[00:00:09.02] - Gordon
Hello.

[00:00:09.13] - Taylor
Hello.

[00:00:09.25] - Gordon
My name's Gordon from Drayson Design.

[00:00:11.25] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.

[00:00:13.23] - 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. If you are new to this channel, then welcome. And if you've been here with us before, welcome back. It's been a good week.

[00:00:29.19] - Taylor
It has.

[00:00:30.13] - Gordon
So any news, first of all?

[00:00:33.10] - Taylor
Not from me.

[00:00:34.09] - Gordon
There's lots of news coming out about the new Apple operating systems, which are going to affect us when they get released, probably September time. So that's all very, very exciting. I think we'll probably have more to say on that in September. So before that, would you like to go first or shall I?

[00:00:57.08] - Taylor
I'll go first this week.

[00:00:58.11] - Gordon
Okay, off you go.

[00:00:59.27] - Taylor
So this week I want to talk about splitting up your environments. So recently I signed up to a co-working space.

[00:01:11.10] - Gordon
Very good.

[00:01:12.04] - Taylor
And the idea behind this was I wanted to separate business with home, with leisure and fitness. I've spoken in the past about working from David Lloyds, and for a long time, that worked really well. However, because I've made friends, I've got a friends group there, lots of people know me, working there becomes very difficult because you either have to ignore everybody that comes up and tries to talk to you, or you talk to people when they come up and talk to you. And neither are a good solution nor are productive.

[00:01:54.26] - Gordon
So it's turned from a workspace into a social space.

[00:01:58.02] - Taylor
Yeah. Well, it was always a social space place, but it's turned more into a social, and so it's become hard to work from there. And so I've been trying to keep David Lloyds as a place to socialise, to go to the gym, play tennis with friends, things like that. Then I wanted a place to be able to work. Now, again, working from home and working from my bedroom, again, has its own challenges. One of them being that my bed is in the same room. The distinction between work and relaxing, the lines get blurred a lot, and it also gets hard to distinguish between them. It's a nice way to be able to split up the day. I can go to the co-working space, get a good solid amount of work done. I can't get back into bed. I can't play games. I can't have all these other distractions because I'm there to work. Then that means that when I come home, I am able to relax a bit more and do my own things. Because for a long time, I was only really working. Then in my free time, I would be working as well. Well, not working, building websites, which is the same as what my work was. There was never a distinction between what was fun, what was work, and what was relaxing. That was my relaxing, really. So I'm trying to make a clear distinction with myself and my brain in terms of trying to be able to shift between when I'm working and when I'm relaxing, or when I'm socialising. That's the idea behind it. It's about three or four minutes down the road, so it's very close, but it's not close enough that I can just come home. I'm close enough that I can come home should I have an emergency, for example. Like the other day, I spilt coffee all over my T-shirt, and so I had to come home and change. But I'm far enough away that it's a bit of an effort having to pack up my laptop and all my other stuff to then come home. So yeah, it is working well. I'm going to give it six months, see how I get on, see if it works, and then review at that point.

[00:04:29.12] - Gordon
It's quite good because I think when you work for yourself, a work-home- relaxation time balance is really difficult. I find myself working into the evening sometimes, but I do it because I want to do it. And maybe I've had a lazy morning. Maybe I didn't start work until 10 o'clock. So going on till 7, 8 o'clock is fine because you're time shifting your day, basically. But it's really important to have other things that you do for fun. And building a website, you can do for fun, but because it's so connected to your business, it's a bit like your business. I've just completed a marble run. It's an R-O-K-R wooden puzzle that you put together, and it's a marble run. And it's brilliant. And I've got two more to do. That's what I've done to relax recently, where a puzzle is not everyone's idea of relaxing, but it's really good, actually. It's just behind the laptop, funnily enough. And I'm looking at it now. It's huge. It's about this big. It's so good. When I say this big, for the people who are listening, you just have to come and watch the video. But it's about the width of me and the same in height. And yeah, it's really good. That's one thing I do for fun to relax, and watch Netflix, that sort of thing. But it is important. And so you're going to give it six months and see if you get that distinction without losing any major time on the work that you do?

[00:06:22.16] - Taylor
Yeah, that's the idea, hopefully. It's trying to build up a routine so that I can go to the gym, I can then go on to the office and then come home and be done for the day, hopefully.

[00:06:36.10] - Gordon
And then you've got your work time when you're actually going to be hopefully getting more done in that time because you are only there doing work and it's not... You haven't got all the distractions that you mentioned.

[00:06:49.23] - Taylor
Yeah.

[00:06:50.15] - Gordon
Okay, that's good. Well come back to us in six months time and find out if Taylor is going to continue it or not.

[00:06:59.01] - Taylor
Yeah.

[00:06:59.29] - Gordon
So my topic for this week is to look after your best customers. That sounds like a very simple concept and something that everyone should be doing anyway. But there is something called the 80/20 rule. Do you know about this?

[00:07:15.26] - Taylor
Yeah.

[00:07:17.05] - Gordon
So normally, it's not always the case. It does depend very much on the business that you run and how you run it. But normally, 80% of your business comes from 20% of your customers and vice versa. 20% of your business comes from 80% of your customers. So working on that basis, you are going to have 20% of your customers that are really good customers, and they're the people you need to look after. They're the people that you want to make sure feel special, that you don't keep hanging about when they need things done. And if they make an order with you, you get it done and dealt with very quickly. Because you can probably make do. I mean, it's not ideal, but you can make do if you lost the other 80% of your customers. If you lose one of the 20% that give you most of the business, that's when you struggle. And sometimes you'll find people will drop off from that 20% and other people will come and take their place, if you like. So you need to monitor it and manage it and make sure you're keeping on top of it. The reason I say this is because I've got a lady who is booking me for the second year running for her daughter's birthday party. So last year she was going to be eight, so she's eight now, and I'm going to see her in a couple of days time, and she's going to be nine. And this is the second year that I'm going to see them. And so they've become one of my 20% because it's with birthday parties in particular, I don't do lots of repeat bookings. It's normally one booking and then friends of theirs will have me at theirs, and then friends of theirs will have me at theirs. I don't do lots of repeat bookings for birthday parties. I do when it comes to organisations like schools and nurseries and companies and so forth, but not for birthday parties. Not often. It does happen. But I want to do something special for these people because they're very nice people, they're lovely people, and I had a little conversation with them during the week because one of the things that they're looking for is a snow machine. Daughter is mad on snow machines, mad on snow, in fact. So I've organised a snow machine that I'm going to take with me as part of the party, and it's going to be a Harry Potter-themed party, so I'm going to do something rather special for her during the show, which is different to what I did last year. And the mother contacted me during the week and just touching base, making sure everything was as it should be. And I said, "Yeah, all is good. Got the snow machine." She came back and said, "Oh, that's wonderful. My daughter is going to be so, so happy. In fact, you are the biggest of her main presents, you coming to the party, because she's been talking about you ever since last year. And in fact, she's already said, Can Gordon come to my first double-digit party?" Which is going to be her 10th birthday next year? And her mum was going, "Well, hang on, we haven't even had this one yet." She said, "You've got a real fan here," which is lovely. So there is the potential that I could be going back again next year and doing something a little bit different for them next year. Maybe we'll do a little workshop for them and teach them how to do some magic. That could be fun. But the whole point of this, just to get back to the topic, is look after those customers. And if you don't know who those 20% are, you should find out. You need to have a look and just figure out who these people are so that you know when you hear from them, they are the people that you need to give, not extra special attention to. You should give everyone good service, but just make sure you jump on their requests and deal with them as quickly as you can to keep them happy, because your business will suffer if you lose one of that 20%. In your business, do you find that you've got 20 percent-ish that bring in about 80% of your work, or is it not quite at that yet?

[00:11:36.17] - Taylor
I'm not sure. I need to have a look at my accounts, but sort of similar, I work with a bunch of people, and someone that I get referrals from, someone that gives me lots of referrals, I sent just a little box of chocolates, like a gift box of chocolates, just to basically say thank you. I think it's very easy sometimes when people refer work to you, that you just take it for granted and assume, "Oh, they'll send me more work," and things like that. Where in actual fact, it's good to recognise that they have been giving you referrals.

[00:12:21.14] - Gordon
And show you're grateful.

[00:12:22.23] - Taylor
Exactly. There are a hundred different other web designers that they could pass the work to, but they've chosen me as one of the people that they pass work to. Just something that I wanted to do just to say thank you. So I sent them something from Amazon and it arrived on their desk and they said they came back from lunch to it on their desk. They opened it up and obviously saw the gift and the note, and they dropped me an email and said, "I really appreciate it. You didn't have to do that but it was really nice." And it made his day. And that's, for me, really nice. He appreciates and understands that I appreciate him.

[00:13:08.20] - Gordon
And he's going to remember that. And he won't necessarily expect another present if he recommends you, but he will, when he thinks of you, he will remember the kind gesture that you gave towards him. And it does change people's attitude as to who they send business to. It's got to the point in these days, in this day and age, that you do business with people that you like and trust. And so if people like you, they're going to pass business your way. You may not be the best in your business, in your sphere of web designers, for example. You might be, but you might not be. But if you've got people who really like you and they trust you, they will continue to send people your way. And that sending a gift to someone when it's not expected is a really good example of how to look after one of your top customers. So have a look, see if there's anyone that you think needs a gift or just an email even, just to thank them for their business and their referrals over the last year. It's a really nice gesture, and it does make a big effect on people. It does have a great effect on people. Anything else you want to say?

[00:14:28.28] - Taylor
I don't think so.

[00:14:30.17] - Gordon
Well, thank you very much. If you're one of our 20% of our top listeners, thank you for joining us. If you're one of the 80%, we have all of our past episodes you can listen to. As always, we can be found on YouTube and on Facebook. Please like, share and subscribe.

[00:14:48.02] - Taylor
You can also go to our website thisweekwith.co.uk to find all of our past episodes.

[00:14:53.14] - Gordon
And if you are listening or you prefer to listen to these instead of watch them, we are found on all of the big podcast platforms. In fact, I believe I'm right in saying that Google podcast has just closed down.

[00:15:07.23] - Taylor
Okay.

[00:15:08.10] - Gordon
So if you were on there, you won't be getting any new podcasts. I think we have it on the website, so we're going to need to take it off the website. But there are lots of other platforms. We actually quite like pocketcasts, don't we?

[00:15:21.07] - Taylor
Yeah.

[00:15:21.20] - Gordon
Yeah, that's one of our favourites. If you haven't heard of it, go look it up. One word, pocketcasts. Until next week, we hope to be with you on Friday next week at 1pm. My name is Gordon, and I'm from Drayson Design.

[00:15:34.29] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.

[00:15:37.22] - Gordon
Goodbye.

[00:15:38.02] - Taylor
Bye.

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