[00:00:09.24] - Gordon
Hello.
[00:00:10.05] - Taylor
Hello.
[00:00:10.18] - Gordon
My name's Gordon from Drayson Design.
[00:00:12.10] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.
[00:00:14.10] - 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 are new, welcome.
[00:00:25.16] - Taylor
Yeah, and those who are not new, welcome back.
[00:00:27.26] - Gordon
Yes, indeed. It's been a busy week, as always. Let's get straight into it. Unless you've got any news?
[00:00:34.24] - Gordon
No.
[00:00:35.13] - Gordon
Okay, no news. Let's get straight into it. Would you like to go first or shall I?
[00:00:39.02] - Taylor
I'll go first this week.
[00:00:40.17] - Gordon
Okay.
[00:00:41.04] - Taylor
So, I want to talk about bringing in outside help for your own business. Now, bringing in outside help for client work is something that I've done before, and I think a lot of people do in their businesses, not just web design, but in all types of business. But bringing in outside help for your own business is something that we don't often do because there's no budget per se, normally. We don't want to spend the extra money. Now, I am bringing in outside help in one of my new projects for my personal site. So my personal site is something that I've wanted to redesign and rebuild for a while now, and it just wasn't going anywhere. Just because I have so much work, it's hard for me to set aside time to work on it. But not only that, I am too close to the project. This website's been through many iterations, completely different styles, completely different focuses and things like that. And so I can't design something because I can only see what the previous design was. So I brought in my friend Jake and basically said, "Would you be able to design my personal website for me?" And it was something that I've never really done before because, again, there's never been a budget for it because you don't really put budgets on your own personal projects because, again, they're personal fun hobby projects. But I wanted to get this done. I wanted it to be done properly. And so I brought in someone outside and I want to make sure that he gets the credit that is due, really. I said to him, "The one thing that it must have is it must have designed by Jake at the bottom of the website and a link to your website." Because I don't want people thinking, "Oh, that's a really nice website that you've got. I think it's good." And I don't want to take the credit because it's not going to be designed by me. So I want to make sure that Jake gets the credit he deserves and people can obviously find a link to his website and contact him if they want design work or website work as well.
[00:03:05.18] - Gordon
So as well as making sure that you get someone who's objective to design it for you, the other advantage is that you know that if someone else is taking it on, they are actually going to get it done because they're going to treat it like a customer, like you would. If a customer came to you, it's one of the things that you would schedule in and it would get done.
[00:03:28.28] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:03:29.04] - Gordon
But when you've got your own personal projects, they get done when you've got time, you never schedule them in.
[00:03:34.02] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:03:34.28] - Gordon
So this is another good reason to bring someone else in, isn't it?
[00:03:38.19] - Taylor
Yeah, and I think it's important to do that. The way I see it is it's an investment. Although my personal site isn't a business website in the fact that it's what I use to generate business and things like that, it's still an extension of me. A lot of places online, I have this linked because if people want to find out more about me personally, because again, a lot of people work with me, not because of The Creative Tinker in terms of that, but because of me personally. In my view, it's an investment in myself of portraying myself the best I can, and then also just being able to make sure that I can trace back my digital footprint, which is what the main purpose of my website is, it's to own all of the data that I have around the internet.
[00:04:32.25] - Gordon
The other thing is, we've said this before, it's collaborating, isn't it? So it's looking at other people's ideas and bringing them into what you're doing and making what you're doing much better because of that. Yeah, very important.
[00:04:46.03] - Taylor
Have you done that in any of your businesses?
[00:04:48.18] - Gordon
Yeah. So if I'm doing a magic show, for example, I collaborate and get help from other people. Paul Longhurst, my double act partner is the first person I always go to. We work very well when we're bouncing ideas off each other and come up with some really good solid solutions to problems. But I also bring in people with web design when I need them. So for example, I bring yourself in when I am looking for some web development rather than design. You have a company that does design for you as well, and I've used them in the past. But then there's specialists that do SEO, and there's people who do Google Ads and so forth, and I bring them in as I need them, in my own projects or for my customer projects, because they know better than I do, and it's much better to pay them money rather than spend the time trying to fudge it myself. So yes, yes is the answer. And I think it's a really important way to grow what you do and being able to offer different things to your customers as well.
[00:06:11.00] - Taylor
Definitely.
[00:06:12.19] - Gordon
Anything else you want to say on that subject?
[00:06:14.29] - Taylor
I don't think so. That's the main thing is something I've been working on the past week or so.
[00:06:20.25] - Gordon
So when are we going to see a brand new website then?
[00:06:24.26] - Taylor
Well, Jake wants to try and get the design done before we go to Word Camp, which will be in a couple of weeks. But I don't know when I will be building it. I don't know. I won't probably be able to get it built as quick as Jake can design it.
[00:06:42.05] - Gordon
Okay, that's cool. And we are actually collaborating on another project ourselves at the moment, aren't we?
[00:06:47.05] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:06:47.16] - Gordon
Which I can't tell you about at the moment because it's not anywhere near ready. But when it is ready, we'll talk about it on here, I think, because it's a really interesting project with lots of different problems that we've not had before.
[00:06:59.14] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:06:59.27] - Gordon
So that'd be good. So my topic for this week is your work space. I've got an office. One of the things that I looked for when we purchased the house that we're in now is for me to have an office space, and that allows me to go in there and do my work. I'm not taking up space that is living space, because if other members of the family are here and they want to sit watching television in the lounge, Well, they can do because I'm not going to be in there tapping away, trying to work. So the office is a really important space for me. And I get to a point where things come in and I deal with them, or I deal with them later and I put them down and I put them in a pile and they get dealt with at some point. And every now and then, my office gets to the point when there's just too much everywhere. Because what happens is I put things down to deal with and then other things get put on top of it and you end up not getting to the first things because they're now at the bottom of the pile, even though they may be the thing that should be dealt with first. And so every now and then, I look at the office and I go, "it's looking a bit messy again." And I do like a spring clean, although it's never in spring. It's always in different times of the year. And I find things that I've been meaning to do or I find things that should have been done and I get onto them really quickly and get them out of the way. Or there's things that just need filing away or putting in the right space. For example, I go to the theatre quite a lot, and if I get a programme, I like to hold on to the programme, but I don't like to leave it lying around. It has to be put somewhere safe, and that's for me in the loft. I've got a special air tight box that I put all these things in. But going into the loft is not just a matter of going upstairs and putting it in the loft. I've got to get a ladder out; I got to open the loft; I got to climb up into it. It's a bit of a faff. So I try not to do it all the time. I store things up and then take them all up in one go. So I've got those that need doing. And I found about four programmes that were needing to go up, and that's a good number. So time to put them up in the loft. I've also got receipts and things that maybe haven't been put into the finance programme that I have, maybe their household bills or their personal bills, that sort of thing. And so, therefore, I've actually got a whole box full of them here, which I need to now go through and work out what needs to be scanned, what needs to be input into the finance system, and then what needs to be shredded. And if anything needs to be kept, where that has to go. And again, if you get a system and a process, then quite often this doesn't happen because you'll deal with it, you'll get it done, and then you'll file it or you'll shred it or whatever needs to happen to it. But every now and then you get just really busy. Or more importantly, you get into a path where you're working on something really hard and you don't want to break off that path to do mundane admin because it might take away your creativity or your ability to finish this project in a reasonable time. So quite often I just put my head down and I go straight through a project, get it done, and then I go, "Right, what have I been missing that I need to deal with?" And sometimes things get missed. And so doing this is a really important process for me. Now, there are people who will say to me, and probably be shouting at the screen or their car radio, saying, "You have to keep your desk tidy at all times because you can't work if it's too messy." And yeah, I get that. There's really two ways of looking at this. The people who will have a very, very tidy desk and anything that comes onto it, they'll deal with immediately and get it off their desk. They're the sort of people who quite often have inbox zero because it's the same sort of thought process.
[00:11:34.13] - Taylor
Yep.
[00:11:34.29] - Gordon
They'll deal with it as it comes in and it's done with. And then there's other people which I think I fall into the category of, which are the people who will let things build up around them, deal with the really important things or the things that are screaming out that need to be done or have a deadline. That's a really good way of getting stuff done, having a deadline, even if it's a self-imposed deadline. We've spoken about that before. And then all of a sudden, you get to a point when you're thinking, "actually, this is a lot worse than it should be." And even though I pretty much, not everything, but I pretty much know where most things are, and I can lay my hands on them pretty quickly because I know where I left them. Every now and then, you get to a point when you go, "I can't find it. I don't know where it is." And doing this process will then allow you to find things again and get yourself back on track, as it were. What sort of person are you, Taylor?
[00:12:33.24] - Taylor
I kind of end up in both camps. I try and tidy my room every single morning. So one of the things I have is like a habit tracker and it says 'tidy bedroom.' So because my desk is in my bedroom, I just have it set as that. And that basically means make my bed, which entails moving everything and either organising it into a place or just leaving it on there if it's something I need to get later, for example.
[00:13:07.11] - Gordon
What we should say is your bed takes up quite a large percentage of your room, so you use it as a surface, right?
[00:13:13.27] - Taylor
Yeah, the end of my bed. And then I will do the same for my desk. So I'll go through and I'll basically try and organise, either get rid of stuff, file stuff, or have a pile of things that need to be done. And I try and keep one pile of things that need to be gone through, whether that's bank documents and things like that. And I try and do that once a day, every morning. It doesn't always happen. Sometimes things just get really busy and I just can't, I don't have the time or the head space and things like that. But I usually, if that happens, I usually on a Sunday evening will go through my entire room and sort everything.
[00:13:51.07] - Gordon
Ready for the week.
[00:13:52.17] - Taylor
Come Monday morning, I'm off to the gym in the morning. And everything is already sorted, organised, and I have a nice, clean, tidy room. There will be times where I'm working during the day and my desk will get messy. Cups and paper and post and just things that come up during the day. But again, every morning I try and sort that so that I'm down to a clean slate. And the same with my email, I try and get to inbox zero. A lot of the time I will deal with the email straight away. If I can do it within two minutes, or I will put it into my action folder, which is basically when I have time, go through the action folder and action all of the things in there. And that's the way I keep an Inbox zero and manage all of my emails. So yeah, stay on top of everything.
[00:14:47.28] - Gordon
Yeah, and sometimes there's things I want to read, either physically or in my inbox, and I just haven't got the time there and then. So I leave them there so that they can be read when I have a bit of time. I'm one of these people who don't really have a bit of time. I've got various models and things that I want to make and put together, and it's just, again, finding the time. I've got a huge Lego DeLorean, which I'm dying to make, but I know it's going to take a few days. So therefore, I need to make sure I have a few days available to me. And maybe I should just take the time off and do that. The other side of that is that sometimes you're waiting for a response from something, or you're waiting for content, or you're waiting for people to get back to you. And therefore, leaving it there is like a reminder that it's not yet been done. And if you were to file it away or something, it would be forgotten. So by leaving it there, I pick it up and go, "Oh, yeah, got to contact this person, see if they're ready to book, or see if they've found the hall, or see if they've got the content that they're going to send me ready," and then deal with it then. So in that respect, it's quite nice to leave things out because then it's a reminder.
[00:16:02.04] - Taylor
Yeah, so that's basically how I organise my email. I have an 'action' folder, I have a 'read' folder, so it's anything that I need to be able to quickly grab. I have cinema tickets in there and anything else I want to read which isn't urgent or important. Then I have a waiting folder where I put anything I'm waiting for. As soon as I send an email, I will flag it as waiting so that I can then go through that folder once a month or so and go through and unflag anything that I actually got a reply to. Then I can also see, "Okay, I sent them an email, but they never actually replied." And it allows me to then follow up with those people. Something I also do is for things that are more physical, I try and put them in a task manager, for example, and make sure I set a reminder for them to come back up to the top of my task to-do list at the point that I want to have the reminder. And that's, again, another good way to manage, again, the physical stuff that allows me to still keep everything tidy, because as long as I know where I've put it and the things that I have physically, like post or whatever, if I make myself a note to say, 'reconcile my accounts,' where I go through my bank statements and manually cross off everything. That's something that I can then set a task and reminder for.
[00:17:24.00] - Gordon
Yeah, it's very good. I think maybe we should look at emails and the way that each of us deal with them in a different way in a future episode, because I think that's quite an interesting subject as well. I think that's everything I want to say on that.
[00:17:39.18] - Taylor
And me as well.
[00:17:40.19] - Gordon
Thank you so much for joining us. As always, we can be found on YouTube and on Facebook. Please like, share, and subscribe.
[00:17:47.16] - Taylor
You can also go to our website thisweekwith to find all our past episodes.
[00:17:51.15] - Gordon
That's thisweekwith.co.uk.
[00:17:54.08] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:17:54.17] - Gordon
Which you missed off. And of course, if you would prefer to listen to us, we can be found on most of the big podcast platforms. We'll be back with you at 1pm next Friday. Until then, my name is Gordon, and I'm from Drayson Design.
[00:18:11.17] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.
[00:18:13.29] - Gordon
Goodbye.
[00:18:14.12] - Taylor
Bye.
