[00:00:09.740] - Gordon
Hello.
[00:00:10.800] - Taylor
Hello.
[00:00:11.360] - Gordon
My name's Gordon from Drayson Design.
[00:00:13.300] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.
[00:00:15.480] - 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 in the last seven days. And today is going to be a little bit different, because last week we asked you to leave some questions for us and a lot of people have messaged us with questions and we're going to try and go through as many of them as we can today.
[00:00:42.986] - Taylor
Yep.
[00:00:43.040] - Gordon
So welcome if you're new, this is not what we normally do. We normally have sort of topics of the week that we talk about and things that have affected us. But today is a different episode because we're going to do these questions and answers. So shall we get straight into it?
[00:00:58.780] - Taylor
Yeah, I will read the first one.
[00:01:00.480] - Gordon
Okay then.
[00:01:02.180] - Taylor
Gordon, what's your favourite trick to perform and why?
[00:01:05.740] - Gordon
Oh, that's a really tricky question to answer. My favourite trick to perform. I think my favourite trick is one where I have a white drawing board and I draw a face on it and when I've finished, it starts talking. Which is really cool. And the reason I like it is because the reactions it gets are just amazing. This is something I do in my children's show and the reactions from the children when it starts talking ranges from screaming and running away to just someone sitting there with their mouth open. So yeah, I think the reason is because of the reactions. It's a great trick. If you would like to see me performing it, then have a look at disbelieving.com. There is a video of my competition act on there, and the drawing board was part of my award winning competition act.
[00:02:08.520] - Taylor
Very nice.
[00:02:09.530] - Gordon
Go and have a look. Right next question. We've got them written down here, so I'll read them off here. Taylor, what's the most difficult coding challenge you've faced? And did you find a solution?
[00:02:22.040] - Taylor
Ooh, I would say the most difficult challenge that I faced was probably using Ajax. So that's a way of being able to send data or update something on the front end without making a, without refreshing the page. So an example of this would be if you submit a form. Sometimes when you submit a form, it will redirect you to a new page or it will redirect you to the same page. Ajax means it sends it and returns the information or the data within the same browser. Or, for example, it could be for updating something. So I created a notification system, which when you press the delete button, it deleted it from your account and in the back end it deleted and then removed it on the front end as well. I think that was probably the most challenging, and I did find a solution. I read lots of different articles. I asked friends that I knew, you know just getting their opinion and asking them what they knew, and they kind of gave me tips and help, so yeah.
[00:03:25.100] - Gordon
And do you think you'll be able to easily do it again in the future from what you've learned?
[00:03:29.890] - Taylor
Well, yeah. So I've done a lot of Ajax since then. So I've created a bunch of different things, you know, a button that basically changes the background image of a section every time you click it, or I've created a generator and every time you click it generates new words from the back end every time you click it. So I've created lots of different things from it, so.
[00:03:55.040] - Gordon
Very good. Okay.
[00:03:57.020] - Taylor
Next one, which one of us works more hours a week?
[00:04:01.540] - Gordon
That's a difficult question.
[00:04:04.740] - Taylor
It depends on what you mean by I guess "work" essentially. Because obviously, if you're talking about web work, probably me because I do websites full time and that's my only job, whereas you have magic so...
[00:04:19.960] - Gordon
Yes. But also if...
[00:04:21.400] - Taylor
If admin counts, and also travelling and things like that for your magic, that's the other thing you...
[00:04:27.060] - Gordon
And also because you've been streaming recently, you've been doing your own projects. Now, do you class that as work or is that something you're doing for fun?
[00:04:35.680] - Taylor
It's a bit of both, really, because it's, on the one hand it's upskilling and trying to improve my skills, but at the same time. It's something I, you know I'm not doing any client work. But then you don't have to be doing client work per se to be doing work. You could be doing admin. You could be watching a course that you've bought on how to, you know, improve your skills or whatever. So it's very, it's very kind of blurred lines, but I think we probably both do a good amount of hours a week.
[00:05:01.820] - Gordon
Yeah, I think the answer to the question is, it's very, very similar. Because as you said, I have lots of different things that I do. And so quite often my weekends are taken up with doing work. You know, normally most of the weekend. And just yesterday. What was it yesterday? Thursday. I had a talk that I did at a Woman's Institute and that was in the evening. So, you know, I was out doing work then and I was obviously working during the day getting that all ready. So yeah, that's a really difficult one. I think it's very similar. Taylor works a lot later than I do, but he doesn't necessarily start as early as I do. He does on a Thursday when he's up early, but the rest of the week he's a little bit later start.
[00:05:59.930] - Taylor
How I feel. But I also start, I'm also trying to get back into cycling or bike riding. So, you know, most of my morning is normally taken up by, you know, taking the dog for a walk and or going for a bike ride.
[00:06:11.330] - Gordon
Very good.
[00:06:11.700] - Taylor
So yeah, it kind of balances it out. Next question.
[00:06:15.250] - Gordon
Okay. What do you prefer doing: magic, websites or graphic design?
[00:06:20.680] - Taylor
Yeah, I'm guessing that one's for you.
[00:06:22.420] - Gordon
Oh right okay. What do you prefer doing?
[00:06:25.320] - Taylor
I prefer doing websites.
[00:06:28.130] - Gordon
Good, okay. Now I don't actually have a preference. I enjoy all three of those and they all have their own different ways of working. They have their own ways of getting feedback and...
[00:06:48.440] - Taylor
You have different, you use different parts of your brain as well, and they...
[00:06:50.510] - Gordon
I do. The creativity side and the performing side. For getting instant feedback, I guess it would be the magic, because I go and do a show; I get people clapping, and that's my reward if you like. Whereas with websites, and also graphic design, it normally takes, you know, a few weeks before I actually get them coming back and saying, "yes, we love it!" or "no, it's rubbish, re-do it!" And then coming back again and going, "yep we love it now." So I think I measure which I prefer best based on the feedback I get. And so maybe magic would be the more instant. But maybe not... It doesn't have as longevity to it as the others. So a website and a graphic design will be around for a longer period of time for me to see. So, yeah I don't really have one. Probably magic for instant feedback. Let's go with that one.
[00:07:48.700] - Taylor
Okay. Next question. How many websites have we built between us, and each?
[00:07:54.880] - Gordon
Wow. Okay, so I've been doing websites now for 24 years. Gosh! So I'm not full time. That's not true. I am full time web design, but the magic also is full time as well. So because they come in at different times and I get to do them at different times, I'm not working on one of them all the time. So in the time I've been doing website design, I've also been doing the magic, which has taken up about half the time. So, you have a quick think about how many you've done and I'll have a quick think about how many I've done.
[00:08:37.060] - Taylor
I reckon that I've probably built around 50 to 100 maybe.
[00:08:43.400] - Gordon
Gosh, and that's in two years.
[00:08:46.100] - Taylor
Well, including the stuff that I built, just practising and stuff like that as well.
[00:08:50.170] - Gordon
Right.
[00:08:50.300] - Taylor
Because I've done lots of practise sites as well. So I don't know if they count. I mean, I guess they do count because if it wasn't for the practise sites, I wouldn't be where I was today.
[00:08:57.680] - Gordon
Okay.
[00:08:57.680] - Taylor
But I also build lots of like small sites which are just like one off functionality. For example, recently on 'Streams,' I've been building these like really quick projects which is like a stream countdown timer. And I built a 'Twitch' race. So me and another team member in my Twitch team called "The Claw." We had a race basically to see who can get to affiliate first, and have the most number of, or 50 followers is what you needed to reach. So I built that on Stream and JWalter built the back end API and I built the front end for it which was quite a fun little project. But yeah, it depends on if you meaning like full websites or like...
[00:09:44.610] - Gordon
What does the question say? How many websites have you built? Okay so.
[00:09:47.660] - Taylor
It's technically a website.
[00:09:48.820] - Gordon
Okay, go on then how many are you going for?
[00:09:51.680] - Taylor
Let's go with 65.
[00:09:54.290] - Gordon
Okay. I'm going to say about 150. Now, that doesn't sound as good seeing as I've been doing it a lot longer than you, but you need to bear in mind, when I started building websites, I was hand coding them with HTML. And then I used something called "Go Live," which then changed into "Dream Weaver" and everything as was done by hand. So everything took a lot longer. So you're talking about one website in maybe four months. It took an awfully long time to do it, because it was all being done by hand. Since WordPress has come along and become really popular, it's become a lot quicker to build sites. And then you've got visual builders, which again has speeded up, sped up? Sped up the development time. There were sites like "The Entertainers Network" and "Online Booking Assistant," that took years to make. And I kid you not, you know, the Online Booking Assistant took about two years to build, because it's all custom coded. I didn't do all the custom coding on that one. I project managed that one and I paid a coder to do all the work, but that took two years and that's one site.
[00:11:12.450] - Taylor
Yep.
[00:11:12.450] - Gordon
So I think, what did I say? 150. Yeah 150 is probably about right without going in and checking. So we are 213? What did you say? 60?
[00:11:22.640] - Taylor
5.
[00:11:22.640] - Gordon
65. 215 between us.
[00:11:28.260] - Taylor
Ish.
[00:11:30.700] - Gordon
Yeah, that's an estimate. But yeah, about that I would say. That's a lot of sites.
[00:11:37.080] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:11:37.080] - Gordon
Wow. Okay. Right. Question for you, Taylor. Your best referral sources, favourite networking avenues?
[00:11:44.220] - Taylor
I enjoy obviously BNI, that's probably my main networking that I do. But I also have other networking that I do. For example, Cafecito, which is my kind of online coffee meet up that I have with someone online, which is really nice because I get to, not experience, but I get to talk to people in completely different parts of the world who have different cultures, who lead completely different lives, and I've connected with people. I have them on LinkedIn and things like that, and it's really interesting to see what they get up to, you know, six months down the line or, you know, just what they're doing. You know, a lot of people that I spoke to were in the transition trying to go full time with their own company, and it's a scary thing, especially when you go from a salary paid job to an uncertain business.
[00:12:36.790] - Gordon
Yep.
[00:12:36.790] - Taylor
So it was really interesting for me to chat to people like that. So yeah, I think I would say Cafecito is probably my favourite. Maybe not to get work, but just to network and just get more connections, which, you know, could turn into work in the future, but...
[00:12:55.740] - Gordon
Very good. I think that was probably a question for you, but I'll answer it as well. I don't really do any networking as far as web design goes. Pretty much all of my work for both magic and design and websites come from word of mouth. It's people recommending me to other people. I don't currently do any advertising. That's it, yeah, word of mouth for me, that's my best. And to be honest, word of mouth is one of the best ways of getting work because it's one of the cheapest and people are being sent to you from someone they know. So it's, you know, you sort of, you're on a...
[00:13:38.940] - Taylor
Trusted source.
[00:13:39.270] - Gordon
Yeah. You're on a winner right from the beginning. So, yep, word of mouth for me.
[00:13:43.940] - Taylor
Next one?
[00:13:44.780] - Gordon
Next one. What is Marty's favourite toy? Ooh, that's a tricky one. I'll see if he's around. Marty. Marty? Oh, he was upstairs. Come here.
[00:13:56.820] - Taylor
The door's shut.
[00:13:58.040] - Gordon
Oh. Come and say hello.
[00:14:04.600] - Taylor
Marty, up.
[00:14:05.242] - Gordon
Marty. Right! Right now what is? This is Marty for those who haven't met him. What is your favourite toy Marty? It's going to be one of your Christmas ones I think. So he's got a robin; he's got a Father Christmas; and he's got a reindeer.
[00:14:23.440] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:14:23.440] - Gordon
Which of those do you think?
[00:14:25.150] - Taylor
I would say it's probably the Santa.
[00:14:26.680] - Gordon
The Santa? Okay. So I think, yeah I think it's going to be either the Santa or the robin. Maybe we'll try it out, Marty, which one do you like best? Do you like Santa?
[00:14:37.220] - Taylor
Thank you.
[00:14:37.670] - Gordon
Do you like the Robin?
[00:14:38.840] - Taylor
Not interested are you? You don't care?
[00:14:40.990] - Gordon
No, not at all. Can you smile for the camera? That's not really a smile, but that's good enough. There we go. Thank you for that question.
[00:14:48.520] - Taylor
Next one. This is quite a long one.
[00:14:51.000] - Gordon
Okay.
[00:14:51.000] - Taylor
So, how do you deal with clients who know they want a website but are extremely vague in their requests and provide you with practically nothing? So an example, a client has come to you by emailing stating they would like a website for their product. However, it has become a situation where you're having to ask them a bunch of questions. Would you either ask them a bunch of questions such as what colour would you like? What content do you want? Or would this be a case of you putting something together how you would see fit, or something else?
[00:15:22.100] - Gordon
Okay. So for me, I need a certain amount of information to be able to quote somebody on their site. I can't just quote them on, you know, "we want a website." I have to do a little bit of exploration to be able to find out exactly what I'm quoting on. And as soon as the job has been confirmed, that's when I will know whether the customer has a good idea of what they want or not. And if they don't, that's the stage at which I will talk to them and find out everything. And I'll get them to make decisions. Because if they haven't made any decisions, you know, two weeks, three weeks down the road, we could end up with them going, "no, that's not what I wanted at all."
[00:16:15.220] - Taylor
Yes. So the way I kind of approach it is, after the quote and things like that. I will have an onboarding session and I tell them to give me examples of websites that they like the look of, and also websites that have the same functionality that they want. So you could, for example, if they want a membership site, they could send you links to membership sites that they, that is what they're basically were trying to do, but they could send you something completely different, that's not even a membership site, for the look. And what this instantly does for me is easily be able to work out, okay what type of style are we going for? What type of direction do we need to go in? And from that obviously, if they've got a branding they should hopefully have a logo at least, you'll easily be able to kind of work out what colours you need to use basically. You obviously you can't go off using completely different colours to their branding, but if they've got one colour maybe, then you can obviously use your own intuition to build up another palette or colour for the palette. But just making sure you ask questions that you need to be able to work. Sometimes people have, I say you know, "give me some, give me the content and I will then design something." And sometimes people just struggle with that. So I either have two routes that I go. I'll either say, I'll sit down with them and then say, you know, "look just map the website out, break it down into very, very simple. First, just start with the headings of the pages you want. Then break it down into 'what does each section need to do?'" So the top section could be a hero section with a full width image, a heading and a button. The next bit is an image and a text maybe, or just an 'about' section, 'services' underneath, 'testimonials' and a 'footer.' That, even though they haven't written content, helps them to visualise what they are going to need to kind of do. If however, they really struggle with that and they don't already have an existing site to pull data from or pull information from, I will use my own past experience to build something along the lines of what they need. So I'll obviously take what type of site they're trying to build, and use my knowledge, my best practises, to design something and then leave placeholder content for them. Sometimes they will give you content that's bigger than what you've kind of given space for. And you can obviously then go back to them and give them two options saying, "look, we can redesign this section with the new added content, or you need to cut down your content or move some of the content into another section." And they're the two directions that I kind of go for. I try and not use the kind of, put the placeholder in, because you do get that issue where the content is normally longer. So if you can, just see if you can help them and break it down, and make it as easy and painless for them to be able to work it out. Because that's the thing, it's the biggest thing; people just worry and stress the content is not going to be correct. Which, another thing you also want to say is just make sure you tell them it doesn't have to be grammatically correct, it doesn't have to be, you know, fully polished. It just needs to be a rough outline, because the word length is not going to change much.
[00:19:29.520] - Gordon
Yeah, that's very true. And, you know, if they need someone to tweak it, we know, copywriters that can do that job for them. Something that we've both been doing just recently, is designing sort of like the home page before we, you know, in a graphics package or having it done just as an image before building the site just to make sure that we're on the right track. So basically the customer is, knows what it's going to look like before it actually gets built. And that will also sometimes trigger sort of ideas in their head as to what content they want to put on the site, and it sort of helps them to visualise what the site is going to look like and therefore what content's going to be needed for it. And that works really well as well.
[00:20:24.770] - Taylor
I think I've only had it once I believe, where I've designed a mock up of a page and the client says, "I just, I don't like it. I do not like this direction." And it's kind of lucky that I did that because I could then go back to the drawing board from their feedback they've given me and make changes or completely start afresh. And the time it saved me from building that page out is, you know, I could have done three pages in the time it took me to redo it, an entire page in building it. And that's why I always recommend designing first. Because you also think about the customer journey and also what content needs to be used and also what needs to be reused. You know, a lot of stuff is going to be reused throughout the site, on different sections.
[00:21:10.830] - Gordon
Yep.
[00:21:10.830] - Taylor
And by building it in the browser straightaway, you kind of don't think about that ahead, because you don't realise that until you get to that second page when you go, "oh, I needed that section from the first page." So yeah, I would highly recommend to design your pages first. It just also helps for client to be able to see.
[00:21:34.400] - Gordon
And the customers, you know, they don't build websites anywhere near as often as we do so, well hopefully not. So it's down to us to guide them really, and make sure that we lay out a very clear specification of what is needed from us, from them by us, and what we're going to be doing and when, so that everyone is clear on it all. So, a clear plan is also very important, I think.
[00:22:05.960] - Taylor
yep. And finally, what three tips would you give for starting a new business?
[00:22:10.950] - Gordon
Okay. So my first tip would be: make sure that the business you want to start actually is required, is needed by customers. So don't build a business on something that's not actually going to be bought by anybody. Because you know, you need to do your research; you need to find out if the location that you're going to do, to put your business in, or the area, or the segment...
[00:22:44.280] - Taylor
Market.
[00:22:44.280] - Gordon
The market is actually going to be needed. You don't want to, I mean this is a very extreme example, you don't want to sell ice cream in the Antarctic, for example, because there's no, no one's going to want cold ice cream to eat in the Antarctic. You know, that's a really extreme example, but I think it gives my point so that you understand what I'm saying. The research and looking at what's already available and making sure that your business is going to offer something different, new, and is needed, is really important.
[00:23:28.080] - Taylor
Yep. Second tip, I would say, is look after your clients or your customers. You know, they are going to be the biggest thing that drives you forward and potentially makes you successful. If you have, you know, just three good clients that each refer one person, you know, that's an extra three people. And if those three people then refer another one to three people, you know, it will then grow and you'll get a bigger customer base and you'll get recommended from the good work you do. So yeah, look after them and make sure you do kind of good work.
[00:24:05.060] - Gordon
I've got a little bit extra to add to that as well. If you look after your customers, you'll find it's a lot easier to sell new products to existing customers than it is to find new customers for your existing products. So if people know, like, and trust you, then they're more likely to buy more products from you. So that's all about looking after your customers again. Third tip is, I had it in my head just a minute ago. Third tip, that I was going to say was... Oh. Have you got anything? I had something.
[00:24:49.670] - Taylor
I would say you've got to be true to yourself and make sure you enjoy it. Do something you enjoy. It's very, very easy to distinguish the people that are in it for the money and the people that actually enjoy and are passionate about what they do. It's very, very clear in the way you sell. You know, for me, I will never force someone on to a website, purely because, you know, I'm not going to say, "you need a website," because if they don't see the value in it, then you're not going to make a sale. But you've got to make sure that, you know, your passion comes through and you enjoy it, because if you don't enjoy what you do, it's going to come across in your business; you're going to look like you're unhappy and you're gonna look, you know they're gonna be like, "oh why am I working with them if they just look really sad all the time or you know just fed up," so make sure you do something you enjoy. It could be a hobby, but also make sure you don't turn everything you do from a hobby because then you won't have any hobbies left.
[00:25:53.540] - Gordon
Very good. And I've remembered what it was. So a bonus tip for starting a new business. Tip number four, is make sure that you think about processes and automation at the beginning of your business, because if you can put processes and automation in place right at the beginning, you'll find that the business will run a lot more smoothly. And...
[00:26:21.900] - Taylor
Nice grammar there.
[00:26:23.380] - Gordon
Yes, thank you. A lot more smoothly. It will run smoother, and it will give you more time to actually work on your business rather than in your business, which is something we haven't discussed in here, on this podcast, but is something that we should do in the future. So yes, processes, procedures, automation; have that in mind when you're starting a business and try and work out what you can put into place early on, it will help in the long run definitely.
[00:26:56.040] - Taylor
Wonderful.
[00:26:57.110] - Gordon
That's it. So we've done all the questions. Thank you so much for everybody who sent us a question. If you didn't know we were going to do this and you have a question for us, then please leave them in the comments. And you know, if we get enough, we'll do another episode in a few weeks and answer your questions then as well. So as always, we can be found on YouTube and on Facebook. Please like, share, and subscribe.
[00:27:24.270] - Taylor
You can also go to our website thisweekwith.co.uk to find all our past episodes.
[00:27:30.040] - Gordon
And that's it. Thank you for joining us. If you'd like to join us again, then we go live at 1p.m on a Friday, every week, unless we have a technical problem, in which case, it's slightly later. But we've been okay recently. Touch wood.
[00:27:46.140] - Taylor
Yeah, we're doing well.
[00:27:48.020] - Gordon
So until next week. Thank you for joining us. My name is Gordon, I'm from Drayson Design.
[00:27:54.040] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.
[00:27:56.400] - Gordon
Goodbye.
[00:27:57.140] - Taylor
Bye.
