Last week Neil and I drove down to Chicago to take in this year’s Seed Conference, eager to hear some of our mentors share stories about their business world successes and failures. This year’s line up included Carlos Segura of Segura Inc., Jason Fried of 37 Signals, Jake Nickell & Jeffrey Kalmikoff of Skinny Corp., Jim Coudal of Coudal Partners and the sensation that is sweeping the nation, Gary Vaynerchuk. Presentations lasted about 30 to 45 minutes and then were generally followed by about 15 minutes of audience questions.

I personally took away quite a few bits of knowledge from the conference and at the end of the day felt like I had been at one giant pep talk.

I happily realised that as a business we’re on the right track. Time and time again, the speakers mentioned that their businesses took about 4 to 5 years from conception to really start making moves. I’m about half way through my forth year as I write this entry and even though we’re a relatively obscure firm, feel like we’re slowly but surely buidling a strong community.

I was happy to see many similarities between the path that my company is on and the paths that the speakers have taken with their business. Carlos Segura spent years working for clients he didn’t really love before finally getting to call the shots on big projects he really enjoyed, Skinny Corp started designing for hire along with 37 Signals before giving up the client world for the greener pastures of virtual products, and Coudal Partners dealt with many of the horror stories that “big, important projects” can bring to a small, growing design firm: Lots of work (that starts out as well paying before the additional “feature requests” come), deadline stress, endless revisions and a lack fulfillment because of all these issues. It wasn’t until each speaker realised that the only way to fulfillment was to “Do It Yourself.” And, to “Do It Yourself” ultimately means making that sacrifice (client work) for a given amount of time until what you really want to do with your business is attainable financially or through an online community that you’ve cultivated.

I also realised it can take years to build an audience and that the only path to an audience is your personal dedication to your craft (really, isn’t that the only path to anything rewarding in life though?). I really appreciated Gary Vaynerchuk’s presentation and his candidness when it came to discussing his rise from obscurity. During his presentation he spent a good deal of time talking about how he blogged and reviewed wine every day for 18 months without anyone really caring about what he did. It took an article in a weekly Brooklyn paper to kickstart Gary’s audience. From there, it was an appearance on Conan O’Brien’s show that truly kickstarted Gary’s community building. “Making it,” takes time according to Gary. So, be patient is the theme of the day.

I don’t think I can really express how awesome of an experience Seed Conference was this year. If anything, the day’s presentations reaffirmed my belief that we’re on the right track as we slowly make the transition from client work to offering our own products.

A big thanks to the organisers of this year’s Seed Conference: 37 Signals, Segura Inc. and Coudal Partners, the catering crew at Big Delicious Planet (amazing food!), Crown Hall (Thanks for the building Mies) and to Coudal Partners for drawing Neil’s name from a hat which won us tickets to see The National (Yes!) Modest Mouse (Yay!), and REM (I can at least cross them off my list of bands “to see”) at The United Centre. I guess I should also thank Chicago for being so rad as well.