[00:00:09.010] - Gordon
Hello.

[00:00:09.450] - Taylor
Hello.

[00:00:09.910] - Gordon
My name is Gordon from Drayson Design.

[00:00:11.770] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.

[00:00:14.140] - 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. Thank you for being with us. We didn't have an episode last week. You weren't feeling particularly well, were you?

[00:00:32.290] - Taylor
I wasn't, no.

[00:00:32.290] - Gordon
No, he had a very bad week, basically. But you're feeling better this week?

[00:00:37.230] - Taylor
I am.

[00:00:37.770] - Gordon
Which is just as well because you had a birthday this week.

[00:00:40.240] - Taylor
I did. I'm getting old.

[00:00:42.710] - Gordon
Yes, you are.

[00:00:44.810] - Taylor
I feel like a dinosaur.

[00:00:46.840] - Gordon
So, yeah, we had a nice day out, didn't we?

[00:00:48.850] - Taylor
We did.

[00:00:49.560] - Gordon
We went and saw the Back in Time Exhibition, which was a Back to the Future exhibition with sort of costumes and props from the films, which was really good.

[00:01:03.870] - Taylor
Yeah, really interesting to see. Obviously a lot of them have been, like, donated for the exhibition by collectors and things like that, which is obviously really interesting to see. A lot of them are originals and things that, you know...

[00:01:21.720] - Gordon
And we even got, if you remember in Back to the Future 2 there's Café Eighties, and there's this big sort of arcade machine that you use as sort of a gun to shoot at the screen. And we got to play that, didn't we?

[00:01:36.330] - Taylor
We did, yeah.

[00:01:36.580] - Gordon
It was really cool. So that was good. And we also had a very interesting lunch as well, do you want to...?

[00:01:43.020] - Taylor
Yeah, we had a Yorkshire burrito, which is one of the best things I've ever eaten. So the exhibition was in Camden and they obviously have really really good street food there, and I saw it on social media. It's essentially a Yorkshire pudding. Big, big Yorkshire pudding with all your roast inside. So your meat, so chicken, beef or cauliflower, if you're a vegetarian, your roast potatoes, your kind of veggies and stuff like that. And then they roll up the Yorkshire pudding and you eat it like a burrito. And it is so good.

[00:02:21.810] - Gordon
It was really nice, actually. It was very unusual. Haven't had one before, but yeah, it was great. So we had a great day. That was back on Tuesday.

[00:02:31.260] - Taylor
Yeah.

[00:02:32.160] - Gordon
So, yeah, a little while ago. My car failed it's MOT this week as well. That's another happening that's affected my business, but I'm going to get it back today, so we should be okay.

[00:02:47.350] - Taylor
Good.

[00:02:48.280] - Gordon
Okay, let's get straight into our topic. Shall I go first?

[00:02:51.700] - Taylor
Yeah, you can go first.

[00:02:52.860] - Gordon
Okay. So my topic this week is something that I've considered doing for a long time and I've sort of sat down and decided to get around to doing it. And that is to find out why people or customers either cancel your service, if it's an ongoing service, or they choose not to go ahead with the service at all. So this is something that can actually help the business. So if I know, for example, if I'm sending out a quote for a website, let's say, and they decide not to go ahead with it, or they decide to go with someone else, it's worth me sending another email out and basically saying, "sorry, you didn't find my quote to your liking. Can I ask what prevented you from employing me on this occasion?" And some people will just ignore you, and that's fine because you haven't lost anything. Some people will come back and they'll give you reasons and tell you why, and they may say, "actually it's not you, it's just something that's happening here that we need to deal with and we need to reallocate the money or the plans are changing slightly, but we do want to come back to you in the future." So that way you know that it's a job that's still likely to happen. And you can sort of keep in touch with these people over time without annoying them, because they've sort of given you the permission to contact them again because they've said it's still a live project, just not right now. But you can also find out if you were too expensive compared to your competitor, or maybe you didn't spell out the reasons why coming to you would benefit the customer and give them more value. It's possible that you didn't reply quick enough and your service wasn't fast. When people make enquiries for services, they often have got to the point when they want to do it, and if they have to wait sort of three days to get an answer from you, sometimes that's a bit too long. I remember a story I read on Facebook during the week about another entertainer who needed some work done in his garden. And so he contacted a tradesman, several tradesmen, telling them what he wanted and sent the messages off and waited for them to get back to him, to say how much it was going to cost and what their availability was. And there was a guy who took three days and when he came back he said, "right, okay, so it's this, this and this." The guy who was employing said, "you're too late. Not only have I had the quote, but the guy's come and he's already done it." And the other guy said, "oh, I'm so sorry, I'm just really busy." So from that I took away, if you're that busy that you have no time to actually deal with new customers and new work coming in, then you've got to find someone to either do that for you as; a virtual PA is an option there. You don't have to employ someone full time, but you could employ a virtual PA just for the picking up of the phone and taking messages. Or you put time aside and that is just for the admin. So if it's getting back to customers and responding to them so they don't have to wait for ages and ages and not know that their messages even got to you because they haven't heard anything back. This guy missed out. I mean, I'm glad he's really busy, but there is going to be a time when he's not going to be busy and he will be looking around for work. And if he's looking after his customers when he is busy because people are coming to him, he's going to end up being busy for a lot longer. So just thinking about why people don't buy from you, and asking them a very direct question, you know, "may I ask why you didn't make a purchase at this point?" It can really give you an insight into how a customer thinks and it also helps you to create value and services that your customers actually need and want, rather than what you think they need and want. Have you got anything else you want to add to this?

[00:07:30.450] - Taylor
Yeah, I mean I think sometimes I can be a little slow sending out proposals purely for the fact that I don't enjoy writing them. They take up a lot, quite a bit of time to do, they take up a lot of brain power and energy to do. I sometimes just don't feel well. And it's obviously something that I don't think that I just don't have the energy to do. But I know it's something that I do need to keep on top of and make sure that I am sending them out relatively quickly, because most people that do approach me are ready to buy in the aspect of if it was a product, in terms of they want a website and obviously they're looking now for the most part, unless they specify that they're just kind of seeing how much people cost and things like that. People want, you know, want websites then. So you know, you need to make sure you're efficient with your response and things like that. And also something else that I read in the TAB community, which is The Admin Bar. I think I read it in there, was don't send proposals on a Friday because it gives people time to mull it over and think over the weekend and things like that, which you sometimes don't want because they might think about it too much and then come back and think, actually, no, I don't want to. But also it gives the breaking point of you not being able to follow up a couple of days later. So if you send it on a Monday or Tuesday, you can follow up on a Thursday or Friday and say, "hey, have you had a chance to read my proposal? Do you have any questions?" And it's in the forefront of their mind, whereas they may come back to it on Monday and have forgotten about it.

[00:09:20.320] - Gordon
Yeah, I agree. So that's the end of that topic conversation. I don't think there's a lot more we can say on that, but it is worth finding a way to talk to your customers, if they've been a customer for a long time and they suddenly decide to stop. What prompted them to stop? Why have they decided to go elsewhere or not continue with you? It might be that they're just retiring or they just don't want your service anymore because they're shutting down that part of their business. There's lots of different reasons, but until you know that, you can't really move forward. Just before we move to your topic, there is something that I wanted to say that I forgot to say earlier about TAB. You reminded me. Because I think in the last episode we were talking about your interactive map where people could place their pins on and I said, wouldn't it be good to have one for my venues? We did it. I say we did it. Taylor did most of it. That's not actually true, is it? You tidied it up for me and customised it for me, but he put a tutorial into his SnippetClub about how to do this and I followed that tutorial and got most of the way, got a working product. It wasn't looking particularly good, but we managed to get most of the way, and then you just tweaked it. So I now have; if I have a person come looking to me for a children's party, I now have a web page on my site which has a list, or pinpoints, I should say, on a map of all of the venues that I've been to that I think are suitable for renting out. So that doesn't include private homes and private companies, but it does include things like village halls and churches and hotels and that sort of community halls. I said that. That sort of thing. So that is a huge benefit for me and my customers. And I will put a link into the show notes so you can go and have a look at that. But if you're just listening to this and you're next to a screen now, you can go to venues, that's plural, venues.disbelieving.com and you can see all of our lovely handiwork and I'm really pleased with it. Thank you for helping me with that.

[00:11:44.520] - Taylor
Looks good.

[00:11:45.420] - Gordon
So what would you like to talk about today?

[00:11:47.960] - Taylor
Well, just another kind of slightly off topic thing, is we have made progress with the new website for This Week With. So obviously we mentioned that we were going to rebuild it and give it a new design, for the new season coming up, and we made progress. We've imported all of the previous episodes. We've started...

[00:12:10.980] - Gordon
Which took the longest actually, because they're all MP3 files and there's 106 of them. So that took forever to transfer them across.

[00:12:18.940] - Taylor
Yeah, so we had to obviously import all of the audio files and import all of the posts that are attached to all of the episodes, so that all of our RSS feeds know where to look and things like that. And we started on the new design and some of the new features and stuff, and it's looking really nice.

[00:12:35.740] - Gordon
It is looking really nice. And we only spent an afternoon on it and we got, I would say about 60% done.

[00:12:42.240] - Taylor
Yeah, we got quite a bit.

[00:12:43.330] - Gordon
I was really pleased with how we progressed with it. I've actually sent you a couple of links for things that I think might work well on our site, but I shall leave that as a surprise for everyone. We can talk about it in a future episode if we decide to go down that route. But that is due to go live in January. Our numbering is slightly odd because we do it by date rather than number of episodes, so we will be entering our fourth year in January, so that will be three years complete that we've been doing this, which, I'll be honest, is longer than I thought we were going to do it. We started it as a lockdown project and here we are, 20, 21 and 22. That's our three years. We're still going and it's actually quite good to do it. I like spending this time with you doing it, but I also like the idea of coming up with topics that I feel I can add value to for the viewers. And also, it's a nice way to, as you said right at the beginning, document what we're doing at any particular moment in time.

[00:13:52.090] - Taylor
Yeah, it's nice to look back on and obviously see how things have changed, things have evolved.

[00:13:59.510] - Gordon
Hairstyles.

[00:14:00.580] - Taylor
Yeah, I mean.

[00:14:01.330] - Gordon
Lack of hair.

[00:14:03.860] - Taylor
The way we film our episodes and things like that hasn't really changed since the beginning. You know, we've changed maybe a couple of cables here and there, but for the most part, we use pretty much the same software. We're still using a mobile phone for our video feed.

[00:14:22.830] - Gordon
Yeah. We're not using our microphone today because something went wrong with it, so we're using the microphone on the laptop. So if it sounds slightly different to normal, that's why. Hopefully we'll be able to figure out what the issue is and get our proper microphone back up and running for next week.

[00:14:39.520] - Taylor
Yeah. So my topic is kind of just an update about where I am. So obviously we're heading into, hopefully the new year at some point. We're coming up to Christmas and things like that, and so I'm obviously looking at my processes that I have in my business. I'm just coming back from, obviously, illness and I want to set myself off on a good foot with making sure things are up to date with my automations, with my renewals, with my invoicing. So, this kind of week or so I'm going to be just before I kind of fully get back into work, because I took a bit of time off to obviously focus on my health. I want to make sure that I'm in the right order and organised because I think that we all get a bit chaotic and we lose track of all of the great things we put into place and we know we need to do. We kind of become lazy, become busy, and sometimes we don't set a priority on stuff like that for our own business and also our clients and things like that. And so something I want to focus on is providing the best customer service that I can. I know that in the past, again because I've been ill, I haven't done that. And I know that it's something that obviously I want to improve. And it's mainly just down to communication. Communicating with clients when I'm ill to tell them this is what's happening, give them a time frame, say, "Look, I hope to be back this time." Give them updates on their projects. Touch base with people that I have retainers and renewals with, and say, "is there anything I can help with? Is everything working as it should?" Things like that, and just be a lot more proactive than I currently am. I think I've kind of been slacking a bit just because I thought, you know, it's getting a bit easy and it's not the way it should be. But again, it's because sometimes I've been ill and taking the easy route sometimes. So I want to put a big focus on making sure that I'm providing the best quality service that I can, which is what I started with and how I got my reputation. And so I want to kind of go back to those roots of really enjoying it and putting in the effort again. Not that I haven't been putting in the effort, but going the extra mile that I kind of haven't been recently.

[00:17:12.870] - Gordon
Yeah, it's a bit like a shop has a stock take after Christmas, basically. In the new year. That's a good time to take a stock check. And it's like a stock check for your service, so you can sort of look through the customer journey and see how they're being treated in the time that they start with you all the way through the project to the end. And just seeing if there's any way you can put things in place to make it better for the customer, easier for you, more informative, that sort of thing.

[00:17:42.840] - Taylor
Yeah, definitely. And obviously, because I've done that coaching, I had some coaching and things like that. One of the things that has really helped is making myself self aware and I think it's something that is very tricky sometimes to analyse about yourself. Obviously it takes someone else looking in to see that you need to be self aware of things. So I'm aware that sometimes I spend too much time on kind of social platforms, messaging friends and things like that. Sometimes I am putting things off. And being self aware is one of the biggest steps you can take because at least you're aware of it, rather than just being unaware of things that you're not doing that you should be.

[00:18:30.180] - Gordon
And if you're aware of it, you can then make decisions based on that; whether you carry on doing it, or whether you change, or whether you give yourself a set amount of time, that sort of thing. And structuring your day better.

[00:18:43.590] - Taylor
Yeah, exactly. And so it's one of the first steps to being more organised, being more efficient and obviously kind of carrying your life in order, because if you've got your ducks in a row, you feel on top of the world I think. I've had it a few times when I've been in that position where I've got everything, I know what work has got to be done, I've got things planned out, everything is set up, I'm not behind on anything. And it just makes you feel a lot better and you end up doing more work, you feel more productive and your work-life kind of balance is a lot better because you're not chasing after... catching up.

[00:19:22.390] - Gordon
Well, you're not getting stressed, are you?

[00:19:24.150] - Taylor
Yeah, because you're not...

[00:19:25.330] - Gordon
Reducing all that stress.

[00:19:26.580] - Taylor
You're not playing catch up, instead of playing catch up and being behind in the work and thinking, "okay, I've got to get this done because I'm behind." You're taking it as it is and you're being proactive and you're actually ahead of your work, which is always good to be.

[00:19:45.430] - Gordon
Excellent. That's very good. Do you like my teddy bear look today?

[00:19:48.940] - Taylor
Very nice. Nice and fluffy.

[00:19:50.440] - Gordon
This is a new jumper. I've not worn very much, but it's very nice and warm and at the moment it's very cold, so that's why I'm wearing it. Right, that's it from me.

[00:20:02.740] - Taylor
And that's it from me as well.

[00:20:04.300] - Gordon
I have my first Sunday rehearsal for Pantomime coming up in a couple of days, so that's going to be fun. We're getting close to that. We're about a month and a bit away from there, so if you are in this area, please consider coming and watching Hansel and Gretel in Sanderstead 7th to the 14th of January. Again, I'll put a link in the notes so you can just click on it and go straight there so you can book your tickets. We're doing ten performances, so please come and join us. That's everything from me, so thank you very much for joining us today and spending your time with us. As always, you can, like, share and subscribe. We are on YouTube and on Facebook every week.

[00:20:50.650] - Taylor
You can go to our website thisweekwith.co.uk to find all of our past episodes and anything we may have spoken about.

[00:20:57.790] - Gordon
So until next week at 1p.m. on Friday, assuming that Taylor's well and nothing gets in the way, we do have Christmas shows coming up, so we may have to sort of find a way around it, and there may be a pre-recorded one at some point. But we will do our best to be with you during December. So until then, my name's Gordon and I'm from Drayson Design.

[00:21:21.100] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.

[00:21:23.950] - Gordon
Goodbye.

[00:21:24.570] - Taylor
Bye.

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