[00:00:09.220] - Gordon
Hello.

[00:00:09.610] - Taylor
Hello.

[00:00:10.000] - Gordon
My name's Gordon from Drayson Design.

[00:00:12.090] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.

[00:00:14.180] - Gordon
And welcome to "This Week With Taylor and Gordon," a weekly podcast and vidcast, where we talk about things that have affected our businesses over the last seven days. And thank you for joining us. We haven't managed to do an episode for the last two weeks, mainly due to the fact that I've been away. You've been away as well.

[00:00:33.610] - Taylor
I was.

[00:00:34.400] - Gordon
But we were hoping we would try and get together and do an episode last week, but it just wasn't to be, was it?

[00:00:43.570] - Taylor
No.

[00:00:44.070] - Gordon
Just things against us, technology and time zones and everything else. But we are here this week, so let's get straight into it. I want to talk to you this week about my trip in a little way, because I had two separate trips that I went from one to the other. And the first one was my trip to Blackpool, which I'll come back to in a moment. And then I went from Blackpool straight over to Vegas, where I helped out with a friend who was exhibiting. I think I've come back with a bit of a cough. Apologies about that. And we were on our feet for three days solid, which is always really difficult. And for some reason, my heels were killing me at the end of it. They don't normally, but on this occasion, they were really, really hurting. And then I went back to a place in Texas, a place called Round Rock, to visit a friend and spend a little bit of time with him before coming home. So that was a nice social visit. But my trip to Blackpool, I think I mentioned this before, was something that is really important in my business. So every year in Blackpool, about four and a half thousand magicians get together and we take over the Winter Gardens, and most of Blackpool, in fact. And we pretty much book out all the hotels and the B&Bs that are there, of which there are a lot. I don't know if you've ever been to Blackpool, but every building near the sea front seems to be a B&B. I think that's probably their major income in that city or that town. So we take it over. And we have shows in the evenings; we have lectures for magicians who come from all over the world; and we have people who selling their ideas. And it's a really, really important event for me as a magician, not only to show my face and to see who's around, but to spend time with other magicians, talking about magic, chatting about ideas, seeing what's new, and basically learning from other people. Now, it's not just the magic tricks that we talk about. We talk about the business of it. We talk about how you handle certain situations. We talk about how you get work. We talk about ways to engage the audience, performances, that sort of thing. And one of the highlights for me this year was a gentleman called Mac King, who has a show in Vegas. Weirdly, he wasn't there when I was there because he was in England, but he brought over his full evening show. I understand it's the first time that he's toured this show or performed this show outside of the US, ever. But he did the whole show. And he did it twice because we had two houses in the Opera House Theatre, which is a three and a half thousand seat theatre. So he did two performances, early evening, later evening. And it was just so good. There weren't an awful lot of props. There were props, but there weren't an awful lot of them. His handling of the audience was just a master class, really. He's an extremely funny man. It was really interesting because I've not seen his show before. I've seen bits of it, but I've never seen it in its entirety. And it was really interesting to see how he structured it, how he put it together, why he did certain things. And in fact, the day after his show, he did a sit down talk and spoke about what his thinking is and why he comes up with certain things. And I also had a bit of an extra bonus because he had an assistant who helps in the show. And he happened to be on my flight back to Vegas, where I was going, and he lives. And so I got to spend a little bit of time with him talking on the way. We had a layover and we had a little chat there as well. And so I got a little bit of behind the scenes chat with him and found out a little bit more about Mac King as well. And it was a really, really fascinating feature of the convention for me. It was probably one of the best highlights I've had for a long, long time. Don't get me wrong, it's a fantastic convention and there's an awful lot that you can learn and do from it, and I do. But on this particular occasion, it was a standout for me. You've been before, haven't you, Taylor?

[00:06:02.820] - Taylor
Yeah.

[00:06:03.340] - Gordon
You've come along to the Blackpool Magic Convention before when you were younger. I remember you having a cube off, like a Rubik's cube off with a couple of top magicians, because that was your thing at the time. You were very, very fast at solving the Rubik's Cube. And in fact, I remember you turning to me and saying, "I think I've found my people." I don't know what you were, 15, maybe?

[00:06:29.380] - Taylor
Something like that.

[00:06:30.140] - Gordon
Something like that. And you turned around and people were appreciating the skill that was involved in solving the cube. And I just remember you turning around to me and saying, "I think I've found my people," which I thought was very funny and has stuck with me all this time. Do you remember saying that?

[00:06:46.140] - Taylor
No.

[00:06:46.660] - Gordon
No. That's funny. Funny what you remember. So you've been to Blackpool. What were your impressions? I mean, you went as someone who was interested in magic at the time, and you still have an interest in magic. It's just you have other interests now. So how was it for you?

[00:07:02.750] - Taylor
Yeah, I think I really enjoyed the going around all of the dealer halls and just seeing the vast variety of props, magic, effects and just also meeting people. I thought it was quite interesting because obviously there's a lot of people that were very well known that I think because of you, a lot of people knew who I was without having actually... I haven't done anything noteworthy, I guess. But yeah, it was very interesting to go around. Some of the lectures were quite interesting. And then obviously the show at the end, at the end of the day, was always something interesting and good to look forward to.

[00:07:51.720] - Gordon
So if there is an important convention or exhibition or something along those lines for your business, then if you haven't already, go along and see what it's all about. Maybe sponsor something or exhibit or just go along as a guest and just see what's going on because there's so much that happens at these industry events that it's really important that you understand what goes on there. And it's going to make making decisions for you easier, because once you see what everyone else is doing and you can talk to them about what you're doing, you'll get a much better idea of what everyone else is doing. And you can then maybe come up with new ideas for your business. You can change things that you do or you can look at your business and go, "I'm doing much better in some respects than a lot of these people because of this, this and this." And that gives you your USP, your unique selling proposition. But it's important to know what's in the marketplace and what's going on in your business. The more you know about it, the better you can service your customers. So that's what I have to say about Blackpool. It was a very, very tiring three days. And then I had a nearly 23-hour trip to America, and then I had another three days helping out on a stand there. So I was pretty tired.

[00:09:27.610] - Taylor
That sounds exhausting.

[00:09:29.400] - Gordon
It's one of the reasons we didn't do a show that week as well. So, yes, that's my trip to Blackpool. And thank you to everyone who watches this, who was at Blackpool and came to say hello. It was lovely to meet you. What would you like to talk about, Taylor?

[00:09:44.210] - Taylor
So I was looking at WP Fusion's website a couple of days ago, and I came across a section that basically said, if you're confused about what tools you should be using. This is for Snippet Club that I was looking at it for. And I'm trying to rebuild the site to facilitate better sales pipelines, better automations and just have the website work a lot better in the way I want it to work. And one of the sections basically said we have a consultancy side of the business where you can have a 30 minute meeting with us to talk about what you're trying to achieve and how they recommend going about it because they've done lots of these types of integrations with all these different tools and found the best ones and things like that and just said, this is what we recommend, this is from our experience. And it was really interesting to have the insight of how they go about things, why they use certain tools, why they use certain processes. And it opened up my eyes to what I could use for Snippet Club going forward and how I decide to build out the website and structure it, I guess.

[00:11:19.250] - Gordon
I think we should mention what WP Fusion is for those who don't already know. So it's a plug-in, basically.

[00:11:25.320] - Taylor
Yeah, so it's basically a connector. So it connects all of your services to all of your other services.

[00:11:32.220] - Gordon
So it basically is a way to talk from one service to another in its own language.

[00:11:38.150] - Taylor
Yeah.

[00:11:38.360] - Gordon
Yeah. So they have these things that allow you to talk to them and pick their brains, if you like, and use their experience. So what part of that made you think about Snippet Club and how you can do it differently?

[00:11:56.130] - Taylor
I didn't really think about how I could do it differently, at least up until the meeting. It was more of just trying to get someone's opinion and just looking over it and going, "is this the way you would do it or would you suggest something else?" and things like that. Because the tools that they were recommending is not something I've used or even thought about for Snippet Club, but it makes a lot of sense the way that they were suggesting to go about it. And also they have a membership subscription model as well, where they've partnered with a lot of these tools and plug-ins that they connect with and they offer it to you at a one price, basically. So it's something like $4,000 worth of annual subscriptions that you can get for $100 a month, which I think is a very good idea and a very good plan and marketing strategy because they help you get everything set up; they provide you with the tools; they provide you with the hosting. And so for people that aren't as tech-minded, it's like the perfect package where you get access to all of these tools that would normally cost $200, $300 a year each. And you're getting it for the price of one. You don't have to worry about any of the subscriptions. You don't have to worry about having to renew stuff. And you get their expertise alongside that. So it's like consultancy, along with getting access to the vast variety of tools that they have and they recommend, really.

[00:13:40.430] - Gordon
And I think one of the reasons they do that is because their business model is to have you use their tools to talk to other services and have those services talk to other services. And if they get you entrenched in that system, then you're going to be happy with it. You're going to keep renewing every year. Because it's one of those services that take a while to actually implement. But once it's implemented, it's normally a one-off thing and you normally just have to tweak it every now and then, or add new services in. So by helping you and giving you this consultancy and help and advice, they're pulling you into their ecosystem to lock you in, as it were.

[00:14:26.880] - Taylor
Yeah, in a way, and I think the people that they target mainly, are the people that don't have any idea of how to use it. But I think it's a cancel at any time kind of thing. So you could sign up for a couple of months, use their support and their consultancy to build out all your tools, and then just cancel because you don't need the consultancy anymore and go and buy your subscription and licences yourself. And then you only are paying for the tools that you're using, per se. So I think that is a step that I think I would maybe take, because I think they do have a lot of knowledge, but I don't think I need the ongoing support. It's just getting set up and getting the experience that I don't have, which is interesting.

[00:15:33.990] - Gordon
Which is why you get someone to consult for because you're picking their brains. So you had your meeting and you've come away with it with lots of new ideas?

[00:15:44.470] - Taylor
Yeah, It's something to think about. I haven't decided whether or not I will go down this route. I may stick to what I was planning on doing, but also it's given me something to think about and realise that it's not something I want to rush into, straight into it because there are a lot of moving parts. And so I want to clearly define how I want the process to work, how I want it to look, because obviously going through the checkout process is the biggest friction point for Snippet Club, for example, for either people buying a membership or for people buying a one-off snippet, really. And I want to make sure that the process and workflow that people have to to go through is going to be the best and it's the least friction possible. So it's definitely something I want to think about and make sure that however I decide to do it is right, because this would be the second time I would be building this site. But obviously, I have now a lot more experience and knowledge than when I first started. And what I thought was the route to go for Snippet Club turned out to be partially right, but there was a whole other market that I hadn't even thought about in a whole different area that I want to explore and go in that direction.

[00:17:09.230] - Gordon
That's very exciting. Well, I wish you all the best with that. And we'll put a link to WP Fusion in the show notes. And once Snippet Club has been rebuilt, I'm sure Taylor will come and talk about that again.

[00:17:25.370] - Taylor
Yeah.

[00:17:25.650] - Gordon
Anything else you want to say?

[00:17:27.050] - Taylor
I don't think so. It's just something that's, we always are the people that are the consultees, I guess. We are the people that get consulted normally. But it's sometimes good to reach out to people that have more experience and knowledge in an area that you may not have as much. Like I said, I have a good understanding of it and things like that, but I don't have the thousands of hours of building these integrations, building sales pipelines and things like that. And that's obviously not my area of expertise, because normally we are doing service-based rather than product-based.

[00:18:09.490] - Gordon
And that links in perfectly with what I was saying about going to the convention, talking to other people about the way they do their thing, because everyone has their own experiences and knowledge. And only by talking to these people do you find out what you don't know. You don't know what you don't know, right?

[00:18:27.990] - Taylor
Yeah.

[00:18:28.590] - Gordon
That's why you get consultancy, and that's why we go and talk to other people who have done it and use their knowledge as well. So that's it from me.

[00:18:38.180] - Taylor
And me as well.

[00:18:39.060] - Gordon
Thank you so much for joining us. As always, you can like, share, and subscribe. We're on Facebook and on YouTube.

[00:18:46.150] - Taylor
You can also go to our website thisweekwith.co.uk to find all of our past episodes.

[00:18:51.380] - Gordon
We'll be with you again next week, all being well. Until then, it'll be Friday at 1pm as normal. My name is Gordon and I'm from Drayson Design.

[00:19:02.190] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.

[00:19:04.810] - Gordon
Goodbye.

[00:19:05.060] - Taylor
Bye.

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