[00:00:09.160] - Gordon
Hello.
[00:00:09.460] - Taylor
Hello.
[00:00:09.810] - Gordon
My name's Gordon from Drayson Design.
[00:00:11.710] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.
[00:00:13.810] - 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 you've not been away this week, have you?
[00:00:25.250] - Taylor
I have not, no.
[00:00:25.890] - Gordon
No. So you've been here. That's very good. Any news, first of all?
[00:00:29.880] - Taylor
I bought a new app.
[00:00:34.870] - Gordon
A new app? Okay.
[00:00:36.260] - Taylor
So it's similar to Airtable. So it's called Retable, and it hasn't got the same level of features, but it's a similar type of product. So it's a replacement to spreadsheets and a relational database, relational databases in a spreadsheet type form.
[00:00:57.020] - Gordon
Okay, well, maybe we'll check back with you in a future episode and see how you're getting on with that, because I still haven't quite got my head around how that works. I know about Airtable. In fact, I use Airtable, but I still don't quite understand how a spreadsheet and a database have fused together. So yeah, it'd be interesting to hear what you've come up with for that. Right, so on to our topics for the day. Can I go first?
[00:01:27.980] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:01:28.720] - Gordon
So talking of spreadsheets. See how I segued into that, you see? I have a spreadsheet that I set up for my car, which basically allows me, every time I fill up with fuel to use an Apple shortcut to basically put in the amount of fuel I've put in, the total cost of the fuel, and my odometer reading. And that's all it takes. And it works out a ton of things from that.
[00:02:08.140] - Taylor
You must be very clever to have figured all that out yourself.
[00:02:10.800] - Gordon
Now, I actually duplicated a spreadsheet that Taylor created for his car. But I've made an awful lot of changes because I also have a fuel card which gets me cheaper petrol or cheaper fuel. I use diesel. So half of the sheet is the pump price, and the other half is the fuel card price so that I can actually compare how the fuel card is doing for me. And one of the settings that I wanted to have in there was the cost per mile. So give me an idea of how much it was costing just on fuel alone to run my car per mile. And so that's an easy calculation, right? It's the amount of fuel you put in, as in the cost of the fuel you put in, and then you divide that by the number of miles you do in that tank. And there you go. You've got your cost per mile. Except it's not that easy, because I was coming up against some problems. It would be fine if you filled up your car at exactly the same point every time you fill it up. So when there's, for example, 10 litres left in the tank. But if you don't do that and you do it when there's 20 litres left in the tank because maybe you're going on a long journey and you know that the amount that's in the car won't get you all that journey, you need to fill up again, top it up, then it really changes the cost per mile because the number of miles that you've done for that tank where you filled up when there was 20% less is a lot less. Therefore, the number of miles is going to be a lot less, and therefore, the cost per mile is going to be a lot more because you did less miles. And it really took a long time for me to figure out exactly how you get this calculation. So I'm putting it on here mainly for me so that I remember and I can come back to it and go, "What is that calculation?" So this is the calculation. I have a row for every time I fill up. So it gives me, automatically because it knows how much I've put in the tank and it knows how much that costs, so it knows how much the fuel was per litre. Now, I happen to know my car takes 60 litres. Okay, that's my baseline. So if I put 51 litres into my car, I know there's nine litres already in there because I'm topping it up. So the other thing which, for some reason I'd never thought about, is that when you fill up your car, the cost of the fuel that you're putting in is not the cost of the fuel that's in the tank because there's also fuel in there from before. So I have a 60 litre tank. If I put 50 litres in, it costs me in round numbers, £70. In my mind, I'm thinking that to fill up my car is going to cost £70. Well, that's not true because there's 10 litres still in there. And those 10 litres, I've already paid for the previous time. So my first calculation was to calculate how much the fuel that was in my tank at the end of a fill up actually cost me. And the way you do that is you add in the amount that you've just paid at the pump, you then see how much you've put in. In this case, we're saying it's 50 litres, and so 10 litres of it is still in the tank from the last fill up. So you're adding on 10 litres at the cost of the previous fill up and that will give you the total monetary value of the fuel that's in your car. Once you've got that cost, which is for in round numbers, let's say it's £90, once you fill up again, you know how much you've got left. So again, let's keep it round numbers. We'll make it 55 litres go in. So there's five litres left. So I used up 55 litres out of 60 of the full amount of that tank. So I know how much that whole tank cost me. I know I did 55 divided by 60 percent and I work out that percentage of the original price. And that will then tell me exactly the cost of the amount of fuel that I've used. And I know how many miles there were, so I can then do the simple calculation of dividing it by the number of miles. And that gives me a very, very accurate cost per mile. And it does change because if you're doing motorway driving, you're going to go further. Therefore, the cost per mile comes down. If the price at the pump comes down, your cost per mile will also go down. And it's really interesting seeing the differences in the prices over time. Now, I've only had my car since January. I've only done about five fill ups in that time. So I don't have enough data really to see what's going on. I can tell you that my fuel card saves me about two pence per litre. Sorry, let me start that again. It saves me about two pence per mile. And I do about, on average, about 560, 570 miles to a tank. And again, that tank is not a full tank. It's a tank up to the point when I refill. So in that case, I'm saving over £10 by using a fuel card for every fill up that I do, which is a reasonable amount. It's worth having a fuel card. The other reason for having a fuel card is that you get the same price at different petrol pumps. So even if you have to stop at a motorway petrol pump, which is notoriously much, much more expensive than your local garage, you're still going to be paying the lower price. So I use two fuel cards. I use one from fuel card store and another one from key fuels. I will put links in the show notes for both of those. They may be affiliate links if I have them. But if you use your car for business, I highly recommend getting fuel cards. Even if you don't use it for business, if it can save you some money and you're able to link it to a business, it's still worth doing. You haven't done it yet, have you?
[00:09:21.360] - Taylor
I haven't. It's on my list of things to do, but yeah, it's definitely something that I want to do. Something that might be quite interesting for you is to forecast some of your data. So taking the data that you've got and going, "Okay, well, if this is how many times I've filled up in this period of time, how many times am I going to fill up over the course of a year?" Which you'll then be able to calculate an average of, "Okay, how much is it going to cost me in petrol a year?" And then you can obviously then budget for that.
[00:09:54.550] - Gordon
So I have done something similar. So I've worked out the average miles per day, and I know how much the average mile is costing me, from all the data I've got. So all I've done is I've created three lines. One is a cost per day. I think it's something like 18 miles I do on average a day. And it's something like an average of 15p per mile at the pump prices. Obviously, the fuel card prices are slightly less. So I've worked out what the cost would be per day. And then I've worked out 365 divided by 12, which gives me an average month, again, because you can't do 30 or 31 or 28 because it changes. So I've got an average per month, and then I've done exactly the same per year. And it's just a smidgen over £1000 at the moment that it's going to cost me in fuel just to have the car, which is really useful to know because as you say, you can then budget for it and you know that that's going to be a cost. And as we all know, if that's a business cost, it's something you need to take into account when working out your prices, because you need to make sure you cover your costs and also make a profit. So if you know what the fuel is going to cost you on average per year, then you'll know what cost to add into your... What prices to add into your costs to make sure you get profit.
[00:11:32.870] - Taylor
Yeah. And you'll be able to calculate on obviously how much money you can claim back per mile or whatever. And you can see, "okay, does the percentage change depending on external factors like the cost of living or the amount you earn?"
[00:11:50.890] - Gordon
Or the number of bookings I get, which is a big factor for me. But then I know what the average cost per year is going to be, and can divide that by the number of jobs I have and therefore work out what cost in my booking the fuel is costing me. And if I were to take that a step further, I can add in insurance and I can add in the cost of the car and I can add in the cost of road tax and even maintenance. Add all these up, I have one big price, divide that by the number of jobs. That's how much it costs me to go and do a job. And obviously, the more jobs that I do, the less that's going to be. But it's going to be a figure that is not going to change too much. But it gives me an idea of what percentage of the price I charge for my shows is actually going towards travel.
[00:12:49.280] - Taylor
Yeah, it reminds me of something I saw on social media. I think it was TikTok. There is a lady that tracks her cost per wear on a spreadsheet. So every time she gets a new piece of clothing, whether that be shoes, T-shirts, trousers, whatever, she puts the price that she paid for it in. And then every day she tracks and she logs what items she wore. So obviously, it's going to be multiple items a day. And obviously, you can wear multiple outfits a day, but she logs that. That then calculates how much it costs her per item and what the cost per wear is. So obviously, things that she wears every day, like a pair of trainers, although they may cost £100, if she's wearing them every day, the cost per wear is going to come very very low very quickly. For things that she bought, for example, she bought a designer bag that she's wore to one event, that obviously is a very high cost per wear. What she's able to do is she's able to take the data and she puts it onto a scatter graph so she can see a chart. It's a trending line. Diagonally, you can see, and there's some obviously outliers, but she can see obviously the more expensive you would assume you'd get a higher cost per wear, which isn't always the case. And she does something like a spring clean. So she'll look at her chart and go, "Okay, which ones have the highest cost per wear?" And if she thinks, "Okay, I'm not going to wear this," she can sell it. And that obviously then brings her overall cost per wear down because she's got rid of something that's quite expensive and she hasn't really worn.
[00:14:31.510] - Gordon
Yeah. I like it.
[00:14:31.880] - Taylor
And it's a good way to also figure out when she last wore something as well, because she can go, "Okay, well, this is the highest cost per wear, but also I haven't worn any of these items in the past year. Let me get rid of them." There was another way that someone did this I saw, which is every time you wear a T-shirt, you flip the hanger or the T shirt around in your wardrobe. And at the end of the year, you find all the ones are still the same way. And obviously means you haven't worn them and you get rid of them. It's a similar way you can do something that.
[00:15:03.720] - Gordon
I like that.
[00:15:04.510] - Taylor
But to not track, obviously.
[00:15:07.170] - Gordon
Yeah, to not have to do a spreadsheet. But the cost per wear is quite extreme. It's the sort of thing that you and I would actually really enjoy. But if you were to do that for maybe equipment in your business, you would then be able to very quickly find out what have been the best buys and what have been the worst buys, and that will then influence your buying decisions in the future. So I think that is very well worth doing.
[00:15:37.260] - Taylor
Yeah. I mean, if you take, for example, my laptop, it's a very expensive item that I bought, but I probably use it every single day. And you know times I don't think I used it at least once, was when I was in hospital.
[00:15:49.920] - Gordon
Yeah.
[00:15:50.090] - Taylor
I think that's the only time that I haven't used it during the day because it's just been so useful. Obviously, most of my business and entire life is on there. But it's something that I invested in and would probably be very low cost.
[00:16:02.430] - Gordon
But we all buy things that are quite expensive and we go, "ooh, shall I get it? Shall I not get it?" And by keeping tabs on how often you use something, will tell you if that was a good choice or not. And you can then decide in the future based on that, is that a good choice or not for the future?
[00:16:21.580] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:16:21.810] - Gordon
Yeah. Really interesting. Right. That's all I wanted to say on that. Taylor, what are you going to talk about?
[00:16:27.040] - Taylor
My topic for this week is a quote that I've always known about but was highlighted to me this week, which is "how you do anything, is how you do everything." Now, what that means is the way that you deal with a situation reflects your entire life. So if you are sloppy with some of your work, maybe you haven't provided the best customer experience to one of your clients, or you thought, "I'm not going to bother, I'll skip today," whether it be the gym or whatever, that although you think, "Oh, it's only one time," it explains a lot and it shows a lot about the type of person you are. And I came across this again earlier this week because I was talking to Kyle, and something that I really admire about him is that everything he does, he makes sure he does to a level he would be happy with. He's always making sure that he thinks about how the customer feels. And I'll put my hand up, that I haven't always done that. There have been times where I've been lazy. I haven't thought, hang on, "how is my customer going to do this?" I haven't provided the best customer experience I can possibly give. And it really shone a light about something that I need to make sure I am paying attention to because these things are important and it sets the tone of how other people will perceive you.
[00:18:02.650] - Gordon
I think it also sets you apart from others who don't, for example. I think customer service is really important, especially in what I do with Magic. The customer service, the amount I do for a customer, means they're going to come back to me and not just go to someone else.
[00:18:17.910] - Taylor
Yeah. So I've been recently trying to make a conscious effort of thinking, "I'm a bit tired, but no, actually, I'm going to make sure that if I agreed to doing something, I make sure that I do it to the best possible standard I can, and I provide the best service." And another company that I think has a similar... Experienced something similar, is WP Manage Ninja. So they have a number of different plug-ins that they've released and built. And what you find is in some of their community groups on Facebook and things, people are itching and willing to throw money at them to build a plug-in. They've been asked to build membership plug-ins. They've been asked to build e-commerce solutions, all of these different plug-ins, and people are ready to throw their money at them purely because of their past experience and the fact that they've always dealt with support in a high professional manner. They've always released new features. And so they have this history of good customer service and good products. And yeah, it goes to show that if you make sure that you prioritise people and you make sure that you're doing the best you can in every situation, then people will remember that. And again, part of the reason I bring this up is Kyle is going to be releasing a new product, which is lots of checklists for your SOPs, so 'signing on process' for clients. He sent an email, like a marketing email, just letting people know about it. And I got to the second paragraph before I just scrolled down to the bottom and hit the 'Buy' button. Purely because I knew that Kyle is going to produce something that is of good quality, is worth it, and the deal he was offering was a no brainer, really. And I trusted that because of the past work he's done. Whether that be paid things that I've bought from him, or just the way that he provides such immense value to his community for free through his YouTube videos, through tutorials, through things he does weekly. He does a weekly newsletter and he's never missed. I think he's just passed his 500th newsletter that he's never missed a week, even if he was traveling or away. And it's something that I think we should all take time to reflect and really think, "Okay, are we always doing the best we can? If we say we commit to something, are we following that through?" And if you can't commit to it, don't say yes at the time.
[00:20:59.030] - Gordon
Yeah, I think setting expectations is a big part of that. I think if when you take on work, you say, "Look, I can't start immediately, but I can do it in two weeks' time," then the customer knows that's going to be the deal, and they're not going to be going on at you and going, "Look, it's taken two weeks and you've done nothing!" Because you've told them about it right up front.
[00:21:24.890] - Taylor
So yeah.
[00:21:25.590] - Gordon
Very good. So this is the new way that you are thinking is it?
[00:21:30.170] - Taylor
Yeah, I'd like to. I think it can be used throughout your entire life in not just business, but personal. When the alarm goes off, do you just hit snooze? Or do you actually go, "No, I've said I would get up" and go to the gym, or get up early to do some more, to do work, or meet a friend, or whatever. And yeah, it really changed the way that I think about things and the way I go about everything, because I think if I do this once, that shows that my attention to detail isn't there, my attention just in general isn't there, or I am not trustworthy or always going to be there kind of thing.
[00:22:08.720] - Gordon
And I think if you get into that mindset, you can then start playing it to your benefit by making lists of what you're going to be doing the following day. And because you've already made that list and you want to make sure that you follow through with it, you'll end up doing them. And so you won't get side-tracked and do other things. So that's a really good, really good way to run your life, I think.
[00:22:32.480] - Taylor
Yeah, it takes a lot of self discipline, but I think it can be worth it.
[00:22:36.460] - Gordon
I agree. Well, thank you so much for joining us. As always, you can like, share, and subscribe on Facebook and YouTube, and please leave comments because we've found that that is something that will help us to get more viewers.
[00:22:52.310] - Taylor
You can also go to our website thisweekwith.co.uk to find all of our past episodes and anything we may have spoken about.
[00:22:59.220] - Gordon
Hit that subscribe button. If you're on Facebook, I don't think there's a like button there. If you're on YouTube, there's a little bell. Click on the bell and you'll be alerted every time we bring out a new video. Until next week, we'll be with you at 1pm next Friday. My name is Gordon and I'm from Drayson Design.
[00:23:18.500] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.
[00:23:21.050] - Gordon
Goodbye.
[00:23:21.670] - Taylor
Bye.
