If you thought that city concerts were good fun, try seeing your favourite artists perform live while sailing on a cruise ship to tropical destinations. That’s what Sixthman is here for, offering immersive music and entertainment festivals at sea through unique cruise experiences that routinely upstage regular concerts. With destinations such as the Bahamas and the Dominican Republic on the itinerary, fans return to shore with memories that they’re unlikely to ever forget.
In its infancy, Sixthman was a small business with about 40 employees. It didn’t take long for the company to hit its first growth spurt, and as the team scaled up to more than 100 strong, Sixthman quickly needed robust tools to support its expansion. Slack rose to the occasion, enabling teams to use automation and collaboration capabilities that empowered Sixthman to scale sustainably – all while optimising its existing operations.
‘Slack allows me to centralise my processes, rather than having to open my browser to look at Google or Outlook for different things. It creates an all-encompassing environment,’ said Sixthman Guest Services Specialist Khalil Tribie. ‘That’s probably one of my favourite things about Slack – it allows me to bring it all together.’
‘From California to New York and everywhere in between, Slack has become the essential glue that keeps us all connected.’
Workflows empower automation for rapid scale-up
Slack’s Workflow Builder allows anyone to build automated processes that streamline routine tasks, freeing up bandwidth to focus on other crucial initiatives. At Sixthman, building workflows has been the key engine driving the company’s rapid scale-up, particularly in two key areas: onboarding and operations. As the company brought new team members on board, leadership and hiring managers quickly recognised the need for automated onboarding processes to ensure consistency, accuracy and speed throughout its expansion.
‘At the rate we were hiring, that was a big challenge,’ said Andy Kahn, Sixthman’s Manager of Talent Relations. ‘But once we got a hold of workflows, it just took off.’
‘We just started automating everything from onboarding to integrations. Weekly syncs and agendas were done through Google Sheets and Slack workflows. We had our mentorship programme go through automations. We had team bonding games that we created through workflows,’ he said.
Tribie uses workflows to respond rapidly to complex guest requests. Because most of those requests involve payments, his day-to-day involves a lot of maths.
‘I was doing it on pen and paper when I first started here,’ Tribie said. ‘I realised that with workflows, I could create something new rather than asking one of my colleagues to go access the sheet that I have, find the right tab and enter the numbers in the right cell without messing up any of the maths.’
Instead, Tribie built a workflow that handles complex equations and even drafts an email with all that information to simply copy, paste and send to the guest.
‘I forgot that I had some nerd in me, and Slack has allowed me to dive deep. It’s been really, really exciting,’ Tribie said. His workflow trick hasn’t just sped up their guest services – it’s also had a positive impact on customer satisfaction.
Workflows also help to optimise day-to-day operations, particularly for Rebecca Medina, Sixthman’s Office Host/Coordinator. She uses workflows to automate reminders for staff meetings, speeding up the agenda-building process while freeing up time to focus on other critical tasks.
‘I have a workflow that sends out reminders on the first week and the third week of every month to send in any staff meeting agenda items,’ she said. ‘It’s really nice to set and forget it and still keep that reminder for people. I don’t have to think about sending it constantly.’
With Slack, project management and event coordination are smooth sailing
Since 2019, Sixthman has expanded from 18 to up to almost 30 events per year – a huge step for a small business with ambitious growth goals. It’s certainly no small feat to pull off this many events, especially when big-shot artists like Pitbull and KISS are on the lineup.
Sixthman creates a Slack channel for each event, preventing crucial information from being siloed while promoting transparency and collaboration between key stakeholders.
‘Everybody works very collaboratively at our company. So for us, that works really well just to keep it focused on a single Slack channel,’ Kahn noted. And thanks to Slack integrations, Kahn and his team can easily use other tools that they need to run a tight ship.
‘All of our primary conversation around a certain event goes into its respective channel, and any final decisions or details for planning the event are stored in monday.com,’ he said. Because monday.com is integrated into his Slack workspace, Kahn is able to maintain focus and reduce the need to context switch, which fragments attention span and cuts into productivity.
‘I’m not navigating back and forth between the platforms. I’m still doing most of my work within Slack,’ Kahn said.
‘With our team spread out all over the country, on ships all over the world and constantly travelling, Slack truly is the best way to keep everyone connected and on the same page.’
Slack Connect puts all hands on deck
Internal collaboration is a cornerstone of Sixthman’s operations. So is collaboration with outside parties, such as part-time contractors, management teams and sometimes the artists’ teams themselves.
‘We’ve started to use Slack Connect, which is really great and exciting to be able to just have more efficient communication with external partners,’ Kahn said. ‘The band KISS did 12 cruises with us, and we worked directly with KISS’s management team to curate that. So we’re constantly reaching out to them to solicit ideas, get approvals on what we want to do and collaborate,’ he said, ‘and that used to primarily be done in email and phone calls.’
Sixthman also collaborates with event organiser Insomniac to produce EDSea, an at-sea edition of the widely popular event ‘EDC’. With Slack Connect, Sixthman can collaborate with external partners instantaneously and asynchronously. Slack Connect enables secure, confidential collaboration with partner organisations while keeping critical information organised in designated channels.
Medina also leverages Slack Connect to quickly solve issues when coordinating travel. If corrections or changes to itineraries need to be made, Medina needs quick access to her external partners to make those amendments as soon as possible.
‘It’s been really nice to have a place where I can chat with them that’s already integrated into my daily communication. It’s really helpful,’ she said. ‘I think it goes a lot faster than if I were to email them over and over with different corrections. Having that stream of instant messages is much easier.’
With custom features, Sixthman throws parties on sea, sand and Slack
Sixthman knows the value of working hard and playing hard, which is why they’ve hacked Slack’s features to inject humour into their everyday. Not only do those features improve productivity, but also team bonding. Their latest Slack trick? A game called Sixthman Office Crimes, made possible by workflows.
‘If you notice anything like someone didn’t load the dishwasher correctly – or maybe they left fish in the microwave and the whole office smells it – you can activate a workflow and playfully accuse someone of committing the crime,’ Kahn explained. ‘We’ll post it on our channel for everybody, and it will have a little emoji of Judge Judy. It will prompt everyone in the channel to discuss in the thread who they think the perpetrator might be and let everyone be the jury.’
Sixthman also turns to user groups to streamline the onboarding process. Instead of notifying an entire channel, user groups enable team members to send custom notifications to specific groups of people. Coupled with customised workflows, user groups help to get new hires up to speed.
‘When my newest hire started, I added her to the talent relations user group. I had a workflow set that automatically added her to all of the channels that are pertinent to my department. So I don’t have to go through and manually add or remember those channels,’ Kahn said, adding that the user group feature acts like an enterprise tool that’s tailored directly to small businesses.
Custom emoji are also high on the list of Sixthman’s favourite Slack features, helping team members to express themselves while bolstering the company’s creative culture. Beyond emoji, Tribie also enjoys using the keywords feature to add flair to his messages.
‘If you say certain keywords in certain channels, it’ll pop up random quotes or information,’ said Tribie, adding that the surprise notifications are a fun way to jazz up his routine tasks.
Tribie also said that beyond boosting productivity, Slack’s features are just fun. But what’s even more fun than the present is what’s to come.
‘The most fun things are the possibilities of future capabilities, solving future problems, problems that haven’t even arisen yet or that we don’t even know or are aware of,’ Tribie said. ‘Knowing what I know now about Slack compared to what I knew three months ago – that’s exciting in and of itself, just thinking about where I’ll be.’
