HSBC Online Is Going Modern Catty

After setting up my account with HSBC Online, I mailed in a check. Just over a week later, I received the password in the mail. They're obsessed with security, see-- what with the advent of keylogging malware and whatnot, it makes the most sense to stay secure.

So, in my email, my login ID. In my snail mail, my password. Both huge strings of numbers. Makes sense. Perhaps in response to old news about security threats, they also have a unique "security key" that you type in on a Flash keyboard with your mouse, which is used at every login. So I'm satisfied. Now I have a VERY secure account I can link to brick-&-mortar accounts, a (relatively) high interest rate, and a place to funnel Adsense/Affiliate/Other money. Perfect!

And my own online security ritual? I have two browsers installed. One I use for browsing, personal emailing, etc etc. The other I use only for business and personal finance. It is set up to remember NONE of my passwords, and to completely wipe its history, cookies, and pretty much everything every time I quit. That way Zooey can't realign my 401(k), and Mr. MacMuffin can't spam his relatives with ads for Cutco knives.

I also run virus scans regularly, using Leopard Cache Cleaner. I work on a Mac, which has no real viruses, but I don't want to infect friends. Besides, nobody likes the smug, especially that guy in those Mac commercials. Probably he never fixes his permissions or runs his maintenance scripts, and then his kernel pops and he has to spend three unpleasant hours getting poked at by a Mac Genius before meeting his boorish but lovable PC pal for an evening of girl drinks and sniping.

(P.S. My passwords are NOT cat-related. Suprised?)

Find of the day: Modern Cat. I'm a little too rustic & bumpkiny for this stuff, and Zooey's a little too outdoorsy, but perhaps those of us with the chic flair thing going on will find cat-products of value and interest.

This Long Tail is NOT hideous!

Fig. 4. The Long Tail by Chris Anderson,

interpretation Zooey.

So. I am now looking for a business design that will work for Zooey's freakishly long tail. Hopefully there are enough people out there who need to get all their business/economics/pet food information from the same source. Otherwise we may need a trip to the plastic veterinarisurgeon.

I'm not reading the book-- because the idea has transcended the book-- but Chris Anderson basically writes that, since the Internet offers unlimited "shelf" space, you can make a profit on ultra-niche products which would get crowded out by the "gigantic, bloated head" products, like non-cat-related business & finance books.

Apparently it works quite well for ultra-niche businesses, like role-playing game books and classical music. (Keep in mind that CATpitalism is no ultra-niche! It just hasn't taken off yet.)

The idea has been kind of epoch-making in e-business, and Zooey and I are going to see if we can get in on the action. It's been kind of slow here in the rolling hills of Tennessee. But, based on this Tail thing and the Cash Machine book reviewed yesterday, I think it's actually possible we could make some scratch from this kind of stuff. And, as always, we will do it out here in public, and let you know how it goes...

REVIEW: Cash Machine for Life

Loral Langemeier flips the proverbial bird at the average personal finance blogger. She writes,

If you want to sit around counting pennies and live a smaller, have-to life, then focus on your debt. In fact, I promise you that if you spend the next year focused on getting your debt down to nothing, you will have exactly that at the end of the year-- nothing. Focusing on debt is like dieting without exercise. It's an endless cycle of starvation and deprivation with no lasting results. (pg. 3)

And, since I'm one of the rare few who made it a point never to carry either school or credit card debt, I can kind of see where she's coming from. She continues:

A colleague of mine drinks three iced quad venti nonfat no-whip mochas a day. His monthly coffee habit is some people's car payment.

She neglects to mention his heart exploded from caffeine overload, and even the EMS crew left the scene buzzing, only to get run over by the Maserati-driving barrista who profited from his loss.

Anyway, Langemeier has written three (3) books with "Millionaire" in the title. How's that working for you, Loral? The latest one is about creating a "Cash Machine for Life." She outlines this with her proprietary (her word) Wealth Cycle (string of trademarks here), which is our first warning sign. Always beware authors , talking about money, who have clearly made that money by talking about making money (I include my cat in that group), or worse yet, selling a proprietary system that makes you money.

Langemeier does, as seminars and exclusive networking opportunities. They look better than those "Millionaire Cat" seminars, where you point at your cat and yell, "I HAVE A MILLIONAIRE CAT!" But they still leave me a little wary.

Fortunately, her book is useful, mainly for how it defines "Cash Machine." It is NOT a pie-in-the-sky great idea, like franchising MMA CATpitalism interactive scratching post sellers all through the world. It IS, however, a laundromat. Or a car wash. It has to make money NOW. And it should be related to what you already know, not what you want to know. So for me, it's not DOGpitalism-- no, I know cats, so I should focus my energies there. For instance, start a consulting business where I explain to cat owners how to realign their portfolios into cat-friendly equities.

To build a Cash Machine, she emphasizes the fast & the practical. Two ideas stand out: "Seven Weeks to Sales" and the necessity of NOT being a "Lone Ranger." I never watched Westerns, so I'm glad she explained that she meant to find a mentor, a model, and to get other people to cover your weaknesses. I, for instance, am bad with setting things on fire, so I would outsource that to a contractor. If my Cash Machine for Life involved setting things on fire. Which it doesn't.

The "Seven Weeks to Sales" walks through a process not just of coming up with a business, a plan, and a team, but a structure. You have to make it a legal entity. For her model, it's non-negotiable. That way, you can expand it, hire others to do the work, and-- most importantly-- sell it later.

She gives some web extras that deserve mention. One, a PDF of Cash Machine ideas, lists 25 pages' worth of every job known to humankind. A sample:

• Pick-up kids from school
• Tutoring
• Pet Psychic
• Advertising Coach
• Personal Assistant Service
• Mobile Coffee Truck
• House Sitting
• Pet Sitting
• Flower Shop
  

It is so encyclopedic as to be quite useless, and kind of thoughtless. I can't imagine she expects anyone will read it.

So, fair enough. Some other books cover similar ground, but not with her emphasis on the nuts-and-bolts. Business organization and legal structure are perhaps the most important part, but books like The Four Hour Work Week flit right past them. She gives them due attention. You'll still have to hire an accountant or a lawyer, but at least you'll know what to ask.

IN SUM:

How This Book Gave Me the Gout, a Misunderstood Disease Not Just for the Old Rich:

• The "proprietary" nonsense. It's a sound set of principles, but a "process" only so she can sell it-- so it's jargon-heavy. I can't stand jargon, and having not yet read her other two books, much of this book is rougher going than it has to be.
• The organization. She relies a lot on stuff from her Cash Machines Seminars, so the book can be needlessly hard to follow. In other words, should I just take the seminar? Well, I'm not interested in furthering your Cash Machine, because those kinds of things are always fluff. It's a good time management principle: AVOID MEETINGS. In my book, Seminar = Meeting.
• Learn to write better or spend more for your ghostwriter, whichever it is. If this book is a bestseller, it's because people want money, not because you can write your way out of a wet paper bag.
  

How This Book Fed My Cat Delicious Tunafish:

• Has a sense of the legal ramifications of business-- what other money-machine book talks about due diligence?
• She's right about getting rich. So many people have long-term plans to retire rich, but in the meantimes they bend over backwards to pinch pennies. Rather, building more income streams-- especially passive ones-- makes more sense.
  

Cat Skills Assessment

As many of you know, my cat Zooey has decided to help out monetarily. But she's become discouraged after her initial enthusiasm. It is hard to find work in this world, especially when you're a cat.

Yesterday she threw up all over the deck. I was worried-- stress is pretty bad, and now the deck is too. I could hear her up late last night. When I woke up I found this on the computer screen:


What an amazing cat! As an outdoor cat, she must have had a copy of the housekey made when I wasn't looking.

She had gone through my self-help books, and opened up Loral Langemeier's Millionaire Maker's Guide to Creating a Cash Machine for Lifeto a self-help skills assessment early in the book. So we sat down this morning and worked through it to give her some direction. This is a short version of it, so you can have an idea of what it's like:

1. List your job responsibilities:

• eating
• coyness
• sleeping
• stalking through lawn & forest as mistress of all i survey

2. List the tasks associated with these responsibilities:

• monitoring small animals
• climbing trees
• somber frolic
  

3. List the industries and markets you have experience in:

• pets
• hunting
• food service

4. List the tasks you do at home:

• tongue-bathing
• resting
  

5. List the activities you find you do in spare time

• rubbing face against lawn furniture
• marking territory
• leering at Mr MacMuffin through his living room window, especially at night when the terror sets in

6. List the tasks others ask you to help them w/

• pest control
• relationship problems
• money problems
• emotional problems
• family problems

7. List the tasks you're good at & may take for granted

• sharpening claws
• furniture control
• consulting.
  

That's her list. Honestly, I'm a little surprised at some of her answers, but she is an outdoor cat, after all. And the Cash Machine book is interesting-- I'll have my full review up tomorrow!

Moving Along with the Plans...

Looking back to our CATpitalism Plan Part I, we've achieved most of our objectives.

The blog's up and running, and we have increased our traffic. To our new readers, welcome! And the SEO is buzzing along. In fact, doing a Google search for "Catpitalism" yields us as the #1 hit! Just like Cat Stevens. Well, #4, but the #1 is our Blogcatalog page. Close enough.

Look at the competition we've beaten out:

• The good folk of Lawrence, Kansas discussing how our very own blog destroyed Chinese Communism
• A Senior Member(!) of a prominent Catholic discussion forum says, " I'm convinced that Catpitalism is the best economic system." Me too!
• And one "Tweaker" intones this simple fact: "Catpitalism works." Like a charm!
  

Since these are all discussions, just do a search for "Catpitalism" and you can see the quotes. And I must say Zooey & I are flattered and humbled by the attention our unique cat-centric brand of e-commerce has received.

But we still had two leftovers from that first plan.

#4 was to open an online bank account, either with ING or HSBC. Which I have done! In an 11th-hour reversal, I chose HSBC for their higher rate. The sign-up was painless-- a few forms filled out online, and a quick credit check and I was good to go. I had read about much more complex application process at other blogs online, but all that remained was to send in a check. I'm still waiting for the check to go through their system, but soon I will earning a big 4.25% interest! Well, probably lower, since the Fed cut rates. At least that'll keep my portfolio from tanking. I hope. Please.

#5 is a Cat Skills Assessment. Which will come, after we have reviewed another book. Next week we'll be getting into some business design & entrepreneurship books. We can't wait!

Meanwhile, have a great weekend-- I think Zooey and I will try to spend more time outside together.

Seth Godin's Cat Builds No Wealth

Kind of cloudy and overcast today, so I was snooping around in Seth Godin's blog. (I reviewed his book Meatball Sundae yesterday.) I found this post, which has some cobwebs on it, but raised some issues pertinent to my CATpitalsm plan.

Briefly-- read the post, though, it has some good points. In sum, Godin destroys my hopes, my dreams, Zooey's plans for gold-dust litter and braised rat pate. He refuses to monetize his blog.

He outlines good reasons for not doing so. Among them, the fact that one of his favorite blogs changed from being a nice place to hang out and read good ideas, into the e-version of the Vegas Strip. Ads, blaring out, carnival barkers touting the dude's new book, his bloated resume (this is the blog Godin describes, not Godin himself-- his blog is elegant and clean, and ad-free), so forth, dogs & cats living together. Just awful.

So yeah, I can see his point. But-- he's also a bestselling author with fourteen-odd books out. (I don't mean his books are odd! It's just English, for pity's sake!) So he doesn't seem to need to monetize his blog-- it's a loss leader, serving as an ad for his books, his speaking, his consulting.

Zooey & I don't yet have a catsulting service together. Or a speaking/meowing tour. Perhaps we will, after doing Zooey's skills assessment. But until that day, we'll have some ads. Maybe when we're raking in more money than Mr MacMuffin ever DREAMED of we'll demonetize the blog. And the cat. But until then...

And I want to reassure you (and myself, shamefaced after reading the post) we never changed! We were all about the boodle from Day 1! Cat-Daddy, Zooey-Monetization, so never mind that we have ads! Don't forgive us, enjoy our catpitalist path! Imitate it! Golden Land of Opportunity! My cat makes money! Your cat can too!

REVIEW: Meatball Sundae

Seth Godin has made a name for himself in marketing circles because he writes short books. He admits it in the intro-- those sell better, so breezy reads like The Dip have made the rounds. It helps that he's long on ideas and short on bloated, crummy prose. Would that his peers could all write as well as him, instead of cranking out filler just to make the spine more visible on the rack.

Anyway, his new book made the librarian raise her not inconsiderable eyebrow. "Meatball Sundae? What's THAT?" I immediately knew not to try the Singles Bar Test on this one.

And what is it? Well, a meatball sundae is flat-out disgusting, the kind of thing you make your beloved when the expiration date's long gone, if they can't take a hint. Not because of the meatballs-- meatballs are great! So's whipped cream & the cherry on top. Together, though...

In the business world, it's when all the newfangled Web 2.0 viral XML marketbot stuff gets applied to, oh, toothpaste. Or buckets. Inverted, it's like a Happy Meal tie-in for Cloverfield. Oops! Horrified screaming kids, smashed Mickey D's.

So Godin puts forth the novel idea: all this Inter-Web gobbedlygook works, but only when the user adapts to it. Huh? In other words, if the Web demands you communicate with your customers fast & honestly, it's a hard fit for a huge Megacorp. Unless the Megacorp changes how it does business!

Godin shows this through his well-integrated case studies. Constantly dipping into real-world stories with Kiva & Recording the Beatles, as well as Amazon & Wal-Mart, he outlines fourteen trends he sees as central to the huge shift underway. The shift, of course, is the change from a huge monomedia model (TV, radio) to a diversity of outlets thanks to the Internet.

The trends, many will have already heard of, like outsourcing (#6), direct consumer-to-consumer communication and commerce (#9), and the Long Tail (#5). It does, however, have as much food for an entrepreneur's thought as for the executive. I have certainly rethought many of my approaches to CATpitalism reading it.

Best things I can say about this book: he can write! And he has things to say.

Also, as another bald guy, I appreciate that Godin has branded himself using his own bald head. It's shapely, and full of Godin goodness.