[00:00:08.880] - Gordon
Hello.
[00:00:09.330] - Taylor
Hello.
[00:00:09.750] - Gordon
My name's Gordon from Drayson Design.
[00:00:11.730] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.
[00:00:14.040] - Gordon
And welcome to "This Week With Taylor and Gordon," a weekly podcast and vidcast where we talk about things that have been happening in the last seven days for our business and how we've overcome them. Challenges and news, all sorts of things. And, as always, it's been a very busy week. We don't seem to stop do we?
[00:00:34.990] - Taylor
Yeah, I actually took a rest. I spent the weekend kind of off as much as I could, apart from kind of urgent, kind of urgent things. I didn't do any work over Saturday or Sunday, which felt nice, but also kind of felt a bit guilty. And I had loads of stuff to do. But it was nice because I haven't taken a break for quite a few months.
[00:00:58.170] - Gordon
The thing is, most people who work for a company will have Monday to Friday working, that's the average, and then they'll have the weekend off to spend time on doing what they like to do, or spending time with the family. So don't feel guilty about not working at a weekend. There's many, many weekends I haven't worked in the past and it's nice.
[00:01:18.120] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:01:18.870] - Gordon
What you want to try and do is get your business to a point when you do only work Monday to Friday and you don't have to work.
[00:01:25.000] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:01:25.380] - Gordon
Any other times, that's the way to go.
[00:01:27.830] - Taylor
I also enjoy working. So that's why I spend my weekends because I work on my own projects and that's normally building websites because I have my own projects that I enjoy doing. Which isn't work related but still does the same thing basically.
[00:01:42.780] - Gordon
Yeah. No, I completely understand and I'm the same.
[00:01:47.080] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:01:47.790] - Gordon
So, let's talk about the two things that we want to talk about today. Do you want to start or shall I?
[00:01:54.690] - Taylor
You can start this week.
[00:01:55.680] - Gordon
OK, so we mentioned a few weeks ago about "Pip Kennedy," a new website that I'm rebuilding. It's not a new website. It's a site I'm rebuilding. And I said that I would explain to you why I have a different name. And so I thought I'd talk about that today. So as you may or may not know, I am a magician as well. And I go out and do children's shows under the name "Gordon's Magic." And I also go out under the name "Pip Kennedy" when I'm performing for adults. Now, that's not adult adult shows. It shows for adults where the audience is primarily adult based. And there's a reason why I have completely different names, and that's because of marketing. So I was finding as a children's entertainer, that I would have my customers, that I'd been to entertain their children, they would come to me and they would say, "do you know a proper magician? We've got a fortieth birthday" or "we've got a banquet coming up and we'd like to have someone come and do some magic around the tables. Do you know anyone?" And I was like, "yeah, me" and they're going, "well no, you do children's entertaining. You're like a clown, aren't you?" I'm not like a clown. I'm definitely a magician. But that was the perception in their mind. They thought I just did magic for children, because that's all they'd seen. And that makes sense.
[00:03:31.000] - Taylor
Yeah, because it's hard for, especially if you kind of if you're an actor and you do kind of children's birthday parties, you know, and you do like, maybe like princesses or things like that, people do like dress up as princesses and do parties like that. You know, you're seen as a children's kind of actor, I guess.
[00:03:49.120] - Gordon
I don't think I've ever dressed up in a dress before.
[00:03:51.160] - Taylor
No, not you. But other people.
[00:03:52.550] - Gordon
As a princess. But you know, there's always possibilities there.
[00:03:55.690] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:03:56.000] - Gordon
Yeah. We could do it.
[00:03:57.070] - Taylor
You've done an Ugly Sister.
[00:03:58.180] - Gordon
I did do an Ugly Sister in pantomime. Yes, that's true. I got told I had the face for it. Yeah. I don't think that was a compliment.
[00:04:06.640] - Taylor
No.
[00:04:07.900] - Gordon
So anyway, the reason that I decided to come up with a brand new name is so I could separate my marketing. So that I could market my children's parties as "Gordon's Magic" to parents, and to clubs, and places where there would be a party for children. And I could have a completely separate identity and marketing campaign and look and name, which is in my case "Pip Kennedy," which would then target adults, and corporates, and banquets for clubs and golf clubs and that sort of thing. And by doing that, if you did a search for "Pip Kennedy," you would only ever find all of my information about performing for adults. And if you did a search for "Gordon's Magic," you'd only ever find my information about performing for children's parties. And by doing that, I've separated my two markets completely and making sure that the right message gets to the right people. And it's not confusing. I, um, for some reason, people have in their mind that children's entertainers can't do adults, and in fact, that is true for some entertainers that I know. There are some children's entertainers who are amazing children's entertainers, but that's what they do. They don't do any other type of magic, whereas I'm more of a family entertainer. So I have my children's show and I have my adult show and I have my close up where I go round tables, and they are very different and they have different markets and different target audiences. So that is the reason I separated them out and it works really well. So take from this whatever you will. If you have different products with different customer bases, completely different customer bases, then you might want to consider separating them out, maybe having different websites like I do. Maybe having different email marketing, maybe even a different company name. Maybe, who knows.
[00:06:17.170] - Taylor
Trying to think of people that have done that, or big companies that have split up. Maybe, for example, you know, people have separate websites for wholesalers. If you're a, if you sell something, you're a 'B2C,' so business to consumer, but you also have 'B2B,' which is business to business, you would have completely different websites because you're targetting...
[00:06:37.090] - Gordon
Well, you don't want the consumers seeing the prices you're selling as wholesale.
[00:06:40.660] - Taylor
But it's more of the fact that you target different people depending on what type of people you're selling to.
[00:06:46.990] - Gordon
Agreed, yep.
[00:06:47.560] - Taylor
And the different audience that you're trying to portray yourself to.
[00:06:52.000] - Gordon
And by having different websites, you can treat them differently. So on the 'B2B,' where you're selling wholesale, you can have all of your images that the businesses that are re-selling your products can then use, which obviously you don't want on the consumer based website. Plus, you've got all your prices, which could have different breakpoints depending on how many people purchase in one go. You could have 'drop shipping' as an option where you send it out to the customer on behalf of the business.
[00:07:25.630] - Taylor
It's all about trying to make the customer or the person that you are selling to, whether that be a wholesaler or whether it be two different target audiences. You want to make them feel special and not just generic, which is why I think you've split it up. So, you know, you could create one website that says, you know, "I do children's parties, but I also do stage magic and kind of close up magic" and things like that. But, you know, you don't feel special because you kind of think, oh, he kind of does everything.
[00:07:53.030] - Gordon
I'm not a specialist in that. I'm a jack of all trades.
[00:07:56.450] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:07:56.790] - Gordon
And nobody wants a jack of all trades. They always want a specialist. One story, just really quickly, that comes to mind is if you are looking to buy a new set of kitchen knives and you go to the high street, not at the moment, but normally. You go to the high street and there's two shops next to each other. One is a shop like John Lewis, let's say, who have a really good name, and they sell all sorts of things. And then the shop next door is "Kitchen Knives R Us" and all they sell are kitchen knives. Now, the chances are if you're looking for kitchen knives, that is the shop you will go into first. So that's why I have two different marketing, sort of lanes, if you like. I've got one for the children's magic, one for the adult magic. And by keeping them separate, I can target them completely differently.
[00:08:54.090] - Taylor
OK.
[00:08:55.200] - Gordon
So yeah. If you have a business that has such different target groups, then it may be something that you want to consider for your own business. Splitting them up, maybe having different websites.
[00:09:11.440] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:09:12.180] - Gordon
Maybe just splitting up the one site that you have and having sort of sections that you can direct people towards. But it does allow you to talk in the right language and give the right information to the right target audience. And that's the reason I do it.
[00:09:29.220] - Taylor
You want to make them feel special, don't you?
[00:09:31.200] - Gordon
You do. Yeah.
[00:09:32.760] - Taylor
So, yeah, it's good.
[00:09:34.950] - Gordon
So that's how I do my magic side, my magic marketing. So Taylor, it's been busy for you, hasn't it? What's been going on with you?
[00:09:46.900] - Taylor
So I've been kind of in new technology all week. I have upgraded to 'Big Sur,' which is the new Mac OS operating system.
[00:09:56.340] - Gordon
Which is quite a big change, isn't it?
[00:09:58.080] - Taylor
Yeah. So there's lots of things that have been updated. New UI really, just kind of polished off, I guess. A lot more compatibility with, like in sync with their own apps. They've updated all the app icons and things like that.
[00:10:12.510] - Gordon
It's got a fresh new look to it. New sounds.
[00:10:15.810] - Taylor
Yeah. And the reason for this is for the new M1 chip that they're bringing out. Which kind of leads onto the second thing which is, I bought a, I've ordered the new M1 MacBook. And there's a couple of reasons for that, mainly for improving my productivity and reducing the bottlenecks.
[00:10:36.390] - Gordon
Yeah, because it's interesting you say that because the, all the reviews that we've been watching and that are online from people who've had the machine for like a week longer than everyone else, have all said how much faster and snappier it is. They've put up benchmarks to show how quickly they can achieve tasks compared to the Macs that are available at the moment.
[00:10:57.980] - Taylor
Yeah they're, the current M1 MacBooks which have less...
[00:11:02.510] - Gordon
There aren't any M1 MacBooks.
[00:11:04.170] - Taylor
Yes, but the ones that the benchmarks, are doing better than the current Intel i9 computers for the 16". Which are kind of the top range MacBooks, that they have to offer and they're competing with that, sometimes even surpassing them. So it's really interesting because kind of reducing bottlenecks, one increases your productivity and the kind of effect that has is you can increase the amount you earn in your...
[00:11:34.620] - Gordon
Yes. So the other thing is that, if you've got your computer and you're waiting for it to catch up to you, waiting. You get a little beachball, which you get on the Mac, which basically says, "just wait, I'm finishing something up." If that takes sort of 30 seconds, that's not a lot, that's not a lot of time, it doesn't take much. But if that happens sort of 30 times in a day and then every day you get the same thing, at the end of the week, you might have that time that you're waiting, adding up to, say, an hour. Which, you know, is an hour's worth of work that you could have done in that time that you haven't been able to because you've been waiting for the computer to do what it's doing.
[00:12:15.000] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:12:15.360] - Gordon
So if it speeds that up, you're gaining that extra time, which you can then use to work with.
[00:12:21.450] - Taylor
Yeah. And also the kind of, being able to run applications kind of side by side. So at the moment I can run, you know, "Adobe XD" and "Photoshop." However my kind of computer comes to a kind of a halt if I have both of them open for a long period of time, purely because of the amount of RAM that I have and memory, it just doesn't have enough capacity to be able to run them at the same time. Which can be a pain, because if I want to jump between Photoshop and XD, so I'm building a website in XD and I'm kind of like "oh I'll create a graphic to put into the XD," I've either got to kind of re-open Photoshop again, which again, I'm having to wait for Photoshop to open, do what I need to do, and then close it back down again so that I can still run my computer at a semi-decent speed, which is acceptable. And being able to, having to do that does kind of get frustrating because, you know, it can handle it, but it's just, it's... being able to do it and reducing the bottlenecks.
[00:13:19.020] - Gordon
So I see another problem here, though, Taylor. If you're running XD and Photoshop, you've got a MacBook Pro that's got a 13" screen and the screen is measured diagonally, so that's that sort of size. I mean that's not a big enough size to run XD and Photoshop is it?
[00:13:37.320] - Taylor
So it means I have to keep switching back and forth, so kind of using shortcuts to jump back and forth. I do have it hooked up to a 22" monitor, which I have when I'm using it at home, which is great because I can have two different things on different displays.
[00:13:51.880] - Gordon
As a second screen.
[00:13:52.840] - Taylor
Yeah. So I can have Adobe XD on one screen and I can have all my reference material on another screen, which works great.
[00:14:00.130] - Gordon
That's good. That works well.
[00:14:01.420] - Taylor
However...
[00:14:01.910] - Gordon
You don't need anything more do you?
[00:14:03.220] - Taylor
Well, I'm upgrading to a ultra wide 34" monitor, which, if you kind of put it into perspective, is about, is a 21:9 aspect ratio. And if you were to kind of put it into something you can kind of visualise, imagine having three semi decent wide browsers on one display, one one after the other. It's about 80, 85cms wide in length, which is absolutely huge. But it allows me, it will allow me to basically do more without having to switch between, again, cutting down on the bottlenecks and improving my productivity because I can have Adobe XD on in the middle. I could have reference material to the left, I can have any notes on the right. I can have Google open in another tab, so if I need to Google something or if I want some inspiration or whatever. And then on my MacBook as well, I can have kind of messages open with replying to emails and things like that.
[00:15:07.180] - Gordon
So you're going to be forever doing this. You'll be watching a tennis match.
[00:15:11.080] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:15:12.040] - Gordon
Because you can't get the whole of the screen because it is ultra wide, all in one field of view, which is going to be interesting.
[00:15:19.630] - Taylor
So, but it should hopefully improve my productivity. So I don't have to jump back and forth really. And it's good for typing as well, if you're ever copying something, you'll know this. If you can kind of touch type, you can be you can have Word open on one side of it and you can have whatever you're trying to copy or take notes from on the other, and you can just as you're reading it, you can just type it. And because you have both of them open, you can basically multitask.
[00:15:48.460] - Gordon
And this isn't really new to you, is it, because you've had three screens in the past?
[00:15:54.010] - Taylor
Yes. So I used to have three monitors when I had my iMac. I had two monitors and my iMac.
[00:16:00.160] - Gordon
And your iMac was in the middle, if I remember rightly.
[00:16:02.140] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:16:02.770] - Gordon
So you had a screen here, screen here and then your MacBook in the middle.
[00:16:07.520] - Taylor
Yeah. And I used...
[00:16:09.340] - Gordon
Was it? No, it was an iMac you had at the time wasn't it?
[00:16:10.970] - Taylor
Yeah, that's what I said.
[00:16:11.680] - Gordon
Yeah sorry.
[00:16:12.610] - Taylor
But most of the time I only used the two screens, because the other one was used for playing video games. However, I would kind of toggle it between playing video games and using it as a third display. And it worked really well. But I just, I upgraded I kind of sold it and upgrade to a more powerful machine and I kind of, I'd sold it because I upgraded to better monitors, which I, one of them I sold to you.
[00:16:35.770] - Gordon
Yeah, I noticed that. And so, he sold it to me, my own son selling me his monitor. And what's really annoying is I think I bought that monitor for him in the first place, so I paid twice for that monitor. So...
[00:16:49.630] - Taylor
But it's really, really good. And kind of being able to have things across different screens really does improve your productivity.
[00:16:57.970] - Gordon
It's true, actually. I will talk about this in another episode, but you did convince me to get a second screen, even though I already had one.
[00:17:07.240] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:17:07.630] - Gordon
But I will explain that further in another episode.
[00:17:11.380] - Taylor
So yeah, that's kind of what I've been.
[00:17:12.790] - Gordon
But you're right, it is useful to have a second screen because you end up with more space.
[00:17:17.080] - Taylor
And it's all about how much real estate you can squeeze out of your computer, really. Which is why people have, you see people that have like six monitors, where you have like three and then three on top. And it's all, I mean, I think that's a bit overkill. But some people use...
[00:17:32.230] - Gordon
It depends on what you're doing. Always.
[00:17:33.520] - Taylor
If you have a TV, for example, you can you know, you can hook that up as well if you're a, like a gamer.
[00:17:38.950] - Gordon
For example, some people like a video editor... Professional video editors, they have a monitor that is calibrated, that they only show the output on. So they'll have a monitor somewhere here, for example. And then the editing monitor is here. So as they're editing, they can see what their changes are doing and what effect it has on a properly calibrated monitor. So they get the colour right; they get the aspect right; they get everything they want to in frame showing. So there are good reasons for having more than one monitor, and that's just one of them.
[00:18:16.570] - Taylor
So, yeah.
[00:18:17.050] - Gordon
Stocks and shares is another.
[00:18:18.670] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:18:19.150] - Gordon
Yeah. If you look at any of the, sort of videos or photos of people in the stock exchange, you'll see they've got monitors all over the place because they need to know when a stock changes immediately. They, you know, if they wait just a, you know, a minute, then they've probably lost the best price they could have. So, yeah, it's getting the information you need at the right time.
[00:18:42.260] - Taylor
Yep. So that's everything I think this week.
[00:18:45.860] - Gordon
That's it. Great! Well, thank you so much for joining us. As always, if you've enjoyed this, then please like, share and subscribe. You can find us on YouTube and Facebook.
[00:18:56.810] - Taylor
We also have our website: thisweekwith.co.uk, where you can see all past episodes, both the audio and the video, as well as the show notes. And we have a 'rate the podcast' in the bottom right corner, which if you enjoy this, then please do share it with other people, give it a rate. We do this just because it's kind of like a journal and we just want to try and help people with our experiences, both the good and the bad that we've found, as kind of working for ourselves and kind of our experiences. So if you do enjoy this, do let people know because, you know, we just try and help people really. And if more, the more people we can help, the better, really.
[00:19:33.440] - Gordon
Yeah. And that reminds me, I've just recently been speaking to a friend of mine called Marcus, and he tells me that he watches these episodes. So thank you for watching, Marcus. A little bit of a hello and a shout out to you. And if you'd like a shout out, leave a message in the comments and we'll see what we can do.
[00:19:51.620] - Taylor
Wonderful.
[00:19:52.610] - Gordon
Thank you for watching. We'll see you next week at one o'clock. My name's Gordon, I'm from Drayson Design.
[00:19:58.010] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.
[00:20:00.200] - Gordon
See you next week. Bye bye.
[00:20:01.820] - Taylor
Bye.
