[00:00:09.01] - Gordon
Hello.

[00:00:09.12] - Taylor
Hello.

[00:00:09.22] - Gordon
My name's Gordon from Drayson Design.

[00:00:11.20] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.

[00:00:13.21] - 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 I was away this time.

[00:00:25.13] - Taylor
Were you?

[00:00:26.02] - Gordon
Yeah. I went to a magic convention for children's entertainers called Trix, T-R-I-X. And that was in a very rainy Stoke-on-Trent. It was extremely wet, but we had a lovely time. We had some shows, we had some people coming to talk to us. We had a lot of networking and chatting about what we do. And there were a few people selling tricks as well. So it was a very interesting but also very tiring visit. I do find that when I go on, especially magic conventions, I end up drinking in the evenings and chatting to people. And that's for me, probably the best bit. And it's not the drinking bit that's the best bit, it's the chatting to people and getting to talk to them and find like-minded people, as we've spoken about in the past. But the drinking does happen as well. When you've got early mornings and late nights, it does have an effect on you, especially when you're getting older like me.

[00:01:30.28] - Taylor
Yeah.

[00:01:32.19] - Gordon
Anyway, let's get straight into our topics. Do you want to go first?

[00:01:36.14] - Taylor
Yeah.

[00:01:37.06] - Gordon
Okay.

[00:01:38.13] - Taylor
So a couple of weeks ago, I managed to sleep through my alarm. Or should I say an alarm that didn't go off? So I use my phone alarm and I also use the Alexa as my alarm as well. So I set two different alarms and I thought, "That's all right."

[00:02:01.04] - Gordon
Should be plenty.

[00:02:01.25] - Taylor
Should be fine.

[00:02:02.10] - Gordon
Yeah.

[00:02:03.02] - Taylor
And there have been reports online about ghost alarms. And these are software bugs that Apple found. And it was basically that the alarms weren't going off. So even though you had set the alarms, they just weren't going off. So obviously people were then using these alarms for their waking up, for example, and they were missing their meetings or whatever because the alarm just never went off, and it's like a phantom ghost alarm.

[00:02:33.10] - Gordon
You get into the habit, don't you, of setting an alarm and using a device to do so. And if it's your phone and then all of a sudden an update changes it, you end up missing things.

[00:02:44.02] - Taylor
Yeah. And so that's what happened to me. I ended up missing my... Well no, I was late for one of my meetings, which wasn't good. And it made me really scared to use that solution. I thought I'd already got two solutions in place. One was a backup. And when both of them fail, you have to think, "Okay, do I need to re-evaluate and change how I do it?" So I'm in the process of looking at other ways that I can make sure that I can have something that is reliable, that I can always use. Because the other thing is if your phone dies, then your alarm isn't going to go off either. No matter if the phone is working and the alarms are working, if your phone is dead, it's not going to make a sound. And that also happened to me. I was very, very tired. I forgot to put my phone on charge. And so in the morning, it was completely dead. And so the alarm just never went off. And so, yeah, you want to make sure that you have redundancy and you're checking your redundant plans that you have in place for your business, for example, and evaluating them regularly.

[00:03:59.05] - Taylor
It's important that you know that your plans are working, especially technology and things. Things change, things get updated, and what was working may not be, might have been broken from an update, which isn't a developer's plan. They never plan to break stuff when they update, but these things happen. And what wasn't an issue could then become an issue in a bug, essentially. So it's important to make sure you're checking these regularly. Because, yeah, especially in business, they can be detrimental to it. So if you have backups, for example, running for your computers, for websites, you want to make sure that you regularly restore from your backups. Even if you don't need to, it's good practise to regularly do that because if you do have to use it, you don't want to go, "Okay, is it going to work?" So I used a system for backing up websites in the past, and then the one time I actually needed to do it, it didn't work. And that was when I was like, "Oh, I've been backing up, but it's not been helpful at all because the backup or restoring process was too complicated and just didn't work." So when I thought I had a backup I didn't, actually. And so, yeah, I have two different backups that I have in place at all times, and I test them regularly to make sure they're always working. And I've restored successfully on a number of different occasions, which is good. But yeah, it's one of those things that you don't really think about until it happens. It's a bit like your NAS drive that failed. But yeah, just looking at what you have in place and making sure you test them regularly, because we always talk about making sure you have them in place, but also testing them is another key feature and factor that you need to make sure you're doing.

[00:05:58.24] - Gordon
The expression I quite like is fail to plan. And if you do fail to plan, you end up planning to fail, basically. So, yeah, it's not just alarms and things, it's anything that's mission critical. Being at a meeting at a certain time is mission critical. So, yeah, anything that's really important to your business, just make sure you've got more than one thing happening so that if one fails, the other one works. It's really important. We've found that both of us out, in the worst possible way, by failing. And once you failed once, you make sure you don't fail again. It's really important. Anything else you want to say on that?

[00:06:51.11] - Taylor
I don't think so. It's just one of those things that's happened to me in the past week or so. And something I need to make sure that I rectify.

[00:06:59.29] - Gordon
Yeah, very important. Right, straight on to my topic then. My topic, because I've been away, I was away from Sunday through to Wednesday this week, and Sunday through to Tuesday was the convention that I was at. And then Wednesday, I had a day off.

[00:07:17.08] - Taylor
That was nice.

[00:07:17.24] - Gordon
Yeah. I went to Alton Towers with some friends from the convention, which was really nice because these are people that I know from what I do, from magic. And you do get to find out quite a bit about them if you work with them on a regular basis or you see them on a regular period. I see them every time I go to a convention. They don't live near me, but I get to see them. And you learn every time more and more about them. But actually being with them in a situation that's outside of work, in this case, being at Alton Towers, the theme park, and having a very very wet day going on all the rides, which was great actually, because the ride queues were like 15 minutes maximum, and it was great. But you get to learn a lot more about them. You get to know what they like, what they don't like, what their views are on certain things. And it just gives you a better understanding of that person.

[00:08:21.11] - Taylor
Yeah.

[00:08:22.14] - Gordon
One of the things that I needed to do while I was away was to make sure I had processes in place to continue running my business. So even though I'm not here in the office, I still have to reply to emails. I still have to send out messages to people who've contacted me asking about shows. I still need to make sure that I take enquiries, because as a self-employed person I don't have anyone else back at the office to do that for me.

[00:08:54.26] - Taylor
Yeah.

[00:08:55.08] - Gordon
And so this isn't the first time I've done this. And so I took, because I was only away for a few days, I took my iPad with me on this occasion. In the past, I've taken my laptop with me, which I've needed because I've been away for a longer period of time. But my iPad was perfectly able to cope with everything I needed it to do. So I was checking emails once a day and replying to emails, which takes up an amount of time. And I had my phone with me to take enquiries, which I did. And when you're in a situation where you're in a place that you don't necessarily know, you also have to plan for having no signal. I was in an area and we were trying to make contact with someone and found that there was absolutely no signal whatsoever. So we found a local pub and sat outside it and used their WiFi so we could do what we needed to do, which was our backup plan. Knowing where these free WiFi's are is also really important. We know that McDonald's and Costa and all the big chains will normally have WiFi, so you can use that as a last resort if you need to, to get internet access, and for some reason you don't have any. I have internet access on my phone and I can access it using personal hotspot from my iPad. However, when I was in the hotel, they had WiFi, I was able to link straight onto that. And I was able to make sure that if any queries came in from my customers about their websites, I had enough access and time, put aside, to deal with these. And this is really important as a self-employed person. You can't expect a customer on a weekday to wait for you for three days until you get back in the office with an urgent request of "my website's down." I mean, that's not the way to run a business in that respect. You need to jump on these things. And so by having these thought processes as to "what am I going to do? I'm going to put a certain amount of time aside every day to deal with it, and this is how I'm going to access the information and be able to use the information and talk to people." That's all part of my planning process when I went away. I mean, you go away or you have been away more than me. And have you... You've had these similar ideas?

[00:11:40.08] - Taylor
Yeah, because I have my laptop and because when I'm travelling, I'm normally working at the same time it doesn't really change too much. But I definitely have to think about where I'm going to be, what I'm going to be doing, especially when I'm travelling. If I'm at the airport or things like that, I have to make sure I don't schedule any meetings that are within a couple of hours of the flights because I never know where I will... How long it's going to take me to get from one place to another, if there's delays, things like that. And I'm always thinking about where I can work from. And I'm always looking up on Google Maps and things to find the nearest Starbucks or the nearest McDonald's I can sit in.

[00:12:27.29] - Gordon
And you find yourself walking around in new places and just making mental... Even if you don't think it's something you're doing consciously, you're looking around going, "Oh, there's a place there," and, "Ah, there's a place over there." And you're just making these mental notes so that should you need to, you can go back to them.

[00:12:45.19] - Taylor
Yeah, I get calls from clients, and recently, the beginning sentence they go is, "So where are you currently?" Because the number of times they've called and they say, "How are you?" And I say, "I'm good, thanks. I'm in..." And then obviously tell them the location and they go, "Oh, that's pretty cool." And obviously for them, it's just another day, it's another business day. So I have to make sure that I, again, am treating it like a business day. So, yeah, that's how it normally goes in my calls.

[00:13:19.22] - Gordon
The flip side of this is if you're managing a team or you are part of a team, how are you communicating with your team? Have you got a way to manage it even if you aren't at the office? So these people who send notes, handwritten notes or stickies or something, and put them on people's computers saying, "Can you deal with this?" That's obviously not going to work if you're away and your staff aren't. And you need to make sure you have a system to communicate with them, whether that be Slack or some board system where you can give people tasks, even something like Messenger. If you've got a small team, that would work as well because you've got a way to keep a history. But again, it's the sort of thing that you don't think about normally until you've actually started on your journey and you suddenly go, "Oh, hang on. How am I going to give this week's work to the guys when I'm not actually going to be there?" So, yeah, think about it. Think ahead. Plan so that you've got a system in place and test it to make sure it's working. Even have a backup in case it doesn't work, just as we were talking about before.

[00:14:39.29] - Gordon
That's what I've learnt this week.

[00:14:42.12] - Taylor
Nice.

[00:14:42.13] - Gordon
And thank you for joining us. We do mention at the beginning of this that it's a podcast and a vidcast. So if you would prefer to watch us and you're currently listening, then we can be found on Facebook and on YouTube.

[00:14:56.18] - Taylor
You can also go to our website thisweekwith.co.uk to find all of our past episodes, transcripts, show notes, links to things we've spoken about, and also all of the other episodes.

[00:15:08.20] - Gordon
And there's also links to all the major podcast platforms that we are on. Quick note for you, if you're using Google podcasts, they are shutting down. So move over to a new podcast platform, and you should be able to do so in the next month. I think it's less than that. It's sometime in June that it's closing. We've got links on our website to Google podcasts, which will be coming off as soon as they're no longer available. Thank you for joining us. As always, you can find us here going live on a Friday at 1pm until next week. My name is Gordon, and I'm from Drayson Design.

[00:15:52.02] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.

[00:15:54.20] - Gordon
Goodbye.

[00:15:55.08] - Taylor
Bye.

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