[00:00:08.900] - Gordon
Hello.
[00:00:09.220] - Taylor
Hello.
[00:00:09.380] - Gordon
My name's Gordon from Drayson Design.
[00:00:11.270] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.
[00:00:13.530] - 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 welcome back.
[00:00:24.520] - Taylor
Welcome back.
[00:00:25.550] - Gordon
Thank you very much for joining us. Any news, first of all, Taylor?
[00:00:29.710] - Taylor
Not from me.
[00:00:31.480] - Gordon
Okay. Before we carry on, just a quick request. If you're watching this on YouTube, please hit the Like and the Subscribe button. There's also a little bell which will let you know when our new episodes are going out. And if you're on a podcast channel, please leave a comment or a review and don't forget to subscribe. That's it. All done. Let's get on to our topics. Do you want to go first or second, Taylor?
[00:00:58.730] - Taylor
I'll go first.
[00:00:59.530] - Gordon
Right. Off you go.
[00:01:01.510] - Taylor
So I'm going to be talking about business numbers. So that's a phone number, essentially, to be used for text messages and for taking calls. So something that I've always wanted to do but never been able to find the right solution and not wanting to have a second phone, is having a separate number for my business. There's a bunch of different reasons for that. First one is if I get a call, I will most likely be able to tell if it's a business call, or if it's a personal call, if it's from a number I don't recognize, for example. That's always good because it means I can answer the phone in a way that is to the right person. So if it's a personal call, I can answer it. Whereas if it's a business call, I'll know, okay, this potentially could be work or something like that. And so I can answer it and say "it's The Creative Tinker here." So that's the first reason. Another reason is trying to keep my business messages and things like that separate from my personal. So a lot of people use WhatsApp, and the annoying thing is that I have my personal and my business contacts in the same place, which can get very confusing and tricky to see which messages I haven't replied to, which messages I've got outstanding, and just being able to separate it because WhatsApp allow you to have the WhatsApp messenger and there is a WhatsApp business app. So they're two separate apps and they allow you to use a dual SIM or eSIM alongside that, and you can then essentially run two different numbers from the same phone. So that's mainly the reasons for it. And I then can separate anything from business and work. I don't have to give out my personal number to people. Although it comes to the same phone, in the future, should I ever close my business or change to something else, or a new number or whatever, I can close that number down and that's gone with the business, basically.
[00:03:19.490] - Gordon
Plus I guess if at any point you decide to sell the business and it's a viable business to sell, you can sell it along with the telephone number so that customers don't then have to change the number again.
[00:03:32.410] - Taylor
Yeah. So the idea is that I will change or send a message to all my clients saying the number is essentially dead to them. I will still keep my number as my personal number, but to them I will say that it basically no longer works and I'm going to be closing it down. That way there's no confusion where sometimes when you have two different email addresses, even if you try and migrate your email, or alter your business one for example, they will still use your Google or they'll still use your personal one, just because they've got it in their contacts. And that sometimes can be annoying. So if I just say it's completely dead, they can delete the number entirely and then only use the one that I want them to use.
[00:04:19.460] - Gordon
So the technical side of this, you're using an iPhone, which allows for dual SIMs. And I think the main number is a physical SIM card, isn't it?
[00:04:31.240] - Taylor
Yes.
[00:04:31.740] - Gordon
And then the second number is an eSIM. Is that right?
[00:04:36.130] - Taylor
Yeah. So it means there is no physical SIM to put in. It just gets loaded up onto your phone and then you can start sending it through the eSIM. The contract that I'm getting doesn't have any data because I don't need data because I get unlimited with my current SIM and so it seems silly to have two data plans with it. So yeah, it would just be for text messages and for making phone calls.
[00:05:05.250] - Gordon
So if you're using WhatsApp, that uses data and you're away or you're trying to receive messages for your business on WhatsApp, will the data work with the plan that has data? Will it take?
[00:05:22.330] - Taylor
Yes. So your phone can only use data from one SIM at a time. However, you basically are linking a number to the WhatsApp account, which is why you can't run two numbers through the same WhatsApp app because you can only set one. A lot of people that are in other countries, for example, they will get something like an eSIM. So if you're in America and you also have a location in the UK or whatever, what you can do is you can set up an eSIM for a London telephone number, essentially, and then you route it through WhatsApp to be able to then send messages and receive calls, etc from your London number, but to your device that's in America, for example. And it's a way of using a local number but in another country, for example.
[00:06:14.880] - Gordon
I think separating out numbers for business is very important. I mean, when I started, there weren't mobile phones. It was that long ago. So what I actually ended up doing was getting a separate business line, a landline. And I've stuck with that to this day. We have two landlines that come into the house. One is the personal line, and it's the one that if anyone wants to make a call or wants to call us, that's the number they use. And then the family can pick that up. Obviously, with mobiles, it's being used less and less, but I think it's still important to have. And then I've got my business line and everyone in the family knows that that's the number that I give out to customers. And if that rings, it's for business. And for example, if Clare's dad is with us, he'll pick it up and he knows to answer it in a professional manner. And I think that's the reason you're doing it.
[00:07:14.640] - Taylor
Yeah. So there's lots of other solutions now that can be a lot better utilized. So if you have a bigger company, for example, you can get the handsets that go around the office, for example, and you can do things like routing. So depending on the time of day, you can have it route through to a different handset. You can also have it so that if after three rings, no one picks up, it gets routed through to a mobile. You can also have things that when you pick up, people have to press a number to go to a certain department. So the people I am getting my eSIM with are Telecoms World, who I do work with, and they offer a lot of these types of services where you can make telephone calls from the computer, for example. So your outgoing phone call is through the computer.
[00:08:10.190] - Gordon
So that's called VOIP, isn't it? V-O-I-P, Voice Over Internet Protocol.
[00:08:15.150] - Taylor
Yeah. And again, there's lots of different things you can add on to that to make it a more personalised experience. You can have it announce calls, so you can actually route a landline number through to your phone, but appears as if it was a landline number. And again, I think it's called, what's the word, ghost speaking to you before you pick up the call, essentially.
[00:08:43.120] - Gordon
Whisper.
[00:08:43.470] - Taylor
Yeah, that's it. So whispering to say this is a business call that's coming through, because obviously it comes through just to your number but obviously is going out as if it was a landline. So yeah, there's lots of different services that you can use to do things for business numbers. And yeah, eSIM is the one that I decided to go with.
[00:09:05.710] - Gordon
Very good. Well, when it's up and running, maybe you'll come back and let us know how it's working for you.
[00:09:11.420] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:09:12.660] - Gordon
My topic this week is about something that Taylor and I was working on last couple of weeks. Taylor came up with this idea, and I thought it was a really good idea. Sorry, can I just say, I can't take my eyes off this little bit of hair just sticking out, which you've obviously spent a long time getting it. Oh, that's better, have it all sticking up. No, it's still there. It's funny. Anyway, we came up with this idea of when I'm doing a booking, so a show for people, it would be really nice to send them a calendar invite. Now, not so much an invite. That's a bad example of, bad wording. It's a calendar entry that they can then click on, and it puts the show and the party into their diary for them with whatever information I want them to have to hand in the description field. And getting this to a point where it worked took us a long time because it's really difficult. I already use a database system called FileMaker Pro. So we wanted to try and integrate it into that. And I already have FileMaker Pro that builds me my own diary. So it basically has a calendar file on my computer, and it basically overwrites that every time I take a booking and I put it into my diary, with all the new entries, and it takes away ones that are in the past and no longer need to be in my diary. But it actually builds the whole file with the right syntax and everything else all the way through. And it wasn't working. And we got that working, which took a long time as well. And it was that that triggered this idea, wasn't it? So what we now have is I've got a button in my database, and when I've finished booking something into my diary, send the confirmation to the customer, I can then automatically have an email created that will have a link in it. And that link will be either an ICS file which works with Apple calendar, for example, or a Google calendar link. And by clicking one or the other, it will take you through to the right calendar and say, do you want to add this to your calendar? And they get to click 'yes' or 'no'. And it then puts all the information in there. And we're using a service that's free and it's called Calndr.
[00:12:03.950] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:12:04.170] - Gordon
That's how you...
[00:12:05.590] - Taylor
It's C-A-L-N-D-R, I think.
[00:12:08.720] - Gordon
It's something like that. We'll put a link to it in the show notes. But what it effectively does is it takes a URL that we craft. So we put the URL together with all the information that needs to be in that URL. And by clicking on that link, it automatically then builds an ICS file that you can bring into your calendar. And it's a really nice little addition. I always like the idea of going above and beyond and making parties as easy as possible for my bookers. And having a situation where they can just click on a link from an email and it'll add everything into their diary with my contact details; how much they have left to pay; how they make that payment; what time to expect me, all that sort of thing, is really, really useful. Now, I do have to finish it off because we've got a lot of scripts that are running, FileMaker scripts, and I need to make sure that I put the right information into those so that the description field, for example, says what I need it to say. So I've got a little bit of finishing off to do. But other than that, it's looking really good and I'm really looking forward to being able to use it. What I might do is I might add it on to the end of my print script so that when it prints out all the confirmations, it then says, "Would you like to send an email to the customer with the calendar file?" And I can click 'yes' or 'no', and it'll just go ahead and do it, create the email. And all I then have to do is send it off to the right person. And that will make my life easy.
[00:13:52.980] - Taylor
Yeah, it works really well, I think. And especially for... You might have had cases where the client got the wrong date or whatever. And this, although it seems...
[00:14:04.700] - Gordon
It's a double check.
[00:14:05.260] - Taylor
Yeah. And they'll go, "hang on, I've got something already in that day. That can't be the right day." And then they realise they've either booked the wrong day or whatever. And they have all the information they need to hand, rather than having to go back through and find all the information that you've sent in the confirmation, which would most likely have the same information in the calendar, but it just saves them having to go digging through. Kind of adding on to that is I recently created a script to create cinema events in the calendar. So Cineworld send, when you book a ticket at the cinema with Cineworld, they send you an email and they include all the information that you need. And it's a pain to have to go find that email to scan the QR code or whatever. But also having all the details in, so the name of the movie, the time, the location, when it will finish, and then also things like seats as well. It listens or watches for when an email comes in from Cineworld, and then it passes the raw email source and does regex, essentially, to find and say, pull out all of these bits of information that I need. And then it generates a calendar event. And because I'm running it on a Mac, it can create the event for me without having to download it or whatever. And it includes all the information that I need.
[00:15:31.560] - Gordon
I would have thought Cineworld would have done that because that seems like a reasonable thing to do. My dentist, for example, whenever I make an appointment with them, they send me an email and there's a calendar link on there which then just populates my calendar with my booking. And I think more people need to do this because it just makes life so much easier. We live by the diary, basically. What's the saying?
[00:15:58.400] - Taylor
Not in the diary, it's not happening.
[00:15:59.970] - Gordon
If it's not in the diary, it just doesn't happen. And so we each have our own calendars. We have a combined calendar, we have a family calendar, we have calendars for other members of the family. And it means that we can turn them on and off, if we don't want to see certain calendars that aren't relevant for that moment in time. But you can see what everyone's doing and when they're doing it. And it makes planning things so much easier because we've got various things that we do. We have meetings during the week and being able to see, "Ah, okay, there's a show there." So during this week, we normally have a meeting on a Thursday morning. Thursday morning, I took my car for its MOT. So we couldn't have our meeting at the time that we wanted to have it because of that. And because we could see that in the diary and we could both see it, we knew that it had to get moved. And it means that you can plan your week better. So you're not going to be making bookings with people that just won't happen. Just a slight aside, my data recovery is still going on, but I have a feeling it's dead. I think the drives have given up the ghost, so I do need to check the data that's coming off it just to see if they're fine or not. But because of that, I've lost all my photo shoot photos. I like to have a library of photos that I can then pick from when I need an image for a show, or publicity, or social media. And so every five years or so, I go to a professional photographer and I have a photo shoot and I know all the photos that I'm looking for and I get them all done. And they're all on these hard drives. I've lost them all, because I don't have backups. I do now.
[00:18:00.870] - Taylor
You did have backups, but the backups failed.
[00:18:03.870] - Gordon
No, I didn't have a backup. That was the problem. But Taylor also wants some headshots because he currently has one he really likes, but it's got a different hairstyle, he looks slightly different. And especially with entertainers, I feel it's really important to get photos that are just maybe a few years old. The number of older entertainers that I know that have photos of them from 20 years ago, and they're using those as their publicity photos is criminal. You're basically false advertising because when people turn up, they go, "Oh, you're a lot younger in your photos." And because it's not what they were expecting, it's false advertising. So I always like to go and get a photo shoot done with up to date photos so that I can update my publicity. And this is what we did earlier this week. No, sorry, we booked it earlier this week for next week. So we will tell you all about how the photo shoot went once we've had it done. One of our customers, in fact, owns and runs a photography studio. So we have arranged to go and see them. And the arrangement that we've made with them is a little bit different to their normal customers, I would guess, in the fact that we've just requested the raw files. So we get basically what comes out of the camera. Because Taylor and I are very good at just editing and getting rid of backgrounds and getting rid of blemishes, and we can do all that. And it means that we get the photos quicker. So that should we need a photo urgently, which I did actually need during this week, and obviously this is what prompted the photo shoot booking. We can just grab one from the library, do what we need to do with it, and send it off or use it however we need to. So I highly recommend getting a calendar system if you do bookings of any sort. And it's important for your customer to know that the booking has been made. And also to make sure your publicity photos and anywhere that your image is, is up to date. That's really important. Anything to add?
[00:20:31.230] - Taylor
I don't think so.
[00:20:32.690] - Gordon
Thank you very much for joining us. As always, you can like, share, and subscribe, and please do, because it does help us, on Facebook. We're also on YouTube.
[00:20:41.980] - 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.
[00:20:48.180] - Gordon
We'll see you again next week, 1pm on Friday. Until then, my name is Gordon and I'm from Drayson Design.
[00:20:54.760] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.
[00:20:57.470] - Gordon
Goodbye.
[00:20:58.070] - Taylor
Bye.
