[00:00:08.960] - Gordon
Hello.

[00:00:09.280] - Taylor
Hello.

[00:00:09.440] - Gordon
My name is Gordon from Drayson Design.

[00:00:11.330] - Taylor
I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.

[00:00:13.280] - 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 joining us. So I think we should first of all go to Taylor and find out what he's been doing this week. What have you been up to?

[00:00:33.330] - Taylor
So I went to Macedonia to see a friend of mine that lives out there, and he looked after me. He showed me around Macedonia, had some lovely food, lots of homemade food, lots of food from Macedonia and that region. I got to see some really nice places. It was very very pretty, and just got to hang out with one of my friends.

[00:00:58.880] - Gordon
And this is part of your 12 months of coffee, isn't it?

[00:01:01.470] - Taylor
Yes.

[00:01:02.290] - Gordon
So for those who don't know about this, Taylor was going to a different European country every month and spending a few days there. Basically hanging out in coffee shops. Although I'm suspecting you didn't do that quite as much this time.

[00:01:15.410] - Taylor
I didn't. They don't actually have a Starbucks, which is the mugs that I collect on my trips, in Macedonia, so I wasn't able to go. But I did get to see my friend, so it wasn't all lost.

[00:01:28.450] - Gordon
But this is someone you've not actually met before, other than talking to online, isn't it?

[00:01:33.430] - Taylor
Yes.

[00:01:34.100] - Gordon
And he's a programmer, effectively.

[00:01:39.520] - Taylor
Yeah.

[00:01:39.890] - Gordon
Was it interesting seeing how he works and comparing it to the way you work and see what the differences were?

[00:01:48.060] - Taylor
Yeah. Well, so he has a family and things like that. So his day-to-day life and things like that is a lot different to mine, for example. He has to look after... He's got two small kids that he has to look after. So he doesn't get much sleep and he's got commitments to his family and stuff that he has to worry about. So when it compared to my life, it was very different, but it was very interesting to see what he goes through on a day-to-day basis and what he gets up to. So yeah, it was really nice to see and experience.

[00:02:22.240] - Gordon
And how different was Macedonia to the UK, for example?

[00:02:27.260] - Taylor
I found that it wasn't a big English-speaking country. A lot of people were Macedonian and knew bits of English, but it wasn't a widely supported language, I don't think. We went to some restaurants that didn't have any English menus and they still have English signs. So they'll have the Macedonian version and then the English version, and they had some adverts that were fully in English and then some that were fully in Macedonian. But for the most part, I found that a lot of people spoke Macedonian mainly. And so my friend, he translated and spoke for me, which was nice. But yeah.

[00:03:12.140] - Gordon
Did you pick up any Macedonian words?

[00:03:14.450] - Taylor
No, not at all.

[00:03:15.510] - Gordon
None at all.

[00:03:16.000] - Taylor
No idea.

[00:03:16.580] - Gordon
Not even hello or thank you?

[00:03:18.310] - Taylor
No.

[00:03:18.850] - Gordon
Okay, so there's a few expressions you should always learn if you go on to a new country, and that is 'hello,' 'thank you,' and 'one beer, please.' That's always quite useful, although not necessarily for us, but it's quite a useful thing to have.

[00:03:36.880] - Taylor
Yeah.

[00:03:37.550] - Gordon
So tell us about what you did out there, as opposed to the work you did out there, was it? Because normally you sit in coffee shops and if there aren't any coffee shops, where were you?

[00:03:50.890] - Taylor
He has an office that is about a two-minute walk from his flat that we went and did some work in. But we went up to this part of the river. There was this very nice river/ lake, which had some boats that you could go on, canoes. We had a nice coffee up there, which was a bit like a tourist attraction, which was very nice and very pretty. They have lots of malls, that seems to be what they do for fun and leisure. They go to the shopping centre or the mall.

[00:04:27.240] - Gordon
Right. And do they have the shops we have or are they all very unique to them?

[00:04:30.160] - Taylor
They do have some of the main brands. A lot of the clothing shops they have. They don't have any Apple stores. They have approved resellers, and their Apple store equivalent is called iStyle, which is essentially the Apple Store, but they don't have the license to call it the Apple Store, which is again very, very interesting because they don't have Starbucks, McDonalds, things like that they don't have. And this is their equivalent for the Apple Store.

[00:05:03.400] - Gordon
Very interesting.

[00:05:04.620] - Taylor
But yeah, overall it was great. I liked the food. I tried lots of new stuff, which was great. I just really enjoyed it. It was nice to see how-.

[00:05:12.220] - Gordon
Fried mushrooms?

[00:05:13.580] - Taylor
Yes, fried mushrooms.

[00:05:15.330] - Gordon
And how were they?

[00:05:16.320] - Taylor
Yeah, they're all right.

[00:05:17.790] - Gordon
The reason I say that is because Taylor has never eaten mushrooms at home. He's never liked them, ever. And it seems like he hasn't actually tried them, because if he quite likes them now.

[00:05:29.680] - Taylor
They're all right.

[00:05:30.520] - Gordon
Your tastes do change over time. So maybe you've got to the point now where you can tolerate it.

[00:05:35.950] - Taylor
Yeah.

[00:05:37.930] - Gordon
Anything else you want to say business-wise, maybe?

[00:05:41.540] - Taylor
It was good to see my friend, and we spoke a lot about websites, web design, building websites, things like that, running businesses. It was really nice to talk to someone in a similar situation with their own business and stuff.

[00:05:58.290] - Gordon
It's nice to bounce off someone who's got a similar knowledge base, because you can push yourself forward by doing that, can't you?

[00:06:06.760] - Taylor
Definitely.

[00:06:07.870] - Gordon
And you actually went for slightly longer than you normally do, because you went for a weekend, didn't you?

[00:06:12.130] - Taylor
Yeah. So there's only three flights a week to Macedonia from London. I had to fly from London, Luton, and there's three flights a week: Tuesday, Thursday, and a Saturday. So I decided to go on a Saturday and I came back on the Tuesday. So yeah, because of the flights and things like that.

[00:06:30.580] - Gordon
Very good. So, anything else?

[00:06:34.180] - Taylor
I don't think so.

[00:06:35.340] - Gordon
So, I have a Balloon Twisting website. Now, originally, I created a community that didn't really get very big and it was part of this. And because of that, I got invited to do a radio show on Balloon Twisting with Liza Tarbuck, who was lovely. I think it was Radio Two, can't remember exactly. But anyway, it was learning how to do a new skill for the new year, New Year's resolution type thing. So it was all pre-recorded. I remember when I did it many, many years ago now, Stephen Mulhern, who I know, was in there just before me, and he was doing a learn how to do magic section, which was great. I went in, did my balloon twisting, and she said to me at the end of the recording, "and if people want to purchase balloons, they can get that from your website?" I said, "Yes, that's right. And that's balloontwisting.co.uk." And came out of it and started heading home thinking, "I don't have a shop. I don't have any balloons I can sell." But I knew when this recording was coming out and I knew I had like two weeks to get it up and running. So I built myself a balloon twisting shop. Now, I have a colleague and a friend of mine who sells balloons. They have huge stock and they sell balloons to entertainers mainly. I came up with a proposition for him that I would build my store, I would promote my store, my online store that is, and that I would copy him in with any orders that I get. He would then drop ship them out. Now, drop shipping is a great idea. If you don't want to hold stock of something, drop shipping is... Effectively, what Amazon do in some respects, they do drop shipping, because you either send your products to them and then they send it out, or you have an affiliate-type scheme where you sell their product and they send it out. And so that's what I wanted. I didn't want to have to every time an order came in, talk to my friend, get some balloons brought over, pack them up, send them out, because that would have taken forever and the customers would not have been happy. So we arranged this. Every month I pay him the amount of stock and postage that we've agreed upon ahead of time. Then the bill goes back to zero and we start again for the next month. And I've been doing this for a little while now and it works great, really well, until there's a problem. Now, the main problems that I've had are where stock has been sold out and I haven't been told. For example, because my friend also sells to entertainers, he could sell the last few bags of a line, and I don't know that, and my shop is still saying I've got it in stock. Therefore, we get an order in which we can't fulfil. And that's always disappointing. The other thing is that if he's making a big order for balloons, which he does every however long, he'll make a note as to what lines he needs and he'll make a big order. So it does mean that some lines can go out of stock for an extended period of time, like six, eight months at a time, which again is not ideal. But I'm not relying on this shop earning my living, so it's not an issue for me. It's just really nice, actually, when I get an email saying, "this is the order, you've just taken some money." Then, later on that day, I get another email saying, "This order has been sent out. Thank you." It's like, "Great, that's my job done." The biggest issue I have at the moment is that he's decided to go on some cruises. Now, he's on a cruise at the moment, which is one month. He's away for a month. In January, he's going to be away for four months doing a world cruise, which is a huge amount of time. I had a choice. I could either shut the shop down for the period of time that he's not here, which isn't great for SEO. You're listed on Google with all the products because you can actually tell Google what products you sell and it can list those and put them in a result when you are... When people are searching for products, it can show your products and it can link directly to your shop to that page, which is great. In fact, all of my sales come from Google, and I don't pay for this, it's a free service. So if he's away, I have the option of closing down the shop, which is not great because then all of my listings get wiped out and I then have to basically turn it back on again and it takes time for it to then propagate and come back into Google Store. The alternative is he drops a load of stock off with me and when I get orders in, I pack them myself, which is what we're doing. Now, the downside to this for me is it's not something that I normally do. So, I'm not particularly good at packing these balloon orders up because I haven't had the experience to know how to pack them and I haven't been told either, so I'm doing the best I can to pack them up. The second thing is it takes time to do. Because I don't do it normally, I don't have set times during the day when I can do it, so I just do it as and when I can. And last of all, the way that I am doing it at the minute, because for me to go to the post office, because I can't go to the post box, the parcels, the packages are too big, is like half an hour, 45 minutes out of my day. Just going there, dropping it off, coming back again. That's just time I really don't want to have to spend every day. I don't get orders every day, but were I to get orders every day, it would be every day. So what I'm doing is I'm using Royal Mail online postage. You can tell them how much something weighs, how big it is, where it's going, and it will tell you how much it is. You can then pay it online. And in fact, it's cheaper. I don't understand this. It's cheaper to buy postage for some packages, some sizes online than it is to go to a post office and pay for it there and then.

[00:13:39.880] - Taylor
It's crazy.

[00:13:40.940] - Gordon
Makes no sense. I don't understand it. But more importantly, they offer a service where your postman or somebody, if it's not your postman, depending on the size of the package actually, will come to your house or your place of business the next day, in the morning and will collect that package for you. They'll also bring a pre-printed label that they can stick on it and then they'll take it and it's the same as me going to the post office. So what's happening at the moment is if I get an order in the evenings or during a day, I will package up, depending on when I get the order, I will package up the parcel the following day. I will then pay for the postage. It will get collected the following day. So this is now two days after it was ordered and be delivered the day after that, which is three days in total. Now, they do get sent First Class, which I feel is important. It's something we offer on our site, but they're not arriving next day because of the way that I've got it set. And I'm not earning enough from this for me to put time into my day to go to the post office. Wouldn't you know it, I've been reasonably quiet recently with orders coming in. The day that he leaves to go on his cruise, I get two orders in. Since then, I've had another three orders. It's all gone mad. The other thing is I have limited stock, because I don't have his whole garage full of stock. I've just got a few select lines and a few packs of each. So at some point, I'm going to have to say, "I can't do this." In fact, we've already had one. One of the lines that I have is already out of stock because I don't have any more of them. I don't know if he does, but I don't. So my online balloon sales are probably going to take a little bit of a dip at the moment because the drop shipping is not in place. Why am I telling you all this? Well, basically, I wasn't expecting to ever have to package up balloon orders and send them out. But if I want to keep going and I don't want to lose my search engine rankings, it's something I'm having to do, which is an extra job for me and not one I particularly enjoy, which is why I set up drop shipping in the first place. But when you take on a new project or a new sideline, you need to just consider what might happen in the future. If your supplier falls out with you or decides that they're going to stop their business or whatever, then what will you need to do to keep your business going? And this applies to any supplier that you might have. If you rely on someone to supply you with a product or a service, make sure you've got a backup plan. Now, that could be that you've spoken to another supplier and they can take over if the first supplier, your preferred supplier, decides not to do it anymore. But always have that in place because you don't know when things are going to change. I actually got a little bit of notice that he's going away. But he could have said to me, "Look, I'm not selling balloons anymore," and that's it. I don't have currently a backup plan. So this is what I've learned and this is what I'm telling you about. There are other people who sell balloons and I will be talking to them and saying, "This is my business, this is my model. If you're interested in being my supplier, then let me know. Tell me what your best price is and any orders I get, you can send out for me." I need to put that in place because I don't know how long this is going to continue for and I don't know that I really want to do four months worth of packing. The amount of stock that I'd have to take on just to allow me to service those orders is huge, and I don't want to do that. So that's the lesson from me from this week is make sure you have a backup plan for suppliers or products that you rely on. Make sure you've got some way of getting those if the current supplier no longer does it. Anything else you want to add to that?

[00:18:19.390] - Taylor
I don't think so. It's a good thing to think about.

[00:18:22.060] - Gordon
Yeah, it is. And it goes through every business, really. If you've got a... Quite often people are reactionary, so something will go wrong, they'll react to it and deal with it at that point. But it's always nice to be proactive and have a plan in place and I think that is something that all businesses should do and should learn from. So that's everything from me.

[00:18:53.740] - Taylor
And me as well.

[00:18:55.010] - Gordon
And you. Thank you so much for joining us. As always, we can be found on YouTube and on Facebook. Please like, share, and subscribe.

[00:19:03.020] - Taylor
You can also go to our website thisweekwith.co.uk to find all of our past episodes.

[00:19:07.600] - Gordon
We will be back with you next week, 1pm on Friday is when we go live. Please join us then. Until then, my name is Gordon, and I am from a company called Drayson Design.

[00:19:19.210] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.

[00:19:21.870] - Gordon
Goodbye.

[00:19:22.480] - Taylor
Bye.

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