Hey. I'm Mitchell Davis, a Laravel developer.
Gavin Tye:Hi. I'm Gavin Tye, cofounder of Six Sides. I was thinking about that the other day, mate. I'm the I'm a cofounder. So are you.
Gavin Tye:So
Mitchell Davis:You are. It's true.
Gavin Tye:We
Mitchell Davis:are. But if we just both if we both say we're cofounders, it doesn't really tell everyone what we actually do here.
Gavin Tye:You're a CTO. Remember?
Mitchell Davis:Well, that's right. Yeah. But I I'm a Laravel developer at heart. Anyway, 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.
Mitchell Davis:How are you going, mate?
Gavin Tye:Good, mate. Happy New Year. Apparently, this is getting released in New Year. Join us here.
Mitchell Davis:Happy New Year, everybody. We're we're recording it in early December, so it hasn't hit for us yet, but hopefully you had a good one. In next week's episode, we will tell you about how our New Year's went and our Christmas and all that sort of stuff because we're doing a bit of prerecording, so we don't miss any weeks.
Gavin Tye:Do you wanna see what I'm set myself a challenge to do in 2026? Sure. This year, apparently. Gonna play the harmonica.
Mitchell Davis:Oh, shit. A bit of Bob Dylan.
Gavin Tye:Absolutely not musical at all. I'm trying to open up a different part of my brain, a creative part of my brain. So I'm gonna set aside for ten minutes So a
Mitchell Davis:Ten minutes a day. Excellent. You'll be you'll you'll be flying along. That's a good amount
Gavin Tye:of says I'll be excellent in a year's time. So we'll
Mitchell Davis:see. You will. Yeah. That's three thousand minutes of Yeah.
Gavin Tye:Three thousand six hundred minutes or something. That's a lot.
Mitchell Davis:That's right. Yeah. That's a lot. Mate, okay. Very exciting.
Mitchell Davis:Well, we'll see. See how we go. For for next year's episode then, 2027, you can give us a show. Okay. Anyway, excellent.
Mitchell Davis:Look. The the idea of this episode today is about getting to know each other. So, break over the new
Gavin Tye:year over the Christmas and new year break here in Australia. We're not gonna have much to update for Six Sides. So we thought, you know, people were lucky enough that some people have listened during the year. You know, we've got, we've got an okay amount of downloads. So we thought we would share like a little bit about who we are and how we got here.
Gavin Tye:Maybe it might help some people think about starting a business or just, you know, not that we're anything special, but we're we're we're nothing special. I don't think we're just two two blokes.
Mitchell Davis:No. No. No. No. We're special.
Mitchell Davis:Absolutely. But so is everyone else. You know? That's okay. That's how I view it.
Mitchell Davis:So, yeah, hopefully, this helps you get to know us a little bit better. I'm sure I'm gonna learn some stuff about you that I didn't know and vice versa. And, yeah. Look. Why don't we just jump right into it?
Mitchell Davis:So what were we like as kids back in the day? Do you wanna go first?
Gavin Tye:Mate, I was I had a bit of a, what's a colorful past when I was a child. Right? Like, I didn't come from a quite, like a it was it was a, what do you call it? Tumultuous. It was a, like, a bit of a violent childhood.
Gavin Tye:I had none violent. Like I was a stepfather that was not a good man. So mom was married to my dad when, and then they separated when I was about three. And I remember them separating. And then we ended up going living with this fellow and it just was not a great household.
Gavin Tye:There was always fighting. It was really, really difficult, but I'm so one of the biggest things that I'm so lucky that happened is I remember a fight happening when I was a kid and I was hiding behind the lounge, really scared. And a voice in my head said, this isn't right. Just don't let it affect you. You'll get out of this one day.
Gavin Tye:And it was that thing just changed my whole perspective on stuff. And a question made me question everything, like, look at everything differently. Like, although we're seeing, something through a particular lens, even from then I was like, well, what, what, what is really going on? And that has set me on the path forever. Like even what we do now in this business.
Gavin Tye:So I look at that through that lens, it is so deeply ingrained in me, but it happened when I was four or five. And, yeah, it was a interesting, it was interesting childhood. Like I, I don't, regret it at the time. I didn't see it, but it it's actually given me a lot of character and perspective that a lot of people don't have. So,
Mitchell Davis:yeah. Sure. Yeah. I mean, you couldn't go through that without getting some perspective and certainly building character. Yeah.
Gavin Tye:So Yeah. So we we actually moved around a lot. Like I was born in Sydney down down there. I was born in Fairfield and or Greystains, and then we moved out to Fairfield and then up to Queensland, for a few years. And then we went to Rockhampton for a while.
Gavin Tye:My stepdad was a truck driver, so he was chasing work. Then from there we went to America. We lived in America for four years when I was eight. And I come back when I was 12. I started year seven over there.
Gavin Tye:You went elementary. I think I did four and five and then you go seven, eight or six and seven, I think in junior high or seven and eight in junior high. And then you do high school nine, ten, eleven, twelve. But I
Mitchell Davis:just You got a whole weird system over there.
Gavin Tye:Yeah. Yeah. But I started year seven there and then I come back and started year seven again in, in Australia. Yeah.
Mitchell Davis:Okay. Right.
Gavin Tye:And that's where I stayed in Campbelltown. I lived in Campbelltown for, for a long time. I did all my high school. I went school there. So Yep.
Gavin Tye:Gave me some stability there. Started getting stability back.
Mitchell Davis:Yep. Well, we've got some similarities. So, I've like my memory for that for that period I mean, my memory in general, honestly, is pretty bad. For some reason, I it's, like, super selective. I can remember all sorts of, like, stuff that doesn't matter a whole lot.
Mitchell Davis:You know? And I can remember some stuff that does matter, but, like, my sister has, like, a wealth of history that she remembers about everything that we did as kids or whatever. She's like, you remember when we did this? And I'm like, no. Not really.
Mitchell Davis:Like, it just I don't know. So I got some I gotta look out for, like, dementia signs and stuff because it's it's a bit scary, to be honest with you. Anyway, for us as kids, we did also move around a bit. Yep. So, I was born in, I don't know the name of it, but, like, Sutherland Shire area.
Gavin Tye:Okay.
Mitchell Davis:There's a hospital there. Yeah. Which is in New South Wales. And then, my family both sides of my family tree, lived around Heathcote specifically. And so, Colgra is the name of the hospital.
Mitchell Davis:And, so we lived around there. Then, my parents actually, separated at one point, and then they got together, I think, about a year and a half later or something again. They actually got back together, and they have been together since. So that was when I was, like, I don't know, six, eight years old, somewhere
Gavin Tye:around there.
Mitchell Davis:Heard. Six, seven. Yeah. Already twice we've had two opportunities for that. Yeah.
Mitchell Davis:So so that was an interesting time. Both my parents, like, dated other people for, like, a year or so, and we moved in with someone. And I still got to see my dad, like, every week or every two weeks or something like that. So I I don't think it was like they were at daggers with each other, and then obviously that would been very unlikely for them to get back together if they were. So I think it was, like, fairly amicable.
Mitchell Davis:But to be honest, I don't know a whole lot about that period of their lives. And Yeah. It's a bit, you know, it's not something that they wanna relive and tell the story of. You know?
Gavin Tye:So as well. It's the same. Like, there's so much stuff you don't realize that goes on as an adult. Like Yeah. Now Exactly.
Gavin Tye:Yeah.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, we moved to a few different places. We lived in Ingerdine for a while. Before I was even in the picture, my parents and my sister who's, like, two and a half years older than me Yep.
Mitchell Davis:They moved up to, is Tawoon Bay on the border of New South Wales and Queensland?
Gavin Tye:Don't know, mate.
Mitchell Davis:Tawoon Gabi maybe? Somewhere up there, though. Somewhere near, near the border. They lived up that way for a while, and then I was born and we came down here and all this sort of stuff. You already knew you were gonna get sunburned, mate.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. That's right. This kid's not gonna last. Yeah. So, then, anyway, when we were like, call it six or seven, it was year two, we moved to the Central Coast.
Mitchell Davis:And I lived there until I was, like, 25. So, went to school up there, met all my friends up there. Yeah, I just remember, like it's funny. I remember I'm you know, speaking of sunburn, I'm not one to go out in the sun. I'm white as it gets for people that haven't seen me.
Mitchell Davis:I'm extremely white, and I've got red hair, so I do not fare well in the sun at all. And we lived, like, fifteen minutes from the beach. We lived on the Central Coast, which, like, the whole premise of the Central Coast is that, okay, you're close to the beach. Right? And, yeah, we basically went to the beach maybe once or twice a year.
Mitchell Davis:So that was always kind of I felt a bit at odds about where we lived versus what all my mates are doing, which was going to the beach. And I was just like, oh, it's just not for me. Bring back
Gavin Tye:the burqa, they would say you would say. Yeah. That's right. Yeah. Because you have a happy yeah.
Gavin Tye:Do you have a have a happy childhood?
Mitchell Davis:Oh, yeah. Absolutely. So even while, like, the parents were separated and all that sort of stuff, I was happy. Like Yeah. No point was I it's funny.
Mitchell Davis:My best mate, Adam, he was, like, full on in high school. He was, like, emo kid, like Yeah. Playing metal music and all this sort of stuff. And I'm just like I feel like I just, like, breezed through life in that period. Just like Yeah.
Mitchell Davis:I used to ride my BMX bike around, and I loved that. I had a girlfriend at the time for many years who lived two or three suburbs away and that was, you know, before I could drive. And so I would ride my bike basically to hers every day and then I'd come back at dinner time. My mom ran a dance school, a few dance schools actually, on the Central Coast. And, my sister then also came into that business and became like another teacher in that business.
Mitchell Davis:So I had heaps of free time and dad who by then like at this point, you know, it's year two, year three of school or whatever and they're back together up in on the Central Coast. And so then dad worked down in Sydney and so he traveled, you know, it's like two three four hours every day. And so he wouldn't get home till 07:00. Mum and my sister would be working until seven or so, somewhere around there. So like I always just had heaps of spare time, basically heaps of free time.
Mitchell Davis:So, yeah, so I used to love riding my bike over. Once I got into high school, I'd ride my bike everywhere. And, that was like a huge I loved that. And now I kind of miss riding a bike and like that freedom of looking around at stuff. And that's when I got a m p three player and like I'd listen to music and fuck.
Mitchell Davis:Like, some good times there. Some really good times. So, yeah, I was happy. Never really had any dramas. Mom and I used to be at odds with each other a fair bit because, you know, I wanted more independence, and my mom is very opinionated on things and lets you know.
Mitchell Davis:She doesn't hold anything back. And so, yeah, we used to have, like, arguments a fair bit. And then I was very fortunate that, they basically converted we had a garage on the property, and, they converted that into, a granny flat basically. And I got the opportunity to have that, which was like amazing. I don't know why my sister didn't take that to be honest, but maybe my mom was like, no, you need to get out.
Mitchell Davis:Like, I don't know. I don't really I don't know exactly what happened there. But, anyway, yeah, I basically got this granny flat to live in from the age of probably like 17, 18, somewhere around there to 25 when we moved, down to Sydney. Yeah. Right.
Mitchell Davis:And so that was fantastic because then now I wasn't in in her hair and, you know, having a girlfriend at the time, you can imagine that's pretty useful to have your own space and all this sort of stuff. So yeah. So it was that was always really good. I never really had any dramas or anything like that that kinda got me down. So yeah.
Mitchell Davis:Awesome. Yeah. Pretty fortunate with that. And it's not the sort of thing that you really think about until you sit down to reflect on stuff like this, like what we're doing now.
Gavin Tye:Like so
Mitchell Davis:if you're listening to this, maybe do the same for you. Think about, you know, what you've got going on in in your history as well. Yeah.
Gavin Tye:I often think back to those times. Right? Like when because we my mom left my stepdad when we were in America and we come back to Australia. So was a single mom with four kids, didn't have a lot of job prospects at the time. Just now that I'm older, just the pressure she would have been on under like to, to, to raise four kids and try to keep them in the house.
Gavin Tye:And she was struggling. Right. She had her own struggles, but it was, it was a dark, it was a tough time from when we got back in '88. I finished school in '94. Mom was dating some blokes every now and then, and they would just try to befriend the older, the older son.
Gavin Tye:And I was like, mate, just go away. I don't want to talk to you. Like just, and I can see it and you can see it now that older just being protective and all that kind of stuff. But when I was about in year eight, actually I met a met Dean who you've met. We were in the same class and, I went around to his house and met his parents and they were a light at, in a, in a ray of sunshine, I guess, in an otherwise dark time.
Gavin Tye:I didn't go over there that much. I would go maybe one, two weekends a month or something. And we would go over there and build the Dean's dad would just make us do all his yard work. He would get all these kids and we would be mowing lawns. We'd be putting up Christmas lights.
Gavin Tye:We'd re turfed his whole yard once. Then it was all and then he said, well, if you're gonna come over and hang out, we'll pay you like they bought dinner and I'll pay for you because people work for it.
Mitchell Davis:Right? So,
Gavin Tye:it was great. It went away on holidays for them with them. And then I was finally got a sense of, oh, this is what a positive family should be. Right. And I never, I didn't know then how to get from where I was to there, but I knew that I wanted to get there.
Gavin Tye:And that just set me on a path to try to figure that out. And it took me a long time. Like I did realize I knew I was, I was aware enough to know that there's things that I knew that I didn't want to do. Like I've never had a cigarette in my life, like all that kind of stuff, just because of that stuff. I've never, you know, I used to see my mom get hit a lot.
Gavin Tye:I was like, I'm never gonna be violent, all that kind of stuff. Right. But I was also well enough. I was aware enough to know that there was stuff. It would have influenced me in a way that I didn't know.
Gavin Tye:So I would unknow, unconscious impacts it would have on me. So I set out on trying to uncover all that stuff. And it took about ten years to figure it, figure it out. Like, so I wasn't always looking behind. Had to figure it out so I could be present without being impacted.
Gavin Tye:And that set me on a, like a journey of all sorts of things. And, yeah, I found my way through it and it was good. Never had counseling or anything like that. Never just just thought my way out of it. And it was, yeah.
Gavin Tye:I wouldn't have changed anything for it. Right? So
Mitchell Davis:yeah. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. There you go.
Mitchell Davis:I mean, that's an interesting point. I've had counselling before. Yep. There was one point actually in school where I got, like, pulled out of a class that I was in to go and speak to the counsellor.
Gavin Tye:Got a memory.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. I can remember that because it was like, what? Why you and it was like some wanna I mean, in school, music was a huge part of my life. Mine and Adam's my my best mate. We would go play guitar all the time.
Mitchell Davis:Like, that was a that was a huge part of what we did. And we got pretty close with the music teacher as well. She was awesome. Missus Sickson, I think. I don't see?
Mitchell Davis:Again, bad memory, but I'm pretty sure it's Sickson. From a long
Gavin Tye:time ago.
Mitchell Davis:Yep. Yeah. It is. But she was great. She we had really good relationships actually with a lot of our teachers because I think we were like you would probably put us in as like the nerdy kids, but we it's not like we were, like, playing Harry Potter and shit on the schoolyard.
Mitchell Davis:Like, we weren't we weren't that type of nerdy. We were just like, okay, with with smart kids, you know, to toot my own horn. We were the smart kids who had decent heads on our shoulders who weren't gonna really cause trouble. Yeah. What was that?
Gavin Tye:And you're polite and
Mitchell Davis:you're Yeah. Exactly. Yes. And so so that meant we got a lot of trust from our teachers. So particularly this, music teacher, miss Hixson, would just let us, like, basically get out of class and go play guitars like out, you know, because we kind of we understood what was going on with the whatever she was trying to teach.
Mitchell Davis:And so then she just let us go, like, play guitars out in the quad area or whatever. And so that was always awesome. But she I think it was her. Maybe I said something, like, silly in class one day. I don't know.
Mitchell Davis:I must have said the wrong thing, and maybe she took it the wrong way that, like, I was depressed or something. So then she apparently raised that with my mom. And then my mom was like, oh, I don't know. Like, okay. Maybe something's up.
Mitchell Davis:And so then I get fucking pulled out of class one time to go see the counselor, and I'm like, what? What's up? She's like, oh, you know, we've had, these reports and you sent this and da da da. And I was like, I got no problems at all. Like, what are you talking about?
Mitchell Davis:I'm fine. So it was yeah. That was my first interaction with any sort of counseling. But then I have had other counseling before to deal with, other issues. Nicole, I I don't super wanna go into this, but it's alright.
Mitchell Davis:Like, it's all open, and there's some transparency here. Right? We're being vulnerable. But Nicole and I, my fiance, went through a break, for a period a few years ago now, like in 2019, I think it was. And so I got, like, a fair bit of counseling at that point to try and deal with that.
Mitchell Davis:Then we got back together. Yeah. And I haven't had any counseling since, but, yeah, it is if you feel like you might need it, I would encourage you to go seek it.
Gavin Tye:There's a book I read which you guys might wanna read too, but Mel and I read it. It was like how to save your marriage before it starts, and it actually asks, gets you to you read a chapter and you speak about it, but it gets you to uncover all these hidden values that you you believe, but you may not communicate to go, oh, right. That's where you're coming from. It's really interesting.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. I'm gonna write that down. That sounds
Gavin Tye:like a by a husband and wife of the same name, Les and Leslie someone. I just saw it the other day. It was actually, yeah, it was a, it was a really good book. We might have it in PDF if I can find it, I'll flick it to you.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yep. All right.
Mitchell Davis:Awesome. Yeah.
Gavin Tye:Was really, it was on the, so the contrast for me was, is I, I have a full sister and two half sisters. Right. And we go and see my dad on the, on the, on the every second weekend. And then, but I, I couldn't tell anyone because I didn't want to tell my dad what was going on at the house because I didn't want to get us separated. Cause if we had, got us separated, if he had to pull me and my sister out, there was just, would have been so bad for my two sisters there.
Gavin Tye:So we just didn't tell anyone. And,
Mitchell Davis:yeah,
Gavin Tye:it was, it was interesting, but, but you know, all that has to pay, pay a price. Right. When I got older, I went from 12 to 24. Like basically I was the looked after everyone and that, that come at a cost. But when I got older, I was like, I just haven't had any fun.
Gavin Tye:I just, and then I made a decision when I was about 21, 22, when I was in Brisbane, I was, I thought I'm just gonna go have fun for a couple of years. I'm just gonna go out and party and, and just do all this stuff. And I'm just gonna be a kid. And, yeah, I did that and then worked through all my shit. Like all my shit.
Gavin Tye:I w I ended up partying a little too long until I was, 30. I was a bit just hanging around that party scene for a while. Then I hit 30 and my adult voice kicked in and goes, what the fuck are you doing? What are you doing? And I left, I left it within a week.
Gavin Tye:I just packed everything up and moved to, well, maybe not a week, maybe two weeks, but I went to Gladstone and just, just retook my life in another direction.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. Yeah. Gotcha. Withdrew from it all.
Gavin Tye:Yeah. Yeah. It's just like, okay, I've had that. That's worked. I was, got stuck in the fun a little bit too long.
Gavin Tye:Just trying to move on to the next phase of my life. And, yeah, so I, I just went to Gladstone and drove cranes for, at a aluminium smelter for five years and, made aluminium and, worked in a, in a mining setting for it was, it was great. It was fantastic. Yeah.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. Wow. Where is Gladstone?
Gavin Tye:It was six hours north of Brisbane.
Mitchell Davis:So, right. Okay.
Gavin Tye:I went up there in 2017 and then no, 2011, I think.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. Wow. Yeah. It's not that long ago.
Gavin Tye:2007. No, 2007. I went up there. Right. Okay.
Gavin Tye:And I come back in 2011. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense.
Gavin Tye:Yeah.
Mitchell Davis:Mate. Yeah. You've you've done a lot of stuff. Maybe we'll get to some more of that as we go. But anyway, I just one final point, which I think is pretty cool on the teacher side of things for me was we actually got invited Adam well, it was the whole class, actually.
Mitchell Davis:My chemistry teacher was retiring, and his name was mister Dixon, and that one I remember. And he was this, like, a bit older guy. He's probably in his sixties, somewhere around there, and he was eccentric as like, he just didn't give a crap about being, like, politically correct or anything. It was just this fun older guy who kinda felt like he was losing it a bit to me. Anyway, he invited us, his whole class, to his, like, retirement party.
Mitchell Davis:So we literally went Adam and I were the only ones game enough to go, but we went to his retirement party and hung out with him and the other teachers. He lived on this property on a lake, and so we, like, hung out out the back and around the fire pit with, like, some of the other science teachers who we get along with. And it just felt felt like we were adults, felt like we were taken seriously, and that always spoke to me. So then going to uni, where then you are an adult, you know, and you're not treated like a kid, they don't give a shit if you complete your assignment or not. Like, no one's gonna force you.
Mitchell Davis:If you wanna fail, then you're gonna fail. Like so that spoke to me pretty strongly and I liked that having that sense of maturity from as young an age as possible that spoke to me as well. Maybe there's some parallel there with you feeling like you were forced to Yeah. Grow up, you know, to take care of your your family. But, yeah, it's How did you pick up always.
Gavin Tye:How'd you pick up developing? How'd you pick up, like, wanting to be a developer?
Mitchell Davis:So I it is an interesting story. There's like a fun stupid aspect to it. So I used to play a few different video games. Right? And, especially as a kid, that was a huge part of what I did.
Mitchell Davis:And, there was one called, San Andreas, multiplayer, which is like grand theft auto San Andreas. Did you ever play that? No. That was in your oh, it wasn't in your time. And, well, that was a huge part of my childhood and gave me, like, musical tastes as well because there's all these radio stations in the game.
Mitchell Davis:And so I love like, I still listen to so many of those songs now and they got me on to different artists that I listen to. But what there was in this game online on the computer, you could play multiplayer on it. And it was this, like, you had to download this extra modded software to basically, like, add the ability to do multiplayer to the game. And so when I heard about this, my brain, like, exploded. I was like, oh my god.
Mitchell Davis:This is so cool. And then you could make custom scripts for it, coding. Right? You could write code for it, run your own server, and have, like, other people connect to it, and then you could, you know, whatever code you had written, like, you could make changes in the game, you could teleport people around, you could do, like, cheating, all that sort of stuff. Right?
Mitchell Davis:And so that was my first introduction to any sort of coding because I saw that and I was like, how are these people doing this? Like, how are these servers out there? Like, you can do all this cool stuff. And it just like lit up my brain like, I wanna know how to do this. So I did.
Mitchell Davis:I started learning it. And then, the, like, stupid part is that, like, you could in this game, there are, there's no other way to say it. There are dildos, right, in this game. And you could, like, hit other people with dildos, and they're around on the map so you can go pick them up and stuff, all this sort of stuff. And, so I wrote some code that would basically like, if you picked up one of these dildos, it would explode and, like, kill your character.
Mitchell Davis:And so then that became, like, a part of our lore of, like, these exploding dildos, like, was something that we would talk about all the time at school. Anyway, something silly for for the podcast. But, that's how I first got introduced to it because it was like, oh, this is so cool, and you can do all this stuff. And then I just kinda kept progressing from there. I added things like do you remember MSN?
Mitchell Davis:Did you ever use that? Yep. Yeah? You had that one? So, I made a way to, like, talk with people on MSN while inside of this video game, like and got it figured out how to connect it up and like, there's some complex stuff in just that alone.
Mitchell Davis:And, yeah, I just I never stopped with it. So I kept doing that. Then I also I used to play, RuneScape at the at well, it's now called old school RuneScape. And I was so close to like writing, bots and like cheats for this game so that you could, have it run automatically. It could, like, do farming for you or do whatever, do all these different tasks inside of the game, but I never did because I didn't wanna get my account banned.
Mitchell Davis:And that's, like, totally being the being a goody two shoes vibe, which I still kind of have. I don't really wanna bend or break too many rules even still today. So yeah. So I never did it with that, but I went all in on San Andreas. So Yeah.
Mitchell Davis:That's how I got started with it. And then, I guess, naturally, to transition into how I started working in it, the very first time I got paid to do anything computer based was someone else who from the San Andreas scene hired me to build some, like, some fleet management software that could just it was, like, very basic, but it was a map, like a real world, like, satellite map, and you could plot the position of these trucks and, in this fleet. And I don't really remember the the exact context, but I got, like, 2 or $3 out of it. And I was, like, seventeenth maybe at the time, something like that. And so I haven't thought about that in years now, but, like, that really started me on this journey of, hey.
Mitchell Davis:I can build stuff for people, and they'll pay you for it. Like, I then, I got a job working at Telechoice, which is a phone store that would sell, like, Telstra and Vodafone and all that sort of stuff. And, my boss there is now a business partner that I have in another business. And, he, asked me basically about making a website that we did together. He then sold it.
Mitchell Davis:So we did that. He then sold the store. It got bought out by like the head office who then wanted to shut it down within like six months or something like that. I went and found another job at that same time. Like it worked out really well.
Mitchell Davis:They told us that they were shutting the store down and then, I had already like, the two days before that, I'd arranged a job to go be a programmer in Newcastle for someone working for someone's, like, small one man dev shop turning into a two man. And so I would go work for him one or two days a week up in his in his house, actually. He had an office in his house. And then when that ran out, I went to work at a school in Newcastle and program there for a year and a half or something like that. And then maybe later we can get into how I transitioned into working for myself.
Mitchell Davis:But, yeah, basically every job other than subway and tele choice has been like coding. Yeah. Okay. So I knew I was into it right from like the age of 11 or 12, I think. Yeah.
Mitchell Davis:Okay. What about you? When did you start feeling like you knew how to, sell things to people?
Gavin Tye:I didn't. I still don't, to be honest. Right. Yeah. So when I was in school, I I I went really well in year 10.
Gavin Tye:Like I was first in computer science, first in advanced maths. And then I kind of got, some bad advice and went to all the advanced classes in high school. And, and that's one of the challenges is I've never had a parent really telling me what to do and guiding me through that stage. And I kind of got stuck. I was burnt out.
Gavin Tye:I didn't know how to see myself particularly through it. I originally wanted to go to the air force. But I was doing advanced English and, I didn't quite understand poetry and the subtle meanings behind it and all that kind of stuff. So I wasn't going very well. So I got to end of school, high school and I would, you know, I didn't have great, great marks.
Gavin Tye:Right. And I should have, in hindsight, I should have just come back one level on everything and then just nailed it and then gone forward. It would have been less stressful or I would have not tried so hard in grade 10 and then gone hard in year 11. But I just did. I was just over ambitious.
Gavin Tye:Think my eyes were too big for my stomach. So from that I was done with school for a while. Like, and I was like, I just don't wanna go to uni. I was too hard. So I've always had this curiosity of how things work.
Gavin Tye:Like, and I've always thought somewhere along the line, I'll own a business. I don't know how it was gonna work, like, considering coming from housing commission. So for years I actually, just worked in labor hire, casual labor hire. And, I just went around to see how lots of different things worked. And I really enjoyed it.
Gavin Tye:It was not very, it was pretty shitty work, but I got to see in factories that I wouldn't normally get to be in. So, so I did that for a long time. And then when I was 21, my mom was up in Queensland at the time when I was 21, I was playing soccer and it was the day after the FA cup final. You know, I was played soccer for many years. I did this silly turn and I got taken out and I got my leg broken really bad.
Gavin Tye:And then that set me on a path. That changed my life. That was a fork in my, I've had a couple of them, but that was a big one because I moved home to mom's house in Bundaberg.
Mitchell Davis:Yep. As soon
Gavin Tye:as I got there, hated it. It was terrible. It was a wrong move, but I, I just burned on my bridges and went there and I rolled at physics at uni. And I started doing physics again. I was like, this isn't what I want to do.
Gavin Tye:And then I moved down to Brisbane and then I started doing sales jobs, like moved down here with a girlfriend. So I was following carpet cleaning. I was a carpet cleaner for my carpet cleaning. And so I'd have to sell Scotchgard and I was actually really good at it. Like, I'd clean their carpets and upsell them on on a really good I thought, this is alright.
Mitchell Davis:How did you how did you make that choice to go into sales though? Because that's a big that's like confronting.
Gavin Tye:Well, someone
Mitchell Davis:be like, hey. I'm gonna convince you that you need to buy this thing.
Gavin Tye:Yeah. Well, some well, if you don't have a degree, sales is the industry that you can potentially make a lot of money. Right. Because of commission and stuff. And then plus I, I was a manager at, Blockbuster Video for a while.
Gavin Tye:I was okay talking to people. I was a lot more comfortable with that. Yeah. And the job at Meyer was just the job that come up and, I had a, and so I was like, okay, I'll go and do that. And, and then the, the selling was part of it.
Gavin Tye:And then I went from there to Vodafone, which is similar to you.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah.
Gavin Tye:And I was pretty good at it. And then I would go backwards and forwards between that and a, like a construction role or labor roles. And that's how I ended up in, Gladstone. Like I went from that, I was building cold rooms, but then I went up there to drive cranes because the mining boom in Australia is a is a real thing. Right?
Gavin Tye:If you go and work into mines or aluminium aluminium smelters, which is pretty close to it, you can, if you save your money, you can actually save a lot of money really quickly.
Mitchell Davis:And buy Yeah. A house with that. Yeah. And no mortgage. Yeah.
Gavin Tye:Rio Tinto is, was who I work for. They have all these, additional benefits of working for them. They'll pay for university if you work for them. So I did two years of a business degree when I was there as well. So I would work four days on, I'd have four days off and on my four days off, I'd do my university.
Gavin Tye:So, and then that set me on the path to come back down to Brisbane as a, as a business development manager for a recruit, a blue collar recruitment company, which is what I've been doing for years. So we'd all kind of come together. And, again, I was pretty good at that. And then I met, on one of the last training courses, I met a founder of Redeye, which is a software company. And I knew I missed, there was there's arcs of sales windows that happened.
Gavin Tye:Like mobile phones was one. I missed it come in too late. Then blue collar recruitment was another one. I missed that. I come in too late, but then B2B SaaS started coming, coming up.
Gavin Tye:And I was like, I'm not gonna miss this one. So I got on that front on the wave of that. And, that's how I got into this industry. So, yeah, but I've been trying so many different side hustles all the time, like drop shipping, try to start a YouTube channel, all sorts of things like buying and selling off Alibaba back in the day. I just, was just trying all these different things, which was, which was good.
Gavin Tye:I wasn't passionate about it. So Yeah.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. Gives you exposure to lots of different ways of,
Gavin Tye:you know, that
Mitchell Davis:other people are making a living. Right?
Gavin Tye:Oh, it's it's if you would class it, you would be you would say I was failing fast. Like, I was just trying these different things, low risk, low reward, you know, low risk, low reward, test to see what sticks and, and just trying different things. And I think just exercising that muscle was what that perf that part of my life was about is, just trying different things. Right. I've worked with someone who's the guy that introduced us, Ian, that he was just so talented at buying stuff online and reselling that.
Gavin Tye:I'm like, I just, I don't know what you're doing. I can't do it. Like I can't do what you're doing. And, yeah, he would just have a knack for buying this stuff and making three times more money. And I'm like, man, I'm lucky if I make 20% more.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.
Mitchell Davis:Well, I guess that kinda gets you to you're very close to then how we met. I think you got one more job in there.
Gavin Tye:Yeah. Yeah. So I worked for Redeye for a, which is a B2B SaaS company. I worked for them for five years and it was the best lesson that I've ever had. It was the heart, one of the hardest lessons that I've ever gone through.
Gavin Tye:Like it was, I was, I was traveling all the time, but one thing I was given a chance by the founder Wayne, and I promised him I would never stop trying to sell it. And I was so grateful to get into that industry. Had, you know, he was hiring me as the person, not my skillset really. I was successful at work pack where that was that I showed a track record there. But it was a slog for five years.
Gavin Tye:And after, at the end of it, I felt like I just, I had grown to a point and the business was still the same and I'm making the same mistakes. And I had no, I was like, I've just gotta either leave or, or I think I'm either holding them back or they're holding me back. During that time, I actually done an MBA in the last two years of, of, of working for them on entrepreneurship. And at the end of it, I was like, I've got to go. Cause I'm very outspoken.
Gavin Tye:I was actually going against the founder at the time. I'm saying, yeah, you're not actually, what the current direction you're on is not right, but it's not my business. So I'm either holding you back. So I'll leave and we'll see. And it turned out I was right.
Gavin Tye:So, I thought I wanted to be an enterprise salesperson. I went to a global company and as soon as I got there, I was like, God, I want to do this. Like it's, it's hard.
Mitchell Davis:This is the one how you and I met?
Gavin Tye:No, no, no. Was at ABB then. Oh, there's a couple of jobs in between there. So that was, that was another one. So, yeah, I just jumped around on sales jobs for a while trying to think if it was the business or me not wanting to do it.
Gavin Tye:And then the last job, which was CV check where we caught windows, I was getting some success. And then I was, but I had this niggle in the back of my mind. I was doing this thing called sales market fit where it was a sales strategy around most people don't own the demand or don't try to create to return return on investment. I'm like, I can't be the only one who thinks this. And I did a market scan a lot around the world.
Gavin Tye:And I was like, there's gotta be someone in The US talking about it. There wasn't. And I'm like, well, maybe I should do it. I'm gonna just do it part time and just see how it goes. And, I did a part time I reckon for a year.
Gavin Tye:And then it was just too much time. Was, I had some success. Like that's how we met. And then I was saying to Mel, I was like, either I'm going to give it a go. It's proving that it's working.
Gavin Tye:I've got to give it a go or stop and just go back to a day job because what am I getting up before in the morning for?
Mitchell Davis:Yeah.
Gavin Tye:It was okay, well just give it a go. And then I put it out into the world and then it was like, some people picked me up on contract. I was like, okay, yes, it is actually happening. I should say. Yeah.
Gavin Tye:Yeah. So, and that's where, and that's when I gave it a go. It was really, really scary to start. So
Mitchell Davis:yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, let me now hop back in with when I started working for myself. So I was working at this school I mentioned in Newcastle doing, like, working on their inventory management systems and, like, they had these you know, at schools they do, like, the donation drive like, food drives and stuff. Know?
Mitchell Davis:They're trying to, like, $2 box of chocolates and all this sort of stuff, you know, like all that. And so we, like, built out me, and there was another developer on the team and then a manager above us. And, yeah, we're, like, building out all these systems, to manage that sort of stuff and manage all of their, like, Apple products, their, you know, laptops and stuff for the kids and whatever. Building out all this stuff. And I was having a ball with it, to be honest.
Mitchell Davis:Like, it was great. That's where I first learned about Laravel, I'm pretty sure, which is what I use now. So they weren't using it at the time, but I convinced them to start using it on some of the projects. And so that was awesome. But then I got a I got a call from that boss that I had at Telechoice, and he had then got on to work at some, like telephony company or something like that doing like managed services or this sort of stuff.
Mitchell Davis:And he had a lead in with, another recruitment, labor hire company, not the same one that you mentioned, but another one. And, they they had some Excel spreadsheet that they were using that somehow and I didn't even know you could do this at the time, but magically, it was, like, able to update itself against the database. So it wasn't just a static spreadsheet. It was, like, able to pull it in live from their database, and they were having some trouble with it. And so this, old boss at Telly Choice, like, he picked up the phone and asked me.
Mitchell Davis:He's like, hey. We got this deal potentially with these guys. Do you know anything about this, that you might be able to help them out with? You know? And I was like, no.
Mitchell Davis:But I'm more than happy to try. Like, I was up for the challenge. And I get in and I try it and I start working on this thing and, you know, we arranged a we negotiated a rate for it and all this sort of stuff. And then turns out I was making more on, like, the weekend that I would spend working on this thing than I was making working for this school in a week.
Gavin Tye:Yeah.
Mitchell Davis:Right. And that really opened my eyes to be like, wow. Okay. There's a lot more money out there if you're doing this on your own and you're able to get work. So it was within, like I I finished the work on the spreadsheet pretty quick, and then that bummed me out because I was like, okay.
Mitchell Davis:The gravy train's ending here now, and I've seen the light, but, you know, I gotta go back to work. I was able to pitch them this labor hire company on, like, the way you are doing this is very old. Turns out, like, I then learned how to do this inside of a spreadsheet and have it connect to a database and all this sort of stuff, but I was like, this is not the way to do this. Have you considered doing this as a website, you know, and making it available and it's in real time reporting? That was, like, the huge part of what we were I was building for them at the time was just this real time reporting on all these different on their clients, you know, so they could go in and see how many people they've hired this month and what their spend was and da da da, all this sort of stuff.
Mitchell Davis:And as soon as they said yes to that, I sat down with their CEO and I was like, look, here's what I think you should do, and this is roughly what it might cost. Da da da. As soon as he said yes, I then quit my job at the school. So I
Gavin Tye:was like, okay.
Mitchell Davis:There's enough
Gavin Tye:people you're still working with today? Correct. That's right.
Mitchell Davis:So, we've got a fantastic relationship with this company, and that now is I think about eleven years ago. Yeah. Right. Wow. It's fantastic.
Mitchell Davis:So, yeah, I'm I was super fortunate to get that referral in. Very lucky there. But then I also busted my ass to make this client very happy and, like, to some extent rely on me for many years to be able to build up their technology offering. Yeah. And I like entrenched myself in their business problems and learnt not in never in like a sneaky way or whatever, but just always trying to, like, offer as much value as I possibly could, and learn about their problems.
Mitchell Davis:And, like, I have my own way of thinking about things. I've challenged their CEO a few times on a few different things. Never with disrespect, always with respect. But, like, hey. What about if you thought about it like this?
Mitchell Davis:You know? And we always had a great relationship there. And it's kind of it's crazy to me to think they took a chance on me when I was some 20 year old kid, I don't know, early twenties. Yeah. I mean, if I'm 32 now, so I must have been 21 years old, right, when they first met me thereabouts.
Mitchell Davis:And I've, yeah, I've, like, grown up inside of working with their business. Yep. And, of course, we've had other clients come and go since, but, yeah, they've remained true the whole time. And Wow. It's like, wow.
Mitchell Davis:That's yeah. So that's really cool.
Gavin Tye:Road. Right. That's without them, who knows where you would've you would probably would've
Mitchell Davis:That's right. Yeah. I would've probably kept working for other businesses. Right? Like working a job instead of doing it on my own.
Mitchell Davis:Yep. And it's like, I have people now, friends and stuff, you know, if we get together and or I meet someone new someone gets a new partner or whatever, and they ask me, like, oh, and what do you do for work? And I'm like, I work for myself. And then they're like, oh, how long have you been doing that? You know, ten, eleven years now.
Mitchell Davis:And then they asked me about, like, what it was like making that transition. And I'm like, it was easy because it was like, oh my god. This is like, you know, this is an amazing opportunity. And even if that happened to dry up, I knew I could fall back on just getting a job somewhere. Yeah.
Mitchell Davis:I'd be able to find a job. Like, I'd I interviewed at other places and I got offers and things like that. And, yeah, like, I just always I was like, okay. I can at least still go get a job. And even now, if everything happened to fall over and we lost all our clients and six sides didn't work out or whatever, I can go get a job.
Mitchell Davis:It'll be fine. Yeah. I might not like it. I might not be super employable now at this point because I'm very accustomed to working and living the way that I do now, but I would make it work if I had to. But, yeah, it was like a through a series of very fortunate events and working really hard Yeah.
Mitchell Davis:I got that, like, amazing opportunity, and then that's gotten me to where I am now.
Gavin Tye:Yeah. I see I see my life has been a series of stepping stones, right, from one to the next. And there's more than one stepping stone to take if you want. And for me, but I just take the one that fits where I want to go, where where I where I feel like my mission or I'm driven to to go. I have diverted from the path a couple times, especially that that period of time parting.
Gavin Tye:Like it went it went longer than I thought. But then I also found my way back. Like the real me found my way back out of that and in the right and into the right path. And it feels like to me at least, and it sounds like it's the same for you is when the right, when the right, when it's the right time, the right thing pops up.
Mitchell Davis:Right? Yeah. Yeah. We both might've gotten lucky.
Gavin Tye:Yeah. Well, I think it's for every, if you're looking and you've got the courage to take that step, maybe it's there for everyone. Right? You got it, but you do make your own luck too. So Yeah.
Mitchell Davis:I'm Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. Yeah. Yeah.
Mitchell Davis:It doesn't just come to you. You certainly have to take some chances. Yeah. Try and put yourself out there more. And that's something that I struggle with and have always struggled with.
Mitchell Davis:Yes. And work really hard at it. You won't nothing's gonna happen for you unless you're busting your ass. Yeah. Is how how I see it.
Mitchell Davis:But
Gavin Tye:And I get and then so that kind of leaves us up to us. Like, what what pushed us to start doing our own thing like together? Like that that to me is an interesting.
Mitchell Davis:So in 2021 is when I started, or late twenty twenty, actually, I started working on, a business called RecruitKit, and, it was onboarding software, automated onboarding software for recruitment agencies and large employers. And, it was basically coming out of working with that long term, client that we'd had under, Atlas and they're in this space. And so I was looking at their processes for what they were doing to onboard people and how much manual effort it was taking. And, I thought there's definitely a way I can improve on that. So I started building out what then became RecruitKit, sold them on the idea of it, and, picked them up as a as a client, first customer for SniperKit.
Mitchell Davis:One shot,
Gavin Tye:one kill.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. Turns out, though, that was the only
Gavin Tye:One shot only.
Mitchell Davis:Kill. Yeah. One shot only. One in the chamber and nothing in the clip. So, yeah, it, it was an awesome business to run.
Mitchell Davis:And to be clear, I'm still running it now, but it has it demonstrated to me that over the course of a few years, I wasn't able to find other customers for it on my own. Mhmm. And so that's actually how we met because, well, why don't you hop in and tell us what you were doing around that time and what your transition was?
Gavin Tye:Yeah. So when I when I left Redeye in 2020, I went and worked. I finished my MBA in entrepreneurship and I, went and worked for this large international company called ABB and they had a asset management software platform. So I, I went into there as soon as I got there, the multinational side
Mitchell Davis:of
Gavin Tye:it and big corporate structure, it just wasn't me. It felt suffocating and I didn't like it. And so that made me go, well, if I thought I was an enterprise salesman and I'm not, what am I? And that really sent me on like a bit of a self discovery process to go, well, I actually really like helping startups and what I have a unique view on, sales strategy, about what it takes to sell a B2B tech company or get people to buy it. And so that sent me on a research path.
Gavin Tye:I actually joined a, a couple of cohorts or, or programs to one is I was gonna start a YouTube channel to share the, to share the message, to build awareness. That didn't quite work out. But in the middle of interviewing people, like I got sold on working for another company by the founder, he sold me. And I said, yes. And I went there and I remember I interviewed and he talked me into it.
Gavin Tye:I'm, I'm easily talked into stuff, in some cases. And Mel was like, my wife was like, are you sure you want to do that? I'm like, why? She goes, your dream is this, he's knocking you off your dream. And I'm like, it'll be fine.
Gavin Tye:It'll be fine. It wasn't fine. It wasn't fine. I was so I was still doing sales market fit in the background and that's where we met. Or almost met.
Gavin Tye:I left that business to go and work for another company called CVCheck, which is where we met. And you talked to me about see, about RecruitKit at the time. And I was like, oh, Mitch, like, I'll have a look, but your view on what needed to be done to to sell it should have been started two or three years ago. And it was just it would have been too hard. And plus I was on my mission now with sales market fit.
Gavin Tye:I wasn't gonna get bumped off it again. And, but we started you coming into the program and, I think I realized that you just did not like selling. You just had you, you detest it. You hate it. It's very much against what you, your your core, but you're actually really good at it.
Gavin Tye:You just have this whatever it is that stops
Mitchell Davis:you from It's a real mental block or barrier. I don't know. I'm I'm not like I'm not fundamentally against sales. Like, it is how the world works. You have to people buy stuff and Yep.
Mitchell Davis:Therefore people need to sell stuff. Like, I get that. It's just never been something that I'm like super comfortable doing myself. So, yeah, I mean, there's a few things that we've kind of skipped over there. Right?
Mitchell Davis:So you were working at CVCheck selling police like, contracts for police checks basically.
Gavin Tye:Yeah. That that was one aspect, but it was a compliance platform on the other side that they were trying to sell to. So
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. Okay. And so we met through that because you heard about, you know, you knew someone at this, labor hire company. You asked them, hey, who do you do your police checks with? And then, they eventually wound up putting us in contact with each other.
Mitchell Davis:And the whole time I was just like, I don't wanna deal with this guy. Like, I've already got a police check provider. I'm happy with the rate. You know? And this guy's kinda hounding me over, hey.
Mitchell Davis:You know, where are we at and what's going on with this? And, you know, let's talk about price and da da da and all this stuff. And you were just, like, ferocious with it. Boccan.
Gavin Tye:Hounding ferocious. Never rude.
Mitchell Davis:Never, like, inappropriate. Just, like, persistent. Very I could see, okay. You don't wanna let this up. Right?
Mitchell Davis:That's my job. Right? Exactly. And so at the time I was, this guy, you know, but then we got on a call and you could kind of see, you know, I could see that you were being pretty open and honest because I think at that time you were seriously considering just going and working for yourself and doing sales market fit.
Gavin Tye:Yeah. There was, there was with that. I was like, I've gotta stop. Like, I've gotta pay attention to it. Am I gonna do it or not?
Gavin Tye:And if I'm gonna do it, I've gotta do it. And so I was already starting to leave Yeah. Business mentally. So
Mitchell Davis:yeah. And so that's when you were like, we got on a call, a video call, and you could kinda see, and I could see through what you were saying as well. Like, okay, this maybe this deal isn't quite right, for for RecruitKit. And you were more interested in, like, hey. I'm looking at doing this other thing, you know, starting this course, and would you like to be a part of it?
Mitchell Davis:And da da da. And so, yeah, I was I was like, yeah. Okay. Let's do this. Let's give it a try.
Mitchell Davis:So yeah. Then I don't know how long after that you were still with CV Check, but it kinda been that long because we started up the coaching not too long after that,
Gavin Tye:I think. Was It 2021, I think, that we first met and started. Right? Maybe maybe a bit bit more than that, maybe 2022. But yeah.
Mitchell Davis:Somewhere around there. So it was about for a year or so. I think I was in and out of those out of the calls and things and just like made some progress, but it never felt quite right for me. And I was never able to actually find another customer of that same size for RecruitKit. We have one other customer in that business, which is like a a subsidiary basically of the main Mhmm.
Mitchell Davis:Customer that we have for it. So yeah. So that one's always been a bit of a, a sore spot for me, but it then, I got really familiar over the course of doing the coaching with you. And then even after I'd stopped that, I mean, your, you know, your plans changed and everything, got really familiar with you. And you had always you had said to me one time when we were doing the private coaching stuff, you're like, I wish you had to come to me with this a few years ago, you know, and we would have been able to kind of work on it right from the start.
Mitchell Davis:And I kept that in my mind of like, yeah. Okay. If ever I'm doing something new that's in this in a space that requires sales work, then I'm gonna reach out to you. And so, yeah, then was there anything going on around that time for you or should we cut forward to event kit?
Gavin Tye:No. No. Because I was I was still trying to figure out my biggest challenges just because I knew something and I knew what was right and I knew it worked. Just trying to communicate that was completely different. So for sales market fit is living something over five years and going through a lot of that pain and subconsciously learning those lessons or emotionally learning those lessons and then making corrections and getting results.
Gavin Tye:That is very different to communicating that to a group, to, to, on, at scale with multiple people. I still haven't figured out how to do it properly. And by that time, I think I just, just as you'd hit your stride when you, when it was originally event kit, then I had started, I don't even think I had thought about deal buddy yet. I couldn't have cause otherwise. No idea.
Gavin Tye:I did have, I did think about it because I was like, no, no, actually I'm building deal buddy, which I did think about a pro helping you, getting you to help me with that as well. And when you originally come to me with event kit, which we'll talk about, I was like, I can't mate. I just don't, I don't have the bandwidth. And again, I was blinkers and not getting bumped off my mission. Right?
Mitchell Davis:So yep.
Gavin Tye:Yeah. Yeah.
Mitchell Davis:Well, okay. So let's get into event kit then. So, around July, I think of 2024, I had already, like, pitched Michael on Michael Dorinda, friend of the show. I had pitched him on, doing a talk on at LaraCon AU, and I wanted the talk to be about building mobile apps. And so it was finally and the conference is in November.
Mitchell Davis:So around July, it was finally time to start, like, let's figure out what I'm actually gonna build. And I really didn't wanna just make something that was just like a toy demo app. I knew I wanted people to instal it, like attendees to instal this app and actually use it during my talk at least. And so and have some way to interact with me and what I wanted to do on stage as well. I knew I wanted it to be really interactive.
Mitchell Davis:So I was trying to like think through all these different ideas and ultimately I said along well, like, okay, we're at an event. We're at a conference. Why don't I build an app for the conference? And talked about it with Michael and he was all for it. So I went for it.
Mitchell Davis:And then the entire time I was building it, was thinking like, okay, I really wanna make this not just like how to build an app, but also give a really good user experience for all of the attendees that are there. That was the main thing that I wanted. And that then led to a bunch of the decisions that now have come into Six Sides about it's not just about the event itself, it's about the experience that we're giving people, all the different sides of the the event. Right? So yeah.
Mitchell Davis:So, I go through, I build out this app. It's got some fun novel stuff with facial recognition and gamifying things and all this sort of stuff. I do the talk. It goes really well. Get a bunch of great feedback.
Mitchell Davis:And then, within a week or so of that happening, I reach out to you. And I'm like, hey, I've got this thing. At that point, I don't think we'd spoken in six months, a year, maybe somewhere around there. I reach out and I'm like, hey, I just gave this awesome talk. Went really well.
Mitchell Davis:I think there's a business here. And you what'd you say? No.
Gavin Tye:I said, I'm sorry, man. I'm busy. Like, I've got deal buddy on and, event apps. There's a dime a dozen of them. There's millions of them.
Gavin Tye:So, Yeah. But, anyway, like, knowing each other, I was sort like, let's have a chat. So Yeah.
Mitchell Davis:Yep. So I remember here like, being on the phone and you saying, oh, no. You know, I don't think I can do this. It's not the right time for me. And I remember being like, fuck.
Mitchell Davis:What am I gonna do now? Like, who who else? Because I knew I didn't wanna do all the other side of things. I wanted this to be a partnership business where there's someone else to lean on, someone with their own set of strengths. And at the time, I think you were you had said like, oh, why don't I, refer you into someone else who I think might be a decent fit for what you're after?
Mitchell Davis:I was like, okay. Well, alright. I guess so. And then you called me back. I guess you went away and you had a chat or something.
Mitchell Davis:You had another think about it? Yeah. Yeah? Yeah. Chatting me out
Gavin Tye:of that. She goes, what why? Why would you do that? Like, you should at least explore the idea first. And, and like,
Mitchell Davis:so you got me to, to think.
Gavin Tye:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like I was already, I was already thinking about it as well. And I'm like, it's not, I'm just getting momentum a deal with sales market fit.
Gavin Tye:And then, and I know the danger of being distracted. I've seen it. I've seen it so many times. Founders who think that they just change their attention and divide their attention and they can just stifle, fuck everything up. And maybe that was part of my worry too, because I've seen it and I don't want, I didn't want to do that.
Gavin Tye:But Mel goes, no, no, you should just explore it. You should just, just explore it. And so I was like, okay. And with her, she sees things differently than I see things as well. Like she, I don't know if you'd met her by then, but she instantly likes you.
Gavin Tye:And that makes a big difference. She sees people and instantly doesn't like them.
Mitchell Davis:Right. Yeah. We're not among
Gavin Tye:all those people. So she, she
Mitchell Davis:thinks she can have
Gavin Tye:a really good heart. And, that means a lot for like, you know, for, for you if you want to go into business with someone like that. So it was like, okay, let's have a conversation. And then we started having conversation. Then Laravel started talking to us about helping them with other, other ideas.
Gavin Tye:And, that really got me thinking about it's your, what my opinion was your current framing of what event kit was would need it evolving. And then we evolved together, which is, which is awesome. We've landed. So
Mitchell Davis:Well, it was your input that like, originally I was thinking like, okay, yes, we at LaraCon, there were some people from Laravel Inc there, and they were interested in talking about using the app, at their other conferences that they run. And so I didn't know I was like a fish out of water. I'm like, fuck, how am I gonna negotiate this with them if this is what they want? So that was a big driver as well behind me being like, I really wanna talk with you because you had previously just out of kindness consulted with me on helping me figure out contracts and things like that, setting prices on different deals and things that were happening under Atlas or RecruitKid or even other stuff. So I knew I wanted to talk with you about that.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. And then as we started, you know, you agreed, okay, hey, let's do this together. And then, we hadn't formed the company yet. I don't think that happened until 2025. Yeah.
Mitchell Davis:March.
Gavin Tye:Something like Feb, March.
Mitchell Davis:Yep. Yeah. But, it was like, okay, we're both in on this together. And then we were talking about it about what's the actual, like unique value prop for the business. And you kind of pushed that you thought it should be about community building.
Mitchell Davis:And that was your idea. And for me, I was just thinking, I just want a really awesome event now that we could then just like, almost like a commodity, you know, you just pick it up off the shelf. This is what we give you and then you pay for it and away you go. And in some, to be honest, in some ways, I still want for that to happen in the future.
Gavin Tye:Well, we are that now. Right? We are that. Like, that's
Mitchell Davis:what we're Not ready yet though with being able to pick us up off the shelf and pay for it, self-service, all of that sort of stuff. Right? We're not there yet, but, we will get there at some point. But I think a lot like our main focus is about building community and that is very different from every other event app that's out there. Right?
Mitchell Davis:Where it is just about serving the needs of the people for the few hours that they're at some event and then away we go. Right? They wash their hands. Yeah. So, anyway, so we initially had a bit of friction about that because I was like, no, I just really want this to just be simple and in my like, in my eyes to be simple and you were pushing hard that no, this should be about building community.
Mitchell Davis:And I was thinking like, is gonna be a harder sell. But anyway, we decided to go along with it. And we went back to Laravel. We won't go into too much detail, but just long story short, it ended up, not going ahead. And so At the end of the day,
Gavin Tye:they just wanted to own the IP and it wasn't gonna work out with that structure of what we were doing. So that's that's the end of it. That, that was really what happened right at the crux of it. So
Mitchell Davis:Yeah, that's right. At that point, it's what January, I think is when that was all decided and that, that fell through. And then, I think you're right. It was somewhere in early, early twenty twenty five that that's when we actually formed the company together. We split the equity.
Mitchell Davis:So we're both fifty fifty in it. And we came to that decision. I think we've talked about that in like way early on in the show, but we basically just came to that decision really easily. It was like, okay, we both want to see each other as fully committed as possible in this. And yeah, it was it just felt like the right thing to do.
Gavin Tye:Yeah.
Mitchell Davis:So that's what we did. And then, yeah, we got our first customer in February, I think it was. Our first two. We picked them up like within the same week, I think. We got volunteering WA, which was a referral from Daniel Govignon, at Hutchett at at hatchet.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. Sorry, Daniel. And, that was awesome. And that really forced us to get our shit together quickly, with, like, getting that initial feature doc, put together in Canva and paying someone on Upwork or Fiverr or something like that Yep. To do that way back when.
Gavin Tye:Just just going back to the event platform and then the community building platform, I think my position on that was, is there is a million it's hard to differentiate against a million different, not a million, thousands of different event platforms. Right? We didn't have a unique, like our functionality could be easily copied. It can be, could have been easily copied potentially. And if that happened, then where, then where do we go?
Gavin Tye:We're competing on price. Right. So what we wanted to try to do is get to building community takes longer over a longer term. So that's more likely to head to SaaS pricing opposed to per event pricing. And that's kind of the impetus for that.
Gavin Tye:Again, that was just a theory. Right. We, when we did speak to volunteer in WA, we talked, I think where you really were sold on that is when we had that conversation with Holly and Tracy and they were like, like, yes, unbelievable. Like the, the, we matched up really like really well on our values and the mission. And they were like, yep, absolutely.
Gavin Tye:And, yeah, within one call they come back and said, yeah, we're in like, and it was, and I think that's when you finally were like, okay, now I think he's onto something. So that must take a bit of faith to put your trust in someone.
Mitchell Davis:Did. It did. But like I had respect for your past experiences and like, you know, for you to be teaching other people how to do sales, like, you must have some knowledge there that is worth listening to. And I would have been a fool to go, no. I know what's best.
Mitchell Davis:Meanwhile, I have one customer, you know, like so it was just like, okay. This is your area of expertise. Let's give it a try. I knew that we could always change it. Like, if it turns out going after community is not the right angle, then we could have easily pivoted and just, know, it's a few changes to the app and the way we go through we go about things, but like it wouldn't have been it's not like we were doing a complete 180 degree turn, you know?
Mitchell Davis:So it was pretty low risk. But even, even
Gavin Tye:now the functionality of the app, even if it was just an event app, wouldn't change, it'd still be exactly the same.
Mitchell Davis:Right. Yeah. Yeah. It's still, it's focus.
Gavin Tye:Yeah. It's our, it's values and our mission and our, how we align with the market. And I think trying to create that competitive space between like, others in the market is really important. Right. Cause everyone goes, yeah, I'm gonna bet out.
Gavin Tye:Yeah. That's not yeah. I understand that's what we do, but that's not what we're doing. Right?
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. Yeah. That's right. I'm just going back to seeing if when did we sit down to come up with names for the company? Because we struggled with that pretty hard.
Mitchell Davis:Oh, yeah.
Gavin Tye:We were remember? We then we realized we're gonna incorporate and then we realized event kit was already taken and we're like, oh shit. So but I'm really happy with six sides.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. Me too. Yeah. I'm just looking now. I'm trying to find it in the calendar.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. We had we were speaking with some of the Laramore guys still, like, over the Christmas break. We spoke with LaraCon EU as well on, like, the December 27. And then we spoke with oh, even on New Year's on New Year's Eve, we spoke with the Laravel team. So yeah.
Mitchell Davis:So that's man, I remember that. And then when did we start going by Six Sides?
Gavin Tye:It was March, I think.
Mitchell Davis:Was it? Yeah. We were still called event kid in gen in Feb. That's right. Yeah.
Mitchell Davis:I think you're right. It must be March. So there you go. So, yeah, it was. Yep.
Mitchell Davis:So the reason we went with that is because six sides we as we see it, there are six sides to any sufficiently large event.
Gavin Tye:Do you wanna tell us what they are? There is up to six sides. Yeah. So there's event organizer. There's an association or business behind it that that wants that the event is associated with.
Gavin Tye:Then you've got speakers, attendees, sponsors, and staff of volunteers. Each one of those sides has a unique set of things that they find valuable. So in my experience now, when this is where we start differentiating ourselves is event apps will satisfy a couple of those sides, but not all of those sides, but we want to actually give unique value to each one of those sides independently. So, and everything we do, is we run that filter over functionality. How does this apply to come, each side?
Gavin Tye:Does it apply to each side? If not, it's got to apply more to one or two sides. Right? Yeah. But it's resonating and, you know, I know we're gonna do a, year end review, but how has the first year gone in your expectation?
Gavin Tye:Do you think that it's gone, it's gone better than you thought or you, I thought it was a little bit slower for a while, but then it's picked up these last couple months. We
Mitchell Davis:actually, at the time of release, we will have already done the year end review last week. So I would just say listen back to last week's episode on that one, but the cliff notes short version is, yes, it felt a bit slow initially, but we've seen some real traction over the last two months of the year, and it's now really exciting. We're starting to pick up momentum. So I'll just leave it there so I don't rehash everything I've already talked about. But, yeah, it's, it's good.
Mitchell Davis:Is is it similar for you or you've got other people
Gavin Tye:just got that? It has. It's been, for the during the year I thought, oh, this might be a slog, but then we've run a couple of events, and it's been that things have changed. So, yeah, yeah, it's, I'm really interested to see where it's going to go in the first half of next year or even next year. Cause I think already the first half of the next of next year is so jam packed with stuff.
Gavin Tye:Like it's completely different to what, this year has
Mitchell Davis:been. Yeah. We had like three, we had from March when we got or Feb when we got those, LariCon and volunteering WA through to I think it was August. That was our first Yeah. Event with Denmark, LariVel Live Denmark.
Mitchell Davis:And it was, yeah. We were not doing any events. We didn't have anything going on in there. It was all just trying to get set up with the new company, get get the word out there, get everything the app and everything done. So, yeah, it was a lot of just waiting.
Mitchell Davis:You know?
Gavin Tye:So, mate, how's it been working together? How yeah. What what what are your thoughts on that? What's your opinion on that side of the fence?
Mitchell Davis:It's good. It's I love it. I it's very rare that we have any problems. And when we do, we have been really good so far in addressing them and not letting things linger. It is a bit like a marriage.
Mitchell Davis:I think it has to be with any close like co founders. So I'm really proud of how we go about handling that. We both play to our strengths really well, I think. We can both lean on each other when things are difficult within our respective businesses, other businesses. Like just yesterday, you helped me with some decisions and pitching on some ideas in some other businesses.
Mitchell Davis:And then you and that was very helpful. And then you called me back a few hours later and you had something that you wanted to get my thoughts on as well. So like it's helpful having someone that I can rely on in that way. But then also just in six sides like I feel good knowing that every week you're out there doing stuff that I would not have been paying attention to at all or it would have been very difficult for me to bring myself to do like having all of the meetings that you have. You know you're probably having three four meetings a week at this point for six sides, somewhere around there, sometimes more sometimes less but on average and that's great.
Mitchell Davis:Like I it's very rarely that very rare that I have to be involved in those. So I get a huge amount of I get a almost like a burst of energy anytime you have a call and you come report it back to me or I go watch the recording or whatever and I can see like you're out there doing stuff for this business and it inspires me to also get in and do my part. Right? So, I'm really glad like we've got it set up so I can see your six sides calendar. I can see what meetings you've got coming up.
Mitchell Davis:I don't have to ask you how things are going or whatever. I'm just in the loop, you know? And yeah, just all in all, I think it's working. So as long as we can keep pushing forward, trying to grow, find more customers, make the right decisions. Like, yes, I would like for that to happen quicker.
Mitchell Davis:I certainly would love to be to have six sides be providing more income for us both. You know, I don't know. Everybody wants that right for for themselves. So yeah. But you know, hopefully we will get there in, you know, the right timeframe.
Mitchell Davis:And there's certainly a lot of exciting things coming up on the future in the, you know, the next six months or something. So hopefully some of that will start to eventuate. What about you? How do you feel?
Gavin Tye:Yeah. No. I think it's the inverse of that has been actually really cool is well, first and foremost, I think we started off well by or we live in different states, which is a challenge, right, is bringing you and Nicole in, and having that family dinner, which we should do that every quarter. Right? We've only done it once and haven't done it since.
Gavin Tye:And the kids know you as Mitch or uncle Mitch now. And, so having you as part of the family and knowing who I am away from work, I think is really important as well. Yep. But yeah, look, we've had a couple of challenges, not challenges, but I wouldn't even call them disagreements, but bumps in the road that we've sat down and had a conversation about and, and rectified it. And I think we're stronger.
Gavin Tye:I love the inverse of that is when you sent me the the screenshot the other day of project rendezvous we're working on, I was like, holy shit, man. Look at that. And like, brilliant. Like it's, you're doing your things in the background and you're producing quality work, which is, which is great. Right?
Gavin Tye:Yeah. And, so yeah, look, I think next year, I think we're about to extend into something in 2026 that neither of us are familiar with and that's growing a company.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. I
Gavin Tye:mean, for like having a business with a subcontractor, a subcontractor, one or two people I've done before, but not a company. Like we need to figure out a structure and like, we want to hit these milestones and we're going to have to grow. And if we want to do it without investment, how that, like, we can either figure that out. Neither of us have been done this part before, but I'm confident we'll be able to do it together. Me too.
Mitchell Davis:And if
Gavin Tye:we need to accelerate and do something beyond what we thought of, then we'll figure that out too. Right? Like when I mean, I mean, investment, but ideally, ideally not. Right? Ideally not.
Gavin Tye:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's right.
Mitchell Davis:We'll we'll overcome whatever we have to do. And it's just all exciting. It's fun having a project that's like this. I feel like we got the right team and the right tech. It's a good market.
Mitchell Davis:There's a lot of good people, like customers themselves are generally really good. We've had so many positive interactions with people. We're not dealing with assholes generally. You know? It's like, it's good.
Mitchell Davis:It's a good market to be in.
Gavin Tye:So I do see bright. I do see the value though. I am really looking forward to be able to hire a couple of people to not lighten our workload, but extend our work, our reach, our workload. Where they can work on some stuff, then we can work on the business and grow it. That I'm really looking forward to is, is the problem solving of that.
Gavin Tye:Like, and so next year, I think in the first three or four months, we were really, I don't know. There's some big things coming next year. I feel it. I feel it. And we're like, I'm glad that we started this B2B SaaS journey podcast.
Gavin Tye:Cause I want to go back and go, holy shit. Look at that. Right? All the way up to August, we were like, didn't think. And then all of a sudden things started to change and we'll be able to plot the change by the podcast.
Gavin Tye:Right?
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. That's right. Yeah. Me me too. So if you've made it this far, an hour and a half or something into this episode
Gavin Tye:No one's probably listening. And that's okay. We're doing it for ourselves. So
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. That's that's probably true. But, yeah, it's a good point. If you are doing anything like this, a podcast is a really good way to journal what's going on in your business.
Gavin Tye:I did learn a lesson from Roman the other day. Gallicoff has been on a podcast as he gets together with his cofounder for, Create Financial, and they do a quarterly year end review. What went well? Did they hit milestones? What they didn't do well?
Gavin Tye:I don't think we're necessarily good at doing that. We should make it I think we should make a plan to do that in person quarterly. Now by the the way these events are starting to play out, we would just tack that on to doing an event in the city that we're in. Right?
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. So
Gavin Tye:I'll be down there in February. It looks like I might be down there in March now. We'll be down in Melbourne together in February. We're, we're going to be seeing each other way more than we thought we could be going to Perth a lot more together. Like, right.
Gavin Tye:Will be seeing a lot more time. We will be spending a lot more time together next year, just for the sake of customer delivery. So
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. That's right. Yeah. It might now be baked into this model, but I mean, yeah, I doubt that will continue for forever.
Gavin Tye:But
Mitchell Davis:maybe it will like going to events and delivering on them in person.
Gavin Tye:It will be. It will be. But we'll class the event on the, on the strategic events. Right? Yeah.
Gavin Tye:We go to them until we're absolutely fucked and we can't go to them anymore. And then we hire people to go there for us.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah, sure. Right.
Gavin Tye:And then, and then we start figuring out that we don't have to go to, we just physically can't go to all of them. Right. Yeah. But then we'll extend into The Us with any luck and then we'll be going to us events. So, yeah.
Mitchell Davis:We'll be hiring someone to do that for us.
Gavin Tye:No, no, no. We won't be doing well, I won't be doing that for a while. I'd wanna go there.
Mitchell Davis:Right. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yep.
Mitchell Davis:Alright. I'll leave. That might be a Gavin special. Yeah. We'll see.
Gavin Tye:Yeah. We'll see.
Mitchell Davis:We'll see. Cross the bridge when we get to mate, is there anything else on the subject of getting to know Mitch and Gav or every cobbiter?
Gavin Tye:No. I feel like I do feel like everything in in all honesty, everything about this for last week, everything that I've been doing up until now, well, up until six sides has been preparing for six sides. Yep. And, the the reality is that I couldn't do it without you. Well, I wouldn't have had the idea.
Gavin Tye:So, that's a start, but I do think that me iterating and developing, sales market fit and all that kind of stuff has really set up a good, a good, put us in a good position to be successful and increase our chances of winning clients more often. Namely with project rendezvous is something that only comes, comes by once or twice a lifetime. And if we win it, it could open up to so many more opportunities. So, and I'll play it by the book, like I said, to the tee, which is everything that I've been teaching people to do. So, yeah.
Mitchell Davis:Yep. Well, fingers crossed, you know, that it will be enough. We will see.
Gavin Tye:Yeah.
Mitchell Davis:Alright. Well, look. On that note, why don't we leave it there? A happy New Year to everybody that is now listening to this. Yep.
Mitchell Davis:And And
Gavin Tye:go on. And with that, like, this would be Christmas during the Christmas break that this comes out in 2025 for anyone that's listening this far and supported us on the podcast. Thank you. You know, it's, really appreciate it, and, we would love to learn more about you, what you're doing. You know, there's some regulars on there, Rowley, and Nick.
Gavin Tye:Was it Nick the other day? Nick. Yep. Thank you. They're probably listening.
Gavin Tye:And we hope you have a great Christmas Christmas period or or holiday period. If you're in The US, you're probably not having a long break, but thank you for your support. And we look forward to sharing our journey next year.
Mitchell Davis:That's right. Yeah. Well, by then it'll be this year because it's coming out first week of Jan.
Gavin Tye:Oh, well, there you go. There you go.
Mitchell Davis:There you go. We hope you had an awesome break and looking forward to the new year. And, yeah, I echo what Gavin said. Thank you so much. You can find Gavin on LinkedIn, Gavin Ty, t y e.
Mitchell Davis:You can find me in a few places, Mitch Dev. And
Gavin Tye:We can't find you in the sun.
Mitchell Davis:No. God. No. I'll be inside. Cool.
Mitchell Davis:Alright, everyone. We will catch you all next week. Cool.