[00:00:08.980] - Gordon
Hello.

[00:00:09.320] - Taylor
Hello.

[00:00:09.860] - Gordon
My name's Gordon from Drayson Design.

[00:00:11.750] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.

[00:00:13.910] - 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. We didn't meet last week, and the reason for that was because...

[00:00:29.580] - Taylor
I was travelling.

[00:00:30.690] - Gordon
You were travelling. Yeah, one of your monthly 12 months of coffee. For those who don't know what I'm talking about, do a search on the website and you can find out all about it. Where did you go this time?

[00:00:43.280] - Taylor
I was in Lisbon, in Portugal.

[00:00:45.020] - Gordon
Very exciting. And how was Lisbon?

[00:00:47.290] - Taylor
It was good. It was very hilly, lots of hills, just up and down. Lots of tight roads, which was quite interesting. And just a very very pretty city. I really enjoyed it. Lots of great food, lots of great people, and just enjoyed the city overall.

[00:01:08.280] - Gordon
Very good. And I don't think we've mentioned it, but you're collecting mugs, aren't you?

[00:01:12.150] - Taylor
I am.

[00:01:13.020] - Gordon
So every time he goes to a different country, or city I should say, he gets a... What are they called? What's the series called?

[00:01:22.570] - Taylor
"You are Here."

[00:01:23.830] - Gordon
You are Here.

[00:01:24.460] - Taylor
Or "Being There" series, something like that.

[00:01:26.200] - Gordon
From Starbucks. And so he's got a huge number of mugs now from all the different places that he's been to, apart from a couple of them which you've been to and didn't get a mug for.

[00:01:36.340] - Taylor
Yes.

[00:01:37.030] - Gordon
But you'll just have to go back, won't you?

[00:01:38.970] - Taylor
I will.

[00:01:40.380] - Gordon
So let's get into our topics. Do you want to go first or shall I?

[00:01:44.030] - Taylor
You can go first this week.

[00:01:45.510] - Gordon
So a little while ago, I decided that I needed a dashcam. Now, these are the sort of things that you put in your car to basically record what's going on, and it protects you and it protects your vehicle. And the reason for doing so is that last December, sorry, not last December, the December before, I had someone go into the side of my car, and it turned out that they wrote my car off, and I got a new car. It's not new, it's new to me. It was about three years old, which is the newest car I've ever had. And I wanted to protect it, and I learnt from my experience with someone going into my car and decided I wanted to I get a dashcam. And there's a lot of dashcams out there. So I did a lot of research and I ended up choosing one from a company called Wolf Box. Now, I'll put a link to the one I actually got into the show notes, but it's very good because what I didn't want was to have a separate device that was just sitting on my windscreen and just pointing out the front, and I had to remember to turn it on, I had to check to see if it was recording, etc. etc. So the one I went for is actually a mirror replacement. So it's a rear view mirror replacement. It goes over your mirror. And one of the really good things about that is that it's a screen in a mirror. So it effectively, when you look into the mirror, you're looking out of a camera at the back. So there's lots of advantages with this. One is that I know it's recording and I know what it's recording. But more importantly is because the camera at the back is situated just above the number plate, it doesn't matter what's in the back of my car. If the rear window is being obstructed because there's people there or there's equipment there, it doesn't matter because I can now still see really clearly because it's a camera on the outside of my car, and that's the way it's been designed. Then on the front of the mirror, so on the back side of it, but the front facing the windscreen, there is another camera, and what it's doing is it's recording at the front as well. It's on a three-minute loop, and so it records three minutes and then it records another three minutes and it overwrites the oldest recording. Then when I leave my car, it will record a frame a second. If it feels any movement in the car, like someone's hit it, for example, it will then start full recording. But it also means that I'm recording while I'm not at my car and it's parked. So if anyone comes along and potentially damages my car, then I've got a recording of it. Now, it also takes GPS information, so it knows which way I'm travelling, and it knows what speed I'm going, and it records all of this onto an SD card. And if there's anything that happens during a journey that I want to record, the mirror is touch sensitive, so I can just tap it and I can press record and it will just save that recording instead of overwriting it. The reason I bought this is not just because I wanted to protect my vehicle, but also because I wanted to make sure that if there was ever some bad driving that caused a collision or caused an accident that I would be involved in, I would have video proof, and that's the front and the back of the car. Because I found that the insurance companies these days seem to like having that footage. And if you've got that, you've got proof of exactly what happened, and you don't have he said, she said, and stories are different. And you get to a point when if they differ too much, the insurance company just say, "well, we don't know exactly what happened. So we'll pay for ours, you pay for yours, and we'll put it on both of their insurance." And so both of our insurances, me and the other party, go up. But if I've got video and I know that there's a reason why it shouldn't come down to me, I've got that video that I can then use as a way to protect myself and protect my insurance. So it's been bought to make sure that other people don't affect my business. I don't want my insurance premium going up because of other people. And this is a way that I can stop that from happening. Plus, it's the newest car I've ever had, and I want to make sure that I look after it, and I'm still treating it like a new car, even though I've had it over a year now. I'm still putting rugs down on the back seats before I put equipment on, just to protect the seats. It's silly. You get to this point when you look at people who are about to get in your car and they've got muddy feet and you're going, "Oh, you've got muddy feet. Don't put your muddy feet on my mats." You must have had that with your car as well.

[00:07:08.100] - Taylor
Yeah, I've had that. And then I think I got something on my seats and then I got dirt or something from the dog or whatever. And it's... I try and keep them clean, but there's already stains and things.

[00:07:23.570] - Gordon
I think it's important to actually, especially for me as an entertainer, that I'm turning up to people's events. And I think it's really important that the car looks roadworthy and in good condition and clean, which is one of the reasons that I have a cleaning company that come once a month and clean my car. And you have the same, and I suspect it's for a similar reason. But by having a clean car, it means I never have to worry about taking stuff out before I put equipment in, and that's really important to me as well. And if there's any... There's no bins in my car. You know how you sometimes get a cigarette tray or a little bin that you can put stuff in? I don't have one of those. So it means that every time I stop any rubbish that's there, I'll just pick it up and I'll take it with me and it'll go in a bin while I'm there or I'll bring it in the house and I'll put it in the bin here, which again is keeping it nice and clean. There's a couple of people I know, one in particular, who has all sorts of wrappers for all sorts of things in their car. And you think, "come on, it doesn't take much just to grab them when you come out the car" and it makes it so much tidier. But I think if you've got a tidy car, then you've got a much better look when customers see you. I mean, they're not going to get in the car, but I just feel better for it. And again, it's all about service for me. I'd like to make sure that people who look at me and my service and my equipment, they look and go, "That's why we're paying the money we're paying, because he's got a good service, he's got good equipment, it's all in good condition, and he's looking after it." And I think that's really important.

[00:09:09.330] - Taylor
Yeah, definitely.

[00:09:09.970] - Gordon
So that's why I did it. And I've had it a little while now. I had it professionally installed because it would have taken me about three days and it would have been installed badly. And it took a professional company two hours to install really, really well. So I paid the money to have it done properly. And that's a really good thing as well. Get a professional to do what a professional does when it's not something that you're good at. That's something I'll talk about in another video. Anyway, that's me done. What would you like to talk about?

[00:09:41.000] - Taylor
So I'm going to talk about coat hangers.

[00:09:44.140] - Gordon
Yes, very important.

[00:09:45.930] - Taylor
Now bear me on this.

[00:09:47.380] - Gordon
Okay.

[00:09:47.910] - Taylor
So I bought a pack of 50 coat hangers earlier this week. I'm quite excited about it, which I think is just me getting older.

[00:09:59.900] - Gordon
I guess so.

[00:10:00.360] - Taylor
I'm a loser, basically. But something that I like doing is having consistency and things in uniform. So, you'll probably have noticed I wear white T-shirts pretty much exclusively.

[00:10:18.750] - Gordon
Yeah, and I should point out he's got lots of them, not just the same one that he wears all the time.

[00:10:23.970] - Taylor
Yeah, so I pretty much only wear and only own white T-shirts. I have pretty much the exact same gym clothes. I have the same shorts, I have the same T-shirts, and I do that for a reason. Part of it is because I don't want to think about what I wear. It makes my life a lot easier. I don't have to think about it. I just throw some jeans on, a T-shirt on, and then just pick a jumper, and I know that everything's going to match and fit. But I also like the fact that I know what I'm going to get. So, I go to Starbucks and McDonald's in most countries when I visit them, and I get a lot of people go, "But why?" The main reason is I know what I'm going to get. I know what I'm going to expect. I know the service, and I know, for example, there's going to be Wi-Fi. So whenever I'm travelling, I know at a minimum, if I need to do work, Starbucks and McDonald's are probably going to be the best places because they are pretty much universally the same; regardless of the sometimes differing menus, the level of service and the environment, the insides are usually the same. And so by getting new coat hangers, I know that they're all going to be the same. And that's why I like to have the same of everything. It's the same with technology. So I like to have the Apple ecosystem because they work all together and it's, again, it's the same. So I know that they're all going to work together and they are using the same operating system and I know how to use them across any different device and things like that.

[00:12:11.260] - Gordon
And it's consistent as well. What you learn from one device, you can then use on another device.

[00:12:15.950] - Taylor
Exactly. And so that's something I always try to keep when I go in my day to day life, really. And it can be expensive. So, for example, I have two sets of MacBook Pro chargers. I have one that sits at my desk and is plugged in 24/7 and is always there when I need to charge my laptop at my desk. And I have one that stays in my bag. I have USB-C cables, I have lightning cables, I have about four, five, six of the exact same cables in pretty much every single bag that I own. Again, because I know that when I leave the house, I have everything I need. I have a charger that I always have. I know that there's going to be a plug, a cable, and I don't have to think about it. Again, that's another thing is by having duplicates of the same items, I don't have to think about when I leave the house, have I got my charger? Have I got my whatever? I know that for the most part, the things I use regularly are going to be there. Again it is, well it can be, expensive to have duplicates of certain items. But for me, the trade-off of not having to think about it, not having to worry, not having to remember, far outweighs the expense of those items, especially if you're using them every single day.

[00:13:49.250] - Gordon
Yeah, so one of the things with magic is that when you perform an effect, you normally have to have a certain equipment to be able to do it. So for example, if I was doing some sort of mind reading trick, I might have a pad and a pen. And a friend of mine, Mark Shortland, who's a very good entertainer, very experienced entertainer, he has Ziploc bags for all of his different effects that he performs. And if he needs a pad and a pen, that pad and pen will be in the Ziploc bag. And if he does another effect, and that also requires a pen, he'll put another pen in that Ziploc bag so that he knows that when he's putting together the show, he'll just grab that bag, that bag, that bag, and he knows he's got everything he needs to perform that effect when he's doing his show. And he doesn't have to remember that he's got to take the pen out of that trick to put into this one because he's only got one. And he's always got everything he needs, which is a really, really clever... Not clever, it's a really sensible idea. And it goes back to exactly what you were saying. The other thing I was going to say is that it's a little bit like Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs, famously, was always wearing the same outfit. He would wear a Polo neck, he would wear jeans, and he basically had a wardrobe full of the same clothes. And he put it down to exactly the same thing you do, which is he didn't have to spend any of his brainpower thinking, "What am I going to wear today?" He would just put on the next set in his line of clothing, which was going to be exactly the same as he wore yesterday, although it's going to be nice and clean and everything then goes in the wash, and it gets put back again, and he just wears the same thing every time, wore the same thing every time. Which is why when you look back and see some of his keynotes, you'll see he's wearing the same clothes all the time, and it was mentioned in his autobiography. But yeah, consistency. Why spend brainpower on things that are trivial and really don't matter. As long as the outfit suits the situation, then why change it?

[00:16:07.440] - Taylor
Yeah. And so going back to what I started on the coat hangers, I had lots and lots of different types of coat hangers that I had accumulated over the years of as you get new clothes, you go home with the hangers from that shop. And I found that sometimes I had hangers that were from when I was younger, so they were really really small. And then I would have hangers that were very, very large. I'd have hangers that were for coat jackets, for jeans or trousers and things like that. And so I had just a wide variety of all these different types of hangers. And so hanging up clothes got confusing sometimes because I'd have to go through and figure out, "okay, which hangar do I need to hang this piece of item on?" And so buying 50 of the same hangar, although I don't have 50 pieces of clothing, meant that I didn't have to think about what hangar I needed to pick for the piece of clothing that I was putting away.

[00:17:10.000] - Gordon
And you knew it was always going to fit.

[00:17:12.200] - Taylor
Exactly.

[00:17:12.870] - Gordon
And you've chosen some quite intriguing hangers as well.

[00:17:16.720] - Taylor
So, yeah. So the hangers I chose were these plastic hangers that had non-slip pads on the shoulders and then also the bar going across the bottom. And so that meant you could put your clothes on, T-shirts and things like that, but also jeans or trousers, and they obviously make sure they won't slip. So if they're a thinner fabric, they're not going to slip off. And it also allowed you to put clothes that weren't as wide or weren't as big on there as well. They had a little cut-out that allowed you to move the collar inside the V of the triangle shape. So yeah, really really useful. Again, quite a boring product to buy, but it makes my life a lot easier. And I know now that whenever I hang up, I can just grab any. And also it was the size as well. It saved space. These hangers are a lot thinner than some of the other ones. And because you had different sizes, if you stacked them together, they're going to be different angles. They're not all flat. Some of them curve and things like that. And yeah, it just makes my life a lot easier.

[00:18:31.900] - Gordon
So basically, organising your life and making it more consistent, knowing what you're going to get. Back to the McDonald's and the Starbucks thing. And looking at this from the customer point of view, do they know what they're going to get with your company? Have you given a consistent experience for them, a consistent customer service, consistent product quality? Whatever it might be, do your customers know what they're going to expect from you like they would if they went to McDonald's or Starbucks? It's worth thinking about, isn't it?

[00:19:08.650] - Taylor
Yeah.

[00:19:09.270] - Gordon
It's worth spending a few minutes just thinking, let's find out. Ask your customers. That's a good way of finding out. Anything else you want to say?

[00:19:18.030] - Taylor
I don't think so.

[00:19:19.420] - Gordon
Well, I think that's a really interesting episode we've had. We've talked about securing your car and making sure you don't get charged for people who are bad drivers. And we've talked about consistency and coat hangers. So a very unusual episode, but I think there's some really important points to take away from it today.

[00:19:41.640] - Taylor
Definitely.

[00:19:43.140] - Gordon
Right well, that's it from us today. Thank you very much for joining us. As always, we're on Facebook and on YouTube. You can like, share, and subscribe.

[00:19:52.240] - Taylor
You can also go to our website thisweekwith.co.uk to find all of our past episodes.

[00:19:57.280] - Gordon
Thank you for joining us. And all being well, we'll be with you next week on Friday at 1pm. Until then, my name is Gordon, and I'm from Drayson Design.

[00:20:07.410] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.

[00:20:09.970] - Gordon
Goodbye.

[00:20:10.450] - Taylor
Bye.

This Week's Topics

Show Notes