful and colourful and fun, but you still want to go for the CEO types people, as long as they know that one of the qualities that you're going to provide is of good, top quality but they know that that's the branding that you give off, you know if you are a kind of an agency that is targeting, you know, out of the box ideas and very, very modern designs and very, very functional, interactive things, you're going to have a much more playful vibe than you are if you have a corporate website. But people that come to you, know that's what they're going to get.
[00:14:28.990] - Gordon
But they won't expect you to be wearing a t-shirt from ASDA, or a pair of jeans from Matalan.
[00:14:37.150] - Taylor
Yeah, but you may not be wearing a suit, for example. You may be wearing casual smart I guess.
[00:14:41.390] - Gordon
But you may be wearing, you know, Armani jeans or whatever. You know, it all depends on your customer base as well and who you're going after. So positioning is really, really important. And it's, as I said before, it's really important to decide where you want to focus your attention and who, what type of customer you want to get. And if, for example, you sort of decide to take a customer that isn't your target audience, or your target market, is that going to affect your business on, you know going forward? Are these people going to then tell their friends and you're going to get a lot more enquiries for sort of maybe lower priced jobs, or jobs that you don't actually want to do?
[00:15:28.620] - Taylor
It doesn't enhance your business and make, help you grow because it's lower than what you know, you want to take projects for.
[00:15:36.690] - Gordon
So it's, and it's really difficult to do. But sometimes if you are aiming for a certain type of customer, you have to say "no" to other customers that don't allow your company to go in the direction you want to go in. And that's really difficult to do.
[00:15:53.670] - Taylor
I'm finding that recently, you know. I've had a couple of times where people's budgets are not at the level that, you know, that I charge, and or they just want a basic site. And it's one not really worth my time because of the bigger projects that I do; it just takes away time that I can spend on it.
[00:16:12.250] - Gordon
Yeah.
[00:16:12.480] - Taylor
But also, you know, I don't want to be getting those types of projects. Nothing wrong with doing basic projects...
[00:16:18.920] - Gordon
It's just not what interests you.
[00:16:20.340] - Taylor
Yeah, it's not what interests me, it's not you know, I can make more money in other areas, especially kind of being, you know, selfish with your time as well. You know, there's lots of people on LinkedIn that reach out to you going, "hey, do you want to have a chat?" And it's always in their interest, not in yours. They always want to connect with you, because they're going to, hopefully you're going to give them business. It's never, "can I help you?"
[00:16:42.760] - Gordon
Yeah.
[00:16:43.330] - Taylor
And so, you know, I found that when I first started, I kind of took all the opportunities I got. But now I'm kind of understanding that no I need to be kind of selfish with my time because these people only have themselves at interest...
[00:16:55.200] - Gordon
Time is money.
[00:16:56.160] - Taylor
And not trying to help me in any way. They're just trying to help themselves.
[00:17:00.180] - Gordon
Yeah, that's not always true. But it's mostly true.
[00:17:03.480] - Taylor
For the most part.
[00:17:03.960] - Gordon
It's mostly true. So that is really important. So, yes. As you've just discovered yourself, then, it's really difficult to sort of turn away a customer who wants to give you money. But you're doing it for the betterment of your company and to allow you to get to the point that you want to get to.
[00:17:23.460] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:17:23.760] - Gordon
And that's why you should look very carefully at your positioning and look at everything around your business, including the branding and the website and even how you talk on the phone, for example.
[00:17:38.700] - Taylor
The type of people that you employ.
[00:17:40.980] - Gordon
The type of people, yeah, that's a good point. Are the people you employ, are they going to be the sort of people that will work well with your chosen demographic? So just look at everything. Just take a step back from your business every now and then, just maybe every few years. Take a step back from your business and look at it as an overview and say, "right, ok, that bit does not match what I need it to do. And that's the bit I need to bring up to the standard that will match everything else." And that's something that I've been doing with my Pip Kennedy branding recently. I've upped all that, because I want to head for higher branded, um...
[00:18:28.230] - Taylor
Target market.
[00:18:28.800] - Gordon
Target market. And so I have to make sure I'm going to appeal to them. And that's the way to do it. It's a really interesting topic and exercise. In fact, just finding out what your target market are looking for as well, is actually sometimes really difficult. If you know your target market well, then it's not difficult at all. But if it's a market you want to get into, you have to ramp up to it, rather than just say, "that's the only type of person I'm going to work for." You've got to get to that point and build your expertise and your experience, until you're ready for them.
[00:19:14.190] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:19:15.450] - Gordon
So that is my little sort of tip about positioning based on my current experience and the experience you're going through at the moment as well.
[00:19:26.190] - Taylor
Exactly.
[00:19:27.480] - Gordon
So that's it from me. Anything from you?
[00:19:29.520] - Taylor
No, that's all from me this week
[00:19:31.260] - Gordon
Well, thank you very much for joining us. As always, we can be found on YouTube and Facebook, please like, share, and subscribe.
[00:19:39.390] - Taylor
You can also go to our website: thisweekwith.co.uk, where you can find all of our past episodes on there.
[00:19:45.480] - Gordon
And I'm very pleased to say that all of Season 2 episodes on YouTube, now have translation, subtitles in English, Spanish, German and French. And the website has all of the transcripts for Season 2 on the individual pages. So you can go and see exactly what we said or you can use the search facility and it will find words within the transcript, which makes the content a lot easier to find.
[00:20:24.160] - Taylor
Yes, it does.
[00:20:24.840] - Gordon
From now on. So thank you for joining us. We will be back with you at 1pm next Friday. Until then, my name is Gordon and I'm from Drayson Design.
[00:20:36.250] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.
[00:20:39.040] - Gordon
Goodbye.
[00:20:39.550] - Taylor
Bye.
