[00:00:10.320] - Gordon
Hello.
[00:00:10.680] - Taylor
Hello.
[00:00:11.130] - Gordon
My name's Gordon from Drayson Design.
[00:00:12.990] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.
[00:00:15.180] - Gordon
And welcome to "This Week With Taylor and Gordon," a weekly podcast where we talk about things that have affected our businesses as self-employed people, over the last seven days. And it's been a busy seven days again.
[00:00:28.170] - Taylor
Yes, always.
[00:00:29.160] - Gordon
Always a busy seven days. And something that we've found ourselves doing over the last week is working a lot more, late into the night, which we have spoken about before. It means that we end up getting up later, but it means for me, in fact, I get a lot done. Are you the same?
[00:00:48.330] - Taylor
Yeah, me too. I find that, you know, I don't get any emails from clients or anything because I send them throughout the day, and so I'm not distracted by them. There's not many people up either online. There's, I've got a couple of friends in America who are normally up and I chat with them, but apart from that, no one is really up. So I just get on with work, there's not that much else to do.
[00:01:09.450] - Gordon
So that works quite well for certain times. I don't recommend it long term. I don't think that's good for your health to be working just in the evenings. There are people who work at night only, but, you know, they have pretty much the whole day to recover. And I'm guessing they've worked their life around that lifestyle. But for every now and then working late in the night, you get into a sort of a vibe, don't you?
[00:01:34.560] - Taylor
Yeah, definitely. I put my headphones on and yeah, get on with it.
[00:01:38.130] - Gordon
So I've been doing that a little bit this week. Anything in particular that stands out for you this week?
[00:01:45.280] - Taylor
Um, I've been working a lot in collaborating with people.
[00:01:49.900] - Gordon
Right, ok. And you've also had, you had an interview today as well.
[00:01:54.090] - Taylor
Yes, so I was, I had an interview with my old school, the alumni basically asking me, you know what I was doing now, where I am, and kind of giving my feedback on how I found Reigate and how that's helped me to be where I am, really.
[00:02:09.810] - Gordon
Which is very good, because they're going to promote that on social media and tell, you know, new and current students about, you know, what a past student has done.
[00:02:21.150] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:02:21.660] - Gordon
Which is great. It's good to be able to see what other people have done to see what's possible. I've got a podcast that I'm going to be on coming up in the next week or so. Next seven days, I'm going to be doing a podcast. I think you've done a podcast recently?
[00:02:37.500] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:02:37.770] - Gordon
Did we speak about this before?
[00:02:39.630] - Taylor
I can't remember. But I was on a friend's podcast who, we were talking about mental health for men and stuff like that, because it's, you know, not talked about enough. And yeah, just my experience of it and how I overcame it and things like that and kind of what I do to deal with stuff like that.
[00:02:55.620] - Gordon
And when's that out, do you know?
[00:02:57.700] - Taylor
I think it's out next week or this week. I'm not sure.
[00:03:01.350] - Gordon
OK, if we get the link for that, we'll put it in the show notes so that you can go and have a listen if you would like. One thing we have changed recently is the numbering and naming convention for our episodes. So you would probably have seen last week we put S2 E35, which is season two, episode thirty five. We explained last week that we were going to be using a new season and we've decided that this is probably the best way to name them isn't it?
[00:03:33.300] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:03:33.900] - Gordon
So we're going to have S2 meaning season two and then this one's going to be episode 36. So we're going to continue with the numbering.
[00:03:41.580] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:03:42.090] - Gordon
So we know where we are. But just change the season number depending on the year.
[00:03:46.920] - Taylor
Yeah, exactly.
[00:03:48.270] - Gordon
So let's start with some topics today. Do you want to go first or second? What would you prefer?
[00:03:53.010] - Taylor
I'll go second.
[00:03:53.670] - Gordon
You'll go second. Ok, so I will talk about my topic. So this week I wanted to talk about crowdfunding. So crowdfunding for those who have no idea what I'm talking about, there are two main websites or companies that do crowdfunding, and that is "Kickstarter" and "Indiegogo." Now, the concept behind crowdfunding is really very interesting. So for consumers, for people who purchase, and for companies who are creating, it works very differently for those, two. So let's look at the companies creating first.
[00:04:37.830] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:04:38.520] - Gordon
So if you are a company, or it doesn't have to be a company, if you're an individual and you have an idea, something you think is going to work well, but you have absolutely no funding for it, what you can do is you can go on to one of these two websites. There are others, but these are the two big ones, and you can basically state your case, ok. So, if it's a new product, if it's a new service, if it's... There's people who go on there and create new packs of cards, or a board game, or a book that they want to print, and they have, most people actually these days have the majority of the work already done. So, for example, if you're writing a book, they've pretty much written the book, and now comes the expensive bit they've got to get it printed. And that is really expensive, especially if you aren't entirely sure how many to print. Because the thing with printers is the more you print, the cheaper each unit becomes. So crowdfunding will allow you to state your case and put up exactly where you are, what your idea is, what you're going to be doing and put it up for sale. And people back you, based on what they want. So basically, you would have, sometimes you'd have different levels depending on if that is relevant. So you could have, you know, buy one book and it will cost you this, normally plus shipping - shipping is normally extra. Or you could buy two books and it will cost you this or you could buy five books and you could have them signed and it will cost you this. And basically the consumers come in and they choose which level they want to purchase at, or which tier, and that is then paid for. I forget it's been a while since I've done it, but I think it's paid for once the date... Ah yes I remember, excuse me about this it's been a while. I've done a lot of these, not creating, but buying, and it's been a while since I've done one. But you have a deadline that you want to get funded by and you have an amount of money that you want to achieve, so your goal basically. And if you reach your goal or exceed your goal on the date, your deadline date, then you get funded. And at that point, anyone who's put their hand in air to say "yep I'll go for that, I'll buy that" will then have their cards debited, and the money, after expenses from the various companies, will be sent through to the creator to allow them to then do what it is they need to do. So that's it from the company's side or the individual, the creator's side. And the advantage to them is they will get a chunk, providing people want it. And to be honest, if people don't want it, well you've saved yourself a ton of money by not producing it. But as long as people want it, you get funded for the expensive bit, which is normally the production.
[00:08:00.460] - Taylor
Yes.
[00:08:00.910] - Gordon
So the production costs of a product, or a service, or an item basically. So from the consumer's point of view, you are normally going to be getting these items with special perks. So you might get, you know, stick with our book analogy. You might get the book that's been signed. You might find that the author is going to have a page or a few pages in the book, which will include the names of backers as a way to say thank you. So you will be part of the book. It might be that you will get an extra, you know, colour sleeve or there'll be another extra or perk. Quite often you get it at slightly reduced cost to what is going to be to everyone else who doesn't back. So you come into this process and you look at the various rewards and you decide if you would like to back it and if you would, you then sign up, put your credit card details in, and if it gets funded, you pay. Now, there is a risk involved. And the risk is that even though you are backing this product, it may never see the light of day. Most of the backers will, most of the individuals or the creators will put in risk assessments and they'll tell you where they are, what stage they're at, what needs to happen, what could potentially go wrong, when the expected delivery date is going to be. And as a consumer, you have to look at this and go, "hmmm, is this worth the risk?" Do they have a track record? Have they done this before and delivered on time on budget? And you have to do your own due diligence basically just to make sure that you're not going to get your money taken and never get anything back. And the thing is, because you are backing it, it's never a certainty. So if the product never comes to life, it never happens, you don't get your money back. It's not like the purchase of a product where if that product doesn't arrive, you get your money back. You are effectively investing in this product and you're getting the rewards, but also taking the risks as well. Now, I've done, actually both of us have done...
[00:10:38.680] - Taylor
Yes.
[00:10:39.010] - Gordon
Have done backing on this. What have you backed in the past?
[00:10:42.310] - Taylor
I have backed a portable charger that was probably, quite small, probably half the size of a phone.
[00:10:51.740] - Gordon
Yeah, and that was successful?
[00:10:53.060] - Taylor
Yeah, that one.
[00:10:53.680] - Gordon
You got it? And it worked as expected?
[00:10:55.470] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:10:55.850] - Gordon
Yeah. That's good. Anything else?
[00:10:57.770] - Taylor
I don't think so, that's everything.
[00:10:59.800] - Gordon
So I've backed quite a few things. Most of them have had happy endings, not all of them, sadly. And probably the biggest thing I backed was a case, a bag. It was a photography badge, actually, a photography bag from a company called...
[00:11:20.030] - Taylor
"Peak Design."
[00:11:20.830] - Gordon
Peak Design. Thank you. I knew you'd remember. And it's a fabulous bag. Peak Design actually launch all their new products on Kickstarter. And that's where I got mine. And I've purchased other products through Kickstarter, funnily enough, when they came back with new products, and I've been extremely happy with my bags, they're lovely bags. I've also backed a watch. I got a pebble watch. That was way back when, that was sort of at the beginning of Kickstarter. Also a tripod, a little, it's not a tripod, a little stand, which we actually used for this vidcast, to record and hold up our camera for a long time. We've moved now to a gorilla pod, but originally it was a credit card sized... I should have brought it to show because that would have been great, credit card sized stand that you can twist and it will hold your phone in exactly the right angle that you want it to stand in.
[00:12:30.450] - Taylor
Yeah, it's good. I like that.
[00:12:31.080] - Gordon
And you got one as well. I got one for you. However, I've also invested in two drones, flying drones, remote controlled using mobile phones, and one of those arrived with me, but the software never worked and the other one never arrived. I didn't even get it. Money lost. I've also invested, one other thing, this was on Indiegogo. As a magician, there's such a thing as the 'mind reading fish.' It's a little bit of red cellophane that you put on your hand and depending on how it reacts, will tell you your fortune, not mind reading, 'fortune telling fish.' So if it goes up, it means one thing, if it wags its tail, it means another, if it wags its head, it means another, if it curls up long ways, it means another thing. And somebody decided that they wanted to do this in the shape of balloon dogs, balloon animal dogs. And so I backed it. It was great. I put about $180, US dollars worth, of backing onto this. And they had problems. They could never get it to work. They apparently attempted to use different materials. They attempted to change the shape slightly. Whatever they tried. Eventually they thought they had it working when they put it up for backing, but it never happened. And it's left a bit of a bad taste, actually, because the creator didn't come forward enough to say, "look, we've had problems, You know, it's going to be a struggle to do this. We've basically spent all the money we had doing our tests and we don't have anything to show for it." He just went silent. He refused to speak to anyone. He's a magician in the magic community, which is a very small community. His name is not very highly thought of by certain people, who backed this and lost all their money. And it was a really, really bad experience, as it turns out. I don't want to put anybody off because you can get some great bargains and you can invest in something really early and be getting a really good product at the end of it. I'm just suggesting you do your due diligence and cover your bases before you put any money down. And the other thing is don't spend money on it if you haven't got it to waste. That's not the right wording. If you haven't got it to spare. It's a bit like the stock market. They always say don't invest in the stock market if you can't afford to lose the money. And it's very true in this case as well. So, you can get yourself a bargain, go and have a look, see what's on there. There's loads of things that go on all the time. There may be something that would be of interest to you. Have a look, see if it's something you believe will actually happen. Put your money down, get yourself a bargain. That is it from the consumer point of view. As a creator, if you have got a product or service and you need backing because it's an expensive thing to produce, have a look at their terms. This is "Kickstarter" and "Indiegogo." Have a look at their terms, because they do take a percentage of all the money that comes in, and see if you think you've got the margins to do it and give people a good deal, because obviously the better the deal, the more people are going to jump on board. But it may be a way for you to do what you want to do without actually spending a lot of your own money. And it's a good way to publicise it as well. You get lots of other, you get lots of people who are interested in it telling other people about it. So that's it. Crowdfunding.
[00:16:35.320] - Taylor
Great.
[00:16:36.070] - Gordon
Go and have a look.
[00:16:37.660] - Taylor
So this week I wanted to talk about how I've been collaborating and working with another developer and a web designer. And he specialises in kind of well, he's released lots of tutorials and a course, for a small community of "Oxygen," people that want to use "Oxygen."
[00:16:59.650] - Gordon
So this is video courses.
[00:17:01.360] - Taylor
Yes.
[00:17:01.750] - Gordon
And Oxygen is a WordPress builder for those who aren't aware of it.
[00:17:05.270] - Taylor
And so he creates courses, and alongside that he creates tutorials, free tutorials that he releases that, you know, could be helpful. Little things here and there. And I've kind of over time, built up a kind of big collection of code snippets, with kind of some cool things that I've done and features. And I've just basically been sharing them and kind of think I've come up with new ideas just to help him, you know.
[00:17:31.120] - Gordon
So, sharing it with the community.
[00:17:32.320] - Taylor
Yeah, I mean, that's my main thing, you know. I'm going to just use them for myself, so, I mean, I might as well just share them with people and hopefully they can benefit. But I don't have any kind of real interest in recording videos, editing them and, you know, making a step by step guide. I just...
[00:17:50.880] - Gordon
So you're not really an educator.
[00:17:53.040] - Taylor
No.
[00:17:53.620] - Gordon
Or a tutorial maker. You're more of a find problems and fix them.
[00:17:58.900] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:17:59.800] - Gordon
Find solutions, I should say.
[00:18:01.030] - Taylor
Yeah. And so this is why it works really well, because I can kind of come up with these cool ideas and pass them over to him. I don't have to do any of the work in terms of creating a tutorial and everyone gets a tutorial. There was one recently that went down really well, which was a, it was a device mock up. So it took the iPhone, the iPad, the MacBook, Samsung phone, and it allowed you to put any content inside of it as if it were a real device.
[00:18:30.010] - Gordon
So you've missed one point, which is really important. The actual device was made up using CSS.
[00:18:34.990] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:18:35.410] - Gordon
So it's not an image. It's code that defines what the image looks like, which is, you know, to start with, it's pretty impressive. And then what you've done is you found a way to get content like website content to go inside these devices.
[00:18:51.750] - Taylor
Yeah. So then when you scroll...
[00:18:52.990] - Gordon
Which is really cool.
[00:18:54.250] - Taylor
You can see it move inside. And yeah it's like, it acts like a kind of a mock up of a device.
[00:19:01.270] - Gordon
And you told the community about this and this particular person came to you and said, can I make a tutorial on this?
[00:19:08.950] - Taylor
It wasn't actually, I reached out. So I'd helped him a while ago on using another piece of software because I had used it before. So, he came to me and asked me some questions like, you know, "how do I get it working?" And things like that. And we've just become really good friends. And he obviously released all these tutorials. And, you know, I'm happy to share what I've found. And, you know, like I said, I don't have any interest in creating tutorials for people because I've got my own work. I'm busy with my own stuff, and I just don't have the patience to, you know, explain stuff simply. And so being able to give him all of the code snippets that I would use, means that he benefits and I benefit. I help by giving back. He benefits by having content.
[00:19:59.110] - Gordon
So that video was released last week. And what we'll do is we'll put a link to that in the show notes so that you can go and watch it, it's very, very well worthwhile watching. It's a great, great tutorial and a great idea as well. Which leads me to another question. Your code snippets. How do you keep your code snippets so that they're easy to find and you know, you can share them with other people if you need to?
[00:20:23.840] - Taylor
So I use something called Quiver, which is a Mac specific app. It's, trying to explain it. It's probably similar to "Evernote" or "Notion," if you've ever heard of or use any of them, where it's kind of like a library which...
[00:20:38.390] - Gordon
It's like a note taker those aren't they?
[00:20:39.770] - Taylor
Yeah. And it allows you to have new entries for each note and you can have different kind of style content. So you can have a code block in there, and you can have just basic text, you can put images in there. And it basically means I can put a bit of text about what the snippet does; how I use it, so where I put the code, whatever; then the actual code itself; and then a bit underneath, which maybe helps me in terms of where I need to do it and how I can integrate it.
[00:21:07.280] - Gordon
And this allows you to put code in because something like Evernote I think would struggle with code. So you can put code in as a block and it would keep all the formatting and everything.
[00:21:16.790] - Taylor
Yeah it highlights it and syntax... highlights colour syntaxes it.
[00:21:20.510] - Gordon
OK, so it's actually designed for code snippets.
[00:21:24.260] - Taylor
Yeah, that code bit is. But I mean, in general, it's just used, it can be used for whatever you want really. And I use that and then I share it with both you and I have a friend who I share it with who, he's recently moving over to "Oxygen." So he's...
[00:21:37.520] - Gordon
And it's great because if I come up with or I find a snippet, I'm not going to come up with it. But if I find a snippet, that I think will be of interest to you, I can put it in as well and it will become accessible by you and everyone who's got access, which is really good. So it's sort of sharing, but in a limited way. And then you can share the snippets to a wider audience if you wanted to.
[00:22:03.820] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:22:04.850] - Gordon
you should talk about "Oxygen" on "Discord" in a future episode, because that's that's quite a big topic, I think.
[00:22:11.480] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:22:11.930] - Gordon
It's something you should look at doing.
[00:22:13.620] - Taylor
OK.
[00:22:14.490] - Gordon
So, I think that's everything from me.
[00:22:16.610] - Taylor
Yeah, same from me.
[00:22:17.990] - Gordon
Thank you for joining us. As always, please, like, subscribe, follow. And you can find us on Facebook and on YouTube.
[00:22:28.730] - Taylor
You can also go to our website: thisweekwith.co.uk which will have all the past episodes, and you can go through them and look at the show notes, listen to the audio or watch the video.
[00:22:39.170] - Gordon
Yep. So we'll see you next week at 1pm on Friday. Until then, it's goodbye from me, I'm Gordon from Drayson Design.
[00:22:48.620] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.
[00:22:50.960] - Both
Goodbye.
