Hey. I'm Mitchell Davis, a Laravel developer.
Gavin Tye:Mate, you've gone red. I'm Gavin Tye, head of sales and marketing at Six Sides.
Mitchell Davis:That's it. We are building 6Sides.co, an events platform that helps you build a stronger community through events. This is our b to b SaaS journey. Mate, episode 12. How are you going?
Gavin Tye:Good. Good. How are you?
Mitchell Davis:I'm good. I'm here. I'm excited. Maybe we should explain why why we put on Lowrider at the start of the and it's kind of the theme of this this episode. So do you wanna give us a Lowrider story?
Gavin Tye:Well, yeah, low rider, obviously, I was watching Gone to sixty seconds a few weeks ago, and I really liked that when they, you know, they go about to start burgling the cars. Right? They played low rider, got everyone aligned. And if we were in a office together, we would we would do something similar, right? We would talk about it, sit around, get pumped, switch into, you know, being client focused.
Gavin Tye:And I thought, since we're away from each other, we work remotely, is let's just do that and have a bit of fun before a meeting because it's actually a really fun song. And I remember we had a meeting the other day with a client, and I listened to it. And at the end, I was like, yeah. Awesome. And then You're pumped up.
Gavin Tye:Yeah. I was pumped up, but you weren't pumped up as much. So I was like, this what listen to this from now on. You're like, done.
Mitchell Davis:Yep. It worked because then we had another meeting after you told me about that and yeah, it would we were vibing, so it was good. Yep. And it's funny. Immediately, I knew, like, as soon as you sent through the song, like, Spotify link on Slack, I was like, got in sixty seconds?
Mitchell Davis:Like, that's that's the only spot there that people, like, are hearing that song from.
Gavin Tye:Yep. Yep.
Mitchell Davis:Great movie. If you haven't if you haven't seen it, go check it out as well. Well worth it. But, yeah, it worked. Totally got us pumped up, and I think we could keep doing that at least until it it it wears off.
Mitchell Davis:But, yeah, it's fun. Nice to have those, like, fun little things, you know, that you you do.
Gavin Tye:Yeah. Yeah. I think having an energy change too. Right? Like, if you go into you're representing the brand and the business out into the market and you're working on something in the business.
Gavin Tye:And like I same as what you do. Right? We're working internally from I think having that energy change or recognizing the energy change is really good because it helps switches us to being client focused. So, yeah, I'm loving it. Even then, pumped up.
Gavin Tye:Good way to start. Yeah.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. I think we couldn't do that every episode, though. You're right. We'll get in trouble. But Yeah.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. Anyway, we'll see. Well, I wanted to take just a a quick second. I've been listening to some other podcasts about making podcasts, and something that they have recommended is to, like, give a random shout out to different, like, people that are doing different things at different times while they're listening to your show. So for this episode, I won't do this every episode.
Mitchell Davis:But for this episode, if you happen to be walking the dog right now, shout out to you. Send us a quick a tweet or a LinkedIn or a blue sky. Just send us something. Send us an email if you like. Just let us know.
Mitchell Davis:Hey. I'm walking the dog right now. I'm listening to the show.
Gavin Tye:That makes sense. I saw that on the Trello board and I was like, what does that mean? So, yep. So there
Mitchell Davis:we go. So I'll pick different ones.
Gavin Tye:What is the email address, Mitch?
Mitchell Davis:The email address. It's [email protected]. Okay. We'll put it in the show notes, and we'd love to get an email from you if you've got anything to tell us. You wanna give us feedback about the show.
Mitchell Davis:Something else that was mentioned on this podcast that I was listening to, it's by Justin Jackson, and I think it's Jeremy Inns. I'll put a link to it also in the show notes so you can go suss it out. But the another recommendation that they had was to ask people for feedback on would they be willing to share the show to other people that they think in their networks that might be interested. And if they wouldn't, to give us feedback on why that is. So if the show isn't bringing you any value and it's just a bit of fun, but you don't think it would be that fun for other people, let us know.
Mitchell Davis:Maybe we can make some changes. If it's our cover art, if it's our goofy intros, like, is it? If anything. Right? And if you are comfortable sharing, great.
Mitchell Davis:Then let us know if you've done that as well. We we would appreciate that. Just to try and get some more feedback on how we're going because we're now, what, three months in. It'd be great to get in front of some more people and to get some feedback. So Yeah.
Mitchell Davis:Thank you.
Gavin Tye:And if you are I guess if you do like it and you are subscribed, if everything is positive, we could ask you to share it with one or two people. That would be really great. It helps us with getting the word out there.
Mitchell Davis:%.
Gavin Tye:Got a question for you, Mitch. With the what's the podcast name that you were talking about? You just mentioned before, the guys from Transistor. Right?
Mitchell Davis:It is one of them from Transistor. I will find the name of it while I'm doing that. Maybe you can keep reefing.
Gavin Tye:Yeah. Okay. I was just waiting. Yeah. So so my question is is how do they name their podcast?
Gavin Tye:Do they name it about the topics for the what the audience might get out of it, or do they name it for the topics or what they speak about?
Mitchell Davis:So their episode their show rather is called Podcast Marketing Trends Explained by Jeremy Enns and Justin Jackson. And then they named their episodes like episode one, The Hard Truth About Growing a Podcast Today, Episode two, too hard to spot but very real problems suffocating your podcast growth. And that's the one that I I listened to recently. So Sure. Quite specific with the names.
Gavin Tye:Yeah. So they they're tailoring the name for the person who might be listening. So so I I I'm not sure whether we're doing that as such in our podcast name. So maybe we need to think about pivoting or changing our name to be what the reader might get out of it as as
Mitchell Davis:Do you mean the episode titles or the show name?
Gavin Tye:No. The episode titles.
Mitchell Davis:So we were doing that originally. Yep. Like episode one, what happens when a developer and a sales expert join forces. Yeah. And then two, how we're actually finding our first customers.
Mitchell Davis:The first probably six episodes were like, okay, kind of SEO type titles.
Gavin Tye:Okay.
Mitchell Davis:And I was doing that thinking, maybe this will help. But if we go look at the analytics on Transistor, those episodes I don't think did, like, any better than the I suppose, like, those were early days. But, yeah, like, two had two listens on in the fur sorry. Episode one had two listens in the first two days. Since then, it's probably had 30 listens or something like that, but nothing crazy.
Mitchell Davis:Like, there's no big outliers. So our biggest episode is number 10. The reviews are in. So and I kind of the reason I've started not doing, you know, now month and a half ago, stopped doing the, like, SEO type titles was because the shows that I listen to, like, often the episode title will be, like, just something that got said during the episode, you know, just a little, like, a phrase or something that just happened to get say get said or, like, something that I think will be interesting, like the $5,000 letter. Like we didn't say that in the episode, but I knew like going into that conversation, oh, that's a fairly catchy title.
Mitchell Davis:You know? So we could try and treat this as like an educational piece. And I think if we were to do that, then making the titles really descriptive and SEO based might help, but I don't know if that's the type of show that I really wanna do. I like that this is us. This is us just kind of having fun, and sure we'll bring on guests occasionally.
Mitchell Davis:And we hope that people get some useful stuff out of this, but, yeah, I like that it's a bit more, like, free flowing, loosey goosey.
Gavin Tye:I do look. I'm just looking at number one, for instance, what happens when a developer and a sales expert join forces. May just a slight tweak on that could be why we think a developer and a sales expert will make a stronger force or something, where we'll make a stronger team. Right? And then if someone's thinking of developing something, then they go, oh, hang on.
Gavin Tye:I'm a sales expert. Maybe I should look at getting a developer as a cofounder. Mhmm. And just slight tweaks like that. So yeah.
Gavin Tye:Anyway, that that that's just my just slight tweaks for how it might be benefit the listener, I think, as a little bit and then when and we're not changing any of our content. I think both of us come from vast experiences from other areas, and we're bringing this into here. So yeah. Anyway, it's Okay. Yeah.
Gavin Tye:Yeah. Anyway We'll see. Yep. Mel says we'll see too. I know what that means.
Gavin Tye:It means it means no. I'm just delaying it. Yep.
Mitchell Davis:No. It so we can try it if you like. We can and let's see if it makes any meaningful difference. Sure. Let's try making, like, the next month of episodes be more about what we actually talked about.
Mitchell Davis:Okay.
Gavin Tye:So we're twelve weeks in. So first of all, congratulations.
Mitchell Davis:Likewise.
Gavin Tye:Let's do the next twelve weeks. Right? Period of time. And we'll join.
Mitchell Davis:Another twelve. I'll see you another four. No. You already six of six of these, I did I played the game. And then the so let's do six weeks then.
Mitchell Davis:I'll give you six more weeks of playing the game.
Gavin Tye:Playing the game? What's the game?
Mitchell Davis:The game is doing your SEO titles Alright. Right. To see if it appeals. But Okay.
Gavin Tye:It is what it is.
Mitchell Davis:Alright. Six weeks.
Gavin Tye:What's what's today, mate? So what are we what are we gonna cover today? How was your week last week? Maybe we do the weekend review.
Mitchell Davis:We could do the weekend review. Absolutely. So I'm not yet ready to talk about infrastructure. I think I will next week. So we might make next week a bit of a technical heavier episode.
Gavin Tye:So so just with that at a high level, though, you've come up with a whole different approach to just something that's gonna really set us up for the
Mitchell Davis:And cut out costs Yeah. Is like a significant driver behind why I'm looking at this thing. But I don't wanna talk too much now because we're just I'm gonna repeat it all next week. But if you're interested in that, reach out. Let us know.
Gavin Tye:Give a teaser, Mitch. Give a teaser.
Mitchell Davis:No. I already gave a teaser last week, but I I wanna keep, like, oh, we're gonna talk about this, and then we don't talk about it. So we'll move on from that. But I have spent a lot of time over the last week working on infrastructure. We're now using Cloudflare to handle our DNS records which was kind of the first for me in ten years, something like that.
Mitchell Davis:Since then I've been all in on Amazon and using their DNS service route 53. And so having to learn Cloudflare again for reasons that I'll explain next week has been a fun challenge. So that's been good. We've been I I've been working on the mobile app, so the new Six Sides mobile app. Over the weekend, I got assigned up to the App Store and Play Store with new, like, developer accounts.
Mitchell Davis:And so waiting for all of that stuff to go through review. The Play Store in particular is a nightmare. You have to provide so much stuff. There's like a hundred questions basically that they they end up asking you, and it's brutal. You have to do it.
Mitchell Davis:So Yep. I was able to reference a lot of the same answers that I gave for the LariCon Australia app last year. So I could kind of have them on both screens and then just copy answers over. So it wasn't too bad, but it's not fun.
Gavin Tye:And so sorry. And so some context around this is we've our upcoming events that we have that of with current clients of towards the end of the year. Right? So we had we thought we had some time, but something has popped up on our radar that we're not ready to talk about that could see us running an event in June that has put an incredible amount of pressure on on our it's moved everything up in a timeline that has yeah. It's it's made you have to look at something, like, look at it differently and so we're accelerating.
Gavin Tye:That's why you've come in on the weekend. And Yeah. But it's an excite it's a could be a game changing opportunity if we do it right.
Mitchell Davis:It could. So why don't we make next week talking a bit about that, assuming we've got approvals, hopefully, this week. So, yeah, why don't we talk about technical stuff, and we'll talk about this new opportunity at least a bit Yep. On next recording. So, yes, so that's kind of been the big driver of really getting stuff done, and it's been fun.
Mitchell Davis:It's it's a challenge. There's a lot to do to get things ready to a point that it's I'd be happy with it in production, but I'm getting through it. I experimented with this technology called Terraform for the first time, and it's this way to spin up new infrastructure, new servers, or databases, or accounts, or whatever using code basically. So I can give you a file, and if you run this file, you'll then create your own copy of all of the infrastructure that you need. It's probably an easy way to put it.
Mitchell Davis:So I have used competitors to this like other alternative technologies to Terraform before mainly CloudFormation is one of them for those in the know. I'm quite familiar with CloudFormation, but it's got a lot of limitations on it and things that you can't do that you can do in Terraform. And I basically spent all of Saturday learning about Terraform and using it for the first time to create some accounts and do different things. I got to the end of the day on Saturday as I was driving home, and I was just like, this is taking way too long. I I can't afford to do this right now.
Mitchell Davis:So I think, ultimately, we'll be able to import any of the infrastructure that I have now just created manually. Well, we're using Laravel Vapor as well, and it has a lot of this stuff kind of built in. It can create different infrastructure for us. Eventually, I think we'll move to Terraform, but I just there's no time to do this right now. So, yeah, on the drive home.
Mitchell Davis:So I'm just basically gonna scrap all of that work that I did. I'll I'll save it so I can come back to it later, But, like, I'm not proceeding with that right now. We just don't have the time, so we gotta move a lot quicker. So that's kind of been it as far as the stuff I've been doing and listening to Lowrider. So
Gavin Tye:Fair enough. Fair enough. So some feedback. We we had a we've made a pivot in the app, right, before, like, you did your MVP last year. Yep.
Gavin Tye:And it was an individual app for LariCon AU. We have since decided to move to a standalone Six Sides app where it would then filter down into the events. And there's many reasons for that, but essentially, we want to help foster community engagement and growth beyond an event. But we had a feedback from our our second client. I don't think we're ready to share the name of that yet, but they do you wanna share that?
Gavin Tye:Because they were really excited and yeah.
Mitchell Davis:They were. Yeah. That was great. So, yeah, we we spoke with this client. They were very happy with the flow of how someone would download the Six Sides app and then punch in a ticket code and now instantly be logged in to their event.
Mitchell Davis:We've shown them some screenshots of some of the different, like, dashboards and and other screens I was able to just share with the iOS simulator on my computer, just share screen and just kinda walk them through some of the different things that we're thinking in the app and that was great. They were loving it. So
Gavin Tye:It's valid they feel validating?
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. It's nice to know that, okay, in particular, the one of the big things we've been concerned about is will event organizers be happy with having a six sides app as opposed to a LariCon Australia app. You know? And so it was really it was validating, and it made me, yeah, like, relieved to hear that, oh, that's fantastic. And, like, for them, they weren't it doesn't This client that we're talking about, it doesn't appear that they were even thinking about their own app in the App Store.
Mitchell Davis:It was just kind of expected, you know, which to be fair is, like, you know, through our accounting software, I'm not expecting Xero to create a a six sides accounting app just for us. Right? Like, you log in, you're using their service. It makes sense, but it was really nice to to get that feedback from, yeah, from an early customer. It's great.
Gavin Tye:I think it's safe to say they just weren't okay happy with it. They were really happy with it. Holly was writing, busy taking notes. She was like, I've got so many ideas, and they're on the same page here. Like, there are there are really there's so much alignment there.
Gavin Tye:I think in our last few meetings with people, I think our ideal client profile or our our ideal buying persona or our target persona has certainly started bubbling to the surface a bit here, which is helping centralized lead generation, which is probably we could do an update on that next about where we are with that.
Mitchell Davis:So Well, let's do that. Why don't why don't we get into that now?
Gavin Tye:Yep. So lead generation. So lead generation is going okay. It's slow in the early days. We don't wanna go too crazy on it because we just can't we don't have capacity during the rewrite to be able to take on more leads.
Gavin Tye:But, basically, I'm using Apollo at the moment. I believe I believe I've got a bit of an issue. We did have the d demark not working, I don't think, last week, but that's been fixed now. Yeah. We definitely got some people who are interested in having a conversation, but I'm not seeing some information come through through Apollo.
Gavin Tye:So either we're going to spam
Mitchell Davis:or Right.
Gavin Tye:Something's happening.
Mitchell Davis:Okay.
Gavin Tye:I think we need to run a few more tests on that first before we figure that out. I'll talk to Apollo and just uncover that. Because I've just what I'm seeing is the because I do lead generation for my other business and some other clients. What I'm seeing here is not consistent with what I'm seeing across other other other areas. So I haven't got something figured out yet.
Gavin Tye:I think we could be We're in a warm up phase, ramp up phase. So could be something there.
Mitchell Davis:Yep. So Apollo does that same type of sending out a bunch of emails to, like, fake addresses, basically. Right? Like No. Just all of that?
Gavin Tye:Well, it doesn't send it to fake addresses that I know of. It just it goes slow, so it doesn't flag the domain, and we don't wanna flag the domain. So Yeah. We also don't have a if we we haven't got a funnel that could self onboard people, so we don't that's just I don't think this is gonna be our strategy long term. We have a hypothesis at the moment of what our product led growth may be.
Gavin Tye:And but we're also going out to market. So it's we'll know in the next two months whether our hypothesis is right. Okay. And then we're happy to, yeah, share those results later on. But, yeah, it's going okay.
Gavin Tye:We've got some people who wanna talk in a month or so. We've got some other leads. So we've got leads coming in. It's it's not going too bad.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. Yeah. Good.
Gavin Tye:Yep. Yep.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. Cool. Did you expect it to be doing better or worse or about the same?
Gavin Tye:I expected to see more results on on Apollo just to see if people are opening emails, but I don't have that visibility at all. So I think something's broken. Okay. Yeah. So I think something's not right.
Gavin Tye:So I can see that they're delivered. I'm looking at them being delivered, but I have no visibility. It's there's just no tracking on the email. I don't know what's going on. So it says tracking disabled.
Gavin Tye:I need to figure out. I'll need to speak to Apollo to find out what's going on.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. Yep. Well, it's good that you with your experience, at least, you're able to recognize like, hey. Something's wrong. I normally I have more information than this.
Mitchell Davis:You know? Yep. So yeah. So that's good.
Gavin Tye:The challenge comes from my I use I use other lead generation tools for my LinkedIn profile, but they're focused around sales market fit. So I'm looking at mainly targeting founders on on that side. So to most of my content on sales market on LinkedIn is around, excuse me, sales strategy and things like that. So I don't quite know how to pivot from that and do LinkedIn outreach for for six sides. Yeah.
Gavin Tye:I like that. I just don't think that that will work, so I need to figure out another way here.
Mitchell Davis:Maybe we should be leveraging my account. Like because I'm not posting anywhere near as much as you. I don't have strong of a personal brand as you. Yep. Maybe we should be using mine.
Gavin Tye:Sure. But the thing is that you do that. You become the focus of the response, and then it's expected to be in the comp sales conversations later.
Mitchell Davis:So Right.
Gavin Tye:You could do that, but then what everything that you don't wanna do becomes what you need to do next. So that's the problem with that.
Mitchell Davis:Okay. Yep.
Gavin Tye:Does that make sense?
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Totally. I yeah.
Mitchell Davis:I I get it. If they get it if they get outreach from Mitchell Davis, they're expecting then that, okay. Where's Mitch? Why is he on this call? You know?
Gavin Tye:So And why is this like yeah. And it just becomes everything that you'd it just takes up your time then. Yeah. But then there is other options we have, which we could do with lead generation about doing cold outreach to a webinar or an event. Right?
Gavin Tye:Opposed to doing to try to get them to engage in conversation. There are other options there, and that works as well. So we will think about that. First and foremost, we've gotta get Apollo fixed up.
Mitchell Davis:So Yeah. Sure.
Gavin Tye:But we have we have leads coming in. Word-of-mouth is our biggest referral as our biggest lead generation tool at the moment.
Mitchell Davis:So Yeah. Which is I've heard is like the best one. Right?
Gavin Tye:It's the best one, but it's also the slowest. Yeah. Yep. And we don't have results yet. This just you should talk to these.
Gavin Tye:It's not it's not like, hey. They've got an event, and they wanna talk to you. It's not that kind of referral fee, or we've used them. They're amazing. We don't.
Gavin Tye:We're not there yet. So Yeah. Yep.
Mitchell Davis:We'll get there. Fingers crossed. In just a a short few months, we'll have some things to some runs on the board. Some more runs on the board. So Cool.
Gavin Tye:It could actually be an idea is to ask the people who who have agreed to work with us if they know anyone else that's running events and if they could make an introduction. Right? So we have two now. We could have a third or fourth very soon
Mitchell Davis:Yeah.
Gavin Tye:To ask them. It might make Yeah. We'll talk about that offline.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. Yep. Cool. Okay. Well, some updates, merch.
Mitchell Davis:So you have ordered the shirts, which is exciting.
Gavin Tye:Yeah. I certainly have. I ordered
Mitchell Davis:What did you order?
Gavin Tye:A couple of different shirts and a jumper. We're heading or a sweat a hoodie. We're heading into winter here. As you can see, I've got my red jumper on, which Mel absolutely hates me wearing the red jumper. I had
Mitchell Davis:a couple hoist? What is the hate hate?
Gavin Tye:It's not a heels hoist. This hoist is I don't know what it is. It's it's a it's a overseas brand.
Mitchell Davis:Right.
Gavin Tye:I had a red jumper that I've had for, like, almost ten years, and she hit it on me. So she finally felt guilty and bought me this one. So I've got yeah. I've got a couple of shirts, couple of hoodies, a couple of hats as well because we know that we're we're kinda known as the hat startup. Right?
Mitchell Davis:I think so. Yeah.
Gavin Tye:You can tell the Weeks podcast by how big the Tuft is coming out. That's because now I'm almost due for a haircut.
Mitchell Davis:You gotta get a haircut. Yeah, that's I don't have that problem.
Gavin Tye:So we've kinda held off on other merch at the moment. It's just because we don't wanna get something that's corny. Yeah. We're thinking about some options, but we don't need to rush on that because we wanna give it to a client when they they come working with us. But we don't wanna just give them a power bank because that's just that's done to done to the nth degree.
Mitchell Davis:So Yeah.
Gavin Tye:We've held off on that a little bit. So, yes, cup couple of shirts, few shirts, and then we'll just have that on. I've got a rack here. I'm sure you've got one here as well. We'll just have our shirts in the closet whenever we're changing
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. That's right.
Gavin Tye:Just put the shirts on. So yeah.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. Need a need a hat rack as well, I think. Yeah. We'll we'll have to get a few different options. I would like long term would be, yes, in addition to some of these, like, physical physical ideas that we're thinking for sending to customers, I would like to have some
Gavin Tye:A personal designer to help you get dressed? You spoke about that offline.
Mitchell Davis:Maybe. Yeah. That's hey. That was a private conversation. I would I would like to have a series of different T shirts that have, like, different designs that aren't strictly just our logo.
Mitchell Davis:You know? Okay. Like, something that's a bit more fun, like, you know, my kind of seems to be my favorite company, Transistor. They had these shirts done up years ago that was like a skeleton or something like that, and that's totally unrelated to their or maybe it was a dinosaur. I'm not quite sure.
Mitchell Davis:I don't it's been a long time since I've listened to it, but they had these shirts done that still had, like, the Transistor logo on it, but it was I'm pretty sure it was a dinosaur now I think about it. Mhmm. And it's totally unrelated to their brand, but, like, fun shirt, I think that's a bit more interesting than just sending someone, like, something you know, some article of clothing that's got our logo on it and nothing else. It's not necessarily an incentive for for them. So
Gavin Tye:So are you talking about, like, limited edition shirts? Like, we would run like, okay.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. Like, maybe, okay, this is the twenty twenty five six sides, like, custom shirt, you know, or something like that. And then I can only spending you know, could could get, like, a design done for, like, a few hundred dollars, print off 10 of those shirts in a year. You know? You and I get one, and we give one to our partners or whatever and, like and then maybe some customers, like just something fun.
Mitchell Davis:Just to, like, kind of like, we're recording this show to look back on in the past. Like, wouldn't it be cool to have five years worth of six side shirts in the closet, you know, or whatever. Like, oh, that's right. And we did this that time. Like
Gavin Tye:stick you would you think about or would you consider we do that run unlimited edition set of shirts a year, twenty, thirty, fifty, whatever it is. Mhmm. And then we could donate the money from that. We could sell some to people, but then donate that to charity. We could create find a charity to donate.
Mitchell Davis:Maybe. Do you think do you do you honestly think people would buy them?
Gavin Tye:Maybe. Maybe if we're we're doing it to a good cause, like
Mitchell Davis:Well, that's true. Yeah. I suppose that is that's an appeal to people. If not, it could just be, okay. We make these shirts.
Mitchell Davis:No.
Gavin Tye:I I'll I'll I'll I was way off.
Mitchell Davis:You brought up this charity thing.
Gavin Tye:I was way off.
Mitchell Davis:We charge double. Yeah. So we we could just create like, incur the expense to produce these shirts and then give them to customers, you know, or something. I don't know. I'm not quite sure, but it might be nice to have these as, like, it's a fun, relatively cheap, you know, thousand dollars a year it costs us in producing these or, you know, whatever, 1,500.
Mitchell Davis:Some smallish amount to produce some bespoke merch for that gear, you know, or something. And I'm not saying, oh, we absolutely have to do this and let's go place another order right now. This is kind of pie in the sky stuff.
Gavin Tye:But
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. Yeah. It might be fun to start thinking of more, like, sentimental stuff so that we've got something to look at, you know, five years from now.
Gavin Tye:Sure. I think we need a critical mass first before we start looking at that. Right? We need to have a set of repeatable customers and then other people growing using the platform. And I think we have options there to do certain things.
Gavin Tye:So
Mitchell Davis:yep.
Gavin Tye:I know I think focusing on building a strong brand that gives us options to do that. Right?
Mitchell Davis:Yeah.
Gavin Tye:So yeah. Which is Yeah. So far with the people we've we've started working with, I think our brand and our reputation is strong. So, yeah, we're just gonna require to continue that. Yep.
Mitchell Davis:We'll keep at it. We're we're having fun doing this podcast, and it is fun, like, getting to share a bit of our personalities with customers that we're having conversations with and stuff. It's not so, like, corporate. You know? Yeah.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. So, yeah, it's it's good. I think it's working. We'll just keep at it. But we will try for the next six weeks these boring SEO titles.
Mitchell Davis:We'll see. Maybe we'll we'll double our listenership. So
Gavin Tye:There is definitely an emotional component to people wanting to work for us to help people. Right? They're passionate about growing their community. It's just not a business transaction. And I think that is really that is highlighted that we have a real opportunity to help our clients in a real fundamental, meaningful way, right, that is beyond just a business need.
Mitchell Davis:So Yeah.
Gavin Tye:Yep. Mate, I've yep. I've been ignoring this.
Mitchell Davis:You didn't wanna bring this one up? No. Did I force it? Bring it up. I didn't wanna bring it here.
Mitchell Davis:Why don't you tell the story?
Gavin Tye:No. I don't wanna. You tell it.
Mitchell Davis:So if you go back to where was it? Was it
Gavin Tye:It was a while ago.
Mitchell Davis:It might have been a while ago. Maybe two or three episodes ago. I can't believe we didn't write it in there. A few episodes ago, Gavin presented to the the podcast, and it's on the WeShared screen, so check it out on YouTube if you wanna go back and see it. Presented a a banner that was gonna go on our LinkedIn pages because I have this new, like, rotating banner thing at the top of your LinkedIn page now.
Mitchell Davis:And you had sent this to me in Slack, and you were like, what do you think about this? And I was like, yep. It's cool. I might just make a few tweaks if you don't mind. And so here we go.
Mitchell Davis:If you're watching now on YouTube, Gavin's sharing screen. So these banners and even now looking at this, I would make changes to my one. So everything changes week week to week. But, anyway, the gist is Gavin created this banner. I then made an edit to the banner, and then we put it up as a competition on LinkedIn to ask people to vote for which one they liked more.
Mitchell Davis:And I think, Gavin, why don't you tell it would be a bit crude of me to to say. You're rubbing my nose in
Gavin Tye:it. Yeah.
Mitchell Davis:Why don't you tell us how it went?
Gavin Tye:Essentially, generally is the consensus was Mitch's for sure. Right? There was a design one of my clients, he's actually very strong on design. Their website's called Kicking Pixels, if you wanna check it out. But he actually wrote, and I quote,
Mitchell Davis:he
Gavin Tye:actually wrote, don't he said, say it in bold what you do. Like, not verbatim, but he actually said, say it in bold. Don't don't make it opaque or whatever it was. So Yep. Which is what I was doing.
Gavin Tye:I was trying to make the message more subtle.
Mitchell Davis:He said, don't do that. He said, make it loud. And so,
Gavin Tye:yeah, you won. I actually took your design. I'd changed it a little bit with the logo. I added our log contrasting colors on the logo into it, but I've put that into our LinkedIn banner in my LinkedIn banner. So now it flicks across in the slideshow.
Gavin Tye:Have you done that with yourself as well?
Mitchell Davis:I have not, but I should. Yeah. Very nice. Looks good, mate. Looks really good.
Gavin Tye:It was you in, Mitch. It was the right call. I'm happy to to be proactive and bring that up in our conversation. Yeah. Yep.
Mitchell Davis:Well, thank you. It's nice to to win, and I promise I will not rub it in your face at all.
Gavin Tye:What would you change in that banner that you said that even now I
Mitchell Davis:think I might flip the colors and make the text the rest the main part of the text in white, I think in black and then make that stronger part in in white. And, yeah, probably also use one of our different variations on our logo there, but I I would keep it 90% the same. I'm happy with how it's all laid out and everything. Just, yeah, a few little tweaks to colors. So if I end up changing that, I will send it over to you.
Mitchell Davis:You can update it. But we appreciate the people that voted, so that took their time to to vote on it. So thank you. So,
Gavin Tye:Mitch, we're twelve weeks into the podcast. We've been doing this since December. What have you what have you noticed over that twelve week journey of us doing the podcast? Like, where where have you has it gone the way that you thought?
Mitchell Davis:One, loving working together. It's going really well. We had some I've had some stuff going on just on my side of the fence lately that's made it a bit harder to get in and work on six sides, and you and I have been talk I'm not gonna fully go into any of that on here. We don't need to, but you've been really supportive. So in addition to you just being really good with sales and doing outreach and doing all the stuff I don't wanna do, you're also, like, a really good person.
Mitchell Davis:And so that's that's shone through with you reaching out to help. That is something that has been great about working together more closely because you and I have known each other for years now, but it's not like we were speaking every week. So now we are. Doing this podcast is still huge highlight for the week. Forces us to get together, talk about stuff, but it's also fun.
Mitchell Davis:Like, it's good. I'm really enjoying doing this, and I'm glad you were up for doing this as well because I've had other businesses with other business partners. I would have never suggested doing anything like this with with other people before. So that's been good. And then our customers, awesome.
Mitchell Davis:Like, we're yet to have a meeting with anyone that I don't like. You know? Like, everyone's been great and everyone that we talk to almost everyone that we talk to is super excited about what we're doing and, like, how it can help them grow their communities. Like, it's just all around. It's fun.
Mitchell Davis:It's a really fun project to work on, and, you know, we've got these two locked in customers that have paid now and potentially another two really promising customers coming through in the next week, hopefully.
Gavin Tye:Yep.
Mitchell Davis:It's exciting. Things are moving forward, and I'm just really enjoying it. So there's a lot of work to be done, especially over this next month. But after that, it ought to calm down a bit, and I'm just trying to enjoy every second of it. So it's good.
Mitchell Davis:What about you?
Gavin Tye:Oh, good question for you. I think it's pivoted even now in a short time. We had this conversation in December, right, about whether we should do this or not. Yep. It's in a completely different space than where we you originally thought it would be even if over the last six months first six months now.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah.
Gavin Tye:Yeah. How's that been? Because it's completely different.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. Originally, I well, you very quickly were like, no. This isn't an event thing. This is a community thing, and that wasn't what I had in my mind at all when I first put this all together and reached out to you. So that took a little adjusting to do.
Mitchell Davis:I remember when we first got it, like we got our first rejection that didn't our first deal that just kinda didn't eventuate for a few different reasons. I remember speaking to you and that was in over the Christmas New Year's period. I remember speaking to you like, can't we just do an event app? You know? That's just like a no brainer.
Mitchell Davis:Why we gotta add all this community to it? And you were like, well, then there's no point of difference. It's not you just weren't really happy with that. And I kinda had to take that on board, think about it and be like, well, yeah, I think you're right. Like, I do believe in what we're doing and trying to connect people together in a meaningful way and we be that icebreaker or we be that reason for them to go say hello to someone, you know, that they otherwise wouldn't have had the confidence to or the inclination to do.
Mitchell Davis:So I do believe it. I'm very happy that, okay, it feels like we've this business and our platform has a voice, not this podcast, I don't mean, but just like, okay, we have we have a mission. We have something that we're trying to do.
Gavin Tye:We've taken a we've really taken a position in the market. I think where the I think what happens is with businesses is they try to adapt their value proposition to just get a client to buy. Right? Opposed to saying, no. This is our position, and it applies to you in this way.
Gavin Tye:If it doesn't work with you like, we're we're we're about to put a we've marked the position with a potential client now and saying, it's okay if you don't think that way. But because otherwise, you end up being trying to be all these different things to people, and you don't real you're a chameleon opposed to trying to help them with this very specific thing.
Mitchell Davis:So Yeah.
Gavin Tye:Yeah. And I think we've taken a position, and I think it's really important. It's easiest it's easier for us to center ourselves around that position. Right? Yeah.
Gavin Tye:Because we we always know where we are. That's our that's our that's our guiding light. So I think it's really important. Yep. Yeah.
Mitchell Davis:So that's me. What about you?
Gavin Tye:I think I think since December, this is hasn't changed. Like, exactly as soon as we come up with that thing in December and and I'm always looking for we need to have a competitive advantage or have a like, again, have a position in a in a grant. In a red ocean of just an event app, it's quickly it will quickly become a bit frustrating, I think, over time. But now when we find the right person, it's not hard. Even now, like, it should not be hard to find sales.
Gavin Tye:And it's it's not we're not even really trying yet. And it's actually we're getting our foundational clients.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah.
Gavin Tye:Right? And I've been in businesses where it is like pulling teeth a year to find a lead and a year to, like, to to close it out. But, yes, it's high price point, different industries. But it if it's gonna grow into a maybe, look, if we're lucky, $10.20, $30,000,000 business, if we're lucky. Right?
Gavin Tye:Stats are statistics are probably not gonna go that high, but we're we're bloody hopeful. Yeah. It's gotta be somewhat easy. Right? And I think it's been fantastic.
Gavin Tye:Like, just it's fun working on this. Yeah. The challenge we have is we have our other businesses, and I think we're starting to align everything. So we're getting multiple multiples from pieces of work. But, yeah, it's been great.
Gavin Tye:Yeah. It's been great. It's been seeing awesome seeing you iterate and rely on each other for our skills and what others aren't that great. And, you know, personally, I just think just now, you're going through some iterations and and challenges in your business. Yeah.
Gavin Tye:It's only a couple months down the track, and I'll be doing the same, and we'll lean on each other. So, yeah, it's been fun. It's been really good.
Mitchell Davis:Yep. That's good.
Gavin Tye:Yeah. Yep.
Mitchell Davis:I'm I'm very pleased that this has come about, like, I think back to probably August, few months before my talk at LaraCon and just thinking about, like, okay. What app am I gonna build? I'm so glad that this is what I settled on. Yeah. Because it's led to all of this now.
Mitchell Davis:You know? It's the reason we're doing this show. It's because of those decisions made almost a year ago now. It's it's cool. It's really cool to think back how different it could have been.
Gavin Tye:Yeah. When you think about it, like, you know, when they say, oh, look. It's an we're not an overnight success by any stretch of the imagination. That's not what that's not what I'm about to say. But Yeah.
Gavin Tye:Like, we've got initial traction pretty quick, and we've got people. And then people go, oh, that's interesting. They just come up with an idea and execute it. And the reality is is you've been doing your thing for ten or fifteen years before, and I've been doing my thing, and now we've come together. And it's just all that experience is starting is come together.
Gavin Tye:Whether it flanders out in a couple of months or in ten or twenty years, the that is yet to be written.
Mitchell Davis:So Yeah.
Gavin Tye:Yeah. Yep.
Mitchell Davis:Mate, it's very exciting. Final topic that we've got here is wanted to ask you, should you go on other podcasts and be talking about what we're doing? So this is coming from me. This is my ticket on here, specifically calling you out because I think you're probably the more interesting podcast guest between the two of us.
Gavin Tye:Okay.
Mitchell Davis:And, I mean, maybe I could go out some more technical ones. That's totally fine. I'm not anti going on other people's shows. Not at all. But Sure.
Mitchell Davis:I just wondered as a part of this outreach strategy and getting the name out there and stuff, how does that sit with you?
Gavin Tye:Yeah. Look. I don't think it's a think it's a good idea. Thanks for bringing it up. I think there's two different things.
Gavin Tye:One is, are you just going out there to tell people what you're doing, or do you wanna go out there and and help people build community? And I think that that look. Would you go on community building podcast to actually talk about how to get people to connect, but then that's a little bit self promotion.
Mitchell Davis:Yep.
Gavin Tye:The short answer is yes because I have a strategy in Sales Market Fit to do the same Yep. When the time is right. So, yes, the short answer is yes. That one to many and leveraging other other audiences would be ideal. The other one is doing webinars around the topic of helping people build community.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah.
Gavin Tye:Okay. Getting that message out there. So, yes, the short answer is yes. That's a lead generation strategy in time. Yep.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. Cool. Okay. Well, watch this space then. We'll Yeah.
Mitchell Davis:So people update if if and when that happens.
Gavin Tye:Yeah. So the the thing is we're going on who would appeal to what we're trying to do? Right? And when we talk about people Like, we want to help people build community through a different way. That's really appealing to everyone we speak to.
Gavin Tye:But where do those people go? Do they listen to podcasts? And then if we can go to them and we can reach many, we're just not ready for it. We're we're not ready for it yet, but we're close. Yeah.
Gavin Tye:We're close.
Mitchell Davis:So Yeah. Yep. Yep. Okay. Yep.
Mitchell Davis:Maybe over the next six months, you know, as we've got an actual onboarding story for the app and got the dashboard and got all these, like, pieces in place, then we can be thinking about, well, yeah, you're right. Who well, I guess in the meantime, we can already be thinking about it now, but who what would be some good shows to try and get on to to get our message out there. You know?
Gavin Tye:When I think of the technology adoption life cycle, which is you've got your innovators, early early adopters, early majority, late majority laggards. You know? Have you seen that before? Yep. Yep.
Gavin Tye:So it I think we're trying to find the innovators at the moment and the early adopters. Right? Because we haven't got a structured a full onboarding process like that is automated. Yeah. You and so we're just trying to find those people who are who are willing not everyone's willing to give two people a go who were just starting a start up.
Gavin Tye:Right? There's too much risk that comes with that. So if we by all means, once we have this done and we have a few case studies and we can someone can go to our website and go, yeah, let's get started. And we can start even to help them just run a community a small community event, by all means, I will be shouting from the rooftops. Yeah.
Gavin Tye:Going, hey, look, and talking to all these people. So, yeah, for sure. A %. Yeah. We're just not set up for it.
Gavin Tye:Right? Because we do get people interested. They come to us and they're like, oh, we can't go anywhere. Right? You get one shot.
Gavin Tye:I think you get one shot.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. Right now, it would have to be okay. Book a call with you, and it's just yeah. It's a lot of effort. You may not even have time to take on 10 calls.
Mitchell Davis:You know? You got a lot of other stuff going on. So yeah. Anyway Yep. It's I just wanted to get your thoughts on Yep.
Mitchell Davis:If you're up for it. Sounds like you are, but a bit later on.
Gavin Tye:In time. Yeah. Absolutely. For sure. Cool.
Gavin Tye:So this week, mate, what are you working on?
Mitchell Davis:Continuing to work on I I do have probably a majority of my week this week will have to be on client projects that I'm doing for Atlas. I've got some commitments there that I that I need to meet, But I will also in the background, I will probably be working some really long days this week to continue trying to get the the new app up and running and this new infrastructure and everything that we'll talk about next time. So Sure. Yeah. Juggling a few plates, but, yeah, that's what's going on.
Mitchell Davis:I'm just still making a ton of progress as quick as I can towards the new app.
Gavin Tye:Sure. Okay. This week, I'm working on refining our terms and conditions that we we need to get prepared. Yep. And then we got some grants that I think come to a deadline this week.
Gavin Tye:So I'll be working on some government grants for funding Yeah. That that we'll work on. And then yeah. So that should be I think the end of the week is the deadline on that.
Mitchell Davis:So Okay. Right. I had totally forgotten. So, yeah, I'm glad you
Gavin Tye:Me too, mate.
Mitchell Davis:You're right. Yeah. Yeah.
Gavin Tye:Yeah. Yeah. So it's I'll be working, like, evenings this week as well to just to get that stuff out. So
Mitchell Davis:Okay. Well, why don't we talk about that when we next record? Let's add let's have three things that we're gonna go through next time, and I'll I'll get them all set up in Trello more. Sure. We'll chat through what we're thinking about that after you've lodged the application.
Gavin Tye:Yep. And I hope by this week, the end of the week, we'll have some news about some new clients coming on board.
Mitchell Davis:So Fingers crossed. Yeah.
Gavin Tye:Yeah. Fingers crossed. Yep. Alright, mate.
Mitchell Davis:Cool. Alright, mate. Well, where can people find you online?
Gavin Tye:Yep. Easiest place is LinkedIn. I'm Gavin Ty, t y e. You can find me on LinkedIn. Also, have our Six Sides Twitter account.
Gavin Tye:It's only new. We're not really using it too much, but it's there. I check it every day. It's Six Sides Events. And what about you, mate?
Mitchell Davis:Perfect. You can find me, Mitch Dav, on basically everything. LinkedIn, Blue Sky, GitHub, if you like, if you're into that type of thing. We do also have a Blue Sky for six sides. We also have a LinkedIn for six sides.
Mitchell Davis:Mate, we got everything. We got all the accounts. Yep. So you'll find we got a YouTube. We're doing it all.
Mitchell Davis:You know? So we've got all of that. Check it out. We'd love if you'd leave us a rating or review. And if you were walking the dog, again, give us a shout out.
Mitchell Davis:This is your episode. Alright? So
Gavin Tye:Mate, all all all our social links are on our website. Right? So if you just go to 6eyes.co and everything's down there. Yep.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. That's right. Yeah. Yep. I should actually check and make sure that is there might only be a few of them.
Mitchell Davis:We might have we've got more to add now with all these new accounts. Anyway, we'll figure that out. Alright. We will see you all next episode. Thank you.
Gavin Tye:Alright, mate. See you.
Mitchell Davis:See you.
