Hey. I'm Mitchell Davis, a Laravel developer.
Gavin Tye:My name is Gavin Tye, sales and marketing for Six Sides.
Mitchell Davis:We are building sixsides.co. It's an events platform that helps you build a stronger community through events. And this is our b to b SaaS journey. How are you, mate?
Gavin Tye:Mate, very well. How are you?
Mitchell Davis:I'm good. I'm, I'm feeling a lot better. I still have a cough. Hopefully, my voice sounds a bit better than the last few episodes. Yeah.
Mitchell Davis:Thank you for bearing with us. Yeah. Hopefully. I don't know. We'll see.
Mitchell Davis:But, yeah, I am, feeling better, and I'm back fully operational. So it's good. It's good stuff.
Gavin Tye:Made lots of progress on the app this week, mate, which we're talking about today. And, yeah, it's been amazing. We have a chat in the morning. You go leave it with me. I'll come back to you in the afternoon and go, oh, shit.
Gavin Tye:He's quick. Yeah.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. It's good. When I'm on, I can be really on. When I'm not so on, it's, like, dreadful. So, anyway, yeah, we will get to that.
Mitchell Davis:But, we've got a topic to go through upfront. We're gonna run through starting a podcast for lead generation. So what's going on there? What have you got planned?
Gavin Tye:Well, so we run a couple of different businesses, both of us. Right? Where we run we're doing our b to b SaaS journey, but it's not for our target clients. It's really just for us to document our journey and something will come of it in the future, I think. You know?
Gavin Tye:When you're famous, right, you're the world most world world famous Laravel developer. And you're saying, Hey, look, I've actually got a podcast. And then it goes Bunta. Yeah.
Mitchell Davis:Right.
Gavin Tye:In my experience, lead generation and finding clients is only getting harder. Right? Digital lead gen, you know, cold email outreach, all that kind of stuff using LinkedIn. It's getting swamped because of AI and it's becoming really, unpersonalized or as much as people are trying to personalize lead generation, it's really, really it's you can see straight through it. Right?
Gavin Tye:So one of the things we're doing is we're gonna pivot. We're gonna, oh, not pivot. We're also gonna continue our B2B SaaS journey because we're doing it for different reasons, namely for us to check-in weekly and share what we're doing on either side of the fence because we don't live in the same city. But we're gonna start a, a podcast for actual our target audience or to help our target audience first and foremost is to add value back to that community and hopefully build a reputation, get people to go, oh, that's an interesting podcast. Who are these guys?
Gavin Tye:Oh, six sides. Never heard of it. Go and have a look at it. Wow. I want to actually learn more from these guys.
Gavin Tye:That's the very first, like that's a very fast workflow of what that may look like. Right? So, I'm also going to be doing that for founders collective because that is starting to get steam in in the founders community, which I'll talk about that in a second. But basically the podcast we're gonna start for six sides is gonna be called change makers. And it's about how everyday leaders create extraordinary impact, which aligns with our purpose and our values of our business anyway.
Gavin Tye:Right? So we want to, we want to get, we want them to share stories of successes and, and what they're doing to build stronger communities. And that could be for organizers, founders, or business leaders, or just leaders in the community. And, so we wanna dive into their journey and hopefully others can learn from that and we can learn from them. And then who knows?
Gavin Tye:Maybe something will come out of it for six sides. Like, something will. Right? Yeah. Yeah.
Gavin Tye:So I'm really looking forward to that. And and that will also help people drive people to our events through growth newsletter, because we'll do it through Substack. So it will indirectly grow our six sides community. So, yeah, just a middle of tying all that together. It's been has a mix of short and medium term strategy here.
Gavin Tye:So yeah.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. Yep. Right. It's really exciting. It's cool to see, like, when you were telling me this morning before we started recording them, you got all these different things going on that you're doing for six sides to help try and grow our community.
Mitchell Davis:It's awesome to see. Yeah. It's really encouraging because like, yeah, I'm I'm making a lot of progress at the moment on the app. You're doing a lot in this space. This does kinda lead towards marketing.
Mitchell Davis:Like, this is a lead gen strategy. Right? Yeah. And the podcast and tying it in with Substack, trying to grow a newsletter, all that sort of stuff. It's cool.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. It's really cool to see it all kind of happening all at once. It's awesome.
Gavin Tye:Half the challenge with with a new business is standing start of momentum or getting people to know who you are. Right? And so it's always it's almost always one to one in the beginning. That's why it's so hard to get, momentum because as soon as you stop doing any type of lead generation or marketing and, and look, to be honest, as a bootstrap business, we don't have a marketing budget that is probably third or fourth on our list of something to do. Right.
Gavin Tye:Hopefully the grant, which we're still waiting on, which we're becoming up close to hearing about, they were anticipating coming back to us in November, December. I had a
Mitchell Davis:dream that we didn't get that, by the way.
Gavin Tye:Why would you tell me that?
Mitchell Davis:Can only pass it We can't change it now. It's it's out of our hands. Right? But just I don't know to dream it. I was like, oh, no.
Mitchell Davis:If we didn't get it.
Gavin Tye:I'm a very big believer in positive energy and not wishing that shit in. Knock on wood damage if you got wood.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah, right. I'll knock on wood. Yeah. So,
Gavin Tye:yeah, that's one of the hardest things. Even, I've been doing this for a long time. It is hard. It doesn't get any easier. It seems easy with AI, but maybe if you're the only one in the world that had AI and everyone else didn't, it would be easier.
Gavin Tye:But because everyone has AI and it's harder to break through the noise. So this is a more genuine way to, I think to, be able to add value first and then something will come out of it later. The hypothesis is, let's just say we had 20,000, thousand people, 5,000 people, 10,000 people, 20,000 people on our newsletter who knew who Six Sides was that would produce a certain percentage of consistent leads throughout the business. Right? Yep.
Gavin Tye:Just don't think you can dispute that if we had 5,000 people, 10,000 people, 20,000 people on our emailing list, that we would have more leads, inbound leads coming into the business. Right? Case in point.
Mitchell Davis:Completely agree.
Gavin Tye:You only need to look at like celebrities, like high influencers on social media channels. Like, you know, yes, the rock and all that, multimillion, people follow it like have followers. Right. But it still shows that, deal flows to them because they have a network and, a community and, a set of followers. And that's where, if we can do, our goal is to do that over the next two or three years.
Gavin Tye:Right. And then, we will have, we'll, we'll build our following up and then leads will come. That doesn't, that doesn't, take away from the fact that we still need to find leads today. So we're still doing that and we'll do short term lead generation, but hopefully over time that will switch so we don't have to. Right?
Gavin Tye:Yeah. Yeah. And that's, so that's with six sides and even for founders collective, which we spoke about, which six sides is pivotal in that that's been getting a lot of traction. And when Why
Mitchell Davis:don't you tell people what founders collectors collective is if, they're not up to speed?
Gavin Tye:Yeah. So founders collective is, was originally just a meetup. Roman Galakoff, who's been on the podcast and I did a, just a meetup and we just thought we'd get some founders in a room and, and just see how everyone connected. We thought we'd have 10 people in a room. It quickly snowballed to 120 RSVP and about 60 to 70 people come in a night.
Gavin Tye:It was like, holy, holy smokes. That was way more popular than we thought. So we were so we sat down and thought, well, what is the founders collective? What does that look like in the next, you know, six to twelve months? So we broke it down into educate like, wanna help educate people, educational, content.
Gavin Tye:So I've got it here. We wanna our goals are is to add value to founders beyond what other groups do. A lot of groups and meetups are around investor from investors. So they do it. They're trying to get deal flow.
Gavin Tye:We want to actually, I'm sure they want to help the founders, but we just specifically want to help founders. Right? We want to help people connect because of loneliness. It a solo founders is often works together at, by themselves a lot. We wanna deliver content that solves real problems and inspire people, to, you know, not, not feel like they're alone.
Gavin Tye:Right? So we wanna do a mix of social connecting events, educational events, and inspirational, events as well. So, Gotcha. And we'll I'll start a podcast on that as well called the leap. So the leap will be about showcasing founders around what made them what was their life before being a founder?
Gavin Tye:What made them decide to become a founder? And what was it that when they took the leap? What was that like? Like the uncertainty, the feeling, how did they get over it? And then what success they've had as well.
Gavin Tye:So That sounds really cool.
Mitchell Davis:I hope certainly you've got a listener there. So Well, there you go.
Gavin Tye:Yep. Yep. There you go. Number one.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. Number one. I'll be number one.
Gavin Tye:That's I've got my first guest already earmarked for that, and I've got our first guest for, the the change makers as well. So Yeah. Already earmarked. So, yeah, it's
Mitchell Davis:So what are you gonna do with, changemakers? What's the goal there? Who will you be having on that show? All of that.
Gavin Tye:Yeah. So, probably ideal target clients would be like CEOs of or or people who are who are trying to help their communities, like maybe the CEO of Vinnie's or the variety club or or, you know, some other target organizations that we're going for, or other, you know, business leaders that have got an interesting story to talk about how they changed their, how they made an impact on their community. Right. I've still got the goal to be a flat, a torch bearer for the two thousand and thirty two Olympics. So I might go for a few people in the two thousand thirty two Olympics.
Gavin Tye:But, yeah, just just to talk through that. Right? You know, I have a, I actually have a connection to Malcolm Turnbull. I could interview him.
Mitchell Davis:Really?
Gavin Tye:Yeah. Yeah. I've actually-
Mitchell Davis:You could interview him. Really? Yeah. Why wouldn't I? Wow.
Gavin Tye:Yeah. I actually spoke to him on, on, LinkedIn actually. We called outreach and spoke to him. So, I said, you're not really him. And he's like, no, no, it's me.
Gavin Tye:There we go. But just community leaders and change makers. Right? Just to, just to help, help and add value. If you, I think if you put stuff out there, stuff will come back.
Gavin Tye:Right? Yeah. What where I think most lead generation falls apart is people try to take too quick. Yeah. I'll just take.
Gavin Tye:You go fuck. Stop trying to take from me all the time. Stop trying to ask me for half an hour to talk about business goals. Right? Yeah.
Gavin Tye:Yeah. Yep. So, yeah, we'll see how we go. Like, that'll be I'll start running this from now and I will definitely commit to all of that, all of 2026, and we'll see what happens on the end of that. But yeah.
Mitchell Davis:That's really exciting. Yep. Yeah. Cool. Well, the offer still stands of me helping you with the editing, on at least on the six sides one.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. But, we will, I'll be able to train you up, I reckon, pretty quick with Riverside. It's pretty easy to do.
Gavin Tye:Yeah. Yeah. So yeah.
Mitchell Davis:You're Not much of a burden.
Gavin Tye:Rely on you to help us be able to produce the other one really quickly. Right? It would take all the lessons that you've learned from now. So so and also with the other one, with the founders collective, it's not completely altruistic. Like our target market is my target market for deal buddy.
Gavin Tye:Right? It's the same principle. It's it's we're doing this and then hopefully things will come out. People will say, hey, what do you do? And I go, hey, we do this with deal buddy.
Gavin Tye:And also six sides. I we haven't got there yet, but I think there's value for businesses to use six sides in time. Right. Once we develop it a little bit further. So there will be benefits to both.
Gavin Tye:Plus we'll be using six sides for founders collective as well. So, Oh, for sure.
Mitchell Davis:It's all tied in together.
Gavin Tye:There's definitely multi multi layers of value and reasons for doing stuff. It's all integrated. So
Mitchell Davis:Well, when are you thinking of kicking these
Gavin Tye:off? The podcast?
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. But like both podcasts, what are you kind of thinking?
Gavin Tye:Yeah. I don't know. I think I'll do, I think I'll do the the one with, change makers. I might do that as a webinar so people can actually tune in and watch it and then take the, take the The audio and turn that into a podcast. So I think they'll I'll, I'll have double dip on that.
Gavin Tye:I'll double dip that. Right. Okay. Yeah. So we'll see how we go.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. Well, that could mess with my editing flow then. If that's not in Riverside, then I'm I'm I'm a potato.
Gavin Tye:Yeah. Right. Okay.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. But we'll we'll see. Anyway, whatever. We'll figure it out, mate. It'll be fine.
Mitchell Davis:But cool. I like that. That makes sense strategically, to to double dip on that. Yeah. Cool.
Mitchell Davis:Okay. And then what about for the leap? When are you thinking of kicking that off?
Gavin Tye:Pretty soon. We're we're just gonna we've got a we've got a strategy to get people into the newsletter. We've had so many people who were really interested in coming to the event but just couldn't make it. So we'll go back to them, get the subscribers up. And then, I've got a whole network of founders that I'm connected with thousands.
Gavin Tye:So I'll invite them all to the founders collective. And then out of that, we will start promoting our B2B SaaS journey on through that newsletter to them as well, because we don't promote
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. This show to
Gavin Tye:I think once we get to a number of a thousand, then we'll start. I'll put it in there as well. So yeah. Yep. So that's awesome.
Gavin Tye:Yep.
Mitchell Davis:Cool. Alright. Well, how about we move on? Why don't you tell me about the trail run? I saw a post of you on, on LinkedIn, and I it's very like, it's actually quite an inspirational post.
Mitchell Davis:So why don't you tell people about the run and then how that how your post went as well?
Gavin Tye:The run was good. Like, I've been doing every I haven't done it today because I'm not I wouldn't call me injured. I'm definitely bruised right now. So, but I'll I'll talk about that in a second, but the the trail run was good on on Sunday. Like, am well undercooked.
Gavin Tye:Like, haven't I've been running on and off if I don't know if I've spoken about it on here. I may have. I've been battling a knee injury for most of the year and I had a arthroscopy. And it's got to a point where was probably about 85%. There was still sore.
Gavin Tye:But I thought, oh, I've been running, you know, on and off a couple of times a week. Up until today for the last three Fridays, I've been running 10 Ks before our podcast. And then I've, there's a trial running series in Queensland. I thought, I'm just going to enter it. I'm just gonna, I know I'm going to struggle.
Gavin Tye:It was only a short course, 8.4 Ks or something. So it actually went pretty good. And there was a few big hills there. So I walked the hills, but I could actually run a lot of the hills and I was like, oh, I'm actually fitter than I thought. It is way different running on dirt than road.
Gavin Tye:So, you know, I finished in the top 50%, which was good. But the last hill, there was like a 12 year old girl with a dad halfway up the hill. Thought I can't let her beat me. I ran up this hill and at the end I was the hardest, most puffed I've been from a rut and I was hurting. I was like, oh God, maybe that was too much.
Gavin Tye:Yeah. Okay. So, but what happens when I get after what's happened is my legs get really tight and it kind of my, I've got a bit of a funny back sometimes and it's twisted my back and it's thrown my back out. Like I've kind of go off to the side. So I haven't been able to run all week.
Mitchell Davis:You got some recovery time.
Gavin Tye:Yeah. So even now my back just sitting here, it's straightening up a bit. My legs are releasing because I don't stretch mate. Not many people. And I should do.
Gavin Tye:And You should.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. That's insane to me. Anytime I go for a run, I'll I will stretch before you.
Gavin Tye:Never do it. Never have. Gonna have
Mitchell Davis:to. Really? Yeah. Man. So it's I
Gavin Tye:I'm coming back to normal now, but it's, yeah, it was really, it was, it was actually really fun. And, yeah, I'll do it again. I want to do the, I can't do the next one because Mel's away, but I'll, I'll go to the rest and, yeah, I performed better than I thought, but I knew it was going to be tough. So, and since then my knee hasn't hurt at all. So it was such a good, it blew out whatever was going on in there.
Gavin Tye:Yeah. So you bruised,
Mitchell Davis:but in, in other parts, not your legs are fine. Your knee is fine.
Gavin Tye:Oh, yeah. My calves are shot and my back is shot. Yeah.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. Right. Okay. Yeah. Right.
Mitchell Davis:Okay. And then tell us about the posts.
Gavin Tye:Oh, yeah. Yeah. I I put a post up on LinkedIn. It was actually really interesting. Talking about, I was just taking my health and fitness for granted.
Gavin Tye:And, I've blinked and I was like 30 and, now I'm 48. Like, I was like, where did that time go? So it's just so fast how time has gone. And I just said to others on the post, don't wait if you want, don't it's easy with time on your side. And I think I've had 2,500 like impressions on it.
Gavin Tye:It's one of my better posts, but there's also been like 600 or 60 people who have liked it or something. Has it really gone? I don't know. I think viral posts, they look like they're going pretty good. And then they actually take off again in a couple, in a week's time.
Gavin Tye:They don't, they just don't take off. So, who knows what could happen, but I'll tell you what, come at 72 likes on it and, yeah, 15 comments and a repost. So it's actually, yeah, took just over 2,500. So it was actually pretty good. The the likes on it are good.
Gavin Tye:So yeah.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. Well, yeah, when I I saw it, I don't know if it was last night or night before. I'm not sure, but it was like late at night. And yeah. I mean, you like, you look good in the photo.
Mitchell Davis:You're you've got a photo there of you doing the run and you're looking at the camera and you got your is it the camel backpack thing on? Water?
Gavin Tye:The best thing. Yeah. It's got water in here. But, yes, you can put a thing in the back. Yeah.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. And and then but the part that got me was like the towards the end, you're like, don't wait to start that business or to, you know, make that change or whatever. Something to that effect. Obviously, I didn't study it that hard because I can't remember it, but specifically, you're like, don't wait to start that business. Yeah.
Mitchell Davis:And it got me thinking for Nicole, my, fiance because she's wanted to start a baking business for forever. And, like, for the last five years, it's always been like, yeah, I'm gonna do that soon. I'm gonna do that soon. And then it just kind of feels like it continues to always be just a goal and not something that she's making, like, meaningful steps towards. Yeah.
Mitchell Davis:So I haven't shared it with her yet. Gotta, like, pick my moments. Right? But, I think I will I'll show that to her this weekend and just see
Gavin Tye:Yep.
Mitchell Davis:If it resonates with her at all because that's the part that really jumped out to me. Because I hadn't really thought about it. Like, for me, I've got a few goals, one of them being my health. I wanna work on my health and and have wanted to that's kind of been my goal for, like, the last five years, maybe even longer. Anyway, I don't really wanna get into all that, but, for her, it's more been this baking business has been like this elusive goal that that she wants to make progress towards.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. So, yeah, it kinda just got me thinking, feeling a bit like introspective of like, I could be doing more in this area or she could be doing more with that, things like this. It was just it was good. It was a nice it was a good post. I saw you got a an invitation to go for a run with Michael Dorinda.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. We'll talk a little bit more in a minute. But, yeah, you got an invite to go for a run with him when he's up in Brisbane in November for for LariCon. So It's so good running around Brisbane.
Gavin Tye:Yeah. So so good running around Brisbane.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. Yeah. But it'll be early, though, because the day well, I I don't know. You have to figure that out with him because you don't live in Brisbane. Right?
Mitchell Davis:So yeah, it'll be it'll be interesting. So see if that happens.
Gavin Tye:The last five lines of it were don't wait until you're 48 to run up that big fucking hill. Maybe you want to start a business. Maybe you want a dream job. Maybe you want to travel. It's easier with time on your side.
Gavin Tye:That's really the biggest thing is, and you, you learn this lesson in time is I thought we had no time when we had no, when we didn't have children. Right. And you don't write you, but when you have kids, you're like, oh my God, what a waste of time. I'm wasted. Like, you never waste.
Gavin Tye:You're always doing things, but I was like, I just didn't appreciate that. Like, yeah.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. And there's not really any way to simulate that until it's actually happening, until you have the kids and then you don't have you don't have that time. You know?
Gavin Tye:We're coming out of the fog now. So we're coming like, the kids are not as dependent on us. Like, we'll get a couple of hours in the morning on the weekend. They'll just watch TV or play and we can sit down and have a coffee in bed and just talk and just, I was like, oh my God, we're out of that fog. But it's, it it's never ending.
Gavin Tye:Yeah. Yeah. What kind of baking does she wanna do? Like cupcake or or chocolate? Or
Mitchell Davis:So she's made a bunch of different things over the last few years. So cookies is one that she does, and I I really love there's this one that she makes. It's got a caramel milk in
Gavin Tye:it. Okay.
Mitchell Davis:And I I don't have chocolate, like, on its own basically ever, but I fucking love a bit of caramel milk every now and then. So when she makes this one, it's, it's a birthday cake cookie, it's called. Yep. It's got, like, sprinkles and all sorts of stuff, but the main thing is, like, it's caramel. So that's my favorite.
Mitchell Davis:So she'll make that every now and then. And, it's awesome because she can make she can, like, have it prepped and ready to go and then just freeze it for, like, months, you know, it lasts for forever in the freezer. And then when it's time to make a batch, just pull them out of the freezer, stick them in the oven for half an hour or whatever, and away she goes. So that's one thing. She she has also done cupcakes in the past, but I think she's fallen out of love with those.
Mitchell Davis:And then a bunch of different things. I kind of struggle to keep up with it to be honest. But the main thing is I think is the cookies. Yeah. Okay.
Mitchell Davis:But she did she did this because it's all like regulated, you're making food for people, right, and you don't wanna make them sick. So you've gotta like take courses on making sure it's all food safe and all this sort of stuff. And especially for baking from home, you gotta have a license from the council and all this sort of stuff. There's like all these layers that kind of I think have really held her back a bit. But she did earlier this year, she did a online food safety course and got it went for, like, ten weeks.
Mitchell Davis:Sorry. What was that?
Gavin Tye:You should get everything wrong.
Mitchell Davis:No. No. No. She got everything right. She went all the way through to the end, and then it was like a she submitted the last assignment which involved, like, getting a colleague or a manager of hers to kind of sign off on.
Mitchell Davis:This is kinda like a reference thing, you know, to say that, yep, she knows what she's doing, blah blah blah. She submitted it one day late, and then that meant that she failed the whole thing. It wasn't like yeah. So now and it was like a $304,100 dollar course or something like that. Yeah.
Mitchell Davis:Right. So now she has to do all again, and that's been a bit of a setback. So it's like it's her own fault for being late with it.
Gavin Tye:Yeah.
Mitchell Davis:But also, like, come on. Be human. Like, it was seriously it was one day late. And they just were like, no. I'm sorry.
Mitchell Davis:You have to redo it. They wanna make another $3,400. Right?
Gavin Tye:So
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. Yeah. Right. Brutal. So, yeah, that was a bit of a setback for her.
Mitchell Davis:And then there's there's, like, planning around us. You know, we're getting married next year, hopefully having kids soon after if we're fortunate. So it's just all like it's a bit tricky.
Gavin Tye:Yeah. Yeah.
Mitchell Davis:There's a lot of like
Gavin Tye:definitely coming into a tough time to be able to start learning something.
Mitchell Davis:Start a new in person business.
Gavin Tye:Yeah. We knew someone that started a, dog biscuit business that would cook at home, take it to the markets and stuff like that. Thought she was really popular, but she did it at stores at a market and eventually got tiring. I thought there was real, there's real scope to do that online if you're really good at like, if you can deliver that online. So, and then they're, I think they're less strict on the food safety, right?
Gavin Tye:Cause it's for animal, for pets. Yeah.
Mitchell Davis:Okay. Yeah. I don't know if that's her passion, but it's interesting. So okay. I'll keep that in mind anyway.
Mitchell Davis:Maybe I'll share this episode with her.
Gavin Tye:Share that episode. And then she wants to talk to this lady Danielle. I'm sure I could make it an introduction. She's she can at least pick a brain because she stopped that business now. So she might even share some of what she does.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. Okay. Not like competitive. Yeah.
Gavin Tye:No, no. Well, anyway, she does it up in North Brisbane. You guys would never touch, you
Mitchell Davis:know? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Gavin Tye:Yeah. Cool. All right.
Mitchell Davis:Well, anyway, congratulations on the trail run. I think that's really cool. And Yeah. I hope you do
Gavin Tye:some go and, you know, it's, I'm on that weight loss journey, so I'm losing weight. So I kinda haven't this week on the store. Yeah. We'll see how we go. And, mate, there's enough about me.
Gavin Tye:Look. We're how long are we into it? So what's going on with you? How how is your wedding planning going and all that stuff? I haven't asked you for ages.
Mitchell Davis:It has been a little while, so it's good. We have the venue. We have photographer, videographer. We have a wedding coordinator sorted now as well, so they can kinda take some of the burden when shit's hitting the fan. Hopefully not.
Mitchell Davis:So, yeah, we still have a few more things to get sorted, in the next two weeks. I'm giving myself till the twenty fourth, of October to send out invites, but it will be in May, next year. So, yeah, I'll, I'll get that all sorted away. There's been we had like the main thing that held us up was we didn't know what time to have the ceremony so that we the time of day so that we could then have nice photos with, like, the whole golden hour and all this sort of stuff. And then it's confusing because daylight savings, changes in April, I think it is.
Mitchell Davis:So I was just all like, oh, we don't know what to do. We and and you wanna put that on the invite. Right? That's the main thing that people wanna see is, okay, address and time. And
Gavin Tye:so Kate.
Mitchell Davis:If you could say the Yeah. Well, we no. We're just doing one mail out. We're just doing one mail out. We've done it all, like, custom designed, and you'll see when you get one in the mail.
Mitchell Davis:Oh, come on.
Gavin Tye:You don't have to give me one?
Mitchell Davis:No. We want to. We want to. So, anyway, we confirm with the coordinator, hey. What would be the right time of day to do this and give us like a rough run through of how long each part takes, you know, because you do group photos and you do your ceremony and you do your cocktail hour and all this sort of stuff and just kind of like getting it all sorted.
Mitchell Davis:So now we have a time. We just have to go through, get all these things printed. What time is that?
Gavin Tye:Two or 03:00?
Mitchell Davis: Gavin Tye:or something?
Mitchell Davis:03:45, mate.
Gavin Tye:Yeah.
Mitchell Davis:So that's what we've landed on. Yeah. You're trying to be sneaky and get all the inside scoop Mate, you just you get your invite.
Gavin Tye:Yeah. It doesn't it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter.
Mitchell Davis:No. That's right. Yeah. But, anyway, yeah.
Gavin Tye:You're wearing? Do you know what you're wearing?
Mitchell Davis:No. I haven't got a suit yet, if that's what you're asking. Yeah. Yeah. Do what wearing a suit.
Mitchell Davis:But
Gavin Tye:Yeah. Yeah. You don't know colors or anything like that?
Mitchell Davis:Or No. I haven't figured that out yet, but it's, like, seven months away. So we're we're going okay.
Gavin Tye:You a vest, bow tie kind of guy?
Mitchell Davis:I don't know. I might have to go go take a look at some different options. Yeah. I really don't know. I'm not, I'm sure you'll fire a shot at me, but I'm not the most stylish person.
Mitchell Davis:That's obvious, mate.
Gavin Tye:I'm not so far in the shot at you. But, yeah, it could be braces and a vest. I think there's there's a you know, that's a that's a good look. Could be.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. Don't know. Anyway, we're probably boring the shit out of everybody listening to this right now.
Gavin Tye:Yeah. Fair Fair Let's move on.
Mitchell Davis:We will figure that out. But, anyway, it is all progressing and it's exciting. It's starting to become less stressful and more like, can't wait. You know? Looking forward to it.
Mitchell Davis:It feels like the ducks are a bit more in a row now. So Yep.
Gavin Tye:Fair enough.
Mitchell Davis:It's good. Alright. So now let's pivot to the technical side of things. So, we'll do a a brief caveat with Michael. So Michael Dorinda, recurring friend of the show, and and constant.
Mitchell Davis:I think he comes up in every episode at the moment. So, Michael's been helping us out with, developing the web dashboards for our like the web app basically for Sikhsides. And this is primarily to be used by event organizers to set up their events, upload all their information, etcetera. And he recorded a podcast episode because he's on a lot of different podcasts, but, he recorded one with, Jake Bennett, and they do it's called North Meets South web audio podcast. I don't know why it's so long, but just North Meets South.
Mitchell Davis:And I listened to it this morning, and he went through and he was talking with Jake about how difficult he's finding it to work on a JavaScript heavy web application like ours because he develops stuff primarily using different technologies. We've kind of talked about this a little over the last few episodes of this show, but he does things quite differently. And, yeah, he's kinda like bumping up against some significant differences of how to develop, applications like this. And he he actually said on the show, and I thought it was funny, but I'm gonna message him after this and say, absolutely not. That he was like, maybe I'll just write it in his way and send that through and just see what I think.
Mitchell Davis:And I'm like, no. There is no fucking chance. We're not having that. So, anyway, it's it's quite interesting. We appreciate what he's doing there.
Mitchell Davis:I think I I messaged him, yesterday because he kind he kinda gave me a heads up, about, that this was gonna come out. And I told him, like, look, we'll have to get on and share screen together and just kinda sit down and maybe work on one section together. Just spend like an hour or so because I think that will give him a good bit of insight into like how I actually go about building out these things. He's picked a really hard area to work on though. He's picked the dashboard.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. To start with that is quite tricky
Gavin Tye:because Is he using does he use cursor or anything like that?
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. He does use some AI tools. I don't know if he uses cursor, but there's, like, alternatives. Are you still using AI? Yeah.
Mitchell Davis:Absolutely. Yeah. I'm using it all the time. So and it's so helpful for times when you when you just kind of like it gets to, like, 3PM in the day. You're feeling a bit sluggish.
Mitchell Davis:It's like, oh god. I don't care anymore. And in the past, that might have been where I might have gone home or I might have just switched to doing non, like, code related stuff. Yep. Stuff that's a bit more like admin y or whatever.
Mitchell Davis:Yep. But now I can just be like, hey, cursor. You know, I'm thinking of doing this. Like, how do we go about that? And I kinda workshop it, and then it'll go right most of the code.
Mitchell Davis:I'm I'm able to, like I'm much more efficient, through that now. And I credit you with that. I was telling my dad about it this week actually. Yeah. Because he was asking, I was like, yeah.
Mitchell Davis:It's amazing what we could do now. And I wouldn't have made the leap, I don't think, unless you had said like, hey. I really think you should pursue this. So So I think he Michael is using, AI tools within the code base which is great. I encourage that.
Mitchell Davis:But, yeah, he's just coming up against some different ways of going about building things. So, yeah. So I think if we get on, we share screen, I'll probably be able to unblock him a bit. But when we did speak yesterday, he said he probably won't have a lot more time to work on the app because now he's coming up like it's one month basically to LaraCon. Right?
Mitchell Davis:So, he's still got a few more things that he's gotta organize. So, anyway, we still really appreciate, everything he's he's doing for us. It's just funny. It was funny to kind of hear him talking some shit, on on north meets south. So I'll put a link to that, in the show notes if you're curious.
Mitchell Davis:And, yeah. Thanks, Michael.
Gavin Tye:So so is he playing words? It's south by southwest. He's blowing north meets south west.
Mitchell Davis:It could be. Yeah. I I don't know. It it is also the fact that so Jake is in The US, and he's, you know, down in, South Australia. So it could be that.
Mitchell Davis:I'm not sure. Anyway yeah. So that was that. So then now why don't we kind of transition to what else I've been working on what I have been primarily working on this week?
Gavin Tye:Yes. Set the scene here. Like, we've got by next week, we have to finish the next stage of development. Right? Cause we've got two more conferences coming up, which is LaraCon AU.
Gavin Tye:And then we've also got voluntary WA. So we want to avoid some of the lessons we did, the lessons learned on, on Laravel live, and we want to avoid some of those and we want to make it a better user experience. But you've been sick. Right? So now you're back on track now.
Gavin Tye:And, so we've got all you've had this week and next week, and ideally that's when we'll, then you've got to stop. So yeah, tell us what you've been doing, mate, because it's been amazing.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. So I've been working a lot on, on the app on the mobile app. Now I've covered a lot of different things in the last week. So, yeah, I've only felt like up to working basically as of Friday last week is when I started. Mhmm.
Mitchell Davis:Just been one week today and what I've been able to do in that time is go through and get the underlying expo framework up to date. So we're now on I think it's expo fifty four and that's brought like a bunch of new improvements. The main reason we needed to do that was because Android has got some they've changed their like minimum required versions in the past couple of months. And our previous version of the app was no longer supported basically. So Google we tried to submit an app release to Google in time for founders collective and they rejected it because at that point we were now using an outdated version which is crazy because that version is less than a year old.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. So I'm still a bit frustrated at that But anyway, it is what it is. So that was the big hurdle to get through before any functionality could be worked on was just we need the ability to roll out updates to Android again. Right? So I went through and did that, and it then highlighted to me how broken the UI was on Liquid Glass, which is Apple's new iOS 26 design framework.
Mitchell Davis:IOS 26 still isn't out yet for the general public, but it will be pretty soon I think, a little later on in the year. And it highlighted like, okay, now all the any buttons that we had at the top of any screens, they're all just like really wacky looking, they weren't necessarily positioned where they should have been. So Apple's made a bunch of changes, Expos made a bunch of changes. The tab bars down the bottom, you can like go look at how these look on Google and on YouTube and stuff. You just search liquid glass, you'll see.
Mitchell Davis:It looks really cool, but it also kind of broke things for us in the app as well. So that when I saw that last Friday, that was a huge concern. And then the other side of things on Android, they've now made it so that apps by default use this edge to edge mode. And in the past, Android has always reserved like space at the top of the screen to display like the battery and, you know, Wi Fi and all this sort of stuff and then like buttons down the bottom as well for like the back and the the back button and the menu button and whatever the other button is. So both of those changes are like huge, huge changes for us to for me to then deal with.
Mitchell Davis:So I showed you on Monday or Tuesday Tuesday, I showed you the liquid glass stuff. Yeah. And I thought maybe I would have enough time to get it all working. And then just looking at like, okay, at that point I had like a week and a half left to go. I thought, screw it.
Mitchell Davis:There's just no way we can't. I need to focus on the features and not on all this other crap that's happened behind the scenes. So there's a flag that we can disable Liquid Glass inside of our app. I did that instantly. Everything worked properly on iOS.
Gavin Tye:So Okay.
Mitchell Davis:That's all sorted. And then I have mostly got the Android side of things working now, so that it functions like normal. It's just really tricky when you're kind of building an app to multiple versions, of different operating systems because that's what's out there in the wild. That's who's gonna use our app. And so I showed I shared screen and showed you, and I had, like, three different simulators running on my computer of different versions and yeah.
Mitchell Davis:Just trying to make sure they're all working. And then if I make a change to fix one thing, it doesn't break another, device version and stuff like that. So it's all like tricky. This is all the stuff that comes with building a mobile app and I knew this like going into it. None of it's a surprise but, yeah, being sick really put me behind the eight ball.
Mitchell Davis:So it's a shame, but we're now through to the point where I can be working on new features and functionality. Yep. And, so what, I then got started with was working on the dashboard. So not the web dashboard that's Mike Michael's working on but the dashboard inside of the mobile app. And you and I kind of looked at it.
Mitchell Davis:We've looked at it for a while. It's felt a bit cluttered. We had like six or seven different buttons on there and they all kind of look the same for things like attendees and speakers and sponsors and your schedule and so on. And it just felt like the word we've used is one dimensional. Yeah.
Mitchell Davis:Right? It felt a bit boring, felt like there's too much going on. So we sat down and we went through, looked at how could we kind of consolidate some of this information, how could we move it off. What we now have, the dashboard screen starts with at the top, we now have the person's avatar if they've uploaded like a profile photo, and we also have a like a points button. And if they click on the it tells them what their current points are for this event.
Mitchell Davis:And then if they click on that, it'll open like a pop up and that tells them all the different things that they've won points for so they can kind of track it that way. Then we've updated the list of buttons so that now, it actually starts with a checklist because we wanna incentivize people to explore all the different functions that they can do with
Gavin Tye:their to onboard. Right? So that's like go through certain things. Right?
Mitchell Davis:So Exactly. Yeah. It's a it's an onboarding checklist. So It's a good go through there. Yeah.
Mitchell Davis:I don't wanna present to the user that it says onboarding checklist. I don't really like that, but that's what it is. Anyway, Gavin and I have been workshopping that. So, something that has changed is we are going to assign people points. We're gonna give them points when they do certain onboarding things.
Mitchell Davis:So right now, up until now, points have just been a function of taking photos with other people, right, and and getting involved with Tag Grit but now that's gonna change. So, yeah. So basically like as you go through and you have a public profile, you're gonna get 10 points. When you add a photo, a profile photo, you're gonna get 10 points. Things like that.
Mitchell Davis:We wanna have the app feel like it's full of We
Gavin Tye:wanna incentivize the behavior that we want them to take, which is building out their profile because it's a richer and event experience for everyone and themselves. Right? So, yeah,
Mitchell Davis:that makes sense. Exactly. Yeah. Yep. So we've got all of that.
Mitchell Davis:We've moved out the, like, tag your hit button. That's now basically hidden, because we can surface that in different ways. Then we have after the checklist we have like whichever talk is on right now, you'll be able to see that, click on that, it'll take you straight into that talk. So we had that at LaraCon AU last year, seemed to work really well. It was then kind of in the too hard basket to bring over into our new infrastructure but I'm bringing it back for this release so it'll be there again which is awesome.
Mitchell Davis:Then I think we've got a link to the schedule, We've got book a meeting button which is brand new functionality and take a photo. Those are two like big highlighted buttons and then we've got a gallery. So that now is the complete home screen that you see, when you go into an event. And then we've got the menu tab and that's where you'll find like some of this other stuff. So we've got, the list of attendees, we've got sponsors, we've got helpful links that, like, the event organizer might have set up.
Mitchell Davis:That's where you'll generate your, like, your wrapped images and things like that now. So yeah. So it just feels like, okay, the app's kind of feels a bit more put together now. The work that I'm still doing is going through and actually implementing some of those new features and then also doing any final testing on Android. Yep.
Mitchell Davis:Because iOS now feels really solid, but Android not so much. So
Gavin Tye:It seems something better to be building on instead of building from scratch. Right? You're just you're just renovating opposed to starting
Mitchell Davis:from Exactly. Euro. Yeah. That's right. And we now have so many screens in there already which are, the foundations of like how you will book a meeting.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. I'll be able to copy a bunch of code, right, and then just change a few things and instead focus on booking a meeting. So, yeah, it's getting to a point where it's a lot easier to add new things which is great and it's exciting. It's fun working on it, I'm working on it every day so I'll be working on it over the weekend because which there's literally seven days until we want to hand it over to Apple and Google for review. Yep.
Mitchell Davis:I think there's a chance it won't be ready on Friday next week, but I think then if we allowed ourselves to go up to maybe the Tuesday I think that would probably still be okay but I really am pushing as hard as humanly possible to get everything done by Friday. Yeah. That was I self imposed that deadline like and I believe that's the right move but it just might not look like me being sick has been brutal. So I lost two full weeks of time on this so anyway but even if it does have to go to Tuesday that's still then two and a bit weeks before to go through review before volunteering WA kicks off so and our last App Store release took less than twenty four hours to go out, so I'm not worried about Apple. Google, I'm still a bit worried about.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah.
Gavin Tye:So we're gonna run a maybe a test release with them. Right? So at least we just to just to get a gauge, know what the timing's right is so we yeah.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. Yeah. That's right. We we are gonna run a test release, up to Android and just kind of test how long does it take them to to approve an app that's already out there. Yep.
Mitchell Davis:Because with other client projects on other mobile apps, I have seen it take less than a day with Google. I know it's possible, but that was now probably two years ago since I last saw it beat that quick. So Yeah. Anyway, we will see. And then a bit of, continuity from last week.
Mitchell Davis:So we had a meeting with the with some designers that you had done some kind of done a trade for. You gave them a discount on Deal Buddy. Yeah. And in return for that, they've given us some of their time to go through and kind of look at the UX, the user experience of the mobile app. And it's funny because we kind of changed we didn't have time to wait because this deadline, we didn't have time to wait for them to come back to us before making any changes of our own.
Mitchell Davis:Yep. So they did a bunch of research into, different apps out there and their onboarding experiences. They gave us they then compared that to ours, at least the version that they saw, and, they made a bunch of comparisons. And then after they were done presenting that, I would then was like, well, actually, we've gotta made a bunch of changes here. And then, one of the, designers, like, sent through, like, a he was reacting on the fly.
Mitchell Davis:He sent through, like, a love heart and when I showed the new version and stuff. So that was nice to see. So we have already incorporated, some of the changes that they suggested which was great. And, it really made me hungry for when we are in a position to afford a designer to be able to go in and kind of take what we have at that time
Gavin Tye:Yeah.
Mitchell Davis:And then just apply like a polish over the top, not fundamentally change the whole UI.
Gavin Tye:Yeah. Just the final 10%.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. Yeah. Just like give it a really nice coat of paint over the top, you know, so, but we are who knows when and if that will happen. Right? Yeah.
Gavin Tye:Yeah. Well, I think I think you underestimate how good it looks, you know, you know, I think it looks really good and, you're a bit more critical than what I am. But I think for the late compared to what most event apps look like, they this this looks amazing.
Mitchell Davis:So Yeah. Well, thank you. So, something else that has changed with the mobile app design is, we now have a full height, background image, and this has been Gavin's suggestion for forever. And I still don't know if I love it or not, but we're giving it a try. So I'm willing to try it.
Gavin Tye:Yeah. Well, I think we should do it on all the all the screens that look like blank and then just see how it goes. Like, because I it though. Yeah. And I'm gonna I'll push for that and then we'll get
Mitchell Davis:through. Yeah. So like I told you yesterday, anytime we do this full screen background image, it means I have to rebuild the header at the top of the page. So it legitimately might not be possible to do that yet, right, under this time pressure. But what I am talking about and that is done already is now on the two different tabs that we have, the dashboard and the menu tabs, they are now full screen branded with whatever the event organizer has uploaded.
Mitchell Davis:And I think it does look decent. So it's it it's like a it's like giving the user a sharp knife, right, where they can, in the past, it probably was a dull knife. They could still make the app look like crap, but at least the, like, the bottom area, which had, like, buttons and things like that, there would have been, like, a decent contrast there. Now it's entirely possible they upload, like, something that just looks awful and tanks the appearance of their app, and it's not really under our control. Yeah.
Mitchell Davis:So, yeah, it's a lot more of a shop.
Gavin Tye:They would care more about it than what we would, so they would fix that up. Right? So Maybe.
Mitchell Davis:But that's Not everybody cares. I know a lot of people that are just like, yeah, whatever. That's fine. Who
Gavin Tye:who cares? Right?
Mitchell Davis:Well, I
Gavin Tye:saw one last night. I was like, oh my god. That's offensive with a client. We won't name it. Hopefully that changes for that, for their sake, for his audience's sake.
Gavin Tye:So Yep. Yep. I won't call him out just because he called us out on the podcast he was on.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. Subtle. Subtle. Yep. Anyway, so that's where everything's at.
Mitchell Davis:I, hope to be able to report when we record next week that everything is done and submitted, but, we will see how we go. What are you hoping to to achieve next week?
Gavin Tye:So by next week, by the time we catch up, I'll have the webinar or slash podcast set up with, a first guest. Awesome. Yeah. I'll have that like a booked in. It'll be a little bit of time down.
Gavin Tye:Right? And then I might have a couple in there as well. I don't know whether I'd do that once a month or just a weekly thing. Like doing producing a webinar weekly is hard. Like Yeah.
Gavin Tye:Doing a
Mitchell Davis:Sounds like a lot.
Gavin Tye:It's a yeah. It's, you know, you you'd promote it.
Mitchell Davis:Maybe it's like every three weeks, every four weeks, maybe. I don't think it needs to be that often. But anyway, hey. This your
Gavin Tye:I'll I'll sort it. Yeah. Yeah. But, but then also we would do a webinar. I think we would just might keep them as podcasts actually makes sense.
Gavin Tye:And then we, unless we have a big guest and we'll do something. Cause we still w we'll have a webinar set up about how to, for community growth with six sides, we will layer some of that in. I'm waiting. I was hoping to get an answer back with a client today, about whether they will go ahead with us, but she said she'll get back to me today or Monday. I was like, damn it.
Mitchell Davis:I was hoping to get an answer back.
Gavin Tye:But on other, you
Mitchell Davis:gotta tell her, no, we got a podcast to record. You gotta tell us this morning.
Gavin Tye:I know. But on other other news, a client that I have been chasing or potential client had been chasing, she gave me news that she's leaving her job at the end of next week. And I'm like, that's always a danger if you've just got one point of contact, which I don't. I have her boss's contact, which I originally went and reached out to, which I'll reach out to him after to pick up the conversation. But she's also going to another place.
Gavin Tye:And she said, I would love to talk then because my, my task, my I'm tasked with creating an event app for them, an event for them. So not all is dead, but if you are meeting with people as a word of advice and they leave, keep in contact because they are often going into a similar role. Yeah. And then it's not all, all done and dusted. Right.
Mitchell Davis:That makes sense. Yeah. Cool. Alright. So hopefully we can report more on that one next week.
Gavin Tye:Yeah. Yeah. We'll see, see how that's going. We're just working on more lead gen now. So, it's it's we're coming into a tough part of the year, but we're still
Mitchell Davis:we're still
Gavin Tye:we're still, outbound and all that kind of stuff. I think
Mitchell Davis:Yep.
Gavin Tye:Getting from now into the end of the year and getting set up to hit 2026 really strongly, I think is really is really important.
Mitchell Davis:Well, we still have that goal of, 300. Right? There's a lot of there's a lot of work that's gotta go towards 300.
Gavin Tye:Stuff's gotta happen there.
Mitchell Davis:Oh, but we might have to lower that goal. But
Gavin Tye:Well, we we've got also the conference coming up for volunteering WA and LaraCon. Look, I intend to go over and I've seen who some of the sponsors are that are going. Yep. It's, I'm hopeful that things will happen in WA.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. Fingers crossed.
Gavin Tye:Yep. I actually think Mitch, we should get, we've talked about getting our procurement process, our buying process sorted with, DocuSign and all that. I would like to, I would think that makes sense now is to get that set up. So if we do have people over there and they go, yeah, I'm ready to go. Okay, great.
Gavin Tye:Let me get that set up and sign something then and there instead of getting like having it protracted out. Right? So, you strike while the iron's hot. I think if we can do that.
Mitchell Davis:I think that, that would be amazing if something like that happened there on the spot. I think it's might be a little optimistic. Yep. But, yes, we could certainly, we can. I don't think there's much that will be involved in
Gavin Tye:Yeah. I'd like to be ambitious. Yeah. The chances of it, maybe not. But Yeah.
Gavin Tye:Yeah.
Mitchell Davis:Hey. Yeah. You're you said earlier, you're like a what is it? You need positive energy. You could do this.
Mitchell Davis:The power of sales, Gavin. Let's do this, as
Gavin Tye:Sepsen says. Let's do
Mitchell Davis:this, dad.
Gavin Tye:Yep. Yep.
Mitchell Davis:That's right. Yeah. Alright, mate. Why don't we wrap this up? Where can people find you online?
Gavin Tye:You can find me on, LinkedIn, Gavin Ty, t y e, or at thefounderscollective.com.au. Very good. There we go. Yep.
Mitchell Davis:Yep. And you can find me, Mitch Dav, online. Alright. We will catch you all next week. Thank you for listening.