[00:00:09.220] - Gordon
Hello.

[00:00:09.620] - Taylor
Hello.

[00:00:09.820] - Gordon
My name is Gordon from Drayson Design.

[00:00:12.340] - Taylor
I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.

[00:00:14.560] - 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 we weren't here last week.

[00:00:27.100] - Taylor
We weren't.

[00:00:27.930] - Gordon
No. So, interestingly, both of us were away last week. You were away at the beginning of the week, and I was away for the end of the week, although I was also away for most of the beginning of the week as well. So you had a little trip. Do you want to tell us about your trip?

[00:00:44.570] - Taylor
Yes, so my trip was to Berlin. This was one of my just monthly travels.

[00:00:50.390] - Gordon
Twelve months of coffee. Yeah.

[00:00:52.380] - Taylor
It was really good. I really enjoyed the food, just travelling. The transport system over there is very, very good. They have quite a high percentage of their entire country connected. So yeah, that's good. It's very interesting and different the way that tickets work and things like that over in different countries. For example, in Germany, I bought a 72-hour ticket and you basically stamp it at the beginning of your journey, depending on whatever transport you get. And then that basically puts the time and date on and that starts your ticket. So you can buy a ticket for a month's time, for example, as long as you don't stamp it, and obviously don't use public transport, you can buy them in advance. It was really interesting because a lot of the people over in Germany don't use paper tickets. They all have an app. They're something like 40 or 50 euros a month or something. You get unlimited access and unlimited travel. So a lot of people have that. It wasn't clear to me straight away that I had to scan it. It was only because someone told me and said, "Make sure you scan your ticket." Because you can get a fine; even though you're holding a ticket, if it doesn't have the date on it, it's not valid and they will give you a fine.

[00:02:15.650] - Gordon
It's interesting because Germany is known throughout the world as being very efficient. All of their processes are very efficient. They're not known for their sense of humour. So if you were to have your ticket that hasn't been stamped and try and make a joke out of it, it's unlikely they'll laugh. But you had a good time?

[00:02:36.850] - Taylor
Yeah, I did. My hostel was good. I made some friends, which was nice. We all kind of hung out. I tried all the coffee.

[00:02:46.160] - Gordon
Of course. And was the coffee different to normal coffee?

[00:02:49.800] - Taylor
I had a Starbucks and I got my mug. I went to Espresso House, which is the main coffee shop in Scandinavia, so Copenhagen, when I went. And then I also tried another one, Kaffee House, K-A-double F-double E, I think. And yeah, they were all interesting. It's not free to go to the toilet in most places. Even Starbucks, which is something, again, I didn't realise and is completely different. Even though Starbucks is probably the biggest coffee chain in the world, they still charge you to go to the toilet.

[00:03:29.340] - Gordon
Very interesting. Different cultures, different ways of working. So I wasn't here because I was in Rhodes in Greece and I was on holiday and I was with my partner. Funnily enough, we worked it out. It's 23 years since we went away together on our own.

[00:03:51.440] - Taylor
Should have gone sooner than that.

[00:03:52.950] - Gordon
Well, yeah, problem is we had this son and this son always wanted to come with us on holiday. He wasn't happy just to stay at home. But it was very good and it brings me onto my topic. My topic today is grasping opportunities. I was on holiday, but as is always the way when I'm on holiday and someone says, you know you strike up a conversation with people and they say, "What do you do for a living?" You go, "I'm a magician." They don't then go, "Oh, that's nice. I'm a plumber." And then move on. That never happens. When you say, "I'm a magician," they go, "Oh, you're a magician. Can you show me any magic?" And were I not prepared for that, there's an awful lot of opportunities that I would miss out on. I don't try and engineer those moments, especially when I'm on holiday, because, well, I'm on holiday, but they do come up. There's two schools of thought as far as magicians are concerned. One is that 'don't work unless you're being paid to work.' That's fine. But I think that if you say to someone you're a magician, it's a perfect opportunity to then say, "Let me show you something," and just do something quick and simple and easy and hopefully it'll make them think, "Oh, he's actually quite good. Have you got a business card?" Which is then the next thing. You give them a business card and you never know what might come out of it. Just earlier this week, for example, I've got a company that come around once a month and they clean my car for me. They do it outside, they do it inside. It's still relatively new to me, which is why it's being looked after and I'm having someone come and clean it for me. But it's the school holidays here. So Mum and Dad are the people who clean the car. They had three children in the car with them because they can't really leave them at home. Eight, nine and ten; unusual names, but there you go. I think they were their ages, to be honest. I thought this is a perfect opportunity. So I went out and I said, "Would your children like to have a balloon animal?" They went, "Oh, I think they'd love that." So I spent 20 minutes with them and just made them each a balloon animal and gave them one of my photo cards because they were very interested in what I was doing and what I did. All this time, parents are continuing washing my car. Two things happened from this. One is when I went to pay, I came back in the house and waited for them to finish. But when they came to get payment, they said, "Our children, there's three of them, our children have made this for you." There was a sheet of paper and they'd each written, "Thank you so much for my unicorn" and "I love your sense of humour." When I gave them my card, they went, "Oh, five stars from Facebook and from Google." He said, "Oh, you must do really well then." And so one of them had put, "Really enjoyed what you did. Five stars." Which made me laugh because that was from the eight-year-old. He said, "Can I like and subscribe to your YouTube channel?" I said, "Yes, you can." When you think about it, this age group, that's what they're being brought up on, liking, sharing and subscribing on YouTube. I went, "Yeah, of course. Yeah, I'd love to." But it was so nice that they took the time out to actually write this down. Just before I left, they told me that they were moving house soon and they were going to have a garden, and next time it's one of their birthdays, would they like me to come along and entertain at their birthday? And of course, because I'd just done a little bit of balloon modelling for them, I didn't even do any magic, just gave them each a balloon. They were all going, "Yes, we want Gordon." And in that opportunity, I've turned them into people who are now big fans, which is lovely. It's really nice. Plus, they weren't just sitting in the car while mum and dad were doing a job, they were actually enjoying being there. That, I think, is going to stay with them for a long time. And there are opportunities like that. It's a lot easier with entertainment because you can entertain people and give them a feeling and a memory. But it doesn't matter what you do, you have opportunities to promote what you do. You've just got to look for these opportunities and grab them when you can. If you're a self-employed person or you run your own business like we do, these opportunities are the sort of things you should always be looking for. If you go to work and you work for a company, you can still look for opportunities, but you don't have the motivation that you do if you work for yourself. I think most of the people who watch this work for themselves, and so this is a really good opportunity and a lesson to learn. Just look out for them. As soon as you start looking for them, you will see them and you never know what they're going to turn into. You might find that someone you speak to will turn into your next £20,000 customer. You don't know. You never know.

[00:09:37.710] - Taylor
Yeah. I've done a lot of work in Facebook groups for other people, writing code and stuff. And although it doesn't lead to money directly, the person says thank you, they remember me. I've had people that I've done one... I've helped with: I've answered a question or I've written a tiny bit of code that maybe took me, I don't know, a couple of minutes, but they remembered that. And I've had people in comments that have not only linked my Snippet Club, for example, they've also said, "look, this is really worth it. I recommend it. They've helped me before." And so from that, I've gained subscribers, essentially.

[00:10:22.960] - Gordon
And business, yeah. And it's really important that you look out for these opportunities. And make sure that when these opportunities arise that you're prepared for them, whatever that means. I was sitting on the aeroplane on the way home from Greece. It was one o'clock in the morning, and the young lady sitting next to me said, "What do you do?" And I said, "I'm a magician." She said, "Oh can you show me something?" I'm sitting in an aeroplane. I've got nothing on me, but I still managed to do something. She was going, "I don't understand what just happened there. That was just amazing." Immediately she said, "Are you on YouTube? Can I follow you?" And I went, "Yeah, of course you can." And she subscribed to me.

[00:11:10.890] - Taylor
That's great.

[00:11:11.390] - Gordon
A new subscriber, which again, in the future, you've no idea-

[00:11:14.620] - Taylor
Two new subscribers now.

[00:11:15.630] - Gordon
-where that's going to take you? Well, exactly. Yeah.

[00:11:18.090] - Taylor
Potentially four, if there's three of them and they all subscribe.

[00:11:21.470] - Gordon
And of course, if you haven't already subscribed, then you should subscribe to This Week With or any of our other endeavours. We have different channels for different things, and most of those are going to be available on thisweekwith.co.uk. So have a look.

[00:11:41.850] - Taylor
Yeah.

[00:11:42.190] - Gordon
That's my topic.

[00:11:43.290] - Taylor
So my topic was just different ways to market and advertise. Now, I've done business cards. I've done a website. I have-

[00:11:56.090] - Gordon
Word of mouth.

[00:11:56.840] - Taylor
Yeah, word of mouth, referral marketing. I've never done a flyer or an in-person event. Coming up soon, I'm going to be attending an event. This is a Ladies' Day, and I decided that I would get some flyers designed and printed and hand them out to people that are going to be there. This is the first time I've done this, so I don't know what the returns are going to be like. I don't know what the feedback is going to be like, but I'm looking forward to it.

[00:12:34.680] - Gordon
Okay, so these events, having printed flyers that people can take away, there's several things that they should have on them these days, which I know you've already thought about. So the number one thing is a call to action. When you have a flyer or any publicity, there has to be a call to action. Otherwise, how can you measure if that was any good or not? And your call to action is?

[00:13:05.700] - Taylor
Just getting in contact and filling in the form on my website.

[00:13:08.360] - Gordon
And how are people doing that? What have you-.

[00:13:10.490] - Taylor
I'm going to be using a QR code that people can scan. I can then obviously track how many people scan it, and that way I can see how many people convert, and things like that.

[00:13:22.260] - Gordon
And the other thing is that, and we spoke about this when you told me you were doing this, is that we don't know how many people are going to be there, but with print, the more you get, the cheaper per print the cost is. It's something... Just pulling numbers out of the air. If you buy a thousand, A5 size, it's like £70. If you buy 2,000, it's like £75. The amount extra is very, very small because the setup costs are the bit that take the time. Just leaving the printer running for five minutes longer doesn't cost a lot at all. But you also don't want to be left with a ton of flyers that are going to go out of date that you can't actually use and you end up throwing away. So, when we discussed this, we worked out how many we thought we'd need, and there's going to be some leftover, definitely. So, by making sure that it's not personalised for that event, it then allows you to use those flyers at other times for other places, for BNI, for example.

[00:14:41.000] - Taylor
Exactly.

[00:14:41.780] - Gordon
And that's really important. By having the QR code as well, you can track not only how many people go, but when they go. So you can sort of see analytics and see if people hold on to it when they get it and come back to it maybe a month later because they find it in a bag or something. And the QR code is a really a good way of doing things because it makes it very easy to get people to go to where you want them to go.

[00:15:08.630] - Taylor
Yeah, exactly. And I also have a short link URL that I can use as well if I need to, which is nice because it means I can save space and it's also less to type in. So should someone want to type in the URL, then obviously I can provide that as well, because you can't scan a QR code on a computer very easily.

[00:15:29.480] - Gordon
And the other bit of advice for an in-person event, which we haven't discussed, is you're going to have lots of people coming by. What do you ask them? What do you say to them? How do you get them to come and talk to you and engage with you? And with what you're doing, I would highly recommend you just say to people, "Hello, my name's Taylor, lovely to meet you. Do you have a website?" Because that's going to tell you everything you need to know. If they do have a website, it's like, "Oh, that's great. Does it work for you? Does it do what you want it to do? How are you measuring? How are you finding out how it works for you? Do you actually have any way of finding out if it works for you?" A lot of people don't. They just have a website and just assume it does what it's supposed to do and bring customers in. But unless you can measure that, you don't know for sure. And if they say, "No, we don't have a website," you say, "Oh, okay, what sort of business are you in?" Because then you can gauge whether a website will be of use to them. It's not always required. You don't always need a website. Most things do, but not everything. But by finding out information and asking open ended questions like this, you're encouraging people to talk to you. And the more they talk to you, the more you have the opportunity to find out a bit about them. And as soon as you've found out about them, then you can get into how you can help them. So instead of selling at them, you're suggesting services you have that might be of use to them, and that's a big differentiator.

[00:17:09.660] - Taylor
Definitely.

[00:17:10.510] - Gordon
So that's what I would highly recommend. If you're doing an in-person event, just start a conversation.

[00:17:19.750] - Taylor
Yeah, that's pretty much it for me.

[00:17:21.540] - Gordon
When is it going to be this event?

[00:17:23.720] - Taylor
It's on a Saturday. It's at a rugby club. It's the first game of the season and they're having a big launch for it.

[00:17:34.690] - Gordon
So it's coming up in September?

[00:17:36.510] - Taylor
Yes.

[00:17:36.960] - Gordon
Okay, so will you come back and tell us how you feel it went afterwards?

[00:17:41.000] - Taylor
Yeah, definitely.

[00:17:41.820] - Gordon
All right, that's very good. Well, that's everything that I have to say for today.

[00:17:46.820] - Taylor
Me too.

[00:17:48.580] - Gordon
Thank you very much for joining us. We apologise if you were waiting for our episode last week and it didn't happen. We completely forgot we were both going to be out of the country. As always, you can like, share and subscribe on YouTube and on Facebook.

[00:18:04.640] - Taylor
You can also go to our website thisweekwith.co.uk to find all of our past episodes.

[00:18:10.030] - Gordon
That's it from me. We will be back, assuming that neither of us go away, next week at 1pm on Friday. Until then, my name is Gordon and I run my business, which is Drayson Design.

[00:18:25.150] - Taylor
I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.

[00:18:28.380] - Gordon
Goodbye.

[00:18:29.070] - Taylor
Bye.

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