This Week with Taylor & Gordon

iPhone 16 and Apple Intelligence information, new watches and AirPods

Exploring Your Industry

Showing starter sites to other professional

We all live in our own bubble, not knowing much about what’s outside of it

Other people using different tools and plugins that we don’t know about

This is what makes the industry exciting and interesting

Finding new communities

Different workflows for different people

List of AI tools

A New Job for Gordon

In addition to the jobs Gordon already has

1 hour a week – teaching drama for Drama Kids – https://www.dramakids.co.uk/

Very specific teaching method and curriculum

Studio Assistant helping to manage the class

Learning to be a teacher

Seeing children week after week with different content, as opposed to different children with the same content

Safeguarding and First Aid training

Seizing a new opportunity

Lots of really important skills learnt from attending drama classes

Adding to your skillset

Slightly outside your comfort zone

Quest for Discovery

Visit the website: https://www.thisweekwith.co.uk

Drayson Design Website – https://www.draysondesign.com

Facebook: https://www.thisweekwith.co.uk/facebook

* Full transcript will be available on the website. We may receive a referral fee from any of our links which help towards the costs involved in creating this content for you.

Audacity update – https://www.audacityteam.org/

Word of Mouth advertising

Best form of advertising for Gordon

People like to recommend you if you do a good job

40th birthday party – led to a children’s summer school show 3 days later, booked on the morning of the show

Website Design recommendations

People trust their friends

Recommendation between companies for business

Reinforcing the good decision

Can you get Word of Mouth referrals work for you?

Workflow Templates – pre-defined template

Lists of tasks and stages, with the ability to set blockers

Prevents forgetting any steps

Can be customised as required

Great use case would be when working in a team

Auto create your calendar with tasks on

Use Motion – https://www.usemotion.com/

Visit the website: https://www.thisweekwith.co.uk

Drayson Design Website – https://www.draysondesign.com

Facebook: https://www.thisweekwith.co.uk/facebook

* Full transcript will be available on the website. We may receive a referral fee from any of our links which help towards the costs involved in creating this content for you.

Comparing Products

Missing a feature that Taylor wanted in his email client

Ranking Mail apps with pro’s and con’s

Action, Waiting and Read Folders, to get down to inbox zero

Using Actionscripts

Mailbutler as an add-on

Canary or Spark are the alternatives

Snooze emails to hide them

Apple iPhone event is September 9th

Mac OS may be released at the same time as the iPhone

Contacting people for the last quarter – seasonal outreach

Missing the best time to start a campaign

Christmas is busy for entertainers

Business quiet – work on the website and improve it

Business busy – work on your website as you have lots of traffic to test changes

Work out your seasons and automate

What is the campaign going to look like – email, mail, lumpy mail?

Put dates into the diary

Working on a big project

Visit the website: https://www.thisweekwith.co.uk

Drayson Design Website – https://www.draysondesign.com

Facebook: https://www.thisweekwith.co.uk/facebook

* Full transcript will be available on the website. We may receive a referral fee from any of our links which help towards the costs involved in creating this content for you.

Business Focus – finding out what you enjoy doing

Taking off Graphic Design as a service which Taylor didn’t enjoy doing

Adding services means you could possibly become a business that doesn’t specialise

Downside is if your niche goes away or has a problem you can have no business

Look at different scenarios to make sure you have plans in place

Niching down can be a particular service or a type of business

Take on the work you want to do

Managing your resources

Washing Machine problems – we had to purchase a new one

Digital copy of the manual goes somewhere everyone has access to it – I use Evernote – https://www.evernote.com/

All letters are digitised and uploaded as well

Lecture notes and books as pdf files go into an indexable catalog system – I use Evernote and also Eagle – https://eagle.cool/

OwlOCR to change pdfs into searchable pdfs – https://www.owlocr.com/

Build your own document manager – indexes all uploads and allows for searching

It’s great to have documents on your hard drives, but if you can’t find what you need quickly, is there any point having the documents?

Using aliases to quickly find things like apps and folders

Visit the website: https://www.thisweekwith.co.uk

Drayson Design Website – https://www.draysondesign.com

Facebook: https://www.thisweekwith.co.uk/facebook

* Full transcript will be available on the website. We may receive a referral fee from any of our links which help towards the costs involved in creating this content for you.

AI Updates

ChatGPT and Midjourney were the kings

Claude, Gemini and Flex and up and coming and over-taking ChatGPT

Chatbase.co chatbot on the website

Moved over to Claude

Check it out by clicking on the chatbot on the bottom right of the website

Search will find content, but won’t summarise like AI will

Getting ideas from GPT

Keeping up with AI is difficult as it is moving so fast

Framing Questions to your clients

A really clever way to change the language you use when handing over work

Recording a video to explain decisions and why they were made, to clients

Easy way to make a change in what you say

No room for the page title

7 word email that will make huge conversions for you – watch the video to find out what they are

Giving customer an incentive to come back and buy from you

The Admin Bar (TAB) – https://www.facebook.com/groups/theadminbar

Visit the website: https://www.thisweekwith.co.uk

Drayson Design Website – https://www.draysondesign.com

Facebook: https://www.thisweekwith.co.uk/facebook

* Full transcript will be available on the website. We may receive a referral fee from any of our links which help towards the costs involved in creating this content for you.

Out of sync issue with last weeks episode

Powerpack – portable battery

My lead acid battery not working correctly

Previously bought from Halfords, who no longer stock these devices

Replacing the battery was an option, but they are also no longer made

Working out the requirements – take your devices and see what wattage they require, then multiple the totals by the number of hour you need  and that is the Wh you will require.

Ecoflow – sign up for a 10% discount – https://www.ecoflow.com/uk/referral-rewards?inviteCode=APOM2NQY

Ecoflow River 2 Pro – https://uk.ecoflow.com/products/river-2-pro-portable-power-station

Technology of battery is iFePO4 battery – 60 minutes charging time – 768Wh

Drove to Hampshire Generators to pick one up

Smaller and more powerful, with a much better display for information

Sorted it all out ready for my show on Wednesday

Giving yourself cues

Adding snippets to Snippetclub

Making it easy for yourself

Having things ready to go

Only deal with paperwork once

Streamlining your Workflow

Barrier to writing is less

Visit the website: https://www.thisweekwith.co.uk

Drayson Design Website – https://www.draysondesign.com

Facebook: https://www.thisweekwith.co.uk/facebook

* Full transcript will be available on the website. We may receive a referral fee from any of our links which help towards the costs involved in creating this content for you.

Strange week for weather

New version of WPExtended.io released

Making space for 60 bags of salt

Finding things that I knew I had but didn’t know where they were

Selling Photography – set up a website using WooCommerce

Bulk import using a csv file (which ChatGPT helped create)

Set up a deal, so that for every 4 photos you buy, the cheapest is free

Then added in Digital copies as an option after requests from customers

Anyone who bought prints got the digital versions as well

Was it worth the effort?

3.5 – 5 days worth of work, plus the website

Would I do it again? Variety of work was good, and I got to work with a team, rather than being on my own

Looking at new opportunities and analysing it after to see if it is something that is worthwhile

Monthly Business Review

Create an overview of how the month has gone – finance, targets, compared with goals

Reconcile and Review regularly

Top level as well as granular level

Year Progress on X – https://x.com/year_progress

Compare data against least month and the same month in previous years

Plan for it with data to guide your decisions

Spring clean for your business

Visit the website: https://www.thisweekwith.co.uk

Drayson Design Website – https://www.draysondesign.com

Facebook: https://www.thisweekwith.co.uk/facebook

* Full transcript will be available on the website. We may receive a referral fee from any of our links which help towards the costs involved in creating this content for you.

Qualatex Balloons are no more

Parent company have gone bust

No more twisting balloons which will affect entertainers and balloon decorators

Buying in bulk while they are still available

Rubber and latex do deteriorate over time

Looking for a new manufacturer

Thicker latex, can I blow them up by mouth?

A part of my live show involves balloon twisting, and inflating by mouth

Do you have any supplies that you would be in trouble if they went bust?

Have a look at alternatives so you have a plan B

Software is a good example of finding replacements

Setting up processes for a team

Making sure change logs are up to date

Keeping track on the codebase and communication

Working in teams experience

Working on your own means you make all the decisions which isn’t always the best way forward

Clarity over progress

Creating pre-update checklists

Updating documentation and screenshots

Visit the website: https://www.thisweekwith.co.uk

Drayson Design Website – https://www.draysondesign.com

Facebook: https://www.thisweekwith.co.uk/facebook

* Full transcript will be available on the website. We may receive a referral fee from any of our links which help towards the costs involved in creating this content for you.

Strange weather this week

WP Extended – wpextended.io

Taylor is now part of the team behind the plugin, along with Dan Barrett and Sumit Singh

Lots of modules – duplicating posts, re-order posts, SMTP, blocking admin user names, admin customiser and so on

Free and pro versions available

Watch Kyle and Jonathan go through the plugin and discuss it –

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r72I2rlS1Pk

Maintaining your Equipment

Annual use of certain equipment – Portable battery to power amplification

They need constant charging, even if not being used

Current one isn’t powering everything I need anymore

Lesson learnt: Make sure you unplug AA battery chargers when using a battery pack inverter

Looking for a replacement battery

Checking power required

WordPress 6.6 has been released

Visit the website: https://www.thisweekwith.co.uk

Drayson Design Website – https://www.draysondesign.com

Facebook: https://www.thisweekwith.co.uk/facebook

* Full transcript will be available on the website. We may receive a referral fee from any of our links which help towards the costs involved in creating this content for you.

Long weekend taking photos

Tech Rehearsal, then portrait photos, next group and so on

Then I took photos during the show

Then everything started all over for the next show.

3 shows on the Saturday and 2 on the Sunday

Then a week of editing over 2000 photos – cropping and colour balancing

Workflow for editing included adding custom actions to save time before specific edits

Photos came out great

Added them in bulk into a WordPress website using WooCommerce, thanks to Taylor

Watermarked, small size images as previews to prevent copyright infringement

Using an off-the-shelf system didn’t work at all

Orders will hopefully come in from now…

Making Connections / Networking

People asking for paid help after doing the same thing for free previously to help the community

You will attract work if you are helpful to people

Being seen as the expert

A great form of marketing

Visit the website: https://www.thisweekwith.co.uk

Drayson Design Website – https://www.draysondesign.com

Facebook: https://www.thisweekwith.co.uk/facebook

* Full transcript will be available on the website. We may receive a referral fee from any of our links which help towards the costs involved in creating this content for you.