I’m an analytical personality type, and when I spend money on something I generally feel that it’s a wise move. However, even in the car on the way down to Las Vegas for the CEO Space Free Enterprise Forum last week, I was still skeptical.

I paid a lot of money to join CEO Space (and I even got a discount!), because I thought even if it was 50% as good as they said, it would be worth the investment.  I also joined because my CPA and attorney are both members, and I have a great deal of trust and respect for both of them.  And yet, the skepticism was still there (could it really be THAT good?).

Yep. Boy was I in for a shock!

CEO Space was a lot more than I expected (maybe it helped that I was skeptical… there’s the analytical coming out again). I thought there was no way it could be as wonderful as they (meaning the company and local members) made it sound like. And yet, staring me in the face: every claim they made in videos, in person, on the phone, and online were all true:

• MBA level instruction by top people in their industry (absolutely!)
• World-Class networking (no argument here)
• High-level contacts (definitely)
• Investors hanging around, deals happening (I saw this happen with my own eyes–at least 3 deals, one into the 10-figure range that I know of)
• Cooperative capitalism (I thought that was an oxymoron for sure!)
• Hyper-grow your business

That last part is the only thing I can’t be sure of yet, but the fact that I have 120 people who gave me their card because either they are personally interested in my services or they know someone who they think would be interested is quite a stack of people to follow up with.  I’ve scheduled time to make about 20 phone calls/day after I send out the 120 emails or so the week before.  Not only that, most of the cards have notes about what I need to discuss with them– THAT is effective.

Now, when I say MBA level, I mean it.  I spoke to business consultants who are the top of their game, including Ed Bogle, Vincent Molina, Karla Dennis, and Paul Simpson.  I heard Greg Reid, Thomas Jurgensen, Ed Bogle, Chris Collins, Lisa Kelley, Bob Circosta, Kevin Harrington, Eric Lofholm, Les Brown, Barry Spilchuk, and Bob Proctor in 90 minute lectures on various business development topics.

Another claim made by CEO Space is that their instructors are accessible (as opposed to other places where the speaker is shuttled away before anyone can talk to them).  This claim is absolutely true– as much as possible, these instructors will make sure they can get you in their schedule, and that is incredible considering how much they get paid per hour outside of the space and how much time they do give away.  In addition to meetings I had there, I will be having phone meetings with 3 instructors in January to assist me with my strategic planning, systems development, and sequencing of my capital plan, all completely free of charge because I’m a member.

In addition, this cooperative capitalism thing just sounded cooky.  I’ve heard people talk about it and say things like “it’s about creating wealth (not all monetary) in the world, not about making money,” and people actually talked about that like it was a real system.  While it wasn’t all a bed of roses at the Forum, by and large most people were genuinely helping each other, and I was very impressed with the fact that so many people endeavored simply to serve others with no opportunity of monetary return (and I myself got caught up in the craze, but somehow, I think it’s all going to work in my favor too!).  This topic probably merits another post of it’s own.  In addition, I saw people competing in the same industry helping each other (and even did that myself).

Even though I got my membership at a steep discount, it was worth every penny, and it would have been worth every penny had I paid full price (and that was just the first event!).  Now that I’m a member, I have a lifetime of networking, instruction, and resources available to me year-round forever.  If that’s not good value, then I don’t know what is.  CEO Space is certainly not a scam, and (from experience) I can vouch for the fact that it is definitely the real deal.

Stay tuned as my businesses continue to flourish!

Waiting for Chrome OS has been a very long wait, but one I think will be worth it.  I’ve been telling people (when frustrated by Windows)… “I’m waiting for Google Chrome OS.”  And of course that sparked conversation… If you don’t know what Chrome OS is, this overview video does a really good job of explaining the basics:

I also wanted to give Google the Top 10 reasons why they need to hurry up and finish Chrome OS so I can use it.

10. I’m sick of Microsoft Windows (I have to use it about once/week for work at the moment).

9. Although I love Ubuntu, it’s not nearly as fast as Chrome will be.

8. I’m sick of hearing Apple Fanboys saying “look what your computer can’t do because it’s not a Mac.”

7. I want to show my Apple Fanboy friends what it’s like to print something at my office from the comfort of my living room, Starbucks, or the airplane.

6. I want to access all my data, docs, and applications from anywhere… being a small business owner, I need this so I can take a vacation (and the business won’t fall apart while I’m gone).

5. I’m tired of my ancient laptop overheating because I have 25 tabs open in 6 windows, running 6 desktop apps, and Flash on Pandora all at once.  If they were cloud apps, it would be easy!

4. I’m the ultimate Google Fanboy (okay, not quite, because I do prefer WordPress over Blogger, but darn close!).  I use about 20-25 different Google services at least weekly, and I use about a dozen of them every day.

3. Google will get very sick of me bothering them to finish after dangling the carrot in front of me during their 2 hour Chrome event today.

2. Google is awesome.  One of the coolest companies, IMO.  Having 20,000 employees and still innovating is an amazing accomplishment– one that should garner a lot of respect.

1. I’m awesome!

NOTE: if the Google Chrome team is reading this, please accept my application to join your pilot program (please!).  As a technology enterpreneur and technology influencer within my network, I know I can contribute usable data to your pilot program because my use, while somewhat related to development, is even more so “mainstream” and will give you a wide variety of use cases.