What I’m doing right now, includes: playing with feral cats & the $41 mill woman [June 2017]

Welcome to the inaugural “What I’m doing right now” post

There will be a ‘What I’m doing right now’ in every 2nd Humpday newsletter. ‘

What I’m doing right now’ is a behind the scenes look at my business and personal life, including:

  • things that I’m struggling with
  • things that are working brilliantly
  • things that are progressing achingly slowly, but progressing nonetheless
  • the strategies and tactics I’m using to turn all my bludy hard work into extremely vigorous passive income

Hopefully you will find this refreshing, useful, maybe even funny, but primarily helpful in your own life. Whether that’s:

  • learning to use psychology strategies to rapidly modify habits
  • escaping from cubical nation
  • providing the tools of hope – if I can do it you can do it (and here’s the tools I used to do it)
  • or simply realizing that you aren’t the only one with such an embarrassingly awful relationship history

The contents of this particular ‘What I’m doing right now’ include:

  • On making money-printing viral videos: Why I’ve trained my feral cat to sit on command & weave through cider bottles
  • Hangin’ with the $41 mill dollar woman
  • The 21 day myth: Changing habits in under a week (incl. procrastination)
  • Books I’m reading

This edition is quite business-y, so the next one will include more personal struggles such as “What happened to Gorgeous Man”.

In the meantime: 

Why I’ve trained my feral cat to sit and weave through cider bottles

Three years ago, she was dumped in a rubbish bin – probably by accident.

I came home to find a furious and upset fellow tenant. She’d witnessed our building manager dump some cardboard boxes in the recycling bin, and then a tiny tabby kitten trying to claw out of the boxes.

Feral?

My fellow tenant didn’t know if the kitten was feral or just plain terrified. She’d tried to pick it up, but it cowered away, hissing at her.

Despite running late for work, she’d also tried calling the SPCA. But tragically, due to a glut of unwanted kittens that season, domestic kittens were being put down – let alone feral ones.

Secretly pleased

“You go to work. I shall take care of the kitten”, I murmured, secretly pleased. While I badly missed my pets, I would never have deliberately acquired one, living as I did at the time in a pet-forbidden, pet-unsuitable, apartment.

But a kitten landing in your rubbish bin, that’s a different story.

She – as she turned out to be – was indeed feral

And she was feral. I called Lynda – my feral-kitten-wrangling friend. “Help” I said “I have a feral kitten under my bed. What do I do?”. Lynda gave sound advice. Although it was three months before she completely stopped hissing at me, Maneki the kitten was taking food from my lap on the second day.

Her full name is Maneki Neko, which loosely translates from Chinese as ‘lucky cat’.

So, I’m making a video of Maneki doing an obstacle course. You won’t be able to tell she’s feral from the video. She habituates to individual humans when she associates them with food and safety, but she’ll always be scared of humans as a species.

Kitten used for sales & marketing

The goal is for the video to go viral as marketing support for my to-be-launched-on-the-1st-July-2017 e-book on habit modification.

The obstacle course consists of Maneki jumping up on a chair, sitting, weaving through bottles, and jumping through a ring.

Kitten struggles with all-male action figures

We are currently practicing the final ring jumping part, which is problematic. Maneki doesn’t like the child’s inflatable water safety ring. It may be the fact it’s orange. It may be the fact it’s decorated with all-male Marvel comic action heros.

Then there’s the set design. I will be dressed in cat-wrangling army fatigues. The sound track will be “The eye of the tiger” from Sylvester Stallone’s classic Rocky film. As Maneki is the world’s cutest cat – how can this video not go viral?

The point of the video is to illustrate a few of the behavioral psychology basics contained in my e-book. People don’t tend to associate training with cats. Dogs – of course: Cats – no. Especially feral cats.

However, the behavior psychology I use to train Maneki is basic stuff that anyone can use to train their own brain and modify their behavior and habits, as well as those of their pets and family.

Action-kitten video release date

Maneki’s debut video will be released in about 6 weeks – you’ll be the first to know. 

And why cider bottles? I’ll let you know next time.

 

Hangin’ with the $41 million woman

Two things:

  1. I’ve been clinically diagnosed as ‘different’. I said “thank you”.
  2. I’m starved for community. Specifically, communities where ‘my different’ is other people’s normal.

I’ve made good inroads into my community craving. I’m just finishing up with B-School – an online interactive business course run by Marie Forleo.

Make money: Change the world

B-school’s motto of “Make money. Change the world” sums up the community I’m after: Idealism tempered with entrepreneurship – or ethical entrepreneurship.

My goal is to make lots of money systematizing the psychological tools I’ve used to help people – largely for free – for years. By ‘systems’, I largely mean ‘e-products’.

The more I sell, the more bills I can pay and the more people I can help. Money = freedom. This may sound ridiculously obvious but for ‘do gooder’ types like me – and especially women – money can seem like a dirty word. I have literally run away from money, but that’s another article.

Over $41 mill in sales – or is that $46 mill?

But Marie Forleo walks the talk. At 41 years, she’s sold over $41 million worth of product (or was it $46 million in sales? Either way, it’s a lot.) AND she’s a do-gooder.

I’m thrilled with the return on my course investment. It’s not cheap, but it’s been deeply refreshing hanging with (mostly) women who are ethically and unapologetically generating maximum cash and profit.

I feel like I can breathe, and it doesn’t seem an accident that many of my critical but long delayed business projects are finally coming to fruition.

I am not an affiliate, but if you are interested in B-School here’s a link. B-School’s been fantastic for me, but it’s a lot of work. If you are considering enrolling, try to ensure you have the time to squeeze the most out of the experience.

In the meantime, I have a question for you: Who are you hanging with?

 

“The 21 day myth: how to bust procrastination and other habits in under a week” – coming soon

The reason I help people with habits, self-sabotage, and procrastination is obvious. My first e-book, like most important, scary things to do with my business, is overdue.

That’s OK, finally happening is happening.

But if I had to choose one thing that has helped me the most finally get to this point, that would be an e-product from Naomi Dunford of Itty Biz fame called ‘product in a weekend’.

The biggest barrier to finishing your book (project, thesis, large scary thing)

Turns out a common barrier to people finishing and launching their e-products is overwhelm – surprise! Specifically, we struggle to decide what content to include and what content to leave out.

Except most of us don’t plan on leaving anything out. The plan is to put everything we know into one book.

This is a VBP (Very Bad Plan). In the unlikely event the book ever makes it to publication, the result will be as overwhelming to read as it was to write.

Key solution to the biggest barrier

As well as not being a Marie Forleo affiliate, I’m also not an affiliate partner of Naomi Dunford. I must do something about this sorry state of affairs, but the gist of Naomi Dunford’s awesome Product in a weekend is to:

…only include the bare bones of what the reader needs to solve a specific problem.

All other related, interesting, and useful but NOT essential content can go into product bonuses, or marketing support – such as the other article in this newsletter ( “You can’t do it” – how to tell when your inner critic is lying through its teeth”).

Anyway, don’t die with your book inside you – the world needs it. Check out product in a weekend if you want support getting your information out to the world in a palatable way that doesn’t overwhelm you nor the reader.

 

Books I’m reading

If – like me – you appreciate a kick in the guts, mind, and heart, I highly recommend “The underground railway” by Colson Whitehead. It’s clear why this page-turner is an international favorite. Days after I read it, I’m still thinking about the almost unimaginable brutality of the slave trade,

It’s not a perfect book. There is an obvious, implausible, and therefore jarring plot device towards the end. And after racing through the book, desperate to find out what happens, events suddenly and frustratingly slow to a snail’s pace.

These are trivial complaints about a remarkable book. I’m first in line to buy Colson Whitehead’s next book.

 

 

Comment below: Anything resonate with you?

FREE download “How to safely use a dangerous – but powerful – psychology strategy to finish anything”  How do you think I finished my Ph.D. thesis on time? This strategy is the big gun of behavior psychology. It provides powerful motivation – but can backfire if applied incorrectly. Subscribe and download the FREE step by step instructions and start finishing!  Click here to subscribe and get the free behavior psychology strategy

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Further Reading:

[1 minute psychology] ‘Failures’ are the stepping stones to success – It’s much easier to succeed when you are willing to fail (& how to make failing easier)

Let the children cry – Warning! A grim read. Possibly worth it if you were shamed for crying as a child

My encounter with the clairvoyant dominatrix – One of my more bizarre life experiences: does this type of thing ever happen to anyone else?

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