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Last week, I hosted my first-ever conference.

Unlike a lot of the work I do nowadays (like creating educational content, getting clients, being interviewed on podcasts, and so on), this was something that definitely took me out of my comfort zone. While I hosted a number of events for my agency, mostly with the intent of generating sales leads, I never hosted a huge conference.

But I did it. And based on the 60ish or so surveys I received back so far, attendees gave it an average 4.8/5 star rating — yay!

In this article, I’m not going to comb over every talk and summarize what was covered. Plenty of other reviews and summaries, which I’ve listed at the bottom, have already done that. Rather, I’m going to share both what I’ve learned and confirmed after spending a few days surrounded by 120 of some of the most business-minded freelancers, consultants, and agency owners around.

@brennandunn put on a first rate freelancing conference! My head is spinning with ideas and action items. #dyfconf

— Schell Gower (@SchellG) September 18, 2015

Over the years, I’ve been to a number of conferences. Most of them were technical and were attended by a mix of employees, employers, and freelancers. If anything related to freelancing or consulting, it was during a periphery talk rather than a keynote.

When planning the Double Your Freelancing Conference, I wanted it to be technology agnostic. Whether you’re a Ruby developer, a designer of logos, a freelance blogger, or whatever else, you’d get something out of each talk. And since the focus was entirely on the business behind our crafts, I opened by letting people know that it was safe to unplug from their clients and their projects.

Last Thursday morning, we kicked off a two-day spa retreat for businesses. And here’s what I learned…

Are you a freelancer or involved in an agency?

Do you want to learn about sales, marketing, running your business, and everything else that’s required to run a successful sustainable business?

And do you want to surround yourself with other, business-minded freelancers and small business owners?

If so, you’re going to want to join me and over a hundred of your peers for the inaugural Double Your Freelancing Conference, coming this September to Norfolk, Virginia.

You’ll not only walk away with a notebook full of actionable TODO items that are centered on growing your business, but you’ll also leave with a Rolodex of lasting connections — people that you can continue to learn from and work with in the future.

Learn more about Double Your Freelancing Conference

Summary: My business did about $447,000 this year with close to $250k in unexpected or unavoidable expenses, and another $50k or so in business overhead.

At first, this might seem like the most depressing annual review you’ll read this year. It starts pretty shitty, but it ends well — and further drives home just how blessed I am to be able to work for myself and make more money on my terms, rather than at the whim of an employer.

This year didn’t start out too great

I’m often labeled a perpetual optimist.

Every year, at around this time, I create lots of lists. I try to list out where I want to be at the end of the next year, and then I work backward to deconstruct these goals into concrete milestones.

So going into 2014, I had a lot of goals in mind: I’d rewrite, redo, and relaunch my flagship course, Double Your Freelancing Rate. I’d recruit a team to work with me on Planscope. I’d systematize and automate the gaps in my business — namely, my Consultancy Masterclass, the Freelancers Guild, and more. And I’d finally figure out this whole work/life balance thing.

…And then, just weeks into the new year, I learned that my wife was going to need to go away for 6 weeks. Now, I’m no stranger to this sort of thing, but as I was riding the high of the new year, it upset me. It wasn’t the hospitalization that necessarily was upsetting; rather, it was that something I had zero control over was derailing me, my business, and everything I had planned.

I’m kicking off a new experiment this week.

I’m starting a new agency. And I plan on live blogging all the struggles and successes I face along the way — and making it all available right here on DoubleYourFreelancing.com.

As many of you probably know, about 6 years ago I started my first agency. I was in no way equipped to run or scale an agency at the time, as I had no experience in business or management. But it somehow… worked. We grew to 11 full-time employees and we grew into a 4500ish square foot office in downtown Norfolk, Virginia. Within just two years, our revenues were just over $2+ million a year and our client base was international.

It was a wild ride, but fate led me to exit the agency and start a software company (Planscope), which later spawned off my teaching business (this website, my courses, etc.)

If you’ve been following along, you know that I left running a million dollar consulting firm to try my hand in building and selling my own products.

In 2012, I started a number of new projects: I launched a SaaS, wrote my first book, taught my first online workshop, and hosted my first podcast.

It was a year of firsts for me. But truthfully, the most sweeping change was that — for the first time ever — someone I didn’t know paid me without me sending an invoice first.

But enough of last year. This post is about this year, 2013, and what I learned and the takeaways I want to share with you.