[00:00:09.04] - Gordon
Hello.

[00:00:09.13] - Taylor
Hello.

[00:00:10.00] - Gordon
My name's Gordon from Drayson Design.

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

[00:00:13.22] - 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 7 days. And thank you for joining us.

[00:00:24.28] - Taylor
Thank you.

[00:00:25.13] - Gordon
We'll get straight into our topics today, I think. Would you like to go first or shall I?

[00:00:31.05] - Taylor
You can go first this week.

[00:00:32.14] - Gordon
So I want to talk about "This Week With..." We are in our 5th season, which means we've been doing this for 5 years now. And we, I just thought it'd be nice to reflect, in fact, on what we've done. Plus, if we continue into 2025, we're gonna need a new colour. So we need to discuss that as well. For those of you who've been with us for a while you'll know that each season is a year for us, so it's sort of January through to December, and we have a highlight colour that we use for that year. So, we'll come to that in a moment but let's just reflect on the 5 years. Why did we start doing this? Are we achieving our goals and should we carry on? So let's start with why we started this. Taylor, do you want to, do you want to explain why we started this?

[00:01:31.10] - Taylor
Yeah. So the original idea was that I had just started my own business, following leaving school, and I wanted a way to be able to look back and see how things have changed, how I had progressed in my business, how things have progressed in my life, and just be able to have a kind of recollection of all the things that I've done, I've achieved, things that have gone wrong, and just being able to, yeah, look back, and also, you know, do something with you every week.

[00:02:05.10] - Gordon
Yeah. And that's why we started this. So we started it in lockdown. And so it was sort of something that we did every week and we edited it and we put it up and, you know, a few of our friends watched it. And I'll be honest, we don't have a subscriber base. We don't have many people who watch this. It's not the reason that we're doing it. We're doing it for us, really. If you happen to watch it and you enjoy it or you get something out of it, then that's a real bonus for us. You know? It's, really nice that you have got something from our ramblings, basically. But we are doing it for ourselves and, putting it on YouTube and originally on Facebook, and of course, the website means that we can keep track of things that we've said, things that we've done. We can go back and look at them again in the future, which is 1 of the reasons that we have the search facility on the web site so we can find things easily.

[00:03:07.08] - Taylor
Yeah.

[00:03:07.27] - Gordon
And, yeah, it's it's as you said, it's a way to sort of every week think about what we're going to say and talk about things that have affected our businesses, whether it be positive, negative, whether it be something that's coming up, something that's happened.

[00:03:25.16] - Gordon
And I think for us, it's been really worthwhile. The other thing is that we have, missed a few weeks during our run and that's because of illness or people being away. But most of the weeks, we managed to do a recording, and it's something that we sort of set time aside for. And it's not a huge amount of time that we spend on this every week. We've got, you know, the after recording bit that needs to be done, which is all of the transcribing, and, a lot of that is done with AI. And, we're very lucky that we've got a friend of ours who goes through them, when they have time and just checks all the AI and fixes any mistakes, mainly based on your company name.

[00:04:15.09] - Taylor
Yeah.

[00:04:15.28] - Gordon
Some great company names that it thinks Taylor has said. And so we thank we thank, Hayley for doing that. We have thanked her before, but she's still doing it. And so we thank her again because it's a very valuable thing for us because the transcript is then searchable. We have, our languages. So we have this podcast, which has captions or subtitles in French, German, Spanish, and English, which are the big languages that we think people will be using to watch this. If you have another language that you would like it, subtitled in, let us know. We will definitely consider that. So it takes a little bit of time, but not a great deal of time. And, you know, there's obviously the actual streaming of it, when we stream it, which is sort of 20 to 30 minutes on average, isn't it? About that each week.

[00:05:12.16] - Taylor
Mhmm.

[00:05:13.15] - Gordon
But it also it's a way for us to just sort of stop from being and running our businesses and just reflect on the week and think about what we've done. Think about what we've achieved. Think about any lessons we've learned and pass them on to anyone who does watch them, either when we release them or sometime in the future because, you know, with the subtitles there, YouTube will be, transcribing it as well. They do their own transcriptions, and I'm sure they have a database that will bring our episodes up if something is said. And every now and then we get comments, which is lovely from people we know or we've had comments from people we don't know. And, so thank you to all those people who've watched even just one of our episodes. We thank you for that. And we've also got people who listen to it as a podcast. And I know there's several people who do that, and we thank them for doing it as well. If you get anything from it, please let us know. If you'd like to have us talk about anything in particular that you think we would know about, please let us know. Going through to the future, I think we're gonna carry on doing it.

[00:06:31.29] - Taylor
Yeah.

[00:06:32.14] - Gordon
Yeah. I think we're, this must be episode, 188. Is that right? Something like that? I had no idea we were gonna get to a 188 episodes. I mean, that's just... If you told me when we started that we would have a 188 episodes at least, I would I would have said, "No. No. No. That's never gonna happen. We're never gonna get to that number." But here we are. So, in previous years, we've asked you to guess what colour our, next season is going to be, but I think this year we're gonna open it up to those people who watch this episode. So leave us a comment as to what colour you think we should use. You might want to look at the ones we've already used so we don't sort of repeat a colour already that we've already used. So, have a look on the website. You'll see all the episodes with the different colours and the different seasons. You can see what colours we've used, and let us know what colour you would like. And we'll have a look through, see if any of them will work because they've got to be, what's the word? Accessible.

[00:07:42.20] - Taylor
Yeah.

[00:07:43.02] - Gordon
Yeah. We gotta make sure they're accessible colours. So we don't have sort of white on yellow, for example, because that just, that won't work. But, you know, we will look at all the suggestions and pick one from there. If we don't get any suggestions, we'll just make our own minds up.

[00:08:00.02] - Taylor
Yeah.

[00:08:01.01] - Gordon
So, yeah, that's pretty much all I wanted to say today. It's, just thanking everyone for watching. Thank you to Taylor as well for being my collaborator in this. That's, I quite look forward to doing these every week. It's sort of one of the things that I, sort of during the week, I'm thinking "What am I gonna say?" Sometimes we get to a point when we start an episode and we're still not quite sure what we're gonna say. But something always comes to us, and we end up being able to talk about an experience we had during the week or something that happened, or something that's gonna affect us in the future. So that's it from me. That's all I wanna say. Taylor, what would you like to talk about?

[00:08:43.08] - Taylor
So I just wanted to talk about what I've been getting up to in the last week. I've had quite a few things. So on Friday, I had a squash tournament, and I was the singles winner, and also the, my team also won. So I won twice.

[00:09:00.09] - Gordon
Yes!

[00:09:01.03] - Taylor
Which was quite, you know, very exciting. What they do is they create 3 groups of people, based on your skill level, and then you play, the people in your group. And then what they do is they each game is basically just done on the number of points you get, and you are paired or 3'd up with two other people from the other groups. And then your combined score is what your team's score is. So I came first in my group and also first in the team as well, which was very exciting.

[00:09:34.07] - Gordon
Congratulations.

[00:09:36.08] - Taylor
And I was upgraded, this week to a fixed desk at my office.

[00:09:42.11] - Gordon
Okay. So before, you were just a floating desk?

[00:09:45.24] - Taylor
Yeah.

[00:09:46.01] - Gordon
What do they call it?

[00:09:46.23] - Taylor
So I had co-working.

[00:09:47.26] - Gordon
Co-working.

[00:09:48.20] - Taylor
That meant I took my laptop in. I took my little portable monitor in with me, and I just found somewhere to sit down next to a plug and just got on with my work. And they have recently changed the... They they sold part of the space to a café, which is great. So they now have a café in the office, which is lovely. However, that meant that the numb, the amount of space there was was obviously, you know, reduced by quite a lot, and the number of people that had co-working, there wasn't really a lot of space for all of them. So what they did is they decided to upgrade people to the fixed desk and reduce the fixed desk price down.

[00:10:28.08] - Taylor
Now this was, quite nice. I quite like the idea of the fixed desk, but at the time, the price just was too much for, you know, what I...

[00:10:36.03] - Gordon
It wasn't justifiable.

[00:10:37.02] - Taylor
Yeah. What I could justify. And this is the first time I've had a fixed desk, and it's really nice. I now only need to take my laptop in. I took my large, 34 inch ultrawide monitor, from my home, from my bedroom, because I had 2 of them. So I took 1 of them into the office, and I just work from that. I did a bit of shopping, this week to add things to my desk, things that are like useful and stuff. So, a keyboard and mouse, for example, and a mat and a cable holder so they don't fall down the back of the desk.

[00:11:14.24] - Gordon
And the reason for this is so you don't have to keep moving them from 1 place to another.

[00:11:19.28] - Taylor
Exactly. So the idea is that I have the exact same monitor, the same keyboard and mouse, at home and at the office. And that means that I don't have to take as much with me, but, also, the environment that I'm gonna be working from is almost identical. And I think that's the biggest thing for me. I've spoken about it in the past, but I try and have duplicates of everything and have them in the areas that I use them. So I have a MacBook charger at home at my desk that stays plugged in.

[00:11:51.19] - Gordon
Mhmm.

[00:11:52.01] - Taylor
I also have a MacBook charger that stays in my bag. I have phone cables. I have, you know, all these different types of cables, etc. I have duplicates of so that I don't have to remember to keep switching them between. We have a friend in the office who regularly forgets their cable at home, and they always come to me and say, "Taylor, have you got this cable?" And obviously, I do because I carry it in my bag always. But I had that issue in the past, which is why I solved it by buying another version of it. But, yeah, so that's been quite exciting. Obviously, I now see, the same people in the same places every day, which is nice.

[00:12:33.19] - Gordon
Yeah. We should mention a fixed desk is basically a desk in a room that's all sort of security locked and stuff, and that is your desk. So you can put whatever you want on it, and you'll know that when you come in the next day, it's all set up and ready to go.

[00:12:49.17] - Taylor
Yeah.

[00:12:50.02] - Gordon
As opposed to the co-working space where you could be sitting in different places every time

[00:12:53.29] - Taylor
Yeah. Exactly.

[00:12:54.16] - Gordon
Depending on if someone was there before you.

[00:12:56.21] - Taylor
Yeah. So it's a nice change. It's, yeah, I'm really enjoying it. We'll just see yeah. See what happens. I need to take in a place mat for my coffee and my drinks and stuff because I currently don't have one, and it's really annoying me. And I've had, in the past, been given lots of place, like, cup, mug mats or whatever, but I've only had one desk. So I only ever needed one, so I didn't need, you know, the dozen other ones. So I need to try and find where all those went and, take some to the office.

[00:13:28.19] - Gordon
Very good. Yeah. Is that everything that's happened this week, of note?

[00:13:33.12] - Taylor
The only other thing is I signed up to "Prep Kitchen."

[00:13:36.20] - Gordon
Oh, yes.

[00:13:37.10] - Taylor
I can't remember if I mentioned this, but this is my 1st week, that I've been using it, and it's been great. The food, it... When you take it out of the fridge, it doesn't look the most appetising.

[00:13:50.28] - Gordon
Okay.

[00:13:51.08] - Taylor
Just because...

[00:13:51.25] - Gordon
Just because of the way it's packed.

[00:13:52.26] - Taylor
Yeah. And way obviously, when it's shipped, it moves around and stuff. And then when you peel off the film, it's, you know, it's okay. But then once you've, like, heated it up in the microwave and you start actually eating it, it is very, very good. Or at least my experience and the ones I've had so far have been really, really nice. And so I think, at least for the foreseeable future, I'll be continuing with it. You know, I think it's for me, to save the time of having to cook, but also have some nice meals that are nutritious, I think is very, I think, very, very good and very important.

[00:14:30.11] - Gordon
And are you saving money or spending about the same money but getting a better meal as you were before?

[00:14:37.14] - Taylor
I'm probably spending slightly more, but I'm saving time having to, 1) think about what I'm gonna eat.

[00:14:45.24] - Gordon
Mhmm.

[00:14:46.15] - Taylor
And 2) going out and getting it. So whether that was ordering a pizza, for example, and having to go and collect it, or going to the Shell garage, for example, and getting a £5 meal deal or whatever, you know, it's slightly more expensive, and I get slightly less. So, obviously, the £5 meal deal included a drink and, obviously, sandwich and a snack or whatever. Whereas, this is just 1 meal, but the amount of calories is actually slightly more.

[00:15:11.03] - Gordon
So as far as your diet's concerned, it's doing much better for you.

[00:15:15.13] - Taylor
Yeah.

[00:15:15.18] - Gordon
Even though it's costing just a little bit more.

[00:15:18.00] - Taylor
But I don't have to, you know, think about what I'm gonna eat, which is always, sometimes a pain, because especially when I'm at home, we don't have a tonne of stuff that's, like, just ready to go. So I either have to then cook something, which I don't wanna do because it's I just don't enjoy it, or we don't have anything to be able to cook. And so, again, that's, you know, time I have to go figuring out what I'm gonna eat. Whereas this, I just pick something from the fridge, and it gets delivered to me once a week. And they come, they get delivered on Sunday, for the week ahead. So it's pretty fresh. It's not as, yeah, it's not the same as kind of getting a microwave meal from Tesco's, for example, that's been sat in there for a couple of weeks or whatever.

[00:16:02.17] - Gordon
Potentially. We've no idea. Yeah. Exactly.

[00:16:04.03] - Taylor
Yeah. It's relatively fresh.

[00:16:06.03] - Gordon
Very good.

[00:16:07.04] - Taylor
So that's been my week. Just lots of small things that have, new or changed or just, exciting.

[00:16:14.05] - Gordon
Very good. Is that everything you wanna talk about?

[00:16:17.23] - Taylor
Yeah.

[00:16:18.15] - Gordon
Thank you for joining us. Before we sign off, we've probably got 1 more, maybe 2 more episodes this year.

[00:16:27.05] - Gordon
We've got normally, our one next week, which is closest to Christmas is just going to be a, you know, "Happy Christmas" one. Really quick, really simple. Everyone's busy at that time. And, I suspect we'll end up doing one between Christmas and New Year just to fill in that gap, because that's a really funny week, isn't it? No one's sort of just... Some people are at work, some people aren't at work, and it's an odd week.

[00:16:55.09] - Taylor
Yeah.

[00:16:56.03] - Gordon
So I'm sure we'll do one then as well. So there's a couple more this year, and then we'll get into the next season. So don't forget to leave us your suggestions for the colour for next year's season 6. Thank you for joining us. As always, we can be found on YouTube. Please like, share, and subscribe.

[00:17:16.09] - Taylor
You can also go to our website thisweekwith.co.uk to find all of our past episodes.

[00:17:21.05] - Gordon
And if you prefer to listen to it as a podcast, we're on all the major podcast platforms. Just search for "This Week With Taylor and Gordon." Until next week, we'll see you here at 1pm on Friday. Until then, my name's Gordon, and I'm from Drayson Design.

[00:17:37.13] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.

[00:17:40.02] - Gordon
Goodbye.

[00:17:40.19] - Taylor
Bye.

This Week's Topics

Show Notes