24: How much should we pay ourselves (and when)?

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

Hi. I'm Gavin Tye, head of sales and marketing. I'm but I am the only one. So of Six Sides?

The small department. That's a growing department. Yeah. It is growing. We are building 6sides.co. It's an events platform that helps you build a stronger community through events, and this is our b to b SaaS journey. Mate, how are going?

Very well, mate. Very well. How about yourself?

I'm good. I'm a little sad. It seems that we haven't had any reviews since since last week's episode. Yeah. Yep. A bit disappointed in all of our listeners. Yep. That's okay.

Way to way to polarize the audience there.

I'm I'm I'm guilting them into it. Hopefully, next next week.

You gotta earn it, mate. You gotta yeah. But we also have to prompt them. So, hey, everyone, if you are listening, all our two listeners, no. We're quite well past that. But We're

more than that.

Can we ask you to pause, jump on over to Apple Podcasts, leave us a review Yep. Maybe about Mitch's dulcet tones or something like that. And

Something like that.

Yep. And we'd really appreciate it. And, yeah, let us know what you think, what you'd like to hear more. Alright.

Let's see how we go. How how that goes next week. I've got a shout out while we're on this kind of area. I've got a shout out for Dan Herbert

Oh, yeah.

From the PHP Australia Slack channel group, whatever. He he reached out to me and said he's been listening, and he had some he actually had some questions because he's interested in doing something in the podcast workflow automation space. He reached out and asked me about my process for doing the editing and the uploading and stuff, and I I fear I gave him way too much information, way more than what he wanted. But I kind of wanted to just, like, front load him and go, okay. Here's all the info that you could possibly ask me so that I could then just move on to the next thing.

That's not like you to give too much info, mate. Like, when you look at the audio transcript of the podcast, there's large chunks of you going on about all sorts. I I zone out, I'll be honest with you.

No. You do the same thing, though. Sometimes you have, you have your own sections in the edit, but Yeah.

Yeah. 20 to one.

Yep. There.

Yep.

You got me. Alright. What are we getting into today?

Mate, there's a few things. We had a we had a good talk yesterday about, you know, the money, like, where like, how we're gonna when we're gonna start paying ourselves. So a couple of, in my mind, I wasn't expecting us to take a wage from this business for a while. Like, we're only in, the early stages. We did the numbers yesterday, and we're just over $10,000 pre pre product launch.

Yeah. So this is kind of, off, we both took a a bit of guidance from the build your SaaS podcast, which we've been talking about a little over the last few weeks. So this doc it's it's a few years old now, but it documents the story of John and Justin at transistor.fm. Yep. And I'll put a link to this specific episode in the show notes here.

Yep. Profit first.

Yep. Do you know who it's by?

I think I'll I'll tell you in a second, but but I've got it in my Audible downloads.

You've got it over there. Alright. So the idea, though, so I have not read this book, but I get the gist, I think, which is a typical podcast thing, to not be informed, but to just give an opinion, I guess. Who's a bow?

Mike Malowicz.

There you go. Well, shout out to Mike. So basic idea being that okay. Not right.

I can't say his last name. Mish Michelowicz. I can't say it.

Oh, dear.

You're gonna have to put it in the show notes, mate, because I I

Well, shout out to Mike anyway. It's Mitch

Mitchelich or something like that. Okay.

Yep. Alright. Well, we'll shout

out Mike. He's listening. No doubt.

Yeah. So the basic idea being though that, like, for let's say you're making a thousand dollars in MRR, right, monthly recurring revenue, that you as soon as that money hits your account each month, you basically split it up into different buckets. Right? And you do this as a percentage of the revenue. So it's not like a fixed amount goes towards expenses of, you know, okay, $300 a month of expenses.

You know? Sure. And so just to to clear on that, we're not that's not an indefinite scale. Right? We were we have a number in mind that will help us transition into full time. And then once we hit that, that's all. That that we stop that. So it's not, hey. We're at 10,000,000. Great.

I mean, never say never. Right? I'd take I'd take 50% of 4,000,000 a year. That sounds good. But in the future, presumably, we will have other employees to pay. Right? So it won't for sure be you and I forever.

Yep. So

Absolutely. Anyway, so the the basic idea though is that, okay, we're gonna take this 40%, and that's gonna go towards salaries. And right now, that's you and me. We'll just be paying ourselves Yep. Into the future.

Yeah.

Afford to spend. It's it's a budget. Right? So that's roughly the number that we've got at the moment for salaries moving forward. And then we're thinking we need to check the exact numbers.

Yeah. Yep. Bit there's a bit left over there, but that we can put that into the account. Is there?

40 for salaries, 40 for expenses, 20 for taxes.

Well, that's still 10 left over. But you said anyway No.

It's not. $40.40, 20.

One of us is wrong. So someone who's listening to this, they would figure out either you or I are wrong. I thought it doesn't matter. I thought you added up a little bit off, but Oh, okay. It's again one of those things where I've drifted off.

Clearly.

I'm just kidding.

Yeah. Damn.

Yeah. It's yeah. And by the way, I was telling Mel last night, hey. We're gonna open up a couple more bank accounts and siphon the money out into these different things. And she was like, don't do that. Yeah. She said, get Roman to help you set it up so we can set it up. Because if you do you're splitting things out into different accounts. It means that we've gotta reconcile the accounts at the end of the month. It's just more work. And I was like,

Yes. I know you can do all this kind of thing with Xero's, like, chart of accounts. Yeah. And we're using Xero as our accounting platform.

Like Yeah.

Yeah. I know you can do this type of thing. It's just it's it's it's a nice visual. I did this when I was first starting doing consulting where I had, like, five bank accounts.

Gotcha. Yep.

Five, yeah, five, like, savings accounts where as soon as I got an invoice, like, back then, had a hex debt, so I was putting money straight into that every time I got an invoice and then similar for taxes and whatever. And I Yep. It is a bit of a pain in the butt if you actually take it to that point versus just use your accounting platform. So Yep. Yeah. I probably agree with Mel.

Yeah. She was like, no. No. So it's okay. She's like, she did not like it. I'm like, okay.

We'll defer to her judgment then. Alright.

We'll go do it. But an interesting thing has happened in my mindset set shift, right, like about revenue is we were like, okay. We're not gonna take clients. We're not gonna make money from it for a while. We understand.

Yeah.

And and so I was just like, I've gotta get clients for a deal buddy because that's where the money's coming from. And I was like, I've gotta get up to this number. And and I'm I'm and I've been focused on that, and that's working. Right? And then I was like, yes. Six sides will get to it when Mitch is there. And then when we said let's take in income, I was like, okay. My in my mind, without me even doing it, my problem solving brain has gone, okay. Well, let's split. What do we do here?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Totally. Was it was really good. It was fascinating sitting down and just, like, chatting through it yesterday, and we were both kind of like the the gears are turning in our heads of, okay, how how do we go from this to this, which we think would be better. And, yeah, this solution that we've settled on and a hypothesis that we want to test Yeah. Hopefully over the next twelve months or so. Yep. It's really exciting.

We can share the the feedback that we get from businesses

Yeah.

About that. And and, like, I I do want like, I only spoke to Holly the other day. As we were doing this yesterday, she wrote to us, and I don't wanna keep bombarding her yet. It's too far away. But we'll test it with Michael, ask you for his feedback, and then for the guys at, Denmark as well.

Yeah. Who who we're meeting with later today.

Yep. Yep. And Yes. Side note, I haven't told you, I got an invite to a conference that a really big conference here in Brisbane to go and go around and make observations and and put a report together.

So Yeah. Cool. Okay.

Can help. And I'll get a lot of this to them.

Yeah. That's another strategy that we're trying to pursue. Right? So

Yep. Yep. That's awesome. To do. Yeah. Yep. Alright. Great. That's brilliant. So that percentage chat did lead into something else, and now it's opened up to, like, okay. Well, how can we actually sustain how can we build a sustainable revenue model? And I really think that we've I I it feels like we found it.

Yeah. Yeah. Because something that we're, like, considering is that with our current model, if we only go after annual events, then it's very likely going to be annual revenue. Right? And Yep.

Well, when you think about our mission is to help purpose driven businesses build community through events, events, like, not event. Right? So it doesn't that framework and that structure pricing model does not support the mission. Mhmm. Yeah.

We have. Yeah.

Yeah. We've got something ready for an event.

Yeah. So why don't we transition into that? So some good news. The iOS app has been approved and is now publicly available. So you could go to the App Store now and download it.

What's the what's what's the line in the sand that makes it go through review opposed to over there? So

it is interesting. It's if you make any changes to like, it's it's hard to explain. I actually went through it in my talk last year, which I'll I'll put in the show notes, my talk on building mobile apps. But for for expo apps, which is just the framework that we're building the mobile app in, it's it's got two parts to it. It's got a native part, and that has, like, all of the actual, like, the down as low level possible code that actually runs on your phone, and that's written in I don't know the languages, but, like, it's written in Swift, I think, for iPhones, and it's written in Java or Kotlin or one of these other things for

Select the foundation or the structure

is always Exactly. Yeah. It's like it's like giving you the structure of the car. Right?

Yep.

That stuff, if you make any changes to that, so we bring in some new package, for example, some new bit of code which now allows us to use Bluetooth or something like that. Right. Something that, like, interacts with the actual hardware or the operating system on the phone that requires a new build of the app. Sure. And that then goes through review.

Okay.

But to continue with the car What's that called? Analogy. Analogy? Yeah. What's the other one? What's the m one? Metaphor. Metaphor. Yeah. Thank you. Total mind blank. To continue with the analogy or metaphor, I don't know which one's right. If we just wanna change, like, one of the the car seats, you know, to look a little different or whatever, we wanna give it a coat of paint or whatever, that's not changing the stuff that's happening, like, under the hood. Gotcha. Alright?

It's just like getting an extension put on your house. You're gonna get council to come Otherwise, if you wanna paint it, they don't give a shit.

Exactly. Yeah. That's right. That's good analogy. Gotcha. Yeah. Nice. So we are rolling out some updates. Some of the things that Rasmus has identified in this feedback, like, he's he's given it must be, like, 10 to 15 dot points in this list. So he's been really thorough.

We've evolved.

We've got.

We haven't shifted, and we've evolved it. Just Sure. Just just for people who are listening, we haven't shifted. We've just evolved.

Yeah. Okay. Let's just yeah. And then we have we've got the iOS app out. So, yeah, it's like this is really big. It's a big week for us, so it's a milestone.

Yep. And now it's just get started to configure for for Denmark. Right? So yeah.

Well, more than that. It's it's done. So I actually well, it's it's 90% of the way there. So yesterday, I went through and set up fortunately, this is a good thing of working with developers is the team at Laravel Live Denmark. They had all of their information about the list of talks and who the speakers are and their sponsors. They had these YAML files,

which is

like a

I love YAML.

I love YAML. You got no idea what it is. Think of it like a spreadsheet.

Like a camel.

A little bit. Think of it like a spreadsheet, but you can do a lot more things inside of it. You can have, like, rows inside of rows and stuff like that. So it's a little tricky, but whatever. But it's not a great analogy. So so Let's make

a name for a shirt, six sides. Yamal the camel.

Yamal the camel. We can do that. That's that's our first merch character.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. I like it. Yep. So they sent those through a week or so ago, plus also all their all of their ticket codes. And I got all of those imported in yesterday, sent the link off to them, and then they couldn't log in.

So Yeah. Okay. Awesome. Okay.

Yeah. It's good. It's nice to have some really passionate customers with this, you know, and it's clear that they wanna make this event as good as as possible for them. So

Yeah. I'm willing to make people passionate too. Right?

Well, that's that's true. Yeah. All of sudden, with time big period of, like, okay. Everything's, like, nice and calm from both sides, us and them. Right? And then now, okay, the event's two weeks away, and, oh my god, it's time. So there's a lot of feedback coming through. So, yeah, it's it's all good, though. We're we're really stoked and and can't wait to to have the app in the hands of all of their attendees, and, hopefully, it gets a good good amount of usage. Right?

Yeah. Yeah. Good. Awesome job. Yeah. It's a so what would happen if if it was me and I was running an event, I wouldn't produce I wouldn't present this data in Yammerata. I would just send you a spreadsheet. Then you've gotta actually take it, do whatever you need to do with it.

Yes. You as a nondeveloper, you would give me a spreadsheet of this information, or you would just tell me, hey. The schedule's up on the website. Right? And then I would go and do that. And to be clear, that is only the case right now. Yep. As soon as we have the dashboard fully functional, like, have a web dashboard, but it doesn't it hardly does anything at the moment. Right? Yep.

Yep. Okay. Hey. So we listened to b to b sat like build your SaaS

The SaaS.

Yeah. From Transistor, and they had a topic of the week that they really spoke about, one main topic, and I think that's actually pretty good. And the one that I heard them say was their fears, and I thought that was an interesting topic to talk about. So I think I slightly touched on it before, but, yeah, I I think that's a good topic to talk about. Like, what are your like, what are our fears in starting this business or if it goes wrong or whatever else? Right? And so yeah.

That's funny because I thought our topic for this week was the the budget, the percentages, and stuff. So that's why we talked about it first.

Okay. So let's start out again. So a couple of topics that we wanna talk about. Yeah.

We'll start doing this. We'll get better at this Yeah. Over the next few episodes.

Well, they do talk about many things, but they have one topic that they yeah. Anyway but it we don't have to copy them.

But No. No. But the it's the right idea, though, of just having, and we to be clear, we've been doing this for the last few weeks of trying to, like, sit down and actually have some structure instead of just loosey goosey because it makes for way better audio. Right? So, hopefully, you have noticed and are liking this. But, yes, this will be the second topic for this episode, and then we're gonna try and be fairly

got another topic after this. So

Oh my god.

Yeah. Look at

Might have to save it for next week, man.

Chapters in there.

Yeah. I do I do. I do. Alright. Go on. Hit us with the topic.

Fears. What what are your fears, like, with starting a business, with running multiple businesses and with six sides and and all that kind of stuff?

Can I tell you about a nonbusiness fear? Is that alright? Spider if I get a little little personal. No. Not spiders. I I mean, I don't love them, but no. Sure. I don't like deep water.

Okay.

Yeah. It's just like a thing. I don't eat seafood. Okay. And I don't really know why that is. I don't like the smell of it.

Do you mean in a in a in a pool or out in the ocean?

In the ocean. Okay. Oh, I'm fine in a pool. That's fine. But I just like I'm a bit I'm not scared of heights. I'm not like space doesn't freak me out or whatever. It's like, that's all cool. But, yeah, I don't know what it is, but just like deep water, I'm like

Yeah.

Don't like it. I just never have. So it was a big deal to go on a cruise for me when I was, like, 20. I went with with some mates for, like, a New Year's cruise. Yeah.

Mate, that's a interesting one. I'm I'm I'm okay if I can see underwater, but I learned to scuba dive in Sydney Harbor. And Oh. We had to swim out to the boat, and the water at Sydney Harbor's murky. And for some reason, I was so petrified. But as soon as I dove underwater, I was fine. Oh. Yeah. Yeah. But I I really wanna go swimming and then having, like, the humpback whales, which are they go off the coast here, is have them swim through it.

Oh, yeah. I would I mean, I like the idea of it. I think I would not be a good fit for that. So yeah.

So so Okay. To business. Yeah. What what what are your fears?

I fear wasting time.

Okay.

So that this all won't work and lead to success, and we only have so many years, right, of our lives. So I'm really hoping that we are that we have created the right team, you and I. Right? And that we've picked the right market. I mean, initial signs are good.

I fear. So I grew up in housing commission, right, which I've I've talked to you about. And I fear I worry about not being able to well, when I grew up, I didn't have a dad around. Right? And so I never I always remember as a kid, and it was a it's a weird thing that I was, I was like, I know I don't have a dad, and that's okay.

She was off. Yeah.

But but it was really confronting. But at the end, I was like after I went through it, I was like, okay. How can I how can I use this as to an advantage or or or learn from it? So during the time of that period, I actually did an MBA and said, I'm never gonna let this happen again. And, I got an MBA in entrepreneurship, and the day I graduated was the day I left my other job and started kind of sales market fit.

I think that's admirable.

Yep. Yep. And that and that does like, some of this is having courage to do stuff. Like, the kids don't understand. I actually sat down with Harper on the board the other day and walked out the value model of the value model of what we're trying to do with the business is having these layers of value in in this business and the other business.

So Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's something that I like, I I think that's very sweet. That's something that I want to do with our hopeful kids is not to, like, enforce on them any sort of learning programming or anything like that software stuff, but just, like, exposing them to it of, like, hey.

Mel Mel's father's a he's a pretty skilled, developer. Right? He was a jester. Yeah. He does a he does some back end stuff that he just doesn't understand what we're doing because he's not that type of developer. But Yeah. We have a plan when they're older. He's gonna teach him code development. Cool. That's his goal. That's his that's his role, and he's gonna Yeah. Yeah. So

because even if, like, for for anyone out there who's maybe got kids, like, even if they're not you're not necessarily like pushing them to become a software developer, you can do a lot more Yeah. For yourself if you know how to write some level of code. Yep. And sure, chatty pity and stuff and the way all this AI is, it's probably going to mean, okay. You don't have to do this stuff yourself.

Yep.

And that's really cool to see, like, oh, okay. If you give normal people, quote, unquote, you know, nontechnical people, give them the tools to be able to do some, like, level of automation. Right? It's really powerful. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Programming is that on steroids.

Yeah. Yep. So going back to what you were saying with your fears and my fears, there's a few things. One is I think we resolve conflict pretty well. Yesterday, we had a talk about some stuff and it was like, okay, Well, look. Glad you brought it up, and let's have a conversation about it. And I don't think it's a it ends up being a nonissue. Right?

Yep. Absolutely.

Opposed to who knows? Maybe we just sit on it and it festers in the background. And then one doesn't matter, but you get ten, twenty, 30 of those things, and then they're all of a sudden, there's there's underlying conflict that is not just one thing. It's many different things.

Exactly. And that's what I wanted to avoid. I think so far, we've had maybe two conversations like that. I I honestly don't remember what the first one was. No. No. I don't remember either. I feel like we've we've done some conflict resolution before. Yeah. We talked about it on on here. I don't remember when, but definitely. It's now happened twice, I think. And the fact that I literally don't remember whatever the last one was about is, like, a really good sign.

Yeah. Yeah. I don't remember either. I I vaguely remember it was something, but it's just shows that it was dealt with and moved forward. Right?

Exactly. Yeah. And that feels really healthy, and I try to do that in all my relationships. I do that with Nicole as well. Like, we we try really hard and have always tried hard to just if there's a problem, at most, talk about it the next day. Like

Yeah.

Yeah. Never let it sit for a week or whatever because it's just awful. You just it's festering. Exactly. That's the right word. So Yep. Anyway

And I also and I I think about wasting time, like, one of the things that I see people do is they fear about wasting time, so they try to move too quick without actually learning fundament the fundamental problem or addressing the fundamental issue. So I feel like we're in exactly this right place that we should be. Right? And and I'm comfortable that we will make some missteps along the way. We'll always you can't not do it.

Yeah. It's a moat. Right? So it it does feel like we've got who knows? It could all fall over. Yeah. Yeah. It feels like we do have the right foundation. I got amazing feedback at LaraCon last year running effectively the first version of this. And instantly, like, when I came to you with the idea and we talked about it, you're like, I think you've really cottoned onto something here.

Yep. Well, that that'll lead into just what I'm my next topic in a moment. But I think in in observing you, you like, in our relationship over the last probably four years, at at least maybe five now Yep. Is you've learned from your mistakes too because you had a you have another platform. And Yeah.

Kind of feels like it got left behind.

Yeah. Yeah. It got overtook, and then it was like, okay. Well, like, you you're like, I'm not gonna do that mistake again. Like, you say like, again, you've you've had something that was technically sound at LaraCon, and then Yeah.

Yeah. They're not contributing.

And I don't know what I should be asking. And I'm like, this is not a one plus one equals four. This is a one plus one equals two in Deal Buddy. But Deal Buddy's fantastic, but it's definitely not it's not the same dynamic as what we have here. So

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, we can we'll continue to talk about that. So Yeah. Okay. Right. I think that covers our fears. Right?

Yeah. Absolutely. And and to be just to round that out is we'll always be conscious of like, I'm conscious of that, and I'm conscious of your I'm conscious of your fears, and I don't want to have I don't wanna have decon unconstructive friction between you and I. Right?

Yeah.

Like yeah. I think there's some friction is fine, but not long lasting. Right? So

yeah. Completely. And just never hire a yacht if we do any parties or whatever in the future.

Or we'll give you a set of floaties that you can do.

Give me a shark proof net and, you know, whatever. I'll be right.

Yep. Yep.

So some other things as we as we wrap up, you've started a well, not started, but you have started recently adding videos to your YouTube channel.

Yeah. I have. I'm documenting my side of the journey on YouTube, Brian. Like and it's more around how do I navigate building both business from businesses from my perspective without a technical background? Mhmm.

Yeah.

We're in different states. It's kind of the same thing, but slightly different.

It's cool, yeah, that you've got you this is like an outlet, I guess, similar to having this show, right, where we're talking Mhmm. Primarily about Six Sides. Right? This is your outlet then for you personally. Right? Yeah. Yep. So that's cool. Do you find it challenging so far? You've done three videos, I think. Right?

I've done four.

Oh, you've done four now?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yep. So I've done How do you find it?

Yeah. It's okay. There's plenty to talk about, but I wanna make sure it's con like, it's

It's useful.

It's useful for others. So, I was just recording on my phone, but I went back to Riverside today. And then Riverside can actually they just made a, like, a a thumbnail that I wasn't using before. And I was like, oh, that's okay. I'll put that on there. So see how that goes. But, again, like, some people are watching. Like, I've got some subscribers over the last few days. Like, I guess you subscribe, but then I've had a couple today already. So Nice.

So Mhmm. Yep. It all comes back to the community. Well done. Well played.

Yep. Well played.

Yep. Excellent. Alright, mate. Why don't we wrap it up there then? Yep. Next week, we're gonna try and talk about our vision, mission, and our values. Mhmm. We did get into some of that yesterday when we had a separate recording, but we're just kinda gonna flesh that out a bit. So stay tuned for next week where we'll go through some of that and try and make that our topic. And hopefully, next week as well, we can report on that the Android app should be up.

Yeah. You can find me on LinkedIn at Gavin Ty. Or, again, if you're still listening to this, hopefully, you'll like it. You can write to us at Journey at Six Sides if you've got any, feedback, if you've got any questions. Or if it's not too much trouble, please take a minute to leave us a review on Apple or or give us a star rating on Spotify, whatever you're listening to.

That would be awesome. Yep. And you can find Gavin on, YouTube as well.

Oh, yeah. Actually yeah. What? I just talked about that. Yeah. Oh, these These videos are on YouTube anyway. Right? So but They are.

And we get, like, one view per video. It's probably you.

We're a sleeper cell, mate. We're yeah.

We're an overnight We had a high point of four, I think, was our highest. I think that was the one with Michael. So Yeah. Right. Anyway, it only takes it I was explaining to Dan Herbert who reached out earlier, but, yeah, it takes me about twenty minutes from start to finish to edit and upload and get everything done.

you're swimming in the ocean and stuff. Right?

No. Not quite. I when I move into this new office, the idea behind moving into that office is so that I can record videos and have a nicer, like, backdrop and stuff. Because if you're on YouTube right now, you'll see in here it's a bit cramped, and it's not a great backdrop.

So Casting couch and all that kind of stuff

seems lovely. Exactly. Yeah. That's that's the look I'm going for.

Mate, I see we got a few videos. Like, we don't have a lot of views. Let's be honest. People don't know who we are, but there's, you know, a couple of fives. One one video here of us talking about OpenAI and Cursor has 34 duration of watching, and it's a it's a

That's exciting.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

A lot. Very good. Well, maybe a bit more of that then in the future. We will see. Alright. Well, thank you very much for listening, and we will catch you all next week.

Be good, mate.

See you.