[00:00:00.00] - Gordon
Hello.
[00:00:09.15] - Taylor
Hello.
[00:00:10.02] - Gordon
My name's Gordon from Drayson Design.
[00:00:11.29] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.
[00:00:13.29] - 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 thank you for joining us.
[00:00:23.11] - Taylor
Welcome back.
[00:00:23.28] - Gordon
It's been an interesting week for me. I've had a few bits and pieces going on, things that I've had to finish up, but no big news, really. Any news from your end?
[00:00:38.14] - Taylor
No.
[00:00:39.02] - Gordon
No? Okay, let's get straight into our topics. Would you like to go first or shall I?
[00:00:43.23] - Taylor
I'll go first this week.
[00:00:44.23] - Gordon
Off you go.
[00:00:45.21] - Taylor
So this week I want to talk about essentialism. So I've been reading a book called "Essentialism," and it's about being specific about what you choose to do in both your personal and, I guess, your business or your work life, and not being afraid to say no. I think a lot of people are guilty of or the way that the world has formed is that saying yes to everything is the best thing to do because it opens up the most opportunities, the most things. And we just think, "Yeah, I can do that. I can take it on." If you're working in the corporate world, for example, you just say yes because you want to please people. If you don't do it, no one really does it or it doesn't get done. And the whole point of essentialism is having key values or core values and asking yourself every time you're faced with a decision to say yes or no to anything, really, is "does that get me closer to what I want to do?" Whether that's some principles that you have and you want to live out or whether that's a mission statement that you've set in your company or for yourself.
[00:02:09.29] - Taylor
And making sure that if you do say yes, can you, do you have the bandwidth? Can you actually afford to do it? Not in a monetary sense, but in a time sense. I think that's the biggest thing. Obviously, a lot of people, as you get older, as you get busier, as you earn more money, time is the biggest constraint that we have. And you want to make sure that you're doing stuff that not only excites you and makes you want to get up in the morning to work on it, but also earns you the money. There's a couple of people I know that have taken on projects that don't actually earn them any money or they outsource 80% of the work. And they're not actually making much of a profit, but they're still running around, replying to the emails, they're managing the project, but actually not getting compensated in a way that actually would reflect the amount of time and effort that goes into it, even though they're not ones doing the actual bit of work. And it got me thinking about what do I want to work on? What do I want the legacy?
[00:03:20.25] - Taylor
What are the things that I want my business, or what do I want to focus on? So I've been having a real think and just trying to declutter. I start lots of projects or have done in the past and clearing them out and either saying, "yes, I want to do that. That is a project I want to do." Whether it's personal or a business project or client project. Or "no, it was a nice idea, but actually, it doesn't actually get me any closer to something that I want to be able to do or achieve" and just deleting it, hard cold deleting it. No archiving, no, "I'll come back to that later, I'll leave it lingering in there," just gone. If it's that important, it will get added back or it will find its way back to me in whatever capacity that is. Do you find anything like that, that you...
[00:04:13.19] - Gordon
Um, yeah. I mean, sometimes you say yes to be kind to someone, and maybe they're having a tough time, and maybe you feel sorry for them, and you think, "right, well, I'll try and help them."
[00:04:27.23] - Gordon
And that could be the time that you could spend doing other things that, as you say, might be more profitable or might be more exciting or interesting to you. But then there is also the flip side of that, where you do things because you want to do them, not because they're earning you money. There are several things that I do. For example, I do the posters and the programmes for the pantomime that I do every year. Now, I don't get paid for that. That's something I do because I want to do it because I know if I don't do it, what we have just won't be any good because there's no one else with the skills and the ability to do it. And I really enjoy it. It's something that I quite enjoy doing. It's a nice portfolio piece that I can use if I want to, to show that my design has been used many, many years running for lots of different productions. And I quite enjoy doing that side of it. So, as you say, it's all about whether you want to do it, and that's whether-
[00:05:34.14] - Taylor
Not everything has to be monetary-based. But obviously, if you are doing stuff for people, like you said, you want to help people, but actually it causes more issues because actually you can't do it to the same level that you want to, the same quality, and something has to give. You either give the client a poor experience because you hold the project ongoing for a longer time because actually your standards are a certain length, or you have to compromise on your quality and then give something that the client may be happy with, but you're not happy with. But it doesn't always have to be monetary, could just be something that is close to you, something that you are passionate about. But yes, it's not taking on everything, right?
[00:06:19.29] - Gordon
And as is always the way, there are some exceptions when you get requests from friends or family. You need to be careful that you don't get taken advantage of because that is something that friends and family don't mean to do, but quite often end up doing, if you see what I mean. They ask for something little and that little thing grows into something huge and big and takes up a huge amount of time. But you also want to make sure that you're keeping the family and your friends, family and friends. You're not alienating them by just saying no to everyone all the time. We've just finished a project for a family member, and we didn't really make any money out of it at all, but it was a nice project to do. I think we both learned quite a bit from it, as in not to say no next time. That's not what I mean. What I mean is we learned quite a bit in the way of new technology, new ways of doing things, things that we can take into new projects. Yeah, new tools. We had to buy a new tool for this, which will definitely be used in the future.
[00:07:40.06] - Gordon
So, yeah, it's an interesting concept, but there is that fine line, especially with family and friends, where you just want to tread very carefully and be-
[00:07:49.18] - Taylor
I mean as long as you explain, say, "I would love to help you, but I just don't have the time and I can't give you the attention that you need." I think as long as you explain your reasonings and as long as they're valid and not just "no, because I can't be bothered," then I think people are understanding.
[00:08:05.29] - Gordon
And maybe give them another option. Give them someone else who could help, possibly, because then you're moving a project or a request from you to someone who's not a member of your family or a friend. And therefore, if it's important to them, they might still go ahead with it, but with someone else. And you're not then going to be in the way or do it because it's going to take forever and you're going to do it in your free time, which is never a good thing. If you ever get asked to do something for friends or family and you say, "I'll do it in my free time." Well, that will never happen. I've been there and done that. It just gets pushed out the way and other things get put in front of it. It's not good for either side, basically.
[00:08:50.13] - Taylor
Yeah. So this week was essentially decluttering of things that I've either said yes to and just giving people updates on where things are, or saying no to. And most of these no's have been my own personal projects that I've thought about, gone, "that'd be a great idea," but actually, it's not something that's important, not something that's going to add value to my life. And I don't have time for it.
[00:09:17.06] - Gordon
And these things change over time. Things that aren't important now could be important later in life. You might find your situation changes, and all of a sudden, that has become really important again. So that idea will still be in the back of your mind. And if you dry up with work and you find you've got nothing, well, maybe some of these old ideas to put out a service or a new product or whatever will come back to you and you can revisit them.
[00:09:44.07] - Taylor
Yeah, definitely. And it's one of those where if it's important enough, it will come back, but it frees up your head space and things like that, where you haven't got these lingering projects that you don't want to say no to because you don't want to leave them because you like the idea, but actually they were more bogging you down because they were just another thing in your to-do list when you look and you go, "Oh, I've got all of this to do." It's actually...
[00:10:11.25] - Gordon
Whereas you want to look at it and go, "Yes, I've got all this to do. I'm really looking forward to this." Now, that's where you want to be because that's when you're going to do your best work. Anything else you want to say on that?
[00:10:23.01] - Taylor
I don't think so.
[00:10:24.08] - Gordon
We'll put a link to the book that Taylor mentioned in the show notes. So if that's something that you want to look into further, then do seek out this book and have a read. My topic today is admin. So it's a really tedious and boring job, but it needs to be done, especially if you are a self-employed person. You've got lots of jobs that you take on as a self-employed person that you maybe don't realise you're taking on. Things like accounts, invoicing, getting back to phone calls, enquiries, what other admin is there? Just general day to day running of your business, paying bills and making sure you've invoiced everyone. That's a big one. All these things take time. And as a self-employed businessman, they're not the things I enjoy doing. I didn't get into doing magic and building websites so that I could do admin. That's not what I wanted to do, but it's something we have to do. And the other side of being self-employed is it's always going to be you that does it. Now, you can outsource these things or you can have someone else that does it, but that then adds extra expense.
[00:11:49.22] - Gordon
And you need to weigh up whether bringing someone in to do that is going to be cost-effective for you, or if you're going to end up working just so that you can pay this other person. And not have anything left at the end of the day for yourself. And the other point is with admin, is that most of the time, for me in particular, the admin is things that only I can do because I know what I've said to the customer, or I know what needs to be written in specific terms, or I know what agreement or deal we made. And to be able to pass that information over to someone else for them to do it, is going to take just as long as it would take for me to actually do the job in the first place. So I might as well do it. Now, because this admin needs doing, it's something that we don't necessarily factor in when we are looking at projects. So when we say to someone, "yeah, I'll be starting that on Friday" and you're on Wednesday. Well, maybe you wanted to start it on Friday, but you then look and you see, "I've got all this admin I need to do, and it's got to be done because there's a deadline coming up, or HMRC needs paying, or I've got to get my accounts to the accountant," or whatever it is.
[00:13:09.08] - Gordon
There's always jobs like that that take much longer than you think they're going to take. And you don't normally account for that when you give a timeline for people. And so I think my lesson here through experience is to instead of give people the idea that, yes, we're going to get started on this next week, I give myself a bit of leeway. And I'll say, "look, yeah, what we'll do is we'll start this on..." And then say a couple of weeks time, three weeks time, whatever is right. I'll add one or two weeks onto my start date because I know that if I'm finishing projects, they never finish on time. There's always little bits and tweaks and sometimes big major issues that happen when you put a site live, for example, that you then have to deal with. And you can't give your full attention to this project to finish it off and fix all the issues that have arisen, if in the back of your head, you're thinking, "I told that customer I'd be starting their job yesterday, and I haven't had time to get round to it yet." So they're waiting for you to come back to them with, "Yeah, we've started.
[00:14:25.29] - Gordon
It's all going ahead." And the people with the project before are waiting for you to say, "Yeah, I've fixed all the issues. You're live." And you're in the middle with this overlapped time period where two people need your attention and your time, and you just don't have that time. And nobody, I don't think, has ever complained if you say to someone, "I'm going to start your project in two weeks," and in fact, you start it in a week. I don't think anyone's ever complained that you've started it early. So there's an upside to it. Admin is a big part of running a business. And that's why bigger businesses have an admin person. That is their job. My dad, he was an accountant for a company. He was the accounting department for that company. His job was to make sure that all the finances coming in and all the finances going out were all accounted for. So it wasn't an accountancy firm. It was just the department in the company. And that's what he did. And that company was big enough to have an in-house accountant. As a self-employed person, I'm not big enough to do that.
[00:15:39.08] - Gordon
And I don't wish to be either. That's the other thing. I don't want to get too big, where I'm trying to manage a team of people and making sure I've got enough work coming in to be able to pay all these staff members. I mean, for me, at my time of life, I don't want to take on that responsibility. I don't want the responsibility of making sure that other people can put food on the table for their families. If I was your age, I might consider it. If I thought I was in the position to do that and steady work was coming in and I was doing really well and I was turning work away, maybe I would consider growing, but I don't want to do that now. I've paid for my house, I've got a nice life, I'm not struggling by living week to week or month to month. And "where's the money going to come from to pay that bill?" I'm not in that situation, so I don't need to push myself any further than I am. And I quite enjoy the lifestyle that I have. I like getting up in the morning and going, "right, what have I got today? Am I going to do a show? Am I going to work on a new trick? Am I going to be building a website for someone? Am I going to be doing some graphic design?" There's different things that I do every day, and every day is different. And I can choose to maybe take a day off or go away somewhere. As long as I make sure I get my deadlines set and I make sure I meet those deadlines and don't upset anyone, then all is good. How do you feel admin is dealt with as far as time managing for you?
[00:17:26.06] - Taylor
Yeah, I think... I don't enjoy doing it. I try and schedule everything that I need to do so I don't forget. I just work through it and try and make it so that it's one of the things I can just tick off and do it, set recurring tasks that remind me to do things. Otherwise, I just forget or I just avoid it. So I try and face it head-on and try and put things in place that make it easier to get it done or get started on it, whatever it may be.
[00:18:00.00] - Gordon
And it always takes longer than you think. So you think, "okay, I've got to bring my accounts up to date," and you think "that should take me, I don't know, an hour or two." And you find, you look at your watch and you've spent all day on it and you still haven't quite finished. So yeah, admin is something you need to factor into your business and make sure you put time aside for it. One of the worst things you can do is not invoice people. I know a couple of people I've met, our colleagues or friends who the invoicing part is just not something that they ever did. And they got behind on paying their suppliers. They ended up having to then argue the case with the customers because they said, "no, we paid this." And it's like, well, now you've got to go and check to see if payment was received. And that takes time. And then you got to go, "no, actually, it wasn't paid." And they'll say, "Well, yes, it was." And you go, "well, what date?" They then have to go looking. And then you've got to see. And it takes way, way longer than it ever should. So get those things done.
[00:19:11.01] - Gordon
As soon as a project is done or you've got to a date when you know you've got to invoice. Just do it. Get it done, get it out of the way, and make sure you have a system to chase it, because if people just ignore your invoices, what system is going to remind you that they've not been paid? This is something that I started doing reasonably recently, but quite a long time ago now. So in the history of my business, it was maybe three quarters of the time I've been going that I started doing that for my Drayson Design side, and I wish I'd done it a lot longer. I had records to show me what was paid and what wasn't paid, but what I wasn't doing is chasing payments that hadn't been made after a reasonable time. And I now have system in place that's all automated because we like automation, don't we?
[00:20:03.06] - Taylor
We do.
[00:20:04.04] - Gordon
So there you go. So that's pretty much all I want to say about admin. It's not a fun job. There are some people who enjoy the admin, but then maybe they don't enjoy the job. So it swings and roundabouts, really.
[00:20:16.20] - Gordon
In that case, make sure you leave time to actually do the job. But, yeah, that's my experience. And the only reason I brought it up today is because this week has been an admin week. It's the end of the summer holiday. Everyone's getting back to school. Everyone's going back to a normal life again. And so it's back to making sure I get some sort of schedule going in my life and make sure I get back to the routine of everything. That's it from me.
[00:20:49.01] - Taylor
And me as well.
[00:20:49.28] - Gordon
Thank you so much for joining us. As always, please like, share, and subscribe. We are on YouTube, and it would be great if we get more people watching our videos.
[00:20:59.10] - 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.
[00:21:06.18] - Gordon
And of course, you can listen to us as a podcast on all the major podcast platforms or your smart speaker. Just look for "This Week With Taylor and Gordon," and our latest episode will come up for you. We'll be back with you next Friday at 1pm. Until then, if you have any comments, please let us know. We'd love to hear from you. We'd love to find out what you think of these episodes and if there's been anything you've taken away from it. But we'll be back with you next week. Until then, my name is Gordon, and I'm from Drayson Design.
[00:21:38.11] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.
[00:21:40.25] - Gordon
Goodbye.
[00:21:41.09] - Taylor
Bye.
