Hey. I'm Mitchell Davis, a Laravel developer.
Gavin Tye:And CTO, Gavin Tye. I'm Gavin, sales and marketing. Yes. Yes. Welcome to Six Sides.
Mitchell Davis:Tragic. We are building sixsides.co.
Gavin Tye:It's an events platform to
Mitchell Davis:help you build a stronger community through events, and this is our b to b SaaS journey. How are you, mate? Pretty good. Pretty good. It's
Gavin Tye:I wish it was slowing down getting into Christmas, but it's not. It's going the, other way. Right? We're getting busy. So
Mitchell Davis:You don't wish that at all. This is good. This is our it's our business now. It's not someone else's that you're busy for. It's ours.
Gavin Tye:So Correct. Do you know?
Mitchell Davis:It's fantastic.
Gavin Tye:Almost do you remember when we started this in, you know, we started talking in December and then I said, wait till six months and then six months come and things started changing. I said, wait till we get to twelve months. Things will change again. We're almost twelve months to the day and things are happening again. It's a yeah.
Gavin Tye:It's you can, it's a weird thing. You can set your clock quiet, but and that's where you've just gotta be consistent. You get nothing for for six or twelve months. And then all of a sudden things start, coming back in.
Mitchell Davis:Which is a good segue.
Gavin Tye:To speaking of, we've gotten more client.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. Yeah. That's right. We have. So, why don't you walk us through what's going on there?
Gavin Tye:Yeah. So this is a, like a a relatively private client, so we won't, say who they are, because it's the beginning of the relationship. But thank you, Joey, for putting her faith, in us. It's really exciting. So it means we'll be down in Sydney in February next year to deliver it.
Gavin Tye:You, you and I will be going together. So, yeah, it's, it's a, hopefully it's a start of a long term multi event type organization, which is falls into what we're building. Right. Yeah, maybe we should give them
Mitchell Davis:a code name as well. So that way we can refer to them later.
Gavin Tye:Project project hammer.
Mitchell Davis:Hammer. Okay. Project hammer. Alright. That'll be project hammer.
Gavin Tye:I like it. Yeah. So I was really it's a it's a it's a great one to, to start. It's it's great. It's it's a it's a great one.
Gavin Tye:It's our work is slowly starting to pay off and, yeah. Yeah. She's really excited. I'm really excited. Yeah.
Gavin Tye:And that's all the great work of you developing. It's a great, yeah. It's things are going per like awesome. I wouldn't say perfect.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. It's exciting. So, I mean, last week we asked, could we win two more customers before Christmas? And this is one of them. Right?
Mitchell Davis:So maybe next week.
Gavin Tye:I'm sneaking. I'm trying. I'm I'm pulling everything out to try to get one. Yeah. We'll see.
Gavin Tye:If it's meant to be, it's meant to be. But who knows?
Mitchell Davis:To have one is fucking awesome. So well done. It's, it's fantastic. And I'm really excited to, yeah, to be working with project hammer. So shout out project hammer
Gavin Tye:for listening. It's, it's crazy that when, when was, volunteering WR? It was the November, I think.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. Yeah. Somewhere around there. Yeah. November.
Gavin Tye:Yeah. So we did not, we weren't sure if we didn't expect to have any more than three clients by the end of the year. Right. So, cause we, we delivered Laravel live in Denmark with them and then we got LaraCon and that, that was it.
Mitchell Davis:Yep. We had three for the year. Yeah.
Gavin Tye:Now we're at five. We've almost doubled it. Yeah.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. And we had world share in there as well, which was, like a more, you know, it was free basically. Yep. As a as a case study to support them. Yep.
Mitchell Davis:So we're at six, I think.
Gavin Tye:Well, we've done we'd also done, prescience as well. Yep. Yeah. That it's I think we've been busy towards the tail half of the year and, really surprised and pleasantly surprised that we've got these, two clients that are signed on marinas and project hammer. And I'm trying, I'm trying, I'm trying to get another one.
Gavin Tye:Yeah.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah.
Gavin Tye:Yeah. No. It's good. It's great. And, we've also been preparing for, you know, project rendezvous.
Gavin Tye:So I sent you some screenshots there or what some things. That's right.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. So this coming Thursday, we've got a call with project rendezvous. Yep. And, yeah, you've done a bunch of work already in work like workshopping on your pitch, for them and how you're gonna kind of open the meeting. And you showed me your early work on that yesterday.
Mitchell Davis:It's great. It's fantastic. So, really looking forward to that. And then on my side of things, I honestly haven't done a whole lot yet. And I I told you about this.
Mitchell Davis:I haven't done a lot yet. I've been focused on some other things, but I will not let us down. This is such an important opportunity for us.
Gavin Tye:I don't expect you would. So it's you don't even need to say that you just get it done. Like I
Mitchell Davis:I will. Yeah.
Gavin Tye:Exactly. Stuff done. Right? Yeah. Yeah.
Gavin Tye:So I'll
Mitchell Davis:be starting that on Sunday. So over the weekend, so Saturday will be busy, and and this afternoon will be busy but Sunday all through next week until everything is done Yep. I'll be this will be my top priority. So, yeah, it's good. You've been able to get me some screenshots of how you think the app might look under their skin and, I'm gonna go through, get those applied.
Mitchell Davis:And then we also sat down and went through last week I think and mapped out like, okay, what are the features that we wanna show them that go above and beyond what we've got already? Mhmm. And these features don't have to work yet to be clear. This is just more of a mock up, but some stuff that we hope will impress them and and pick, you know, pick their interest. So that's the idea.
Mitchell Davis:So yeah. So we will be able to report on that, next week, I think.
Gavin Tye:Yeah. Yeah.
Mitchell Davis:We will. Confusing because we got all these bloody all these extra, these two episodes that we're recording to fill in the gap while while you and I are both away on some leave. It's a bit hard to remember which when we're gonna talk about different things. You know? Yep.
Mitchell Davis:But, anyway, we will we'll make it work.
Gavin Tye:Yeah. And just and as an FYI, I've never prepared so hard for a meeting before in my life. Like at this stage of a sales cycle, because it could go, either way. But I figure if it doesn't work out, we can reuse what I've done anyway. So the inductive program, which we talked about all, all this week, I've been reframing everything to do with six sides and actually this particular meeting.
Gavin Tye:And they'd given me some invaluable feedback. The first message was, yeah, it was okay. And then they told me some feedback. So I took that, put it in and I said, that's perfect. Don't change it.
Mitchell Davis:Excellent. Yep. That's great.
Gavin Tye:So
Mitchell Davis:that's awesome feedback. So, yeah, it was really good. And you made it clear because you were reading off of a script while doing it. And I, and I asked you, I was like, are you gonna is this how you're gonna present it? And you're like, yeah, I'm gonna have to.
Mitchell Davis:So you're gonna tell them upfront like, hey, I've written some things out. I prepared for this. I just want to kind of set the stage for this meeting and tell you what we're going to go through today. And I I think that's I think they will appreciate that.
Gavin Tye:Yeah. Yeah. 100%. Yeah. So Yeah.
Gavin Tye:It's fan it's great.
Mitchell Davis:We've got some other exciting news.
Gavin Tye:Well, yeah. Hang on. I'm hanging. Woah. Woah.
Gavin Tye:Woah. Woah.
Mitchell Davis:Hold on. It's a big episode. Yeah. It's a
Gavin Tye:big episode. It makes me start thinking about when I said earlier, a few, few episodes go around readjusting that, the, the target for next year. I was like, well, we haven't got any indication from the market whether we might hit it.
Mitchell Davis:I'm not so sure anymore. Yeah.
Gavin Tye:Yeah. The 300 ks target. I'm not so sure anymore. If we were to go, if, if like what we said, talked about a me to go full time, we should, we absolutely have to hit that then some, right? Like you would expect that with a full time.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. I hope so.
Gavin Tye:Like, I don't want to call me like a professional salesperson in the
Mitchell Davis:group, I
Gavin Tye:am a professor.
Mitchell Davis:That's okay. You've been paid for this for half your career.
Gavin Tye:I'm a sound like I'm not a, it just sounds like a big noting myself. That's not what
Mitchell Davis:No. It's fine. It's fine. I'm a professional developer too. It's okay.
Gavin Tye:Mate, I sometimes walk into a meeting and say, it's okay, guys. I'm a professional. Just come.
Mitchell Davis:You tell tell Mel at the dinner table, hey, it's alright. I got this. Oh,
Gavin Tye:Do you know what I love telling the kids? Like, I love telling them, hey guys, I don't know if you know this, but your father's kind of a big deal.
Mitchell Davis:Yep. Yep. And then I I look forward to doing that too.
Gavin Tye:They just, they'd shake their head and go, no, you're not dad.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. At least they keep you grounded. Yeah. What you want. If they, if they were like, oh yeah, yeah, you are like, that wouldn't be as fun instantly.
Mitchell Davis:That wouldn't be fun for you.
Gavin Tye:No, no, absolutely not. So, yeah. I don't know. I don't know. I feel again, feel the feel, like we said it last week, the feeling feels like something's happening and things are just being reinforced here.
Gavin Tye:I don't know. Yep. Yep. Anyway
Mitchell Davis:That's great, man. It's really exciting. We just gotta keep at it, you know, ride the wave.
Gavin Tye:Keep on hammering. Project hammering.
Mitchell Davis:Hey. Well done. Yeah. Alright. Now can we reveal the other exciting news?
Mitchell Davis:You can. It's been a long time coming. Yes. Alright. Take it away.
Mitchell Davis:This is your guy.
Gavin Tye:Well, you said you wouldn't read it out, so I don't
Mitchell Davis:I know. I haven't even read these yet.
Gavin Tye:So so Hirile Choe, longtime listener, I would class him as a good friend, has written us an email to Journey at Six Sides. He's like, don't cut me off your Christmas list. He goes, Gavin Mitch, hope hope your legends are well. Just sending a little Christmas cheer your way mostly because I genuinely pity you both. Thank you.
Gavin Tye:Thank you for that, every episode, you ask for an email and and silence. So here it is. Your first letter. Treasure it. PS.
Gavin Tye:Love your podcast. It's one of my favorite listens. And I'm just gonna say to Hiralee, our first letter, incorrect. That is incorrect.
Mitchell Davis:But first Somebody scooped you.
Gavin Tye:Yeah. Someone scooped you this week, but thank you anyway.
Mitchell Davis:Week, we actually
Gavin Tye:got letter from, Nick Taylor from all the way from The UK. I'll let you read this one, Mitch, and then I'll I'll read his response and give him, I'll I'll take it from there.
Mitchell Davis:Alright. So Nick said Nick Taylor. Hi, guys. I'm from The UK. Discovered your podcast a couple of months ago.
Mitchell Davis:I've since caught up on all the episodes and now tune in every week. He's really enjoying the podcast for the honesty and humor and going through our highs and lows of building out our SaaS business. He's just recently been made redundant, and we've inspired him to take the leap and begin his own SaaS journey. He wants us to know people are listening and finding real value in what we're doing, so please keep it going. Don't worry, Nick.
Mitchell Davis:We definitely will keep it going because Gavin and I are really enjoying doing this even if nobody else was listening, but you are. So thank you. Last week I mentioned about maybe you're considering changing the format. So he's he's made a suggestion that he'd love to hear some, deep dive sessions into technical and marketing aspect because because that would help him make the right decisions from the start. It's wished us a Merry Christmas and continued success with Six Sides.
Mitchell Davis:So, Nick, right back at you. Thank you so much for for reaching out first ahead of Herrilee, and there was no, negativity in your, email either unlike Herrilee. So thank you very much for that.
Gavin Tye:Yep. And you set Herrilee up to look silly because he's not the first.
Mitchell Davis:Unknowingly. Yeah. That's right. It's It's beautiful. It's chef's kiss.
Mitchell Davis:So, thank you, Nick.
Gavin Tye:So I went back to Nick and said, what are your two biggest challenges? We'll see if we could, answer them today. So the first one was, he's early in the process, but I have a lot of ideas for my SaaS product, but don't know how to choose or validate the ideas. I'm thinking of picking what what is the simplest one to get an MVP up and running and running as quickly as possible. The other one was I'm a developer, so the sales and marketing and my weaker points, how and when should I start marketing?
Gavin Tye:Where should I focus? So you wanna answer the sales and marketing one, mate, or should I jump in on this one?
Mitchell Davis:You need to find yourself a Gavin, because it's fucking hard. Let me tell you. It's really hard to do everything, especially if you are like me. Not every developer's like me, of course, but I'm my own special kind, I guess, where I'm almost like I'm it's repellent to me of doing any sort of, self promotion, or picking up the phone and calling people or texting people or whatever. I just like, I just really don't wanna do it.
Mitchell Davis:Even So
Gavin Tye:I Even today, you were saying, god, you reply fast to people and go, I would do that on Monday. Like
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. That's right. Like, I would wait a few days to reply to someone who just emailed you back about something, and you're like, oh, wait. While we were in the pre show, like, talking through, you're like, oh, just give me a sec. I just wanna reply to this person now.
Gavin Tye:Yeah.
Mitchell Davis:So it's it's totally night and day. Some people have this ability or this desire to be, you know, the marketing, the sales, all the stuff that Gavin's good at. And some people like me don't. If you find yourself like me, then I would encourage you, Hey, consider finding a co founder who is good at that stuff because honestly it's worked really well for me here in Six Sides, and hasn't worked well for me in the past with, with not having someone else, on a project that could have gone really well, I feel like was a very good solution that I'd built. This is a, it's called RecruitKit.
Mitchell Davis:It's an old project now of mine, and I felt like it had really strong technical foundations, but I had no ability to sell it and get it into the market. So, it's then, you know, basically subsided since then. So I learnt that the hard way. So, yeah, I mean, otherwise the alternative is if you are somewhat comfortable or capable of doing sales and marketing and, know, building up awareness for your product, then go for it, do it all on your own. But if you're not, then yeah, consider getting someone else.
Gavin Tye:I'll jump in a little bit before that idea of getting a founder. Right? So Sure. The thing, the question that Nick had here is have a lot of ideas. I'm thinking about picking, what is the simplest one?
Gavin Tye:Get an MVP up and running. So the question I think you always gotta ask is, well, what's what do you want from the app or from the platform? Do you want it is it gonna be free or do you want someone to pay for it? And if it's you want someone to pay for it, think about the end user and you're better off. And this ties into the second one.
Gavin Tye:When should I start marketing it? Don't worry about marketing it. Go and do some research under the buyer, under the person who you're building it for and see if they will pay for it. Right. And see what first and foremost research the problem and understand how much the problem is impacting them.
Gavin Tye:And, you know, what do they do as a workaround and what, how do they solve it currently? And if you were to build something, what would, would they pay for it? Right. So I actually did a course a few years ago. And she said, you get your ideal client profile, pick 50 people and do 50 interviews.
Gavin Tye:Right. And then just do research on the problem. Ask them about it. What do they do? What, how do they get around all that kind of stuff?
Gavin Tye:Now, if out of some of those 50 people, some will be really interested to stay in contact, to be in line with you, to find out what your solution you come up with. And then some won't be. So, but I would, out of that, you would go, were they a cold, warm, or hot lead, or were they like, and then if it, if they say, Hey, yeah, look, if you could solve it, I'd pay a thousand dollars a month or a $100 a month. Then you get great. Can I stay?
Gavin Tye:Can I come back to you when I'm working through it and get your feedback to make sure it's relevant? Then just stay in contact with those group of people over the course of, you know, however many months it's gonna take you to build it. Now think about if it's an MVP, to get up and running quickly means someone can do that as well. Right? A lot of that quick MVP shit has been done and dusted.
Gavin Tye:It's more the technical stuff and subject matter expertise stuff. So that is really getting traction these days. Yep. So, but it's not about marketing. It's about forming relationships.
Gavin Tye:I think too many people try to go, I'm gonna get my first thousand customers. Fuck that. Get your first one. And out of interviewing 50 people, and if it really resonates and then they, they will pay for it. That first customer will be in that 50.
Gavin Tye:Your probably first three or four customers will be in that 50. Right. You just want to validate. Right. Yeah.
Gavin Tye:Yeah. We had what you, you that was validated from like, in our case event kit, it got validated, at LaraCon AU back in '24. And then we got a initial customer of volunteering WA and we spent way more time on actually developing the platform than what they paid us in the first instance, but at least we had a client that we could work alongside. Right. And, and again, LaraCon AU as well.
Gavin Tye:So that's what I would do is do the research first and then find out if someone's willing to pay. Cause most people will go and spend so much time on developing something and have no consideration for their end user. And they go, this is not, I wouldn't, I wouldn't use this. Yeah. Just because you can build something doesn't mean you should.
Gavin Tye:Yep.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. A 100%. That rings true again for me with RecruitKit. So I have lived this. Yeah.
Mitchell Davis:So yeah. I mean, if there are more, do you feel like we've covered that?
Gavin Tye:I think so. Look, I think, I I would love if Nikki, you I'm assuming you're gonna be listening, is build out your list of 50 potential, users of whatever you're doing or whatever you're thinking about building when you find an idea that you think that you can build something and then go and interview 50 of them and come back and tell us what the result was. What did you learn? And even if you decide not to pick up the product, you'll learn something about the next thing. Right.
Gavin Tye:Yeah. And, and come back and let us know. Yeah, happy to jump on a call and talk us through with you after you do all that as well. Yeah.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. Yeah. Nick, thank you so much again for reaching out and to Harely as well for reaching out. So funny we got the scoop on him though. That's excellent.
Gavin Tye:Yeah. Yeah. Yep. And and as as a technical person, just as a side note, there are so many people who aren't technical that are looking for technical founders. So subject matter experts that are more versed in some of the problems in the market that struggle to find a developer.
Gavin Tye:So maybe with, and tying in what Mitch said, maybe finding someone that has a really good sense of what the problem is, but can't solve it. Maybe that's how you join force. That's maybe that's how you join force. Sorry. Saxon.
Gavin Tye:We got a visitor. Yeah. Saxon just snuck into the room. There may be joined forces with someone who has a subject matter expertise that can't find a developer because a good developer is, hard to find.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. Yep. Yep. As you found out, mate. So thank you for saying that.
Gavin Tye:Yeah. Well, you are our CTO.
Mitchell Davis:Excellent. Alright. Look. That I think that rounds out the the feedback session. So thank you so much.
Mitchell Davis:And if you are out there, if you like this, send us another email to [email protected]. I'll start reading them again, if you start sending them through. Alright? So that's it.
Gavin Tye:Oh, so you're coming down off the off the ledge.
Mitchell Davis:Well, that's right. I mean, if the people will respond, then absolutely. Let's let's do it. Let's let's open the lines of communication again. Yeah.
Mitchell Davis:We'll lift the trade embargo and we'll just we'll bring them in. Let's bring the people in. Righto. Alright. Well, let's transition now to the main subject for this episode.
Mitchell Davis:We buried the lead a little here. We are planning our first hire, quote unquote hire. Our first contractual, engagement, shall we say?
Gavin Tye:Our first paid person in because we have Mel that does some stuff in the business and but she's doing it, out of obligation. Because she's married.
Mitchell Davis:Thank you, Mel. Well, well, I mean, we have hired Roman in some respects. We paid Roman. Right? But, anyway, this putting all that aside, why don't you tell us what we're what we're thinking about here?
Gavin Tye:So we do need to start bringing someone in, but we can't afford to do it full time. Right. Cause we are funding this. But I do think we need to improve our lead generation where look, I'm starting to prepare that we are gonna take, start taking off in 2026. And so that means moving me across into here more full time.
Gavin Tye:But then that required more leads and more, not, not just names, but people who are actively looking, for a solution like ours. And we need some help in that space, whether it's called growth marketing, marketing, lead generation, whatever you wanna call it. It's all the same stuff. So we can't afford full time. So what we're gonna do is start with someone, at four hours a week, and then hopefully grow that to eight and beyond whatever that is, whatever they can do.
Gavin Tye:It's very easy to go. I think it's very easy to go. I just going to pay that money and hope to get a return, but we have to turn that whatever we pay per month into a two or three X return on investment. We have to be conscious of spending a dollar and making three. Otherwise, if we don't do that, we spend a dollar, make $30.30 cents where, where, it's not a long term viable business model for the business.
Gavin Tye:Right. And I can't fund that indefinitely. Yep. Neither can you. Right.
Gavin Tye:So I was thinking about this this week. So that brings up a really interesting, challenge that we have. A friend of mine, he gave me, I think I may have spoken about this. He said, if you start a business, I challenge you to be able to build a world class business and know more than seven people. And I was like, okay.
Gavin Tye:Because seven people is a really strong team environment. Once it goes beyond that, it starts breaking down. Yeah. So it really got me thinking about setting up a standard operating procedure for hiring someone like measuring the ROI. Like some of it won't be, some hires will be financially driven.
Gavin Tye:Like we want to get a financial ROI. Some of it might be a productivity ROI, which we more on your side of the fence.
Mitchell Davis:Developers. Yeah.
Gavin Tye:But then again, if we develop, like what we're talking about for sponsors, you wanna tie that to an ROI KPI. Right? So I think setting this up from the beginning and making sure we're managing it right. I think we'll set the foundation for making sure we're a productive organization as we grow.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. Yeah.
Gavin Tye:What are your thoughts? I think
Mitchell Davis:it will, it's hard to define. It's hard to define one SOP that covers all the different areas of the business that we would hire for. Yep. Right. So what what would be in a in an SOP, a standard operating procedure for hiring someone do you think?
Gavin Tye:Well, I would think, well, what's the what outcome are we looking for? Is it an ROI based role, like a monetary based role, or is it a productivity based role? Or Yep. Is it a, is it a freeing up our time based role, which essentially
Mitchell Davis:But is that is that what about that is goes into a SOP though? Like, just walk me through what is, what are we actually documenting? Well, it
Gavin Tye:may not be that SOP is like, it may be the structure of what we're the goal of hiring someone or something. Yeah. I think the standard operating procedure would probably be,
Mitchell Davis:it's probably us sitting down and like documenting, okay, what is the actual goal for this hire? What do we expect to spend on them? How much of our time do we need to dedicate towards them Yep. In an ongoing fashion. Right?
Mitchell Davis:And then what are we getting what do we expect to get out of it? Right? Is that more
Gavin Tye:Yeah. So, so as an example, I'm meeting with this person this, like this morning after our, after our podcast, and I'm gonna talk through, Hey, what realistically can be achieved in four hours a week? Right. Yeah. Cause I don't think it's a lot of work.
Gavin Tye:It's just setting up something and then overview and providing feedback. Yep. Or maybe tweaking. That's it. Yep.
Gavin Tye:So out of that, I'm gonna, we would talk that through. Obviously we'll be using Fireflies to record it. Then I will build out a, I'll use GPT to build out a, some type of framework around it. And then out of that, like a what's a weekly deliverable or monthly deliverable that we'll have. And and then we would do it and then document it and then improve it.
Gavin Tye:We'll see what comes out of that and then see if we could actually build an SOP around it. Maybe the standard operating procedure will be, hey, document whether it's a revenue generating role or a productivity role or a time frame role, sit down with them and map out what the goals are of the role, and then break that down into weekly tasks and deliverables on certain days. Maybe that is the SOP. Right?
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. Okay. Yep. Yeah. I think it would be good for you and I to get some more documentation in this business as well.
Gavin Tye:Documentation. Yeah. Yeah. That's true. Yeah.
Gavin Tye:We don't have a lot.
Mitchell Davis:We don't have any at the moment.
Gavin Tye:We don't need it. Right?
Mitchell Davis:But That's right. We're both of us are executing at a very high level with what we're doing. There's no one else that we need to be informing of things. There's no board. There's no investors, whatever it is, just you and I, but it would be good to have to start to build a bit of a catalog of, okay, documentation that we've got about what we do.
Mitchell Davis:What because I still have that, like, open question of what do you actually do here? And I'm sure you feel a bit the same. Like, well, how do I go about the work that I do?
Gavin Tye:You know? See the end result of yours. Right? Yeah. And I see it in the app.
Gavin Tye:Right? Yeah. I don't need to see what's behind it, but then you, you can go for months or you can go for months with salespeople going, I'm not seeing anything. Yeah. Like, I'm not how do I know that you're not taking the piss?
Gavin Tye:Yeah. It's only when your things start coming through or you get yourself in the right room at the right time, that it's, you go, oh, okay. They are doing like they are.
Mitchell Davis:And then it becomes clear that they've spent a lot of time making those things happen. Right. To get into that room or, or have that meeting.
Gavin Tye:But I also think it's like, have I told you about the messy effect? Have I spoken to you about that before?
Mitchell Davis:I don't think so.
Gavin Tye:I saw Lionel Messi, play soccer, play football once. He's the one the world's best footballer. He was playing for, Barcelona. And I saw him in a world. Are you chewing?
Mitchell Davis:Oh, this does ring a bell. Yeah.
Gavin Tye:Are you chewing the mint on a pod? Like a sold in on a podcast?
Mitchell Davis:It won't be picked up on the
Gavin Tye:I can hear it. Like you're telling me not to tap the table and here you are eating it, eating a whatever you
Mitchell Davis:My throat is sore. All right. This is a medical condition. Anyway.
Gavin Tye:So what I saw him was is when I watched him play, world's best footballer. He doesn't run that fast, but when he needs to run, he runs at a 100 and bloody 10%, 20% beats everyone's scores and then stops again. And I was like, I used to run at a hunt, try to run at 110%, or I see some founders do that at 110% burnout, can't last the ten year journey. And I was like, well, maybe that's the key. It's how you do marathon training.
Gavin Tye:You do zone two, zone three training anyway. So what I'm, that's how I kind of apply my life. Like when I need to like replying to emails, no fucking around, just do it straight away. Like it's no point in running at 50% on that. Getting us, I know how important it was to be in the room with, on the day of delivery with, volunteering WA, we would not have met project rendezvous if we were not there.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. Plus everybody else. Right.
Gavin Tye:So, that's what, I don't even know how I got on this tangent, but that's kind of what we're doing is, but, but you only see the end result is, yeah. So, I think documenting this stuff, kind of gone off track a little bit here, but documenting this stuff and then, or trying to document it. Mel does this for her business that she works in. She has written full SOPs for a major tier one electrical contractor. So she does this stuff.
Gavin Tye:She, she puts together massive binders of stuff to do. We can make her, yeah. If we can make her understand or help us do that, and she knows how to lock what we're trying to achieve. Maybe in time she can take a lot of that burden off us and help manage the team where we can just focus on us being creative and laying on boats around the place and not working.
Mitchell Davis:That's right. Always been my dream just to lay on boats. I went back and listened to last week's episode. I was dropping bombs with the, like, no pun intended.
Gavin Tye:Oh, yeah.
Mitchell Davis:And you were just I don't know. You were having an off day.
Gavin Tye:You went and do back and listened to last week, and you were right. I did say one drive and not You did.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. Did. Yeah. I knew it in the moment and I'll, I'll throw you a bone and say, oh, We'll
Gavin Tye:go back and listen twice. I was like, ah, fuck. You was right. And I was gonna text you. And I went, nah, I'll just wait till the podcast.
Gavin Tye:That's alright.
Mitchell Davis:So I do listen.
Gavin Tye:But I think is if we don't document that stuff, then the results we want from people will be vague. Right. And, yeah, we need to know if our expectations are right or wrong because we could be, we're just putting a flat, like a, we're just trying to see that's the outcome we want. We make, we will need to adjust.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah, that's right. And it would be, you know, we then want to know for the next hire, like, okay, cool. If hire number one was able to do this or maybe hire number two, like it adjusts expectations into the future. Right. So, yeah.
Mitchell Davis:If we, if we had
Gavin Tye:the wrong expectation of people and, and we have a, and they don't in their mind's eye, they're not doing what we need them to do. And they get frustrated at us and we're frustrated, then we'll have a lot of churn. And we'll waste every time you churn, you just waste money because it takes time to find people and get them back up to speed. So we have to try to be as efficient and as innovative and as, as possible, I think. Yeah.
Gavin Tye:Otherwise, yeah. Otherwise we'll just burn. We'll burn
Mitchell Davis:whatever we, we win. Burn cash burn time.
Gavin Tye:Yeah. Yep.
Mitchell Davis:Okay. So when is what's the time frame? You're you're meeting with this person later today and assuming that goes well, what's the time frame then to have them start working within the business?
Gavin Tye:We'll probably we'll see. I'll talk to them about what's going on next year around AIM and stuff like that and, and see what he would suggest we do in the lead up to it. He's really good at that stuff. Okay. So, we'll go from there.
Gavin Tye:We'll just see. So either. Yeah.
Mitchell Davis:Okay. Cool. Amazing.
Gavin Tye:Yeah. Good. Yeah. We kind of have to start them as quickly as possible because otherwise they'll go somewhere else. Right?
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. Yeah. True. Yeah. There's some risk there.
Mitchell Davis:Yep. Okay. Cool. Well, on that point then let's talk about next year. So we've got some more episodes coming that we'll kind of go through, you know, we still got another recording to do this this year, but already we can see next year will be really busy.
Mitchell Davis:So in January, hopefully we're doing this hiring. I will be working away on the web dashboard so people can configure their own events and take me out of the loop and and you. But then also working really hard on AIM, so getting things set up. And AIM for those that haven't listened back is we talked about in episode forty and thirty nine is it's a it's a conference that is all about events basically, event planners and venues and all this sort of stuff. So obviously a big opportunity for us to go and present what we're doing to the open market.
Mitchell Davis:So need to be doing a bunch of planning to try and the words we're using is wow the shit out of anybody that comes to our booth. Holy shit moments, mate.
Gavin Tye:Great sales is based on holy shit moments or epiphanies.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. That's a big burden on me to get, like, to get our stuff to a point that it just does impress the passerby which is awesome. It's a big responsibility, but it's also like a big opportunity. It's fun. It's fun flexing like development and creative muscle, to be able to come up with some things that hopefully will wow people.
Mitchell Davis:So Yeah. That's what I'm spending a lot of my focus on. What else have we got going on next year?
Gavin Tye:So we do have a bit of planning around that conference as well. We have to get a back banner, which is, two meter three meters by two meters or something like that, whatever that is. Big banner. Yeah. It's a big banner.
Mitchell Davis:I gotta get that designed and everything.
Gavin Tye:I'm sure Canva has a template. We can at least a starting point and it Yeah. So, next year in the first part of the year, we're assuming I'm gonna assume that this project we're under view is gonna move forward into a step. Yep. And so that's gonna take up some time in the early part of the year because we, we need to be able to is saying if they all say yes, it needs to, we need to kick off as quick as we can because we need as long as long, we need as long as brunt time of a runway as we can to actually do that.
Gavin Tye:So that could involve us going traveling as well for that. But then we've got AIM and then we've also got this other event, which that does require us to be out on the road a bit. So, Is that project hammer? Project hammer. Yep.
Gavin Tye:Yep. So yeah, it's already in the first half of the year. Like think about what happened this year. We've got five in the end of the year, towards the end of the year. This year, we're gonna be really busy at the beginning.
Gavin Tye:I reckon it's gonna set up a massive year. Yeah. A massive year.
Mitchell Davis:Hopefully. That's what I'm hoping. Because wouldn't that be great to just start having a bit of a snowball effect, a flywheel, you know, of things coming and each event hopefully turns into one, into many Yeah. Continue to grow like that. Yeah.
Mitchell Davis:My hope is that we get to a point where we can't physically go to every event. Yes. You know?
Gavin Tye:Yep. Yep. That's right. I agree. It has made me rethink about sales a lot in the last couple months.
Gavin Tye:Right? I've come from an industry before when I worked this company, Redeye, their sales were hard and it was a long timeline. And so I've often wondered if, if I've just created that bias or, that I just expect B2B enterprise sales to be long. Yeah. And, so I just go, I don't try to push.
Gavin Tye:I just go, it is what it is. And, but I've seen a few instances and with other people as well, like the founder of Redeye, he started he's co founded create financial with Roman. Right? Yep. And he said to Roman, he said, it's such a refreshing thing to be able to sell something when there's a need for it.
Gavin Tye:Like, and if peep you don't have to try to sell, they they just, yes. Okay. And he goes, and I'm wondering what we hear. It seems like the cycle is so much faster than what I'm used to. And I'm like, have I just conditioned myself for it to be slow in other businesses?
Gavin Tye:Because that's what I'm used to.
Mitchell Davis:Maybe. I mean, it's not like we what's the quickest sale from a conversate what's the quickest cycle that we've had so far?
Gavin Tye:Volunteering WA, which was probably two or three weeks, maybe a month.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. Okay.
Gavin Tye:Yeah. This last one project hammer was the quickest in that business, but they were in another business. So, Yeah.
Mitchell Davis:This person moved in. Yeah. Our contact with them recently changed jobs. We met them at their last job. They moved into this job, and then that established a quicker pattern.
Mitchell Davis:Right? Because we already knew this person. It's a
Gavin Tye:tricky, it's a tricky thing. Right. Time is time. It's not, I don't think time is the right metric for closing a sale. And I explained by that is sometimes it just takes weeks to meet someone from one meeting to the next, but it doesn't mean it's taken a lot of time, a lot of effort.
Gavin Tye:So if you know what I mean, so let me, so I'll tell you quickly while we're chatting.
Mitchell Davis:It might be more relevant of about like time spoken that Yes. Time spent with the customer.
Gavin Tye:Yes.
Mitchell Davis:Like interacting with them rather than, yeah, at the sales cycle itself.
Gavin Tye:Yep. Okay. So let me, I'll give you an example. So the person from project hammer, I've met them four times. One, two, three, two hours of work.
Gavin Tye:Two hours a minute. Yeah. Right? Yeah. So that's that already in itself.
Gavin Tye:It's not the good hourly rate. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's right.
Gavin Tye:So volunteering WA was two meetings. Right? Two meetings for, for Marinas.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah.
Gavin Tye:It was, but there's a bit of backward forwards on emails. So there's probably an hour of email backwards and forwards. So it's a very short closing window, but that price point is reflective of it, but that's where you gotta have more. And so you're closing more, like sometimes they just got meetings that they can't make a decision for a month and you go, well, you can't do anything about it.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah.
Gavin Tye:But if you're spending, oh, we've had 30 meetings with those people, so I'm gonna close them. Then that's a problem. Right? That is. Yeah.
Gavin Tye:That's a proper problem. Yeah. Yeah. So I think the closing cycle is fine. People aren't often gonna say yes on a call then and there.
Gavin Tye:They could do, but I don't think it's the, I think it's an anomaly. It's not the regular.
Mitchell Davis:Well, what do we take from this then? Like what, does this inform for us? Because to my mind, I start thinking about self-service signups. Like could people do this themselves? If they were happy enough with what they saw on the website and any of our marketing content, could we get this to a point where 10% of our sales are self-service?
Mitchell Davis:Like could marinas have seen what we've done and just gone, these guys look alright.
Gavin Tye:I think that requires the leads to be coming into the business, not us going out to them. Yeah. Right. If they know who we are and we're getting a reputation and they're coming to us and they can sign up. Yes.
Gavin Tye:Because they're already, we already have some type of reputation.
Mitchell Davis:Sure. Right. Right now it's super early days.
Gavin Tye:We're we're creating momentum going out. You can't really say, Hey Mitch, how are you? Do you want six sides? Great. I'm gonna send you a link and just sign up.
Gavin Tye:They just, the chances are them doing it is not gonna, we're still trying to over service the shit out of people.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah.
Gavin Tye:And then yeah,
Mitchell Davis:yeah, yeah, totally.
Gavin Tye:Yep. But in time I would like to think that we could switch that around. Like, we're doing the outreach to people, not like the follow-up emails after the event. Once we had the dashboards, we were saying, hey, look, if you wanna sign up and have a come come here and I think that's when that starts happening. Right?
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. Yeah. I can't wait. I real I'm so excited for a future world where we have this ability to have people come into our funnel. They can sign themselves up.
Mitchell Davis:We don't know anything about them. Like, this is a proper SaaS business without it requiring like the high touch. I mean, you're not even talking much there. Like, two hours to get, you know, a a multi thousand dollar deal is fantastic. But, yeah, could we scale that?
Mitchell Davis:We will get it to a point where it scales and and we can have people enter our funnel and sign themselves up. Like, that's I'm excited for that.
Gavin Tye:Well generally, yes. Look, I think if people do start coming to us in that way that you said, I think we would know a lot about them anyway. Would have tried to attract them with, with marketing content and we would have an understanding of who they were anyway. But when you think about two hours to close a client in theory, that's 10 clients a week at twenty hours. Right?
Gavin Tye:So, there is so much more scope there too. We don't need to automate yet.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. For sure. We would
Gavin Tye:need to automate the, you know, the, the paperwork and the contracts and all that kind of stuff after, I think that is probably the better place to do stuff right in the, in the first instance. So, I do, I think we will have, I think there's a long way to go from. Yes. That's a great end result. I think there's a super long way to go from where we are today to there.
Gavin Tye:And that's where I think most people fuck up is they try to bridge that gap too soon without actually learning the customer.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. I agree. But I'm that world and whether that's a year or two years from now, I would hope it's not any longer than that to be honest, but whenever that is that's when I'm really excited for, okay, we've got a business where people can just come in, sign themselves up. Obviously, we still continue to do outreach and go after the big opportunities, right, but where this just can kind of run, you know, and we can work on the business rather than in the business as you like to say.
Gavin Tye:But this is a I think the next iteration from here is to is going to multiyear contract. Yeah. And then that gives us the scale, like the automate, like a little bit. Right. Cause we're, we're now building on top of, on, of what we've done the previous year, which I think, and that's where we start seeing exponential growth.
Gavin Tye:And then finally from that, then we start seeing, other stuff. So yeah, it's, yep. Awesome.
Mitchell Davis:Okay, cool. Well that covers next year. So yeah, so this week coming up for me, working exclusively on project rendezvous. Going to start on Sunday, like I mentioned, go through set up a new app. So this would be a separate app in the App Store.
Mitchell Davis:It'll still have the same bones and foundation as the Six Sides app does, but it will be completely reskinned for this particular project. That's the main thing that I'm gonna be working on. I don't think there's anything else.
Gavin Tye:So you're not setting up an app now for next Thursday?
Mitchell Davis:I will be making a start on it. So we we won't publish it.
Gavin Tye:No. No. Won't.
Mitchell Davis:It will just live on my computer. But, I will be able to demonstrate on in a simulator Okay. On Thursday that we have a new app. It'll have their icon. It'll have their colors, their fonts, etcetera, go through.
Mitchell Davis:It'll be connected to our infrastructure, which again will just be running on my computer. Yep. So it'll share the same list of users and all this sort of stuff, but, it will look like their app. And yes, that's what I'm gonna have for Thursday. Okay.
Gavin Tye:Yeah. Cool. So, yeah,
Mitchell Davis:hopefully that is hopefully just by showing them, look, hey, we care enough about this even in this super early phase where we've had one meeting with them and you spoke with them at at a conference to go like, hey. This is significant to us. You know? I I worry. Does it put things does it sway us a little into the, oh, these guys are maybe desperate category?
Mitchell Davis:Is it too much?
Gavin Tye:What's the alternative if you say to someone, hey, we're not gonna do any of that until you choose us. So like, fuck off. I think I think you have to do and show before you get paid. Right? The law of reciprocity and you give before you ask.
Gavin Tye:And I think as long as the balance of it here is twenty hours, right. Or whatever it is for ten hours, whatever. Yeah. And to show that, okay, this is just what we've done in a short period of time. Like, I think, yeah, the other way it doesn't work, mate.
Gavin Tye:Yeah. Yeah. The other way. Yeah. That's right.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. So okay. Cool. Well, that's good. That was just the only thing I wanted to flag you though.
Mitchell Davis:So, mate, that's it. That's all I'll I will be working on until it's ready to go. I'll I'll keep you informed obviously, as I as I go, what do we have
Gavin Tye:to a look at this Harry the Hire stuff for AIM and just choose what the, the furniture is. And, then we can look at the backdrop. We have to be conscious of, how long the lead time is on one of these back walls. That's like, we don't wanna get caught out on that.
Mitchell Davis:Yep. Well, maybe we can catch up on that on Monday.
Gavin Tye:Yeah. Yeah.
Mitchell Davis:Because we'll we sit down and do a we have two meetings a week. One of them is this podcast that we do on Fridays and the other is the, Monday morning. We sit down and plan out the week.
Gavin Tye:So Yep.
Mitchell Davis:Let's do it then. Yeah. Okay.
Gavin Tye:Yep. Cool. Yeah. I've got my list of stuff on the board here that I need to knock off before Christmas. So some of this stuff is, you know, six sides.
Gavin Tye:Some of this stuff is deal buddy. Some of the stuff is founders collective, the other podcast. Yeah. Knocking those out.
Mitchell Davis:So yeah. Right. Exciting. Big week then.
Gavin Tye:So Yes. Well, yeah. Big, big lead up into Christmas. So I do think we'll be well, I'll be working a little bit over the break. So Yeah.
Mitchell Davis:Well, me too. But we've talked about that. When it's working for myself, I don't mind that at all. Like, I really hate working on other people's stuff when I'm meant to be on break, but, no sweat. I I really like what I do.
Mitchell Davis:So it's fun working on your own things when no one's, like, bothering you about stuff. You know? Anyway, so thank you again to Nick and to Herrilee for reaching out. If you would like to send us an email or a DM or whatever, [email protected], we'd love to read out your email and get your feedback and your thoughts on anything, or any questions that you might have for us. We'd appreciate it.
Mitchell Davis:So please do that. And, where can people find you online, mate?
Gavin Tye:On LinkedIn. Yep. I mean, Ty, t y e on LinkedIn, and also on the other leap the leap by the founders collective. We've got, that's up and running. We've almost booked out our first season.
Gavin Tye:So we've gotta start, recording all those, but yeah. LinkedIn love to connect and say hi.
Mitchell Davis:That's it. And you can find me, at my Where can we find you, mate? You're just terrible at this every week.
Gavin Tye:You're the host.
Mitchell Davis:I don't know if I don't know if you're doing it on purpose now or not.
Gavin Tye:You're the host.
Mitchell Davis:So I just never I won't wait. I'm the host. I thought we were hosting together.
Gavin Tye:Mate, come on. You're the host. Right. Okay. I'm the terror.
Gavin Tye:Yeah.
Mitchell Davis:Okay. Got it. Understood. You can find me at Mitch Dev in all the places. We got links to everything in the show notes, and, we will catch you all next week.
Mitchell Davis:Bye, mate.