[00:00:10.110] - Gordon
Hello.
[00:00:10.560] - Taylor
Hello.
[00:00:10.950] - Gordon
My name is Gordon from Drayson Design.
[00:00:12.900] - 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 and vidcast where we talk about things that have happened to our businesses in the last seven days. Welcome back.
[00:00:26.850] - Taylor
Yeah, just a clarification, it's "This Week With Taylor and Gordon" not just "Taylor and Gordon." But...
[00:00:31.920] - Gordon
Is that what I said?
[00:00:33.600] - Taylor
You said welcome back to Taylor and Gordon.
[00:00:36.120] - Gordon
Welcome back to "This Week with Taylor and Gordon" I do apologise.
[00:00:40.275] - Taylor
Ok.
[00:00:41.220] - Gordon
Rubbish at this. Honestly, you'd think after 41 episodes, I'd get it right, wouldn't you? Oh well. Have you noticed anything different with me this week?
[00:00:50.130] - Taylor
You shaved.
[00:00:50.790] - Gordon
I shaved. Yes. Yeah, I got rid of the beard. It was starting to itch and gets in the... I've never really had it before, but it got in the way of here. And instead of just trimming it, I thought, just get rid of it. Hopefully I look much younger. Well, supposedly that's what happens when you have a beard and you get rid of it. So anything, anything exciting happened in the last week for you?
[00:01:15.600] - Taylor
I've been looking at a lot of projects, so this is kind of my...
[00:01:20.400] - Gordon
You're always looking at lots of projects.
[00:01:22.190] - Taylor
So these are personal projects or side projects as probably better.
[00:01:27.570] - Gordon
OK.
[00:01:28.650] - Taylor
And basically I'm looking at other ways I can help the community, or building another side income to kind of improve, you know, my business and, you know, make more money. But also being able to provide something of value to people.
[00:01:50.110] - Gordon
That's quite a good thing, because if you're a designer of websites, you have a finite amount of time. So you can only do a certain number of websites and in a set period of time. But if you have a product or service, then you can sell that to, make it once and sell it to many people.
[00:02:10.410] - Taylor
Yeah. So popular example is tutorial websites or membership websites or courses. So if you sell a course, you make the content once and you sell that to as many people as you can, or you want to.
[00:02:22.830] - Gordon
Yep.
[00:02:23.460] - Taylor
And it's one of those things that you can kind of wake up every morning and you would have made a sale or something like that because it doesn't rely on you to be there to make the sale. You've done all the hard work prior to that.
[00:02:35.730] - Gordon
Passive income it's called.
[00:02:37.440] - Taylor
Yeah, exactly.
[00:02:38.130] - Gordon
It's a great way of doing it. If you're a person or a business that is service led like we are with designing or entertaining in my case as well. Try and find something you can do that's passive and will bring in an extra income for you without doing a lot of extra work.
[00:02:56.890] - Taylor
Yes, I've got two kind of projects which I won't say what they are at the moment, but I am working on. One of them is solving a problem that I have seen a lot, its to do with social media platform and kind of, yeah, trying to help solve that problem. And it's more of just a fun project I wanted to work on and, you know, give give people something that may be useful. And the other one is a side project, which is a passive income to kind of, not only give back and kind of help the, not give back, but not only help the community, but also bring in some more money that again, I don't have to be there all of the time because when you lead a Service-based, most of it is, you are kind of, your bottleneck is normally your time or number of people working, because if you're not working, you're not making any money. So a lot of people try and find stuff that will continue running without them needing to be there.
[00:03:55.590] - Gordon
Yeah. Now making it once, selling it lots of times, does require quite a lot of customer service as well. So it's not quite as simple as it sounds. So you've got to bear that in mind, when you're considering a service or product that you want to sell to gain a new passive income. You may need to spend some time dealing with customers, helping them, answering questions, that sort of thing.
[00:04:20.880] - Taylor
Yeah, but it's, for, especially for my industry or our industry, it's not really much different to what I already do when a client comes to me and goes, "there's something wrong with my website" or "can you fix this?"
[00:04:33.450] - Gordon
Yeah.
[00:04:33.990] - Taylor
It's not too different. You know, if I've got a product that people are going, "help, I need help with it. Can you help?" Then, yeah, that's fine. I can, you know, reply to to the question and it would be in a similar way, although the tone of, kind of the language that I would use would be different depending on the audience.
[00:04:52.170] - Gordon
Yeah, exactly right. Ah, that's very exciting. So I mean, are these long term projects?
[00:04:57.930] - Taylor
Some of them are long term. I think I want to try and get them, I want to try and get a kind of working version as soon as possible and kind of get it out there. To not only kind of raise capital, but also to kind of see what the interest is, because some markets, there are a lot of, there's a lot of people out there, and so trying to get into it and making sure you've got, you know, your USP is very important. So I want to make sure that I do it right. But also, I spend enough time that, you know, it can warrant me the money back if it doesn't fail, you know, put in as much time as I have to lose, basically.
[00:05:35.860] - Gordon
Yes. So it's really important to do your research on this, I think. If you're going to spend time and even more importantly, money on something, it's really important that you check to see if there's actually a need for that service or product before you even start. You've obviously done your due diligence and checked to see if what you're about to build is already out there. And I'm guessing the answer's no, because you've now got to, sort of the idea to go ahead. But, you know, one of the things that you're talking to me about at the moment is coming up with a name. And that's really important, getting a name right for a product or service is so important it needs to...
[00:06:20.890] - Taylor
It sets the tone for the company.
[00:06:22.630] - Gordon
That's just what I was going to say, it needs to set the tone for what that product or service is.
[00:06:27.580] - Taylor
And also what you believe in. So you know what your values are and how you portray yourself. For some people, you know, it's all about how it looks. You know, people will judge a product, especially on how it looks. And even if you have the best product in the world, people probably won't buy it if, you know if you've got spelling mistakes, if you're, you know, you've missed out small details, because they're the things that you should be paying attention to.
[00:06:52.690] - Gordon
So you could go for something that is sort of the name on the tin, you know, so that, you know, it does what it says on the tin. So something like, you know, thinking of some big brands. Costa Coffee, for example, is a prime example. They are called Costa and they do coffee, it make sense. Toys R Us, you know, another brand that I thought had a really strong name, because you you could tell someone "I'm off to Toys R Us" and they don't have to say, "well, what do they sell?" You know, you can tell, it's easy.
[00:07:26.330] - Taylor
Yeah, exactly.
[00:07:27.280] - Gordon
So you might want to go that route. You might want to go the route of having a sort of an all encompassing brand name, maybe with several different products underneath it that doesn't necessarily tell the person what you do.
[00:07:41.530] - Taylor
Yeah, so I mean, a good example would be Amazon, or Apple. They are very broad and generic words, however, they've been turned into a brand name. But it doesn't limit them to what they can sell. So, Amazon originally started as a book store. They now sell electronics. They now sell storage hosting. They now, you know, they have a grocery supermarket. You know, they do...
[00:08:04.510] - Gordon
They sell coffee.
[00:08:05.320] - Taylor
Yeah exactly. They have lots and lots of different products and lots of different areas, not only in their shop, but they have the Kindle, they have their own...
[00:08:14.020] - Gordon
Hardware.
[00:08:14.830] - Taylor
Exactly. But...
[00:08:15.880] - Gordon
And ecosystems
[00:08:16.870] - Taylor
That doesn't limit them to what they can, they can do or what they sell. You know, if they called them "Amazon Bookstore". Then that would be limiting because they would only be, they have bookstore in their name. Whereas, you know, if you go for a name that isn't; so "Nike".
[00:08:30.760] - Gordon
Yeah, so just thinking about these names, they do in your mind, if you know the brand, they conjure up something. So Amazon, for me, conjures up speed. If I want to get something quickly at a reasonable cost without paying over the odds: Amazon. Apple is, "it just works" that's their tagline, it's a quality with, you know, a price that goes along with it, but something that, you know, is going to last and do what it says it's going to do.
[00:08:58.300] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:08:58.870] - Gordon
Nike. What does that mean for you?
[00:09:01.150] - Taylor
I would say active wear and a fashion brand that is kind of like, designer.
[00:09:06.160] - Gordon
So something that people are going to look at and go, oh, he's got Nike on.
[00:09:09.070] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:09:09.490] - Gordon
Yeah. So, again, the sort of the feeling behind the name needs to be considered as well, because you will get, you will get branded not just by your name but by other words alongside it.
[00:09:25.000] - Taylor
As well, you also want to make sure that when you're typing your domain name in that it looks right and you don't have words that could be, you know, could could make other words when they're put next to each other.
[00:09:37.090] - Gordon
Yeah.
[00:09:37.480] - Taylor
Or words that are kind of very difficult. So sometimes if you had, if you for example, if you had Hubsspot and it was H-U-B-S S-P-O-T, then you'd have a double s in the middle. And then you have that awkward situation where some people would put Hubsspot with H-U-B-S-P-O-T, some people would say, H-U-B-S-S-P-O-T. For example.
[00:10:03.040] - Gordon
And the other thing is, there's a famous picture of a Starbucks lorry. And it's got the word "Starbucks" written on the side, and it's one of those vans with a sliding door so that when you slide it, it ends up getting rid of, I think the door went in and along, so it ends up with a photo of an employee going into the van. And the word "sucks" on the side because the T-A-R is sort of on the door and is hidden. It's the sort of thing that you want to consider when you're branding vehicles with a certain name. Yeah, but yeah, definitely look at your name and how it appears. And also, if it has a meaning in a different language or culture, that's another thing to be really careful of.
[00:10:53.020] - Taylor
Yeah. Yeah, definitely.
[00:10:55.020] - Gordon
That's really exciting. Excellent.
[00:10:56.690] - Taylor
I'm looking forward to it.
[00:10:57.570] - Gordon
Yeah. Keeping you busy then.
[00:10:59.580] - Taylor
Always, I find that if I don't keep myself busy that, or if I'm not busy, I try and find stuff that I can keep myself busy with.
[00:11:06.960] - Gordon
I'm a bit like that as well. I'm very similar. And on that vein, nice little Segway there, the thing I'd like to talk about this week is investing in your company and your company's assets. So that could be the equipment that you use or the talent and skills that you have available to you, whether that's just yourself or whether it's your staff. Investing in courses and education for your staff members and for yourself....
[00:11:40.410] - Taylor
I have a...
[00:11:41.280] - Gordon
Is really important
[00:11:42.300] - Taylor
There's a member of my chapter, who is an electrician and he's just bought kind of branded everything. So he has a branded hat, branded jumper, branded T-shirt, even branded knee mats; so when he's on down on the floor, he has mats that say what company.
[00:11:58.510] - Gordon
It all looks professional doesn't it? It gives you that little bit extra professional appeal when you're at a client's house, especially if you're an electrician.
[00:12:09.300] - Taylor
You can, you know, you can you can put your prices up a little more just because you have, you know, you look the part and you are professional rather than being, you know, just a small side business that you don't really pay too much attention to or...
[00:12:23.760] - Gordon
It' true.
[00:12:24.570] - Taylor
You know, put too much thought into.
[00:12:25.860] - Gordon
So something along those sort of lines; something that I've been doing the last couple of weeks or so is I've done brand new business cards for "Pip Kennedy." Now, the website is live, I now know what the branding looks like, and I've got my brand guidelines so that I now know how to create graphics and artwork for the company and make it all cohesive, make it look the same.
[00:12:52.920] - Taylor
Yes.
[00:12:53.410] - Gordon
So I had business cards. I designed business cards. I had them sent to the printer. They are now back. They look great. And I will actually talk about the business cards another time because I'd like to show you and explain the process behind it as well. Something else I've been doing is, I created a graphic, because we've now been given some guidelines for entertainers as to when we can go back to doing live performances. And so I've been doing a sort of a, some graphics for my children's magic, "Gordon Magic" and for "Pip Kennedy" and posting them on social media and also on the websites, to explain what dates I'm going to be able to do what, so that I can take bookings for relevant things. There's different dates that allow different things to happen. So again, using the guidelines and the branding that I've created, I've got those all out and they're all on brand.
[00:13:54.800] - Taylor
Very nice.
[00:13:56.180] - Gordon
And the thing I'm working on at the moment for "Pip Kennedy" is a little publicity giveaway, which is a little booklet on how to do some simple card tricks. And again, that's all been branded up, and I'm going to send that to the printer once it's ready. Have them all printed professionally, and folded properly so that I can give those away when I'm able to get back to work. And so the main thing behind this is the equipment and the skills. Looking professional is a really important thing, having good stationery and business cards and, you know, products behind you, like your branded garments and so on. But also the equipment. And I have been doing Zoom shows now for coming up to a year. You know, when we started in the first lockdown back in March of last year is when I started doing Zoom shows, and we're nearly a year into that now we've got, you know, just a short while to go until we come back to the anniversary. And in that time, I've invested a reasonable amount on equipment. So, for example, I've got some nice lights now, which we've spoken about before. I've got myself a stream deck, which is great. I should have got it earlier because it's really made my whole performance much more slick and it looks so much better. I've upgraded the camera that I use from the inbuilt one with the iMac, which is the C 920 from Logitech, and part of using that was learning how to use it. There are settings behind it which I couldn't figure out to begin with, and it took a while to sort of educate myself, through YouTube videos and searching on Google, to find the information I needed to stop it changing to a different colour and a different grain every single time I loaded it, which is what was happening. And I just could not understand it, until I found the way to set it all as manual. And now I can manually set the focus and the brightness and the aperture. Now it's the same every single time I open it, and it gives me consistent results. And it's got to the point now with OBS, for example, which again, I'll talk about another time because that's really important, where I've been learning it for over, about two months now and other entertainers have suddenly come to me and said, "oh, you're using OBS. It looks really good. Can you can you help me out? Can you explain how I get it to do what I want to do?" And so I'm now helping other entertainers to make their product more professional as well. So, yeah, equipment, education, really, really important. With the equipment I purchased for my Zoom shows, I made sure I bought quality equipment that would fit in the space I had and give me the quality output that I wanted, but would also allow me, if I needed or wanted to, after we go back to live shows, it would allow me to then sell the equipment on to other people second hand and it would keep its value because that's really important, because I don't know where I'm going to be going at the moment whether live shows are going to come back in full force; if Zoom shows are going to stay a thing; if I want to keep doing the Zoom shows, probably do I quite enjoy them. And if so, I'm going to keep the equipment. But if not, it gives me the option to sell them and get my money back, really.
[00:17:53.590] - Taylor
Yeah, it's kind of like with Apple, when you buy that, it normally keeps its value. There are other, you know, PCs do as well.
[00:18:01.410] - Gordon
Not as much.
[00:18:03.090] - Taylor
Normally the higher end PCs that are custom built keep their value, which, you know, you get into similar territory with like Apple computers and things like that. So it was actually quite interesting, I was watching a streamer who is a developer and he uses two computers. One computer is a streaming computer and that is a custom built PC. And then he uses a Mac, and you kind of think, well, you know, you've got a custom built PC for streaming, why would you not use a PC for kind of the coding side of it? And his simple answer was "it just works."
[00:18:42.459] - Gordon
That's true.
[00:18:42.910] - Taylor
He doesn't have to worry about is it going to work? You know, fiddling around with everything, it just, you load up, everything just works. That's not to say that PCs don't, but that was kind of showing that although he's probably more, uses like Linux software, things like that, that the reason he uses it is for simplicity, which is kind of the whole debate.
[00:19:05.040] - Gordon
Yeah. I mean, he's done a very sensible thing. He's paid money to get a good quality PC that has been tuned just for streaming.
[00:19:13.620] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:19:13.920] - Gordon
You know, so he's got a good graphics card in there. He's got, you know, fast Internet, whatever, you know all the, good camera, everything he needs to make sure that streaming from it is going to be great.
[00:19:25.710] - Taylor
It's all about using the best tools for the job.
[00:19:26.160] - Gordon
That's right. And then on the flip side for his coding, he's decided to go for a Mac because he knows it's going to work for him and it's not going to cause too many problems because Apple do both the software and the hardware, and the integration together is really good. But it means that, you know, with his streaming, if new technology comes along, he can take bits out and put new bits in, which is very difficult to do with a Mac. So he's very sensible.
[00:19:50.250] - Taylor
Yes. I mean, he still uses a, he upgraded his computer, his Mac, a couple of, a year or so ago, and he upgraded to literally a year or two later than what he already had, which was, I think it was about 2015 he had originally, purely because he needed the cables he needed like a HDMI output and things like that, but, you know, he had a fully spec'd one and it still kept its value and it still performs great.
[00:20:19.510] - Gordon
So when he's upgrading, he can sell his existing machine, get a reasonable amount for it and pay the extra towards getting the newer model.
[00:20:26.980] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:20:27.310] - Gordon
Which is great. So that's me. I think I've told you everything I wanted to talk about as far as upgrading equipment, investing in equipment, investing in your staff, education and yourself. Anything else you want to say on that?
[00:20:44.050] - Taylor
No, I think that's everything.
[00:20:46.660] - Gordon
Great. Well, that's it for this week. Thank you very much for joining us. As always, we can be found on YouTube and on Facebook; please, like, share and subscribe.
[00:20:57.400] - Taylor
And you can also go to our website: thisweekwith.co.uk, which has all of our past episodes, which you can search and filter and find a bit more about us, as well as kind of our companies, and, yeah, kind of what made us start this podcast as well.
[00:21:14.500] - Gordon
So that's it for this week again, thank you for joining us. Join us again next week at 1pm on YouTube and Facebook if you want to follow live. My name is Gordon and I'm from Drayson Design.
[00:21:26.200] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.
[00:21:28.900] - Gordon
See you next week.
[00:21:29.780] - Taylor
Goodbye
[00:21:30.040] - Gordon
Bye bye.
