20: Mitch vs Apple (and will we get $100K in funding?)

Hey. I'm Mitchell Davis, a Laravel developer.

Good day. I'm Gavin Tye. I am guest and head of SaaS and marketing for Six Sides, I think, still. And you're

feeling confident about it too.

Haven't been fired. Yep. We

are building sixsides.co. It's an events platform that helps you build a stronger community through events. And this is our b to b SaaS journey. How are going, mate?

Good, mate. Well, we think our journey is interesting, and it may not be. It may be interesting later if we have a massive exit and I go, I wonder how they got there. Look. Just come back and we're episode 21.

The whole journey. Yeah. So This will be 20. Yeah. So on that point, I wasn't meant to be here. If you listened to last week's episode, I was like, well, I won't be here. You'll hear Gavin and Roman, but turns out I don't know how to read a calendar properly. So I'm not in Bali yet. I'm leaving on Monday. We do the recordings on Friday.

It was good.

It was good. How did it go with Roman? Look. I think it's

it was really Roman and I have known each other for a long time, and I have the best banter with anyone than I have with him. We don't get offended at anything and with each other. And he made a joke yesterday that was I thought was hilarious. And I was telling my wife about it, and she said, I think you should take that out of the podcast.

You'll get canceled. Well, it won't

get canceled, but she said you and you and Roman have a interesting like, a good relationship, but people don't know him. And if he the joke was in if you didn't know him, it was in really bad taste. I really wanna tell you what it was, but I'm not gonna do it. And Yep. People don't know him.

That's funny.

Anyway, it was gold. But that aside, he gave me some gave us some really good gave me some really good tips to think about on how to structure, like, the finances for not only six sides, but how to structure it for my other business, Deal Buddy and Sales Market Fit and what we should consider. He he did complement both of us on the way we wear our hats for one, and he did. He didn't. But just what we're doing He should've.

So That's awesome.

Even with both businesses, either of us have multiple businesses, he goes, you know, you're in a dream position. So Yeah.

Yeah. It's well, that's really nice to hear. So I will hear more for the edit when I do that Yeah. Tomorrow before I head off. So looking forward to it.

One of the best he's he's one of one of the best people in my life, and he's he's fantastic. And he his knowledge about accounting and and accounting practices in particular for startups and new businesses is, you know, is is as good as anyone I've ever met.

Yeah. Yeah. Amazing. Okay. Well, shout out to Roman. Yep. And you can look forward to next week's episode listening to that.

Tuesday week. Tuesday week. And if you have any questions, leave leave a write us in at journey at six sides, or you can reach out to Mitchell and I on LinkedIn, and you're at Blue Sky as well.

So a 100%. Check us out. Alright. Cool. Well, let's have some continuity from last week's episode.

Well

So yes and yes and no. So we have released the app up onto TestFlight for our early customers. It was I think it was a day late and a dollar short. So

The song?

I think it's just an expression. Okay. I think it was a day late. It might have been two days late. I don't actually remember, but we had some delays with it has to get reviewed by Apple, and that's just kind of baked in. So I I got the release up on Tuesday morning and then it had to go through review. So I'm pretty sure they didn't get it till till Wednesday. Look. Anyway, it doesn't matter. We got it out the door.

just don't think we need to reinvent the wheel. Right? That's a consumer based product. This is a B2B, but it's still consumer facing. Right? So

yeah. Yeah. 100%. So it's it's nice to have them as some inspiration. And I've been like I encode if you're looking at building your own mobile app for whatever you might be doing I'd encourage you to just take a look at some of the apps that you use and just see what are they actually doing because unless you're really actively thinking about it, you don't notice this stuff.

So Yeah. That's awesome. Mate, I've got you like, while we're here, I've got I reckon we could get you this this, swimming thing for when you're away.

Okay. This will be good. Yeah. Like, for

the protector from the sun.

Yeah. It looks great.

The swim burka. Yeah.

Oh, certainly a lot of lot of coverage there. Yeah. That's right. I'll end I'll end up with just sunburnt eyes, but yeah. Get you out

of the you know, get you out out from the hotel room like a typical developer. Yeah.

Yeah. No. Trust me. I'm not going there to spend the whole time on the computer. Absolutely not. But we have commitments, and I I need to meet them. And a lot of that will yeah. A lot of our commitments, at least at the moment, is all coming from me. So Yep. Gotta do what you gotta do. Right?

Well, yeah. So there is another commitment coming up, which we're talk about later. We got some news back. But I guess so to walk me through that for people who don't know, you're saying that we have to submit things to Apple, one, to test flight, and then there's a period of time. So what do they what do what are they checking when they do that?

Yeah. I believe they're checking, like, are you doing anything malicious that's going to harm the the iPhone in this case? So, like, are you doing Bitcoin mining on this iPhone and now it's gonna drain the battery in five minutes? You know? Things like that.

Is that automated or is it manual check on their side?

That I think it's, manual. So that's why it can take some time. So in our case, it was, I wanna say it was like sixteen hours or something like that. Yep. So that's to be expected when you do any mobile app stuff. It is a whole different world to web app publishing where I push a button on my side and we control the website. Like, it's there's no body sitting in between us and our customers or our users. Right? Yeah. So it's very different from the web, but you just have to build this in.

all good. You know? Yep. Awesome. That was a very long answer for a very short question.

Yep. Well, I got through all my stuff. So now we can talk about you.

You've gotta learn to summarize, my friend.

Anyway Well, we we had stuff to go through, on our list. We track everything in Trello, so, I've just covered, like, four points I've just checked off. But

Oh, yeah. For instance alright. So with, so with that, we're working on you're working on speakers right now. Is the I mean, the Yeah. But the speaker profile. Right? The speaker value. And then is it to look into the, sponsor? I think there's a there's a parody there that we can come over where ask a sponsor a question and people could upload. And then there I think there's some taking some of the functionality and see where does it apply to and just mirror that.

Yep. Yep.

So I guess that did bring on a lot of stress last week. So how are you stress levels now that you got that released and then we've got a game plan? Is it, yeah. How's that going?

It is better. Like, it was a huge weight on my shoulders to just get this thing up, on to test flight. I was a little bummed that we missed the the actual deadline that was self imposed to be clear, but it was a commitment. Hey. We will have this ready for you on the seventh or the eighth, whatever it was, and then it turns out it wasn't ready till the ninth.

Yeah. Cool.

What about you? How are you feeling as far as stress and what's going on in your world?

Mate, I'm fine. Perfect.

Good, are you? No. Cool as.

No. I'm alright. Yeah. There's lots of things going on. I'm trying to be more organized too. Right? As we're getting further into this, there's more and more requirements of time and then other things that I think the more successful you get, the more that you're asked to do or have to do. Right? Yeah. So my other my other business is I've released just released a a deal buddy, and that is requiring a lot of time, but it's also we've got this stuff.

be better at it. You got a lot on. Okay. How has the release gone of Deal Buddy? That's really exciting.

Yeah. It's really good. So I've like, we released it this week. We're still going through teething issues, right, with AI and all that kind of stuff. Like, we think we fixed something and it comes back again. Like, I just Yeah. Saw an issue this morning, but I've released I'm currently running nine startups through a program. And then I've got at the moment, I've got one, two, three, four, five, six more to onboard Wow. As well. And then another group of people will come on board as well.

So Yeah. Yeah.

I wanna get to it's so tricky, though, and I'm sure you fit you know it as well is you've spent a bit of money on something. It's like, oh, just keep spending money on it. Right? And then but I don't wanna I wanna try to get ahead of that. I wanna try and do

it different. So Yeah. Make sure it's running profitably.

Yeah. I

mean, it's mate, you've got some fantastic early traction, so good on you. That's that's awesome.

It's been five years in the making.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. It's five it seems like traction, but it's five years of trying to get the strategy right. And and it's it's coming to fruition now. So it's been a long, long journey, as you know, like we worked together ages ago. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it's good. Good on you. That's great. Well, yeah, it has been interesting. You reached out to me to ask, like, hey. You know, we talked about that blog authoring thing, Tina, we're using. You can listen to last week's episode if you wanna hear more about that. You're like, can we get that out before I go away on Monday? And I was like, oh, you got some ideas, dear. And you're like, no. No. No.

Yeah. Mate, I've color coded my whole Trello board that I've got. I've got green for six sides, and I've got low, medium, high priority. Then I've got deal buddy, and then I've got money belt as well. So, yeah, it's I can't understand it. But

As long as you can use it and it's working for you. Yeah. Yeah. Cool.

And and so there's a there's a few things I'm trying to do. Right? Is one is I'm trying to complete our sales strategy for six sides because six sides is gonna be a living case study of the value Deal Buddy Deal Buddy provides. Right? Yep.

Yeah. That's unreal. Yeah. Cool. Okay. Why don't you tell did you talk about that already with Roman on the recording yesterday?

No. We didn't.

No. We Right. Well, maybe run us through that. That's exciting. That's new. Okay.

So when you think about lead generation. Right?

I do. Yeah. I think about

it all But anyone who's thinking about lead generation would be using things like potentially LinkedIn, which is a big one, but using cold email outreach. Right? But with the advent of those tools like Apollo, like Clenty, it's becoming easier for people to do email outreach, which means the per person receiving those emails is getting spammed way more than they ever have. And so it's making it harder for the message to break through Yep. Added onto the top of AI, which is making it easier to produce the messages, which means, again, the volume is significantly increased and is slightly getting better at delivering a message, but means more volume of it.

a platform. Me you'd, like, guess it. Yeah. You'd be like I'm becoming d or m Davis or whatever. Yeah. Right? Yeah.

And it was like name to email or something where I give you all the different options. And then I I would figure out that, well, for a large government organization was often named dot last name, but some businesses would go last name, first name, and all or initial. But I become really but that barrier of entry made cold email so much more effective because no one would go through that process. Yeah. But now everyone can find your email within two seconds, and you're like, just go like so

Yeah.

To combat that digital lead generation is, I believe, coming to an end. Not coming to an end, but it's getting harder to do. So I think we're gonna switch back to in person events. Right? Okay.

So That's right. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So this is going to be some type of regular meetup then that you and Roman are organizing?

Yeah. So we're gonna just start. We got we just penciled in the August 27, I think, the first one on a Wednesday night. We're gonna do one. We're gonna actually give away a $100 Amazon voucher for people doing the Tag Your It game because we want the we want the content for awareness, to build awareness and get people to come to the next one. And so we but we have to give them a we have to give them a reason to play the game. Right?

Sure.

Yep. So we're gonna do that. We're gonna try and actively this is our medium term plan here or longer term plan is we're gonna actively try to build the community, and we're gonna focus on Brisbane and then see how that community will I reckon will splinter out into other cities over time if we do it enough. Then then it might be to do, like, a conference or do a weekly LinkedIn group or a month like a LinkedIn closed group where we have just a weekly sales webinar, a weekly development webinar where maybe you can come in and give some advice, maybe a marketing session a week or maybe an accounting session a week or do certain value ads to continually add to the community and help people and build up our authority and subject matter expertise. And hopefully people wanna work with us at the end.

That's exciting. At the very Yep. Sorry. Have you spoken with potential attendees already? Like, have you been shopping this around?

Nope. Right. Okay.

Yeah. Cool. But I'd be very curious to see how many people you can get to come in the first, the first event. Right?

Yeah. Well, mate, for the last three years, I've been just building up my network of founders and predominantly in Queensland. So Yeah. I've been doing

that for

a long time. So we've got I don't have a lot of followers on on LinkedIn. 8,000 or something. Nearly 9,000, but it's That's a lot. It's okay. It's it could be better. 80,000 would be better. Sure.

This a lot.

It is. It is. But this is what we're our game I think our at the very least, if nothing else comes out of it, our goal is to add value to the to the community where Yeah. We're not expecting anything in return. Hoping maybe.

Yeah. Dog fooding it. Right?

What does that mean?

Ah, you never heard of that before.

No. Okay. I've heard of dog food, but I don't know.

So it's eating your own dog food is the kind of the core of the expression, and it's for it's basically like businesses like ours, software businesses using their own tools Right. As opposed to building in a silo and releasing it to customers who live in their own world. Right? So, yeah, that's that's dog fooding. I'll be dog

dog feeding it.

Yep. Yeah. Yep. Anyway, cool, mate. That's that's very exciting. So how's things going with sales strategy?

Yeah. Really good. So I've been working on it for the last few days now, like trying to put pen to paper. So one of the biggest things I advise anyone who's starting a business and especially b to b SaaS business is recognize what you're really selling, and that's what it's it can be a bit difficult to do that. Even for us, it looks like we're selling an event app, but I don't think that we are.

Exciting because, like, this is pretty new this is pretty new for me working with someone else in a sales capacity. I've never had that before. I have had other business partners, but they've never been doing exactly what you're doing. Right? And so it's really exciting.

good job. So Thanks, mate. It's Yeah. It takes a while to figure it out. Like, we everything that I've state, like, here has been a summary of I've talked about this at a high level with some people, even Holly back from volunteering WA.

Yeah. So Okay.

Yeah. It's, but, yeah, it's been a really good process. And I think the value we offer, you can see it. You can see the value. Right? Like, it's it's there in your face. You can't ignore it. It's a workflow process that you can see the improvement of it. Right? Yeah. Think that will even help with development. Right? Like, hey. Look. Can we do can we achieve this? Not yet.

Or yes. It sets like a north star. Right? It sets the vision of, okay. This is exactly what we are trying to do. Let's build the technology to achieve it.

A proper solution to a proper problem that has a real impact in in the world.

Yeah. Yeah. Yep. And then separately, so you run, yeah, now multiple other businesses. Right? But under the umbrella of sales market fit, which is sales training effectively is how I would probably simply put it. Would you agree?

It's difficult. Right. I wouldn't call it coaching. It's well, everything's moving to deal buddy. Right? So for for a start. So, basically, it's a it's not co it's partly coaching, but coaching is is more about, hey. You should say this at this time, which is a little bit it is. There's a million people like that. My I'm more about how to position your value, the right value at the right time so people want to buy you at or want to move forward in the in the in the sales process.

Yep. I think you do a good job. Where I was going with this was that I saw because I'm a part of, like, you using school to manage or you were to manage, like, a cohort of all your clients. Right? So you posted a video in there today walking through the this as is and to be model that we've just talked about or or this document that you're talking about.

Well, you've manufactured it for yourself, haven't you? Yeah. That's right. Who's the smart one here?

That's right. Yeah. Cool. Alright. Well, look. That's all that's all really promising. So I guess we've got two other things here unless you've got other things to cover, but we had an update on the the grant that we applied for.

So do

you wanna share that?

The only other thing before we move on, if anyone is having trouble with this, with sales in their business, any founders or whatever, you don't need to talk to me. It's fine. There's a we'll put a link up to a white paper that I talk about this topic of sales market fit. It's a full it's a really in-depth white paper. It'll just get you the intention of it is getting you to think about sales from a different perspective.

Awesome. Okay. We'll put that in the show notes. Yep. Excellent.

Alright. Next thing. So if you've been a longtime listener for the podcast, which is we're 20 episodes in now, so it's

a few months.

Yeah. It's getting up there.

It is getting up there.

We submitted a grant application for, for six sides to the Queensland government. It's called the Ignite Ideas about new new tech, bringing it to market. And we were shortlisted, so which is a fantastic, which is a fantastic result. And, you know, they gave us some pointers. And so the pointers they gave us, I'm just gonna bring them up just to

Yep. While you're doing that, it was in, episode 13. We talked about applying for a 100 k in funding. Not quite a 100 k. I think 92.

Yeah. Something like 95.

Yep. Yeah. Somewhere around there.

Yep.

Yeah.

So so they have actually read through the application, and so they're able to provide us with some feedback here. And so, basically, they said, you're encouraged to take this feedback. You said quantify jobs through the SaaS rollout, support roles, and content production. Mentioned social economic value, how improved community engagement strengthens Queensland's civic sector. Showcase inclusivity where the benefits of to regional organizations, marginalized groups, etcetera.

Well, that's that's very exciting. Sounds very smart. That's that's the right way to go about it because that we used you specifically did 95% of that submission, I think, last time. Right? Mhmm.

I I think that's where where where I see most people use GPT wrong, HR GPT wrong is they'll just say, hey. Answer me this question for here. And it doesn't have it does its best. It takes the context from what it it just doesn't have the context behind the why or the or things like that. So what I'm doing is I'm all this stuff we've built, like, you can't not build it originally, but then you can improve it and and and get it to think about it in a different way.

Yeah. That's right. So, what's also interesting, we know some of the other applicants for this round of funding, and we are the only ones of the people that we know that actually got shortlisted. So this wasn't a given. This is, like, a big opportunity and and a great sign.

100%.

Yeah. I'd never done this type of thing before. Right? Had you? Have you ever applied for anything before?

I've applied for grants, but for other people, like in businesses and stuff like that. So I have, like, award submissions and all that kind of stuff. So I have done stuff like that, but not not for us. No. Yeah.

Yeah. Yep. Yeah. I have done one of those award nights before. I forget actually what company, like, who was running it. But, yeah, it was like one of those you pay you know, we probably spent, like, 2 or $3 to get a table there for 10 of us, and then, yeah, we get some we get nominated or whatever. It all felt a bit like, but it is good exposure. And and it's a good, you know, something to pin on the website or

or whatever. Let me tell you the the this is one of my most proudest moments of being tenacious. Right? When I was at Redeye, we went to this industry conference. It was called Auswater at the time, Australian Water Association, this water body.

Oh my god. Yeah. Yeah. You could just make your own awards.

Make your own awards, Mitch. Why couldn't you?

Yeah. Yeah. That's true. Yep. So That's funny. That is tenacious. Yeah. Well done.

Yeah. I still got I still got the I still got the photo on my phone, I think.

Yeah. Now that you've told me this, I don't know if I'll believe, like, if anything good comes through the door now, I I got no idea whether to trust you or not.

It doesn't matter. You choose to trust me or don't. You're the only one who's gonna be damaged from it.

Yeah. That's true. That's true.

Have I got it? Yeah. I've got it here. I'll send you the photo.

Okay. Maybe I can put that in the in the show notes.

But Yep.

Yep. Yeah. Cool. It was brilliant. Very good. Yeah. Okay. Well, look. We will we'll keep you posted. Do you know off the top of your head when the next submission date is due?

August 4.

You do know. Very good.

I do. Okay. Cool.

Yep. So yeah. Alright. Well, we'll we'll keep you posted. That's only, like, a couple episodes away. Right?

So It'll be done unless there's anything that I need from you before. I don't think that I'll do. They're not asking for development road maps or anything like that. I think I should be able to get it done. Okay. Cool. At the moment, Ryan was offered the help as well if I need any financial, numbers done. So

Amazing.

I'm gonna have a look at this once we get off this podcast around, how to answer. And then, I should it should be pretty much okay. So what I won't do actually, I won't do is I'll get it all ready and saved. And before you when you come back, I think get you just to read over it and add in anything that you feel is different. So Yeah. Yeah. Cool. To be added in. So but the majority of it will be done before you come back.

Yeah. Amazing. I I thought an interesting point on the, like, how does this funding create jobs? I think that's quite interesting because it's like it's a $100,000. It's not like they're then funding another three full time people. You know? It's not. So I think that's an interesting one. Do you have any quick off the cuff thinking there?

Everything's done for an ROI. They're they're not spending money out of the goodness of their heart. They're trying to bring economic value to Queensland Or or and so economic value is in part of bringing jobs to Queensland, then we'll go into tax revenues. So Mhmm. Yeah. So, hey. I'm gonna spend, like, a $100,000 here, and we can anticipate we will get two new FTEs, full time employees later on. Right? Or we yeah. So that would demonstrate right?

Yeah. I just think it's an interesting one to answer because it's like, well, this it's not enough to then have to hire directly from this $100. No. But it contributes towards the economy of growing, you know, other yeah. I guess other employers if we're hiring out for services to be done or things like that.

But so but say, like, we developed the platform in a way that we could go and generate $2,300,000 in revenue in the next three years, and out of that, we hire five peep, like, people over time. Whatever. Yeah. Okay. So it does it's an indirect Yeah. Benefit. It's not like

I'm Not not just on this funding. It's yeah. What do we do with it that then generates? Yeah. Okay.

It's they wanna help us with economic growth. And then out of economic growth, we're gonna need to hire people to support that change in the business. So that's where I think that they're going.

Yep. Yeah. We should talk about what we would want, not on this recording. We'll do it maybe after the submission, but what would we do with a $100? Okay. I think we just we have talked about, okay, we've applied for this back in episode 13. Today, we've talked about, okay, it's going decently well. Sure. I'd I'd love to, if you're cool with it, to sit down and and say, what would we do with a $100? Okay. That might be interesting for Okay. People in similar position.

So why don't you do your $100, and then I'll do my $100 and then see what the difference is? Yeah. Okay. I We'll have a Look.

I got a wedding coming up. I wonder where I could put a $100.

We'll have about in sunscreen for when you go to Bali.

Speaking of wedding, just little update before we wrap up. So we've now told all our immediate family, which is great. So I had dinner with my family this week. We met up with Nicole's family and a bunch of her cousins weekend or so ago. Yep. So everyone's really excited. We will be sending out invitations in August. So What's the date?

What's the date?

No. You'll get yours sent. You you'll be just like everyone else. You know? You've already said you've got you know, you get along the most with Roman, and he's, you know, da da da. You put Roman up here, so now you don't get to and not me up here. So now you don't get any early information.

Your North Star to work too, mate. Like, bump him off. Right?

Yeah. Right. Right. Look. I I've learned my place now, so that's alright. You'll get yours in the mail just like everyone else. Mhmm. Mhmm. All good. Alright. What are your plans while I'm away for the next two weeks?

Yeah. So couple of weeks. I've a couple of things. I've got I'm still chasing down that bigger opportunity at the moment. I was hoping to have an update this morning. It got delayed to next week. I'm working on the submission, and then I'm working on getting six sides into DealBuddy. So I'm working all sales strategy. Yeah. Then I also working on a marketing plan, like a like a regular marketing plan, which won't be very it's not gonna be massively complicated.

No.

But it'll involve the, like, blog posts and and building a newsletter. We've got quite a few people on our in our contact list on HubSpot. So Yeah. We do need to get a newsletter going.

Yep. That's something we talked about very early on. Right? So Yeah.

That's right. So that's on my list. That's on my Trello board. So

Yeah. Cool. So working

on my strategy, getting getting that right and into Deal Buddy and updated playbooks for that, cause that will inform the marketing content as well. Newsletter. Yeah. Yeah. So quite busy, mate, just in a couple of decent opportunities.

Well, I I look forward to hearing even while I'm away, keep me posted with any exciting stuff, and I'll do the same with with the app. Yeah. That sounds great.

So as you're getting closer to getting full, like, full functionality and all that kind of stuff and we're starting to then I will start ramping up my side of stuff. Right? Like, we're we're trying to meet at the Yes. As you can see, we're trying to meet at the same point. It's just a little it's a little unpredictable at the moment where that is. So Yep. It's it's starting to come to fruition.

It is. Yeah. That's right. It it is tricky to know. What we do know, though, is definitely the app will be ready with a 100% of everything that it needs by you know, it's August 21, right, for Laravel Live Denmark. So Yep. Need to have that in place. So that's only I I had a look. It's I think it's six weeks out from now. So, yeah, we're we're getting close.

Probably down in Campbelltown.

No. Can find me in Bali, actually.

Yeah. In Bali. You just look for the big, bright red guy. Yeah. In a swim burka.

On the on the laptop in the hotel room working on this. Fuck it out.

You remember you gotta get me Tina up Tina up and running before you go.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I haven't forgotten. All good. We'll get that sorted. You can find me, Mitch Dav, in all the places, and we will catch you all next week.

See you, mate.

See you.