[00:00:09.970] - Gordon
Hello.
[00:00:10.460] - Taylor
Hello.
[00:00:11.010] - Gordon
My name's Gordon from Drayson Design.
[00:00:12.980] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from The Creative Thinker.
[00:00:15.270] - Gordon
And welcome to "This Week With Taylor and Gordon, a weekly podcast and vidcast where we talk about things that have affected our businesses over the last seven days. And thank you for joining us.
[00:00:27.870] - Taylor
Welcome back.
[00:00:28.680] - Gordon
Apologies for not being with you last week. We just had a few things going on, and it was just impossible for us to do our show. So we do apologise for that. We hope nobody was too disappointed. And hopefully you'll enjoy what we have to talk about today. So first of all, any news? There is some big news, actually, isn't there? The biggest news. Is that Twitter has been purchased.
[00:00:57.050] - Taylor
Yep.
[00:00:57.050] - Gordon
Or it will have been purchased. It's been agreed by...
[00:01:01.970] - Taylor
Elon Musk.
[00:01:02.670] - Gordon
Elon Musk. Yeah. I was thinking of his name, I was thinking Musk that's not right. Elon Musk has bought Twitter. So, it's very interesting because lots of people have said that they're going to leave Twitter now that it's been bought by Elon. I don't know why. I don't know the reasons for it. He has said that he's going to be a bit more laid back with the content and allowing people to write a bit more of what they want. The EU have said, "well, that's all fine, but we have rules in place, which means that you can't say what you want. You, as Twitter, need to make sure you moderate certain things and make sure that fake news is not being transmitted by your platform." So lots of interesting things happening. And he spent, I think it was $44 billion buying Twitter. $44 billion. That's just madness, isn't it? Probably just pocket change for him, I guess.
[00:02:07.870] - Taylor
Probably.
[00:02:08.990] - Gordon
Any news from your side?
[00:02:10.680] - Taylor
Not from me, no.
[00:02:12.090] - Gordon
Okay. So we're going to get straight onto our topics for today. Shall I go first?
[00:02:16.960] - Taylor
Yeah, you can go.
[00:02:18.290] - Gordon
Every year we have a magic convention for children's entertainers. It's specific for children's entertainers, and it's called "Trix in the Stix." And it's spelled T-R-I-X and sticks is spelled S-T-I-X. So it's "Trix in the Stix." And the reason it's called that is because it is in the middle of nowhere. There is a hotel there. There is another hotel next door to it, and that's pretty much it. There's nothing else anywhere nearby. So it really is in the sticks. And it takes place over a day and the previous evening. So I'm going to sneeze, one second. Oh, dear. Pardon me. I've got hay fever and it's starting to kick in because of all the things growing outside because it's spring now. So apologies for that. So, yes, it takes place over a full day and the evening beforehand. And people have to stay in the hotel or the hotel next door if they want to go. And we have talks and shows and we meet up with other children's entertainers and we talk about children's entertaining. And I'm very glad that I am actually speaking at this event. I spoke at the last event that we did with my double act partner, Paul Longhurst, which if you've been a long time supporter of this channel, you will know because he's been in an episode a long time ago. And we spoke about a way to book shows, as a children's entertainer with PTA shows, which worked really well. And that was the last time we did it live, which was 2019. 2020 obviously didn't happen and 2021 we had a virtual one which was on Zoom. And this is the first time we've been back since 2019 and I'm speaking again. And I'm going to be speaking on software tools. So one of the things that gets me excited is looking for new tools and things that will help me, both in my business and personal life and things that I can play with; new shiny toys, if you like, in the software world. And there's a lot of entertainers who don't get at all excited by that sort of thing and so they're not really interested. But because I am interested in it and I research things quite a bit, I'm putting together a list of certain tools that I'm going to tell everyone about, and going to have a place where we can all talk about tools that we've found and that we've used and that we think might be of use and interest to other children's entertainers. And in fact, the group that we're going to create for this is going to be for all entertainers, not just children's entertainers, because a lot of it is very overlapping with other different types of entertainment. Now, the reason I mention this is not because I'm really pleased to be doing it, which I am, but it's more to do with the fact that by doing this, all of the attendees and the people who watch the talk will see me as being an expert in the field. It's a bit like becoming a published author. If you write a book and you have a book to your name on a certain subject, you become an expert in that field. And it's backed up by the fact you have a published book. Even if it's a self-published book, you still become, the authority is still there. And so this is one of the reasons that I like doing these talks, is because it positions me as a person who knows what they're talking about. And therefore, in the future, people with questions that are sort of in this realm will come to me, and quite often they'll ask me questions about it, they'll ask me to do things. They may even use my services as someone that they trust to do a good job. And so as far as marketing goes, it's a really good way of positioning yourself as an expert. And this is just one of the ways you can do it. Writing a book is another; doing any sort of speaking, whether it be at an event like I'm doing or on an online seminar, even if it's a local BNI, that sort of type of place. If you do a talk and you are an authority on something, you become the expert. And being the expert is worth a lot of money. People will seek you out and come to you because you're the expert. And it takes you out of the realm of being one of the people that people can hire. So, for example, if I were to be an expert in web design to a group of people, then I'm no longer going to be one of a few people that they can contact to quote, for web design, it will be a choice of either me or one of the others. So all of the others are then grouped into one group and then I'm separate on my own. I get a much higher chance of getting the work than all of the others put together, which is a really good position to be in. And it's something I like to do with the magic as well. So as a children's entertainer, for example, I like to be the children's entertainer, the authority on it. And so again, when people in this area are looking for a children's entertainer, it's going to be, "shall we have Gordon, or shall we have one of the others?" So I get a 50/50 chance at getting the booking between me and everybody else, which is a really high percentage. And one of the downsides with being the expert or the authority is that people think you're going to be more expensive, and that could very well be the case. But not always. But the very fact that you can potentially get all this extra work by being an expert, I think outweighs any other disadvantage that may come from this. So there you go. If you get the opportunity, become your expert in your field for a group of people, however big or small that group might be, because it will end up being good for you. Have you experienced this?
[00:09:18.680] - Taylor
Yes, so in the kind of web development groups that I'm in, a couple of them where I reply and comment to a lot of people, mainly in the Facebook groups, because I reply to people and give them solutions I'm kind of looked at as one of the experts in the group, and because of that, I've managed to get work from it. People asking me, "can you build this?" Or actually building relationships with other web developers and designers that have taken me on, not taking me on, but have used me multiple times on an ongoing basis. And so, yeah, it's been really good. And it's nice because like you said, it makes you stand out and looked upon. Anything you were to release is highly regarded because you already have that position and that status. So when I first launched something, it was okay, people were interested. But then anything else I've launched since then and just because I'm more well known, is very highly regarded and things like that. So it does kind of lend you to better opportunities, essentially. Because if you're... Say I release something for other web designers and developers, people are more likely to have trust in me for the price, say it's a couple of hundred pounds or so, people are more likely to be like, "okay, that's okay," because I've already built up that reputation.
[00:10:52.850] - Gordon
It's got a good name behind it.
[00:10:54.160] - Taylor
Whereas if you are someone that's maybe it's like your first or second post in a group, people are going to be like, "okay, you're asking for all this money, but do you have any evidence to back up what you're trying to sell and does what you do?" Or if you're trying to sell a service, again, do you have the kind of track record?
[00:11:12.110] - Gordon
Yeah.
[00:11:12.800] - Taylor
Essentially.
[00:11:14.850] - Gordon
That's really good. I'm glad it's worked for you as well. So there you go. I didn't really say this with that in mind, but Taylor has experienced the same, which is great news. So there you go.
[00:11:25.370] - Taylor
Doesn't always have to be though, you seeking to be an expert. So for me it very much just happened because I had an interest in the area and the subject and I was just trying to help people.
[00:11:39.000] - Gordon
You actually fell into it without realizing sort of the thinking behind it. You just ended up doing it instinctively.
[00:11:47.760] - Taylor
Yeah, I was just trying to be helpful and a good person to reply to other people's questions and bugs and issues. And because of that, people kind of put me up as one of the others that are kind of well known and experts in that area. So I didn't do it to get to that level but because of just kind of showing up and always replying to comments and questions, I kind of got there.
[00:12:15.020] - Gordon
It's a really good technique to think about and work out how you can apply it to what you do.
[00:12:23.010] - Taylor
Cool.
[00:12:23.600] - Gordon
Good. So what would you like to speak about today, Taylor?
[00:12:27.100] - Taylor
I think I've spoken about this before, but my personal website, something that I've had an ongoing battle with for the past three years or so, mainly because it's something that is never really finished and as soon as I save a page or a section of my site and I build out an integration, it's already out of date; because I'm always thinking about new ways to do something, new techniques, new technology just come along and you kind of think, "okay, that's probably a better way, but the way I have it set up and built doesn't allow for that." And so it requires a full rebuild or requires me to redo what I've done. And I got to a point where I was kind of quite happy with the website that I'd built. I started importing all of my data. So for people that don't know, I track a lot of data about myself. It's called "quantitative self" if you're interested in finding out more about it. And essentially, you track things. So what you eat, so your calories; your sleep; all the activities you do, so if you do a bike ride or walking or running, things like that; if you write articles and stuff or write notes; social media posts; countries that you've visited, all of this stuff is things that I track. Most of it is automated so it comes from the service that I use and gets imported into my website. And the reason I do this is because if, to give an example I use Strava to track all of my bike rides, my dog walks, and my runs and things like that. If in ten years it is no longer in service, I will no longer have that data. So the reason for importing it is to give me access and to own my data, essentially. And so it means that in the future, if something better comes along or the service shuts down, I don't lose that data and I still have all of the data in the format that I want because I can merge it into my website in the way that I want it formatted. And I recently came across a website that was shared, and the guy does something very similar. He's created an app that he has on his phone that logs his current location in like an interval, something like five/ten minutes, and it gets sent to a server where he stores it and so he logs the coordinates and things like that. And he also tracks other things like air temperature and things like that on his website. Then when you load his website, the background, like image, is a scaled out view so maybe like a town view or map, of his current location.
[00:15:15.180] - Gordon
Which is fascinating because when we went to look at the site, when you showed it to me, he was actually on an aeroplane at the time. And so I sort of went, "really? Okay." So we refreshed, and sure enough, the background changed to a new map location, which was amazing.
[00:15:30.020] - Taylor
Yeah. So this guy does very, very similar. He tracks what he eats, what he drinks; all of his Twitter posts get put into his website; all of his bike rides; his walks; his taxis, is all logged on his app. And he has current stats like current whereabouts and what he's doing, but he also logs all of this other information. So he uses "Foursquare" to check in to places, and again, they get pushed to his website. And this is all automated. But what it means is that if he moves away in the future to another system, he still owns all the data, and he doesn't have multiple data sets in different apps. And it was really interesting just to look in to see how he built this and how he set it up. He actually uses WordPress, which is what I found quite interesting. And he just has a new post type for every different thing he tracks, so whether it be food, whether it be check-ins. Bookmarks is quite interesting. So if he finds something on the internet, he stores it, the link of the URL and the title in a post and he just submits it so then that just links to the post that he kind of bookmarked.
[00:16:41.530] - Gordon
I guess you could get a screenshot as well, couldn't you? If he wanted to.
[00:16:44.820] - Taylor
So he has a lot of interesting stuff, and it was really interesting to see how he had laid it out, set it up and managed everything mainly. And so that gave me quite a bit of inspiration to actually get my website redone and finished in a way that was manageable and scalable for the future. So the one thing that I struggled with previously was making it scalable. What if I want to add a new type of data set in there later? Can I do that? Well, the way I set it up, not really. Whereas now, because of the way I've seen him do it, using post types for all of his separate data sets, it makes it a lot more manageable. I want to add a new data set, add as a new post type. Yes, it's probably not the best way, and you probably could do it other ways, but it's the easiest way to manage that isn't going to be not as performant, essentially. And so I was starting to redo it, and I got pretty much most of the template and foundation built. It's mainly just now setting everything up to import the data, format the data, import it for archived existing data, and then set up all the automations so that it's easy, ongoing, and it just sits in the background and collects all the data.
[00:17:57.330] - Gordon
Sounds great, but I can see a lot of people who are watching or listening to this going, "why would you want to keep all of this data? Why do you want to collect it all? Who cares what you ate on a specific day or what you weighed?" Why do you want to keep all this information?
[00:18:17.190] - Taylor
I just find data really fascinating, especially... You can create graphs based on different things, so you can create hypothesis. So you can say, "was I eating more calories when I was working out at the gym or not?" You can very easily make a correlation. You can see the activity you're doing and compare it, and you can graph things like that. It's also just again, similar to the way that, the reason I started this podcast is, I want to be able to look back and see what have I done? How have I changed since when we first started? Which if you went back to episode one, you would be able to see a lot has changed. The background is pretty much the exact same, but the way that we are filming it, the way that we are kind of streaming it and creating the graphics; how the website's managed; our faces have changed.
[00:19:20.250] - Gordon
Transcriptions now as well. The translations on the YouTube videos.
[00:19:28.050] - Taylor
So a lot of things have changed, which is really interesting. I think it's an extension of what people use their Photo Gallery for. I think a lot of people take photos to make memories and to keep track of what they've done and what they've done that day. So you go to the Theatre, you take a photo just so if you look back and go, "okay, what did I do one year ago?" When you have different services that say, "one year ago today you did this." Similar to how Facebook does that.
[00:19:56.670] - Gordon
So it's a little bit like a personal journal. Personal online journal.
[00:20:02.860] - Taylor
Yeah, I think, yes. It's essentially that.
[00:20:05.310] - Gordon
It's meant for you, but if other people are interested, they can access it and view it as well.
[00:20:10.730] - Taylor
Yeah, I could very easily put this behind a password protected, so only I can see it if I wanted to. But I think it's quite interesting, especially for me. I've spent the past week going back just looking at this person's website just because I found it so interesting, because I was thinking, I was saying, "okay, he's just checked into an airport lounge. Okay he's now on this flight. He's just eaten this food." It does feel a bit weird because you're kind of like in their life, but not; but I just find it fascinating because you get to see a bit into what people do and what people get up to.
[00:20:47.240] - Gordon
And the other thing is, if people aren't interested in this sort of thing, they just won't visit the website. So it's only going to be viewed by people who are mildly interested in some way.
[00:20:56.640] - Taylor
Yeah, it's not something for me to try and monetize, not trying to gain any traction on SEO or anything like that. The blog posts and things like that are pretty much just for my pure interest that I find interesting. Any notes that I come across or things that I find interesting I will kind of share. But again, it's not for anyone else but me. That's not the reason I created it. It wasn't for me to go, "hey, look at my amazing life." It's for me to be able to go, "okay, this is what I was doing that day. That was a nice memory." Things like that.
[00:21:29.520] - Gordon
And do you know what, when you get married, have children, it might be the sort of thing that your children will get a bit of a kick out of. Being able to go into a specific day and see what you were thinking or where you were going, what you were doing, what you ate, that sort of thing. I've just thought of something else you can add to your post types, soda streams.
[00:21:52.680] - Taylor
So this was something that I was debating about and it doesn't make sense due to duplicated content. I want to create a separate site for the soda stream so we can have all of the data on a separate site, because it's currently stored in a spreadsheet so I could very easily do, create something very similar with my current website but in a new separate install.
[00:22:16.900] - Gordon
We can have an online portal for our soda stream usage.
[00:22:20.270] - Taylor
But the reason that I say it's duplicated content is because if I'm going to be importing all of my food and drinks that I consume, then having a soda stream and having the drinks that I have will be duplicated. Because I will already have tracked it inside of my calorie tracker and so by creating a new post for when I have a drink, it would be in there twice because the Cola would be there.
[00:22:46.240] - Gordon
Agreed.
[00:22:46.240] - Taylor
So that was the only reason I didn't.
[00:22:48.690] - Gordon
Makes sense.
[00:22:49.380] - Taylor
But yeah, I can always link to it and say, "look if you're interested in seeing my soda stream usage, or our family soda stream usage, you can check it out here." But I won't be logging it on my website just because it would be duplicated content. I don't see the...
[00:23:02.650] - Gordon
Makes perfect sense.
[00:23:03.950] - Taylor
Yeah, that was the reason I didn't. But yeah, I would still be able to have a log of everything that I've eaten that day, which I think would be quite interesting.
[00:23:13.360] - Gordon
So when it gets launched, you can tell everyone about it and tell them how to get to it if they want to see it.
[00:23:20.120] - Taylor
I've already technically launched it. The base framework is built, it's just now a matter of going through adding all the data, and setting up all the automations.
[00:23:28.670] - Gordon
Do you want to share the address if anyone is interested?
[00:23:32.040] - Taylor
So it's taylordrayson.com and you'll be able to see, there should be a picture of me in the top header. I kind of tried to make it look like a social media profile, something similar to like Facebook or Twitter, because I thought that was quite fitting. It's kind of like a profile of me.
[00:23:49.470] - Gordon
It's a journal.
[00:23:50.310] - Taylor
Yeah. And so yeah, you can check out the site, you can explore it. Currently, as of recording this, it only has my activities and my blog posts that I've written, but in the future it should hopefully have all of them in there and it should be kind of up to date. I'm looking at a way to be able to ping my phone location at intervals throughout a day, to also create like a /now page where it says where I currently am and what I'm currently doing, which I think would be quite interesting.
[00:24:29.230] - Gordon
Yeah, there may be security issues involved there, but yes, I understand the thinking behind it. You can find out how often you go to the gym and so on without actually doing anything. In fact, I think you can set up a geo fence and have something happen if you go to the gym so you could do that automatically as well. Anyway, that sounds really interesting. Go and have a look. If you've got any comments, leave them below and that is everything that I have to say.
[00:25:00.080] - Taylor
Same with me.
[00:25:00.990] - Gordon
So thank you for joining us. As always you can like, share, and subscribe on YouTube and on Facebook.
[00:25:06.980] - Taylor
You can also go to our website thisweekwith.co.uk to find all of our past episodes.
[00:25:12.590] - Gordon
And that's it for today. We look forward to seeing you next week, 1pm on Friday. Until then, my name's Gordon and I'm from Drayson Design.
[00:25:22.440] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.
[00:25:25.080] - Gordon
Goodbye.
[00:25:25.800] - Taylor
Bye.
