Our B2B SaaS Journey

In this episode, Mitchell and Gavin unpack a reassuring World Police Games client catch-up, turn LinkedIn into a competitive sport, prepare the Changemakers podcast for launch, and push SixSides towards release with a redesigned app, new analytics and support tooling, community features, and a long-overdue plan to reduce their bus factor.

Links

Chapters
  • (00:00) - A World Cup lesson for bootstrappers
  • (04:14) - Proactively updating the Police Games team
  • (08:14) - Chasing sporting events and parkrun connections
  • (10:48) - The LinkedIn impressions showdown
  • (15:49) - Launching the Changemakers podcast
  • (21:12) - Hiring a designer for the SixSides marketing site
  • (29:45) - PostHog, Intercom and the finished app redesign
  • (35:06) - Two weeks to finish the World Police Games milestone
  • (40:07) - The bus factor problem
  • (43:18) - Communities, expansion revenue and launch planning

In this episode, we cover:
  • Proactively keeping major event clients informed during long development projects
  • The latest progress on the World Police Games app
  • Expanding SixSides into sporting events and volunteering organisations
  • Building relationships with the founder of parkrun Australia
  • Mitchell and Gavin’s LinkedIn impressions competition
  • What makes personal founder-led LinkedIn content perform
  • Preparing the new Changemakers podcast for launch
  • Editing podcast intros, music and production workflows
  • Budgeting for a professional SixSides marketing website redesign
  • Finding SaaS designers through Dribbble
  • Integrating PostHog analytics into the mobile app and web dashboard
  • Adding Intercom customer support and push notifications
  • Completing the SixSides mobile app redesign and translation system
  • Automated mobile app testing with Maestro
  • GDPR, account deletion and attendee privacy
  • Reducing the bus factor inside a bootstrapped SaaS
  • Giving contractors enough access to keep the business running
  • Building community posts, comments, likes and invitations in SixSides
  • Expansion revenue from existing customers
  • Planning a coordinated launch campaign for the new SixSides website
Got questions or topics you want us to cover? Email us at journey@sixsides.co

If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a 5-star rating and a review on your favourite podcast app. It really helps us reach more people!

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Creators and Guests

Host
Gavin Tye
Sales and Marketing and Co-Founder of SixSides
Host
Mitchell Davis
Developer and Co-Founder of SixSides

What is Our B2B SaaS Journey?

Join the SixSides.co team as we navigate the highs and lows of building a B2B SaaS company. From finding product-market fit to scaling sales and community-driven growth, we share real insights, tough lessons, and candid conversations about what it really takes to grow a successful SaaS business. Whether you're a founder, marketer, developer, or just SaaS-curious, this is your backstage pass to the journey.

Mitchell Davis:

Hey. I'm Mitchell Davis, CTO and Laravel developer.

Gavin Tye:

Good day. I'm Gavin Tye, CEO. And well, some other stuff, but we're taking it out of time.

Mitchell Davis:

Yeah. He's just CEO now. That's probably enough. We are into year two running our remote startup, sixsides.co. Check it out.

Mitchell Davis:

We're a community led events platform. And on this show, we're documenting the business and tech of our journey as we build out

Gavin Tye:

our SaaS. How are going, mate? Very well. Very well. Did you watch the, the world cup semi final between England and Argentina?

Gavin Tye:

No. Ugh, mate, there's some business lessons in that game.

Mitchell Davis:

Really?

Gavin Tye:

England was, they have not made a final for a long I think 1964 was when I made the last final. And I think they got beaten by Argentina by the hand of God, if I'm by Maradona. Do you know what that is?

Mitchell Davis:

No. I heard though I heard something. They were up one nil till the end of the game and then they lost two.

Gavin Tye:

Yes. That yeah. That's right. But the I'm pretty sure it was, Maradona hand of God while we're talking, but basically, hand of God. Oh God, Maradona England.

Gavin Tye:

Let me just double check that. So Maradona, yeah, was England versus Argentina world cup semi final. It was back a long time ago and Maradona handballed the ball to score a goal and knocked England out. But so they finally made the semifinals again yesterday and they were up, they were up one nil with about, I think it was 75 at seventy five minutes or fifteen minutes to go or something very similar. And then they panicked or they took it for granted and, and, the opposition come back and, beat them two one.

Gavin Tye:

It was absolutely. You can never count them out, but I think there's a good lesson for us. It's kind of what we played a hand, like with the world police games is it's not over until it's over. Right. Don't take things for granted and take your foot off the gas.

Gavin Tye:

It was really, it was heartbreaking for them, but it was also, a good lesson, I think.

Mitchell Davis:

Okay. Yeah. Okay. Alright. Not the way I thought we'd start the show, but it's good.

Gavin Tye:

Me neither, mate. It just popped into my head to be fair. I had some I had some extra time to think about because I wasn't saying sales and marketing.

Mitchell Davis:

Have you seen The Rock, the movie The Rock? Yes. Yeah. With Nick Cage and that. There's this line in it, and it came it came to mind yesterday.

Mitchell Davis:

And I was like, I gotta find a way to work it in. And this is the line. He's like, now what do you say we cut the chitchat? A hole. I think that's that's prudent to use that right now.

Mitchell Davis:

Let's enough of the, the world cup.

Gavin Tye:

Mate, I I had a, fun meeting yesterday. Met with, a volunteering organization, and about a conference. And then she was talking about one of the ladies was talking about how to get something in the app or how can we let find out that information or something. And I was like, it's magic. And I was like, it's magic.

Gavin Tye:

And

Mitchell Davis:

You did the magic hands? The spirit fingers?

Gavin Tye:

But there's a prime TV show where these comedians, have try to make each other laugh and they can't laugh. And then they get booted when they, if they break character. And I got it from that. And, I said, oh, that was from a TV show. One of the girls go, oh yeah, it's this guy.

Gavin Tye:

I watched it. I was wondering, I thought that's where it was from. Lady looked at me and she goes, I think you found your people.

Mitchell Davis:

That's good. It was really fun. Builds rapport

Gavin Tye:

in the videos. Funny. Yep. It was great. They were they were really, really nice people.

Gavin Tye:

So

Mitchell Davis:

that's awesome. Oh, good one. Mate, speaking of good people, we met up with the police games people this week and it went really well. So we had started to be like, we've been working on the police games app now for the last ten, twelve weeks, something like that. Right?

Mitchell Davis:

It's been a while. And there's been the occasional email back and forth about different things, but we hadn't really, we probably hadn't done as good of a job as we should have of keeping them in the loop. So we proactively reached out a week or two ago and said like, hey, let's set up a meeting. We wanna give you an update. This was your idea actually.

Mitchell Davis:

And, yeah, we sat down with them, showed them what we've been doing, showed them some of the new, like, the translation stuff. We showed them the redesign of the app. We showed them, like, the the map view, everything. How do you think it went?

Gavin Tye:

Yeah. I think it went really good. I think they're really impressed. And there's a little bit more behind just reaching out for them like that. So I'm always trying to anticipate what they're thinking.

Gavin Tye:

Right. They've got so much on that. No. I'm I could not imagine how difficult that is to organize a games with 64 sports. Right?

Gavin Tye:

Yeah. Plus convention and everything else. And so in that particular, in that particular management or whatever they have to do, there would be some suppliers that are not great and some that are perfect. Right. Really good.

Gavin Tye:

And I don't, and I would imagine that think about spinning plates. Everyone's good until you don't hear from them and the ones that aren't going great, you don't hear from them. And by the time they check-in, things are going pear shaped. And so what, before they start worrying about us, because in my experience, probably tech is where their frustration comes from a lot of time, a lot of the time. And so before they start worrying too much about us and that plate gets wobbly, I want to check-in proactively and just keep that plate spinning again.

Gavin Tye:

So they're like, oh, they're on it. We don't have to think about it. We'll go back to the other squeaky, to squeaky wheels. So we can at least, I want them from day one to go, those guys were fucking amazing. Like, we had no problem.

Gavin Tye:

They delivered above and beyond. They helped us realize, different games. They've set us on a new direction. And because that is better than any marketing we could ever, ever have.

Mitchell Davis:

Yeah. Yeah. And

Gavin Tye:

although we were still in ideation phase and we were still bringing everything together, I think it went really well during the week. They were happy. Ash had some ideas that we already thought of as well. Yeah. Yeah.

Gavin Tye:

And I think it I don't know. Was it was it was it, what's it called? Reassuring for you as well? Because you could see It was.

Mitchell Davis:

To to know we were on the right track. They were coming up with ideas that we had already thought of and were implementing, and then I could go, well, actually, this is what we're doing right here. So I could just, like, go to the next screen and it was already like, we're in sync, which is great. So, yeah, it they raised a couple points of things that we've gotta go look at. Like, there's more work to do.

Mitchell Davis:

We've still got a fair few things to get through and I'll talk about what we've been doing maybe a little later in the episode. But it yeah. It went really well. I'm pretty stoked. Since then, we've had a couple more emails come through from them.

Mitchell Davis:

So I think it's probably, like, kick started a bit more collaboration between us and them Mhmm. Which is great. And that's what we want. So yeah. All in all, pretty happy.

Mitchell Davis:

I'm glad that it's going well. So yeah. It's opened up a bit of a it's opened our minds a little to like, hey. What else should we be looking at in similar industries? Right?

Gavin Tye:

Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. So I've, I've done a big push on this week for other sporting events and, there's other, there's a big sporting event here on the Gold Coast every year. I think it's the gold Australian pan Pacific or something.

Gavin Tye:

They've got an office not far from here. I can't find any information. I've sent them an email to that info line, but that never works. So, I'm, I think I'm going to go for a drive down there and knock on their door. Right.

Mitchell Davis:

Okay. Excellent. Yep. That's what I wanna hear.

Gavin Tye:

Yep. Just go down there.

Mitchell Davis:

Yep. Yeah.

Gavin Tye:

Well, mate, if you, if you've, if you turn the corner with your LinkedIn posts, that's the least I can do, Rob.

Mitchell Davis:

Okay. Great. Alright. What else can I do so that it inspires you to, to go shake, rattle a few cages?

Gavin Tye:

Invite people to come and work with you at Iron Park. That would be awesome.

Mitchell Davis:

What what would you do then? What would you do? What would that unlock?

Gavin Tye:

I don't know. I looks

Mitchell Davis:

like when you're playing a video game and there's like later characters and they're all like blacked out, you haven't unlocked them yet.

Gavin Tye:

Yeah. That's right. I don't know. I don't know. Maybe try and win some more clients.

Mitchell Davis:

Yeah. Well, I'd like to think you're doing that already, but yeah.

Gavin Tye:

Must admit this is a weird podcast today because typically I can see you and then so all I'm doing is looking at myself and it's really weird.

Mitchell Davis:

Yeah. I I'm having a bad hair day. No. My, my camera battery has died because I was stupid and I didn't plug it in. And so, yeah, it's a we're just putting up the mirror right now.

Gavin Tye:

During my travels or during my conversations and my efforts this week, I actually met with the founder of, the Australian park run, was having a conversation with him. Yeah. Tom Oberg. I reached out to him and said, Hey, this is what we're doing for the police games. And I would love to chat.

Gavin Tye:

And he'd come back and we had a conversation and, talked about Park Run, the structure of Park Run and what he sees is loneliness and all that stuff. He goes, mate, this sounds amazing. So, we will, once we have something, we will show him what it looks like. And I'm sure he has a lot of, he knows a lot of people. He's the one who suggested the pen packs on a golf course.

Mitchell Davis:

Right. Yeah. It's a good person to, to, have interested in us. Park run is huge.

Gavin Tye:

Yeah. It is. Yeah. Yeah. It is.

Mitchell Davis:

Alright. Mate, on the subject of LinkedIn. Alright. You brought it up earlier. Let's let's give the people some some number updates.

Mitchell Davis:

So we've got we've got a bet running to the end of June next year of who can get the post with the highest views. Right? Is it views? We didn't really No.

Gavin Tye:

No. We're impressions. Impressions. Yeah. Same thing.

Gavin Tye:

Which are views.

Mitchell Davis:

Right? So okay. So that's the metric that we're going for. And, yeah, so this week, I put up two posts. One was about the new redesign that we did, and that one went okay.

Mitchell Davis:

And then just this morning, put one up about how we've expanded our like, the the database infrastructure out into four different regions. Yep. And this one not going so well so far despite me putting in, like, an hour and a half of effort into it. It's only on 57 impressions. And then you have the audacity to repost it, which is great, by the way, And you've stolen all of the likes.

Mitchell Davis:

I have. You've got six of them. How many and the comments. Oh my god. This is unfair.

Mitchell Davis:

How many, impressions are you on?

Gavin Tye:

One twenty five.

Mitchell Davis:

Oh my god.

Gavin Tye:

Mate, I'm just gonna piggyback when you post something. I was gonna steal it to defend. I know we don't have a lot of impressions, but what was the one that you got? How many impressions are you at for, the one that you put up earlier in the week?

Mitchell Davis:

You know what? Let's find that out. I will mark this so that I can clip it. 687 impressions, mate.

Gavin Tye:

Okay. So I'm at 864 for the Nick Marchese and Orange Sky one, so I won't include my one beforehand. That's at almost 13,000 because that's not fair because we didn't have the agreement by then. Currently

Mitchell Davis:

Okay. Sure. I'll accept that. I wouldn't I wouldn't have if my post didn't flop this morning, I would have said, no. It's fine.

Mitchell Davis:

You can include your your best hits right now, but I think I I probably I need to play defensively. So alright. I accept that. From the day that the pod that we did this last Friday, so the July 10, anything from then on is fair game.

Gavin Tye:

Yeah. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. That's right.

Gavin Tye:

So yeah.

Mitchell Davis:

Anyway, it is fun. I had I had a bit of fun with it. It did take me an hour and a half. I sat down and I was like, okay. This is what I wanna talk about.

Mitchell Davis:

I didn't use AI until the very end because so I wrote the entire post, and I came up with what I wanted the graphic to be as well. I couldn't quite get the layout right. So I asked for a little help from Chatty Bitty on just give me the layout and then it also suggested a slightly different wording in like the subtitle. So I did use that, but that's okay. I'm happy happy enough with that.

Mitchell Davis:

And then we got on this morning after you saw the post and you're like, okay. I think I can help you with a hook. So we edited the post working on it. So I'm yeah, I'm pretty happy like with this. I'm enjoying it, which is not what I thought I would be doing.

Mitchell Davis:

So, yeah,

Gavin Tye:

it's kind

Mitchell Davis:

of if we can make

Gavin Tye:

it, I think if we make it fun, right? Like, that's the main thing. Like, thought I do think that you take a photo of your office, with yourself in the back, like with it in the background and ask people to help you design what the office should look like. I think that would be a really interesting post. Hey.

Gavin Tye:

Hey. He's on. Here he is. Camera's back.

Mitchell Davis:

Hello. Yep. Alright. Yeah. Look.

Mitchell Davis:

I don't know. I'm not sure. It's a bit embarrassing having an office with not much in it, but we'll we'll see. We'll see. I'll I'll think on that.

Mitchell Davis:

Thank you for the suggestion. I'm gonna take it, and I'll process it internally.

Gavin Tye:

This is exactly what Mel does. She goes, we'll see. And it's a no. Like, because otherwise you go, that's a really good idea. I'll do that.

Mitchell Davis:

So that's right. This is me letting you down gently. Yep.

Gavin Tye:

I would just say, do me a favor and do it. Cause it would be really fun. And I'll take one of my yard and say, Hey, this is my now workspace. And like what I was saying with my my other clients is photos of them in the in the photo go so much better than without them. You know?

Mitchell Davis:

Yes. I will try and find more ways to get my face in there. I think that's just all around us a good idea. Right? We should try and share a bit more of ourselves personally.

Mitchell Davis:

I mean, the wedding one that I did did pretty well. What was that? And that had my face in it.

Gavin Tye:

That was like 13 it was over a thousand.

Mitchell Davis:

Yeah. It was over a thousand, I think. So anyway, it doesn't matter. But it's all going well. So enjoying it, having a bit of fun with LinkedIn, and we'll keep you posted.

Mitchell Davis:

Pardon the pun. Changemakers make. So you recorded with Nick Marchese and with Michael Dorinda so far. Right?

Gavin Tye:

Yeah. Yeah. It was really good. Michael Dorinda, which is the, the director of LaraCon AU, just sat down with him. He's been doing it for almost ten years.

Gavin Tye:

Right? You started a podcast for LaraCon and then he, I think he's been doing LaraCon for seven or eight. And there's been some common themes across both of those gentlemen. That was really interesting and namely is they didn't start out with a grand idea. They just started out just trying to solve one problem and just do one thing.

Gavin Tye:

And there hasn't always been easy, particularly for Michael, like with COVID and all that kind of stuff. And, yeah, it was really interesting. We're we're getting it. We'll release the change makers podcast. We'll start we'll release it next week.

Gavin Tye:

Yeah.

Mitchell Davis:

There's a bit to do before then, but yes, I've edited that first episode. We gotta have cover art. We gotta get it up on the

Gavin Tye:

I've got the cover art. I've already done all that. I've done that ages ago. Remember? No.

Gavin Tye:

Anyway, I've done it LGBT anyway. Change. Oh, good. Yeah. I've already done it.

Gavin Tye:

We just got to, obviously set it up into the, inside transistor.

Mitchell Davis:

Yeah.

Gavin Tye:

But we release it release it next week. I've gotta organize some more as well. But it was it's interesting getting to know people beyond just what you know the mass. You know, he's clearly Michael, Michael's clearly talented in this space. Right.

Gavin Tye:

He's always thinking about, what's next. Yeah, definitely. You know? Yeah. Then there was some good, community stories that come out of it, You know?

Gavin Tye:

You come up in it once. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Gavin Tye:

It was good. It was really good.

Mitchell Davis:

Yeah. I enjoyed I I surprised myself. I enjoyed editing the episode with Nick. So I I had some suggestions for you of, mate, I think you gotta record an intro and an outro, and you did that, like, pretty quick. You turned that around to me.

Mitchell Davis:

I I went through, like I probably listened to, like, 50 songs in Riverside. It makes it it actually makes it really easy to go through song libraries, which is great. Because for this show, like, I had to go searching for that music. Riverside didn't have that option when we started it. Right?

Mitchell Davis:

Yep. So, yeah, it was great. And then I found a song that I thought was like, yep. Okay. This feels right.

Mitchell Davis:

And then started finding like the right pacing of how to do your intro. I cut down your intro actually quite a lot. I kept everything you said, but I, like, I cut for gaps to kind of to keep it nice and tight. So it was only like a a minute long intro or something like that. And I added in some pauses so that the background music could just play.

Mitchell Davis:

And, yeah, like, it was probably the most editing I've done in, like, two years, and it was fun. And then for the whole conversation, I didn't touch that at all. Like, because Yeah. Okay. You didn't use any markers to tell me, like, hey.

Mitchell Davis:

This I need to edit this or whatever. So, yeah, it was good. I was thinking about what you'd said about maybe we could have someone on the team take over doing the editing for that show. Yep. And I was like, there's no way I can describe exactly how I did it because it took me, like, half an hour to go through and do so maybe for the episode with Michael, I'll just record, I'll record my screen or something like that.

Mitchell Davis:

Or maybe walk through it with it would be Raya. Right? Is who

Gavin Tye:

you've No. Chris. We'll do it to Chris because Chris will Raya would do, video.

Mitchell Davis:

Okay. So maybe I'd get on and I could just do that live with Chris. Yep. Yeah. Yeah.

Mitchell Davis:

It was it was it was fun. So it was a good one. Looking forward to getting that out and and seeing, how it's received.

Gavin Tye:

Yeah. Yep. So, it was great. Mel I got Mel to listen to the front part of it. Yep.

Gavin Tye:

And she goes, can I just give you some feedback? I was like, yeah. She goes, you're trying really hard not to make a mistake. I was like, fucking course I am. Like, pick it straight away.

Gavin Tye:

Like, she couldn't. Like, I'm like, of course. So Yeah. Yeah.

Mitchell Davis:

Well, that's right. I mean, you'd only get a one shot at a first impression. Right? So Yep. I think this intro this cover art could be better.

Mitchell Davis:

You're sharing screen now. Sorry for our audio listeners, but I think this could be better. We could we could work on that. Let's not settle. Rubbish.

Mitchell Davis:

But anyway. Yeah. Let's not settle. Anyway, so we gotta figure out the the only question that I really have is where does this live? Like the web episodes, you know, show notes and stuff.

Gavin Tye:

I think we would have two podcasts. Like, we'd have our B2B SaaS Journey and Changemakers. And then because we wanna pull people to our website right from it. Yeah.

Mitchell Davis:

Yeah. Yeah. So I'll have to do a little restructuring I

Gavin Tye:

think to

Mitchell Davis:

be able to support that. Yeah. Definitely some tweaking.

Gavin Tye:

Maybe this is a good segue into the marketing website. You've been doing some work on that this week or at least investigating.

Mitchell Davis:

Some planning. Yeah. That's right. So the it is a good segue, mate. Well done.

Mitchell Davis:

Well played there. So we sat down last

Gavin Tye:

week's big question. Mate.

Mitchell Davis:

To head segue, Maker.

Gavin Tye:

To lead the team.

Mitchell Davis:

There you go. You can add that into your intro next week. We sat down and looked at can we like, what can we afford in terms of getting some help with a designer? And I won't give exact numbers, but, yeah, we can comfortably afford to get some design help, with our runway and our expected costs and income coming in, all that sort of stuff. We just sat down and did some forecasting.

Mitchell Davis:

Right? And it's grounded in reality, not just like what we hope to achieve. It's grounded in what we will get. So that was really good. I I figured out those numbers and then I sat down and I shared it all with you and we ran through a couple scenarios and we feel comfortable enough going ahead with someone.

Mitchell Davis:

So then it was on me to find the someone. So I spent some time yesterday going through finding a couple of designers. I won't name anyone. I can name them after we get someone. But, yeah, I found it was interesting doing a bit of a review of what's out there because it's like, well, how do I find someone?

Mitchell Davis:

So I went on Dribbble and I just I searched for like landing page, I searched for isometric which is like a certain style of illustration that I've been liking on some sites that I've seen lately, seems to be a bit of a trend. I searched for Bento as well because those are like the grid patterns of having a bunch of different features kind of all lined up next to each other. Found a couple that I liked, and the first two ones that I saw, they had like a monthly it was like pricing upfront of like, hey, if you for our project, we'll charge you 5,000 US for a fourteen day block of work where you'll get like, I forget the exact details, but, you know, it was like five revisions or five pages with unlimited revisions and turnaround time of, like, two or three days per page and they work over Slack. Like, it sounded just really chill, which is great.

Gavin Tye:

Yeah. Look. Some of the ones are interesting. I've actually seen some of the designs already on. Well, I think I've seen them on, on Dribbble, particular that one that I screenshotted, which, yeah, look, I think if we can at least have a conversation with some of these people and getting so you just need four or five screens to get the theme of what they're doing and then you can pick that up and run with it.

Gavin Tye:

Right?

Mitchell Davis:

I think so. That's my plan is like, if I can give someone get someone to give us a a style, a brand. Hey, this is how Six Sides looks. And then I can use, because I'll be the one implementing it. They'll just be creating the design, which is the hard part.

Mitchell Davis:

I'll then go implement it. And then now the AI that we'll use can just pick up on that and go, okay, cool. Right. This is how we would come up with, other screens like it. Right.

Mitchell Davis:

So I would like to eventually if money wasn't a concern, which it is, if it wasn't a concern, then I would like to be able to have like custom illustrations on each feature page and animations that make us look premium. Right? That's the sort of like that's the level four design when you get to doing that sort of stuff. And I don't think AI would do a good job of coming up with those. Yeah.

Mitchell Davis:

But money is a concern right now. So if we can get a level three or a three plus, I'll be very happy with that at this this roughly this price point. And that 5,000 to be clear that was in US. So it's more like $78,000 somewhere around there is what we're expecting this is gonna cost.

Gavin Tye:

Even looking at this one here, let's just give you some ideas around what the mobile app could look like. Right. Just the, the, the raised shadowing and all that kind of stuff. Right. So I do think it's yeah.

Mitchell Davis:

Yeah. Like, this I'm glad you're it seems like since yesterday, your the message you sent me was like, wow. Some of these are really cool designers. Yeah. And that's exciting for me because it's like, okay.

Mitchell Davis:

It seems like maybe you are starting to appreciate the finesse that a good designer can give us. Right?

Gavin Tye:

Oh, I know what I know what it can give us. I just don't know whether we can afford it. Hopefully at this price point, then it can get us to the next level. Cause we're on we're on a, we're on a timeline here. That's not our timeline.

Gavin Tye:

That's what

Mitchell Davis:

I'm worried about. Right. So, with the police games,

Gavin Tye:

Cause we wanna, we need to be ready for when they want to release it. Right. Cause it's by nature, they're going to say, who are these guys? And these people are going to come and have a look at us anyway. Right.

Gavin Tye:

So, but even just looking at this site now, what we're looking at, I think there's some interesting things around when you hover your mouse over this stuff, how it brings up a different screen. Like some of this stuff is cool in itself. Yeah. So

Mitchell Davis:

That's right. There's a whole world of like ideas out there that we're just not gonna get based like from me and also limited from AI. It's not gonna come up with everything that someone with really good tastes that we like, like we get to pick the taste that we like and and we are. We're we're starting down that path. So you've sent me back some recommendations of the ones that I gave you.

Mitchell Davis:

So I'm gonna reach out to some people today and over the weekend and then try and set up some meetings for Monday Tuesday next week, see how quickly we can do this. But I'm really appreciative of the fact that like at least in those first two designers that I looked at like they talk about it's a fourteen day turnaround. So at most, if they if if it had to wait a week or two for them to start, we know that we're only a month away, you know, from having the finished designs. Then I can power through that in a week. I could get all that implemented and applied across the whole site.

Gavin Tye:

And then we like, by the time we do that, they're not gonna give us a wording. We'll put the wording in. Right? And then they're Exactly. Then we

Mitchell Davis:

can It's likely we will have to come up with the wording prior. Yep. Because it's got a the design has to match the context of what's on the page. Right? So you and I will have some sitting down planning out to do, but, we can definitely do it.

Gavin Tye:

I I've got a I come up with a tagline as well last

Mitchell Davis:

night.

Gavin Tye:

Think something like find your event, find your community, find your people. Something like that. I

Mitchell Davis:

like to find your people.

Gavin Tye:

But we have to cover, we are events. Find your peep find your event. Yeah. Find your event. Find your community.

Gavin Tye:

Find your people.

Mitchell Davis:

Find your event. Find your people. Community is implied.

Gavin Tye:

It's not implied.

Mitchell Davis:

It's a really long slogan otherwise.

Gavin Tye:

Yeah. But we have to call it community because we are gonna be community led. Right? Okay. Anyway.

Gavin Tye:

We'll, we'll work from it. You need to work from

Mitchell Davis:

I do like it. This is not a Mel moment. I do like it. It's good. Anyway, so that's really exciting.

Mitchell Davis:

I'm stoked because I have wanted to be starting on a design project for forever. So, yeah.

Gavin Tye:

You've worn me down. Thank

Mitchell Davis:

you. It's probably the

Gavin Tye:

same strategy you used to finally get Nicole to marry you. Just wore it down over nine years.

Mitchell Davis:

No. I think you're you're talking about yourself there maybe. No. Definitely not. Anyway, yes.

Mitchell Davis:

So I'm excited for that. So hopefully the time we record next episode, I can let you know who we've gone with and and how it's going. So

Gavin Tye:

Yeah.

Mitchell Davis:

Yes. Alright. On the dev side of things, on my end, we have added a bunch of things this week. So the main things I focused on were, integrating Posthog into our mobile app and also our web dashboard. I it is already on the marketing website, so that's that's taken care of.

Mitchell Davis:

But, yeah, being able to have analytics from the mobile app and the dashboard so we can see people as they're moving around, That'll obviously help us for things like marketing and stuff like that later. It was actually pretty easy to implement which is great. Then Intercom. So we signed up this week for Intercom and we've we've added that into the which is like help desk software for those that don't know. And, we've added that to the mobile app.

Mitchell Davis:

They have like a React Native package, so it was actually pretty easy to get integrated in. And really cool because they can send push notifications through our app to users. Like if we reply to a support ticket or something like that, someone opens a ticket from within the app and then, you know, they close the app and we reply three hours later, we'll send them a push notification. And when they tap that, it then opens up in the app and opens the support ticket for them. It's really cool.

Mitchell Davis:

So shout out to Intercom. I've heard it gets very expensive, which worries me. It's like the big dog when it comes to help desk software. I've used Zendesk in the past, and that totally sucked. I don't know if it's got any better, but it's it's pretty garbage.

Mitchell Davis:

I've also used Help Scout, and I was thinking of using Help Scout for six sides. Help Scout is much better in my opinion than Zendesk, but it's also a lot simpler. But I'd always heard of Intercom. I had a friend I have a friend who worked at Intercom actually Yep. A while ago.

Mitchell Davis:

And, yeah, it's always been like the enterprisie, very expensive vibe.

Gavin Tye:

Okay.

Mitchell Davis:

But it was your idea to go with Intercom. I don't know if that was based on anything.

Gavin Tye:

I use it on Deal Buddy, but a lot of people are like they're not using it too much. But I guess I guess going for tried and true for now and then we can like amend it later. No one cares if we change. Like, we're just gonna get up and running for this first trunk of people coming in. And then if it's too expensive, then we'll change.

Gavin Tye:

So

Mitchell Davis:

Yeah. Yeah. But I'm so far, I'm really enjoying it. Like, it's really cool. They, I can see why they charge a premium because their stuff is pretty good.

Mitchell Davis:

Yep. It it's certainly awesome to see that that whole notifications thing and React Native and stuff, like, just makes our app feel really polished, which is awesome. Good. Yeah. So that was cool.

Mitchell Davis:

And then so those are finished features and then the the app redesign is now done, which is great. So we now have an app that looks awesome on current versions of iOS, older versions of iOS, and Android as well. So really stoked with that. We also got the translations feature of all of our UI, kind of reimplemented. Raymond ended up kind of throwing away a bunch of the stuff that we did like a month or two ago because it was just too far out of date.

Mitchell Davis:

It was really hard to reuse. So he just reimplemented it. It only took him like a couple hours to do, so it's not not a big deal. But, now moving forward, any new features that we add to the app will automatically we will use translation so we won't incur that cost again. But

Gavin Tye:

are you gonna roll out these new changes to the Six Sides app itself? When are gonna do a release to the app stores?

Mitchell Davis:

It will be it's a good question. I think that will come, We'll do the police games app and the sick sides app at the same time because it's a bit I would like to be able to release all of this stuff now so that you can see it and start using it in demos and things like that. I guess that's where the question's coming from.

Gavin Tye:

A 100%.

Mitchell Davis:

Yeah. Yeah. But I think that's gonna add a bit of extra pressure on us to do right now. And I don't I don't know that it's the juice is worth the squeeze just yet. Sure.

Mitchell Davis:

So we can do that. We've got two weeks left like where we are right now. We've got two weeks left of active development and then we'll go into a testing phase. So at the two week mark, that's when everything will be done and that's the point that we can run our own tests and then release the Six Sides app. So I think we're only two weeks away.

Mitchell Davis:

Okay. Sure. From all of this. Alright. So, yeah, so really happy with the redesign being done.

Mitchell Davis:

Thank God. Let me ask

Gavin Tye:

you a question. Let me ask you a question. When we started the the world police games project, and we knew what the milestones were, would have you been happy about where we are today at the beginning of the project? Or do you think we're ahead or behind? Or are you really happy with

Mitchell Davis:

the Well, I have a doc that has everything that we still need to do. So

Gavin Tye:

mean, just the feeling yeah. That

Mitchell Davis:

Yeah. Well, me put it in context. Right. There's a couple more things. So over the weekend, I've got to merge in a few things that we've had waiting in the wings, but the stuff that's coming up, it's like, we gotta do some automated testing of the mobile app.

Mitchell Davis:

And I expect that's gonna take a week or so to get set up. We'll use a service called Maestro for that. You and I have to sit down and figure out the right onboarding in the app. So we we should block out a half a day or something like that to go through, or at least maybe two hours, let's say, two hours to figure that out. Right?

Mitchell Davis:

And we should probably do that next week.

Gavin Tye:

Yep.

Mitchell Davis:

Then we need to make it so you can delete your own account to comply with like GDPR privacy stuff. We've already implemented the we've implemented mock ups of the like add friends functionality so that way only when you've got a confirmed friend that's when you can see contact details. So we we're already addressing the privacy stuff And then it's just the marketing website. So those are the only things that really remain left to do. So now to answer your quest and integrating with the database of all of the athletes for the police games.

Mitchell Davis:

Still need to implement that, but I know how that will work. I'm not too worried about

Gavin Tye:

it. Okay. So

Mitchell Davis:

those it does feel like all of that is achievable within the two weeks that we've got. The testing in Maestro that could easily leak into the two weeks of dedicated testing. We can have the app delivered to the police games team for them to run their own tests and they no doubt they're gonna want tweaks and things like that. That's fine. So I think I'm okay with where we're at.

Mitchell Davis:

I don't feel stressed about it. So maybe that there's your answer. Like, no. This is all right. We're we're going okay.

Mitchell Davis:

I'm having to work a bit more than I would have liked. Like, I'm spending a lot of time every day on this plus then time on the weekend as well. So that's not ideal, but that's okay. It's part of the gig.

Gavin Tye:

Is is your vision matching your reality of where what it looks like?

Mitchell Davis:

Definitely. Yeah. Or is it The design that I came up with now, like six weeks ago, seven, eight weeks ago, something like that. Like, I'm pretty happy with where we're at with the design of it.

Gavin Tye:

Okay.

Mitchell Davis:

But then vision of the whole project? Yes. I think so. Like, it is it is matching what I thought where we would be. And we we then keep in mind, this isn't the final version of the app.

Mitchell Davis:

Like, we then have another three milestones to go after this. Right? So we got more stuff that we'll add. We can make more tweaks, and I'm excited to do all of that stuff.

Gavin Tye:

Yeah.

Mitchell Davis:

But, yeah, it's feeling pretty good. So we'll see see how I feel, you know, the next two Fridays as we start to wind down development. But as I sit here fourteen days away, it feels pretty good.

Gavin Tye:

So Yeah.

Mitchell Davis:

Yeah. Well I think we're alright. How do you feel?

Gavin Tye:

We're just observing, like, this time, our first milestone, which I think was August last year when we did Denmark La Ravelle. Yep. La Rabel live. La Rabel live. You were way more stressed and way more in the red, like, and you got a little bit to it a li like a couple of weeks ago, but you've come out of it a bit.

Gavin Tye:

And even though you're working, you see, well, seem you're working more than what you would have anticipated. You are nowhere near stressed out. The team is clearly helping and clearly doing a shit ton.

Mitchell Davis:

Definitely. So yeah, yeah, are.

Gavin Tye:

Like, it's a, I think it's a, we've both had times where we've got to trust the other one. You, you know, like last year you're like, I'm sure you're like, is he going to fucking win it? Right. Is he going to get him across the line? I'm like, trust me, we're there.

Gavin Tye:

We'll get there. I know we'll get there. And you're like, oh, well, I guess we will. And then it's in that same position now. Right.

Gavin Tye:

Like, it's like, I trust you. Like I would've personally, I would've chosen my show as well, but, you know, there's a lot of, there's a lot of trust in like, I like, if you were to fall off the earth tomorrow, we'd be proper fucked. Like,

Mitchell Davis:

yes. Which has been on my mind lately.

Gavin Tye:

Falling off the earth.

Mitchell Davis:

Yeah. I've been thinking about it.

Gavin Tye:

You wanna talk

Mitchell Davis:

about it? Yeah. I've been thinking about the fact that, like, you're not in all of the tools that we use, and I'm not in all of the tools that you use. So if something did happen to either of us right now, it would be a big issue. Right?

Mitchell Davis:

And there's tools even that like the engineering team, my side aren't in yet because they haven't had a need to be in production. Yeah. And so they don't have access to certain things. We should think and implement a plan for what happens if either of us isn't here tomorrow, you know? Because there's risk there.

Gavin Tye:

Right? Yes. I agree. We do. I think it look, it wouldn't matter if I got in those tools today or I just wouldn't know what to do.

Gavin Tye:

So it doesn't

Mitchell Davis:

That's really not, that's not the point. The point is like you should have the ability to access those accounts so that if I let's like, I'll just talk about myself. If I got hit by a bus, it's literally called the bus factor what we're talking about, then you would have the ability to find someone else, right, and go, hey, okay, this now I can give you access to these accounts. Right? It's not about you developing, it's just you can control it.

Mitchell Davis:

Right?

Gavin Tye:

Sure.

Mitchell Davis:

And similar for me. So we should at least have that at a very base level. We should have access to everything together. And then I can give you my password for Gmail and stuff like that, share that with you, and you should probably do that with me as well. So if there was ever anything else that you needed to get into then Yep.

Mitchell Davis:

Like So you're gonna look at a shared level of trust. Right? That we're not gonna do anything silly with that. So that feels fine.

Gavin Tye:

I do think we yeah. Look, after we hit this milestone, I do think we should start building out some redundancy in the business. Like, and it's I think whether hopefully the team I do think after this first rollout, we need to make a choice on the team. Do we bring them on as a like, like for longer term? And then if that's the case, then

Mitchell Davis:

we can- They're currently just contractors basically.

Gavin Tye:

Yeah. But I still think we could keep them as contractors, but we just might pay it like, make it more permanent or whatever. I don't know. I don't know how it works. Right.

Gavin Tye:

We'll figure that out. But bringing them into the, a little bit under the hood a little bit more for your side of the fence. So if you were away, they we we could still continue. Yeah.

Mitchell Davis:

It will definitely come up with, me being away on this honeymoon.

Gavin Tye:

100%. Like, if there's a bug and you're not around and or a major bug and you're not around and you're two days away, that's not that's not good. So

Mitchell Davis:

Yeah. That's right. Yeah. Okay. Maybe we can put some work into that over the next couple weeks, and pull

Gavin Tye:

it back. Yeah.

Mitchell Davis:

Anyway, and then final piece on the dev side. So this week, we've started work on the implementing the communities functionality. So that's like being able to make posts in a community and liking and adding comments on posts, things like that. So kind of like what you would expect on a Facebook group or LinkedIn group, whatever. But then also on adding people to communities and inviting other people and all this sort of stuff.

Mitchell Davis:

So that's all starting to come together, which is honestly pretty cool because this is something that we've been like building towards for twelve months, you know, or something like that. We've been

Gavin Tye:

we've been talking about this from the reason we built the business. So Yeah. Yeah. Like

Mitchell Davis:

Yeah. So pretty cool to finally see that happening. The plan for that is finish the implementation of that for the back end and like in the dashboard probably by like early next week. And then Raymond is kind of standing by ready to implement this in the mobile app. So we already have all those mock up screens that we've talked about.

Mitchell Davis:

So we're gonna go through actually hook up all of those screens and then do a bit of a pass over all of that UI and go, okay, is this the best version of this that we could do? Because it was like those screens I just used AI to just, hey. Alright. Come up with a screen here. Give me some fake data.

Mitchell Davis:

So Yeah. Yeah. It's all going on. It's kind of funny. You and I do this recording on Fridays.

Mitchell Davis:

Right? And then Friday morning. And then I go write up my weekly Slack, my weekly linear project update where I basically repeat all of this. And then we get on a weekly call with the whole team, and I repeat it all again. Right?

Mitchell Davis:

So it's it feels a little redundant, but the script gets, I guess, gets a little tighter, each time I'm doing those each of these options. So, anyway, mate, that's it for me on the dev side.

Gavin Tye:

Okay. Yeah. Look, I think it's really it's exciting. I've I've been talking through the community aspect of this recently, like to with some people and they pick people find it really intriguing what we're doing, but they can't visualize it. What's that song?

Gavin Tye:

Visualize it. Whatever it is. If you want to overlay that in whatever.

Mitchell Davis:

No, I don't.

Gavin Tye:

Me too. And yeah, the, like the volunteering organization that I met yesterday, they thought it was really cool because there's some, some problems they know out in the world that they can't that haven't been able to be solved because this doesn't exist and they think this will solve it.

Mitchell Davis:

Yeah. Yeah. It was cool. Can't wait to see it actually happening and being used. You know?

Gavin Tye:

Yep. Yep. Yeah. It's great. So we'll see how that plays out.

Gavin Tye:

We should have I spoke to project hammer yesterday too. Unfortunately, Jo has moved on, but spoke to her counterparts who were there and they continue to use us as well. Going to introduce us to other parts of the business too, to other areas.

Mitchell Davis:

Amazing.

Gavin Tye:

And go from there. And then we're waiting So

Mitchell Davis:

expansion revenue there.

Gavin Tye:

Expansion revenue. Yes. And then we have, CCF, which are about to issue us an agreement for the next twelve months, which would be pretty cool. And hopefully we'll use that to grow into other CCFs around the country also. Yep.

Gavin Tye:

So that

Mitchell Davis:

Contractors Federation. Correct. So I got it. Only took me six months. Very good.

Mitchell Davis:

Yeah. Cool, mate. That's good. There's it's exciting.

Gavin Tye:

Yeah. Then I'm catching up with, mister World WAD today. Need to come up with

Mitchell Davis:

a CJ.

Gavin Tye:

Yes. CJ there. We need to come up. I need to talk to him about, to maybe do the recording next week for, change makers. I have to get ahead of this stuff.

Gavin Tye:

So, booking people in. Yeah. So I don't know. I'd like to think that we got a few, like another 50 k coming easily before the end of the year. Would like to think so.

Gavin Tye:

And then plus whatever happens after we release police games, which I've still got a plan. Did we talk about that plan on here? What plan? I don't think we have around, getting, asking certain people. Yeah.

Gavin Tye:

Like get 20 or 30, people who have strong networks and I want to write. I want to get them to say, yes, they'll share the post. And I want to write them the post, give them some imagery, whatever it is, and then get everyone to do a coordinated release at the same time. And then hopefully cause procure pro did it and they were everywhere. Like I reckon they, I reckon they did it not all on the same day because that all goes out and you can only see a certain amount.

Gavin Tye:

I reckon they staged it over a week or two weeks, which I'm going to ask them about it in a couple of days. But yeah, like,

Mitchell Davis:

I think that find some people for that. Right?

Gavin Tye:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like I can, I can rattle off 10 or probably 20 people? So you, you could, you could do it.

Gavin Tye:

Like Michael would probably help. Then we would have, you know, some of your I think you're in a couple of Slack groups. Right? I'm sure they would help. Yeah.

Gavin Tye:

Yeah. Yeah. Yep. So okay.

Mitchell Davis:

Anyway. I'll start thinking about about some people. Yeah. Cool. It's, that's pretty exciting.

Mitchell Davis:

That's gonna be only six to eight weeks away, I expect. Right? So, yeah, we better start putting some work into that.

Gavin Tye:

Yeah. Yep. So once they're ready, what we would do that once we have the marketing site ready to go.

Mitchell Davis:

That's right. Yeah.

Gavin Tye:

Yep. And ideally we would be together and take some photos and, and have those photos released, but we're not going to be around each other unless we

Mitchell Davis:

Well, let's just fly Yeah.

Gavin Tye:

Unless

Mitchell Davis:

Yeah. We could just catch up like this. If, if this is gonna be in any sort of news, like, news media stuff, then, yeah, I'd say it's probably worth us getting together, take some photos together with, like, proper photography. Right? That would be cool.

Mitchell Davis:

But if it's not gonna be in any news media, like we haven't been able to arrange that, then I'd say it's probably not worth it. But they what they do is they pick it up, like from these posts. Right. And then

Gavin Tye:

we could, we could do lots of things. Like, do think, I don't think, I think it would be pretty good. I think we still, let's do that. Right. Let's, we'll figure out where to go to you or to me.

Gavin Tye:

And then, get some photos done and then we'll just get a series of photos done, get some different shirts, different situations. So we could use that anyway. And cause if people go, Hey, I would like to do this and you go, okay, great. Yeah. Hang on.

Gavin Tye:

We don't have any photos of us together. We just have,

Mitchell Davis:

Yeah. Us at LariCon really.

Gavin Tye:

Yeah. And then down there.

Mitchell Davis:

Oh, and here here at the office. Yeah. So yeah. Okay. Alright.

Mitchell Davis:

We will talk about that later, but it's a good idea. That's exciting. Where can the people find you online?

Gavin Tye:

Made on LinkedIn. Right? Gavin Tye Tye soon on the Changemakers podcast. So, that will stay tuned. I'll put a post out on LinkedIn about that next week.

Gavin Tye:

But yeah, I'm looking forward to that. That I'm I'm actually really inspired by talking to just these like Michael and, and Nick, these like, yeah, it's, it's starting it's the mission of what we set out to do that is, is already working. So I, and I just hope other people enjoy it as well. So, Yeah. For sure.

Mitchell Davis:

Yeah. That's good. That's awesome. I look forward to more more episodes and I look forward to not editing them after we get Chris trained up. That'll be good.

Mitchell Davis:

Yes. Looking forward to it. You can find me on LinkedIn. I'm a I'm a very active poster now under the handle Mitch Dev, and you can go like and share and repost and all that sort of stuff. Appreciate it.

Mitchell Davis:

Alright. That will do us for this week. I hope you all have a great week, and we will catch you next episode.

Gavin Tye:

Alright, man.