[00:00:08.27] - Gordon
Hello.

[00:00:09.08] - Taylor
Hello.

[00:00:09.23] - Gordon
My name's Gordon from Drayson Design.

[00:00:11.15] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.

[00:00:13.12] - 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. Oh, a little hiccup there, pardon me. Welcome back. Thank you for joining us. Any news, first of all, Taylor?

[00:00:30.16] - Taylor
Not from me.

[00:00:31.18] - Gordon
Okay, let's get straight into it then. I'm going to go first today.

[00:00:34.25] - Taylor
Okay.

[00:00:35.18] - Gordon
So today, I hinted about what I was going to talk about last week, and that is balloons. Now, for entertainers and for decorators, balloon decorators. And for people who work with balloons in general, there has been a company called Qualatex, owned by a company called Pioneer. And they have been the best quality balloons for as long as I can remember. I don't recall ever using any other type of balloons. And the balloons that I use in my magic business are called 2-60Qs, 2-60 made by Qualatex. And 2-60 is basically 2 inches wide, 60 inches long, so they're the long, thin ones. You leave some air at the end, and then once you've tied the knot, you can twist them and you can make dogs and all sorts of wonderful creations. Now, these are the balloons that I've been relying on for my business forever, since I started. And Pioneer have recently gone bankrupt, which means that someone has taken over the balloon side of it, but they have now announced that they will not be making any further latex balloons, which means whatever Qualatex twisting balloons are out there now, that have already been made, that's it. There won't be any more.

[00:02:07.11] - Taylor
It's not good.

[00:02:08.02] - Gordon
Well, it's not good because there's lots of people who are going to be affected by this. I'm just one of them. So when you use a particular make of balloon or a particular make of anything, you get used to that product. You get used to, in balloon terms, how much you have to blow up a balloon, how much space you have to leave at the end. You get used to how tough it is. You get used to the different colours there are. You have a whole host of models that you make that rely on certain colours, certain balloons. They do different sizes. They do 1-60s, they do 3-50s. Again, 1-60 is one inch wide, 60 inches long, 3-50, three inches wide, 50 inches long. And you get used to these balloons. And so when you hear that whatever stock is out there now, that's going to be it. You get a little bit jittery, jittery? Juddery? You get a little bit confused and a little bit concerned that it is going to affect your business. And so as anyone in this situation would do, I've just purchased 50 bags of balloons. Now, they come in bags of 100, so that's 5,000 balloons. They're in a big box. I can see them from where I'm sitting, and that it should last me a little bit of time. But the problem is that these balloons are made of latex, and latex is biodegradable, so it will... It's like rubber, basically. It will deteriorate. And we know that rubber deteriorates because we've had to replace the rubber seal on our washing machine recently, haven't we?

[00:03:49.27] - Taylor
Yeah, we did.

[00:03:50.17] - Gordon
Yeah, because that was seven years old and that had started deteriorating and had a big hole in it and it was a bit of a mess, but we managed it, didn't we?

[00:04:00.02] - Taylor
We did.

[00:04:00.11] - Gordon
We managed to get that replaced. That was thanks to the Tubes who showed us how to do it. But yes, it's going to wear it. And I suspect the balloons I have, because I already had some stock, I suspect the balloons that I've got won't actually last as long as I'm hoping they will, because at some point they will deteriorate. So there are other makes, not makes that I know or like at the moment. So there's one make called Sempertex, which is a little bit like Qualatex, but I never really liked it, so I never used it. So I don't really want to start using it. I found that they were popping more often than the Qualatex ones. And when you're entertaining with balloons, popping balloons is not what you want to happen. There's another one called Gemar. I think I've said that correctly. And this is a make I know nothing about. But in my box, my order of 50 bags, I bought one bag of Gemar, so I can test it out and see what they're like. From what I understand, they're slightly thicker, which makes them stronger, but also if I'm blowing them up by mouth, it's going to make them a lot harder to blow up. And the colours from what I can see are nowhere near as vibrant. They're much duller. They're more pastel colours, which, again, is not ideal. But a lot of the show, the balloons that I do in my show, I blow up by air and I've got lots of jokes and lots of bits of business that I use with blowing it up. And if these are going to be thicker, I need to try them and see if I can actually blow them up. Because if you've ever tried blowing up a twisting balloon before, because you are twisting them, they are thicker and stronger than normal balloons, and that makes it a lot more difficult to blow up. And it's, if you don't know what you're doing, you can hurt yourself by trying to blow them up. So it's something that, again, I've spent a long time learning to do. Now I can do it, and all of a sudden, product is going away. So I need to know if I can do it with the new balloons. But it's a big, big upheaval for all entertainers, all balloon twisters, all balloon decorators, because Qualatex make round balloons with print on them. And if they're not making latex balloons anymore, that means they're not going to be making those anymore either. So it's a big, big change for the industry. And I've just got this feeling that it's going to affect people a lot more than they think it is at the moment. What's out there at the moment is all that's left and I have a feeling that that's going to be bought up pretty quickly from people in a similar situation to me. I don't normally buy 50 bags, but here we are with a box sitting in the lounge with 50 bags of balloons in it. So we're going to have to see how we go with this. But it did make me think, what would happen if I lost the supplier of other things that I use? I've got used to the particular paper that I use when I'm doing my letters and my printing and so forth. Paper is a little bit more interchangeable because there's lots of different varieties and companies doing it. But again, I've got used to the colours that I use, that I prepare tricks with and games for my shows with. So just have a think about the suppliers that you're using, and if there is something that you rely on and it's the only one that you really know, like, use, then maybe have a look at the alternatives. See if there's anything there that would do, should your supplier stop being able to supply that product to you. I think it's a good little test if it's something that's not too expensive to get in some samples, because two things can happen. Either you're going to find that the replacements are not as good as what you're using, in which case, you know you're using the better product. The alternative is it's actually going to be better than the product you're using, and you may then end up switching suppliers and going to a newer product. And that might be a cost saving, it might a better quality for your business. There's lots of advantages to that. So just test out the competition as far as the products that you use in your business. See if there's something better, see if you can survive without the product that you are currently getting.

[00:08:47.12] - Taylor
I've had it happen a couple of times in the WordPress space where I've been using a tool and then they didn't go bust or anything, but they just stopped releasing updates and it became the end of the life. And so I then had to look at new solutions and alternatives. And actually the solution that I and the products I'm using now are actually a lot better. So although it was a pain having to move, I think I've come out a lot better in the end with some of the products that I'm now using. There's also a lot of people that sold lifetime deals and people that were buying lifetime deals are a lot more wary now that if a plug-in, for example, has one developer, that it's a lot more risky. It's no longer, "Oh, is it a lifetime deal or not?" People are now looking at, "Is it a team of people? Is it one person? Where are they based?" We had some horrible stuff happen to the WP Manage Ninja team over in Bangladesh the past week or so, where their country went to war with itself. And they cut the internet, and they cut telephone communications. They did nothing wrong, nothing they had done, and they were unable to communicate with anybody in their own country, but also around the world. They were powering 750,000, or they are powering 750,000 plus websites all around the world. And not being able to even give an update and be like, "We don't have any internet" or anything like that is devastating. It could have had a massive knock-on effect to the business. So things like that where you never know what's going to happen. So having a look at alternatives, talking to people that are in the same industry and just getting their feedback, getting their opinions, and just chatting with them is always a good idea because you may find something that's good. You may find something that you didn't even know about, that is something you've been looking for this entire time. I think when I moved from Divi, when I was using Divi, I was like, "I want to use something that I can build a loop with," so the cards and stuff. And that's when I found Oxygen, and that was the first time I was introduced to what we would call a 'query loop' or a 'loop builder.' And it was something I was like, "oh, that would be so cool if they could do this." And it was actually built into a lot of other tools, I just didn't know about them. So, yeah, definitely looking at the tools you use, the tools that you have available to you and just making sure you have a plan, really.

[00:11:34.21] - Gordon
Very good. That's my topic. What would you like to talk about today?

[00:11:39.22] - Taylor
So I've been settling in to the WP Extended team and we've been setting up a lot of processes. Now, this is something that is very new to me, working in a team and working towards a product in a product-based environment is very different. I've only ever worked on products that I have built myself and I run by myself, or I've worked in a service-based business, so my agency, for example. And again, most of the time that's by myself. And it's something that I've always read a lot about and I've always seen and how people recommend running them, but I've never needed to implement anything in that situation. So, I've been working with the team, and we've been setting up a lot of things and processes to make sure that everybody has clarity over where we are throughout the entire stage of a task. So whether that be a feature, a bug, a change to the code base. We can see where it is in the cycle, so whether it's in the to-do list, whether it's currently in progress, whether it needs testing, or whether it's just ready to be shipped in the next release. And then also making sure that we're committing all of the code, as each feature is done. So rather than shipping all of the code at the end of the week with all of the changes done and you just have one massive changelog, committing each change separately so we can go back and go, "Okay, well, that was changed. Why did that happen? That's caused an issue further down the line for us." And we can make sure that we can keep track of what's going on. Especially when you have multiple people working on the code base at once, you need to be able to pull people's new changes and commits into the code. So it's been really interesting setting up all of these things, making sure we've got good communications, especially as we're all working around the world. It's been fun and been really interesting to work as a team. Do you work as a team at all?

[00:13:54.11] - Gordon
Sometimes I work with others on shows. So for example, my double act, I work with another magician, Paul Longhurst, and he's been on this podcast, in fact.

[00:14:07.21] - Taylor
He has.

[00:14:08.08] - Gordon
And so I work with him. And yes, you're right, it is very different. When you work for yourself, you are the one that makes all the decisions. You are the one that decides on everything because there's no one else there to make decisions. Whereas when you've got more than one person, you have to argue your case and explain why you think this is the best decision, and others might have other opinions, and they have to do the same thing. And as long as you've got an open mind and you're willing to listen to other points of view, I find that sometimes I can be persuaded that someone else's way of doing things is actually the best way, because they've explained it really well and thought of things that maybe I hadn't already thought of. So that's a really good thing about working with a team or with other people. Plus, you've got more ideas coming in. The more ideas you've got coming into a project, the better that project can be because you can filter ideas, and no ideas are bad ideas when you start. Only when you start filtering, you can go, "well, actually, that's not practical because we need something that we can't do with that. And that's actually a really good idea; we should be doing this right now. And that's what we're going to focus on." Whereas when you're on your own, you don't have these multiple ideas. So, yeah. Can I ask a question? What your processes, are they all internal processes or are they customer-facing processes?

[00:15:48.15] - Taylor
So it's a bit of both. So we set up... So we're using Fluent Board, which is by the WP Managed Ninja team, to manage all the tasks. Every single bug, feature request, change, update, accessibility issue, all gets tracked in and added to the board. And then we then add tags, we add priorities. And then based on that, we then at the beginning of each week, sorry at the end of each week, we go through and go "what was done, what was completed, what needs to be looked at." So we look at the ones that obviously didn't get shipped and go, "did they not get shipped because we ran out of time, because we miscalculated how long we thought task would take, or was there an issue with something when we actually didn't foresee that there to be an issue?" And then we schedule in next week's what sprint we do each week in a sprint of what do we want to get done for the week and schedule and go, "what shall we focus on for the next week?" And it allows us to have good clarity over the direction of the plug-in, where we want to go, and just overall, and then being able to quickly pivot should something come up. So when we had Jonathan and Kyle's livestream, they brought up some great things that we needed to fix. And so they got pushed to the top of the pile because they were quite important. And so being able to review them once a week has been really good. And then we've also added things like a pre-launch checklist or pre-release checklist. So making sure we've got the changelogs updated in all the places that changelogs are added. So that's in the plug-in, on the website, etc. Making sure we have a blog post for the release. So just highlighting the stuff that we've released and pull out some things with some screenshots, and then writing a blog, sorry, a Facebook post, scheduling a Facebook post and scheduling an email to go out telling people about the new update, basically. And it's these things that... And also updating documentation as well. And it's these things that is very quickly and easily to be missed if you don't have a checklist in place. And I think it helps maintain the plug-in because you can very easily get behind on not updating your changelog and that then looks like you're not active on the plug-in, or you haven't updated the documentation and the screenshots you have are a year old and the UI looks nothing like that anymore. So by having these things in place, it allows us to keep accountability of each other as well, of what's going on, really.

[00:18:37.11] - Gordon
Very good. Excellent. Anything else you want to say today?

[00:18:41.13] - Taylor
I don't think so. Just been really excited working with the team and we've got some big plans coming up.

[00:18:48.10] - Gordon
Okay, keep your eye out for WPextended.io and all the new plug-ins, all the new functionality you will have with that one plug-in. In fact, I saw someone, and I think it was Kyle who did the video that we posted a link to for last week's episode, who I think pointed someone in the direction and said, "Look, this is going to be a must have for every site from now on." Which is great praise, really. That's it from me.

[00:19:19.01] - Taylor
From me as well.

[00:19:19.26] - Gordon
Thank you so much for joining us. We're still having problems with Facebook. I'm not sure those are ever going to get solved. So what we're going to do instead of livestream to Facebook, is we are going to livestream to YouTube. And then after that, when the show notes are being done, we will put it onto the website and then link to it on Facebook. So if you want to see the latest episode, always go to YouTube and subscribe. It should tell you when our lives go live. Otherwise, you can listen to it on your podcast or go to Facebook. But as I just said, you can find us every week on YouTube. Please like, share and subscribe.

[00:19:57.23] - Taylor
You can also go to our website thisweekwith.co.uk to find all of our past episodes and anything we may have spoken about.

[00:20:04.23] - Gordon
And you can contact us if you have a project that you'd like us to look at for you. We both do work on the web, whether that be a rebuild or a rebrand, or just some tweaks or new functionality for your website, or a new idea that you want to do. And the website will have the details to contact us. So have a look at that, we'd love to talk with you. And until next week at 1pm on Friday, my name is Gordon, and I'm from Drayson Design.

[00:20:36.07] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.

[00:20:38.26] - Gordon
Goodbye.

[00:20:39.09] - Taylor
Bye.

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