Hey. I'm Mitchell Davis, a Laravel developer.
Gavin Tye:Hi. I'm Gavin Tye, head of sales and marketing. I'm but I am the only one. So of Six Sides?
Mitchell Davis:The small department. That's a growing department. Yeah. It is growing. We are building 6sides.co.
Mitchell Davis:It's an events platform that helps you build a stronger community through events, and this is our b to b SaaS journey. Mate, how are going?
Gavin Tye:Very well, mate. Very well. How about yourself?
Mitchell Davis:I'm good. I'm a little sad. It seems that we haven't had any reviews since since last week's episode. Yeah. Yep.
Mitchell Davis:A bit disappointed in all of our listeners. Yep. That's okay.
Gavin Tye:Way to way to polarize the audience there.
Mitchell Davis:I'm I'm I'm guilting them into it. Hopefully, next next week.
Gavin Tye:You gotta earn it, mate. You gotta yeah. But we also have to prompt them. So, hey, everyone, if you are listening, all our two listeners, no. We're quite well past that.
Gavin Tye:But We're
Mitchell Davis:more than that.
Gavin Tye:Can we ask you to pause, jump on over to Apple Podcasts, leave us a review Yep. Maybe about Mitch's dulcet tones or something like that. And
Mitchell Davis:Something like that.
Gavin Tye:Yep. And we'd really appreciate it. And, yeah, let us know what you think, what you'd like to hear more. Alright.
Mitchell Davis:Let's see how we go. How how that goes next week. I've got a shout out while we're on this kind of area. I've got a shout out for Dan Herbert
Gavin Tye:Oh, yeah.
Mitchell Davis:From the PHP Australia Slack channel group, whatever. He he reached out to me and said he's been listening, and he had some he actually had some questions because he's interested in doing something in the podcast workflow automation space. He reached out and asked me about my process for doing the editing and the uploading and stuff, and I I fear I gave him way too much information, way more than what he wanted. But I kind of wanted to just, like, front load him and go, okay. Here's all the info that you could possibly ask me so that I could then just move on to the next thing.
Mitchell Davis:And he's like, yeah. I do the same. I front load, info. So we were commiserating there. But, anyway, shout out to Dan, who who's clearly listening.
Gavin Tye:That's not like you to give too much info, mate. Like, when you look at the audio transcript of the podcast, there's large chunks of you going on about all sorts. I I zone out, I'll be honest with you.
Mitchell Davis:No. You do the same thing, though. Sometimes you have, you have your own sections in the edit, but Yeah.
Gavin Tye:Yeah. 20 to one.
Mitchell Davis:Yep. There.
Gavin Tye:Yep.
Mitchell Davis:You got me. Alright. What are we getting into today?
Gavin Tye:Mate, there's a few things. We had a we had a good talk yesterday about, you know, the money, like, where like, how we're gonna when we're gonna start paying ourselves. So a couple of, in my mind, I wasn't expecting us to take a wage from this business for a while. Like, we're only in, the early stages. We did the numbers yesterday, and we're just over $10,000 pre pre product launch.
Gavin Tye:Right? So, we're about to launch our first event, which is at the end of the month, which we'll talk about that that a little later. But the end of the day, we are bootstrapping. Right? We are funding ourselves, and the you're spending a lot of time inside six sides.
Gavin Tye:And to not get paid for that, like, you are gonna suffer from that in your lie like, in your day to day life and vice versa. Right? So we did have a talk about that, and we kinda landed on what, breaking down the percentages of the business and moving forward. Obviously, it doesn't apply going backwards because that money is accounted for, and it was never ours to begin with. It was the businesses businesses.
Gavin Tye:Yeah. We'd landed on, what, 40% will take out our founder wages, and then the rest goes towards business. Right? And yeah.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. So this is kind of, off, we both took a a bit of guidance from the build your SaaS podcast, which we've been talking about a little over the last few weeks. So this doc it's it's a few years old now, but it documents the story of John and Justin at transistor.fm. Yep. And I'll put a link to this specific episode in the show notes here.
Mitchell Davis:If you're curious, you can go listen. But, basically, the the idea that they were talking about and we have now started to use moving forward for any to be clear, this will apply for any future revenue that we make. So that's what you were talking about, Gavin, of we're not it won't be a retroactive thing, is to I think the book is called profit first.
Gavin Tye:Yep. Profit first.
Mitchell Davis:Yep. Do you know who it's by?
Gavin Tye:I think I'll I'll tell you in a second, but but I've got it in my Audible downloads.
Mitchell Davis:You've got it over there. Alright. So the idea, though, so I have not read this book, but I get the gist, I think, which is a typical podcast thing, to not be informed, but to just give an opinion, I guess. Who's a bow?
Gavin Tye:Mike Malowicz.
Mitchell Davis:There you go. Well, shout out to Mike. So basic idea being that okay. Not right.
Gavin Tye:I can't say his last name. Mish Michelowicz. I can't say it.
Mitchell Davis:Oh, dear.
Gavin Tye:You're gonna have to put it in the show notes, mate, because I I
Mitchell Davis:Well, shout out to Mike anyway. It's Mitch
Gavin Tye:Mitchelich or something like that. Okay.
Mitchell Davis:Yep. Alright. Well, we'll shout
Gavin Tye:out Mike. He's listening. No doubt.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. So the basic idea being though that, like, for let's say you're making a thousand dollars in MRR, right, monthly recurring revenue, that you as soon as that money hits your account each month, you basically split it up into different buckets. Right? And you do this as a percentage of the revenue. So it's not like a fixed amount goes towards expenses of, you know, okay, $300 a month of expenses.
Mitchell Davis:Instead, the way you do it is you go, okay. Cool. What we have decided is we're gonna take 40% of any future revenue that we make, and we'll separate that out and basically pay ourselves immediately. And we'll split that because we've got fifty fifty equity.
Gavin Tye:You know? Sure. And so just to to clear on that, we're not that's not an indefinite scale. Right? We were we have a number in mind that will help us transition into full time.
Gavin Tye:And then once we hit that, that's all. That that we stop that. So it's not, hey. We're at 10,000,000. Great.
Gavin Tye:We're taking 40%. That that would be amazing, but we're not we wouldn't do that. So we're just trying to etch up until being able to transition over into the businesses the business, you know, full time, half half time, whatever, part time, whatever it is.
Mitchell Davis:I mean, never say never. Right? I'd take I'd take 50% of 4,000,000 a year. That sounds good. But in the future, presumably, we will have other employees to pay.
Mitchell Davis:Right? So it won't for sure be you and I forever.
Gavin Tye:Yep. So
Mitchell Davis:Absolutely. Anyway, so the the basic idea though is that, okay, we're gonna take this 40%, and that's gonna go towards salaries. And right now, that's you and me. We'll just be paying ourselves Yep. Into the future.
Mitchell Davis:That will be other employees. And and this it's a good framework because it kind of it hones in. It makes you really, like, think through about how much money you can afford to spend. So if we really want to hire someone but we're currently using up that full 40% and there's no, like, extra capacity there because if we brought someone else on, then now you and I don't make any money or or we go back to making, you know, $200 a month or something like that. Like, clearly, we can't afford to hire, which if we weren't putting this cap on it of, say, 40%, and this is a number that will likely change over time.
Mitchell Davis:Right? This is just some numbers that we've come up with now. It forces you to go, okay. This is how much I can actually
Gavin Tye:Yeah.
Mitchell Davis:Afford to spend. It's it's a budget. Right? So that's roughly the number that we've got at the moment for salaries moving forward. And then we're thinking we need to check the exact numbers.
Mitchell Davis:Right? But we know that GST is gonna be, what, 10% or 11% or however that calculation works out. And then despite the fact that I don't think we'll be making a profit as a company for a while because we'll be pulling out a wage, Gavin, you've suggested why don't we also put some aside for company taxes, which as far as I know only applies on profit, end of year profit. So we're doing that. Right now, we don't have, like, a marketing budget or anything like that.
Mitchell Davis:It's just salaries, expenses, which is our infrastructure and any of the software services that we're using and accounting and all of that. It's all kind of lumped into one. So we reckon we're probably at, like, 40% will go towards expenses, about 20% will go towards taxes, and that gets us to to a 100.
Gavin Tye:Yeah. Yep. Bit there's a bit left over there, but that we can put that into the account. Is there?
Mitchell Davis:40 for salaries, 40 for expenses, 20 for taxes.
Gavin Tye:Well, that's still 10 left over. But you said anyway No.
Mitchell Davis:It's not. $40.40, 20.
Gavin Tye:One of us is wrong. So someone who's listening to this, they would figure out either you or I are wrong. I thought it doesn't matter. I thought you added up a little bit off, but Oh, okay. It's again one of those things where I've drifted off.
Mitchell Davis:Clearly.
Gavin Tye:I'm just kidding.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. Damn.
Gavin Tye:Yeah. It's yeah. And by the way, I was telling Mel last night, hey. We're gonna open up a couple more bank accounts and siphon the money out into these different things. And she was like, don't do that.
Gavin Tye:Yeah. She said, get Roman to help you set it up so we can set it up. Because if you do you're splitting things out into different accounts. It means that we've gotta reconcile the accounts at the end of the month. It's just more work.
Gavin Tye:And I was like,
Mitchell Davis:Yes. I know you can do all this kind of thing with Xero's, like, chart of accounts. Yeah. And we're using Xero as our accounting platform.
Gavin Tye:Like Yeah.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. I know you can do this type of thing. It's just it's it's it's a nice visual. I did this when I was first starting doing consulting where I had, like, five bank accounts.
Gavin Tye:Gotcha. Yep.
Mitchell Davis:Five, yeah, five, like, savings accounts where as soon as I got an invoice, like, back then, had a hex debt, so I was putting money straight into that every time I got an invoice and then similar for taxes and whatever. And I Yep. It is a bit of a pain in the butt if you actually take it to that point versus just use your accounting platform. So Yep. Yeah.
Mitchell Davis:I probably agree with Mel.
Gavin Tye:Yeah. She was like, no. No. So it's okay. She's like, she did not like it.
Gavin Tye:I'm like, okay.
Mitchell Davis:We'll defer to her judgment then. Alright.
Gavin Tye:We'll go do it. But an interesting thing has happened in my mindset set shift, right, like about revenue is we were like, okay. We're not gonna take clients. We're not gonna make money from it for a while. We understand.
Gavin Tye:And so that kinda takes the impetus off well, it does two things. One is I've gotta try to sustain living in the house, like, bring in income from the house. Right? Because we have our bills. We have a mortgage and stuff like that.
Gavin Tye:So where my, where I've got a I've got a certain level of income where I've gotta produce a month for us not to go backwards. We have a we have a nest egg in the bank. We've been saving for rainy days and all this kind of stuff, but you don't wanna eat into that if you if you ever could. Right? We've got about we've got about six to twelve months of money there if we need it, but I do not wanna go into it for a month, let alone all that stuff.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah.
Gavin Tye:And and so I was just like, I've gotta get clients for a deal buddy because that's where the money's coming from. And I was like, I've gotta get up to this number. And and I'm I'm and I've been focused on that, and that's working. Right? And then I was like, yes.
Gavin Tye:Six sides will get to it when Mitch is there. And then when we said let's take in income, I was like, okay. My in my mind, without me even doing it, my problem solving brain has gone, okay. Well, let's split. What do we do here?
Gavin Tye:And now that's become more of a priority, which is it's not intentional. It's just how like, I think when we're we're faced with a really significant problem, you just go to that problem solving mode to relieve that stress. And, but now my mind's opened up about, okay. Well, let's think about this. Like, how do we move beyond just an event app?
Gavin Tye:And we had the most we recorded it yesterday. We were potentially gonna share it on on here, but we come up, I think, with an an amazing competitive advantage that we just can't share. Like, it's the secret sauce of what this will be. And I at the end of it, was like, fuck yeah. That's amazing.
Gavin Tye:Yeah. And I'm so keen to call everyone. Like, Holly, if you're listening, I don't wanna keep bombarding you, but I would love to share it with you, like, what our thoughts were to continue to help you beyond us, helping you at at your event. Yeah. And I think it's really interesting to be able to to do that, especially when Holly said, and she she said, like, keep this this is gold is every conference that she starts, they're starting from a standing start, zero momentum, and it feels like they're starting again.
Gavin Tye:And I was like, I think we have a solution for that to to not only stop that from happening, but continue with accelerated momentum.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Totally. Was it was really good.
Mitchell Davis:It was fascinating sitting down and just, like, chatting through it yesterday, and we were both kind of like the the gears are turning in our heads of, okay, how how do we go from this to this, which we think would be better. And, yeah, this solution that we've settled on and a hypothesis that we want to test Yeah. Hopefully over the next twelve months or so. Yep. It's really exciting.
Mitchell Davis:So I'm sorry that it makes for bad audio that we're we're not comfortable sharing at the moment. Maybe we can share, you know, six months down the line, once it's kind of up and running and and we've got a moat that we can defend.
Gavin Tye:We can share the the feedback that we get from businesses
Mitchell Davis:Yeah.
Gavin Tye:About that. And and, like, I I do want like, I only spoke to Holly the other day. As we were doing this yesterday, she wrote to us, and I don't wanna keep bombarding her yet. It's too far away. But we'll test it with Michael, ask you for his feedback, and then for the guys at, Denmark as well.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. Who who we're meeting with later today.
Gavin Tye:Yep. Yep. And Yes. Side note, I haven't told you, I got an invite to a conference that a really big conference here in Brisbane to go and go around and make observations and and put a report together.
Mitchell Davis:So Yeah. Cool. Okay.
Gavin Tye:Can help. And I'll get a lot of this to them.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. That's another strategy that we're trying to pursue. Right? So
Gavin Tye:Yep. Yep. That's awesome. To do. Yeah.
Gavin Tye:Yep. Alright. Great. That's brilliant. So that percentage chat did lead into something else, and now it's opened up to, like, okay.
Gavin Tye:Well, how can we actually sustain how can we build a sustainable revenue model? And I really think that we've I I it feels like we found it.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. Yeah. Because something that we're, like, considering is that with our current model, if we only go after annual events, then it's very likely going to be annual revenue. Right? And Yep.
Mitchell Davis:We'll just get paid once from, Michael or Holly, and then that's it for the year. And, I mean, I would much prefer to have stable, like, monthly recurring revenue. You know, people get paid more on that cycle and all of our expenses are on that cycle. Like so that was kind of the the decision the discussion rather that we were having yesterday, and that's kind of how we then cottoned on to a a different way of thinking about this.
Gavin Tye:Well, when you think about our mission is to help purpose driven businesses build community through events, events, like, not event. Right? So it doesn't that framework and that structure pricing model does not support the mission. Mhmm. Yeah.
Gavin Tye:So but it does it's an iterative process. And, yeah, at the moment, we're just trying to get something ready for what we have.
Mitchell Davis:We have. Yeah.
Gavin Tye:Yeah. We've got something ready for an event.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. So why don't we transition into that? So some good news. The iOS app has been approved and is now publicly available. So you could go to the App Store now and download it.
Mitchell Davis:Just search for six sides. I'm gonna get a link up on the website on our website in the next over the next few days, let's say, to be able to go download it straight from our website. So that's really cool. Very pleased with how that's all gone. We're able to get some early feedback from Rasmus on the Laravel Live Denmark team.
Mitchell Davis:Yep. And now we're meeting with them at this time of recording in, like, another six hours or so, six, seven hours. So we're gonna sit down and go through their feedback with them and then because at this point, their event is now two weeks away. I've got a calendar thirteen days away, so it would have started yesterday in two weeks. So Okay.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. So that's really exciting. We're gonna go through all of that with them. Still waiting on let me refresh Google now, but I believe we're still waiting on Google to approve the changes, and this is exactly what happened last year at LariCon AU. So, yep, changes are still in review.
Mitchell Davis:So I'm going to prompt them again, Google support, to say, hey. Can you please do this? Super it's really annoying, to be honest. Like, the fact that, okay, Apple can approve this. I think it took them maybe thirty hours to do.
Mitchell Davis:Mhmm. And Google now is at, like, a hundred and twenty hours or something like that. It's been four, five days. So, yeah, it's a bit frustrating. Anyway so yeah.
Mitchell Davis:So that's all looking really good. There's still plenty of time for that app to get approved, and then we're rolling out some updates to the app as well, and they can just go out over the air. So that means it doesn't have to go through Google and Apple review. It's just like it's instant so we can roll out.
Gavin Tye:What's the what's what's the line in the sand that makes it go through review opposed to over there? So
Mitchell Davis:it is interesting. It's if you make any changes to like, it's it's hard to explain. I actually went through it in my talk last year, which I'll I'll put in the show notes, my talk on building mobile apps. But for for expo apps, which is just the framework that we're building the mobile app in, it's it's got two parts to it. It's got a native part, and that has, like, all of the actual, like, the down as low level possible code that actually runs on your phone, and that's written in I don't know the languages, but, like, it's written in Swift, I think, for iPhones, and it's written in Java or Kotlin or one of these other things for
Gavin Tye:Select the foundation or the structure
Mitchell Davis:is always Exactly. Yeah. It's like it's like giving you the structure of the car. Right?
Gavin Tye:Yep.
Mitchell Davis:That stuff, if you make any changes to that, so we bring in some new package, for example, some new bit of code which now allows us to use Bluetooth or something like that. Right. Something that, like, interacts with the actual hardware or the operating system on the phone that requires a new build of the app. Sure. And that then goes through review.
Gavin Tye:Okay.
Mitchell Davis:But to continue with the car What's that called? Analogy. Analogy? Yeah. What's the other one?
Mitchell Davis:What's the m one? Metaphor. Metaphor. Yeah. Thank you.
Mitchell Davis:Total mind blank. To continue with the analogy or metaphor, I don't know which one's right. If we just wanna change, like, one of the the car seats, you know, to look a little different or whatever, we wanna give it a coat of paint or whatever, that's not changing the stuff that's happening, like, under the hood. Gotcha. Alright?
Mitchell Davis:So we can ship out those updates, and Google and Apple don't even know about it. Like, it's not their concern. Okay. We just need to get the the structure of the car approved, and then we can do whatever we need after.
Gavin Tye:It's just like getting an extension put on your house. You're gonna get council to come Otherwise, if you wanna paint it, they don't give a shit.
Mitchell Davis:Exactly. Yeah. That's right. That's good analogy. Gotcha.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. Nice. So we are rolling out some updates. Some of the things that Rasmus has identified in this feedback, like, he's he's given it must be, like, 10 to 15 dot points in this list. So he's been really thorough.
Mitchell Davis:So, Rasmus, if you are listening, thank you, and I'll I'll tell you this even if you're not on on the call later. So it's clear he sat down and really gone through, and he's trying to help us make this as good as possible for his attendees at his event. So, yeah, that's really nice to see. It means I've got a little bit more work to do to go through and get that ready for them, but we've still got time. I've got two weeks to to get that all sorted.
Mitchell Davis:So it's good. It's it's been a really, like, big week for the business. Right? Because we've gone through and we talked about money. We've shifted this strategy that we've got.
Gavin Tye:We've evolved.
Mitchell Davis:We've got.
Gavin Tye:We haven't shifted, and we've evolved it. Just Sure. Just just for people who are listening, we haven't shifted. We've just evolved.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. Okay. Let's just yeah. And then we have we've got the iOS app out. So, yeah, it's like this is really big.
Mitchell Davis:It's a big week for us, so it's a milestone.
Gavin Tye:Yep. And now it's just get started to configure for for Denmark. Right? So yeah.
Mitchell Davis:Well, more than that. It's it's done. So I actually well, it's it's 90% of the way there. So yesterday, I went through and set up fortunately, this is a good thing of working with developers is the team at Laravel Live Denmark. They had all of their information about the list of talks and who the speakers are and their sponsors.
Mitchell Davis:They had these YAML files,
Gavin Tye:which is
Mitchell Davis:like a
Gavin Tye:I love YAML.
Mitchell Davis:I love YAML. You got no idea what it is. Think of it like a spreadsheet.
Gavin Tye:Like a camel.
Mitchell Davis:A little bit. Think of it like a spreadsheet, but you can do a lot more things inside of it. You can have, like, rows inside of rows and stuff like that. So it's a little tricky, but whatever. But it's not a great analogy.
Mitchell Davis:So so Let's make
Gavin Tye:a name for a shirt, six sides. Yamal the camel.
Mitchell Davis:Yamal the camel. We can do that. That's that's our first merch character.
Gavin Tye:Yeah. Yeah.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. I like it. Yep. So they sent those through a week or so ago, plus also all their all of their ticket codes. And I got all of those imported in yesterday, sent the link off to them, and then they couldn't log in.
Mitchell Davis:Nobody could log in to the app. And then, frustratingly, the issue was that when I copied over all of their ticket codes, they had at the and I don't I'm not putting this on them, but just it somehow happened to be that at the end of each of these ticket codes when I pasted them into the database, because for now, I'm just manually putting all the stuff in the database, It included, like, a new line character at the end of each ticket code. And so that meant when and save that in the database. And that meant when someone tried to log in, Lara will actually, which we're using for our back end, it actually strips, like, new lines and stuff. It it does a trim of strings.
Mitchell Davis:And, Gavin, I know your eyes are probably rolling over, but it, like, gets rid of that stuff for you for any requests that are coming in. And so that means that it was no one was ever gonna be able to log in as long as the data in the database is bad. So when I realized that's what was happening, this was at, like, 11PM last night, 10:30, something like that. I'm talking with the with the Denmark team in Slack, and I'm like, this doesn't make any sense. And then I even logged out and tried to log in with one of their codes.
Mitchell Davis:I got the same issue. So it wasn't anything they were doing, and then I checked the database, and sure enough, I I just copied it in wrong. So got that all sorted, and then instantly, Rasmus was able to get in, and, yeah, that's when he left me all this this feedback.
Gavin Tye:So Yeah. Okay. Awesome. Okay.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. It's good. It's nice to have some really passionate customers with this, you know, and it's clear that they wanna make this event as good as as possible for them. So
Gavin Tye:Yeah. I'm willing to make people passionate too. Right?
Mitchell Davis:Well, that's that's true. Yeah. All of sudden, with time big period of, like, okay. Everything's, like, nice and calm from both sides, us and them. Right?
Mitchell Davis:And then now, okay, the event's two weeks away, and, oh my god, it's time. So there's a lot of feedback coming through. So, yeah, it's it's all good, though. We're we're really stoked and and can't wait to to have the app in the hands of all of their attendees, and, hopefully, it gets a good good amount of usage. Right?
Gavin Tye:Yeah. Yeah. Good. Awesome job. Yeah.
Gavin Tye:It's a so what would happen if if it was me and I was running an event, I wouldn't produce I wouldn't present this data in Yammerata. I would just send you a spreadsheet. Then you've gotta actually take it, do whatever you need to do with it.
Mitchell Davis:Yes. You as a nondeveloper, you would give me a spreadsheet of this information, or you would just tell me, hey. The schedule's up on the website. Right? And then I would go and do that.
Mitchell Davis:And to be clear, that is only the case right now. Yep. As soon as we have the dashboard fully functional, like, have a web dashboard, but it doesn't it hardly does anything at the moment. Right? Yep.
Mitchell Davis:You can log in to it, and that's it, basically. So the plan will be, though, that everyone will self configure their own events. So we won't be doing that this sort of stuff for long, but, you know, you have often talked about do stuff that doesn't scale initially, and this is, I guess, a part of that. Right? So Yep.
Gavin Tye:Yep. Okay. Hey. So we listened to b to b sat like build your SaaS
Mitchell Davis:The SaaS.
Gavin Tye:Yeah. From Transistor, and they had a topic of the week that they really spoke about, one main topic, and I think that's actually pretty good. And the one that I heard them say was their fears, and I thought that was an interesting topic to talk about. So I think I slightly touched on it before, but, yeah, I I think that's a good topic to talk about. Like, what are your like, what are our fears in starting this business or if it goes wrong or whatever else?
Gavin Tye:Right? And so yeah.
Mitchell Davis:That's funny because I thought our topic for this week was the the budget, the percentages, and stuff. So that's why we talked about it first.
Gavin Tye:Okay. So let's start out again. So a couple of topics that we wanna talk about. Yeah.
Mitchell Davis:We'll start doing this. We'll get better at this Yeah. Over the next few episodes.
Gavin Tye:Well, they do talk about many things, but they have one topic that they yeah. Anyway but it we don't have to copy them.
Mitchell Davis:But No. No. But the it's the right idea, though, of just having, and we to be clear, we've been doing this for the last few weeks of trying to, like, sit down and actually have some structure instead of just loosey goosey because it makes for way better audio. Right? So, hopefully, you have noticed and are liking this.
Mitchell Davis:But, yes, this will be the second topic for this episode, and then we're gonna try and be fairly
Gavin Tye:got another topic after this. So
Mitchell Davis:Oh my god.
Gavin Tye:Yeah. Look at
Mitchell Davis:Might have to save it for next week, man.
Gavin Tye:Chapters in there.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. I do I do. I do. Alright. Go on.
Mitchell Davis:Hit us with the topic.
Gavin Tye:Fears. What what are your fears, like, with starting a business, with running multiple businesses and with six sides and and all that kind of stuff?
Mitchell Davis:Can I tell you about a nonbusiness fear? Is that alright? Spider if I get a little little personal. No. Not spiders.
Mitchell Davis:I I mean, I don't love them, but no. Sure. I don't like deep water.
Gavin Tye:Okay.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. It's just like a thing. I don't eat seafood. Okay. And I don't really know why that is.
Mitchell Davis:I don't like the smell of it.
Gavin Tye:Do you mean in a in a in a pool or out in the ocean?
Mitchell Davis:In the ocean. Okay. Oh, I'm fine in a pool. That's fine. But I just like I'm a bit I'm not scared of heights.
Mitchell Davis:I'm not like space doesn't freak me out or whatever. It's like, that's all cool. But, yeah, I don't know what it is, but just like deep water, I'm like
Gavin Tye:Yeah.
Mitchell Davis:Don't like it. I just never have. So it was a big deal to go on a cruise for me when I was, like, 20. I went with with some mates for, like, a New Year's cruise. Yeah.
Mitchell Davis:And that went all the way out to New Caledonia and and Ouatu, and it's like a ten day thing. And I was like in the first day or so, I was a bit freaked out about being so out on the water. And, like, if this thing sinks or whatever, I'm screwed. Like, it was just ugh. Anyway, I got over it, but I still that's like if you ask me for fears that aren't business y, that's the top one for me.
Gavin Tye:Mate, that's a interesting one. I'm I'm I'm okay if I can see underwater, but I learned to scuba dive in Sydney Harbor. And Oh. We had to swim out to the boat, and the water at Sydney Harbor's murky. And for some reason, I was so petrified.
Gavin Tye:But as soon as I dove underwater, I was fine. Oh. Yeah. Yeah. But I I really wanna go swimming and then having, like, the humpback whales, which are they go off the coast here, is have them swim through it.
Gavin Tye:Like but you have to be in, obviously, deep water for that. But, yeah, I know not to bring you along.
Mitchell Davis:Oh, yeah. I would I mean, I like the idea of it. I think I would not be a good fit for that. So yeah.
Gavin Tye:So so Okay. To business. Yeah. What what what are your fears?
Mitchell Davis:I fear wasting time.
Gavin Tye:Okay.
Mitchell Davis:So that this all won't work and lead to success, and we only have so many years, right, of our lives. So I'm really hoping that we are that we have created the right team, you and I. Right? And that we've picked the right market. I mean, initial signs are good.
Mitchell Davis:Right? But I'll I'll feel a lot more confident that, okay, this thing is going to go well hopefully a year from now when we've got 10 times the revenue that we've done so far. Like so everything's looking good, but, yeah, I I mean, it is still a fear that it it won't work out. Right? Yep.
Mitchell Davis:Yep. I fear letting people down, like, with new technology if there's a bug in the app and that prevents someone from being able to get in or something like that. Like, it's that's a worry. That's the last thing I want. Right?
Mitchell Davis:Mhmm. Apart from that, I feel like if you and I have some sort of issue that grows between us, that will really suck. Yeah. I don't think I have any other fears. It's just about all, like, what if things go wrong?
Mitchell Davis:You know? Then that's that's a bummer, and I hope that that doesn't happen. Right? Yeah. What about you?
Gavin Tye:I fear. So I grew up in housing commission, right, which I've I've talked to you about. And I fear I worry about not being able to well, when I grew up, I didn't have a dad around. Right? And so I never I always remember as a kid, and it was a it's a weird thing that I was, I was like, I know I don't have a dad, and that's okay.
Gavin Tye:And I knew there was things I didn't know that would affect me. And, and I thought it's okay because I'll get a check second chance of this when I have kids. And it was and, like, I was, like, 10 when I thought of that. And it was it was interesting that I I never really understood it until now becoming a dad. And so it's really I don't I don't worry about failure like what you what's like, I I'm sorry.
Gavin Tye:I do worry about failure in a different way, but I'm I try to learn. Like, I've failed so many times, and I fucked up so many times in my life, but I've always learned from them and move forward. If it if I meant to fuck up, I meant to fuck up. Right? Like, I went bankrupt a few long time ago.
Gavin Tye:Just some houses went the wrong way, and and it was I was I was actually on my honeymoon when we sat down and went, like, we gotta deal with it. We can't actually let this go on any further. And so Mel signed up for a bloody a good journey. Right? Get married when when that happened.
Mitchell Davis:She was off. Yeah.
Gavin Tye:But but it was really confronting. But at the end, I was like after I went through it, I was like, okay. How can I how can I use this as to an advantage or or or learn from it? So during the time of that period, I actually did an MBA and said, I'm never gonna let this happen again. And, I got an MBA in entrepreneurship, and the day I graduated was the day I left my other job and started kind of sales market fit.
Gavin Tye:And so my fear is letting people down, letting my family down because we are doing things that haven't been done before, or I've never been done before. I'm trying to learn something that I don't know, some of the things we need to learn. Worries me. I don't ever want to be seen as a failure in my kid's eyes or do something that's irreparable. Right?
Gavin Tye:Yeah. That that's my biggest fear. So and I wanna be the dad that I didn't have. So yeah.
Mitchell Davis:I think that's admirable.
Gavin Tye:Yep. Yep. And that and that does like, some of this is having courage to do stuff. Like, the kids don't understand. I actually sat down with Harper on the board the other day and walked out the value model of the value model of what we're trying to do with the business is having these layers of value in in this business and the other business.
Gavin Tye:Yeah. And she's what does this mean, dad? And so we sat down, and I've got a whiteboard marker out. And she doesn't understand it, but at least someone's taken the time. No one ever did that for me.
Mitchell Davis:So Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's something that I like, I I think that's very sweet. That's something that I want to do with our hopeful kids is not to, like, enforce on them any sort of learning programming or anything like that software stuff, but just, like, exposing them to it of, like, hey.
Mitchell Davis:This is actually a really creative and, like, fun thing. You know? Because when I talk with Nicole, my fiancee, or her sister, Jessica, about what I do, I think they kind of just think, like, it just sounds really boring to them, but I would love to be able to show them, like that show kids, no. This is actually really fun. Like, you can do a lot of Yeah.
Mitchell Davis:It's super creative what you can do. So
Gavin Tye:Mel Mel's father's a he's a pretty skilled, developer. Right? He was a jester. Yeah. He does a he does some back end stuff that he just doesn't understand what we're doing because he's not that type of developer.
Gavin Tye:But Yeah. We have a plan when they're older. He's gonna teach him code development. Cool. That's his goal.
Gavin Tye:That's his that's his role, and he's gonna Yeah. Yeah. So
Mitchell Davis:because even if, like, for for anyone out there who's maybe got kids, like, even if they're not you're not necessarily like pushing them to become a software developer, you can do a lot more Yeah. For yourself if you know how to write some level of code. Yep. And sure, chatty pity and stuff and the way all this AI is, it's probably going to mean, okay. You don't have to do this stuff yourself.
Mitchell Davis:You can just ask the AI, whatever. But, like, there's some really powerful unlocks. One of my mates just recently has been he doesn't matter what he does, but he's in Excel, like the spreadsheets in spreadsheets, and he's just recently been asking about pivot tables. And one of my other mates who also works in an office and also does a lot of spreadsheet stuff just, like, sat down and explained how to do pivot table stuff with him.
Gavin Tye:Yep.
Mitchell Davis:And that's really cool to see, like, oh, okay. If you give normal people, quote, unquote, you know, nontechnical people, give them the tools to be able to do some, like, level of automation. Right? It's really powerful. Yeah.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. Yeah. Programming is that on steroids.
Gavin Tye:Yeah. Yep. So going back to what you were saying with your fears and my fears, there's a few things. One is I think we resolve conflict pretty well. Yesterday, we had a talk about some stuff and it was like, okay, Well, look.
Gavin Tye:Glad you brought it up, and let's have a conversation about it. And I don't think it's a it ends up being a nonissue. Right?
Mitchell Davis:Yep. Absolutely.
Gavin Tye:Opposed to who knows? Maybe we just sit on it and it festers in the background. And then one doesn't matter, but you get ten, twenty, 30 of those things, and then they're all of a sudden, there's there's underlying conflict that is not just one thing. It's many different things.
Mitchell Davis:Exactly. And that's what I wanted to avoid. I think so far, we've had maybe two conversations like that. I I honestly don't remember what the first one was. No.
Mitchell Davis:No. I don't remember either. I feel like we've we've done some conflict resolution before. Yeah. We talked about it on on here.
Mitchell Davis:I don't remember when, but definitely. It's now happened twice, I think. And the fact that I literally don't remember whatever the last one was about is, like, a really good sign.
Gavin Tye:Yeah. Yeah. I don't remember either. I I vaguely remember it was something, but it's just shows that it was dealt with and moved forward. Right?
Mitchell Davis:Exactly. Yeah. And that feels really healthy, and I try to do that in all my relationships. I do that with Nicole as well. Like, we we try really hard and have always tried hard to just if there's a problem, at most, talk about it the next day.
Mitchell Davis:Like
Gavin Tye:Yeah.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. Never let it sit for a week or whatever because it's just awful. You just it's festering. Exactly. That's the right word.
Mitchell Davis:So Yep. Anyway
Gavin Tye:And I also and I I think about wasting time, like, one of the things that I see people do is they fear about wasting time, so they try to move too quick without actually learning fundament the fundamental problem or addressing the fundamental issue. So I feel like we're in exactly this right place that we should be. Right? And and I'm comfortable that we will make some missteps along the way. We'll always you can't not do it.
Gavin Tye:And Yeah. As long as you don't make the same stuff twice, like, say, mistake twice, I think. Yeah. And I worry about so what I'm trying to do with I could talk to Deal Buddy and Sales Market Fit because I've been around in that a lot longer, is if I had to try to go real fast and not waste time and build DealBuddy, if it was available back in 2020, I would have fucked up. I would have wasted too much money.
Gavin Tye:It wouldn't have worked. Right? But just getting the strategy right first and then that the direction right and then building on that, I think, yeah, I think that's really hard to beat if you've get it right. Right? I think that that's hard to compete against, for others potentially if we get it right.
Gavin Tye:Yeah.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. It's a moat. Right? So it it does feel like we've got who knows? It could all fall over.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. Yeah. It feels like we do have the right foundation. I got amazing feedback at LaraCon last year running effectively the first version of this. And instantly, like, when I came to you with the idea and we talked about it, you're like, I think you've really cottoned onto something here.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. And it was because I was I put a lot of thought into, okay, how can I make this the best experience for attendees primarily is who I was thinking of, and we've now evolved that to be all the sides had a community? But it it feels like we we've got the right Yeah. Mission and the right approach here for what we're trying to do. So that's not even on my mind anymore as far as, like, gotta have the right Sure.
Mitchell Davis:Idea and the right approach because it feels like we've that's already been settled six months ago now. You know? So now that fear of not wanting to waste time is more just about like, okay. I hope that this actually resonates, that there's enough of a market for our particular viewpoint, and can we reach them effectively? Like, all of that sort of stuff.
Gavin Tye:Yep. Well, that that'll lead into just what I'm my next topic in a moment. But I think in in observing you, you like, in our relationship over the last probably four years, at at least maybe five now Yep. Is you've learned from your mistakes too because you had a you have another platform. And Yeah.
Gavin Tye:Although it was it feels like it's technically sound and superior, like, excellent, you you didn't pay attention to the go to market strategy of it and the kind of market, maybe evolved or went in another direction. Yeah.
Mitchell Davis:Kind of feels like it got left behind.
Gavin Tye:Yeah. Yeah. It got overtook, and then it was like, okay. Well, like, you you're like, I'm not gonna do that mistake again. Like, you say like, again, you've you've had something that was technically sound at LaraCon, and then Yeah.
Gavin Tye:What you were missing was the go to market or the competitive strategy. And it was like, now even yesterday, when we're talking about it, I think your your thinking of it and then my well, I wouldn't say how I feel like the the market will react to this or or or how to position it in the market. I think our combined effort there is is definitely stronger than individually. Like and I'm and to be honest, I'm feeling this at Deal Buddy not having you there. Like because I'm dealing with a an agency, and they're doing what I'm asking, but they're just doing what I'm asking.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. They're not contributing.
Gavin Tye:And I don't know what I should be asking. And I'm like, this is not a one plus one equals four. This is a one plus one equals two in Deal Buddy. But Deal Buddy's fantastic, but it's definitely not it's not the same dynamic as what we have here. So
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, we can we'll continue to talk about that. So Yeah.
Mitchell Davis:Okay. Right. I think that covers our fears. Right?
Gavin Tye:Yeah. Absolutely. And and to be just to round that out is we'll always be conscious of like, I'm conscious of that, and I'm conscious of your I'm conscious of your fears, and I don't want to have I don't wanna have decon unconstructive friction between you and I. Right?
Mitchell Davis:Yeah.
Gavin Tye:Like yeah. I think there's some friction is fine, but not long lasting. Right? So
Mitchell Davis:yeah. Completely. And just never hire a yacht if we do any parties or whatever in the future.
Gavin Tye:Or we'll give you a set of floaties that you can do.
Mitchell Davis:Give me a shark proof net and, you know, whatever. I'll be right.
Gavin Tye:Yep. Yep.
Mitchell Davis:So some other things as we as we wrap up, you've started a well, not started, but you have started recently adding videos to your YouTube channel.
Gavin Tye:Yeah. I have. I'm documenting my side of the journey on YouTube, Brian. Like and it's more around how do I navigate building both business from businesses from my perspective without a technical background? Mhmm.
Gavin Tye:And that's I actually saw a really interesting video, yesterday on diary diary of a CEO with Steven Butler. He had Alex, Cody Sanchez, and, Daniel Priestley on there. And, it's a it's many, many different kernels of value, and I was almost taking notes. But there was one where she spoke about, Cody spoke about a lot of people are doing volume now. Like, a lot of people doing volume lead generation, and they say they're working, but they're actually more lazy than ever.
Gavin Tye:And so she said, what about if you were doing, say, 15,000 leads or all the effort that you would have put into that? She said, why don't you just investigate five deep dive into companies instead of asking them, do they want a report of you or something? Why don't you do it and just send it to people? And Yeah. You know?
Gavin Tye:But targeting the top the top of businesses around this. And I was like, why why don't we do that? Like, there is there is no reason for us not to do that. So, again, we're starting lead gen. There's a few different areas of what we'll do.
Gavin Tye:We're looking to leverage your your profile for the more the developer community or developer events, because you you will resonate with them better, but we will still do the same. And and I'm gonna run this as a as a internal project. So I'll report on this internally here over the next few weeks Yep. Or months or so. And then, on my YouTube channel, I'll document that.
Gavin Tye:I'm doing a video a day. It's only a three or four or five minute video. It's not that long. But I'm going to, you know, document that to hold myself accountable for me managing two businesses and, like, for us documenting this for us because we're different
Mitchell Davis:Yeah.
Gavin Tye:We're in different states. It's kind of the same thing, but slightly different.
Mitchell Davis:It's cool, yeah, that you've got you this is like an outlet, I guess, similar to having this show, right, where we're talking Mhmm. Primarily about Six Sides. Right? This is your outlet then for you personally. Right?
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. Yep. So that's cool. Do you find it challenging so far? You've done three videos, I think.
Mitchell Davis:Right?
Gavin Tye:I've done four.
Mitchell Davis:Oh, you've done four now?
Gavin Tye:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Mitchell Davis:Yep. So I've done How do you find it?
Gavin Tye:Yeah. It's okay. There's plenty to talk about, but I wanna make sure it's con like, it's
Mitchell Davis:It's useful.
Gavin Tye:It's useful for others. So, I was just recording on my phone, but I went back to Riverside today. And then Riverside can actually they just made a, like, a a thumbnail that I wasn't using before. And I was like, oh, that's okay. I'll put that on there.
Gavin Tye:So see how that goes. But, again, like, some people are watching. Like, I've got some subscribers over the last few days. Like, I guess you subscribe, but then I've had a couple today already. So Nice.
Gavin Tye:I'm working that to try to build community. Right?
Mitchell Davis:So Mhmm. Yep. It all comes back to the community. Well done. Well played.
Gavin Tye:Yep. Well played.
Mitchell Davis:Yep. Excellent. Alright, mate. Why don't we wrap it up there then? Yep.
Mitchell Davis:Next week, we're gonna try and talk about our vision, mission, and our values. Mhmm. We did get into some of that yesterday when we had a separate recording, but we're just kinda gonna flesh that out a bit. So stay tuned for next week where we'll go through some of that and try and make that our topic. And hopefully, next week as well, we can report on that the Android app should be up.
Mitchell Davis:So Yep. Look forward to that. And, yeah, Gavin, where can people find you online?
Gavin Tye:Yeah. You can find me on LinkedIn at Gavin Ty. Or, again, if you're still listening to this, hopefully, you'll like it. You can write to us at Journey at Six Sides if you've got any, feedback, if you've got any questions. Or if it's not too much trouble, please take a minute to leave us a review on Apple or or give us a star rating on Spotify, whatever you're listening to.
Mitchell Davis:That would be awesome. Yep. And you can find Gavin on, YouTube as well.
Gavin Tye:Oh, yeah. Actually yeah. What? I just talked about that. Yeah.
Gavin Tye:Oh, these These videos are on YouTube anyway. Right? So but They are.
Mitchell Davis:And we get, like, one view per video. It's probably you.
Gavin Tye:We're a sleeper cell, mate. We're yeah.
Mitchell Davis:We're an overnight We had a high point of four, I think, was our highest. I think that was the one with Michael. So Yeah. Right. Anyway, it only takes it I was explaining to Dan Herbert who reached out earlier, but, yeah, it takes me about twenty minutes from start to finish to edit and upload and get everything done.
Mitchell Davis:So Yeah. It's not that big a deal having YouTube. But, yeah, anyway alright. Well, you can find me at Mitch Dev everywhere, LinkedIn and Twitter and Blue Sky, and I'm all over the shop. I do have YouTube as well, actually.
Mitchell Davis:But yeah. But
Gavin Tye:you're swimming in the ocean and stuff. Right?
Mitchell Davis:No. Not quite. I when I move into this new office, the idea behind moving into that office is so that I can record videos and have a nicer, like, backdrop and stuff. Because if you're on YouTube right now, you'll see in here it's a bit cramped, and it's not a great backdrop.
Gavin Tye:So Casting couch and all that kind of stuff
Mitchell Davis:seems lovely. Exactly. Yeah. That's that's the look I'm going for.
Gavin Tye:Mate, I see we got a few videos. Like, we don't have a lot of views. Let's be honest. People don't know who we are, but there's, you know, a couple of fives. One one video here of us talking about OpenAI and Cursor has 34 duration of watching, and it's a it's a
Mitchell Davis:That's exciting.
Gavin Tye:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Mitchell Davis:A lot. Very good. Well, maybe a bit more of that then in the future. We will see. Alright.
Mitchell Davis:Well, thank you very much for listening, and we will catch you all next week.
Gavin Tye:Be good, mate.
Mitchell Davis:See you.