[00:00:00.00] - Gordon
Hello

[00:00:09.13] - Taylor
Hello.

[00:00:09.29] - Gordon
My name's Gordon from Drayson Design.

[00:00:11.26] - 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 thank you so much for joining us. It's been a very busy couple of weeks. I've been away, which is the reason we haven't had, I think it's two episodes now, but we are back and lots to talk about and not a lot of time to do it in. So let's get straight into it. Do you want to go first or shall I?

[00:00:42.08] - Taylor
You can go first this week.

[00:00:43.25] - Gordon
So while I was away, I had the opportunity to have my box renovated. Now, what happens is that I've got a box that I perform children's magic, and it's got all of my bits in it, and I can't ever get it renovated or changed because I'm always using it. And so the only time I can do it is if I'm ill or if I'm going away and I don't need it, and I'm going on holiday and I can't necessarily work it for when I'm ill. So, I gave it to a friend of mine called Jezo, who is also an entertainer, a very good entertainer at that, and gave it to him with a mock-up of what I need it to look like, gave him the graphics I want to be on the front and left it with him while I went on holiday. And I picked it up this week. I went on Tuesday up to Cambridge, where he's based, to pick up my box, and it looks amazing. It's really good. I got to use it for the first time on Wednesday, which was the day after, and took photos of it in place, and it looked really good, didn't it?

[00:01:54.08] - Taylor
Yeah.

[00:01:54.26] - Gordon
I mean, before it was black with hand-painted white on it, and that was my old branding. And I've got my new branding, and it required a complete strip down, a sand, a fill, a paint, a sand, a fill, a paint. Apparently, there's four coats of paint on it in total. And then it was all put back together again. And he's done a fantastic job, and I'm over the moon with it. He's really done well with it. But it gave me an opportunity to go to Cambridge this last Tuesday to pick it up from him. And I asked if he was performing because he's a children's and family entertainer, and he was. And I asked if I could go along with him to his show. And he said, yes. So I got to go to his show at a Haven site, which is primarily... Holiday parks are primarily his niche where he does all his work. And I got to see the... Oh, is there someone at the front door? You go do that. I'll deal with this. I got to see him perform in front of a real audience. I've seen him perform in a competition situation, but not in front of a real audience of punters.

[00:03:19.03] - Gordon
This was a really good way of seeing how what we do affects an audience. I was watching the audience a lot to see how they were reacting, to see what they liked, what they didn't like. And holiday park audiences are very tough because you've got to grab their attention because they start by chatting with each other. That's when you get introduced. And you've got the bar, in this case at the back. You've got a shop which is selling lighty-uppy things and all sorts of other bits and pieces. You've got a place that sells food, and you've got all your friends sitting around a big table chatting, and it takes an awful lot to grab their attention and, more importantly, hold their attention. He did a really, really good job at this. He went out into the audience right at the beginning and managed to involve them, and everyone was watching to see where he's going. You've also got all the children sitting on the dance floor. Again, you've got to make sure that you control that situation so they don't climb onto the stage and potentially get hurt and all sorts of things. Yeah, he's such a nice guy.

[00:04:39.00] - Gordon
You can tell that in his performance. You can tell that just by chatting with him. That's why I knew that my box project was going to be in great hands when I handed it over to him. Sure enough, when I picked it up, it was just great. This is possibly the last time I'm going to rebrand the box. He gave it back to me with the paint that he'd used so that if I need to do any touch-ups, I have the paint. I'm going to make a note of what it is. If I need to get it again, I can. He added brand new wheels. The wheels I had, this is a box that I have had since I was 15 years old. That's 37 years I've had it now. It got painted at the time and it got repainted, and now it's been repainted again. But it had the original metal wheels on which were at an angle, two halves, and the bottom half was the bit that touched the floor. I don't think you can even buy those anymore. But he's upgraded those wheels to two small rubber wheels on each corner, and the two wheels at the back now have locks, so I can lock it in place to stop it moving, which is great. I've never had that before.

[00:05:56.03] - Taylor
That's good.

[00:05:57.01] - Gordon
He's painted the whole of it, including the inside. So all of where I put my props is all painted as well. So that all looks beautiful. The paint not only looks good, but it's because it's got four paints, it's tough wearing and it protects the wood as well. I also have this fablon, which is a felty material with sticky on the back that I've got on the top, which I've always had, and I've replaced that as well. He put it on for me. He's also put the same stuff on the inside at the bottom as well. Now all the props, when they're stored, are sitting on felt as well, which obviously protects it even more. It all fits in the new bag that I had made, which I was concerned about because there was new wheels. Basically, he's done a really good job. If you're an entertainer watching this and you're looking to have an apparatus or a prop, either made or renovated, then I can't recommend Jezo highly enough. He did a fantastic job. That's me. Let's go straight through to you.

[00:07:07.11] - Taylor
I want to talk about padel this week.

[00:07:10.11] - Gordon
Paddle? On a-

[00:07:12.05] - Taylor
No, the sport, the new sport padel. Padel is one of the fastest-growing sports at the moment. It's a cross between squash and tennis, of which both of those sports I play. They've just added padel courts to my local club and I have been playing it. I've played about three or four games now and it's great fun. You get encased in a glass cage and you play it similar to tennis with a net and two players, but you can hit it off the back wall and the glass and the side like in squash. There are some other rules too, and things, but it got me thinking that we have certain skills that can be applied to more than one thing. So for example, my business, I have the skills to build a website, to design. And recently I've started expanding that to building little web apps for myself to improve my life, to make things easier. So I built a currency conversion, basically a little calculator. When I was putting them into my bookkeeping, every time I got paid in dollars, obviously there would be a currency conversion fee and also then a fee to pull it out of the platform, I think it was Wise.

[00:08:43.21] - Taylor
And I had to figure out what the currency conversion was inside of ZOHO to make sure that all of my basically numbers matched up. Because even if they were one or two decimal points different in terms of the currency conversion that ZOHO pulled in from their exchange rate, it would pull the numbers out slightly. So I basically built a little app that allows me to just put the figures in and it generates me and says, "this is what you need the currency conversion to be to make sure that everything is zeroed." So, yeah, it got me thinking how skills can be transferable that you otherwise don't think about or didn't know that you could do. And, yeah, it's been really, really fun to play padel and to experience something new, make new friends, because people that are in the tennis world and have never played squash, obviously, they're experiencing what squash is kind of like and vice versa. People that have only ever really played squash are coming into this now and meeting tennis people who obviously are coming over from that side. And it's interesting to see how different players play and think about what shot to hit or how they're going to play the ball, completely differently.

[00:10:00.15] - Taylor
The squash players are much more likely to hit it off the back or the glass because they're used to that in squash, whereas tennis players try and keep it as low to the net as possible. Whereas in padel, you don't actually want to do that. A lot of the time, you're actually lobbing the ball, and then people are killing it and things like that, and then obviously waiting for it to hit the glass and things. And yeah, it's just really, really interesting to see how different people approach problems, especially in a couple of projects I'm working on. I've been collaborating with some friends, and again, leaving them to figure it out. I've been having conversations. We've been thinking about how we want to go about something, and I've just been talking to them and saying, "That'd be quite cool. We could do something like this." And instead of actually having to come up with a solution, just saying, "I've given you my feedback, you go and figure it out from your side," and then seeing what they come up with. Sometimes it's something I didn't even think about and thought, "actually, that's a great idea. I didn't think we could do that or didn't have that idea." Just lots of thinking, really, recently and applying skills in different areas.

[00:11:14.22] - Gordon
I had a similar thing with Jezo. When I went to see his show. Because I'm a magician and I'm an entertainer, I was able to look at his show and give him some suggestions for things that he might want to look at during his show that might improve it and add value. But quite often, especially in the holiday parks, going and doing shows every night is a very lonely thing because you're going on your own in a van, in his case, getting to the venue, doing your show, getting back in your van, driving to the next one or home. It's a very lonely existence, but you don't get the feedback. You don't get people who have enough knowledge of theatre or magic to give you that feedback and let you know, "Have you thought about doing this?" Or, "Have you thought about having a little bit of a pause on that point?" Or lots of different things which we discussed on the way back from Great Yarmouth, where we were.

[00:12:14.09] - Taylor
I guess it's also quite interesting because it's a different crowd and different type of audience, essentially, to what you're normally used to.

[00:12:24.17] - Gordon
Well, we do "The Pip and Paul Show" at holiday parks. Not that we've done them recently, but we did quite a few of them at one point, and so we built the act for that sort of audience because it's a very specific type of audience. And so I was using that knowledge and experience to make suggestions through to Jezo. He can then make a decision as to whether he wants to listen to it, whether he wants to try it, or whether he wants to ignore it. That's the beauty of getting feedback from someone you trust. You can listen to them and make your own decision.

[00:13:02.25] - Taylor
Yeah.

[00:13:04.04] - Gordon
That's it from me this week.

[00:13:05.24] - Taylor
And me as well.

[00:13:06.23] - Gordon
Thank you so much for joining us. As always, you can like, share, and subscribe. We're on YouTube. Please let everybody know about This Week With...

[00:13:15.17] - 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.

[00:13:22.10] - Gordon
If you would prefer to listen to us, we're on all the major podcast platforms. Just do a search for "This Week With Taylor and Gordon." You can even ask your smart speaker and they'll play it for you as well. All being well, we'll be back with you next week on Friday at 1pm. Until then, my name is Gordon and I'm from Drayson Design.

[00:13:41.24] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.

[00:13:44.14] - Gordon
Goodbye.

[00:13:44.28] - Taylor
Bye.

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