Hey. I'm Mitchell Davis.
Gavin Tye:And I'm Gavin Tai. Mate, this sounds weird.
Mitchell Davis:That's dumb.
Gavin Tye:This is our b to b SaaS journey. Mate, welcome to week two, Mitch.
Mitchell Davis:We made it. We're we're still here. We're doing it, and, I'm excited. We we've had very little feedback on our first episode. It wasn't the immediate smash hit that, you assured me it would be, but that's okay.
Gavin Tye:Well, we've we've made it to week two. They say, what? Many businesses fail in year one, so we're still going. We're still bucking the trend.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. We just gotta keep plugging away. We'll get there. So what are we gonna chat about this week?
Gavin Tye:Mate, let's talk about what we did last week in the business. We'll do a week in review, from my side of sales and marketing and, obviously, your side of dev. Had something really interesting happen to me this week, and it brought up the topic of redundancy, making sure that we always have a backup plan for things. Got some views on finding first clients. We've had some development there as well, our thoughts.
Gavin Tye:And, yeah, we just maybe go from there. Right?
Mitchell Davis:Amazing. Okay. Well, let's, let's address the elephant in the room. So you've got a cyclone happening near you.
Gavin Tye:I do.
Mitchell Davis:Those I do. Those that don't know, Gavin's in the the Gold Coast area of Queensland, Australia. Yep. And, there's currently cyclone Alfred. It's one two hundred k's off the coast.
Gavin Tye:Yep. I'll just share my screen there just so for anyone who's watching on YouTube. Yeah, it's about a 20 kilometers offshore. It keeps going around in circles at the moment. Like, that was taken about half an hour ago.
Gavin Tye:That measurement, a 22 k's. Looks like it's gone backwards a little bit. We're about 36 k's from a massive rain event that's coming through, but it's, again, it's all changing. And, we've been on lockdown here for the last couple days, and it's, which never a cyclone's never come down this far into Australia, where we live anyway. And so, everyone's a there's a bit of panic stations going on.
Gavin Tye:But, you know, podcast as usual, nothing stops.
Mitchell Davis:Remote must go on.
Gavin Tye:The show must go on. So have you seen
Mitchell Davis:a real terror? I I was thinking that I might have to do a solo episode as episode number two is just me talking through some tech stuff. But, you've made it, and you're here on time. You you're ready to go. So Yeah.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. How's how's your stress levels, and and how's the family feeling and everything? Like, do you know what to expect? What sort of prep have you had to do? Like, let us in on
Gavin Tye:it. Yeah. Well, we're we're okay. We've done just taken everything from out the back, taken down some shade sails over the driveway. And the main thing is we've gotta try to manage is we've got two kids, one, three, and two.
Gavin Tye:We gotta try to manage their stress levels. So in Christmas here a couple of years ago, we had a really, big weather event on Christmas on Christmas day, and that really scared the kids. So, we're just trying to manage our stress levels, and they're okay. They're playing outside now, driving my wife crazy. But at the end of the day, I think it's just gonna be a massive rain event.
Gavin Tye:There'll probably be some flooding here in a couple days, but, mate, it'll be okay. It'll be good. Fingers crossed.
Mitchell Davis:Well, we can, you can give us the update next week when we record Yeah.
Gavin Tye:Absolutely. See how how it went. Alright? I'll take some photos.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. Yeah. That would be good. Maybe we can put him in the in the show notes. Alright.
Mitchell Davis:Well, you mentioned about redundancy, and you've had something happen this week.
Gavin Tye:Yeah. Yeah. So I so, well, let's cover the weekend review first, and let's do that. How about that? So we're just, we'll copy topic.
Gavin Tye:We'll cover it off one by one. So how how was your week, mate?
Mitchell Davis:It's been good. It's been very cyclone free, which is great. So I'm I'm, down in Sydney. So it hasn't affected us, but, it has been a bit windier down here. And today, it was it rained for the first time in a little while, and I I actually like the more, like, winter times.
Mitchell Davis:That's much more my thing than, summer being super hot. So it was a nice, like, drive in for me into work this morning, when it was all rainy and miserable and stuff. And I don't know. For whatever reason, that just I just like that. So Yeah.
Mitchell Davis:Whatever. But, my week's been good. It's been busy. Specifically, six sides stuff. We covered a lot this week.
Mitchell Davis:So, you and I have been working on, well, firstly, launched the podcast, and that went fairly well. Got that in front in front of a few people. So that was nice. Haven't had much feedback. So if you're that was kind of expected.
Mitchell Davis:If you're listening to this, I'd love to get any feedback that you've got, any questions, just, you know, let us know that you're that you're listening. What else have we done? A main focus of this week has been on this, presentation doc that we're putting together Yep. To really try and, like, have some great assets that explain exactly what we do for, potential leads, or potential customers. And, so you and I have spent a fair bit of time over the last week working on well, the last two weeks or so working on that document, and going through.
Mitchell Davis:So we're now, we will soon be getting it to a designer, to actually get it all mocked up nicely now that we've got most of the content in place. So, yeah, so that's been the main things. I've done some work on the marketing website, and I plan to, for basically the rest of the day, continue work on that, so that, because right now, it's just a one pager, basically. So I'm trying to expand that out and provide a bit more, context for people, that might be interested in it. Yeah.
Mitchell Davis:That's basically it for me. What about you?
Gavin Tye:So and and just to be we're we're both bootstrapping this business. Right? So we have to spend the majority of our time at this point in time in our external businesses. So, and that's why it's I I think it's a juggling act here as well, which I think maybe we can talk about a little later is juggling the our ambition with starting six sides and the reality of of of living and and supporting ourselves and being able to fund six sides. So, I think it's been really interesting these first few weeks is we've been really like, let's call it text heavy and ideation and, phase of what does six sides look like conceptually.
Gavin Tye:Right? And, out of that, we've built a pretty comprehensive feature list document, but it's actually as excited that I was to create it, sharing it with people as just a wall of text. And, they're like, it's too overwhelming. Yeah. Yeah.
Gavin Tye:Absolutely. Fair enough. This is not public facing. So we're trying to distill that down into something that's appealing that follows our our brand and our what we're trying to build and, really takes our intended audience on a journey. So that's what we're, that's why we've been focusing on this too.
Gavin Tye:And I I don't think you can do it the other way. I don't think you can build a nice presentation without first doing the foundational work and the the, the of content. Yeah. That's right. Otherwise, it's too superficial.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. That's right. It's too high level of yeah. You know, we we solve events for people. Like, it's like, what?
Mitchell Davis:Hang on. Let's clarify that first. So Yeah. Yeah. I I agree.
Mitchell Davis:I think we've got to get the the content down, which is what we've done, and now it's time to to get it looking nice. Yeah. So, hopefully, I I don't know exact timelines, but, are we thinking potentially we'll have that ready for next week?
Gavin Tye:Yeah. By next week. By the it should be by the middle of next week, we'll have a version of it anyway. Easy. Yeah.
Gavin Tye:So I guess it just popped into my head. Now we're distilling the information instead of creating the information, and it's far harder to create and put into a presentation and communicate that with someone, I think, opposed to just taking it out of something we've already done. So I'm gonna make a note of that distilling, instead of creating.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. Well, that's that's right. Like, we put together that feature list doc, and it's, like, six or seven pages of just text, right, of all of our thoughts on on all the different areas that we can help people and different sides, you know, of the community and and the event organizers and all this sort of stuff. So taking that down, and then now it's time to pretty it up. So yeah.
Mitchell Davis:Yep. We've put a lot of work in over the last few weeks on on getting all of that text done.
Gavin Tye:Yep. And my my week this week has been really about building relationships and just speaking to as many people as I can about, six sides because I I'm aware enough to know that we just have an hypothesis and it the hypothesis needs to be molded to what the market's reaction is. So last week, I went to a kickoff meeting for a conference that's coming up, that I sponsored last year through Sales Market Fit. And just talking to the the organizer of that conference, she gave me some really strong feedback that at the beginning, I didn't necessarily agree with. But as I sat down with it, I was like, you know what?
Gavin Tye:I think she's right. And, and and then and then we've spoken and since going, yeah. I think that's got legs too. So we've created or or iterated or just slightly changed what we were currently thinking. So, and it's all about speaking to as many people as I can.
Gavin Tye:I've spoken to some head of associations, some head of events. You know? Being a new business in sales and going out to these people initially, I'm expecting to be behind the decision making process. Like, we're we're trying to catch up to that and trying to get ahead of it. And you may get ahead of some of it, but you're, like, we're I know we're behind.
Gavin Tye:So it's about positioning for next year. So, and that's just all it is at the moment. And, yeah, building those relationships. We've got some really good ideas, out of those conversations, which we'll no doubt talk about in time.
Mitchell Davis:Well, that I mean, that's that's a big part a big challenge that we will face in this industry, which I I guess we haven't really addressed episode one, go back anyone that didn't see episode one, go back and check it out. We talked it through a bit more, but that's the cliff notes. We will face, this challenge of it's a long lead time. Right? Like, event organizers and associations and businesses are making these decisions twelve months out, you know, because they have to plan for these events.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. And they might have thousands of people attending. It's not the sort of thing that you wanna wing, you know, wing it and and put it together a month before the event. So we will face that that challenge. Have you dealt with that before in previous, positions dealing with, like, really long sales cycles?
Gavin Tye:Yeah. 100%. Yeah. So the it's it's not necessarily a long sale. Let's break that down a little bit.
Gavin Tye:Right? It's not necessarily a long sales cycle where they sit there and ponder the question for a long period of time. It's more like they only come into small windows of making decision to purchase something. So and so you're working you're kind of at a high level, you're trying to influence when that window opens. You're trying to actually, get them to see things in a slightly different way or understand the problems that exist in their business so it shapes how they want a solution.
Gavin Tye:And when they open that window to purchase, it could only get sometimes it could be two or three months every five years. Right?
Mitchell Davis:Yeah.
Gavin Tye:But so you wanna work. Sometimes you when I've worked in the in the past, I've worked on influencing that for the one or two years. However way I need to do that, webinars, content, site meetings, visits, whatever that is, or helping them with ROI, whatever that needs to be. So when that decision making window opens, I can have a increases my chances of success. Right?
Gavin Tye:Yeah. The decision making lifestyle is not that long. It's the time they take to get to there. So yeah. So I I can completely expect that to be happening with us.
Gavin Tye:Right? And I've done a lot in the Queensland tech community in Australia here. So I'm leveraging, trying to leverage those relationships because I've built trust, and I've put a lot into the into the network to try to actually have a influence on that. When they open that window up, they go, oh, I know this guy. Yeah.
Gavin Tye:I I believe in what he's doing, and they trust us more, and they'll they'll hopefully give us a go. But that doesn't extend much for me beyond Queensland, right, or beyond Southeast Queensland to be more specific. Yeah. So, yeah. But it will
Mitchell Davis:be interesting then to see, like, how do you go, you know, as in sales in six sides, how do you go and extend further beyond your immediate network? You know?
Gavin Tye:Yeah. Yeah.
Mitchell Davis:People that you know. I guess a lot of that will come from being able to show what we've been able to do already, in, you know, like, for Laracon Australia last year in November. But also then, hopefully, any of these events that you're looking to, get us into now, right, then next year, you know, looking to expand out beyond your networks and and take those as, like, testimonials or evidence of, hey. This is what we've done. Yep.
Mitchell Davis:It it'll be interesting to see how you go about it, approaching just, like, randoms effectively. You know? Yep. People that we don't know.
Gavin Tye:So to me, it's a %. What we gotta try to find is our competitive advantage. Right? Our competitive advantage, it doesn't have to be a massive mark market, but it has to be an area where they're probably not serviced as well as what, other like, broadly. Because if you look at the event market worldwide, every capital city runs an event every week of it nearly every day of the year.
Gavin Tye:Right? So there are thousands and thousands and thousands of capital cities around the world, and they're all running some type of event. So on the surface of it, you could say there's hundreds of thousands of events going on at any one time. Just taking a small market share of that shouldn't be easy, but it's actually very hard. Right?
Gavin Tye:So to me, I'm trying to think about, well, what's our niche? To me, the niche at the moment is very similar to what the cold start problem book talks about is we'll find our niche that we can create a competitive advantage, get a bit of a market share, and then extend out from that. And, and that's what I'm working on at the moment, trying to find that. I think I know what it is, but we need time to be able to prove it. And then also on the flip side, not everyone is comfortable giving a new tech business a go on managing something so important.
Gavin Tye:So you have to be able to find those innovators, who are willing to take a chance, who while we're trying to remove as much risk from that as possible. So that's easy and easy decision for them. So there's it's not just about going to try and sell something. It's about trying to think about all these possible risk scenarios or creating a competitive advantage and trying to be two or three steps ahead of what people are thinking so we can be proactive in knocking that stuff out. And that's where I think the strategy of selling for particularly for a b to b startup, it is not about it's it's a little bit about relationship building, but it's it's about problem solving.
Gavin Tye:We've got so many problems to solve. We wanna make it as easy as possible for someone to say, absolutely. Like, you guys are onto something, and that's already happening, right, in early conversations.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. I've been very impressed, with all of the calls that I've been on, and I I know you've had quite a few calls that, I haven't been on, which is awesome, to be honest
Gavin Tye:with you.
Mitchell Davis:But the ones that I have been on yeah. It's amazing, like, the the feedback that we're getting from these, leads of, like, wow. This is awesome of what you're doing here, or, oh, I've never thought about that, or, like, you know, some of the specific advantages that we have within the app. Like, yeah, there's some things that we're doing, which evidently, like, isn't being done in the market already. Right?
Mitchell Davis:And, yeah, to get that feedback from some of these potential customers, it's like, this is awesome. It certainly feels good when a lead is like, oh, wow. This is amazing. You know? And things like that.
Mitchell Davis:That's a good feeling. So Yeah.
Gavin Tye:Hopefully, we
Mitchell Davis:get more of that.
Gavin Tye:When you think about these big these big competitors who have been around in the market for a long time. I I'm not gonna say their name. So they have been around for a long time. Right? Some of them have been around for ten, twenty years.
Gavin Tye:So they've built their business on old philosophies from ten or twenty years ago. Right? And but they've now have a market share, and they're getting I think of big businesses, like, they have their own gravitational pull. We're a small we're a small planet. We don't have any gravitational pull, so we gotta go out and get people to come to us.
Gavin Tye:We have to go out and reach for them. Right? These big companies, they get this big gravitational pull and lead and what that means, essentially, is leads start coming to them just by reputation. Right? They're into the early majority and late majority of the technology adoption life cycle.
Gavin Tye:So they're relying heavily on word-of-mouth and case studies, and, oh, they did our event. Yep. They don't have to prove their value because it's well known. So they don't they don't necessarily have the incentive to change what they're doing. They're just optimizing as some people do, like Salesforce changes and but still built on it's still predicated on their foundational business model from twenty years ago.
Gavin Tye:So these companies don't have an incentive to to change, or we're coming in trying to mix it up, finding inefficiencies or or areas that they're not capitalizing on. And there's a couple of particular ones that we're focusing on that people are going, oh, I want that. Alright. That's that's amazing. That would save us so much time.
Gavin Tye:These companies have they can't turn as quick. I and that's what I that's how I see it anyway. So yeah.
Mitchell Davis:For sure.
Gavin Tye:It does not make sense to go head to head in a David and Goliath battle because we will never win.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah.
Gavin Tye:Why would they? Why would they choose us if we had the same exact functionality as those bigger players? It just doesn't make sense. Yeah.
Mitchell Davis:It it is interesting, like, from my perspective as a developer, thinking, like, yeah, we think very differently about some of this stuff, which is awesome.
Gavin Tye:Yeah.
Mitchell Davis:That in my mind, like, I have seen many, many small software businesses take off who I don't think have had a great competitive advantage at the start other than just being the new kid on the block, you know, and doing something well. Like, obviously, you have to execute really well on what you're doing, but, like, not necessarily having a huge like, a specific feature or something that these other, existing businesses don't have. You know? Mhmm. So it's yeah.
Mitchell Davis:It's really interesting to hear you kind of push that, like, no. You have to have something. There's gotta be a hook that makes you unique as opposed to just being another, you know, option in the market, and certain types of customers will want to go for the new, option because it's exciting and new things are being added to it and stuff like that.
Gavin Tye:Well, I mean, I don't I don't respectfully, respectfully, I don't I think you're giving yourself a bad rap there. I don't think that's the same at all. Because when you talk about developing, you're like, oh, I built this with the future intent in mind. Right? So it's the same thing.
Gavin Tye:We can compete on the future, but that might get us a couple of months down the track, but in the future, that won't last. So it's the same thing. We're trying to future proof we're trying to future proof the business in our own unique skill set, really. Yeah. So it's the same thing.
Gavin Tye:I think fundamentally, as long as you try to address a fundamental issue, that will see you see us last a lot longer or get more traction, right, over time.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. Yeah. So Okay. Awesome. Yep.
Mitchell Davis:Mate, you said you had something happen this week that you wanted to talk through some redundancy stuff.
Gavin Tye:Yeah. Yeah. So, like, my business is runs through my laptop. Right? And I've got some monitors here, but largely runs through my laptop.
Gavin Tye:And, got sales
Mitchell Davis:market fit.
Gavin Tye:Yeah. Sales market fit. Yep. I coach, startups, b to b startups on their sales strategy, which is exactly what we're implementing here. Yep.
Gavin Tye:Come in and open my laptop, and, my screen was smashed. My daughter had accidentally dropped her, the iPad or tablet onto my screen. And, I'm like, it's brand new laptop. Not not even a month old. Oh, no.
Gavin Tye:And I'm like, fuck. Like, and that made me think about redundancy. I don't have redundancy. I had another Mac laptop here, and I sold it. Alright?
Gavin Tye:And, I've got an old, old one from 02/2014. And, I can still operate on my screens, but that's in my laptop is useless at the moment till I get it fixed. And speaking to Apple, they said, yep. It does not work like that. You cannot bring it in.
Gavin Tye:It's gonna be at least five to ten days of of us having it. And then it really got me thinking about redundancy. Like, if I had to spilt water on my laptop, or something like that, like, I'd be proper proper screwed. And Yeah. So it got me thinking about redundancy.
Gavin Tye:Like, I need to have multiple, multiple other options. It's may not be the most ideal. But, if something goes wrong or I lose my laptop, it gets stolen or I break it. That's just for me. You know, if I get hit by a bus, like, how do I share with you, like, how we're doing sales?
Gavin Tye:Right? It doesn't work. So, yeah, what's your thoughts on that? How do you plan for redundancy? You, would do you recognize it as anything else?
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. Well so what comes to mind for me okay. There's a few different parts to redundancy there. One, I would recommend you should get, like, a a Mac mini or something like that to have as your as home base. You know?
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. And then have a laptop that's available for, you know, when you go out to meetings and things like that. Because a Mac mini much or, you know, some type of desktop and they're fairly cheap now as well, and they're kind of amazing. But, having something that's, like, at home base, very a lot less likely to have any damage and things like that happen to it, you know, than something that you're taking around like a laptop. Hopefully, you're doing, like, backups of your work.
Mitchell Davis:I think a lot of your work is online anyway. Right? It's like in Google Drive and stuff. So you're very online, so it should hopefully have all of your stuff there anyway. But as far as, like, redundancy within the business in terms of people, what comes to mind is the bus factor, which, you and I spoke about a little while ago, which is like, what happens if you get hit by a bus?
Mitchell Davis:What happens to the business that, you know, you're running? Or in in my case, like, with my other business, with Atlas Software, we do, software development consulting. And if, if something happens, like, in a let's say there's some, some company out there that we're, supporting, you know, if something happens to their lead engineer, you know, or maybe they have only one developer on on a project or something like that, if something happens to that person, is that business gonna be able to continue on? You know? And this is a developer, not not even, like, the the CEO or the founder or whatever of the business, but just, like, is some business out there going to be able to keep going and, like, rapidly respond to any changes that they need made to their software and their platforms and whatever.
Mitchell Davis:That's where having extra developers on hand, you know, can can really help, and that's that's an angle that we're going after at the moment. We're finding more customers and and working with our existing customers to try and decrease that bus factor. So, yeah, it is a good point. It does also highlight for us that the six sides, we're both totally like a huge bus factor being so small. You know, it is just the two of us.
Mitchell Davis:If something happens to me with our tech, that's not great. And and if something happens to you, what's gonna happen with our sales? You know? And and so it is super early days, for us. We're probably not in a position to be able to do anything like that.
Mitchell Davis:Certainly, we we can't be hiring or or anything at the moment. Yeah. But it is interesting, and it's something that we'll have to think about, into the future, you know, if Six Sides continues to grow. And, you know, we we're running events for people, like you said, right at the start. Like, it's really important.
Mitchell Davis:We wanna reduce the risk as much as we can. Maybe we should also be thinking as we proceed, what ways can we reduce our our bus factor Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Is it bringing in other people on, like, a contractor basis or something like that so that they know the code base?
Mitchell Davis:So that if I, you know, if I'm away on holiday or, you know, something bad does happen that someone else would know the tech. Because you're not from our conversations, I'm guessing you're not that interested in learning much more about the the code and how how the servers work and things like that. So we might need to find someone else for that.
Gavin Tye:Yeah. It's it's interesting as you were just talking there. I think there's probably an evolving strategy here of redundancy. Right? There's probably first level on the day to day.
Gavin Tye:Like, now, as we're speaking, I'm I've fired up my old laptop that I haven't I haven't used for a long time, at least since 2020. But thank God, Max, as you fire him up, it was a bit slow, so I reset it. But I fired it up, just updated it, and you're right. I'm mostly online, so I'll I'll be able to get by. But that still doesn't, it does the day to day, if something happens, I think both of us is, like, what's the day to day?
Gavin Tye:Something breaks, then what do we how do we get back online? And then I think there might be a more medium term one and then a more longer term one, like different layers here. I think the challenge comes well well, to me, couple of issues here for us to consider is we both talk different languages. Right? We have different skill sets.
Gavin Tye:You're, it's easier for you to come into my world than me to come into your world, I think Sure. If you need to.
Mitchell Davis:I would agree. Yeah.
Gavin Tye:Yep. So how do we do that? Like, we there there might be something that we look at in the next six months. Right? Is, how do we actually if something happens, then I can at least I can at least get an understanding of what's going on or we have someone on call.
Gavin Tye:If something was to happen, then they could jump in and they could, they could at least maintain what you've been doing or get an understanding and and vice versa. Right? It it comes down to documented sales playbooks or documented processes because there is a set of tacit knowledge that I would I know that is very hard to communicate. But there's what's the 60 or 70%. And, it really got me thinking about that.
Gavin Tye:And sales market fit puts food on the table for my family. It's our only source of income. It's way more important I get redundancy in that business today than in this one. And as you told MacBook Mini, I just had a look there, and I was like, yeah. Okay.
Gavin Tye:That makes sense. I'll look at that. I'll probably get that as well. So I've got three two forms of backup, because I cannot afford that to happen again. Right?
Gavin Tye:And, and I'm glad I'm glad it wasn't I'm glad it was just a screen and she didn't drop water on here because I got water near the desk all the time. Yeah. But so I guess for anyone who's listening to this, it's about it's just to be considerate of redundancy is have a backup laptop or something there that if something does happen, that you can at least fire up. It may not be as best as what you used to. It may be a couple days out of date, but, at least it's something.
Gavin Tye:And, and I found out I didn't even think about it. I I knew it was there, but I never really thought about it until yesterday. And I was like, shit. That could have been so much worse.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah.
Gavin Tye:So yeah. Yeah.
Mitchell Davis:You should you should look at a backblaze as well, which is like a a regular and it's so cheap. It's a couple dollars a month or something like that. But it's just like it's a backup program that's basically always running on your computer. Yep. And, it'll just send up whatever's changed.
Mitchell Davis:So it's like it uses very minimal data because it's just sending the changes that you've made. So, okay. I I added a new file. Great. It's just gonna add that one file.
Mitchell Davis:It's not like it's backing up your whole computer all the time.
Gavin Tye:Yeah.
Mitchell Davis:And then, yeah, they have like, there's a bunch of different things that they have, to to help you out if you're in an emergency. But something cool that I have heard is, like, if you pay them, I think it's a couple hundred bucks, they can send you a hard drive with, like, an external hard drive with all of your stuff on it.
Gavin Tye:Yeah. Right.
Mitchell Davis:So you don't have to, like, wait to download it, from their website when you get a new computer and stuff like that. It's like if you really need this in a jam, you can you can get a hard drive. And I think if you then send them the hard drive back later, they give you like, they reimburse most of that
Gavin Tye:Yeah. Right.
Mitchell Davis:Back to you. So it's yeah. It's interesting. I've been using them for years now, and, yeah, never had any problems. And, like, if your network drops out for whatever reason, like, you you go away on holiday or something and you you don't have your computer on at home for a couple weeks, they email you.
Mitchell Davis:Like, hey. We haven't heard from your computer in, like, a week. Is it are you aware of this? So that way you know that, like, okay. They're constantly waiting for more stuff to come through.
Mitchell Davis:So
Gavin Tye:Okay. Awesome. Yeah. Yeah. No worries.
Gavin Tye:Else. Yeah. That that's a really big one that I think is, boring but important. So, yeah, thanks for that info. I'm gonna go look at the Mac Mini after this and, look at black, back plays as well.
Mitchell Davis:Back plays. Yeah. Yep. That's right.
Gavin Tye:Cool. Right. So what about so we talked a little bit about finding first clients. Right? So, I think that's one of the biggest challenges that we have.
Gavin Tye:Like, you've got you were lucky enough to get a first client last year through your network, which is really good, and and and we're working on maybe getting some more business out of them. But I think this is one of the biggest challenges that a startup has, and, going from zero to one is fucking hard. It doesn't matter how good you are. I like how good you are. You think it's yeah.
Gavin Tye:Yeah. It is fucking hard. Like and I don't wanna you can sugarcoat it, and you can look at, examples in the market where they've just gone from zero to a thousand really quickly, like Leonardo springs to mind at the moment, you know, Canva, all those businesses. And people use them as a North Star and think it's the norm. The reality is that's not the norm.
Gavin Tye:So, we've been trying really hard these that's one of the things that I've been trying is, just find first clients. It's just and to me, it starts it with conversation. And, you can push I think you can push too hard in the beginning. I'd love to know your thoughts on this. You can push too hard and ruin relationships.
Gavin Tye:And, I think the first part of, starting a business is speaking to as many people and trying to cement foundations. What what do you think?
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. So I have very little sales experience, but it definitely is all down to just have more conversations from from what I can see. Have more conversations. And what you have, like, previously spoken to me about is, like, don't treat them like a sales conversation.
Gavin Tye:Yeah.
Mitchell Davis:You're not going there trying to immediately sell someone because it's it's too much too soon. Right? Yeah. So it's thinking through like, okay. How can I help this person?
Mitchell Davis:Can I give them any helpful information that might help them with what they're already, dealing with at the moment? Laying the foundations of, like, trying to be that person that they think of and that, you know, that solution when they need it or when the right time comes, like you were talking about earlier with the, like, the decision making time. Right? Yep. So, yeah, I've definitely had people reach out on LinkedIn, not related to this, to six sides, but for other stuff.
Mitchell Davis:And, like, it's like an immediate in the connection request. It's like, hey. This is what we do. Let's set up a call. Like, I'd love to and it's like, woah.
Mitchell Davis:Woah. This is it's too much. It's too much too soon. Right? So Yeah.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah.
Gavin Tye:I think about it like dating. If you go and meet someone, we're both our partners now, but back in the single board, if you wanna say, hey. And you just were too fast, go inside their personal space, and you even if, women did that back to men, it is off putting. Right? It's more of a men do more like, it is.
Gavin Tye:Yeah. They are more off putting, but that's what it kind of is. You just gotta be a bit more casual. I think you commented on a meeting this week when I was meeting with someone and they were laying down. Looked like they're not laying down, but they were definitely propped over.
Gavin Tye:I was trying to be as relaxed as possible and not make it a like a sales meeting.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah.
Gavin Tye:And, yeah, and that we had a good outcome. Alright. Right?
Mitchell Davis:That's right. They they kind of I commented immediately as I was watching the the playback of it. But I was like, I love that you're both like, you were doing this thing, you know, for people that are watching on YouTube. You were doing this thing where you were both kinda, like, leaning holding your head up, and with your arm and and, like, leaning into that. And, yeah, it was, like, very quick.
Mitchell Davis:I could see that you were kind of copying, you know, mimicking the body language there. And then we spoke about that a little, and you're like, yeah. It's it's great to help just make, like, a a nice relaxed feel Yeah. To the meeting as opposed to, hey. I'm Gavin, and, you know, we want your business.
Mitchell Davis:Like
Gavin Tye:Oh, yeah. That that wouldn't have gone anywhere. No. Yeah. It's and and it was that was that was actually unintentional, I think.
Gavin Tye:I don't remember consciously doing doing it, but building rapport, having similar body language is a is a is a strong rapport indicator, strong rapport indicator. So we ended up just doing that, and I always try to be casual anyway. Most people will sit straight talking to people, on their chair and and take it pretty seriously. I try to spin it around and put my like, make it casual across my leg is across my legs because people don't normally do that. And I learned that from someone at a business I worked in is he was amazing at it.
Gavin Tye:And, I was like, why is this guy doing it? What a clown. And then I realized he was just so casual. People would just disarm around him. I was like, oh, that's a really good skill to learn.
Gavin Tye:So, I learned something last week about it took a while to sit with us. I I spoke to someone who's an they're an adviser who will help people raise capital, and we're not necessarily doing that. But I also wanna get a lot of information so we can if we do take off or we go, hang on. This is interesting. I think we should probably fund this and go, like, try to go as quick as we can.
Gavin Tye:He was telling us about he was telling me about, looking at trying to build a customer advocate group. Like, who are your ideal customers that you could go back to them and share what you think about product road map? And so they can give you a real world advice so you don't go down the path of of developing functionality that's not fit for purpose. And I was like, yeah. Okay.
Gavin Tye:And, well, sorry. No. I didn't think that. At the moment, I was thought in the moment, I was like, I don't I'm not sure that fits. But then I had some conversations over these last two weeks with some pretty high up people in the government, here.
Gavin Tye:And I'm like, they would be great customer ad customer advocates because they were already somewhat invested or interested in what we're doing. They don't need us. But if I could get them involved and get their feedback, hopefully, that they would become invested in what we're doing, emotionally invested, and then they will wanna see us succeed. I was like, did that make sense? So, I'm gonna work on that.
Gavin Tye:We'll work on that and try to build a customer advocacy group. Like, I'm thinking Zoe. Right? Sarah, Tara, who we've spoken to. Yeah.
Gavin Tye:And then get their feedback because that's the the area of the cold start problem, like the small ecosystem that I wanna try to penetrate.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. I I have heard of this before, these types of, like, small groups of potential customers, not necessarily customers, because then it kind of it can change the expectation there. Right, but, yeah, I've heard of this before and heard of it working quite well. And because you're right, like, you and I can sit in a vacuum effectively and think, oh, this is what an event organizer would want. Yeah.
Mitchell Davis:You know? And that to a large part, that is what we have done. Right? But, you and I have not run significantly large events. I've never run any events.
Mitchell Davis:Have you I know you've done webinars and stuff. Have you ever put people together in a room?
Gavin Tye:No. But I've worked with a company that has done that before. Like, when I worked for Red Eye, they did do an, a summit every couple of years, and it's just not easy to do. Right? So
Mitchell Davis:No. So having people that actually, this is what they do Yeah. Our potential buyers, right, like, it it's it's perfect. So Yeah. Yeah.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. Will you be, so firstly, I think this is great, and this is what we should try and do. Yeah. Will you be I know you've just mentioned a few names now, people that we might talk to about this. Mhmm.
Mitchell Davis:But how would you find new people for this group? Would it just be kind of like a byproduct of, you know, all of the outreach and and the different conversations you're having with people now. If you find somebody that might be a good fit, is it then at that point that you're thinking,
Gavin Tye:oh, okay.
Mitchell Davis:Maybe we can add them to this this advocacy group? Well, I I think there's
Gavin Tye:a few things that need to happen first. One is we live in different states still, and we still haven't been able to come together and plan out the next six to twelve months of of where we think the business is going. Right? Yeah. So I think we need to get our ducks in a row there.
Mitchell Davis:Do a retreat.
Gavin Tye:Yeah. That's right. A retreat. So we did so we've mapped out our market of what the maturity of, an event organizer might look like, and we've related it to the six sides of an event. So with five like, we think about one being a real mature market or a real simple event, which is two sides, like an event organizer and attendee, five five being the six sides of all the people who are involved in an event.
Gavin Tye:So I think one thing from
Mitchell Davis:for people that aren't sure what we're talking about, it's like a scale of how developed is any Sure. Right? So one being very low, low level developed with only a few, people there in in in different roles, and then a five being, like, a very highly developed event, significant day events.
Gavin Tye:Thousands of people.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. That's right.
Gavin Tye:Yep. So we're on a side note, well, we call it the client maturity scale. On a side note, I'm working on a on a free course for that. So we'll put that around here at some stage, whether it's in the notes on whatever you're listening to, whether it's YouTube or a podcast. We might put that in there in time.
Gavin Tye:Yep. So a couple of weeks away. But, basically, we have this vision. We wanna help all levels of those markets, but we're actually our functionality doesn't lend us to do that at this point in time. So we're focusing on one particular market there.
Gavin Tye:Right? So I think I think in my mind, once we get all that sorted and go, hey. We if we ask them for feedback without directing them, we could end up in all these different bloody tangents. I think if we need to say, hey. We're heading this way.
Gavin Tye:What what, what are we missing? And they just open their eyes to certain things, right, opposed to them telling us what direction to walk in. I think that might be otherwise, we're getting we're not proactive. We're being too reactive to what they're saying. Right?
Gavin Tye:Yeah. And and I do need to think about I think we need to think about what does that customer advocate group look like? What what would be the rules? Because they're gonna say, first question is, what does that involve, Mitch?
Mitchell Davis:Yeah.
Gavin Tye:And then, and then if you're like, well, we just spoke with if we don't have a clear plan on what that looks like, I think, we won't and won't have the intended outcome of what we want.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. That's right. Like, we we'll have to sit down and and I mean, maybe this is even like, this is stuff we could totally be doing on recordings like this of, like, okay. How are we going about like, what are these meetings that you and I are having internally to kind of sort out the business? Like, we're we're looking at doing a regular Monday, meeting, just us sitting down, mapping out the week, and and planning out a case case what we're gonna do.
Mitchell Davis:I don't know that we should record that one, but maybe for things like this where it's like, okay. This is, we could sit down and and build out what does a customer advocate group look like. We could totally do that on on the podcast. Right? And that might be interesting for people.
Mitchell Davis:So
Gavin Tye:Yeah.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. We we should do that before you bring this up with anybody. In that way, we've got a plan for what we're actually asking people for.
Gavin Tye:Yeah. Yeah. So that that's a really good idea as well. So, I think that's pretty good. Like, that could help people just to go, hey.
Gavin Tye:Yeah. That's a good idea. How do I build one out? So we could actually do some research and and then workshop that with with our workshop, with our plan, and then we can implement it and keep people updated on the outcomes of that. Cool.
Gavin Tye:K.
Mitchell Davis:Let's let's do it. Awesome.
Gavin Tye:So, look, of all three people, are they gonna be watching this on YouTube or or on a, podcast? If you find think that would be useful, can you let us know just in the comments, and then, we'll, make sure we get that done or or take in your feedback.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. On that point, I've got I spoke with, I I briefly interacted with John and Justin at, Transistor, where we're hosting the podcast. And their show, to be clear, their show, Build Your SaaS, which they did over a few years. I think they started that in 2018, building out their podcasting platform. That was a huge inspiration for me personally.
Mitchell Davis:And then I'm kinda bringing that forward into this podcast that we're doing and how we're, thinking of our business and and, yeah, and doing these recordings.
Gavin Tye:Yeah.
Mitchell Davis:And, specifically, Justin mentioned that they've got a Blue Sky integration now with the comments. So, anytime we publish an episode, that's gonna go up on my, Blue Sky profile automatically. And then if you reply to that, I can then track those comments. I think they end up on the on the website that we've got set up for this podcast. So that might be the best spot, to, get in, you know, get in touch with us, either there or or on the YouTube videos.
Mitchell Davis:We are recording these. Gavin, you were saying earlier before we started recording, we might release the first few in, like, a batch. So, we will get these up on YouTube. They just won't but yeah. So you you can reply on there as well.
Gavin Tye:Yep. Cool. Mate, what else is on your agenda for, I guess, next week or your top of mind at the moment from a dev side or your your operation side?
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. So I want to continue like, I will be involved in getting that, presentation set up. So I know that's largely gonna be your thing, but I'm still kind of making sure that I'm in the loop on that. So I think that's coming up next week. Yep.
Mitchell Davis:I'm continuing to work on the marketing website, which I would do more of today. Yep. I wanna try and have just at least a few pages there.
Gavin Tye:What's the address of that, mate? So just in case people wanna check it out, our current
Mitchell Davis:Yep. So we will have it in the in the, description and show notes, but it's 6sides.co. Okay. We couldn't get the Com. Maybe one day.
Gavin Tye:We don't need it, mate. We don't
Mitchell Davis:need it. That's right. We got the dot code. Yeah. So, continuing to work on that.
Mitchell Davis:This week, we've kind of finalized, we think, on a new logo. So we've now changed our logo three times, I think, because we used to be called something else, that headed logo. And then now, we've done some things with hexagons and stuff. And now we finally settled on, this kind of it's a six in the shape of a cube. And it was actually Nicole, my fiance.
Mitchell Davis:It was her idea. And when she first showed me, I was like, nah. And then I I thought more about it, and she was like, just show it to Gavin. And then, she even put a this is really funny to me. She put, like, a calendar reminder in my calendar of, like, show the new logo to Gavin.
Mitchell Davis:And sure enough, it's worked because we've ended up
Gavin Tye:sending Well, you send it to me, and I was like, nah.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. You were like, what
Gavin Tye:is this? Yeah. I thought you're taking a piss. I thought you were I thought it was a joke, and, but it's actually turned out just a bit of massaging, and I think it looks pretty good.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. So we're we'll get that. I don't even know if that's updated yet on the on the website at the moment, but, we'll make sure that that's in place. So by the time you're listening to this, if you head to 6sides.co, you can Yep. Check it out.
Mitchell Davis:Also on, 6sides.co, we've got a I think there's, like, a learn more link or something like that, on there a few different times on the page. If you click that, you can book a call with Gavin. So if you're listening to this and you would like to chat with us about, helping you out building your community through an event that you might be running or you just wanna know a bit more, you can book a a time with Gavin. Yeah. We are working on setting up a link where it can be with both of us.
Mitchell Davis:But, again, I'm very happy to have a cofounder that's doing the sales and marketing so that I could do, the development stuff. So it's nice having you being able to just do these calls on your own. So
Gavin Tye:That's right. Well, it is what it is. Right? So It
Mitchell Davis:is what it is.
Gavin Tye:It is what it is. Yeah.
Mitchell Davis:Alright. Well, that's kind of the plan. So, hopefully, you don't have too many problems with, Cy Clone Alfred.
Gavin Tye:Alfred. Yep.
Mitchell Davis:And you can update us, next week on that, and, we'll get this episode out. I think we're releasing them on Tuesdays. We're recording them on Fridays. That gives us a little bit of time to do the edit and then, very minimal edit. We're not, basically not touching any of the middle stuff.
Mitchell Davis:I'll just chop off anything at the start and the and the end. And that's it. So, Gavin, where can people find you online?
Gavin Tye:You can find me on LinkedIn, Gavin Ty, or, again, on on six sides. Catch up with me. Yeah. That's it. Yeah.
Mitchell Davis:Excellent. And for me, I'm Mitch Dab on LinkedIn and Mitch Dab dot is on Blue Sky, and we'll have links to everything we talked about in the show notes. Alright, mate. Have a good weekend. I will catch you next week.
Gavin Tye:See you, mate.
