Hey. I'm Mitchell Davis, CTO and Laravel developer.
Gavin Tye:I'm Gavin Tye, CEO and sales marketing. Head off. We
Mitchell Davis:are into you too running a remote startup, sixsides.co, and it's a community building platform focused on events. We're documenting both business and tech of our journey to build our SaaS. How are you, mate?
Gavin Tye:Mate, very well. Very well. We just got confirmation of a, a guest while you're away on your wedding. She, doesn't wanna do it, but I think I think she will do it, which is, my wife, Mel, she's gonna, sit in while you're away on one of the episodes. I'm looking forward to that because she is Me too.
Mitchell Davis:I look forward to listening to it.
Gavin Tye:Lot of laughs, Maybe a bit of tears. Who knows?
Mitchell Davis:See how the conversation goes, I guess. Yep. Yeah. Awesome.
Gavin Tye:How are you, mate?
Mitchell Davis:I'm good. I'm good. It's it's been a big week. We're two less than two weeks now till the wedding. So really excited for that.
Mitchell Davis:Getting a little nervous. Like, the stress is starting to kick in. Everything that could be sorted is now sorted, but it's still it's like, okay. It's big lead up for this thing. So Yep.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. Getting a little nervous about that, but it'll be okay. And Are you gonna interesting because Nicole never gets nervous about stuff, but even she's been telling me, like, I'm getting a little nervous now. Like, yep. Yep.
Mitchell Davis:It's happening.
Gavin Tye:Will you see not see each other day before the wedding or not sleep in the same room and then
Mitchell Davis:just meal? We'll sleep separate on the on the Friday night. We're staying in the same place, like, on-site on the venue. We're staying in. It's like a big historic house with eight rooms or something like that.
Gavin Tye:And a
Mitchell Davis:bunch of our mates are staying. So, yeah, we'll sleep separate that night.
Gavin Tye:So How are you gonna juggle not seeing each other in the day so you're not like, you're gonna have
Mitchell Davis:to get I like it.
Gavin Tye:And grow up.
Mitchell Davis:I'm sure we'll see each other, like, at breakfast or something like that. And then once they once the girls start getting ready, then I'll be in a separate area of the house. Like, yeah, it's a it's a it's either two or three I think two stories big house, though. And so the guys will probably take the downstairs area or something. So Yeah.
Mitchell Davis:It'd be fine. Okay. Alright. Anyway We'll look forward
Gavin Tye:to it.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. We'll we'll make it work. So, yeah, we booked our flights to we're doing a, like, a honeymoon light. The real plan is to go to Europe later in the year when the weather will be a bit more favorable, but we're gonna do a week in Tasmania, like leaving the Monday after the wedding. So Okay.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. So that should be nice. So I just booked those flights last night because we were a bit we're still trying to figure out what the plan was, and then I just thought, right. Let's just book the flight. So we'll be gone for seven days, Monday to Monday.
Mitchell Davis:And then, yeah, I'll be back to work on
Gavin Tye:the Tuesday. You go to Port Arthur and places like that?
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. That's the plan. Wanna go there.
Mitchell Davis:I've looked at a there's like a vineyard or a what do they call it? A cellar door that does, there's heaps of them. Right? But there's one that does a charcuterie board that I'm interested in. There's a place that does there's like a cheese factory or whatever.
Mitchell Davis:A place that makes cheese. I don't know what you call those. But Cheese factory. Cheese factory. They do cheese and beer.
Mitchell Davis:And I'm like, right. That sounds pretty great. So, yeah, I've expected to come back from this week two or three kilos heavier, and that's okay. I'll work it off after that. That's fine.
Gavin Tye:But Wait. We did at Port Arthur this called Rob Pendercot, Pendercot Wilderness Tours, and we did a it's on a yellow boat. We booked it from there, and they take you out around, like, at the bottom of 300 meter cliffs and out around where baby seals are. One of the best things I've ever done. You have to do it.
Gavin Tye:Alright.
Mitchell Davis:They also have That's in Hobart?
Gavin Tye:No. No. In in Port Arthur.
Mitchell Davis:Oh, at Port Arthur. Okay. Right. Yeah. Gotcha.
Mitchell Davis:Well, that's near Hobart.
Gavin Tye:Yeah. There's also a ghost tour, at Port Arthur that we almost did. And Mel goes, yeah, we'll sign up for it. I went, are you serious? Because you get so scared.
Gavin Tye:She was like, what am I thinking? Like, no.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. It's No. Yeah. I don't know about ghost stuff. Neither of us are that interested in it.
Gavin Tye:But Yeah.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. Definitely. Okay. I'll get the details for that because I'm starting to map out what we're doing. Yeah.
Mitchell Davis:I
Gavin Tye:think Best one of
Mitchell Davis:the best
Gavin Tye:things I've ever ever done.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. Cool.
Gavin Tye:Mhmm. K. I'll get
Mitchell Davis:the details from you. But Yep. Yeah. We're gonna do just we're sticking to the East Coast. We're gonna do a couple days in Hobart, couple days in or something like that
Gavin Tye:or Coles.
Mitchell Davis:Coles. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. It's quite busy.
Gavin Tye:As well. Yep.
Mitchell Davis:Okay. Great. And then finish off in Launceston and then fly home from there. So Okay. Should be good.
Mitchell Davis:Looking forward to it. I was up till midnight last night. I was, like, looking at all the different stuff we could do, and I'm looking at all the booking sites and everything. And I thought, okay. I should probably run all this past Nicole to make sure she's getting what she wants.
Mitchell Davis:But in the past, I've, like I like Nicole is much more the holiday planner, but then I got a bit of a taste for it with booking, like, the engagement trip that we went on, and it's quite fun to, like, surprise your partner with stuff. Mhmm. So I'm gonna ask her today, like, are you okay if I just nail this? Like and I hopefully, I do. But I'll I'll factor in a bunch of things that I think we'll both like.
Mitchell Davis:So hopefully, she'll say yes, and then I can just, like, get it all booked today probably.
Gavin Tye:I I surprised Mel on a downhill mountain biking trip from Mount Wellington, which is in Hobart, and it was freezing. I think I've told you the story. And Yeah. She was going too slow. Anyway, she got mad at me and jumped off the bike because I I may have went ahead a little bit and but a great ride if you both like it, but it was freezing.
Gavin Tye:I
Mitchell Davis:am interested in doing that. So I yeah. We'll have to we'll talk offline because I am curious to get details. I would like to include there's a few spots where you can do mountain biking type stuff, at least on bikes. And, yeah, I'm curious about it.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. So alright. We'll talk offline. But, that's all exciting that's happening. And I think that's that's the main stuff that's for me personal.
Mitchell Davis:Fitness wise, I'm still at the ninety kilos. I asked you, hey. Let's not talk about fitness for a little while over the last few episodes because I blew back up to, like, 92. I had a blowout weekend over Easter, and I wanted to work it back off. And I've I've done that now, and I was kicking myself about it.
Mitchell Davis:I couldn't believe it. But, anyway, I've sorted it now, and then I'm back to doing between one and two walks per day, like decent walks. So I reckon I'm gonna lose another kilo before the week. And then Yeah. That'll be it.
Mitchell Davis:So I don't then wanna lose too much, to be honest, because then I won't fit into my suit properly. Like so yeah. Anyway
Gavin Tye:Yeah. Cool. Alright. Well, that's good, mate.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. Yeah. Alright. Cool. So why don't we talk about the business?
Mitchell Davis:So last week, I got our two devs, Martin and Raymond. They both started, and they started on Thursday. Was we had a lot of problems getting them set up in the code base because I hadn't had to set it up from scratch again for quite some time. And then there'd been a bunch of, like, dependencies and different things in the code base that it kind of changed. We're also challenged
Gavin Tye:mean? What does dependencies mean?
Mitchell Davis:It's a dick answer, but it's stuff that our code base depends on to run. I'm sorry. But but it's like packages of preexisting code that we use under the hood that other people have written and published for free that we use under the hood to make our app on top of, basically. It's like the foundation of the house. Right?
Mitchell Davis:Right. So a bunch of things had changed, and it was compounded by the fact that Martin's on a Windows computer and Raymond's on a Mac, which is like eight years old now, I think. So it's, like, completely different architecture for the operating system, like, just a bunch of stuff that we just had to deal with and and work through. So it took, like, four hours to get them to actually have the application up and running on their computers. So that was a challenge, and Thursday was brutal, but we got through it.
Mitchell Davis:And then by Friday, they were both working independently on some on some projects and we're doing peer reviews and all this sort of stuff. So, yeah, it was good. It was really good. And I'll be catching up with them a little later on today and and kinda setting the expectations for this week with, like, a bunch of small projects. And Yeah.
Mitchell Davis:I'll get Raymond onto the mobile app because for now, we've only just been dealing with the dashboard and, like, the back end. But, yeah, this week, we'll get get Raymond into the mobile app, and that's exciting. So yeah, it's cool. It's a fun time. It's there's a lot because I'm going away and having the week off before the wedding, I've kinda gotta preload them with a bunch of info and set them up with projects maybe earlier than would have naturally taken place if I wasn't having some leave.
Mitchell Davis:So it's a little bit of a challenge, but, yeah, working through it. It's going well.
Gavin Tye:Yeah. It's been, interesting to watch our Slack channel. Typically, it was you and I in Slack. We did have, Roman in there and Mel was in there from time to time, but not really contributing to the conversation. Last week, specifically, the increase in traffic or conversation in that in our Slack channel is 10 x, 20 x what it was.
Gavin Tye:Like, I'm part of that engineering. I I have no idea what I'm looking at, but you guys are going backwards and forwards. And even in our marketing channel, like, it's we've got a lot going on. So
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. Yep. It's great. That's really good. On Friday, we had a we had the first of our weekly meetings.
Mitchell Davis:So we're gonna do a regular Friday call to just get the whole team up to scratch on or up to speed on what everyone's done this week and then kind of setting a plan for the week to follow. And that was good. That was at the first time that the dev team had met the sales team, so that was nice. Got to introduce them. And yeah.
Mitchell Davis:And then just kind of seeing everyone's praises a bit of all the stuff that's been done over the last week. It's really impressive to see how far we can go and how quickly that can happen. You know?
Gavin Tye:Yeah. Yeah. Like, it's saying, like, we were the whole week is really for me last week with the team with Raya and Chris was about feeling out, like, what's the right way to go to make because we've been focusing mostly on marketing content last week. Where do we draw the the content from and how do we post it? And, basically, we, by the end of the week, we figured out where we we're heavily using white papers and and value adding content earlier in the sales process.
Gavin Tye:So we're gonna actually pull, key themes. We've gotta come up with key pillars so we can actually go, really thinly wide, but a mile deep on certain topics. Yep. But, basically, it took all week for us to get to a point, particularly Raya was very, very proactive in what she was doing with design, but we needed to know or we needed to actually give guidance on how it aligns with our personal brand and also our company brands. So, as we've gone on through the week, we we've adjusted, and it's taken a bit of time, and Chris has done a great job as well.
Gavin Tye:And now we're just starting to build the SOPs around that, the standard operating procedure, to try to get it into a uniform way. And so what I'm thinking of there is if we can get it into repeat set of instructions, I think we can help the team automate some of that because I want client contact time. I think marketing is just gonna make people aware that we're around, but we need to talk to people or have interactions with people. The more we can do that, the more the more we will make revenue. Yeah.
Gavin Tye:And so I wanna I would love to get to a and goal is Mondays is just our content days, and the rest of the week is value adding and and fun stuff. I think we can get there within about three weeks, maybe four weeks. I think we'll be there, which would be great. Yeah. With two to three weeks up our sleeves, we'll be ahead two or three weeks.
Mitchell Davis:So Right. Okay. So you still yeah. Alright. That's good.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. That'll be that'll be really cool to see once that's all up and running. Yeah. And we just have a bunch of content. And then I guess, what, every Monday, you and I just Monday, Arvo, we go in and we approve or add notes for things.
Mitchell Davis:Right?
Gavin Tye:Yeah. Well, potentially, like, we might be doing that midweek, but I would oh, yeah. Monday afternoon. Yeah. Just approve it and go, yeah.
Gavin Tye:That's good. Because I do think we have to take into account that sometimes connection over there is gonna be sporadic. So, and it may not like, people may not be online and just because of the nature of the connection in The Philippines. So if we can be ahead of the curve a little bit, then we don't have to worry about that as much. Right?
Gavin Tye:And we can just focus on the good stuff. So Okay.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. Sure. Cool. Okay. So you've got you've titled the episode here, our multicultural team.
Mitchell Davis:You wanna talk about that?
Gavin Tye:Well, we are multicultural now, Mitch. Sure. Yeah. That's very true. That's it.
Gavin Tye:One thing that I do wanna be aware of, and I know there's subtleties in culture. Like, I know that. And it's on it's our responsibility to make sure that we learn about our team, not the them learn about us. Right? So I I have I was on the weekend, had a very long conversation with Mel about, like, what kind of leader I wanna be.
Gavin Tye:And I just don't wanna be that directive person just to tell people what to do and not not take I don't think either of us wanna build a company like that. Right? So, even today, I was just like, okay. When I was going from a walk, was just interacting with Chatty Patino going, hey. What are the subtleties between Australian culture and The Philippines culture, Filipino culture?
Gavin Tye:And, yeah, just got some just got some insights. It's not that much. It's not that different, but it's a little different. And I wanna be aware of that. I don't wanna be culturally insensitive.
Gavin Tye:Right?
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. So, yeah. Were there any specific things that you wanna talk through?
Gavin Tye:No. Well, I do think that basically that very similar to what we wanna do is with they're very family orientated, and so I am as well. So when when we first met, we had our family dinner, which we haven't done it since, which we need to do it after the wedding. But I also wanna do it with the team, at least my team anyway, and, just be more just be more sensitive. And and also about feedback, I can be direct in some instances, and I've been working on that over the number of years.
Gavin Tye:And being a con like a contractor or a service provider to businesses has definitely helped me do that. Because if you're too direct and you're too offensive, they'll just get rid of you, which Yeah. So I've been working on that a lot in the last couple of years. So they're the main things that I I took away from my investigations over the weekend. How about you?
Gavin Tye:What have you have you thought about anything on this topic?
Mitchell Davis:No. Okay.
Gavin Tye:Let's move on. No. No.
Mitchell Davis:Like, I just it's still so early days. I think you and I spoke prior to recording here about some more, like, of the of the differences that you've surfaced, and it all everything just sounds kind of like the kind of business that we wanna run anyway. Yep. Celebrating wins, like personal wins, and asking people about, you know, how they're going and, like, what they get up to on the weekend and things like that. Like, these these are our team members.
Mitchell Davis:It it doesn't matter that they are in a completely different part of the world. Like, it's still you know, of course, I care about these people. Right? So, yeah. It's good.
Mitchell Davis:I I don't think there's anything crazy in there that, like, oh, wow. I would never think to do that or to think about things this way. Like, no. It just it all feels pretty par for the course. So Yeah.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. No. I I feel fine. It will be interesting to see like, I would love to in the future for us to be able to go over there and meet meet our team members and shake their hands and go out to dinner and meet their families and whatever. And I was even thinking about, like, a future world where I we wouldn't be ready for it this year.
Mitchell Davis:Don't imagine. But, like, would it be possible to bring at least the devs over here to Australia, maybe for LariCon or something like that? Right? Like Yeah. Yeah.
Mitchell Davis:Would that be possible? Yeah.
Gavin Tye:A good idea for next year. Right? Next
Mitchell Davis:Yeah.
Gavin Tye:Depending on if something crazy happens. But a question for you, mate, how would you go in the heat of The Philippines? Like and the humidity.
Mitchell Davis:I don't know. How how hot is it? It's hot. It's hot.
Gavin Tye:It's not it's it's not just hot. It's humid. I don't know.
Mitchell Davis:Let me have a look. Because I because when I went to year round. There we go. I'm just getting some research done for me. On that engagement trip, we went to Singapore and then Maldives, and it was humid as fuck.
Mitchell Davis:Let me tell you. So and it was brutal for both Nicole and I. And the weather, at least in The Maldives, was a constant 28 degrees, but it felt like 40 And during the so I did struggle. I'm just looking at it now. It looks like it's between high twenties to mid thirties.
Mitchell Davis:So call it 30 degrees. Yeah. Yes.
Gavin Tye:But what's the humidity? What's the humidity? That's the trick.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. You know, I don't know. What is the what's the humidity?
Gavin Tye:What's the what was that vampire movie with Robert Patterson when they had the Twilight. Yeah. You're like an amphibious version of Twilight where you don't like the humidity and the heat. Frogs were vampires. Yep.
Gavin Tye:Thanks, mate.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. I needed that. That's great. Around 70 to 85% relative humidity through the year. That is up there.
Gavin Tye:It is up. It's up there. Yeah. Look. You've even gone you've even gone red just talking about it.
Mitchell Davis:I'm red all the time. It's nothing new. I look like I've been punched in the face over here. I don't know what happened, but anyway.
Gavin Tye:By the way, Mel, I can see Mel in the corner of my eye. She knows she's gotta be quiet for the podcast. She's jumping around laughing. She's probably laughing. I look forward to having you travel at night.
Mitchell Davis:Yes. Yeah. That's right. Naturally.
Gavin Tye:Yeah. And the portable ice machine.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. Oh, I'll be bringing a portable fan for sure.
Gavin Tye:God, that portable fan. Yep.
Mitchell Davis:Anyway, look. We'll we'll see. That's like future goals. That would be that's where I want to get to, though. Like, yes.
Mitchell Davis:Let's create the right sort of business where we can take away those barriers of, like, distance. Right, and go actually meet our guys and shake hands, meet their family, like Sure. Spend some time together. I've been listening to the Build Your SaaS Transistor FM show, and they talk about their, like, retreats, team retreats that they're going on. Yep.
Mitchell Davis:And bring it because they're a remote team, so bringing all their team together. And I I listen to it with jealous ears. I'm like, oh, that just sounds cool.
Gavin Tye:Probably do that. It would be one thing we don't I don't know specifically or visually is where everyone is located in The Philippines because it's a big country and different islands. Yeah. We're probably better off doing that, bringing them to a central location in The Philippines, and we'd go there. That's right.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. So, I mean, it's it's all it's early it's too early days to be planning anything like that, but that could we could do that next year. Or if things go amazingly well, maybe that's later this year. You know? Like Yeah.
Gavin Tye:Yep.
Mitchell Davis:But yeah. Yeah. Call it twelve months from now, maybe after the police games. Like, that would just be awesome to do.
Gavin Tye:Right? Yep. Yeah. It would be. One thing that's not on our list, which we, I've only just remembered is we had a conversation last week about your roles changing and you're adjusting to how your role as a developer is is evolving.
Gavin Tye:You you talk through talk that through.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. So yeah. So this has come from someone in a in the PHP Australia Slack that I'm a part of. Someone in there asked about how does how does everyone feel about their job changing and has it made you has AI made you a bit more lazy and like lost some of the spark of your job? And I looked at that and that's something that I've been feeling for a while now.
Mitchell Davis:And it gave me an opportunity because I opened up this thread and gave me an opportunity to just write a little bit about it, and I wrote basically like, yeah. And it sucks. Yes. I do feel that way. I've always really enjoyed writing code.
Mitchell Davis:The main thing I'm doing and I get paid for is to solve problems. Yep. And I still like doing that, and I get to do that with AI, but I much prefer to do it while also writing the code. That's like the fun part for me. And now I don't really get to write much code anymore.
Mitchell Davis:I'm still solving problems, but I'm just asking the computer to do it for me. Yep. And at the same time, I've always not always, but for the last ten years or so, I've had employees. And so I'm used to asking people to go away and solve problems and then come back and report on it and we'll talk about it and da da da. But now, like I'm still doing that, but now I don't get the part I find satisfying where I'm writing code as well, and that makes it okay that, like, alright, I can yes.
Mitchell Davis:I can spend, you know, 75% of my job managing other people, and that's fine. But now the remaining 25% is just talking to the computer. So it's it's a bummer. And I do find I'm a bit more lazy when it comes to just writing the code and I go, yeah. Okay.
Mitchell Davis:This looks good enough. It's not how I would've would've written it, but I just solved the problem in two minutes instead of taking three hours, you know. So you just kinda have to get on with it because there's always so many things to do.
Gavin Tye:Yep.
Mitchell Davis:So, yeah, that's kind of how I'm seeing everything. But that
Gavin Tye:was gonna evolve. That was evolved. That was gonna happen any that's gonna happen anyway. Right? There's no way.
Gavin Tye:That's just the evolution of the industry, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah.
Mitchell Davis:That's everyone. Like, anyone in any white collar job, anyone working in an office, if you're not using AI by now, like, are behind. No matter what your job is
Gavin Tye:Yeah.
Mitchell Davis:Right, you're you're behind because it can do a lot of the grunt work stuff that you don't have to think like, you shouldn't have to be doing a lot of the time. Right? So, yes, I think it's everyone, but especially, like, of course, I I only know my perspective as a software developer. Right? But we have absolutely created a rod for our own backs, the software industry.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. Because we're the ones, people like me, a lot smarter than me, creating all of these LLMs and this ability to do all this stuff knowing that it's like, it is taking the coding out of our jobs. Like, they are building stuff to replace all of us. Right? And so you have to roll with the punches.
Mitchell Davis:You have to change your job so that you still have a place, and that has necessitated that I'm writing less code now because someone else, a computer, can do it a heck of a lot quicker and cheaper than I can. Right? And it's depressing, but I can't just bury my head in the sand and pretend it doesn't exist. Right? It's still this is the case, but, yeah, it it is a bummer.
Gavin Tye:Yeah. I I listened to how I built this the other day, which podcast with Guy Raz and the founder of iRobot called Colin Angle. He was on there, and he was the same. He said very similarly a while ago that his his, passion is building things, building robots. And then he realized when he built a business that he hired a, someone to come in and use CAD, computer assisted drawing or whatever it was.
Gavin Tye:And he said within one day, he could build something better than what I could do. And then I realized that, hang on a sec. I need to hire smarter people than me. And then he switched his focus to building products opposed to building, like, building a business and product. So he still gets the building part, but it just what he does to do it is different.
Mitchell Davis:So Yeah.
Gavin Tye:Yeah. Yeah.
Mitchell Davis:And that is that's where I'm at as well. Yeah. Yeah. I just find it depressing. I don't see that as okay.
Mitchell Davis:Like, oh, cool. Like, I still I get to do this thing just at a higher level. I liked the thing I was doing. You know? Yeah.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. And now that thing is is gone, basically. And I could choose to sit down and write code myself, and sometimes I still do. But, like, I'll talk about it in a little bit. I spent a bunch of time on the weekend working on a project, and I could have written a lot of that myself, but I found myself lazily going into Cursor and asking, hey.
Mitchell Davis:Can you do this? And getting super frustrated when it was doing the wrong things. And I but I'd instead again, instead of doing it myself, I did the lazy option because now that's available to me, and I can then go on my phone for two minutes while it runs. You know? So it's a it's a double edged sword.
Mitchell Davis:I'm I'm still choosing to use it, but I also feel like I have to use it because otherwise, I'm behind. Right? So Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Mitchell Davis:Okay.
Gavin Tye:Yeah. Alright. I wonder if anyone else is having that feeling if if you are listening to the podcast and you are sit feeling it. Like, I know Nick Taylor, he listens. He's a dev.
Gavin Tye:I know Rowley's listening. If they're feeling it or Michael, let us know in the comments or in the comments or not in the comments bloody. Email us at Journey at SixSides. Yep.
Mitchell Davis:Yep. Yep. Cool. Alright, mate. We are on a timetable.
Mitchell Davis:We got fifteen minutes
Gavin Tye:to Oh, yeah. I've got an extension by ten minutes, mate. So we got twenty four minutes. Okay. Perfect.
Gavin Tye:I will click that down. Alright. So what do you wanna talk about now, mate? We've been thinking on the list, we have we've been trying to plan out what the next eight or nine months looks like in revenue with cost now. We have a team.
Gavin Tye:Do wanna talk about that?
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. Yep. So we sat down I sat down on Friday and put together just a spreadsheet of what are the next like, what's the next year look like, basically till the police games is done and included all the revenue that we would make from them, from that deal, like and the different payment milestones, and then also added in all of our costs for the team and the like, any of our expenses that we've got to support, like, running this business, so all the software that we're using and any of our infrastructure costs, etcetera. We won't go into exact numbers we're probably at the point now that it just doesn't make sense to talk about revenue and, like, actual numbers anymore. It's probably not fair.
Mitchell Davis:We could do a
Gavin Tye:review at the end of the year, like but I I think potentially, but that's probably Sure.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. Yeah. So yeah. So went through and just kind of modeled out, okay, what's the bank account look like on, like, a running total basis? And we would remain with some money in the bank, but there were a few months where it over the next twelve months or so, but there are a few months where that balance got down a bit lower than we'd be comfortable for.
Mitchell Davis:But that was assuming no new revenue at all. Right? So and we know that won't be the case because you and now with your extra resources, your team members, we've got a lot more capacity for more sales that once we add in some new revenue plus some ongoing revenue as well, we're to look at some SaaS agreements with some potential customers, then we are very comfortable if any of those projections are right. So Yeah. Yeah.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. I'd I sat down and I did that on Friday, and then we walked through this this morning with Mel who's doing our what would you say Mel's doing? Not much. Keeping? No.
Mitchell Davis:No. No. Yeah. Bookkeeping.
Gavin Tye:She's she's kind of the military police of the business.
Mitchell Davis:Yes. She Like She's the sense check
Gavin Tye:She is.
Mitchell Davis:On Yeah. Are we running things correctly? Correctly? Yes. Yes.
Mitchell Davis:Yep. Yep. Yep. So yes. So we sat down with Mel today, and Mel's gonna basically do a much better version of what I did in the proper
Gavin Tye:she just sent you a list a a message on Slack telling you exactly what she does. No. Okay. No. She didn't.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. Okay.
Gavin Tye:I like this podcast. I've never she's never been so quiet. It's bloody brilliant.
Mitchell Davis:It's great. Yeah. It's very good.
Gavin Tye:For me. Yep. I've been thinking about the revenue, like, projections as well. Right? Like, we are with this World Police Games win or success, it's given us the ability to build more functionality to deliver an exceptional games, which we're planning to do an exceptional games for them, which we had the official kickoff meeting with them on Friday, which we're gonna talk about them in a second that in a second.
Gavin Tye:But it's got me thinking about raising money and bootstrapping. Right? We are lucky that we that we the police games and and us found each other. Right? Now I'm thinking about where we're gonna be on the functionality of at the end of probably August through to October, where we'll be.
Gavin Tye:We'll probably be in a almost final spot for the games that are in March year. And so part of me is thinking about not all the world is innovative and willing to take a chance on a new business. Right? So that got me thinking about when we when we're talking projected functionality or where we'll be in six months time, where else does that apply to all these other businesses or even sporting events? And so it's given me a different insight to say, hey.
Gavin Tye:We get that one lead client that kind of is like funding, but helps us build the platform to the next level. And then we go and find all the clients that that functionality is relevant for to then sustainably grow revenue. And then we go look for the next flagship type of client that will potentially get us to the next level of development. And then we go and find all the people that are relevant for that. Or Yeah.
Gavin Tye:We just start winning more events that are that functionality, and we use that to go strategically and thinking about how that revenue growth or how to and it's not revenue growth because you take all revenue growth, but how to approach the market in a way that it's a just in time model of delivery to sales and things like that. Like, it's really interesting that now that we've got the team, I've been able to be afforded to start thinking like that because I'm not thinking about the day to day stuff as much.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. Yeah. It's great. That's what we need. So yeah.
Mitchell Davis:I like the sound of all of that. Yeah. Yeah. We can it sounds great. Hopefully, we can we can go after that model.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. Exactly.
Gavin Tye:Yeah. Mate, you we started we we named some more now we're doing the revenue projections. We're starting to think about the different revenue streams. So we've coined you updated the marketing side, but we've coined a couple of different Yeah.
Mitchell Davis:These are your ideas. Yes. Your acronyms.
Gavin Tye:Yep. Well, product led growth and sales led growth are common attributes. Right? But Right. We're starting to think about revenue projections and where they may come from.
Gavin Tye:So one of the things we've talked about or what you've added is the ability to people to sign up on the website now for free, right, and and get started. So whenever they so if you are listening to the podcast, we encourage you to go along to SixSides, sign up, get a free account, and create a team and start creating an event that you can use at no cost at the moment. But we call that a product led lead. Right? Because we want people to sign up, and get get find it useful, but then we also wanna start bridging that gap or that pathway or that funnel.
Gavin Tye:Then if people will find it useful, how do we end up getting them to become a client, a paid client over time? And so we have a bit of a bit of a challenge at the moment. You think it's eight weeks from when someone first signs up to when we get them as a client. And I was saying four months. So we've got a bit of a a dinner a dinner, as a bet, a Korean barbecue as a bet to see how it goes.
Gavin Tye:So that is I think that's really interesting to track over time because if we can get product led leads in and all this marketing content starts bringing people to our site and then we start optimizing for that, That can't be I've never been part of that in the business, so we can yeah. That's really exciting. Really good, really cool stuff.
Mitchell Davis:Hopefully, we can do it, and hopefully, it's sooner than you think. But, yes, I've chosen the very optimistic eight weeks.
Gavin Tye:Yeah. Yep. Fair enough.
Mitchell Davis:We'll see. We'll see. On the
Gavin Tye:on that, it
Mitchell Davis:brings me to something else I wanted to talk with you about is we had said way back when you came down here, which I think was in, March or April, so about around twelve months. So we wanted to do, like, a six monthly meetup, basically, like a retreat of sorts for you and I. Right?
Gavin Tye:Yep.
Mitchell Davis:So you are coming down for my wedding, so that can kind of count as the that's this one. And then
Gavin Tye:Not we're not even gonna talk work, mate. So that can't work.
Mitchell Davis:Wow. Well, do I mean, do you want to come back down, like, within the next month or so after? Probably not. Like, you got a you got your family. And Yeah.
Gavin Tye:Or where you come up here?
Mitchell Davis:Well, so I will, but I'll do that regularly. You can count on it for Laricon, alright, in November. Yep. So, kind of evening that. So, you're already coming down.
Mitchell Davis:So, we won't worry about it for now. Right? Because you're coming down for the wedding and that's enough. And then I'll go up for Larracon and I'll spend a day or two. An hour.
Mitchell Davis:An hour? No way. No. I want to spend more time. So this is where I'm going with it.
Mitchell Davis:I would like to come up and I wanna talk through with you on timeline because I wanna be in Brisbane already on Tuesday night, I'd say, of that week. LaraCon's typically Thursday, Friday. Mhmm. I wanna be up there already on Tuesday because this year they're doing a Wednesday thing as well, doing some workshops and stuff, and I just wanna be around. So I was thinking maybe I could come up on, like, Sunday, maybe Sunday arvo.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. And then you and I could have with your family, could have Sunday night and then Monday all day Monday as well. Yeah.
Gavin Tye:Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah.
Mitchell Davis:Okay. Cool.
Gavin Tye:We'll bring Nicole up, come up on Saturday, stay there for a couple of days.
Mitchell Davis:Probably, yes, we have dogs, and then we gotta put them in boarding, and that's fine. We do that. But, yeah, it's not something we do lightly. So and she doesn't need to be around when Lara Con's on. She was here when I gave my talk, and it was just like, she probably shouldn't be here for that whole thing.
Mitchell Davis:It's a
Gavin Tye:Yeah.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. Because you
Gavin Tye:you do wanna concentrate on
Mitchell Davis:that. I wanna be out and networking and having fun with people I only see once a year. You're
Gavin Tye:rude shaker. I get it. Yep. Yeah. Yep.
Mitchell Davis:Like going on a date, you know, on on one of the nights when I should be out with other people.
Gavin Tye:Fair enough. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Come up on a Sunday.
Gavin Tye:Whatever. It doesn't make yeah. It'd be great. Kids love you being up here. Yeah.
Gavin Tye:But I do think on that about getting together and planning, I think when we're intentional, like what we did the other day setting up the contracts for the team, I think if we're intentional and we just block out days, we can get a lot done. I also think that we have mostly formed this relationship by Slack and whatever else, or by meeting remotely. It's fun to be around each other, don't get me wrong, but I don't think we add any level of productivity. If anything, it goes down.
Mitchell Davis:Right? Yeah. I'm I'm not looking at it for being productive. I'm looking at it for more bonding. Right?
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. And like, let's go like what we did in Melbourne, you know, let's go for a bike ride or like we did the simulator golf and stuff. It's fun doing stuff together. Yep. And I think it's good for us.
Mitchell Davis:So yeah.
Gavin Tye:I don't know what you feel about. I'm pretty sure you do not have a you have might have a negative feeling on it, but we could do a jet ski tour around Stradi with a group of people for a day. It's about 200 k's on a jet ski, but it will require you being out in the sun. So you might have to get your six side six side UV burka.
Mitchell Davis:We're back to the burka.
Gavin Tye:Like here with the six o logo just under your eyes. Yeah.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. Okay. Something to look at. I have jet skied a couple times, but it's not for 200 k's.
Gavin Tye:Yeah. Yeah. It's a big day.
Mitchell Davis:A lot.
Gavin Tye:Yeah. And you snorkel whatever. Like, you can do it. We'll we'll take an umbrella for you. What?
Mitchell Davis:Floating umbrella.
Gavin Tye:What's that?
Mitchell Davis:A floating umbrella while I'm snorkeling.
Gavin Tye:You know, one of those hats?
Mitchell Davis:No. Oh, yeah. But not for snorkeling.
Gavin Tye:It'll get very wet. But it would be a fun trip to do, like something that you would not you would not do from down there. It would be a fun fun day. Yeah.
Mitchell Davis:We could do that. We could also other other climate idea, we could also go, like, have a fire somewhere. Museum. Yeah. No.
Mitchell Davis:No. I'm not a museum guy. We could go like Blue Mountains and and have a fire and stuff, like hanging
Gavin Tye:around can't do that in November.
Mitchell Davis:No. That's so this could be different time of the year. Maybe we do here's an idea for you, mate. Depending on how much revenue you and your magical team are able to bring us, maybe we do a you come down here and then you get to see what's your mate's name? I'm sorry.
Mitchell Davis:Dean. You get of course, it's Dean. You get to see Dean and Nicole and I here. You get to come to Oran Park where you love to tell everyone where I work. I'll go and we do that in around now, right, each year.
Mitchell Davis:And then we do November. I come up to you for LariCon, and I spend a couple days. But then we do one where we go somewhere together. Like, we both fly into somewhere. I suppose we're gonna have that with AIM, aren't we?
Mitchell Davis:We're probably gonna go AIM for the next few
Gavin Tye:years. Yeah. That's right. And we will probably end up going into The Philippines if we're gonna do that Okay.
Mitchell Davis:Over time. It doesn't work.
Gavin Tye:But yes. I do like it.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah.
Gavin Tye:Yeah. I do like trips.
Mitchell Davis:But
Gavin Tye:yep. Anyway Anyway. Pencil you in pencil you in for for for bloody jet skiing.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. Talk offline.
Gavin Tye:Shit. There's a new zinc out called tar. We can put that on your face.
Mitchell Davis:Tar. I'm just messaging the guys now.
Gavin Tye:Mate, I I just got a text message from Josh. You know, Josh, who I'm talking about? He said, mate, I've had a look at this. This is fantastic. My plan is to include the costings in my next level of proposals.
Gavin Tye:He wants to catch up this week.
Mitchell Davis:Excellent. That's good news. Okay. Glad all the wouldn't say harassing.
Gavin Tye:That's all harassing.
Mitchell Davis:Has has worked. Yeah.
Gavin Tye:Yeah. Of course. Yeah. How do you think I got Mel as a girlfriend, now a wife? Same thing.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. Yep. Alright. Sorry. I'm distracted.
Mitchell Davis:So
Gavin Tye:Just talk about the marketing website, mate, because I think we're we gotta jump off in a minute. So you've been doing some stuff? Yep. Talk about it.
Mitchell Davis:We use this thing called TyeNA to manage all of our, like, marketing content on the website. So that's for our blogs and white papers, webinars, etcetera. It's a CMS. It's a little complicated the way it works. It ties into like your React app, which ours is a React app and does all this crazy stuff with GraphQL under the hood and all these things.
Mitchell Davis:And it's just like it's a bit tricky to then do some other things that we wanted to have on the marketing website, like having these files statically generated with all of our markdown in them so that we can put those into, like, AI search databases, vector databases and stuff. Some other things that we can do then is like sitemaps really quickly and easily, have the site completely static generated. Like, there's a bunch of different things that Tina was kind of holding us up on. And it's not Tina's fault, it's just that's that's the way they built their project, and I want to implement it slightly differently. So, I spent most of the weekend working on pulling Tina out of our marketing site and still using Tina, but putting it on a different project.
Mitchell Davis:So now our marketing team will still log in to Tina, but it will be on a different subdomain basically. So I've kind of recreated the a very light version of our marketing website where it will just display these, like, the the content stored in Tina. And then you can go in and you can edit it and do all that sort of stuff. And then it will publish all of the stuff that's hosted in Tina. It will create it out as markdown files and then bring that into our marketing app and redeploy our app.
Mitchell Davis:And I'm pretty happy with it now, but it was so frustrating while I was doing it. I wasn't getting it right, and then it would work fine on my computer, and then I would deploy it and it wouldn't work. Just like pointing for two days to get it to work. But now it's at a point where I'm really happy with it. It unlocks a bunch of stuff for us that I've just talked about, but also I want us to have really great documentation.
Mitchell Davis:We've already been asked about that by quite a few of our customers, the fact that we don't have any documentation at the moment. And so this enables us to write documentation still in the same interface as what we have for the marketing content. So for Chris and Raya, it'll be nice and familiar and for us when we're writing the docs. Yep. But we get all these other benefits too.
Mitchell Davis:So I can take what we've done, what we will do with docs, and then make them look really nice like some of the other developer tools like the Laravel docs, for example, look beautiful, you know, and their product documentation as well, I think looks even better. And now we'll be able to kind of mimic some of that stuff. I'm not talking about just ripping off their style, but like I want ours to at least look look as good or
Gavin Tye:as cluck
Mitchell Davis:to it as I can. Right? And this work that I've done will enable us to let that happen. Right? So, yeah, it's by far, it's the most advanced CMS type flow that I've ever done.
Mitchell Davis:And, yeah, I'm pretty happy with it now. So pain in the ass to do, but I'm glad it's done. I don't have to do it again. So yeah. Unfortunately, there is nothing that looks different at all.
Mitchell Davis:It all of that, you think like this hasn't changed since Friday, but it took me, like, probably
Gavin Tye:But that's the skill, right, to make it look like it hasn't changed.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. It would be nice if it looked at least slightly different, but no. That nothing presentational has changed at all, but now we have this completely different work workflow that Yep. I have to rerecord a Loom video for the team to show them how to do this now. But, yeah, it's it's good.
Mitchell Davis:Pain in the ass. I'm glad it's done, and I hope that over the course of this week, which will be my last full week, I need to continue getting the team onboarded, introduce them to the mobile app, set up a bunch of projects, do some more peer review, and then any remaining time that I have, I'll continue work on the marketing website and start adding, like, a support area with a knowledge base and some docs and things like that. I'll start kind of laying those foundations and any little redesign work that I can do before I wrap up the end of this week. So Yep. Should be able to report on how I went with that for next episode because there's a lot of stuff in there, but I think I can do it.
Gavin Tye:Yeah. Okay. So we'll do one more episode before you go and leave, right, on Friday morning?
Mitchell Davis:That's right. Yeah. Exactly. Yep.
Gavin Tye:So we'll
Mitchell Davis:just that, and then I'll be done. I'll be off. Finally
Gavin Tye:yeah. Cool. Sorry. We just got six minutes. So finally, we had our kickoff meeting with the World Police Games this week last week, which is great.
Gavin Tye:Like, I really am looking forward to not only helping them, but working with the team. Right? They're all they seem like great people. Right?
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. They're they're great. We've already got like it's a very comfortable relationship.
Mitchell Davis:Feels like we've been working with them forever, you know, is is how I felt from just that, like that's only the second time I've met some of those people, and it was great.
Gavin Tye:Yep. It's yeah. So we we're we'll finalize getting the agreement set up now, and then, obviously, we'll start kicking off. And our first big milestone's in August. So that's the stage one where they will send it out to all their athletes, starting letting the people know who have signed up.
Gavin Tye:We've gotta take in their unique identifiers because we wanna have unique identifiers for people coming into the platform, which is, you know, think about when we first started developing, you were like, everyone has a unique identifier. Then we made it more simple. If we had to just made it simple to that, I think that would have added a massive headache for you. Like, oh gosh, how do I do it? Right?
Gavin Tye:It might have been.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. This will be different anyway than what we were doing before. This is like an external database of all of the athletes that are coming, so we gotta sink in with that. Yeah. Like, a little different, but, yeah, it's good.
Mitchell Davis:I don't think there's anything there that we uncovered on that call that scared us. If anything, it I think a part of it helped us because originally we were thinking we needed this, like, read only public view mode, and they were saying, like, look, I don't think we're gonna have anyone from the general public that will go and download this app. So everything can just be authenticated, and that aligns really well with what we already do. Like Yep. That's the way the app works at the moment.
Mitchell Davis:So I did on this subject, we talked on that call about having a nice onboarding flow in the app for the police games and how it should be localized for each language that we need to translate it into and things like that. And I started doing some research on NICE onboarding flows. So I'm I'm in that space a bit more because we currently, we just drop people straight into a get started button and they go log in, and they don't even know what the app does yet at that point. Right? So that's something that's been on the road map for a while.
Mitchell Davis:But now I've started to get some design ideas and inspiration from other apps and their onboarding. And, yeah, I'm pretty I'm excited. I think it'll be a fun project to work on, hopefully, with some nice design that we can get some help there or something like that.
Gavin Tye:I was in the app door on the weekend for a different reason. I wasn't looking at this betting app, but this ad was on there, and it showed some screenshots that were pretty cool. I just sent it through to you, and I think it might be cool for that World Police games even for SixSides. I just I just sent it to you in Slack around joining two images together to make a bigger image.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. Yeah. This is really common. Yep. So, yeah, we should we should do that.
Mitchell Davis:Absolutely. Yep. I really think we should we should get some help with some design, like even just a small bit of help. But, yeah, if we really wanna make a splash with this, we should we should look at that. Yep.
Mitchell Davis:Anyway.
Gavin Tye:Mate, it's three minutes. I gotta go. I've gotta we gotta snap this off. Where can people find you, mate?
Mitchell Davis:On LinkedIn, Mitch Dev, couple other places as well. It's all in the show notes.
Gavin Tye:Said Warren Park is like what you just mentioned to as well.
Mitchell Davis:Yep. Absolutely.
Gavin Tye:Oh, you're open to it. He's open to it now.
Mitchell Davis:Oh, my door's locked, but yes. Yeah. What about yourself?
Gavin Tye:Mate on LinkedIn. Gavin Tye, t y e. Yep. Beautiful. I'm there every day.
Mitchell Davis:So Every day? Every day. Can't get enough. Alright, mate. I'll let you go.
Mitchell Davis:I hope everybody has a great week, and we'll catch you next episode. No worries, mate.