9: The $4,700 refund

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

You're more than that, mate. I'm Gavin Tyre, cofounder of Six Sides.

And you do sales and sometimes marketing. Yep. Kinda

kinda bit of here and there. Yep.

And we're 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. How are going, mate?

Good, mate. Episode nine. So that's nine weeks. We've been decided to document the journey, and it's been really interesting to go back and listen to some of these episodes. I listened to episode two, I think, the other day again, and where although this is a side not a side hustle, but we have our main businesses to focus on, we are we are moving along.

So It's on the back burner for now. Yeah. It was a little too too difficult, and and we had some scheduling changes as well that happened. We were meant to record on Thursday. This episode's actually late.

I'll never stop. I I thought the first time I've got myself into a situation by volunteering than getting myself into something way above my depth. I remember once when I was younger, there was a there was a music band called Sonic Animation if that's a really old band. Right? But I had these two puppets that they used to get on stage.

So you were dancing the whole time during the whole oh my god. In a

puppet suit. Yeah. It was it was terrible. So

Wow.

Yep. Side note. This is kinda like that. Yeah.

A little bit like that. Yeah. Well, I did wanna call out early on in the episode because I always leave it way too late. If you are listening and you are enjoying what we're doing, we would love if you would review it, if you would share it, if you'd give it the five stars, get it out to your friends, your network, whatever anyone that you think might be interested in what two Australian founders are doing with a fairly new business and hopefully you're liking what we're doing. So, yeah, that would that would be great.

Well Any feedback as well. Like, if you have anything you want us to talk about, maybe you're having some challenges or something around product development, which is what your specialty is, Mitch, or around sales and marketing, happy to, answer those specifically on the call. Although we're new to the startup world, like this particular venture, I've been in b to b startups since 02/2015, and you've been doing your stuff, Mitch, for the last ten

years apart.

So we're quite experienced, and we're happy to share and help any way we can if anyone has any questions. So yeah. Yeah. That's

the stand

up front. Yep.

Yeah. There there'll be, like, contact info in the, show notes. So I wanted to get out in front and give you an update which you haven't heard yet from me Gavin. The dot com. We got an email back from Namecheap on over the weekend saying that they basically had no contact from the current owner.

But That's why you were sad yesterday.

I got on the call crying, but I wouldn't tell you why. No. No. Oh, no. What what I think we should do so we we you can go back and listen to the episode seven, the $5,000 letter, if you wanna kind of hear how this came about.

that

to

You didn't wanna spend the money on

I didn't wanna do it. Yeah. It turns out we ended up losing that much in fees anyway. So maybe what we should do is try and go through a a broker, an agent like that.

You think? That's what I said in the first instance.

That is what you said. Yeah. But I but look. Anyway The live and love. It is what it is. That's right. So I think we should try that because I don't wanna give up on this. But I was saying to Nicole when I found out about this, like, the fact that they just didn't respond at all, that's a bad sign. Like, not even saying no. They might be like, they might be dead. You know? Who knows? Like, we do we don't know. This could be a not solvable problem for a long time.

Yeah. I wonder if we could get a cheaper letter. Like, I wonder if we could go .con. That that probably won't have an impact. Right? Dotcog. Yeah. Dotcog.

Good idea. Yeah. Like Yeah. We should we should do that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We should definitely do that. That's a great idea. I like that.

Yeah. Yeah. I know.

It's not. Anyway, so it's a bit of an evolving story. A saga. It is a saga, the the.com saga, and hopefully, it has a good resolution, a good ending, but it it is a bit embarrassing kind of having well it's not our fault but we talked about it as though it was going to happen and then it hasn't so it's a bit of a bummer it would have been nice if it was just an instant like yep okay you buy it and it's yours the next day and great but this is real life. You know?

Drama. It's suspense. It's it's sadness. It's anticipation. It's everything is. Could be. Like, we it's really

It's a story, but I would rather have the domain than have the story for the podcast.

Most people do, like, murder mysteries, spy dramas on podcasts. This is about getting the letter m.

Like The letter m. Yeah.

I think our numbers are gonna go up.

I'll be

alright with

you. Yep. I think so. Yeah. You might be right. This is worth it. Worth all the pain. Anyway, so that's where the the.com is at. So for now, it's .co. We'll we'll keep you posted as as things keep moving.

Yeah. Alright. Well, on that sad note, let's move on to something more happy. Mate, you've been since we spoke about, like, last it's been almost a couple of weeks. We've had the Easter break.

Thank you. Yeah. Well, so at last episode, I had just installed Cursor maybe an hour or two before we recorded and I was using it to just put together some like really basic screens of a mobile app like okay hey build me a home screen, it's got a button that says get started on it etc, here's a logo. Well after that I then spent because that was one of these long weekends that we have in April, I think that was the Easter one. I then spent most of Saturday after we recorded going through and kind of bringing across some of the functionality from the existing Laricon Australia app and I got it to a point where we had you could log in with a ticket code and I really wanted to start proving out the theming this ability for events to apply their own branding into the app and have then all of the screens take on their colors and eventually maybe we'll get to things like fonts and stuff like that but trying to make the app feel bespoke once you get past the enter a ticket code area.

You have you've used it quite a bit now over a longer period of time. So if now and we have done quite a bit with it. So if you weren't using cursor as an example, where how where would you be? Would have you you would it doesn't feel like you'd be at the same spot, but how much harder would it have been to do what you were doing that what you've achieved now?

Yeah. It's totally a fair point a lot further behind. So where it really for me it shines, Cursor specifically shines in two ways. The first is like grunt work. So giving it a task of hey can you take this you know this code or this data or whatever and then make it look like this instead and it'll go through and go and it'll fix it all up.

stuff as well. Mate. That's a that's a word for 2025. That's a boom boomer word is inspiration. Just wanna call it out there.

Oh, okay. We need a running tally of when each of us are a boomer.

Yeah. I gave you a one word answer in Slack yesterday, and I thought he's gonna think that's a boomer word.

Not at all. No. It was fine. I think you said nice. And I was like, yeah. That's that's cool. I was already on my way out the door, so I wasn't thinking about it at all. But yeah.

Sorry. I've I've interrupted.

At all. Good. That's basically it. That's my experience with cursor so far is that it's, like, very powerful.

Where does it fall down? Where does it do you find that your expertise needs to jump in and save it?

It gets stuck with what's the best way to put it? It doesn't it's not always smart enough to know, oh, okay. This is what he meant. You know? This is what you meant when you typed this in.

Yeah. Right. Okay. So it's kinda like because you get that in normal GBT where it's kinda like a little like an adolescent anyone that has kids, you go ask a child to do something, and if you don't watch them, come away and come back. They went, I did that, dad, but I've also done x y and zed. I'm like, what are you doing? Like, you've just smashed the window, burnt the house down. Like, yeah. This hasn't happened to you, but you know what I mean? So you just don't

watch it.

You just yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And it to its credit, it is good sometimes at, like, okay. I'm gonna do the minimum. Let me know. And then it'll say, do you want me to go do data? And then you can go, yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yep. Let's do that. Yeah. So that's handy when that happens, but, yeah, there's been a few times where it's just gone off the rails.

Yep. And I guess it's gonna get it's just gonna keep getting better and better. Right? Like everything. Yeah. So yeah. Awesome.

Well, it on on that point, there's this new thing which I I don't know too much about. I can't speak about it with any authority at all but it's called MCP, I think it's model context protocol something like that and basically it's a way where you can plug into these AI agents like Cursor or ChatGPT I think they're working on I'm not too sure but it's a way where you can connect systems to talk to each other so you can have it connect to Stripe and say you just type into Cursor 'hey can you go and add a subscription for Gavin for $30 a month for blah blah blah' and it can then do that because Stripe has released some sort of API or SDK for the people that are in the know to know it's a protocol that allows the AI agent to understand, oh, okay. These are these are all the different things I can do on Stripe and how to interpret me saying, hey. Go charge Gavin thirty dollars. It then knows how to connect those dots to go and do that.

Right.

Okay. And I was looking at it because it's like, oh, wouldn't that be cool? Only purely for the technology aspect which is why I haven't done it yet because it's gonna be a waste of time but wouldn't it be cool to be able to plug into ChatGPT or something like that and say who's coming to my who's coming to LariCon Australia you know and then it goes oh yeah cool I'll go get that from Six Sites because it knows how to do that right and then oh and what are they interested in and here's my list of interests who might I want to chat to you know at the at the conference at things like that and you can start to do that stuff using this MCP. So yeah I think we're a long way away from that but I over the weekend, I was kinda googling on my phone. I was like, what is this and how does it work?

Yep. Awesome. That mate, that sounds really good. It's yeah. Like, and and since then, you've delivered you've given me some screenshots. The last conversation we had, I was hesitant to go do some lead gen because we need some consistent a consistent direction, and I I honestly think we're there. Right? Yeah. I did show someone yesterday, and they were really impressed. And they're a professional event management company.

Yeah. Lay it on us. What do you got planned?

Well, lead gen, basically. No. So last I guess last week or the week before, I've been trying to figure out what the actual business process is that we have an impact on and trying to figure that out. So doing all that, which is a specific framework that I follow, I figured out what our ideal customer is and its associations that have a vested interest in building or, making their community stronger and also subsequently building it through events. So, yeah, I'm gonna start reaching out to those and just sharing just sharing what we're doing, just seeing if anyone wants to have an interest.

is that?

Yeah.

Like, that's that's that's your one to five that you're talk you know, that you've been talking about for forever. Yeah. If we can have that happen for the actual events themselves, but that would be great. But this is an awesome start. You know, because this is app this has happened a few times where on these calls that we've been having, oh, you should talk with da da da, you know, or or whatever. So, yeah, this is awesome to to have someone just instantly give us five other people to chat to.

That's great. Yeah. Look, I think it's a it's a bit different. There's different types of referrals. So we you could Yep. You could loosely call that a referral. Sure. But it's it's a referral. I think it's a really strong referral if you go, hey. Speak to Mitch. They're Yeah. Looking for something now. They said they've got this problem. They're actively searching. That's a that's a strong referral. It's a, hey. Just speak to Mitch. He's in this industry.

It's pretty

much referral, but it's better than nothing. Right?

Yeah. That's a good sign at least.

Yeah. That's right. The sign is it's resonating. So, we are still optimizing our LinkedIn to accommodate the six sides, the app in there, which we haven't quite done yet. We wanted to wait for that screen to be done, which was where they're now. And then I've changed I've changed my, LinkedIn to incorporate, six sides as a founder. Have you done that to yours yet?

I don't think so.

Word doc, maybe. But, anyway, we can we can sort that out, and then we'll start doing some lead generation into just trying to engage in conversation and get people interested and just see what they say. Right? I think there's a few different things I think we need to work on as well. Like, one, we're working on the app and what that looks like.

Yeah.

Yeah. And then from there

Well, it might be worth just pausing on the mobile app. Like, I'm sure it wouldn't take too long to get. So what tool are we using for the website?

Yeah. Yep. One of the things that I'm like, what I'm trying to do is is try to lighten the load from you a little bit because I can see that it like, you've got many different things on. And so up until this business, I've deliberately stayed out of design and UI and UX just because as a salesperson, if you get caught up in the future, you'll start selling your future, then people won't buy today. So, and that's really, you start talking about, Hey, we're going to do this in the app in the next three or four months.

Yeah.

So I've deliberately stayed out of it. Okay. My job has always been to sell what we can do today. Right? But I want to lighten the load and I think, and have some interesting points of view on what we're doing.

Reloom. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. So now it's my job to take what you've done in Reloom and then convert that into something that we can use.

We have to get back on track. So, yeah, I think

Yeah. We do.

Yeah. But yeah. So that's where but that's where I think I can lighten the load. Like, if we give you the framework and you're just doing, the messaging is, I think, mainly coming from me, which is my role. Right? And and then and then we could just add to that. And then I think once we do that, we can put this link to this podcast up there and people can get to know us a little more. And if they're invested in us, I think it it'll start having an impact here.

Yeah. I look forward to that. That'll be cool to to have, like, instantly if the we push out a podcast episode and then the our marketing website updates not too long after. That's gonna be really cool, I think. Yeah.

Yeah. So that's been good. And, again, trying to leverage as much as we can from AI and being consistent consistently using it. And, I found that really, really useful. So my plan is now is, and I don't use AI for lead gen messaging.

Yeah. Yeah. Awesome.

We've got Cool.

Well, it's all we've

got the 10 still got the 10, the goal of 10, and I've also got the 2032 goal as well that we're working towards, which I've made some not headway. I've made some effort to bridge that gap too. So

It's exciting. How are you feeling about about everything? I mean, it's a bit of a softball question. I can imagine you're excited.

Yeah. We've had a couple of setbacks in in sales in this last week. Like, the one one opportunity we thought was gonna come through. They've gone down another path with an app, which is disappointing. Yeah.

Yeah. It would be no yeah. It it is a shame these few setbacks that we've had. It would be nice to have a product that appeals to a larger market right so anyone that's throwing an event and I think in time, we will. There's nothing intrinsically hey? Sorry.

Do you know how big that market is? That is massive. Like, capital city every city most there's an event per week all around the world. So I think I I think the hardness, you want it to be hard a a little bit because that hard, is your competitive advantage. Well well, it did separates you from a competition.

need to set up

a profile. They have no need. The the the needs of that kind of conference or that kind of event is gonna be different. So

Yeah. Yeah. That's that's a great point. We're not gonna be the right fit for everyone. I would like in time if we were the right fit for more than just associations. Like, it does feel like these two opportunities that now, you know, at least one of them is a definite no, the other one feels like it's probably a no. It would have been great if we were in those, but and we were the right fit for them. But yeah. Look. It's early days, and it is what it is.

Think about Uber Eats. Like Uber. Uber just concentrated on car car, like, ride sharing for many years, and then they branched out into something else. Yeah. I think about we our attention is not a % in the business, so we just need to have one value proposition or one ideal persona or two, like or one business target.

So Yeah.

And then I think other things will come out of that on the other side in time. But yeah. Yep.

Yeah. No. It's it well, I'm I'm very excited. And this, like, next step, we talked last week about, okay, what's it gonna take for you to feel comfortable to not limit sales opportunities until we're ready? I'm really excited that you are feeling like we're you know, by no means are we ready ready the the app and the back end and everything.

And that's why, like, looking at episode eight, our notes on Trello to today, it was like, oh, Jesus. You've done a we've done a lot in eight days or whatever. It's bit more than eight days. But, yeah, it's actually we are progressing pretty quick.

Right? Yeah.

So

Yep. And the trailer list seemed to keep getting bigger. Each week, we got more more stuff to talk about, so that's a good sign. It'll be a bit of a bummer if we come in one day and there's only one or two things on this. So we might have to keep, like, maybe through the week as we think of things as something comes up.

Cool. It's it'd probably be a sign, objectively speaking, if we looked at this and it was nine weeks and we're like, we haven't really moved much. Like Yeah. We haven't really won much. Got nothing to report. We haven't spoken to anyone. That's probably a sign that the business isn't gonna be successful. Right? Yeah.

Yeah. Exactly. So every time that you tell me about a conversation that you've had with a prospect or whatever, I'm like, god, I'm so glad that you're on top of that because I just I know within myself, I would not be we would be nowhere near where we are right now if I didn't have you doing this. So I've just it it's every single time I'm like, god. This was the path that we've gone down. So, yeah, I'm just really pleased. This is I'm loving this. It's

great. Mate, it's vice versa. We were I was at dinner last night, and you sent those screenshots about the chat through. And I was having dinner, and I was with my friend Hayden, who's the person that recommended that we try to build a business that no more than 15 people. Like, he was really interested in what we're doing.

Yeah.

Yeah. Like, that just would not happen.

So It's cool. Right? Like, just it it almost feels a bit magical, and it's only through hard work. Right?

Come on, mate. No. No.

But but hear me out. Yeah. The magical part is like, oh, stuff's just happening without me having to do it. You know? And you get to experience that as well anytime I get in and I if I'm inspired on a weekend and I knock out four hours of building out stuff and now the app has five new screens or whatever, and it's like that's just happened without you doing anything.

On on the flip side, Mitch, I I just don't know how someone I I've I've worked for founders that aren't technical, and then they rely on a development team. And I would imagine being so prescriptive. I this is what I reckon most most people do there is they engage with the agency, and they think they're invested as much as what they are, and they give them loosecom like, direction. We have loose conversations. We're not very tight.

Yeah.

But I know other founders that aren't technical, so they go to an agency and they probably try that high level speaking. That agency comes back. They don't care. They're getting paid. They do something that's completely off.

And It serves us both really well because you're right. It does stifle creativity. You've we had a call yesterday to go through some of those widgets on the home screen so we could prep for these screenshots that you wanted to shop around. And yeah, you- I didn't realize it, but I must have been a little cranky on the call because you you messaged me after him when you were like, hey. Is everything alright?

So Yeah.

Yeah. You and I sitting down and going through, like, button by button or whatever. Doesn't work. It Yeah. It it hasn't works. Yeah. So And

I and I think I think probably this is actually a really good interesting conversation. Yeah. Like, I think talking at that high level and going, hey. Because I did that, what would on a dashboard be for the different sides? And I got a example and you got some.

Yeah. Right? Yeah.

It's yeah.

It's it it yeah. I think it really complements our skill sets, and I'm very glad you're not, like, over the top as far as wanting to come up with every single screen and how it should look and all of that because that really would just take away a bunch of the creativity that I get, and I enjoy that about the work that I produce. So, yeah, I'm glad that we're we're yet I think we're yet to have something some, like, trait that we both really feel super headstrong about. Yeah. I'll be very interested to see if and when that comes along how how we deal with it.

I feel really strongly about oh, that episode number hashtag. No. Was something Yeah. And then I was like, Mitch, I feel really passionate about this. You're like, okay. We'll change it. Like and and Mel Mel, she heard it, and she thought it was really funny. Yeah.

It's not a so what Gavin's talking about there is, with the titles of the podcast episodes, if you go back and look at them now, you will see that they all have, like, the number as a prefix on it. Okay. This is episode number nine. You know? But before, they were just the title. You know? It was just the words. And, yeah, you had come to me and said, hey. I I wanna do this. Do you think we should number them?

Yeah.

So I just yeah. Anyway, so it was a bit of a

That's fine. Yeah.

It was a bit of a learning moment for

like resolution, Mitch. We're we're brilliant at it.

We talked about it in episode one, actually. So if you're curious, we talked to having this all of this, all these topics in Trello is awesome because I could just go back and see. So, anyway, well, why don't we wrap up there? So sorry for getting the episode out late, but at least you got an episode out today. And you can catch me on LinkedIn, Mitch Dav, and Blue Sky as well. Gavin, where can people find you?

Find me on LinkedIn. Gavin Ty. And, yeah, that's it.

Yep. That'll do on my but

I don't use Twitter. So

Yeah. I I don't either. I haven't in probably a year or two now. So yes. Alright. Excellent. Well, we will catch you all in the next episode. Alright? Thanks, mate.