[00:00:09.040] - Gordon
Hello.

[00:00:09.400] - Taylor
Hello.

[00:00:09.740] - Gordon
My name's Gordon from Drayson Design.

[00:00:11.630] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.

[00:00:13.460] - 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.

[00:00:23.530] - Taylor
Welcome back.

[00:00:24.360] - Gordon
My voice is a little bit sore. I think lots of people are getting colds and things, and it's affecting the voices, because just recently it's got very cold outside.

[00:00:34.930] - Taylor
It has.

[00:00:35.590] - Gordon
Winter is definitely on us now, and we are feeling it. And there's been a lot of flooding going on in the UK here. So if you've been affected, we are sending you all our best wishes. Hope that it's not too bad and you can get everything sorted. Any other news from you?

[00:00:55.260] - Taylor
I don't think so.

[00:00:56.240] - Gordon
All right, let's get straight onto our topics. Do you want to go first this week?

[00:00:59.500] - Taylor
Yeah, So my topic this week is Christmas cards.

[00:01:02.340] - Gordon
Oh, yeah. Good time to talk about them.

[00:01:04.550] - Taylor
So I am planning this year to have custom Christmas cards designed, branded for The Creative Tinker, and I'm going to have them delivered to my clients. It's not something that I've done before, but I thought it was quite a nice thing to do to remind my clients that I'm still here. People that I've done work for, maybe it's just one-off, but I've done work for them. And people that have care plans with me, for example, I don't reach out to them probably enough as I should. And so this is just my reminder to say thank you for being a client. Thank you for using me as business in the past or in the future. Yeah, just do something nice.

[00:01:52.310] - Gordon
You have actually done that without knowing it, possibly, because we did have family ones that we sent out. And I also I created some for Drayson Design a long time ago, and your signature was on there as well, because I thought it would be nice to send it as a family.

[00:02:08.140] - Taylor
Okay.

[00:02:08.820] - Gordon
But yeah, that's a really nice idea. It's quite expensive to do, mind you.

[00:02:15.300] - Taylor
Yeah. But I just... Yeah, but I think I've had a good year. So I just want to say thank you to the people that have helped me get there, really.

[00:02:25.510] - Gordon
Okay. So it's nice for your marketing to keep your customers, keep your name and your company name in the customers' mind, because even though they might be paying monthly to you or every now and then for work that you do, it's always nice for them to have something and be able to go, "Oh, yes, that's nice. We got a card from Taylor at The Creative Tinker. That was lovely." And then put it on their fridge or on their shelf with all the other cards, and they'll remember it again when they take it down. I haven't done that this year. I have done it in the past, but I decided not to because the cost of postage is so high at the moment. If you want to send it first class, I can't remember the figure because the last two times before it went up, I bought a load of stamps, and I think I spent £1.40 or something per stamp at the time, and I bought loads and, like 200 pounds worth, and I'm still going through them. But it's gone up even higher now. I think it's like £1.60 something. It's a huge cost. So are you going to be sending them second class because you're doing them ahead of time?

[00:03:36.880] - Taylor
Yeah, I am going to be using a friend who gets cheaper stamps than what retail are. So that should hopefully cut down the cost. And also it doesn't require me to actually do them manually.

[00:03:51.030] - Gordon
Okay, so it's a service that you're using to send out these cards?

[00:03:54.290] - Taylor
Yes.

[00:03:55.490] - Gordon
And you find, you think this is a better idea than doing a digital one?

[00:03:59.280] - Taylor
I think I'll send digital ones to people that I can't send in the post, people that are outside of the UK, for example, or people that may not have given me as much business. Maybe it was just a one-off thing, it was an hour of work or whatever. I may send that to them. But for the people that are on care plans, obviously, recurring revenue and stuff like that, I think it is worth it, because like I said, they've invested a lot of money into me and obviously The Creative Tinker. And I've had a pretty good year, so it's my way of saying thank you and give back.

[00:04:36.570] - Gordon
It's nice to give back, isn't it? And I think a little while ago, in fact, you mentioned about sending your top customers lumpy mail as a nice surprise and a nice way to thank them.

[00:04:48.970] - Taylor
Yeah.

[00:04:49.570] - Gordon
Which I can't remember what episode it's on, but do a search. We've got a search facility. You can have a look, see what Taylor said about it. But that also works fairly well.

[00:04:58.190] - Taylor
Yeah, I sent that to someone that passes me business. They're in a similar industry and they pass me business for work that's not right for them. And I got a great response. They were very thankful. They really appreciated it.

[00:05:15.090] - Gordon
And you've gone up their list for people they're going to refer people to because people like to do business with people they like.

[00:05:21.550] - Taylor
Yeah.

[00:05:21.750] - Gordon
So that really helps. Just before we move on to my topic, unless you had something else you wanted to add to it?

[00:05:27.660] - Taylor
No.

[00:05:28.450] - Gordon
How is your challenge going? For those who don't know, Taylor is doing a 75-day challenge. How's it going?

[00:05:34.750] - Taylor
Yeah, it's going well. There's been a few days where I haven't felt like completing it. There's been lots of things. There are two exercises, one of which is outside. It is getting trickier, especially when it's getting darker quicker, and also colder. I went for a walk at 10pm, I think it was last week, in the pouring in rain and I got absolutely drenched.

[00:06:02.450] - Gordon
But if you hadn't done it, you would have lost your challenge.

[00:06:05.600] - Taylor
Yeah, exactly. And I'm also trying to come up with creative ways to do exercise. So I've started playing table tennis on the Meta Quest and also Beat Sabre and other games that keep me active, which I've found has worked quite well.

[00:06:27.100] - Gordon
That's very good. Well done. For those of you who don't know what we're talking about, again, use the search facility. That's what it's there for. And you can hear all about Taylor's 75-day challenge. And how far in are you now?

[00:06:39.890] - Taylor
I want to say about a month in.

[00:06:42.030] - Gordon
About a month? Okay, so 30 days-ish. So nearly halfway, not quite.

[00:06:46.280] - Taylor
Yeah, almost.

[00:06:47.340] - Gordon
Okay, very good. I have a sad topic this week. One of my bunny rabbits. So when I perform doing children's shows, we have a bunny rabbit in the show and the birthday child will make the bunny rabbit appear. And a long time ago, I had to ring up a parent and say, "I'm due to come see you today, but I'm ever so sorry, I can't bring the bunny rabbit because, sadly, he died this morning." And that was such a horrible conversation to have because one of the reasons that people had booked me was because their child was going to make a bunny rabbit appear. And so I thought, "I don't want to ever be in that situation again." So I started to get another bunny. So now I have two bunny rabbits. It means that they get to work half as much because they get to work day on, day off when it's a really busy time. And it also means if ever anything happens to one of them or one of them is ill, I've got another one and I can go out and do my shows. So on Monday this week, very sadly, one of my bunnies passed away. It was a real shame. And it's a bit like a member of the family, not quite as involved as the dog is, where the dog just gets into everything and we spend a lot of time with the dog. The bunnies we don't spend as much time with, but they're still part of the family, and it's always sad when we lose one. So that left me with one bunny rabbit. Now, the problem is this bunny rabbit hasn't actually gone out and done a show yet. She's been in the hutch. We've been training her. We've been keeping her friendly by stroking her every time I go to feed her and making sure she's sociable because rabbits like to be sociable, so we like to keep that sociable aspect for them. But she's not actually been out yet and done a show. And we're coming up to the weekend, and I've got two shows this weekend, and so she's going to be in the show, first time ever. And it's always a bit daunting when I have to put a brand new bunny into a show. Now, as soon as we found out that my bunny had passed away, we are really close to December, and December is historically a busy time for shows. And so I thought, "I can't just be with one bunny because I'm going to be in the same situation that I have been in the past, and I don't want to be in that situation." So I started looking for another bunny. And on Wednesday this week, I had a show in Woolwich at one of the hospitals, and I went from there to go and see a new bunny that was, I believe, eight or nine weeks old. They need to be eight weeks old before they can leave their parents. So it's definitely eight weeks, but it might be nine weeks. And she's just lovely. Her name is Blondie. That was the name given to her by the previous owners. And she came home with me. And she's in our hutch now and she's getting used to everything. I'm going to give her a little bit of time to get accustomed to her new surroundings, but then she'll go straight into training, and you never know, she might even be able to do shows this December. There is a lot of training that goes into it because you need to teach them the tricks, which sounds strange because they're a bunny rabbit, but they need to be confident and comfortable in performing the tricks. They also need to be trained to be around lots of people, and that's very difficult to train for. The only way you can really do that is with little and often. So taking them to do a show, letting them be in the environment for a short period of time and then whisking them away is a good way of doing it. And then getting them to be comfortable with people coming to say hello, because that's what invariably happens at shows. Everyone wants to come and say hello to the bunny rabbit. So that's again the next step after that. And this all takes time. And I haven't had to do it for a long time now because the previous bunnies that I had, the last two, not including the ones I've now got, I both had for six, seven years, and they were very, very comfortable, very happy with the way that it all happened. And now I'm back to stage one again, back to square one. So, what have I learned from this? Well, it's the same every time you lose a bunny. It's a valued member of my team, if you like. I've got new members of my team, and they need to be trained to do what they get to do. And so, yeah, if you lose someone from your team and it's unexpected, maybe they just decide to leave and go somewhere else, or hopefully they don't pass away like my bunny did. But maybe you've got someone that you need to train up. How are you going to do that? How are you going to make the transition as quickly as possible so you can get back up to speed? I've got a whole process in place for bunny rabbits, but if they were humans and they were part of my physical team, I would have a binder, a folder with processes so that I can train people as quickly as I possibly can, because only that way will you be able to bring someone on board and get them up to speed quickly. So even though this was a very sad experience for us, it's something that I thought it was worth mentioning so that hopefully yours is not going to be as sad, but it will bring that into focus for you so you can make sure you've got processes in place to get a new member of your team on board quickly. That was it. That's all I wanted to say. Anything else you want to say today?

[00:13:17.570] - Taylor
I don't think so.

[00:13:18.820] - Gordon
Thank you so much for joining us. As always, we are on YouTube. Please like, share and subscribe.

[00:13:24.630] - Taylor
You can also go to our website thisweekwith.co.uk to find all of our past episodes.

[00:13:29.730] - Gordon
And if you would prefer to listen to us, we are on all the major podcast platforms. Just do a search for "This Week With Taylor and Gordon." We'll be back with you next week. So until 1pm next Friday, my name is Gordon and I'm from Drayson Design.

[00:13:45.800] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.

[00:13:48.380] - Gordon
Goodbye.

[00:13:48.890] - Taylor
Bye.

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Show Notes