[00:00:09.280] - Gordon
Hello.
[00:00:09.560] - Taylor
Hello.
[00:00:09.890] - Gordon
My name's Gordon from Drayson Design.
[00:00:11.660] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.
[00:00:13.600] - 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 for those who've been with us before, welcome back. For those who are new, welcome. So it's been a busy seven days for both of us.
[00:00:33.500] - Gordon
Yes.
[00:00:34.730] - Gordon
Shall I go first on this occasion? Any news, first of all?
[00:00:38.940] - Taylor
No news from me.
[00:00:40.780] - Gordon
No. ChatGPT has brought out the latest version, which is ChatGPT 4, which is supposed to be much better. I haven't had a chance to play with it yet. And also Midjourney, which makes the AI images, has just been updated to version 5, which I have been playing with, but not much. So I'll come back to you on that with my news on that. So straight into today's topic. And my topic this week is catching up.
[00:01:12.260] - Taylor
Okay.
[00:01:13.270] - Gordon
Catching up and planning, in fact. So because I've been away for a few weeks, there's been a number of tasks and follow ups that I've needed to do that I haven't had a chance to do because I've been away. So that list is something that I kept while I was away. So it was things that I couldn't do while I was away, and needed to be done when I got back. Things like invoicing and so on that I can only do from here. And so my whole week, effectively, has been taken up with catching up with all of this list. And I'm not there yet.
[00:01:52.910] - Taylor
No?
[00:01:53.280] - Gordon
No. It's been a week since I got back. And... No, it's been... Is that right? Or is it two weeks? It's two weeks, isn't it? Yeah, this is the second week. It's been two weeks since I got back and I'm getting near the end of 'Catching Up.' Problem is that as you reply to people that have asked for quotes and people who've enquired about shows, it then means that they reply back to you again. And so you haven't actually finished that task yet because you've then got to continue the conversation until it comes to its natural conclusion, whether that be a booking or not. And so I've been doing all of that. And there's been trying to chase people and talk to them about information they need from me, which is another thing that I've been doing. Catching up with emails, because the emails were being dealt with, but only if I could deal with them while I was away. So anything more complicated than replying basically, I left 'til I got back. And my email is always quite busy.
[00:03:05.940] - Taylor
My email is pretty good actually. I try and get to inbox zero every single day.
[00:03:10.070] - Gordon
I try to. I just get nowhere near.
[00:03:13.120] - Taylor
I get to inbox zero every day then, shall I say?
[00:03:15.900] - Gordon
Which is very good. Well done. Yeah. It's been an aim of mine for many years now to get to inbox zero, but I haven't managed it yet.
[00:03:26.190] - Taylor
I think it's all about how you maintain it, how you manage things, moving stuff out of your emails so that you can clear them.
[00:03:36.120] - Gordon
Yeah. I mean, a lot of the emails are there because I haven't dealt with them. That's why I leave them in the inbox. It reminds me that they still need doing, whatever that is. And there are things in there which are tasks that still need doing, but they're not important. There's no priority on them. And it's something I can do when the next pandemic comes along. I'm not suggesting we need another pandemic, but that is the sort of length of time I need without any work as such to be able to get this all sorted. So that's one of the things I've been doing, doing my catch up. I've also had lots of enquiries. For some reason, everyone seems to want a new website at the moment. Mainly people who've got one and want to change it, or want to update it, or get it to do something it doesn't already do. One of the sites, for example, is a company that I've had as a customer for a long time now, but I didn't build their website; they came with the website. And the problem with it is, it doesn't work very well on mobiles. It's not mobile friendly. And that's one of the things that they need to sort. And they've realized that that's becoming much more important. I mean, it's been important for a few years now, but it's much more important now. And so they've come to me and they said, "look, what do we need to do?" And it's effectively a rewrite of the website, bringing it into new, up to date framework, and making sure that it will work on mobiles and other devices like TVs. I understand they're not used much for browsing, but again, we can't discount in the future that they won't be. As screens get bigger, as tablets get bigger, the size ratio of those sort of things is getting to the point of a small TV. So you need to take that into consideration when you're building a website. And these people have realized that that's something that they need to do. So this last week, I've sent out four different quotes for four different websites, and it looks like most of them are going to come back and book and sign up for the service. Which means the next thing on my list is to plan ahead. So I've got to make sure that I've got time to do all of this work. And in my world, it's first come, first serve. So as soon as someone says, "Yes, I want to go ahead," they get put into the diary first. It's the same with bookings for shows. If people want a show, if the date's available, you can have it. If someone else is thinking about it, well, they haven't booked yet, so it's still available. And I discovered that that was the best way of doing it a little while ago, because otherwise you can be holding a date or a period of time for someone, and for whatever reason, they could turn around and say, "actually, we're not going to do that anymore," or "we're going to do it next year," or "it's going to be postponed." All of a sudden you've got this big chunk of time that you just can't resell because it's too soon, it's coming up. So I've got to plan ahead and make sure I've got time to do all these things. One big thing that I have done this week is I've made party bags. So this is something I do for my children's shows. Part of my 'party package' is that I supply party bags that go home with the children. Now, there's two reasons I do this. One is that it's one less thing for the parent to do, because they've got enough to worry about. And if I can make their life easier, then I will. And this is one thing that I can do that will help them. Plus, they're not buying extra party bags just in case there were extra children and then have 10 party bags left over at the end of the party that they can't give to anyone. It's a waste of their resources, their time, their money, etc. With me, if I take party bags to a party and we don't use that number, they say there's going to be 20 and there's 15, we've got five extra party bags, well, that's fine. I can take them home and they can be part of my next party's party bags. So it makes it nice and easy for me. The other thing that I do party bags for is so that I can make sure that my details go home with all the children at the party. And it's one of the ways I advertise. And in fact, if you were to have a party with me, the first 20 party bags are included in the price. And that's because they're paid for out of my marketing budget. So they get a party bag with my web address on, and they get a photo card and a booklet with tricks that they can learn, along with other party bag favours as well. But they get to go home with all the children, and I get a lot of people who contact me, having got my details from those cards or from the bags. So it's a good marketing exercise for me, and that's why I don't have the customers pay for it. I actually pay for those out of my own pocket effectively. If they want more than 20, then they do pay for them because there are costs involved, and I can't have someone having a party for 100 children and then bearing that cost by giving out 100 party bags. So that's one of the things I was doing. I was making them up because I have to make them up. I buy all the prizes that go into them in bulk. Probably about five, six thousand of each, at a time. And then I sit in the lounge, here in fact, I put something on the television. In this case, this week I was watching "Wednesday," the Netflix series about Wednesday Addams, which is very good. I'm really, really enjoying it. I'm late to the party with this. Everyone else seems to have watched it months ago. But... Sorry about that. Put my hand over your face. Sorry about that.
[00:09:51.250] - Taylor
Thank you. Appreciate that.
[00:09:53.500] - Gordon
I'm really enjoying it. I've only got two episodes to go now, so I'm slowing down a bit, so I don't see them all too quickly. But I just sit here and I make the party bags, putting everything in, putting them on the side. And I've got a party bag system, something that manages all my party bags, which I will talk about in a future episode, because it's something I came up with and it makes my life a lot easier when I'm going out to parties. So that's pretty much it. So catching up and planning ahead.
[00:10:23.660] - Taylor
Nice. So I mentioned a while back for Snippet Club, the way that I create tutorials and the screenshots and things like that, and how they're nicely annotated with boxes and arrows and things like that. So I use a service called "Tango.Us," and what it does is it records your screen, and it takes screenshots as you are doing the activity or the tutorial. It just takes screenshots every couple of seconds. And then it puts this into a nice long step by step guide where it kind of guesses what the thing was. So if you clicked, it says, "step five, click this." And it can take the text of the button and things like that. And then I go through, I delete the ones that are duplicate steps or aren't needed. I then label all the headings and I then export all of the images and the text. You can copy button. And I paste it into the Guttenberg editor, and then I just need to upload all the images and I have a plug-in that I can just click a button and it auto downloads from the external server and uploads them to the website. And I've got a nice step by step guide on how to go about the tutorial.
[00:11:48.300] - Gordon
So you're basically just doing the thing that the tutorial is all about, in real time.
[00:11:55.540] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:11:55.540] - Gordon
And then the software is just sort of grabbing the information it needs to be able to present it in a way someone else can follow it. So it's actually a really quick and easy way for you to create the written part of a tutorial.
[00:12:11.790] - Taylor
Yeah. I mean, the biggest part is the screenshots, and it's very time consuming to go through, do something, take a screenshot, do another thing, take a screenshot. And so this helps speed it up. I still have to write out the instructions and things like that. And I prefer written tutorials rather than videos. I'm not a fan of editing videos and things like that, so that's why I prefer writing it. And also it's a bit easier sometimes to write down and explain something when you can... If you've got code or whatever, it's easy to copy and paste. And yeah, it just goes through screenshots, and then I can then put that in to the tutorial.
[00:12:55.150] - Gordon
So how did you find Tango? And what sort of service is it? Is it a free service, a paid service?
[00:13:00.230] - Taylor
So, it's a paid annual, I think, annual subscription. And I found it through The Admin Bar I think, someone had shared it. And there are lots of different versions, as in there's other websites that do similar things that are cheaper. But I found that this is the most robust and go to solution, and I wanted to use something that was going to be supported and did a good job. There's a cheaper one that was on AppSumo called "Komodo Deck," I think, that does something similar. They're like a both between recording a video and then creating step by step guides. They kind of do both at the same time. So whereas the Tango.Us only does screenshots and creates a step by step guide, Komodo Deck does both. So it records the video and then you obviously have a video, but it also has the step by step guide that it creates. The reason I don't use that is because I found it didn't work as well. And some of the features that I use in Tango.Us aren't there in Komodo Deck. But it's a nice alternative. I think it was a bit cheaper. I don't know if it's still on AppSumo or not, but it was a nice alternative. And I know a lot of people that use it, and I recommended it to quite a few people for people that wanted an alternative to Loom that didn't want to pay a subscription.
[00:14:22.840] - Gordon
I think I might have purchased it myself. I'll have to check now, because I think it would have been something that I would have bought just before I went away, so I didn't have a chance to play with it. If you are watching this on our website, then if you look just over here, there will be a link that will take you straight to Tango.US. I think that's how you pronounce it. I think it's the US domain, isn't it? It sounds like, it's spelt us, but I think it's US. So yes, you'll be able to see the link there and you'll be able to follow that and go and have a look for yourself. If you make tutorials, that is a great way of doing it. And it has actually made life a lot quicker for you because the thing you enjoy doing is actually creating the...
[00:15:11.810] - Taylor
Yeah, I really don't enjoy writing up tutorials, but it's the only way I can do it. I dislike writing tutorials less than making videos. So it's the lesser of two evils, basically.
[00:15:28.000] - Gordon
And this makes it really easy. You can just do it very quickly and all the information is there, which is the important bit. It doesn't miss anything out because it's being done by a service, by a computer. Yeah, that's really good. So that, I think, is everything from me today.
[00:15:45.720] - Taylor
And me as well.
[00:15:46.580] - Gordon
So there we go. We managed to do another episode this week, which is great news. Taylor is feeling good. Are you feeling good?
[00:15:53.610] - Taylor
Yeah, doing well.
[00:15:54.920] - Gordon
Yeah. So he's feeling good. And I'm back into this time zone again, which is nice. It didn't take long, to be fair. I was straight into shows the day after I got home from America, so it didn't take long for me to get back into this time zone with a bit of a thump, really.
[00:16:13.740] - Taylor
Definitely.
[00:16:14.310] - Gordon
Yeah. And the weather's a lot cooler here than it is over in Texas. So thank you so much for joining us. As always, you can like, share, and subscribe. We're on YouTube and on Facebook.
[00:16:27.080] - Taylor
You can also go to our website thisweekwith.co.uk to find all of our past episodes and find anything we may have spoken about and see any links that we've put in, in the nice link sharing widget that we have.
[00:16:39.200] - Gordon
Yeah. And we will be adding the advertising part, our own product mainly. That's something that we wanted to put onto the website, which will be coming very soon. And it wasn't required at the beginning, but it'll be nice to have on there. So you can see any specials we have, or any new products we have, or things that we're promoting. So until next week, 1 o'clock on Friday when we release on Facebook and on YouTube. We'll see you then. Until then, my name is Gordon and I'm from Drayson Design.
[00:17:11.510] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.
[00:17:14.730] - Gordon
Goodbye.
[00:17:15.030] - Taylor
Bye.
