And in fact, the ability to do what we feel like, even when it’s not 100% measurably on path to our eventual business success is part of why we started Jackson Fish Market and to this day remain 100% independent of investors and outside oversight.

We’ve each been to countless conferences as attendees, exhibitors, speakers, and organizers. Sometimes all of the above. And we each wanted to go to a conference that would address our needs in terms of being inspired and seeing others be successful in a model that we’re pursuing. And that’s how Small and Special was born. In terms of putting on a conference that we enjoyed, the event was a home run. Though, I would recommend anyone who wants to put on a conference cause the one they want to attend doesn’t exist to think really carefully. It’s a non-trivial amount of work. At various times the week before the even we would look at each other and say “why the hell did we do this?” Those comments were mostly kidding around. Mostly.

In the end, the conference achieved its goal which was to be the event that we wanted to attend. Luckily, 200 other people also felt similarly. Some factoids from the event:

• We sold out the conference on the previous Friday afternoon. 200 tickets at $25 a pop (plus the eventbrite service fee)
• The venue worked beautifully — the Georgetown Ballroom is a very cool space. Parking was a bit of a pain but people figured it out and nobody got ticketed or towed (i think/hope)
• We started 10 minutes later than we intended and ended 25 minutes later than we intended
• We had a 2 minute custom video from Governor Gregoire of Washington state kick off the event. Super cute. They have a form where you can request her coming to your event. Runners up get a video if she can’t show up in person.
• We had 8 speakers at the event and 7 sponsors. The sponsors got to speak for 2 minutes, the speakers for 15.
• Massive Monkees, who donated their services for a sponsorship did a breakdancing performance to open up the second half of the event. That seemed to get everyone pumped.
• We haven’t finished adding everything up yet, but we came pretty close to breaking even on the entire event in terms of cash we put out. This doesn’t count the time JFM full-timers spent on the event though. We’d definitely have to charge more money for this to be a non-trivial source of revenue.

Folks did a great job covering/representing the event on the web. Some coverage includes:

• Tweeting was pretty constant throughout the event. You can see the entire real-time stream from the event on Twitter at #SandS.
• While our official photographer Kevin Moore did a kickass job taking pictures (which I haven’t processed or uploaded yet), Charmaine Velasco, an attendee, also did a fantastic job taking photos and posting them quickly! Check them out on Flickr. (Kevin’s photos to come soon.)
• JF over at the No Friday blog writes their recap of the day.
• Matt Heinz turned his afternoon into 10 lessons he learned from the conference.
• Marcelo Calbucci put together his take on the conference and garnered a bunch of comments from attendees (and one of the speakers) as well.

The feedback on the web was very useful. But we were particularly proud of our event survey which had only one question: “Would you attend next year.” Some people added comments on the back. Of the folks who filled out our arduous survey, 111 said yes, 2 said maybe, and 1 said “no but I would recommend it to others.” I’m pretty sure we can’t complain about those numbers. That said, there was tons of good feedback on how to improve things for a further Small and Special event. I’ll list some of those thoughts here:

• Not enough mingling time. The break was too short.
• The after-event gathering was half-assed and only a tenth of the attendees and a couple of speakers made it. (The staff was busy cleaning up and couldn’t get there.) Also, the one 20 year old we had in the audience couldn’t go.
• Some folks wanted to ask their own questions instead of having me ask the questions of each speaker.
• Would have been nice to have a program listing the speakers so folks knew who was up next.
• Some folks wanted at least one of the speakers to talk more about failures and how to overcome them.
• A couple of attendees wished there were more specifics and “how-to”s from the speakers on how they created their businesses

Those were the main bits of feedback. All helpful should we put on another one of these.

Thanks need to go out to many folks:

• Our inaugural attendees. Thanks for your great energy, attendance, and feedback!
• Our inaugural speakers: Eric LeVine of CellarTracker, Nisha Kelen of Fleurish, Joe Mansfield of Engrave Your Tech, Rachel Venning of Babeland, Oliver Chin of Immedium, Jon Rimmerman of Garagiste, Andrew Bennett of Deneki Outdoors, and Steven Bristol of Less Everything.
• Our inaugural sponsors: Perkins Coie, First Sound Bank, Office Nomads, SmartSheet, Lilipip Studios, Massive Monkees, and the publisher of Small Giants.
• Our helpers for the day: Adina, M-A, Adrian, Kevin, Bryan, Brian, and Peyman who were so generous with their time (as were many of our friends who stuck around to help clean up).
• and most of all… part-time JFMer Donald, who’s been leading the coordination of the event for the past 3 months or so and really made it all come together calmly and smoothly.

That’s about all in terms of the recap. Bryan is working on producing the videos that were taken and those will all be posted at Small and Special in the next few weeks once they’re ready to go. We’ll obviously post/tweet when they are up. You can also follow @smallandspecial on Twitter and become a Facebook fan for updates. We were super happy with the afternoon, and glad that most everyone seemed to have felt it was a good use of their time.

I’ll leave you with this comment from one of the attendees that inspired us:

“This conference was very inspirational to me as a small business owner. I will bring 4-10 people with me [next time]. I know I will be invited to speak at this conference in a couple of years… even next year.”

Love that confidence. Super inspiring!

We’re a little exhaustipated but feeling good about Small and Special and the tons of great and useful feedback we received. We need to do a proper recap of the event, but that might take a couple of days. Thanks to everyone who attended, participated, spoke, sponsored, vended, and staffed. Jenny, Walter, and I are very appreciative of all the support. The event wouldn’t have been possible without all your positivity and energy.

Stay tuned for a proper recap in few days once we recuperate. In the meantime, search for #SandS on Twitter if you want to see some of the real-time reporting from the conference.

Thanks!

“The single biggest enemy of an indeterminate amount of time needed for success is a deadline. And nothing gives you a deadline like taking money from venture capitalists who need a liquidity event within a specific timeframe.”

Not to be outdone, Marcello Calbucci over at Seattle 2.0 was also nice enough to ask me to do a guest post on bootstrapping as part of a series of posts this week. This one is on the specifics of doing consulting as a mechanism for bootstrapping your non-consulting tech startup (like we’re doing).

“…odds are, that the job you do today five days a week can be a consulting gig for some other company (or maybe even the company that currently employs you full time). If you’ve determined that you in fact do have some skills that people will pay you for on a consulting basis, then it’s time to go get those gigs.”

Both John and Marcello are very kind to invite me to blab on their fine websites. But the NWEN folks have one-upped them by having me come in person to their bootstrapping workshop tomorrow to give a talk on lessons learned from the real world. I should have posted about this earlier (apologies NWEN) but it looks like you can still register.

Believe it or not, I try to shy away from giving advice on topics where I don’t feel like I have much to point to that I’ve personally accomplished (my friends may debate this assertion). But I suppose, when it comes to bootstrapping, (at least the part where you are making self-sustaining revenue that lets you try to establish your core business), Jenny, Walter, and I are making it work and have a couple of observations that are worth sharing. I encourage you to check out the posts and workshop listed above.

But if that’s not enough, you should attend our mini-conference next week - Small and Special. It’s a bootstrapper’s dream. First, my speaking will be at a minimum. The main attraction is eight founders of passionate small businesses who have created entities that not only let them do what they love, but also make them a real living. Tickets are limited and we are starting to run out. It’s only $25 for the entire afternoon and that includes a free copy of Small Giants by Bo Burlingham as well as a chance to win an almost $8000 custom animation provided by Lilipip Studios. Buy your tickets now if you want to attend.

While the conference speaker roster is limited to founders of small passionate businesses who are making a success of themselves, we were immediately willing to make an exception to get Bo himself to come talk at the event. Bo’s schedule didn’t allow it this time. And then on a lark we suggested that Bo convince his publisher to give us free copies of his book for every attendee of the event. We were almost laughing when we suggested this as we knew it was unlikely. Bo laughed too but passed it on to his publisher.

Much to both of our surprise and delight, the kind folks at Penguin said yes. And as a result, every attendee at Small and Special will receive their own copy of Small Giants courtesy of Penguin (and Bo Burlingham). Thanks Penguin. These books can be autographed. Not by Bo himself of course as he won’t be attending, but I’m sure one of your fellow attendees would be happy to do the honor.

We try not to do the hard sell on this blog, but we can’t help but pointing out the following two numbers. A ticket to Small and Special costs $25 (plus the $0.99 service charge from EventBrite). The cover price of Small and Giants is $14.95. You could pay Amazon $10.40 but then you’ll pay for shipping. Alright… not to get too detailed but hopefully you get the point. Buying a ticket to Small and Special is a kickass deal. Well… we think so, and hopefully you will too.

Head over to the Small and Special website to get your ticket now before we run out.

And if you just can’t attend the conference, go buy your own copy of Small Giants, Companies That Choose to Be Great Instead of Big by Bo Burlingham. Of all the books I read before we founded Jackson Fish Market (and there were many), this was the single most inspiring and influential of the bunch.