Hey.

I'm Mitchell Davis, a Laravel developer.

I'm Gavin Tye, head of sales marketing at Six Sides.

I noticed you've elevated.

You're now head of sales in marketing as opposed to Yeah.

Have.

Doing sales

in marketing.

It's more to do just being self conscious.

Fair enough.

Look, maybe one day I'll get to be head of technology or something.

Well, you are.

There's Well It's two of us in the business, so you are head of technology.

What did you say?

What what was on the wording yesterday?

Visionary.

Jeff GPT called me a a product visionary, and I didn't correct it.

So Yep.

You know, I gotta pick it for myself.

You could be head of visionary.

Yeah.

Yep.

Head head visionary.

Yeah.

Head visionary.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Anyway, we should introduce who we are and what we're doing.

We are building 6Sides.co.

It's an events platform, helps you grow community through events.

Mate, how are you going?

Excellent.

Excellent.

Mate, I got some news.

You can see my shirt.

My jumping gear.

We got our merch this week.

Can do merch.

Then we got Oh,

you haven't showed me yet.

Hey.

There

you go.

That looks great.

Yeah.

We've got a

few of

them as well.

There's another one as well.

Oh, nice.

This

is a yep.

So Alright.

It's good.

Mate, I like it.

I like the I like it on the side there.

It's printed for now.

I would ideally like to get it embroidered at some stage, but Yeah.

At the cost of that goes up significantly.

So

We gotta make it

more, mate.

I love this hat.

This hat is awesome.

I'm Cool.

Gonna wear it everywhere.

Get it out there.

Yeah.

Right.

Well, we'll have to you're coming down in a month.

Right?

Yeah.

I'm gonna send you stuff next week.

Yeah.

Okay.

Alright.

If we just want to get it next week, whatever.

Yeah.

I'll I'll aim to send it.

Next month.

Probably Monday, next Monday or something.

Yeah.

Perfect.

Cool.

Looking forward to it.

But, yeah, looks looks great.

So you can check it out on the video if you you wanna see how beautiful Gavin looks right now.

So well done.

Mate, definitely a four out of 10.

A %.

I'd I'd say you're a five, mate.

Don't don't cut yourself so short.

Mate, that's actually 20%, so I appreciate it.

25%.

I was thinking about the purpose of this, our podcast.

And in a couple of weeks in the June 17, I'm actually going to do a talk at a startup precinct here in Brisbane.

And I'm actually sharing and and I'm going in and me and the founder of the company that I started in b to b SaaS in, Wayne Girard, are gonna go talk about our journey as him as a founder building the business and me as a salesperson trying to win sales in in, the company, like in the challenge, the challenges that presented.

Yep.

And one of the things that this podcast, our aim or my aim hopefully is to document some maybe seemingly consequential things that we talk about today, but then may have a profound impact six months or twelve months down the track.

And Yep.

And it's to go back and have a look at those lessons because it's sometimes when I don't know if it's like what it's been like for you is sometimes those little lessons have the biggest or those little things have the biggest impact later on, and but you forget.

And, we don't know what the purpose of this podcast is now or the ultimate value will provide.

I just think documenting it and going back and go, oh, remember we spoke about that on week 12?

Wow.

Wow.

And that played out like this.

So, yeah, I I wish that I had created a podcast from that that time to capture more lessons.

So, yeah, it's, yeah, it's interesting.

Yeah.

I I'm very glad that we did this.

It took a little to convince you initially.

I remember talking about it with you in November or December, like, hey.

I'd really like to do this, and then we kind of umned and ahed, slow start, and then it was I didn't I don't think we started recording till maybe February somewhere around there but I'm so glad that we're doing it it's really fun forces us to talk to each other regularly which you know we are anyway we have multiple meetings through the week but having something like this I think will be really helpful into the future if we keep doing this you know for the next year or so even on weeks where maybe this is the only time that we chat still really good to force us to connect plus you get like a it's a time capsule.

Right?

I don't think we should stop doing it for as long as the business is around, to be honest.

I wonder if they will get if it will get to a point where we're like, well, we've kind of said everything there is to say.

I wonder.

I don't know when that would be.

Yeah.

But but the evolution of what will be on our plate, because we're talking about what's on our plate.

Right?

And the evolution of the business growing, managing people, whether we take funding in the future, whether we expand into other countries, I don't think that will ever change.

I don't think there's ever a you're either growing or declining and even declining is a oh, that'd be a hard podcast.

Imagine things aren't going well and we're struggling and

Might be a

bit depressed.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, we should be stop recording.

Something's gonna be in the shit up.

Yeah.

So, anyway, it is it is really useful, though, what you're talking about there of being able to go back and hear like decisions that get made in the past and then how that affects things because I was listening to even last week's episode.

I listened to it in the car.

Doesn't matter where I was going I was driving for a little while and I I was in the car I was like oh let me listen to this episode and it was cool because there were some things I can't quite remember them right now off the top of my head but there were some things that you were saying

So it's memorable.

Yep.

There are some things that you were saying last week that even as I'm here or I was there recording with you listening to what you were saying, but I wasn't really taking it in.

Yep.

So then being able to sit sit in the car, listen for an hour, and go like, oh, that's right.

Okay.

He was talking about this thing.

And then I so I do remember some of it was, like, topics for us to talk about for this week so that we have some continuity there.

So I then, you know, when I finished the episode, I then jotted those into Trello so that we could chat about them this week.

So, yeah, it's it is really handy to have this as a record.

Record.

So if you're out there listening to this and you're in a similar position, new business or even existing business, I I would encourage you to start your own show.

It's really worked well for Gavin and I.

There's a pattern that's evolving in my life that I've only just kinda come and been aware of is the things that are probably the best for me, I'm initially resistant to them in the first place.

When when Mel and I first met and got together and, I was initially resistant to us dating, because I felt like she'd been, just didn't have the best track record for guys And, like, the guy's treating her well.

And I was like, I don't wanna do that to her.

And but after a couple of weeks, I was like, no.

No.

Hang on.

Actually, there is something there.

And a few other there's a there's been a handful of things as well.

And I would say us deciding to start six sides was I was initially resistant to it.

You told me no.

You were like, no.

Let me refer you to someone else who I think might be a better fit.

And then you called me back, like, couple of hours later.

Yeah.

That's right.

And even for this and and then that's it.

Podcast.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That asked me made me ask myself another question.

It's like, why is that?

And maybe it's because I I get focused on something and then I just can't handle distraction or my mind doesn't do like, doesn't handle it very well.

And and I was like, okay.

Well and a friend of mine, Roman, he's been trying to get me into dirt bike riding for ages.

He goes, man, it's so much fun.

And I'm like, no.

No.

I can't.

I'm not gonna do it.

And I thought, hang on a sec.

He's been coming back to me every time we catch up to say, hey.

You should do this.

And I'm like, hang on.

Maybe I should because I don't have any really good hobbies.

And, so, yeah, I'm going down that path too.

I've gone, no, no, I will go down there.

I could very well end up in traction in the future.

But, yeah, it's, it's an interesting.

It's interesting.

And even even now, like Mel Mel telling me certain things as most husbands or partners of girlfriends and wives or whatever tell them.

And then I finally come to the conclusion a few months later, she goes, I was been telling you that for months.

You just haven't been listening.

And I was like, what else am I missing in my life that I should be listening to?

And I've consciously beginning to stop and assess and really think about a lot more things and being single-minded.

Yeah.

That's really

nice, mate.

It's interesting.

I mean, it's normal to not like change.

Right?

There's a lot well, for a lot of us, we don't really like change.

So Yeah.

It doesn't surprise me.

Well, it's not necessarily change.

I'm quite comfortable with change, but it's like the change that I that I'm creating or that I can see coming, I guess when things come in from something that doesn't fit, I haven't quite figured it out, but it's yeah, it's, yeah, I I've made, I get quite comfortable with change.

It's just, that's not.

Yeah.

It's maybe I'm just headstrong.

I need to be a bit more flexible.

Yeah.

Don't know.

I think you're alright, mate.

So don't worry about mate.

But you don't live with me.

Yeah.

That's true.

I'm pretty happy about that.

Yeah.

You said just before, we don't know much about each other.

You don't know my political views or my music taste.

So That's right.

We're gonna have an episode.

Yes.

So we're we're gonna have an episode.

I don't know if it'll be next week, but at some point in the future, maybe we can sit down and get to know each other a bit more on the podcast because there's I'm sure there's plenty of stuff that we can learn about each other.

Yeah.

Ought to

be really fun.

So Are you gonna shout

out shout out on Blue Sky?

Yes.

Exactly.

So I want to give a shout out to Caffeinated Dev on Blue Sky who reached out, so thank you, and said just popped in to say down with boring SEO titles.

Love the podcast.

And so I agree.

So this is someone who's in my camp, which is great, but we are starting the SEO title saga for the next six episodes.

We're gonna

give Saga?

Yeah.

It's an epic.

It's an epic.

Oh,

sure.

Sorry.

So we're going to give that a try for the next six episodes.

So I don't know if you wanna create these titles or if you are happy for me to use the like, I maybe this is interesting for people.

I created a GPT.

You showed me how to do it because I'd never done one before.

In chat GPT, you can go in and create, like, custom GPTs.

They're called just little, like, scripts basically for any developer people where you kind of tell it hey this is your purpose this is the goal that we're trying to do and then I created one for this show so basically what I do I get the transcript from the recording in Riverside that we do, I copy that into this GPT and it then spits out a list of, like, 20 titles that it recommends.

And for the last six episodes, I've been just coming up with the titles.

I've been ignoring the ones that it suggests.

The problem.

Yeah.

Well, maybe, but it's clearly Caffeinated Dev likes it.

So maybe I can use one of these titles, or you can come up with the title for these episodes.

But didn't he say he wants the bore or they, sorry, don't want the boring SEO titles?

You're not doing SEO titles.

Lowrider's not an SEO title title.

They they said down with boring SEO titles.

So Yeah.

But that's not you.

That's not what you were doing.

Well Yep.

I think they're trying to say no to boring SEO titles.

Okay.

What's funny how it I mean, that's true.

I've interpreted it that way.

Down with boring SEO titles, but maybe they're like, yeah.

I'm down with boring SEO titles.

What we wanna see, man.

Right?

This cuts both ways.

Anyway, so we'll Okay.

We will we will start that from this episode for the next six weeks, see if it makes any meaningful improvement Sure.

To the to the analytics there.

Anyway, just to round out the GPT part, it then creates all the show notes, gives me, like, reminders of, hey, add this link because this is something that you talked about in there, things like that.

It's got all the chapter markings.

So for me to take this recording that we do and publish it takes me now.

I've got it down to, like, fifteen minutes, which is awesome.

So such a time saver.

Do you define the audience who who the audience is of, like, of our podcast?

So what that's a good question.

Who is our audience?

Is it our potential clients?

Is it people who are maybe starting a business like a founders or at home or working remotely that are that are maybe on this journey as well and wanna give a different, like, a different perspective?

Or is it a caffeinated dev that, is like, hey.

I would love these guys sound great.

I wanna listen to their

well, who do you who would you We do sound great, though.

It's they've identified it correctly.

I'm I am working on my sound.

I recognize last week my sound wasn't that crash hot, so I'm trying.

It's a

work in progress.

Yeah.

So our audience for this show, no, I don't think it's our ideal customer.

Not at all.

Sure.

I can't imagine Holly, you know, stumbling across our podcast and then become a customer from it.

Yes.

Builds trust.

I think going in the reverse direction is fantastic, which is why on the marketing website, like, we're now promoting the podcast.

Right?

We want customers or potential customers to get to know us, but I don't think that's our audience.

It's not a lead generation strategy.

No.

Yeah.

No.

We're not yeah.

Exactly.

So I think it's it's great if they listen, but we're not trying to find event organizers via the podcast.

Who I'm speaking to largely is just you, and this is just a recording that we're putting out there.

So I'm not necessarily thinking of, okay, there's, you know, hundreds of people listening to this.

Sure.

But in, I guess, in my mind, they are people that are interested in starting a business or running their own business or are just developers that are kind of along for the ride.

That's why we'll talk about some of the technical stuff.

People that are interested in sales as well.

Like, obviously, it covers both of our skill sets.

Yep.

Maybe it's not for anyone that exists yet.

Now let me give you an example.

Maybe we're rec taking a record of what's happening for the future employees of six sides, right, to six, twelve months down the track.

And they're saying, hey.

Why did you come up with the idea?

How have you made this?

And go go back and listen to this podcast because we'll talk about it.

Right?

Or we can summarize it later.

Maybe it's maybe it's for tomorrow, the audience of tomorrow.

And then or, like, sub subsequently, maybe the founders or other people who are thinking of starting a business or wanting to know how to go on a SaaS journey.

Right?

Whether we don't know if it's gonna be successful or not.

We hope so.

We've we're certainly planning to.

So We're working on it.

That's very deep, though.

The audience

of You can put

that in the SEO title.

For the audience of tomorrow.

Yep.

I this is a funny story.

I when Mel and I got married, I'm talking about my wife again, I paid 5 or $6,000 for a video video, of the day.

And she was like, why are you paying that much money for?

And I said, it's for our kids when they get older.

She's like, oh, oh, that's so sweet.

Anyway, so Harper was born, and I've been waiting for her to get old enough to watch it.

Anyway, so I put it on maybe six months ago, and after five minutes, she's like, this is so boring.

I was like, oh my god.

That did not go the way I thought it would go.

And so who knows?

Anyway You gotta wait a bit till she's a bit older, I reckon.

Yeah.

That's right.

So

Try again.

Three, so he or two, he's got a bit of time.

So they'll come at moment now.

Kid thing.

It's a, like, a young adult thing.

It's your mom and dad.

Kind of thing.

They don't come at Yeah.

Yeah.

That's right.

So just just give it another ten years and try again.

So

Mate, so we got a couple of updates from last week.

One is did we we were talking about two clients.

Yes.

One, one client, potential client is unfortunately that timelines were too short.

And even if we had a got a yes, which was, was gonna put an extreme amount of pressure on you, which I'm confident that you could have delivered on it, but there was a, there was a lot of stuff out of our control, which was being approved by apple, the latest version and, and Google and stuff like that.

And they just couldn't get the internal.

They thought their red tape, would have not seen the approvals in time to be able to position it effectively with, the, the, you know, the event.

So

we've deferred that for twelve, months and they are seemingly really excited.

And we're gonna look at a national event next year.

And it's not a no.

It's just that the timing's not right, so we delayed it.

And Yep.

The the second one, what's you wanna give an update on the second one?

It seems positive.

Sure.

So, unfortunately, we're not willing to say names yet, so I appreciate, listener, that it's probably a bit frustrating that we have to be so vague.

We promise these are actual events and people.

We're not just sitting here making it up, but we're we're not gonna say any names for now.

It's we're still a bit early on in the piece.

So you've had a hat change.

Looks good.

I have a hat change.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So the other event that we're looking at, we reached out to them to just kind of update them that, hey.

We are only looking to offer our Six Sides branded app at the moment because this is that client that we did reference last week that maybe they were interested in having their own app on the App Store and that our other customers have been happy with the concept of just a six sides branded app.

And so they came back and said, hey.

We're we're good to go.

And then we just made it really clear to them, awesome.

We'd love to work with you.

We have refined our thinking, and we are only going to offer the the Six Sides branded app.

So now we're waiting on on them.

They did come back to us and said, should be okay.

They're going to talk about that internally.

They would appreciate if we could get them some screenshots just kinda showing, okay.

This is the exact flow that an attendee would go through to get into their event.

Yep.

So we will do that.

We'll get that for them next week, and, hopefully, we can update you, listener, next week as to whether we've got that or not.

Yep.

It's it's positive.

Right?

And it's, it's gonna be an event out of the country too, which is, interesting.

Yeah.

Interesting also.

So I I guess that leads into well, there's a couple of things here is it doesn't matter how confident you are in a sale when it comes to something of high value and many different decision makers and many layers of decisions, it's always it's never straightforward.

But as you can see, Mitch, it's always there's, even my clients today, like, they it's just never straightforward.

It's just it's a it's always a uncertainty until they give you the yes.

But that that kind of leads into a couple of different topics that we have is one was Apollo.

Yeah.

When I was saying I couldn't see the visibility of what was going on, I had inadvertently not checked a couple of boxes.

If you ever do use Apollo, you need to check.

There's two check boxes in your profile under email about whether you're tracking links or clicks, opens or clicks.

And I I did it, but there's a bloody save button in the top right hand corner.

It doesn't look like I'm gonna say.

So I did it, and I thought I've all done that.

And then four days later, it wasn't working.

And I went to the support, which they are great.

Customer service is a fantastic differentiator.

And, they were like, oh, you just didn't do this.

I was like, what a rookie error.

So but I can

see Good thing I'm the technical one in the business.

Right?

So Oh, mate.

Technical to hit the save button.

My gosh.

So so, yeah, anyway, we fixed that, and we've had a couple of leads come through from there.

I think we're sitting at three that have come back that have responded.

Looks like a couple are interested.

But yeah.

No.

It's, now it's starting to work now, and we'll iterate on that a lot more.

So That's awesome.

I'm glad it's working.

We got the it was DMARC.

Right?

That was the initial problem that we we needed to solve.

So that's all done and dusted.

And Yep.

Yeah.

I'd never really dealt with it.

I had set those DMARC records before.

Yep.

But I never really knew what it was actually doing.

I still kinda don't, but it's interesting to

see that Yeah.

Some magic.

But spam people just do the same thing.

Right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

So Yep.

Anyway, I'm glad it's all working now.

Yeah.

I think it might come down to if they're because they can mask your email address right when they send it out maybe.

So, who knows?

It's something there.

But

Who knows?

Yeah.

It's good.

And and that probably flows onto another topic here is, you know, we're talking about the other week where I think there's a struggle of, well, one is I'm connecting with people on I'm doing outreach on the polo, but then I'm connecting with them on LinkedIn.

So now I've got the dual banner going on.

But I still the predominant my messaging predominantly on LinkedIn sits around, sits around my my sales consultant, sales market fit.

And then that's about to change again because I'm working on a agent in that business.

That I thought about, we need to start a news I'm gonna start a newsletter here.

So anyone we're interacting with or have interacted with, we're gonna put them on a newsletter.

Okay.

We're gonna order opt them into it, which Right.

Is yeah.

So we're gonna we're gonna opt them into it.

Okay.

But I've already got the name of the email, the newsletter.

Oh, okay.

Yeah.

You're right.

Called Watch Out six.

Watch out

six.

Yep.

Yep.

Yeah.

I like that.

Alright.

A bit of military, terminology for you.

Very good.

We're gonna have a couple of headings on it.

The sixth sense, ideas and insights into shaping event driven community building.

Okay.

Field notes, which are success stories and lessons from recent events that we've, then we'll go from the sides, actionable tips tailored for organization organizers, attendees, speakers, sponsors, and then, you know, what's coming up.

So, yeah, we're gonna, I just think it's about there's a there's a part of it of building community.

Right?

And we need to we're never we can see now, and it always happens with sales.

Like, we're behind the eight ball, we're always behind a decision.

The opportunity that could have been a really good one three months ago, we had got in contact with them, I don't think we would have this issue.

So we gotta get we're always gonna be behind, or they're so far ahead that we're waiting for till November, which is fine.

So we need to keep them, updated and, and have a better to do this is through

Often touch point.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yep.

That comes down to I think we're gonna run that through HubSpot because we do have a CRM in HubSpot.

We're not using it that great that well, but I know you're gonna talk about later,

marketing side

posts and all that stuff on, on the website.

So I w it's, it probably dovetails into that, whether we can run the newsletter and do more posts out of HubSpot and then have that automatically sync onto our website, which I believe that can be done, but might be something for you to consider about how.

Yeah.

Okay.

I got some ideas on that.

We'll talk about that towards the end of this episode.

Yep.

Cool, mate.

That's exciting.

So this is something that I'm assuming you are going to handle.

Is that you vol were you putting your hand up to volunteer there, or were you waving

your mouth?

No.

No.

No.

The family just got home.

I was just

I thought maybe you're like, yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I've got this.

I'm volunteering to do it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yes.

Look.

I'll I'll run it.

Like, there might be some inputs I need from you from time to time, and, like, I don't think it's a it's a a solely doing the whole thing myself.

Like, I think that having you have some type of input on there would be great.

Yeah.

So, but yeah, look, I think that that's just the way to stay front of mind.

We've got 200 people on our list already.

I need a list from people that you've interacted with on your email around Yeah.

Sure.

Around, six sides.

But, yeah, it is yeah.

We'll go we'll see Eric.

We'll get that started next week.

So yeah.

That's exciting, mate.

Well, as we start to transition towards talking about the website, something that we added to our website this week on our homepage is that you are doing the Saint Vincent de Paul CEO sleep out, the Vinnie's CEO sleep out.

Right?

And we added that to our homepage.

So can you just kind of walk us through that?

What's the what's going on there?

Yeah.

Look.

I was lucky enough to be invited to do it, and it just could be because of my title right now.

Live on the Gold Coast, but it doesn't matter.

So it's always been something that is dear to my heart.

Like, I just never I haven't been in a position to doing much about it.

So for context, this is one of these things that you don't know much about me is we when I when I grew up, we had a bit of a bit of a it wasn't a fun childhood.

Just to say the least.

But we lived in Australia.

I I was born in New South in Sydney, in around, Parramatta or Fairfield, and then we went and lived in America.

So we lived in America for four years from when I was eight to when I was 12.

But things weren't things took a turn over there.

Like we overstayed like I was 10, so I don't really know the full story.

I know we overstayed our visa, so we were essentially illegal aliens in The US for a while.

And we ended up not having a house, so we were homeless for a while.

I don't know the length of time.

I think it was like probably three to six months or something.

Wow.

And we slept in a truck trailer behind a bar, and, it was tough.

And it was just it was just unfortunate.

It was just a few things didn't go my parents' way at the time.

And we ended up coming back to Australia, which I grew up down where you live.

And Yeah.

Yeah.

So it kind of means a lot to me, about being that that homelessness.

And I don't really think about it a lot, but now in a position to do something, to help.

So, I'm raising money for it.

If anyone's listening and I wanna raise, if they wanna donate some money to a great cause, there's a I'm sure you'll put a link in the show notes.

And, yeah, that that's why I decided to do it.

Mate, good on you.

It's it's really nice, and thank you for sharing that story.

I'm sure that was very hard to to deal with as you were going through it, and I'm sure it's kind of shaped your mindset now, you know, of how you're thinking about providing for your family.

And, yeah, just I'm sure there's a a huge amount of flow on effects that have come from that experience.

So this is really nice to see.

Things hap things happen.

Right?

One of the things that I learned is just sometimes things happen and keep going forward.

You know?

My my mom coulda let that coulda let her beat her, but we come back to Australia.

Then, yes, she she we ended up leaving she ended up leaving her partner at the time.

And then we come back, and we ended up in some housing commission areas around, Campbelltown.

And Yeah.

But one thing I noticed that people were they would get into those situations and that was their life.

And, you know, one of the things I learned from my mom was that that was just a that was a station that she lived at for a while.

She used it, for what it was intended.

What it's intended to do is help people get back on their feet, and then she moved on from there.

And I always try to that's one of the biggest lessons I think I've learned from her particularly.

And, yeah, it's something that I've thought I've wanted to do one day and looking forward to doing it.

It's on the June 19, the day before I'm coming down to see you.

So I'll fly down to see you on Friday morning and we're gonna have our catch up.

So I'd be probably pretty tired.

So Yeah.

Yep.

Yeah.

Well, yeah.

I just I think it's really good.

So good on you.

Yeah.

Would that happen?

Were you ever homeless?

No.

I wasn't, which I'm thankful for.

Not yet.

Well, that's right.

Let's see how this goes.

Fair enough.

Some tough times.

So we, as a business, have donated we've currently donated 505 hundred and $30.

There were some fees there.

So we've put that in.

You collectively have raised $1,101 so far, and your goal is 3,000.

When does this cut off?

Is it all the way up to June 19?

I would imagine so.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Makes sense.

I'm sure it goes off early.

As well.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Cool.

Yep.

So if you are out there, you're feeling generous, there's a link on our website at 6sides.co.

You'll see it in the on the homepage.

Otherwise, it will also be in the in the show notes for this episode.

So, mate, well done.

Cool.

So on the subject of money, before we get into the technical aspects, we are, for now, at least, bootstrapping this business.

So for those that don't know, like, we're not necessarily seeking external funding and VC and all this sort of stuff.

However, one of the reasons that we incorporated Queensland because I'm in Sydney as Gavin said and Gavin's in Queensland, you originally suggested we should incorporate the business in Queensland because we might want to apply for some of the government funding and grants and things that they've got there.

There's quite a few of them in Queensland.

So we have applied for I think it's a hundred grand in funding.

Do you wanna walk us through that?

Yeah.

Because you you did all of the legwork here.

Yeah.

So, basically, let me bring just fill the screen airtime there, Mitch, for a second, and let me find it so I can bring

it up.

Bum.

Bum.

Bum.

Bum.

Got it.

Yeah.

Basically, I think the main reason was is I no doubt New South Wales, each state has their own funding.

I'm just more familiar with what's going on in Queensland.

Right?

I'm more bit more plugged into the system ecosystem.

%.

And and you as well-being involved in the startup scene there with all of the work that you do for sales market fit, it just made sense that, okay, if we want to try and have you be in the best position to sell into some of these events and these associations, etcetera, it probably makes more sense that we register in Queensland.

And I must admit on that point, it felt a little odd.

Like, oh, I've never set up a company in a different state, and it was interesting, like, learning some of the differences there.

It felt a little like I was betraying my own type of a thing.

It was like a little I don't know.

It was a little weird, but, anyway, whatever.

I don't, regret it at all.

It's all good, but, let's see if it if it can benefit us.

It's funny because, when I was talking about it because I was talking about it with Mel, and I was like, hey.

I think that we should set up here.

And I was like, but it feels a little funny.

It's Mitch's idea.

Then he asked me to be a cofounder.

Now I'm saying, hey.

Let's set up as Queensland.

And I'm like, I'm sure that's how people scam people.

Like, that that's obviously that's it.

That's not the thing.

Met in person.

I don't know.

Yeah.

It could just be AI.

Like I could be an avatar.

That's true.

Avatar.

Yep.

Oh, that's good.

Yeah.

That's good.

So, basically, the funding is to help commercialize six sites.

So it's, not research granting.

It's it's how do we commercialize and scale it.

So, and we have to match a certain percentage.

And it's actually made me feel think through the the client acquisition strategy more.

So I always learned, something from doing this, and it was it was actually really interesting.

So, I think I have a we have a hypothesis of how we could achieve product led growth to a certain degree.

When it gets to a certain price point, that's not gonna happen.

But, it we wanna make it easy for people to say yes to us.

And I have an, I have a theory on how to do that.

And, this if we're successful in this grant, then it will, we'll be able to test it out.

Huge unlock.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But even even if this grant isn't successful, we now have a roadmap of how much it will spend it will cost us to which is roughly $97,000 plus 31,000, which is our contribution.

With about a hundred and 20 ish, a hundred and $30,000, we can basically this is what it's gonna cost us to scale, to build the business to the next phase.

And I was like, okay, that makes complete sense.

Like, we got a list of everything we're gonna look at and was like, yeah.

Okay.

That makes sense.

So

And you came up with those figures.

Right?

Like, that it's not like this was from some formula or something like that.

It was you sitting down and thinking of all the different things that we could try or that that we might need to scale.

Right?

Yeah.

Again and then again, I was using GPT as best practice of what some things to think about, and it was coming up with some cert like, one of the things I did is there's certain criteria that you need to answer and you need to fall within these guidelines.

I use our our six sides app, GPT, that we have that I've created.

Yep.

And then I uploaded the guidelines.

I said, this is what I wanna answer.

We need to fall within those guidelines, and it would it helped me craft some of those answers, and then I just tailored it at the end.

But it it come up with some in some some suggestions.

I was like, that's not relevant.

We don't need that.

Yeah.

But, yeah, it's yeah.

Was pretty yeah.

It was it was it's pretty decent.

Right?

And it's only expression of interest.

They're going to ask for more detail.

I'm sure they're going to ask for way more detail.

They're just not going to give out a hundred thousand dollars.

But yeah, it was a good exercise.

I've certainly got a lot more.

I've learned a lot more about what to do with the next you know, with the next hundred thousand dollars.

So yeah.

Well, we'll keep you posted.

When do we hear back whether we're through to the next round?

I have no idea, mate.

They are so slow.

Bad question to ask.

Yeah.

Well, to be honest, they don't tell you I don't think they tell you when they're gonna come back.

So Right.

Okay.

Well, hopefully sometime in the next few months.

Yeah.

So Yep.

We will be sure to let the listener know.

Yeah.

So while you're talking, I see if there is a guideline on the questions.

So but I don't Yeah.

Okay.

Alright.

Well, what we will talk about next, we've got about twenty minutes before we've got a a hard stop.

So I'm kinda gonna take over this section now, and we'll talk technical for a while.

So I'm gonna go through two things.

Gavin, feel free to ask me questions.

We're gonna talk about marketing ask explain

it to me like I'm a five year old, which is what I am with technical stuff.

Right?

Sure.

And why it's important.

I'll let you know when there's a save button that needs to be pressed as well.

Yeah.

That hurts.

Yes.

So we're gonna we're gonna talk about the marketing website first, and then we'll try if there's time, we'll talk about the database and, like, infrastructure changes that I've made over the last couple weeks.

So this is what I've been alluding to for, like, the last two or three episodes, I think.

So okay.

So the first thing, the marketing website.

So this is 6sides.co.

If you go check it out now, right now as of recording, it is being hosted or or served from Laravel.

So we are using Laravel Vapor to run our business logic.

Right?

So anything, like, anytime inside of our app, you post a question or you take a photo or whatever, that information is getting sent to Laravel and that's our back end for all of our systems.

Now Laravel is really great and I love it, but it doesn't necessarily need to be every part of your tech stack.

Okay.

The reason that I've looked at making this change to move the marketing website over to Next.

Js, which is a React framework.

React is, like, the most popular JavaScript framework out there now.

It's what a lot of people are building a lot of developers are building websites in.

Gavin's done a runner on us.

He he doesn't give a shit about this.

It's what most websites that I know of, most modern websites are getting built in now.

So I have used Next.

Js before, which is, again, kind of a framework on top of React.

It uses React under the hood, but it makes some things a bit nicer for you.

I've used Next.

Js before on other websites, other marketing websites.

And as I was working on the Six Sides marketing website, which, again, right now is still on Laravel, and it's actually a Vue VUE JavaScript application.

I was finding that I was a bit a bit roadblocked at times.

Like, okay.

Maybe I wanna add this thing or, like, some of the the AI tools if they're generating code.

A lot of the times it's in React because it's the most popular.

And we were using Laravel and Vue to serve the marketing website, and it just didn't feel great.

Another thing that I noticed was when I was searching on Google for six sites we just weren't coming up.

Often actually this podcast was coming up so the transistor hosted website would come up because they were listed on Google, but we weren't.

Alright.

And one of the reasons for that is because we weren't using this technology called server side rendering, which is possible to do for Laravel and Vue, what it means is that for us to serve the website at the moment you have to run JavaScript in in your browser.

So we're not sending the page that we're serving to Google when they're crawling it is not automatically filled in with all of the content for our website with our information about us and everything.

It's like instructions for how to build that page.

K.

And Google doesn't really like that.

So you're meant to use server side rendering so that you already get a copy of the content and this it's not just instructions on how to build the content.

You'll have to let me know how good of a job I'm doing with the with the five year old.

It's hard.

This is a tricky one.

I've oned out.

I was Yeah.

You're just nodding along.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Anyway, so the move to Next.

Js means that it will automatically be served up correctly for us.

Okay.

You can do this in Laravel and Vue.

I have got an example of it, but it just meant, I'm really complicating our stack for this marketing website that could just be done in this other thing, which is way more popular.

Why don't we just move over to that?

So

what also helps if we do outsource some of this to something, then we have a lot more options to use opposed to a very specific Laravel developer.

Right?

100%.

Yeah.

So this now will mean that I can set you up, you Gavin, with the website, the marketing website, and you could make small changes if you wanna update text.

You wouldn't have to install all of these crazy programs and whatever.

Like, this is a way simpler stack Yep.

Which is also way more popular.

So you would you're right.

We we would be able to find help for this a lot easier.

Awesome.

So Okay.

Something that is something that's different about this move to Next.

Js is most Next.

Js websites are hosted with Vercel, which is this hosting platform.

They're the company that I believe built this framework, Next.

Js.

And I was looking at it at their pricing, and it's, like, 20 or $30 a month or something like that.

And I'm paying that for the Atlas website, Atlas.dev, that's using Vercel and is written in Next.

And I was thinking like, I don't wanna add another expense.

I know it's only 20 or $30 a month, but you get a few of those.

It really starts to add up.

We're already like $1.20.

Yep.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's right.

Thanks, mate.

Quick, Matt.

Yeah.

I'm that's what I'm good at.

Yeah.

So we we are already now paying for Cloudflare.

So Cloudflare Workers in particular, which is a part of the database piece that I would like to talk about today.

Anyway, we are now already paying for that, and it's something like $5 a month, somewhere in that room.

And so it got me thinking like, I wonder if I could run this Next.

Js website on Cloudflare.

You can't.

So we now are.

So effectively, we've got the hosting for the the Cloudflare website as like an extra bonus.

Haven't had to pay Vercel to do this, and it's working really well.

We can have different versions of the marketing website.

Explain to me why that would be useful?

Like, for

different regions?

Different.

No.

So for changes making changes to the website.

So kind of like how for the the mobile app, we're going to have a version that's available on TestFlight, and that might have the latest changes or we've moved this thing here or added a screen or whatever.

We can do that with the marketing website as well where I can make a change on my end to say, hey.

I've just updated this text, or I've added a photo, or I've added a bunch of new screens or whatever to the website.

And I can send you a link, which is like a preview link to say, what do you think about this?

And you can get in there and click around it.

I've added rules so that those, like, preview versions of the website won't be indexed on Google.

So people shouldn't be able to find them by searching

for

us, and we would only allow on Google the actual production version of the website, which would be the Sure..co.

So would you be able to like, in the future with that, if we AB test and we're trying to do, growth hacking, can we do like, we just serve up once we get a lot more traffic, we would serve up different and see what the outcome run tests on that?

Yeah.

We can do that type of thing.

%.

Yeah.

Awesome.

So you can do that with most we could have done that with Laravel and Vue, for example.

Yep.

Okay.

Yeah.

You can definitely do that type of thing with Sure.

Next JS.

So yep.

%.

We can do that.

And on the subject of you, Gavin, contributing content, I am thinking about blog posts and how we might be able to start leveraging some of those to help us with our SEO.

Yep.

As a precursor to that, what I have done over the last two weeks, I first implemented this with Laravel and Vue, was to basically use this podcast as content to go on our marketing website.

So Transistor, who we host the podcast with, they have an API where you can go pull down episodes from a podcast.

And then they also have webhooks so they can send you to your server hey this show has a new episode so then maybe you go and update the website automatically.

So what we've got now and this is up live even on the Laravel version of the web site, which is currently live, you can go there and then there's a podcast link, and then that will that's we have already pulled in all of the episodes from Transistor.

We've got the show notes, and then we've also got the transcript.

You can click play on it on the website, and then it'll add an embedded player.

And a lot of this stuff has just come straight from Transistor.

So I've basically copied the design that they have for our show.

I've Yep.

Basically copied that over to now be on our marketing website.

And then the idea is when I'm happy with it, we'll turn off the transistor website and just serve the podcast from our website so that we get the the SEO boost.

Right?

Questions?

Sure.

Oh, sorry.

I'll pause on that.

I've got You weren't ready for the questions.

No.

No.

No.

No.

I'm no.

Oh, I do have the questions, but I think I'll just jump straight off the podcast, so I'll I'll hold that to later.

So

Gotcha.

That's that's funny.

So, anyway, I with this move to Next.

I okay.

I was fetching those episodes from Transistar using Laravel.

I was pulling that in.

It was like a back end thing that we were doing, and then I was storing those I was caching those episodes for, like, a few hours, you know, so that we're not constantly hitting transistor service.

But then with this move to Next.

Js, I

had

to learn, oh, well, how do you do that?

How do we securely go and fetch a list of episodes from Transistar using our, like, our login credentials, basically?

It's an API token.

How do we go fetch those without exposing to the user who's just browsing our website what our token is?

So I then had to learn about using API routes with Next.

Js, and that was really interesting and a lot that we got there.

I was using Cursor for a lot of this to help me basically migrate, like, Vue code, Vue JS code over into React code.

It was not fun, and it kind of did a bad job in a lot of places.

I had to I was expecting to be able to ask Cursor, hey.

We're moving from Vue to Next JS.

Can you just go copy over all of these screens?

It totally shit the bed.

Had to really hold it to hand.

So it was a it took all day yesterday to do this.

Took about eight hours to go through and move us, and there's only, like, four screens on the website at the moment.

It just took a long time.

But now we are up and running, and over the weekend, I've gotta make a few more changes, and then I will roll it out.

So probably by the time you hear this episode, we will be running fully on Next.

Js on Cloudflare and no longer on Laravel and Vue.

So that's now my question's more relevant.

So when it comes so some things to think about going back to this newsletter is we wanna try to bring people into our world and add value.

So, maybe consider how, one, we could get people to who want to become join a community and sign up to our newsletter on our website, but then also, how we can generate I don't think we'd put the newsletter content on our website, but we may put blog posts or or, lead magnets or something that people can log in and, or, or download.

So maybe consider that and how that flows back into, flows back into HubSpot.

And then then we can even once I do that, then we can task do certain tasks.

Right?

So, yeah, just to consider that.

So I've got I've already got ideas on that.

So you've raised the the blog post there.

Yes.

I think maybe the newsletter should we should take that content and bring it in to the blog.

Right?

Yep.

So effectively, if that give us an idea of, like, what the newsletter might look like.

Is that just gonna be effectively, like, one article a week or a month or something like that that you email out?

Is that what you're thinking?

Yeah.

I think so.

Yeah.

I think there's a whole different there's a whole lot of things around it.

One, it could be we could interview, like, get some feedback from a from an event director or event manager, like how they're approaching events differently.

Not necessarily do with six sides, but some of the stuff that they're seeing.

Sure.

Or we could be doing a regular webinar or something about events that that could be a pillar piece of content that goes into the newsletter, that goes into a blog post.

Like, I think we gotta figure out the structure of they're so easy to create posts and blog posts and all that kind of stuff using ChatGPT, which is not what we want.

Right?

I think we wanna own the pillar piece of content, and then we use AI assisted to help us break it out, but it still forms from us.

So Yeah.

I think that's a really interesting mapping that out of, hey.

Look.

Maybe we do a monthly webinar or something or, and then that branches out into the newsletter, which we can do snippets or that branches out into a blog post.

Then it makes its way onto the website.

So we, and then maybe posts.

Yeah.

Whatever.

Whatever.

So Like a waterfall thing.

Yeah.

Like a waterfall.

Like Gary V talks about it all the time.

Like, you know, one pillar piece and multiple different pieces.

If we could figure out that structure, I've even got some ideas on a AI agent to help do that.

But if you get them to do the pillar piece, then it's just AI and it's not what we want.

Right?

So, yeah, but figuring out how to do that in a way that makes sense and is authentic and is actually with is aligned to our mission to add value to the community.

Right?

Yep.

So Yeah.

Yeah.

Well just on To to wrap us up, because I know, you gotta run-in a minute, but what I am thinking is being able to give you the tools that you need so that I'm not a bottleneck where you can go and add content to the website and then automatically roll it out to one of these preview things and then be able to make that live.

Like, I'll give you the fully the keys to the castle with it so that you can do everything that you need, make quick changes.

Of course, I'll I'll help if you need it, but I will walk you through how to get all of that set up.

And then, yeah, let's start working on our, like, SEO flywheel.

We can tie in, like, using these back end API routes, the same stuff I'm talking about with Transistor.

We can have it where someone punches in their email and then we load that into HubSpot and sign them up on whatever sequences and things like that.

We can do all of that, so these tools allow us to work in really nicely.

Yep.

So yeah.

So that's kind of the the update on the marketing website.

It's going really well.

It loads super fast now, which is great.

We will automatically, like, rebuild the website when you when we publish an episode of this show, it'll automatically go and, like, go and build out that page and all of that.

So that's working well.

Yep.

And, yeah, that'll happen from Tuesday, let's say.

So Monday or Tuesday, I'll get that rolled out.

Yep.

So, unfortunately, no time to talk about the databases and infrastructure, but let's continue to move that next week.

But to give people a teaser, it does use Cloudflare workers and durable objects.

So if you wanna go research those, and then we could talk about it more next week.

So what is that cloud cloud Cloudflare?

I just wanna make sure I read up before next week.

I don't mean you.

I mean the listener.

I know you're not gonna Cloudflare.

Come on, Workers.

Workers.

Durable objects.

Oh, yep.

Durable.

And by the way, my Sales Market Fit site is hosted on Cloudflare, so I've been using it for a while now.

I'm very I know how to log in.

Yeah.

Cool.

Alright.

Why don't we wrap up here, mate?

Yes, mate.

Gonna jump I'm gonna jump you down.

You can

find this week quickly.

What are you doing this week?

Next week.

More.

More marketing websites.

That's

right.

You just said that.

I did I did one out.

Yep.

It's nice to know you're paying attention.

You could find Gavin at Gavin Ty on LinkedIn.

Gavin, where can people find me?

At link on LinkedIn?

Mitch Dab.

Oh, Christ.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You don't play attention at all.

Blue Sky, whatever.

Mitch Dab.

Twitter,

GitHub, everything.

I'm all over it.

It's all Mitch Dan.

I'll put phone number.

I don't need to know where to find you.

Or or I'm He's on Slack too.

Yeah.

I am on Slack, but don't give out my phone number.

Alright.

Cool, mate.

We will catch you next week.

Yep.

See you, everyone.

See you.