[00:00:08.960] - Gordon
Hello.

[00:00:09.800] - Taylor
Hello.

[00:00:10.226] - Paul
Hello.

[00:00:10.370] - Gordon
My name's Gordon from Drayson Design.

[00:00:12.110] - Taylor
I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.

[00:00:14.150] - Paul
And I'm Paul, from quite a few places.

[00:00:16.820] - Gordon
And welcome to "This Week with Taylor and Gordon, and Paul," a weekly podcast and vidcast where we talk about things that happened in our business working as self-employed people. And you may have noticed we have a guest with us today.

[00:00:32.600] - Paul
And if you're watching this in the future, we're practising social dist... I don't smell.

[00:00:39.920] - Gordon
Well...

[00:00:41.760] - Paul
They're sitting over there for social distancing reasons.

[00:00:44.480] - Gordon
So, yes, we are observing social distancing. Paul doesn't live in this house. He's visiting us. So we are making sure that we are keeping as far a distance as our sofa will allow, basically.

[00:00:56.120] - Paul
And so am I.

[00:00:56.120] - Gordon
Exactly. So it's been quite a busy week for all of us, really. And it's nice to have Paul come and visit because Paul is actually my double act partner. So when I do my stage show, "Pip and Paul."

[00:01:11.510] - Paul
Well, you say your stage show...

[00:01:12.430] - Gordon
I'm the 'Pip' part of it.

[00:01:14.000] - Paul
I'm the 'Paul' part of it.

[00:01:15.650] - Gordon
Yeah. So it's been quite a while because we haven't seen each other.

[00:01:20.570] - Paul
It's been a while. Not well...

[00:01:22.430] - Gordon
Since before lockdown.

[00:01:23.570] - Paul
We've done some Zooming.

[00:01:24.650] - Gordon
We've done lots of Zooming, but no actual physical seeing of each other.

[00:01:31.610] - Paul
You've grown.

[00:01:32.540] - Gordon
Thank you. Oh that's nice. So Paul, shall we start and talk about the changes that have been happening for you as a, 'cos Paul is a self-employed person, he's a magician. And this has changed recently for you.

[00:01:47.000] - Paul
It really has. So I, make sure you're sitting down, I don't wanna surprise you, but the government grants haven't seen me through in terms of paying my bills. I'm no longer able to magish, but the parties, and basically every form of income I have has been reduced. So I went out into the world with my wife. We were at a supermarket one day and things just got desperate. We saw people, do you remember the days when there weren't any toilet rolls?

[00:02:17.600] - Taylor
Yeah.

[00:02:17.900] - Paul
Yeah. That happened.

[00:02:18.360] - Gordon
Yeah.

[00:02:19.100] - Paul
We got quite emotional about it. Someone came up and said, "are you alright?" And my wife went "No!" And they said, "do you want a job? So, which was very good of the supermarket. So we ended up doing the 2am to .8am shift, doing other people's shopping for them.

[00:02:34.280] - Gordon
Wow.

[00:02:34.910] - Paul
I know.

[00:02:36.440] - Gordon
So can I just explain, magicians normally do most of their work in sort of afternoons and evenings, especially if you're not a children's entertainer, your evenings are normally the prime slots for performing. So we normally go to bed sort of one, two o'clock in the morning that's...

[00:02:53.210] - Paul
We're night owls.

[00:02:54.020] - Gordon
That's quite normal. So to get up at two o'clock, which is...

[00:02:57.800] - Taylor
Before then.

[00:02:58.340] - Gordon
Like an hour after you've gone to bed.

[00:02:59.900] - Paul
You get up at quarter past one.

[00:03:01.820] - Gordon
Oh yeah.

[00:03:02.690] - Paul
In work for two.

[00:03:04.010] - Gordon
So, Paul's been having fifteen minutes of sleep.

[00:03:09.050] - Paul
Ha ha, yeah, it's true.

[00:03:09.620] - Gordon
Which is why he looks like this.

[00:03:11.090] - Paul
And night time snacking. So yeah. So I've, so now I'm working with, so I'm not doing that anymore, now I'm doing click and collect for this supermarket and I'm doing it five, four days a week sorry, from 7am through till 12. So actually it's a lot better, and the transition for me has been obviously not making my own decisions about my business. I really miss not being able to progress my business or work on new ideas or...

[00:03:39.920] - Gordon
Because when you're not working, you're probably tired or you've got house things to do.

[00:03:44.710] - Paul
I have debts. I've now got a manual labour job.

[00:03:46.510] - Gordon
Yeah.

[00:03:49.460] - Paul
Ha ha. Yeah. So, so I guess what I've got to talk about is how that transition has worked and what that's been for me.

[00:03:56.690] - Gordon
So just as a slight aside, your wife owns her own shop.

[00:04:00.890] - Paul
Yes.

[00:04:01.400] - Gordon
So she's still her own boss.

[00:04:03.230] - Paul
Are you talking about Daisy and Dot, which is at daisyanddot.net?

[00:04:06.020] - Gordon
Yes.

[00:04:06.560] - Paul
Yeah, that one. Yes.

[00:04:07.370] - Gordon
So she's still her own boss. So you're working for her as well one day a week.

[00:04:13.070] - Paul
So, thanks. Yeah, that's true. I'm not really working for her 'cos I don't get paid.

[00:04:17.840] - Gordon
Right.

[00:04:17.990] - Paul
So one day...

[00:04:18.590] - Gordon
Helping out.

[00:04:19.550] - Paul
Yeah. So one day...

[00:04:20.790] - Gordon
You're Tuesday boy.

[00:04:22.160] - Paul
I don't know anyone out there is in retail, or has their own shop, but it is a seven day a week job. Especially when you, very early days when you haven't got the investment to get the right tools to help you with inventory management, stock management, but also pricing things. And we believe in retail that it's really important when you walk into a shop, it's different, it's new and it's exciting from the last time you went in. So she moves things around a lot, which means it is literally seven days a week. So, I give her a day off basically, I just say, "look, Tuesdays, you put your feet up because you..." How's the, the House doesn't tidy itself, does it?

[00:05:00.350] - Gordon
No.

[00:05:01.340] - Paul
So.

[00:05:02.270] - Gordon
Well.

[00:05:02.480] - Paul
Sorry, I didn't mean that. The views of me don't represent the views of this podcast. Should have said that upfront.

[00:05:11.210] - Gordon
Yeah, we should have done. We'll put a disclaimer on the screen.

[00:05:15.140] - Paul
So one day a week, I'm in the shop and I basically give my missus a little bit of a rest to just have a lie in and look after herself a bit.

[00:05:24.050] - Gordon
So going back to the fact that you are now working as an employee. That means that you obviously see the processes that are already in place.

[00:05:36.080] - Paul
Yes.

[00:05:36.650] - Gordon
And you think, "oh, these are great. They're working exactly as they should be."

[00:05:40.640] - Paul
No, no! So, there are two aspects to this. I was just thinking about this before you pushed the record button. Should phones go on silent, by the way?

[00:05:50.660] - Gordon
Yes.

[00:05:51.050] - Paul
Yeah. Ok, let me do that now. There are two aspects to this. The first is you can obviously see some amazing processes that don't quite hit the mark. So processes that were made for this area and have been moved over and they don't quite work for what you're doing. And because there are a thousand people doing this nationally, you can't then go, "well, I'll improve that, I'll do this and I'll do that," because if you don't, it's a warning offence. Doesn't matter if the processes are good or bad. If you don't follow it...

[00:06:23.540] - Gordon
It's got to be consistent with all of the stores.

[00:06:26.120] - Paul
Absolutely right. Yeah.

[00:06:27.200] - Gordon
And you can't make a change because you're not high enough to make that decision.

[00:06:30.500] - Paul
And I have recommended the changes.

[00:06:32.240] - Gordon
Right.

[00:06:32.240] - Paul
So, I have gone to the management and said, "in my experience doing this, this, this results in this, because this." And they look at you like you're an idiot.

[00:06:40.310] - Gordon
Well, they look at you like that because, I'm guessing, most people who, I mean, this is a bit of a generalisation, but most people who are doing the job that you're doing, are doing that job not because they want to, but because they have to or they don't have the skills to do something else. And they don't have the experience that you have running your own business, to be able to bring that to the job that they're doing.

[00:07:03.590] - Paul
Definitely true. But also, management aren't incentivised to improve processes. Management aren't incentivised to improve processes, management are incentivised to follow processes.

[00:07:14.590] - Gordon
Yes.

[00:07:15.230] - Paul
So at my level and anyone I have access to.

[00:07:19.010] - Gordon
Yes. It's not in their job description.

[00:07:21.860] - Paul
Absolutely. Absolutely not. They don't care.

[00:07:24.020] - Gordon
But it's really frustrating, I would guess. Because I know that if I find that something in my business needs streamlining, I look at how I can do it, I put it in place and it becomes a much better process for me. And I get really frustrated until that point has been reached. And I'm guessing you must find this every day?

[00:07:45.200] - Paul
Yeah. So the reason the reason I'm being quite guarded in my answer is because on two occasions I've gone to my boss and said, "if you did this and this, then that." And they would go, "oh, we don't do that and this because..." And then the magnitude of where I'm working comes into play, and you think, "actually, yeah. I hadn't thought about that." I'm trying to think of a really good example. So occasionally those processes aren't natural to me, but they're not natural to me for a really good reason because it helps this process, or the selling process or whatever. And once it's explained, you go...

[00:08:21.380] - Gordon
So there's bigger things at play that you haven't taken into account.

[00:08:24.260] - Paul
Sometimes.

[00:08:24.860] - Gordon
Or you don't know about.

[00:08:25.550] - Taylor
Yeah, absolutely.

[00:08:27.000] - Gordon
Ok.

[00:08:27.000] - Paul
But I would say the majority of time, you just... So working for someone else is a biting your lip process. It's a...

[00:08:33.860] - Taylor
Depends what role you're in when you're working. So, for example, I work, I do work for an agency.

[00:08:39.680] - Paul
OK.

[00:08:39.980] - Taylor
And I was you know, it was only me and him. And so I recommended my, I gave my opinion on software to use and things like that. And because it was quite small and he was open to changing opinion, we went for a different solution and it has now increased and improved his workflow and the, what he's able to do. And that was because I was at a high enough level, although there was only two of us, I was at a level that I could give my opinion.

[00:09:09.140] - Gordon
You had access to the person who made the decisions.

[00:09:10.920] - Taylor
Yeah.

[00:09:11.150] - Paul
Yeah.

[00:09:11.750] - Taylor
So, yeah, it depends on, at what level you are, I believe that, it can be you're biting your lip because you can't make the changes, I guess.

[00:09:19.490] - Gordon
Well, again, the difference to Paul is that you are seeing the whole process. So you're seeing everything. Whereas Paul isn't.

[00:09:27.470] - Paul
I'm being given a process and say, "follow that."

[00:09:29.720] - Gordon
Yeah. So aside from processes and being frustrated with things not running as smoothly as they possibly could, is there anything else that you've found is a big, big difference between working for yourself?

[00:09:42.080] - Paul
So I have worked for other people before in an I.T. programme and project management. And when I did that, I was working with people who were intelligently trying to move a business forward or a result forward, and now in this role, as you alluded to earlier, I'm working with people who day in, day out, get up, come to work, move that box from A to B and then go, get their money, go to the pub and go home. And I'm not saying that's bad, but what I'm saying is that brings with it work attitudes that I'm not used to.

[00:10:21.610] - Gordon
Yeah, OK. So people who speak their mind basically.

[00:10:26.360] - Paul
Yeah, speak your mind, but also don't care about. So if you work for yourself, you care deeply about the customer, you care deeply about the service or the product that you're delivering because it's got your name on it, and you have personal pride about doing that. And where I am at the moment, the personal pride comes in how many minutes can you shave off, you know, going to the loo 50 times a day and, you know, taking the mickey out of, who's got the best insults for your colleagues that day and... So, I find it very difficult going into work and going "Pow, right let's..." And being forward, and then meeting a whole resistance of people who are living a day to day.

[00:11:14.060] - Gordon
Hand to mouth sort of existence.

[00:11:15.930] - Paul
Yeah, hand to mouth's maybe a little exaggeration, but I guess that's in the right... But also sitting back on their energy and they, so there's no, yeah, it's tough. It's, so, I'm expending a lot of energy trying to get other people around me to be inspired to do what I think is a good job for the supermarket.

[00:11:33.120] - Gordon
And they just don't want to.

[00:11:34.290] - Paul
Yeah, having said that, and this isn't a show off to me, but I think it's because of the attitude that you go into as a self-employed person. There are 15 "well done for good service" things up on the wall, and I'm 10 of them. So out of the 15 customers...

[00:11:50.550] - Gordon
And is that because you are coming into it as an entertainer maybe, so you're a people person?

[00:11:55.430] - Paul
I think it's that, I think it's because I do care.

[00:11:58.040] - Taylor
Attitude towards your work.

[00:11:59.060] - Paul
Absolutely, absolutely. I do care that the customer's coming in and getting good service, from the moment they drive in. If they can't find a parking space and I can see one over there...

[00:12:07.640] - Gordon
You point it out.

[00:12:08.480] - Paul
Yeah. It's like, "there's one there, I happen to know there's lots up there."

[00:12:11.810] - Gordon
Yeah.

[00:12:13.070] - Paul
And it's that sort of attitude that I think makes you successful as a self-employed person.

[00:12:17.030] - Gordon
And as a person in life.

[00:12:18.710] - Paul
True.

[00:12:19.130] - Gordon
Yeah.

[00:12:19.520] - Taylor
I remember when I was working for a farm and their kind of, it was a kind of case of they didn't really care about you as a person because, you know, you could be easily replaced. And so that's why people do have these kind of attitude towards these types of jobs, because, you know, the company don't really care about you, they're, you're just another person and they will just replace you, which is what happened at the farm that I worked at. You know, their staff turnover rate was very high, purely because they didn't value the people coming in enough.

[00:12:52.520] - Gordon
And that's not good for the company either, because they've got to train people up and that costs money. And if you've got people who are leaving, then they're obviously leaving for a reason, whatever that is, instead of staying where they are with loyalty and growing, going up the ladder.

[00:13:10.130] - Paul
The other reason, you're absolutely right. And the other reason I get lots of feedback is because as a self-employed person, I know how to get good feedback.

[00:13:16.190] - Gordon
Yes. You know how to work the crowd.

[00:13:18.810] - Paul
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Make sure they know my name.

[00:13:22.370] - Gordon
Exactly.

[00:13:22.370] - Paul
Make sure they know that feedback matters. I'm not asking for good feedback. "Here's my name. Please give honest feedback." And as a result, 10 out of the 15 things up on there have my name on them.

[00:13:34.070] - Gordon
Which is great.

[00:13:35.000] - Paul
Well, I value that.

[00:13:36.530] - Gordon
Yeah.

[00:13:36.830] - Paul
Everyone else thinks I'm a... try hard.

[00:13:40.100] - Gordon
Yeah.

[00:13:41.000] - Paul
But I'm not, it's just in my nature because I've been self-employed for so long.

[00:13:44.150] - Gordon
Well that's really interesting, thanks for telling us about that. And if anyone is concerned about something that Paul said earlier, we will be asking him to go and see a doctor about these 50 trips to the toilet every day.

[00:13:56.930] - Paul
Yeah, ha ha.

[00:13:56.930] - Gordon
And I think they must be able to do something. Yeah. So Taylor, what should we talk about as our topic for the week?

[00:14:05.060] - Taylor
I think something we can, we should talk about is browser extensions.

[00:14:08.180] - Gordon
Oh, now this is something that I think Paul will have a lot to help with here.

[00:14:12.350] - Taylor
So kind of how you can use extensions that other people have made to improve or increase your workflow; your automation; speed up your workflow, and kind of help you kind of take out another job that... bless you.

[00:14:28.550] - Gordon
Pardon me.

[00:14:29.600] - Taylor
An app would have to do, so taking up storage on your computer, and you can just install a quick browser, which is a lot quicker and easier.

[00:14:37.640] - Gordon
I think this is great because it's improving your workflow; improving productivity; putting better processes in place, which is you know...

[00:14:46.100] - Paul
What we were just talking about.

[00:14:46.640] - Gordon
Just what we were talking about. So, Paul, do you have a favourite browser extension?

[00:14:52.520] - Paul
One I use, one I think is brilliant actually, the first one I want to talk about is "GoPinLeads." Go G-O, pin P-I-N, leads L-E-A-D-S.

[00:15:01.583] - Taylor
It'll be on the screen.

[00:15:02.420] - Gordon
Yeah, we'll make sure we put it in the show notes.

[00:15:04.280] - Paul
Oh sorry I've watched the show so many times I remember how that works now.

[00:15:07.220] - Gordon
Yeah.

[00:15:08.360] - Paul
"GoPinLeads," what it does is, if you go into a Google search in maps and I turn the extension on, so let's say I search for what's a good example? Schools in the area that I'm looking at...

[00:15:23.930] - Gordon
Just before, it's because he's a children's entertainer that he's looking for schools, and no other reason whatsoever.

[00:15:30.950] - Paul
Let's say restaurants then.

[00:15:32.120] - Gordon
Ok, restaurants is a better example.

[00:15:34.170] - Paul
Okay, so you'll search for restaurants, GoPinLeads will take that search result and then it will do in the background a Google search for each of those results, finding you contact details across not only Google but also LinkedIn and other sites like that, and it will return to you a comma separated values file. So a spreadsheet basically, for each one of your searches, who the manager is; who the contact is; where to make bookings, basically in tabulated form all the way down in one swoop. It's paid for, but it's very cheap and I heartily recommend it. If you're doing any sort of contacting companies in your area, it's a really, or any area, it's a really good tool for getting those contacts details.

[00:16:24.230] - Gordon
It's a good way to gather data, to then be processed in whatever way you need it to be done.

[00:16:29.150] - Paul
Exactly. And it's something that everyone who works for themselves has wanted to do or tried to do at some point.

[00:16:34.754] - Gordon
Yeah, agreed.

[00:16:34.970] - Paul
And it's great, just great, it's an automated process.

[00:16:36.080] - Gordon
I have a friend of ours who's been doing exactly that, and funnily enough, it was for schools, but they have been not using that software because I didn't know about it until now, so thank you for that. And he's been basically finding a list, copying and pasting from every page, going to the next page, copying and paste. And he's been doing it now for over a week.

[00:16:59.360] - Paul
Right.

[00:16:59.720] - Gordon
And there's like 150 of them in total. It's such a waste of time.

[00:17:04.490] - Paul
This, I really recommend it, it's a good tool.

[00:17:06.140] - Gordon
GoPinLeads, very good. Taylor?

[00:17:08.600] - Taylor
So the longest and most useful extension I have is "1Password."

[00:17:14.660] - Gordon
Ah, yes.

[00:17:15.380] - Taylor
So this is basically a password manager. There's lots out there, there's "Last Pass" and there's lots of them. And what it does, it allows you to store and save your passwords for all your websites that you frequently use, you can generate passwords like so random charactered passwords that are, they're secure. And you can autofill, so when the login box comes up, you can click on it, it will say, "Do you want to use this password and username?" And you click 'yes,' it autofills them and you click 'sign in' and it does everything for you.

[00:17:46.170] - Gordon
And I've been using it just as long. And one of the biggest things with creating a password, because every time you go to a new website, you're asked to fill in a new password and you shouldn't be, and if you are, change it now, you shouldn't be using the same password for every different site, because if one site gets hacked, as soon as they've got your email address, your username, your password, they can then try and use that on other sites. And if you're using the same information, well, you're going to get hacked. I mean, your whole life could be stolen personality wise online. So using 1Password and having it generate a password, which is sort of 15/20 characters long, it's a really long and complicated password, and it's different for every single site, is so important.

[00:18:35.740] - Taylor
And kind of when you're building lots of websites, you're kind of mandatory to have lots of passwords.

[00:18:41.500] - Gordon
All your different logins.

[00:18:42.460] - Taylor
And I don't want have to remember, "oh what password did I use for this website? What password did I use for this site? So if I've I've just got them all stored in a nice, secure kind of database in a way, I don't have to remember them and I can just put them in.

[00:18:54.400] - Taylor
So I use Last Pass, which is very, very similar. I'm pretty sure the functionality is going to be similar. Two things I want to also add: Last Pass does a security check, so when you log into Last Pass, it will go, "these websites, use the same password, do you want me to change them for you?"

[00:19:08.380] - Gordon
Yep, we have that.

[00:19:09.550] - Paul
Yeah, I'm pretty sure...

[00:19:10.480] - Gordon
It's great.

[00:19:10.480] - Paul
One or two clicks of the button it'll go to the website, and it'll change that password for you and then remember it, it's brilliant. Second thing Last Pass does, and I'm sure 1Password does as well, is you can set up who your, if I can't get into my pass, like I've set up my wife as able to get into my password file after 24 hours worth of wait. So she can request access, it'll come to me and go, "do you want her to have access to your passwords?" I've set up a 24 hour thing, that I can go yes or no. And if I haven't answered in that 24 hours, then she's in and that's really good. So if anything happens to me...

[00:19:41.980] - Gordon
Yeah.

[00:19:42.460] - Paul
Then my dad and my wife can get into all my passwords and get into almost, and basically sort my life out for me.

[00:19:48.780] - Taylor
One other thing is vulnerabilities. So...

[00:19:51.850] - Paul
Oh yeah, great.

[00:19:52.540] - Taylor
1Password it will say, "these websites recently have had a data breach" and so it kind of recommends you to change your passwords.

[00:20:01.630] - Gordon
I was just going to say that and the last thing I was going to add is that you can get it on multiple devices. So, if I create a password on my computer because I'm working on a particular website there, if I access that, then on my phone, because it synchronises the database, I can then use exactly the same details to get into it on my phone or my iPad or any device that I have access to, which just makes life easy.

[00:20:27.520] - Paul
Yeah, really good.

[00:20:28.690] - Gordon
Yeah. Really good, really good extension excellent. [Motion detected at the front door.] There you go. We have this a lot. We should turn that off. I think maybe next time when we go live we should do that. Apologies for that. #

[00:20:38.750] - Taylor
What's your number one?

[00:20:41.050] - Gordon
So not my number one, but one I use a lot is called "What Font Is This?"

[00:20:45.560] - Paul
Yeah.

[00:20:45.910] - Gordon
So as a designer of websites and graphic design, quite often I'll get a client come to me and say, this is our website, we need a leaflet made or we need a business card or something. And it's like, "yeah, no problem. I notice you've got a typeface that you use in your brand guidelines. Can you tell me what typeface that is?" And they give me these blank looks as if to say, "I'm sorry, what's a brand guideline?" And so this extension will basically allow you to select a part of the page and it will then try and figure out what the typeface is based on the shapes that it's looking at. Now, this typeface could be an image or it could be actual text. If it's actual text it makes life easy, because it knows what the typeface is based on the code. If it's a picture, it's a bit more difficult, but it will look at the shapes of the characters and suggest fonts that it might be. And normally you'll get something either really close or, you know, bang on, which is great because you can then go back to the client and tell them what typeface they are using, which is always a nice benefit for them. So that's one I highly recommend. A lot of these browser extensions are not available on all browsers, we should point out. The main, so the two that are very heavy with browser extensions is Chrome and Firefox. They do a lot. And normally if you find an extension on one of them, it will be on the other. Having said that, with the next version of the operating system for Mac, which is called, um...

[00:22:24.400] - Taylor
No idea.

[00:22:25.600] - Gordon
Oh, it's two words, something her, not "Ben-Hur," anyway, whatever it's called, the one after "Catalina," they are improving Safari to allow for more extensions. They've obviously seen...

[00:22:40.090] - Taylor
Third party.

[00:22:40.810] - Gordon
Third party extension, which they've obviously seen it's become really popular on other browsers, so they're bringing it into Safari. So that's a really good thing.

[00:22:50.050] - Paul
But also, Microsoft's latest browser, the "Edge" browser, is a chromium based browser, so it'll run all of the Chrome...

[00:22:54.500] - Gordon
So anything that runs on Chrome will run on that.

[00:22:57.180] - Taylor
Yeah, so they'll run on Microsoft Edge as well.

[00:22:59.290] - Gordon
Paul, back to you.

[00:23:00.840] - Paul
Gmelius I use, I love Gmelius, I think it's an incredible email plug-in. I use Google Mail and this is a Google Mail add on. But it's functionality is, it's wonderful.

[00:23:17.350] - Gordon
So give us the top three.

[00:23:20.230] - Paul
So if you're working in teams, shared inboxes, workflow tracking and Trello canban boards, which are like Trello, where you could just move emails through any canban board you like, and that is shared across as many people as you have in a team. And those teams can be function based. So you can have administrators and you can have workers and... So, if I was working with anyone else on any project I would get them to use Gmelius, and it's just a great way of moving emails in between. Second thing it does sequencing, intelligent sequencing. So if they open the email within three days, then send this follow up email, but if they don't, then send that follow up email, but include this text and... So really detailed sequencing for any emails you send out. And the last thing that I want to talk about as, oh shortcuts for, so for instance, I have a formal ending to an email and an informal ending to an email, and that's always the same like two paragraphs, if it's formal or informal, depending on my clients. So I just type special character i.e. for informal ending and f.e. for formal ending, and it goes ppffm with that. So I have snippets of text and I just build all my emails up by going like, "informal opening..."

[00:24:44.110] - Gordon
So you could do a whole email in sort of 10 key presses basically, just.

[00:24:49.960] - Paul
Yeah. So yeah, pricing's a really good example. So my pricing table can depend on how far I travel or sometimes it could depend on what, if they live in the rich part of town? I might give them this price. I might not but. I'm not saying it's a good way to work, but that's off the top of my head. So I could have four or five pricing tables code that once and then in each of my emails just have whichever mix and match of things that I think makes a good email to suit that person.

[00:25:16.630] - Taylor
So I do that. I have, at the moment I only have to two shortcuts, which is "ATB," which is "all the best."

[00:25:23.020] - Paul
Right.

[00:25:24.250] - Taylor
And I have "HRU" which says "hope you're doing well," which because of like Covid and all the situations, that's kind of a very kind of standard thing to say now going, "hope you're doing well," because of obviously the situation. So I have those two shortcuts, which I can just type the three letters and it returns...

[00:25:44.560] - Paul
Got it.

[00:25:44.830] - Taylor
A full sentence, which has been really useful.

[00:25:46.960] - Gordon
It doesn't have to be a full sentence. It could be three paragraphs.

[00:25:49.630] - Paul
Yeah, absolutely.

[00:25:50.410] - Gordon
Which is great.

[00:25:51.190] - Taylor
So basically in twenty key types, I've done an email that suits that person's requirements really well, and it's a detailed full email.

[00:26:01.000] - Gordon
Yeah.

[00:26:01.270] - Paul
And I know that all... And if I want to change my prices I just change it in one place. And the next email I send out, does the same. It's a, I, so Gmelius is hitting all the buttons for me at the moment. And the other thing to say about them is they're improving it all the time. You know, almost every week there's an announcement of something that they've improved, or a new thing that's coming. So, it's paid. It's a paid for service, but it's one I really recommend.

[00:26:24.610] - Gordon
And if you want to beat your 20 key presses to send a personalised email out... "OBA." We'll talk about that on another episode.

[00:26:31.180] - Paul
Oh, that's a, yes.

[00:26:33.070] - Gordon
We'll talk about it in another episode, that's fine. Paul is actually a user of OBA, "Online Booking Assistant."

[00:26:38.410] - Paul
I am.

[00:26:39.010] - Gordon
However, we will spend a bit more time on that than we have today. Taylor?

[00:26:44.590] - Taylor
So the other, I don't use many browser extensions because they can slow your machine down and because of my work's very browser heavy in terms of that's the main sort of programme or application I use, I don't want to slow any of my website down or my process of building sites down, so I don't use that many. But one I do use is "Language Tool," which is very similar to "Grammarly," which is basically a grammar checker, spell checker, kind of synonyms or nouns.

[00:27:16.060] - Gordon
Free version is available.

[00:27:17.200] - Taylor
Yeah, and it's basically a Firefox version that I kind of put into Firefox "the best kind of grammar tool," and this one came up top, so I thought I would use it and it's been really, really good, actually. It has like a little circle with a number in the bottom corner, if you have any changes underline same as Grammarly and it works really well.

[00:27:35.160] - Paul
So the thing that Grammarly's just introduced is, it will work in Google Docs. It works.

[00:27:43.020] - Taylor
Yes.

[00:27:43.560] - Paul
Basically, anything online, it's now, Grammarly's plugging into, is this doing the same?

[00:27:48.870] - Taylor
It doesn't work for Google Sheets or Google Docs but any other application.

[00:27:54.840] - Paul
Pretty sure that's on the cards.

[00:27:56.040] - Taylor
But yeah it probably could do.

[00:27:57.630] - Gordon
Grammarly is a good plug in. That's a good...

[00:27:59.640] - Paul
It is a good plug-in.

[00:28:00.300] - Gordon
A good extension. Next one I want to talk about is "Built With."

[00:28:07.050] - Paul
Oh that's a good one.

[00:28:07.050] - Gordon
So Built With will tell you as much about the website that you are on as possible. As in what technology is being used; what cookies are being set; what browser JavaScript is being used. It basically goes through the code and looks to see if it can figure out what is powering this website, which is really useful as a designer and also as someone who's just interested in how the web works. You can go in and you can see that this website is using "WordPress," or it's on "Joomla," or it's a "Wix" site.

[00:28:47.160] - Taylor
Yeah. If you wanted to recreate a certain feature for example, a lot of websites use plug-ins, for example, and just by looking at the code, you can tell by the prefixes kind of what that plug-in, or who owns it and who it was made by.

[00:29:01.840] - Gordon
And you can still do that. You can still go through the code. You can go and pick it out. But Built With is a quicker way of doing it. And it's a free extension, which is great.

[00:29:10.950] - Paul
Yeah, you're right. That's something I use a lot.

[00:29:13.290] - Gordon
Yeah.

[00:29:13.620] - Paul
Yeah, good one.

[00:29:15.120] - Gordon
Right, I think we've got, this is a slightly longer episode we normally have, but we do have our guest...

[00:29:19.470] - Paul
I'm sorry, I talk a lot.

[00:29:19.470] - Gordon
So we want to make the most of having him here. So is there one more tool maybe you'd like to talk about?

[00:29:26.070] - Paul
The only other one I can think of offhand is User Agents, which I use it all the time. I'm not sure if there's an easier way of doing it now, but basically I can view my website and then say, "actually, I want to view it as if I'm in Safari, actually I want to view it as if I'm a..."

[00:29:38.670] - Gordon
So it's emulating.

[00:29:39.990] - Paul
Yeah, it's...

[00:29:40.820] - Gordon
The view.

[00:29:41.700] - Paul
It tells, before it asks for the website, it lies to the website about what machine you're on.

[00:29:46.650] - Gordon
OK.

[00:29:47.100] - Paul
And it can be anything. So, I can view my website as a five year old android.

[00:29:53.220] - Gordon
So sorry, sorry to interrupt. So it's just telling the website, the server what user agent it is. So even though it's saying "I'm Safari," if you're in Chrome, for example; Chrome is going to have certain CSS properties, for example, that it has in Chrome, that maybe not be in Safari. So you're not going to see it exactly as if it were...

[00:30:19.800] - Paul
That's a really good point.

[00:30:19.800] - Gordon
In Safari.

[00:30:20.550] - Paul
And I don't know the answer.

[00:30:21.480] - Gordon
But you may be able to see things that have been coded to show if you're in Safari. So if, for example, we're doing AB testing, which is something we spoke about a couple of weeks ago, you could have a title that shows only to people using a Mac on Safari, for example.

[00:30:36.810] - Paul
Right.

[00:30:37.110] - Gordon
And this could then trick the website into thinking that you've got that and display that.

[00:30:42.540] - Paul
Yeah, "deliver me the page as if I'm..." I'll have to look into how it display, if it makes any intelligence into how it displays the page. I'll have to look into that. Shall I do that now?

[00:30:54.650] - Gordon
No, no that's fine. We'll...

[00:30:55.750] - Paul
We'll put it at the bottom.

[00:30:57.380] - Gordon
You can you can put a comment on the video afterwards once you've looked it up. Taylor have you got anything else?

[00:31:03.350] - Taylor
Nope. I only use two extensions, most of the other stuff I have, which are in my top menu bar, which are kind of like colour pickers and things like that.

[00:31:12.532] - Paul
Yeah, me too.

[00:31:13.450] - Gordon
Ok. Well, the last one that I've got then is "Honey."

[00:31:16.920] - Paul
Why didn't I mentioned Honey?

[00:31:17.560] - Gordon
I think all three of us use Honey.

[00:31:19.570] - Paul
Yeah.

[00:31:20.230] - Gordon
And if you don't use Honey...

[00:31:22.480] - Paul
Get Honey.

[00:31:22.480] - Gordon
gethoney.com, whatever the address is, we'll put it in the show notes. It's a really good extension. I had something similar in fact before, but the browser extension stopped working and so I stopped using that service, and Honey works on the browsers I use, so that's what I use now. It's a very simple concept. When you go to a website to make a purchase, Honey will see what website you're on; it knows because people have submitted coupon codes and [Motion detected at the front door.] Sounds like the door is very busy at the moment. Luckily, we have other people in the house who are dealing with it. And it will attempt to put the codes that it knows about into the voucher code, and it will keep doing it for as many voucher codes as it has until it finds the best deal for you. And if it doesn't find one that works or it gets to one that has the most amount of discount, it will then say, "this is what you're going to pay" and it saves money. It's a really, really good extension.

[00:32:31.930] - Paul
It's free, it saves money.

[00:32:33.850] - Gordon
And sometimes there are websites that don't have coupon codes, but you can earn "Honey coins." I think is what they're called?

[00:32:43.060] - Paul
Yeah, me too.

[00:32:43.060] - Gordon
Which is an activation thing. You just have to click, 'activate,' and however much you spend, they give you a percentage of that back in coins. When you get a certain number of coins, you can then get like an Amazon gift card or something to a value of whatever the amount is. There is absolutely no reason, as far as I can see, not to use it. Unless you are a security nut and you, because the way they earn their money, I think, is that they, they are tracking the sites that you are going to anonymously, and they are feeding that back to the people who own the websites to show how many people are coming to the site, you know what they're looking for, that sort of thing. And I can only think that that's the way they earn their money. [Motion detected at the front door.] I do apologise.

[00:33:36.370] - Paul
Yeah, you're right. Because they don't, there's no advertising involved, there's nothing like that.

[00:33:39.520] - Gordon
There's no advertising.

[00:33:40.690] - Taylor
They pay, so I watch a lot of YouTube and they do a lot of YouTube adverts.

[00:33:45.460] - Gordon
A teenager watching YouTube!

[00:33:46.400] - Taylor
And also they do a lot of sponsors for YouTubers, so they will pay them £2000 or whatever to make a video and to promote it basically.

[00:33:55.760] - Gordon
OK.

[00:33:56.500] - Paul
Alright.

[00:33:56.500] - Gordon
So that's one way they make money. That's good. So I think unless anyone has anything else they'd like to say?

[00:34:02.950] - Paul
I don't think so.

[00:34:03.970] - Gordon
So I think that's it for today. Thank you so much for joining us. And of course, thank you so much to our guest, Paul. Paul, if people want to find you online, how do they find you?

[00:34:16.060] - Paul
Paullonghurst.com.

[00:34:17.830] - Gordon
There we go, paullonghurst.com.

[00:34:19.850] - Paul
Perfect.

[00:34:20.290] - Gordon
And you are based in Northampton.

[00:34:22.240] - Paul
Yeah, but because I'm based in Northampton, I'm right by the M1. I can travel anywhere.

[00:34:26.260] - Gordon
There you go, so if you're looking for a magician in the Northampton or surrounding areas, paullonghurst.com. So that's it from us. Thank you for joining us. My name is Gordon, I'm from draysondesign.com.

[00:34:40.150] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.

[00:34:42.760] - Paul
I'm Paul from paullonghurst.com. Oh, and I think there's some motion at the front door.

[00:34:47.590] - Gordon
Yeah, we'll find out who that is. Thank you for joining us and we'll see you next week. As always, you can find us on YouTube and Facebook where we go live at one o'clock in the afternoon every Friday.

[00:35:02.470] - Taylor
And you can also go to our website: thisweekwith.co.uk, which has all of our past episodes on it, where you can find out, yeah, all of our...

[00:35:12.550] - Gordon
And you can subscribe to the podcast.

[00:35:14.290] - Taylor
Yeah.

[00:35:14.560] - Gordon
There's links there. So thank you for joining us. We'll see you next time. Goodbye.

[00:35:19.540] - Taylor
Bye.

This Week's Topics

Show Notes